Israeli and Palestinian leaders have begun a new round of peace talks in Egypt under the close eye of the United States, which wants a deal within a year.
There is little confidence among the Israeli or Palestinian public that these new negotiations will lead anywhere at all.
But US president Barack Obama has made it a priority to get the two sides talking again, whether they want to or not.
Two weeks ago in Washington, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised to negotiate in good faith.
But since then, they have been drawing their first lines in the sand, with Mr Abbas demanding Israel permanently end the building of Jewish homes in the West Bank, and Israel demanding it be recognised as a Jewish state.
These are demands both leaders will find it almost impossible to meet, and these talks have barely begun.
Settlers’ threat
Meanwhile Jewish settlers say they will withdraw support from the Israeli government if they are not allowed to build new homes for a growing population.
At least 300,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, or what the Bible calls Judaea and Samaria, dotted among a population of nearly 3 million Palestinians.
Mr Netanyahu is suggesting the freeze on new settlement homes will end later this month.
Peace activist Hagit Ofran works for a group called Settlement Watch.
He says if that is the case, thousands of new homes will be built.
“We know of approximately 2,000 housing units that are ready to be built the day the moratorium ends,” he said.
“There are another 11,000 housing units that are in approved plans that the settlers theoretically can build without any intervention of the government.”
But settlers themselves say after 10 months without any construction it is intolerable to expect them to wait any longer for desperately needed new homes.
Aliza Herbst lives in the settlement of Ofra, near the Palestinian town of Ramallah, and represents the settler council, Yesha.
She says it has been a tough time for those waiting to build homes.
“It creates a lot of tension and a lot of stress for a family to be in cramped quarters and a lot of these young couples thinking that it will be a short wait, moved into caravans or mobile homes, or very small structures and have been on hold for quite a while,” she said.
“Many of them have two, three, four children by now in very cramped quarters.”
‘Real peace’
She says it will not be necessary to compromise on building in order to reach a peace deal.
“I believe that if there were a real peace there really would be no land issue at all,” she said.
Ms Herbst says there is plenty of vacant land between Jerusalem and Ofra.
“There’s a lot of empty spaces. There’s certainly no problem with whoever wants to live here living here, you can certainly build tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of houses in this area,” she said.
“So I believe some kind of compromise could be worked out.”
Ms Herbst says she thinks Palestinians already have their own state.
“I believe they have their own state in Jordan. The population of Jordan is primarily Palestinian,” she said.
“Many of them have Jordanian passports, but before [1967] there were also Jews in these areas, it depends on how far back you want to go.
Ms Herbst says there has been a strong presence of Jews in the disputed territory for well over 2,000 years.
“This area was never Palestinian territory. I mean Palestine is not a political entity, it was never a political entity, the Palestinian nation never existed,” she said.
“But aside from that, if there’s any part of Israel that is the most authentic part of the Jewish nation, it’s here.
“This is where our forefathers lived, this is our history, these are our roots.”