By  | Apr. 9, 2014 on Haaretz.com

The people want it; the snag is powers invested in the status quo, from the settlers to companies to the Palestinians themselves.

In the Israeli-Palestinian complex, economics traditionally has taken the back seat. At its best, it used to smooth out a difficult diplomatic process by promising the Palestinians (and occasionally even Israel) aid money in exchange for cooperation. At its worst, it’s used as an excuse to delay real progress towards a diplomatic solution (a-la Benjamin Netanyahu) or as a grand but distant vision of a glorious future to inspire diplomatic process (a-la Shimon Peres).

But economics can and should be used in a very fundamental way to build a real Palestinian state in the making.

See the example of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which went their separate ways in 1993 without a bullet being fired.

Palestine has become a foster child placed in the hands of dysfunctional family. It has one parent (the U.S. and Europe) that tries to buy cooperation if not obedience with money and another parent (Israel) that ignores it when it’s behaving and is quick to punish it when it acts up. The child itself has come to expect their money and attention as a substitute for taking its fate into its own hands.

What ‘s resulted is economic disaster.

Read the rest of the article here.