Barry Rubin: Why All the Excuses for Palestinian Intransigence Don't Make Sense - '...the arguments being made by Westerners who think they are being sympathetic to a suffering people just don't make sense. In fact, they make things worse. Indeed, they are part of a Palestinian strategy to avoid making peace and encourage such intransigence. Again, the calculation goes something like this: the longer the Palestinians refuse to make a compromise peace, the more people will blame Israel, turn away from it, and pressure it into unilateral concessions. This is a masochistic-based approach, a willingness to suffer in exchange for gain, and a gain that partly comes from many onlookers' inability to believe that anyone could use such tactics. And yet the truth is right out in the open. Don't like settlements? Don't like "occupation." Then make peace and get rid of these things. The continued existence of settlements or of any Israeli military presence due to the Palestinian continuation of the conflict doesn't prove anything to the contrary.'