ABSTRACT
One common quip about the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is that the problem is not that there is no light at the end of the tunnel, the problem is that there is no tunnel. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict will make clear, peace is hard to come by in a conflict where any foreseeable resolution will need both sides to accept less than they rightfully deserve, which is what has made discovering the tunnel so difficult. The 1948 war was such a devastating defeat for the Palestinians that for the next few decades they became marginal players in the region's politics. Instead of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the focus shifted to a wider Arab-Israeli conflict in which the Palestinians, without a state of their own, were at best secondary actors. The war over Kuwait also helped bring greater international attention to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Saddam Hussein attempted to link a resolution of the Kuwaiti crisis with a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
