Israel: facts, not necessarily on the ground

From an email conversation of mine, regarding the controversy over Israeli settlement building:

My reading of it is that Israel knows it will never get a better opportunity to grab Palestinian land in the future, and so it's going to take that opportunity right now unless someone says "Stop or you will be destroyed." Right now, there are two groups of people who oppose Israeli land grabs, one of which says "Stop or we will say 'Stop' again", and the other of which says "You will be destroyed, period." Hence, no stopping will take place.

So let's be realistic here. If Israel is going to stop building settlements on Palestinian land, one of three things will have to happen:

1) The United States or some other large, powerful, nuclear-armed country makes a credible threat against Israel.

2) Entities too weak to threaten Israel (e.g. Arab countries, Palestinians) make a credible offer to Israel to provide something Israel wants even more than Palestinian land (e.g. recognition and peace treaties), in exchange for halting of settlements.

3) Israel is destroyed by military force.

If the U.S. doesn't care enough about the settlements to threaten Israel, and if Palestinians are unable to credibly offer peace (because of internal divisions and lack of functioning institutions), and if Arab countries don't care enough about the settlements to give up future negotiating leverage with Israel, and if no outside power like Russia decides to get forcefully involved, it seems clear to me that settlement building will simply not stop.