[Ha'aretz] Yoel Marcus - For now, with the Palestinians, there is no one to talk to and nothing to talk about. One after another, their leaders have turned out to be bloodthirsty extremists or too weak to reach an agreement, of which compromise is a central component. At Annapolis, Condoleezza Rice will be flexing all her muscles to bring home at least one achievement, at our expense, before Bush leaves the White House. At most, Mahmoud Abbas will quit and Hamas will grab the reins - a scenario that is not so far-fetched even without Annapolis. Rice will go back to Stanford University and write her memoirs, and Bush will build his library and ride horses at his ranch. But we will still be here, as Hizbullah, Hamas and other terror organizations, together with volunteers from the Islamic fundamentalist camp, gear up for the next round. That's the Palestinians for you: The UN-approved Partition Plan gave them a state and they did not take it. They signed the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn with the whole world looking on, but opted for jihad rather than building themselves a state. At Camp David, they were offered the 1967 borders and the division of Jerusalem, but they preferred a second intifada.
2007-11-09 01:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive