The fundamentals in the Middle East have changed so drastically--unalterably--that the recent agreement at Sharm el Sheik was just a strip of gauze on a gaping wound. The complacent assumption of many in Israel and the United States that the "peace process" was moving irreversibly forward has been drastically shaken.

An enormous gulf opened between the two peoples sharing the same land. A troubled Israeli columnist wrote in Yediot Ahronot, "It was only two weeks ago that we were buying furniture in Ramallah, gambling in Jericho, importing vegetables from the West Bank villages and reading about the Palestinians' intention to build six new duty-free malls for Israelis along the border with the autonomous areas." (Note the one-sided view of Palestine as a consumers' haven.) "Where was this [anger] concealed so that we didn't see it?" The answer came from a Palestinian social worker: "For fifty years, we have lived together, yet I do not believe the Jews really know anything about us.... Young men cannot find work. Nearly half of all Arabs in Nazareth live below the poverty line.... Why is anyone amazed that everything has exploded?"

How could any reasonable person not have believed that the visit of Ariel Sharon, escorted by 1,000 policemen, to the Temple Mount--also known as the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim holy site--would provoke the Palestinians? As Gideon Levy wrote in Haaretz, Sharon did not care if he offended the Palestinians--"he went up ignoring their existence completely. He went up for internal political reasons, without giving a thought to how his behavior might affect them." Sharon is loathed by Palestinians for the brutal war in Lebanon and for loudly championing the policy of pushing ever more settlements into their space.

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