Bush delayed his "mideast speech" after the first bombing in Jerusalem this week killed 19 bus riders. But really, why delay? We all knew that (barring a miracle) these attacks would be coming down the pipe sooner or later.

In the early days of Oslo, Israeli officials would say: "we can't be held hostage to terrorism, we can't let terror attacks slow down the peace process". Whereas Netanyahu, being concerned with "reciprocity" in honoring agreements, got Arafat to make the Jihadis hold off temporarily each time Israel was about to hand over some land.

The common denominator of all proposals since Oslo (including Israeli ones up until Operation Defensive Wall) is that they have had to maintain that the Palestinian side is really interested in coexistence. At some times, people found that easy; other times they had
to pretend.

But now it's entirely disingenous to claim that offering more freebies to the Palestinians will accomplish anything other than inspiring more senseless bloodshed. So by postponing the address, it seems that the US is promulgating a policy that relies on people having very short memories.