Israel has no intention of ever returning what they call Judea and Samaria, i.e. Palestine. That is the dirty little secret Israelis want hidden from the world. It means Israel has never negotiated in "good faith" over a Palestinian state.

Israeli Founding Father, David Ben-Gurion set the stage in a speech made August 7, 1937 to the 20th Zion Congress in Zurich. As for a Zionist state, he said, "It is better to have immediately a Jewish state, even if it would only be part [of Israel]É If we were offered a Jewish state in the Western land of Israel in return for our relinquishing our historic right over the whole land of Israel, then I would postpone the state. No Jew has the right to relinquish the right of the Jewish people over the whole land of Israel."

That "whole land" needless to say includes all of Palestine. There has always been the intention of gaining the full territories. For example, even as Prime Minister Menachem Begin was signing the 1978 Camp David Accords with Egypt, he agreed with and was working towards the return of Judea and Samaria. While the Camp David Accords stated Palestinians had legitimate rights, Begin never saw the Palestinians as equals much in the same manner which the Nazis, and Americans for that matter, once held for Jews. He and most of Israel's citizens fundamentally rejected anything but an Israel exclusively for Jews from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Anything else he considered bogus. His protŽgŽ, Ariel Sharon, shared this vision as has almost every Prime Minister serving since.

Ultimately, Israel is the only entity on earth that can stop the genocide of Palestine and it has no desire to do so. It wants that land and the indigenous people will not vacate. It also understands it has several options to stop the primary conflict dragging the world to the brink of war and has been fully aware of them for decades. Instead of creating a truly viable solution, it dodges any real solution to the problem so it can continue gobbling up Palestine and stalls for the time to do this. The solutions include:

1) It can withdraw to the pre-1967 borders totally and completely, the land for peace solution favored by many if not most Palestinians. In this plan, Palestine would become a fully recognized, sovereign nation. Negotiations would have to include leaving settlements and the Jewish only highways intact so Palestinians left homeless by bombing and bulldozers have a place to live and a means to rebuild their economy.

2) Vying for popularity is the one land, one country solution, incorporating Israel and Palestine into one country that runs "from the Jordan to the Sea." Because there are more Palestinians than Israelis that's not going to work unless Palestinians are fully integrated on an equal basis and the racist Jewish-only mentality of Israel is ended. Otherwise Palestinians will remain second-class citizens.

3) Or it can continue what its been doing for 40 years, play its game of "Dodge and Stall" while grabbing up Palestine as fast as it can. On the diplomatic circuit, the game has kept Israel one step ahead of the multiple UN Resolutions and World Court indictments. DodgeÉ"We have a right to defend our country, Our people are being killed." it declares righteously. But does Israel have the right to exterminate another people? And what happens to the rule of law to determine guilt? Only totalitarian governments resort to such means as bombing suspects when they could just as well have arrested them. Is the tactic successful? Are Israelis safer?

Then there's the StallÉ "We'll pull back when there is no more resistance. Jerusalem will be dealt with at the end of negotiations." In the mean time, numerous settlements were built between Jerusalem and Bethlehem to ensure Palestine could never reclaim its capital.

Palestinians have listened to one excuse after another from their occupier. They're not civilized enough. Their leaders aren't' t strong enough. Even though all maps to the area between Lebanon and Egypt for a hundred years refer to the country of Palestine, Israelis have dismissed such claims. Former PM Golda Meir was quoted in The Sunday Times of London in 1969 as saying "They [the Palestinians] do not exist."

For a long time the "Dodge and Stall" was that Palestinians had to recognize Israel's right to exist. Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority stated clearly before the United Nations and numerous other venues that the government of Palestine recognizes Israeli's right to exist. Even so, for a decade, Israel continued to demand a recognition they'd already been granted.

Israel then demanded that the Palestinian Authority rein-in those resisting occupation even though the Geneva Convention says they have every right to resist. Israel won't budge until the Palestinians meekly submit to living in prison-like conditions for the rest of their lives. Sharon's recent plan for Gaza to be a totally walled-in territory shows that's also the plan for the West Bank. And, while the Israelis haven't pulled out of Gaza yet, they have bulldozed a no man's land between Gaza and Egypt, made over a thousand families homeless and destroyed housing and businesses. The Dodge and Stall elements in Sharon's plan worked beautifully for those trying to expel all Arabs from Palestine.

Ariel Sharon's fast flight to disrupt the Wye River peace accords with Clinton, Arafat and Barak worked the Dodge and Stall strategy. Barak was suppose to be giving away too much though the paltry concessions were dismal. Sharon pulled Barak back home.

After that was former Prime Minister Barak's re-election. The PLO was to declare a state in May of the next year but agreed to wait until after the Israeli election to protect Barak. Instead, Sharon took power and ended any immediate hope of a nation. Then it was the "marginalizing" of President Arafat and the attempt to find a leader who would surrender to all of Israelis demands and so on and so on.

Thomas Friedman's excellent 1989 book, FROM BEIRUT TO JERUSALEM, the source of much of the present material, quotes Woody Allen speaking on the Op Ed page of The New York Times, January 28, 1988. It shows how things have only deteriorated for Palestinians and how the old Dodge and Stall has worked. Written during the first intifada, Allen was said by Friedman to be reflecting the sentiments of many American Jews, confusion.

"As a supporter of Israel and as one who has always been outraged at the horrors inflicted on the little nation by hostile neighborsÉ I am appalled beyond measure by the treatment of the rioting Palestinians by Jews. I mean, fellas, are you kidding? ÉBreaking the hands of men and women so they can't throw stones? Dragging civilians out of their houses at random to smash them with sticks in an effort to terrorize a population into quietÉ Are we talking about state-sponsored brutality and even torture?É I can't believe it, and I don't know exactly what is to be done."

And so it is, the American Jews remain confused, in denial and duped while the Israelis grab more land. The policy of Dodge and Stall until Israel has exorcised all Arabs from Palestine is working very well.