I'm just very relieved that Israel has accepted the roadmap, even if there is considerable reluctance from some elements. It could have been much worse. If this had been rejected the peace process would have been out the window yet again.

I have no doubt that Sharon will find a reason to sidetrack the whole process. His whole goal has been to drive all the Palestinians into neighbouring countries, if not kill them out right - he didn't earn the title Butcher of Beirut,Sabra and Chatila for nothing. He always finds a reason to abandon the peace process and to up the scale of violence against the Palestinians. I can't see that changing.

No doubt Bush is putting a lot of pressure on him. Maybe Sharon is playing a stalling game waiting for the 2004 elections to end at which point if Bush loses (highly doubtful at this point) he can abandon any pretense of caring and continue with his own final solution to the Palestinian question.

He will always be handed the excuses he needs. He, along with the US, have always insisted that the Palestinian authority has control over the various terrorist groups that operate out of Palestine against Israel. No doubt they have control over some but also no doubt there are renegadee groups that take orders from no one. If the bombings continue Sharon will up the pressure more with his own terrorist tactics - bomb more civilian apartment buildings, send tanks in against men with rifles, bulldoze homes with people still in them, start more settlements, turn off water and power to Palestinian areas for days at a time, shoot ambulance drivers, journalists and protestors, or save the lead and just run them over with bulldozers.

Both sides indulge in terrorist tactics. Neither side is acting appropriately. Both are guilty. However, the Palestinians have little other choice than to act the way they do. They don't have the weaponry that Israel has and the vast majority of their terrorist actions take place on land Israel has stolen from the Palestinians not on terrirtory that was assigned to Israel by the original UN charter that established Israel as a country.

It was crazy enough that Sharon ever got elected. For most of the last 20 years he was as dead to public life as one could be in Israel. And other crazy things happen in Israeli politics, too. The peace governments in the 90s had a lot of former warriors with blood on their hands. It's possible for people to grow sick of war and finally say "no more blood, no more tears," as Menachem Begin said in 1979. If Sharon does that, I would be only moderately surprised.

Israeli political culture, especially the Likud side of it, believes some things that are strange to the rest of the world, even to Americans. Like the idea that the territories are "disputed" but not "occupied"; or the idea that the very existence of Israel is seriously threatened by its neighbors, even without U.S. assistance. And yet on the other hand, I think that Israelis feel hurt by the animosity that the rest of the Middle East has for them. After the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, many Israelis started travelling to Egypt to see the sights and many Israelis hoped that soon they could mingle with their other neighbors in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan. Egyptians never responded in kind, and the dream didn't come true.

The point is that despite a Western myth, the Near East is historically not the site of Jewish persecution and conflict with non-Jews--most of that happened in Europe. Indeed, over the last century some Arabs have learned a lot about hating Jews from the West. But Jews who understand their history (and they understand it much better than most Americans do) know that Palestine was not made for eternal conflict. This is why I get frustrated with people who characterize the conflict as a petty squabble over holy land, and why I am optimistic in the long term for peace in Palestine--as long as Bush leaves office eventually.