Israel learned another important lesson from this disparity in defining victory in war: any Arab leader who can inflict serious damage on Israel is motivated to do so, even if his nation will ultimately lose the war. This is the sad reality for a couple of

may seem ironic that so soon after Israel offered the Palestinians nearly everything they and the international community wanted—a Palestinian state with Arab Jerusalem as its capital, return of the entire Gaza Strip and almost the entire West Bank, a fair and practical resolution of the refugee issue, and an end to Jewish settlements—it is now a p

America’s new policies set conditions for talks that Israel could never meet and that Palestinians could not ignore.

The Palestinian leader also composed a list of preconditions—an end to Israel’s demolition of Palestinian houses, its arrest of terror suspects, and the removal of its checkpoints—that first had to be met. Most critically, Abbas insisted that Israel recognize the June 4, 1967, lines as the borders of the future Palestinian state.