Igor Boog, over at Shou?, pointed out these three articles for those trying to put the current situation in Israel/Palestine in context. The are a must read so I repeat the links here.

From LBJ to GWB
The Full Story of Resolution 242:
How the US Sold Out the Palestinians

The quarter-century-old bedrock U.S. policy of supporting the exchange of full peace for full withdrawal had thus been reshaped by Clinton administration policymakers to supporting the exchange of full peace for a mere partial withdrawal. The promise to the Palestinians that had always been part of the demands on them to accept Resolution 242 was abandoned without a by-your-leave by a team of U.S. negotiators whose main interest lay in guaranteeing Israel's security and seeing to the furtherance of Israel's interests, and by a president who may not have understood and apparently did not care about the nuances of decades of U.S. policymaking.

This failure of understanding is the primary reason the peace process collapsed at the Camp David summit in July 2000.
[read more]

The leaders of Clinton's negotiating team, Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, had been connected with the pro-Israeli think tank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a spin-off from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the principal pro-Israel lobby organization. Martin Indyk had worked for AIPAC. They were both Jews that had lived in Israel. This made for impartial negotiations on the part of the U.S.?

----------

This article was written at the end of last year but is still very relevant.

And Darkness Covered the Land

Israel did not set out to be a right-wing apartheid-state-in-the-making, where Palestinians would be held in bantustans--if they were not expelled. But it is dangerously close to becoming just that. The religious right, with its demagogic dream of Greater Israel, seemingly has won.
(...)

As evil as terrorism is, however, it doesn't represent an existential threat to Israel. The absence of peace does. Without peace that would result in a viable Palestinian state, Israel will soon be ruling over a hostile majority-Palestinian population, and then "the situation will deteriorate in a very short time into hell," says Yossi Beilin. "I don't know what kind of hell, but it will be hell."
[read more]

----------

Ethnic cleansing attended the birth of Israel but, more than 50 years later, the country is still in denial about its bloody past. Those who speak out risk their jobs

Behind the turbulent news from Israel, a struggle for historical truth has passed almost unnoticed outside academic circles; yet its wider significance is epic. In May 1948, more than 200 Palestinians were killed by the advancing Jewish militia in the coastal village of Tantura, south of Haifa.

According to the recorded testimony of 40 witnesses, both Arab and Jewish, half the civilians were shot in a "rampage". The rest were marched to the beach, where the men were separated from the women and children. They were taken to a wall near the mosque where they were shot in the back of the head.

The "cleansing" of Tantura (a term used at the time) was a well-kept secret. When they were interviewed four years ago, several Palestinian witnesses said they feared for their lives if they spoke out. One survivor, who as a child witnessed the murder of his entire family in Tantura, said to the interviewer: "But believe me, one should not mention these things. I do not want them to take revenge against us. You are going to cause us trouble... "
[read more]