From the editors of The New Republic, whose tolerance for the Palestinian collective — and for the Bush/Powell handling of the Mideast crisis — has reached the breaking point:

Of course Palestinians went and slaughtered Israelis: The president of the United States was about to propose the creation of a ‘provisional’ Palestinian state. This presented the Palestinians with an emergency. The Palestinian dream was drawing closer to its realization; the possibility of a truce between Palestinians and Israelis was in the air again; territorial compromise with the Jews, and an elementary respect for their lives and their rights, was all that stood between occupation and statehood. Clearly this had to be stopped. The choice between rage and happiness seems to be an easy choice for the Palestinians, and so they regularly choose rage. A bus with schoolchildren, a street corner with baby carriages: Here was the answer to the threat that the resumption of a peace process posed to the Palestinians. But blow the bus and the street corner up and the threat could be averted, and the holy war could continue, and Allah — or at least Sheikh Ahmad Yassin’s Allah — would be gratified.

Actually, the Palestinian depravity of this week was even worse, and more cynical. For no sooner had Hamas exploded the bus in Jerusalem than the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade exploded the street corner in Jerusalem: The secularists did not want to suffer in popularity for their failure to murder. In contemporary Palestine, suicide bombing is politically savvy. Yes, yes, the Palestinian community is divided, and there are many decent people who deplore the suicide bombings and aspire to get on with the business of self-government. But Israel cannot be expected to welcome stoically the internecine Palestinian debate while innocent men, women, and children — Jewish and Muslim — are regularly destroyed. The clarification of Palestinian identity is costing too many lives.

[…] The American government, under the leadership of Colin Powell, is readying itself to offer the Palestinians provisional statehood. This is not diplomacy; this is pseudodiplomacy. A provisional Palestinian state is a phony Palestinian state, a chimera, a sop to the violent Palestinian streets, a capitulation to the Riyadh-Cairo analysis of the present crisis. A Palestinian state that is not created in a negotiation with Israel is not a Palestinian state that will live in peace with Israel. The legitimacy of the objective of Palestinian statehood is almost universally acknowledged in Israel; even Sharon speaks of its inevitability. But this great Israeli accommodation to reality should not be mocked by American attempts to appease the Palestinians for their bloody and dogmatic avoidance of negotiations for almost two years now. After all, Israel also has a problem that might be called ‘homeland security.’ For their provisional crackdowns on terrorism, will George W. Bush reward the Palestinians with a provisional state? If so, then he is a monumental hypocrite, and no friend of a genuine peace.

“No friend of genuine peace.” Strong words, those. But apt…?

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