If anyone honestly believes that the Intifada was "spontaneously" provoked by Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, I've got a bridge to sell them.

Arafat engineered the Intifada, probably with the deliberate intent to elect a boogeyman as an Israeli leader instead of someone who made Arafat look like the obstacle to peace. And obstacle he was, something even Clinton realized.

Arafat has been playing world opinion like a tired fish for years. It seems to be utterly irrelevant to anyone that he has been pumping millions in cash designated for poor Palestinians into personal accounts, and treating the Palestinian people like his personal fiefdom.

Arafat, and the others leading the Palestinian movement, will accept no solution other than the extinction of Israel. None. No compromise, no middle ground, no nothing.

This has been documented in speeches, writings, and many other sources. No map made by any Palestinian shows any trace of Israel in the Middle East.

It seems to be impossible for many liberals to comprehend that there are some people on Earth you just cannot deal with by sitting down at a table and "working something out." That there are some principles and positions where there is no "middle ground" to meet on. There was nothing the Jews of Germany could have offered Hitler as a compromise. There is nothing the Jews of Israel can offer Arafat and Hamas other than suicide.