we are. The concurrent establishment of forces and leadership can happen but if all that happened was an international force in the West Bank and a continuation of Abbas/Fatah then it would be a failure. There has to be a change that would be concurrent with Israel withdrawing, perhaps in stages and an aggressive posture toward ridding the "state" of the Hamas/Hezbollah etc. goons. As it is now any action of any kind about anything that is done by Israel is hated and rejected by the Palestinians in the West Bank. At the same time they are intimidated/terrorized by a minority of their own population acting as thugs and they know the corruption of Fatah/Abbas so they certainly don't feel free to speak. So my point is that trying a single thing at a time isn't going to get much change. Even if Israel withdrew tomorrow and dismantled every settlement you would still have the other problems. Even if the other problems suddenly disappeared we would still have the occupation and settlements and all of that resentment. So people are in a vice so to speak.
The building of what we would like to see as "stable and secure institutions" for governance takes a fair amount of time and an absence of conflict and terror groups. The way we're going now doesn't get us there and I don't see the surrounding countries making any serious moves to embrace a withdrawal of those groups. So the only organization with any actual legal authority in the West Bank is the UN. Just depending on "some day" as a strategy to bring change has been a colossal failure of conference after summit after conference and still here we are. Yes other countries in the region have made peace with Israel over the 75+ years but there can be little doubt that the actual matter of the West Bank, the Palestinians and peace is worse off now than in years past and it wasn't dandy then either but it is certainly worse now.
Over history there were plenty of examples of Palestinian villages and Jewish villages living in piece with each other side by side. There are plenty of examples of Palestinians and Jews defending each other during the Mandate when extreme forces from either side came to attack. I cannot believe in my heart that those people with that care in their hearts have ceased to exist. Those are the people who must be empowered in the West Bank and in Israel. Otherwise all we have is periods of war and fractured ceasefires escalating without end.
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