THE MORE THINGS CHANGE.... An e-mail correspondent to Instapundit offers the following observations:

The moral state of things is this:
1. If the Palestinians unilaterally lay down their arms and renounce
violence, they will be given peace, dignity, and their own state.
2. If the Israelis unilaterally lay down their arms and renounce
violence, they will be slaughtered.
3. As far as most of the world is concerned, either outcome would be
satisfactory.

On some days, that seems too generous, as in certain quarters option #2 might be deemed preferable. Take Mark Steyn's word for it:
The "whole world" has a pretty good track record of being wrong, especially where Jews are concerned. Fifty million Frenchmen can be wrong, and never more so than when they're teamed with Chris Patten, Mary Robinson, the European Parliament (which has demanded sanctions against Israel), the German government (which has announced an arms embargo against Israel), the brand-new International Criminal Court (which - in its very first 24 hours! - started mulling the question of "Israeli war crimes"), the Norwegian Parliament (which had a visitor thrown out of the building for wearing a provocative Star of David on his lapel), never mind the members of Calgary's "Palestinian community" who marched through the streets carrying placards emblazoned "Death To The Jews", a timeless slogan but not hitherto a burning issue on the prairies.
...Meanwhile, what have we learned from this last extraordinary month? Not much about the Middle East, but quite a lot about Europe. What happens when Palestinian civilians strap on plastic explosives and head for Israeli pizza parlours? Europe says Israeli checkpoints for Palestinians are "humiliating". Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances permit themselves to be used as transportation for bombs and explosives - and Europe attacks Israel for refusing them free movement.
"Ah, those Jews," an attractive, intelligent, sophisticated Parisienne sighed over dinner with me the other night. "They cause problems everywhere they are."
Actually, they don't. Of the 30 ongoing conflicts in the world today, the Muslims are involved in 28 of them. There are no Jews in Kashmir or the Sudan, so the Muslims make do with Hindus and Christians. What the Europeans call "Muslim-Jewish tensions" on the Continent do not involve Jewish gangs attacking mosques or beating up women in hejabs, only Muslim gangs attacking synagogues and stoning a bus of Jewish schoolchildren.
...The "whole world" is agreed that if anybody has to be blown up it might as well be the Israelis. Ah, those Jew troublemakers: why won't they just lie there and take it?
And he has this bon mot about the current Powell mission:
From Washington's point of view, the peace mission was necessary because of a scheduling conflict over scheduling conflicts: they'd booked the Middle East for a war with Iraq only to discover the joint being used for some other guys' war. In an ideal world, the US would like to restore peace in the Middle East in order to launch a massive conflagration there.