The atrocity this morning left me so full of sadness and rage that I took a few hours off and went to the beach. At this point I still don’t really trust myself to put into words what I think is going to happen in the Middle East. I ran into a friend and talked to her a little bit about it; it was anything but a joyful conversation.

Stefan Sharkansky has some good thoughts about what today’s bombing at Hebrew University means, coming after George Bush—the first US president to officially support a Palestinian state—offered the Palestinians what can only be described as a last chance.

I propose the following explanations:

1) The Palestinian leadership is either too stupid, vengeful, ignorant or irrational to recognize and act on the obvious as outlined above.
2) The Palestinian aspirations are not limited to the West Bank and Gaza. They continue to maintain the pre-Oslo goal of abolishing Israel after all.
3) The Palestinians are not a monolithic society. Some factions may be satisfied with a West Bank/Gaza state. Others (such as Hamas) want the whole thing.

I would believe that it’s all of the above. And where does this leave things? The fallout of (2) is that the mainstream Israeli public will not trust the other side enough to make any concessions, (3) implies that there is nobody who can make a deal on behalf of and rein in the people who commit the violence and (1) implies that there’s nobody competent enough to bother to deal with anyway.