David Cameron is in a muddle over Palestine

The definition of madness, commonly attributed to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. In all likelihood, Einstein never said this, but the formulation is useful for understanding not only madness but western policy in the Middle East. (Admittedly, there is substantial overlap.) One idea that fixates foreign policy elites, so much so that we must persevere with it despite all evidence, is the creation of a Palestinian state. It is less a policy than a religious doctrine and its most devout adherents are to be found not in Israel or the territories but in the US State Department, the British Foreign Office, the European Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institution, and the editorial conferences of the Times, the FT and Foreign Policy magazine. 

A Palestinian state is an article of faith to which reality must bend. In an example of what behavioural psychologists call escalation of commitment, the more the proposition is shown to be faulty, the more ardently its disciples pursue it.