Israel's now confronting the same lesson the U.S. is learning in Afghanistan: If you create a cat's paw based on religious fundamentalism to do your bidding in a circumstance that's advantageous to your national goals, on the presumption you can 'stuff the genie back into the bottle' you're delusional.

Once you create, motivate, and supply an organization whose allegiance is to some 'higher power' (whose agenda is voiced by the extremists who purportedly 'speak' for that higher power) you're no longer in control... they are, unless you're willing to go to the extremes necessary to reassert control.

America created & funded the Taliban & ignored the Wahhabi fundamentalists (including Osama bin Laden) who supplied their ideology and who created al Qaeda in a stupid game of cold war one-up-manship.

Israel created & funded the fundamentalist settlers and turned a blind eye to their excesses (when it suited the state's purposes) and is now paying (or will pay, if Israel does not accede to the settler's demands) a similar price as the U.S. has because the settlers aren't concerned with the "state" of Israel. Their concerns, like those of all religious extremists, are centered elsewhere.

Your view of settlers has been tainted by a few bad apples. We are not talking about the majority of the settlement community (mostly normal Israelis living in the suburbs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv). We are talking about a handful of radicals living in a few settlements deep in the West Bank that both sides can easily agree will be removed in any final status agreement. Attempting to characterize all settlers as 'Teitels' is shameful. Comparing hundreds of thousands of Israelis living in city suburbs to the Taliban and radical Wahabi belief is beyond comprehension. There are indeed extremists in every society. But the overall article title and the comments of Marshalldoc are beyond despicable and show only a lack of understanding of who most 'settlers' are and what they believe.