cos

You're right, people in the US tend to oversimplify because they're missing a lot of important context. One who did understand, and was in a position to act on it, was Bill Clinton. It's amazing how much he managed to learn about every thread of the situation, every group's history and desires and greivances. They all trusted him, and he was making a lot of progress. It's really tragic that he got cut off when he did. After the tie election in 2000, when people were talking about Bush reacting by having a bipartisan administration, I was hoping fervently that his big bipartisan gesture would be to keep Clinton on as his Middle East envoy. And again in 2004, I got a lot of hope when Howard Dean said if he were President, he'd ask Clinton to go to Israel/Palestine on behalf of the US... and Kerry adopted and endorsed the idea after he got the nomination. Really, really sad that didn't happen.