It is all about what could come into Israel — whether it is rockets flying in from southern Lebanon or the West Bank or suicide bombers from Gaza and Jordan. To paraphrase what Mark Heller from the Institute for National Security Studies once said: Israel is not worried about its ability to respond to attacks, it is interested in thwarting attacks before they happen.

So Israel will not respond positively to Mahmoud Abbas’ call for Nato forces to intervene in the perennial Israeli-Palestinian conflict because first of all, Benjamin Netanyahu does not believe in peace with the Palestinians and secondly, because he — like all Israeli leaders — believes resolutely that the Israeli Army can do a better job protecting itself from attacks than any international military force.

The Palestinians have long called for an international force to intervene and to act as a buffer between them and the Israelis. Abbas’ comment last week: “They can stay to reassure the Israelis and to protect us” echoes the numerous attempts to convince the international community, namely the Quartet (US, United Nations, European Union and Russia) to engage more robustly with boots on the ground.

For the Palestinians, it is a way of showing the international community what the Israelis are doing, primarily expropriating land and further colonising territory with the pretext of maintaining a military presence to annul the possibility of further attacks — something they have been increasingly good at doing with the illegal wall and overall occupation and domination of Palestinian Territories.

For the Palestinians, it is also a way to involve the international community in sharing the responsibility for a colossal mess created and left by European colonialism. Calling for an international force to monitor the “shared capital” of occupied Jerusalem is an attempt to recuperate political and territorial claims to the third holiest city of Islam — something Israel will obviously not accept.

The Israelis also have little regard for international law and multinational forces. Look at the separation wall built on Palestinian land and the numerous invasions of southern Lebanon where the Israeli Army overran the United National Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in pursuit of Palestinian fighters and Hezbollah. UN troops were actually killed.

The Israelis did permit US Security Coordinator, General James Jones, also SACUR (Supreme Allied Commander Europe) of Nato to implement a programme for Palestinian police to be trained outside Amman by US military staff — the same training grounds used for the Iraqi police when the US Army was trying to reform the security sector in the desperate years after the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussain.

Palestinian police were brought back to the West Bank to debunk any militant cells from Hamas who had just won the elections in Gaza and were riding high on popular support. Training Palestinians to turn them against each other is a tactic Israel accepts, but deploying an international force to monitor borders and the dismantling of colonies is simply out of the question.

The Israelis will also play the security card by eliciting western fears of militant Islam. They will say: Look at what happened with the UNDOF (United Nations Disengagement Observer Force) that was kidnapped and killed by Al Qaida members in the Golan Heights, separating Israel and Syria. Nato does not want a single casualty — hence the aerial campaign against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

Nato deployment in whatever remains of Palestine is not going to happen, least of all in occupied Jerusalem, at most along the Jordan-Palestine border, definitely not along the Gaza border. It is just not realistic, the Israelis will never go for it, and US diplomacy does not have the leverage in Washington or abroad to impose a security solution on the Israelis.

Yet, that is what is really needed: For a US administration to see through the Israeli security subterfuge and to say: “We will help provide security for Israelis and Palestinians alike while negotiations go on and the pending issues are resolved.” But it is always the other way: Negotiate first and then intervene to implement the results. That is what happened in Sinai after Camp David.

Except in Hebron, where Baruch Goldstein shot 30 Palestinians praying in the Ebrahim Mosque; the UN quickly deployed a Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH) that is still there today. But this too is something Nato or any international force will want to avoid: Being present while no political progress is made on the final status issues of refugees, borders and occupied Jerusalem.

As an over-sized remnant of a military-security response to the Soviet-era threat of Communism, Nato has other arenas to consolidate such as Afghanistan. And if Libya was clearly stretching the limits of Nato’s jurisdiction, then why would it get embroiled in the confines of Israel-Palestine? In any case, Kerry can try, but Netanyahu will say no to Nato.

Stuart Reigeluth is Founding Editor of Revolve.