This is what passes for reporting at Agence France Presse, in a story about the poor, oppressed, discouraged Palestinians and their loss of faith in the United States: US pledges fall on deaf Palestinian ears.

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) - A pledge from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to redouble efforts to improve the Palestinian lot has fallen on deaf ears, with few in Ramallah optimistic about any practical benefit.

“There is no more hope,” says Nasser Ikhder, 29, a carpenter on busy Al-Manara Street as shoppers scurry for bread, fresh plums, oranges and dates, preparing for the sunset break-the-fast meal customary during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. “Rice, (US President George W.) Bush, (British Prime Minister Tony) Blair, they’re all saying the same thing. The tune never changes.”

Since the second Palestinian uprising broke out six years ago, the situation for Palestinians has grown ever more bleak. In the occupied West Bank, the number of Israeli checkpoints has mushroomed and the vast separation barrier, slammed by Palestinians as an apartheid wall, has separated loved ones, landowners from land and necessitated long detours.

Travel restrictions, daily humiliations and a nosediving economy are, for many in this West Bank political capital, the only fruits of a peace process that kicked off with the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994.

But Rice’s latest visit, tasked in part by Bush to support Israeli and Palestinian leaders “in their efforts to come together to resolve their differences” was too little too late for many in Ramallah.

Once a beacon of hope for Palestinians, now US involvement in the peace process is a harbinger of doom, says Tamer Mohammed as he slouches against the hood of a rusted beat-up Fiat in Ramallah’s Al-Amaray refugee camp.

Notice: in AFP’s simple-minded summation of the Palestinians’ “bleak situation,” there is not even a hint of acknowledgment that at every step of the way, the Palestinians have brought this situation upon themselves.

The intifada didn’t just “break out.” It was a politically calculated terror war launched against Jewish civilians by Yasser Arafat and the surrounding Arab states, with the full support of the Palestinian people. And when that terror war failed to break Israel’s will, the Palestinians overwhelmingly elected the genocidal terrorist gang Hamas to be their “government,” running on a platform to destroy Israel.

Recently, they had another chance to create the beginning of a functioning society, when Israel withdrew from Gaza. International investors purchased the numerous high-tech greenhouses Israel had built and operated at great profit (giving employment to numerous Palestinian families), and presented them to the PA as a gift. The response: the greenhouses were burned and looted by marauding mobs, and the no man’s land where Gaza meets the Israeli border is now used mostly for firing rockets into Israel, in attempts to murder more Jewish men, women, and children. At random.

People who genuinely want to build a functioning society will start building it. You can’t stop them. But the Palestinians have proven time and again that destroying the Jewish state takes precedence over creating a hopeful future for their children.

My tears are all dried up when it comes to the plight of the Palestinian people. I’ll save my sympathy and support for those who deserve it.