Iran saying it's behind the missiles, Hamas praising terrorist and wanting body bags, Israel with airstrikes and calling up 75,000 reservists for a ground invasion.  And all of this over a tiny scrap of land that holds 1.5M people.

Neither side wants war, but they do have different views of "not war." Hamas seems to think that they can continue to shot rockets as they have basically done for the last five years. Israel, a vanilla flavored Democracy with strong free press, wants total quiet.

Netanyahu's Likud party has never really enjoyed the confidence of most native-born Israelis whose families have lived there for several generations, and who have demonstrated an increased willingness to seek a negotiated peace with their Arab neighbors. Further, the Netanyahu government has generally incurred the hostility of the Israeli Arab community with its hardline policies toward Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

Thus, the governing Likud coalition has come to rely ever more increasingly upon the rapidly growing Jewish immigrant community for most of its support. Unfortunately, over 500,000 of these recent arrivals have shown a marked tendency to settle upon lands that are still being seized from Palestinian ownership and control in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, even as we speak.

Therefore, it's hardly surprising that the large immigrant community would generally be the most unyielding in their political opposition to the idea that there should be any sort of suspension or freeze on further Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. They can further be counted upon to remain vehemently hostile to any proposed accord with moderate Palestinians that would effectively impose and implement a two-state solution, which would compel most if not all Jewish settlers / squatters to abandon their presence in the Palestininan territories and relocate within Israel proper.

Suffice to say, both sides in this seemingly intractible conflict are at present being effectively held hostage by the most extreme elements amongst them. While the rhetoric and hostility has become most heated, one must hope that there is a lot of backchannel communications currently taking place between the sane adults in the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority, to head off an armed confrontation which would serve neither of them well at all.