OPPOSITE! :

A Dangerous Lull (Washington Post, July 14, 2002)

ON MONDAY, three weeks will have passed since President Bush presented his latest ideas for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On the surface, little has happened since then, either on the ground or in diplomacy. That is good news, in part: With Israeli troops occupying most Palestinian towns and enforcing tight restrictions on movement, there have been no suicide bombings or other major incidents of violence in Israel or the Palestinian territories. But it is also worrisome. Behind the scenes, American, European, Russian and U.N. officials have quietly been seeking to flesh out plans for overhauling the Palestinian Authority, the starting point spelled out by Mr. Bush for launching a new peace process. But the work has been slow; only on Tuesday are the discussions due to reach the level of Secretary of State Colin Powell. The bottom line is that the practical road map for taking action that was so conspicuously missing from Mr. Bush's speech has yet to appear.

That there is so little movement is highly dangerous, because it risks the breakdown of the nascent homegrown Palestinian reform movement and a new explosion of violence. It also offers ammunition to those, including many in the Arab world, who saw in the president's speech not a serious commitment to brokering Middle East peace but a thin and one-sided artifice that abruptly stopped at the points that would have required tough or politically difficult calls. In particular, the administration's spokespeople still have not made clear how they intend to promote the democratic selection of a new Palestinian leadership while simultaneously ensuring that Yasser Arafat -- the probable winner of any straightforward presidential election -- is not a part of it.

Boy, they just don't get it, do they? In the first place, President Bush's last idea was that we would bow out of the "peace process" until the Palestinians demonstrated, through elections and governmental reforms, that they were serious about living in peace with Israel. Three weeks hasn't exactly been enough to show that.
Posted by Orrin Judd at July 14, 2002 4:42 PM