Stardate 20010628.1447 (On Screen): They are
still making the same mistake of assuming that everyone in Israel wants peace. Secretary of State Powell has announced a plan to get the peace process back on track (as if it had ever been on track), but yet again there's that stipulation that the process can't proceed unless violence ends. This is music to the ears of the people who've been committing the violence, because they don't
want a peace process, at least on the terms which have been proposed. (If they'd wanted peace above all else, they wouldn't have started their terrorist campaign in the first place.) The right way to go about this would have been to proceed with the peace process
in spite of the violence. The only way to stop the terrorists is to deprive them of popular support of the people on behalf of which they think they are campaigning, and that can only occur by giving those people (the Palestineans) something which is valuable. But the way they're going now, this pronouncement yields control of the situation to the terrorists and permits them to destroy it. Which they will do: there will not be any cessation of violence over the next seven days.
(discuss)
