Canada needs to look at the big picture

Canada has role to play in Mideast | rabble.ca <read me.

But restricting our focus like this obscures the central fact of this decades-old conflict - millions of Palestinians, in Gaza and the West Bank, have lived under Israeli military occupation for more than 40 years. (The removal of a few Israeli settlements from Gaza in 2005 resulted in tighter, not looser, Israeli military control over the territory.)
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However, the evidence suggests another factor may be the real obstacle:
Israel doesn't want to give up the land it's been occupying. Certainly,
Israel has moved in the opposite direction, allowing Jewish settlers to
take over large swaths of Palestinian land.

There are now more than 250,000 heavily-armed Jewish settlers living
in the West Bank where a future Palestinian state is slated to be. They
have made it clear they intend to stay.

Indeed, for the past 40 years, there have been two sets of
developments going on simultaneously in the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict - one under the glare of public attention and one largely off
camera.

In the spotlight, there have been peace negotiations, interrupted by
bouts of violence. Meanwhile, well out of sight, is the inexorable
takeover of Palestinian land by Israeli settlements, effectively
removing the possibility of a peace deal.