MIDDLE EAST PEACE: IT'S ONLY AN ILLUSION. The kind of illusion that tends to be put back into perspective when major attacks on Israel are in the air. AFP reported on Sunday:

Hamas is seeking to launch a "large-scale" suicide attack inside Israel to torpedo chances of a peace deal with moderate Palestinians, a senior security official warned on Sunday.

Noah Pollak writes on Commentary Magazine's blog Contentions that news like this reveal the fragile--and illusionary--nature of the so-called peace process that Rice and friends are frantically pulling out all of the stops in order to achieve:

This remains the fundamental dynamic of the conflict, and the reason for the terminal fragility of the peace effort. The negotiations now being conducted between Olmert and Abbas are taking place in an alternate reality, in the realm of diplomatic resolutions whose purview aspires to be sweeping, but which is actually limited to the paper on which such agreements are written and the press conferences at which they are affirmed. Where the peace process does not exist is on the ground in the West Bank, Gaza, and Damascus—in the realm of facts.

When Hamas does manage to carry out a major suicide bombing, all of the hopeful diplomatic print-on-paper will be obliterated (along with Israeli lives), and Israel will be forced to respond. The IDF presence in the West Bank will be strengthened, violence will escalate, and hopes for a real peace (which requires as its first step, rather than its last, a sea change in Palestinian public opinion regarding terrorism and its use against the Jewish state) will once again be lost.

Hope for peace will be lost for a while, but only until the next 'breakthrough' when 'peace partners' will take advantage of the 'momentum'.

Again.

Technorati Tag: Israel and Hamas and Noah Pollak.