okay -

They went through the Clinton negotiations here at the Habitable Zone. Israel's offer to Arafat left Israel in control of ALL water in the West Bank, a fact conveniently ignored by nearly all US media.

Terror: I heard a good description of it:
War is the rich man's terror, Terror is the poor man's war.

In most of the Moslem world, and there's 1,000,000,000, to Israel's 6,000,000, "terrorism" by Palestinians against Israel is viewed as "resistance", the same way we viewed French "terrorists" in World War 2.

However you parse it, my guess is that too many Americans are likely to die before the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is over. My thinking is that if either Camp David or Oslo had gone through, bin Laden would never have recieved enough popular support to mount the World Trade Center attacks.

While it may be true that the PLO killed more people than al Qaeda, it had renounced that policy after Camp David. Arafat had realized that any attack using WMD would likely kill more Palestinians than Israelis.

Arafat's '91 endorsement of Saddam's attack on Kuwait came after Sharon's attack into Lebanon, and expansion of settlements during Begin administration, which was completely tolerated by Reagan administration.

Arafat's attempt to bring arms in came after collapse of Clinton talks, election of Sharon.

I don't know if having the Palestinians "fracture" is such a good thing. As far as terrorism goes, the PLO was pretty inefectual, particularly given Arafat's fundamental concepts concerning WMD, and his desire for a peace agreement.

Finally, if the Palestinians fracture, Isreal would then have no one to negotiate with. Why would this be bad? Because if there's no Palestinians left in the West Bank and Gaza, Israel becomes a target for WMD attacks - think of the Palestinians as hostages if you like, and my thinking is that if they leave, that's when Israel's troubles really start.

I have got to stop looking at this mess - its not doing my mental health any good, and I have work to do.

I hope that those working towards peace are successful.

ep