A State Department official says what is needed is a greater willingness to engage hard-line forces on both sides of the sectarian divide as well as the Iranians and Syrians, all of whom will have a say in Iraq's future. Resistance to this idea comes from the White House, a U.S. diplomat says. "There is a reality on the ground in Iraq that we never really wanted to confront too much, but there are real politics in Iraq," says the official. "If we can tap into that and start working and engaging with Iraqis in a different way, we might actually become part of what emerges as a solution."

The former speaker of the House of Representatives, who has strong conservative credentials, didn't hold back criticism of the commander-in-chief, whom he didn't address by the title president.

"We are in greater danger than you can imagine. We lie to ourselves. We have suffered in the West an enormous defeat in Gaza. We have suffered a significant defeat in South Lebanon, and we lie about it. We don't have a peace process. We have a surrender process," Gingrich said, eliciting applause from an audience waving hundreds of American and Israeli flags.

... I found a device, in cooperation with the management of the world [the Bush administration], to ensure that there will be no stopwatch here. That there will be no timetable to implement the settlers' nightmare [-- withdrawal from the West Bank]. I have postponed that nightmare indefinitely. Because what I effectively agreed to with the Americans was that part of the settlements would not be dealt with at all, and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did. The significance is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem. Effectively, this whole package that is called the Palestinian state, with all that it entails, has been removed from our agenda indefinitely. And all this with authority and permission. All with a presidential blessing and the ratification of both houses of Congress. What more could have been anticipated? What more could have been given to the settlers?

After the wave of killing by Hamas last month, a 16-year-old girl in Gaza City told a reporter, "The gunmen want to destroy the culture of our fathers and grandfathers. We will not allow them to do it." She went on, "I'm saying it's enough killing. Enough."

That young woman speaks for millions -- in Gaza, the West Bank, in Israel, in Arab nations, and in every nation. And now the world must answer her call.

"The gunmen want to destroy the culture of our fathers and grandfathers," said a 16-year-old girl, who gave her name only as Hahla. "We will not allow them to do this.

"I'm saying it's enough killing, enough! What are they fighting for? They're fighting over this broken chair, and neither side deserves this broken chair. If neither side can solve their problems, let them go to hell!"

Any Israeli who has occasion these days to meet often with Arabs from the West Bank, or speak by phone with Gaza residents, can increasingly hear comments such as: We can't take it any more, we're sick and tired of it. And the continuation: If only the days of full Israeli occupation would return. Occasionally one could think that these words are being said out of a desire to find favor with the Israeli listener. But the truth is that they are being said out of despair. When the hope of establishing a state within the territories, with Jerusalem as its capital, is lost, one can undertake to fight Israel to the finish, as Hamas proposes, or give up and say, under these circumstances, let there be occupation. In other words, make the State of Israel take full responsibility for the territories.

Sooner or later Hamas will fail in its war against Israel. But that does [not] mean that there will then be a return to the days of Oslo and the two-state vision, which has withered and died since September 2000. Rather, there will be increasingly strong demands by Palestinian Arabs, who constitute almost half the inhabitants of this land, who will say: Under the present conditions we cannot establish a state of our own, and what remains for us is to demand civil rights in the country that is our homeland. They will adopt the slogans of the struggle of the Arabs who are Israeli citizens, who demand equality and the definition of Israel as a state of all its citizens. That won't happen tomorrow morning, but there doesn't seem to be any option to its happening eventually. If there aren't two states for the two nations, in the end there will be one state.