The contours of the solution are known — all we must do is try harder.

Wrong. Twenty years of diplomacy have failed to achieve peace between the two sides. That must mean that the gap is still too wide for a successful bridging compromise. It is all too easy to play the blame game in this context, ascribing failure to "extremists on both sides" — one of the most frequently uttered asinine phrases in Middle East commentaries. In fact, neither side is prepared to settle for what a bridging proposal would look like. In 2000 and 2008, two Israeli prime ministers signed up to a comprehensive solution to the conflict that entailed expansive concessions on Israel's part. A third proposal — the Geneva Initiative — pushed those terms even farther, with the support of Israel's dovish opposition at the time. None was enough for the Palestinian leadership. In a laboratory environment, the repetition of a failed experiment would demand a change of the ingredients and the conditions. In the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, Western diplomats have forgotten their science.

The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is central to the region's ills.

Wrong again. Regional challenges are quite unrelated to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Iran's nuclear pursuit is a function of that country's aspirations for regional hegemony. The wave of Arab revolts has nothing to do with the lack of Palestinian independence. Syria's grim body count would not have been avoided by peace next door.  The conflict is marginal to the region, increasingly so since the wave of Arab revolts began.

Israeli occupation of the West Bank is corrupting Israeli society.

Based on what evidence? Israeli society is much more diverse, pluralistic and multicultural than it was before Israel conquered the West Bank. Israel's government is much more transparent and less corrupt than it was before 1967. Israel's press is a lot less party-controlled and much more inquisitive than it was then. By what standard is moral erosion being measured, other than the pangs of conscience of Western elites who do not even live there — and often know little about the place? Israelis are far from being morally corrupt. They are keenly aware of the moral dilemmas posed by the status quo and wish they had a way to make peace with their neighbours. The problem is not that their society has been corrupted — it is that Palestinian and Arab societies have not matured enough to come to terms with the price required to make peace.