Tony,

Lot of natural gas offshore of Gaza, more than Israel's.

Oil reserves under the West Bank.

Israel cannot endure the independence such wealth would bring to the Palestinians.

And so the Israeli path is to divide them by corrupting their leaders, Arafat's estate was close to $1 billion, by supporting Hamas in Gaza and the P.A. in the West Bank: all the while taking more and more land and illegally settling some 700,000 Israelis on it.