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A large segment of the Palestinian population is irrationally motivated by hate and intergenerational grievances, and their leadership has always been corrupt. I don't believe peace would ever be "easy" or smooth. That said, it's also simplistic to think they are literally all irredeemable vengeance-monsters. Any peace process will necessarily have to be a long term and painful one - the current generation isn't going to suddenly stop wanting to kill Israelis, but there have been efforts by some Palestinians to change things. It will only work in a staged way where the next generation has things better and is less inclined to become martys.
Sometimes these efforts are undermined by their own people (the conflict between Fatah and Hamas is complicated, and not entirely Israel's fault but Israel isn't innocent of responsibility either), and sometimes very deliberately undermined by Israel. If the Israelis take your attitude: "We'll have peace only if and when every last Palestinian renounces violence and accepts the status quo, and until then, we'll keep bombing," no, there will never be peace. At the moment, that does seem to be Israeli policy.
Just to cite one example where I do blame the Israelis, the West Bank settlements are literally the "settler colonialist project" that gets thrown at them a lot. It's explicitly a project to displace Palestinians and fuck them over. Gaza is a hellhole and probably can't be anything else in the foreseeable future, but the West Bank could be the start of an actual Palestinian state with cooperation between them and Israel, but Netanyahu has (IMO) intentionally made the West Bank a sore spot and another conflict front.
Israel's current attitude is "We have the power, so suck it." I can't say I blame them (especially after October 7) but I also can't say I blame Palestinians for hating them. A "peace process" would have to start with the Israelis acknowledging the Palestinians have legitimate grievances instead of just saying "This is 100% all your fault." Clearly they are not going to do that. So here we are.
The details of the Oslo process and why it failed, the Camp David accords, Clinton's peace efforts (whatever else you believe about Bill Clinton, he made a genuine effort with Israel and Palestine) are very complicated. The popular narrative right now is "It was all undermined by Arafat," and honestly, I'd say that's only about 60% true.
Who gets the other 40% of the blame, if you don't mind me asking?
Mostly the Israelis, but also other Palestinian factions (notably Hamas).
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Wait, why not? If Israel decided to ignore optics, accept whatever level of collateral damage as was necessary, and bombed every Palestinian that didn't renounce violence, and only bombed them, then Israel would stop when only the non-irredeemable non-vengeance-monsters were left, and there'd be no more violence, yes?
I mean, given the current state of Palestinian culture, this would be at least genocide in the wholescale and eradication of their culture, and would probably end up being genocide in terms of actual real genocide, yes, but that would stop the violence.
Sure, but that would effectively be pretty close to actual genocide. I don't think Israel is literally committing genocide right now, but I think what they've decided is acceptable collateral damage is on the far end of "looking kind of like war crimes." Whether or not you agree, it is for certain that Israel at this time (and for a long time even before October 7) does not believe and does not care that peace will ever be on the table.
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Because they aren't willing to kill them all, whether that is due to morality or the fact their allies would not allow it. So given they are not willing to do that, and given history shows that even if most of the population accepts peace, there will always be hold outs, then demanding 100% peacefulness is an impossibility.
That is the problem here, if you aren't willing to kill them all, and you also are not willing to accept 95% peace, then you are stuck in the current situation for the foreseeable future. You can get to 100% peace by genocide yes, but that is already off the table.
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