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Even $4 Billion Can't Buy Love Or Peace

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains committed to Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s approach: “Everything we don't grab will go to them."
Jewish settlers, one of them wearing a garment printed with a map showing the borders of Biblical Israel, pray during a protest at the site of a stabbing attack by a Palestinian, at Tapuach junction, near the West Bank city of Nablus April 30, 2013. A Palestinian man stabbed and shot dead an Israeli settler in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday, the Israeli ambulance service and police said. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun (WEST BANK - Tags: POLITICS CIVIL UNREST) - RTXZ5CZ

The multibillion-dollar development plan for the West Bank unveiled by US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jordan this weekend is the first practical manifestation of the renewed US interest in promoting a diplomatic plan to end Israel's occupation and establish a Palestinian state.

Yet while no doubt well-intentioned, there is no indication that this latest injection of enthusiasm to improve the declining lot of Palestinians, who have been ruled for almost half a century by Israel, will fare any better than its failed predecessors, or indeed that there is any reason to think that it even should.

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