No End in Sight

I've been reading a lot about the Israeli elections today, and none of it inspires any kind of hope that the Palestinian question will get an answer that everyone can live with any time soon. Gadi Taub has an interesting, if not a particularly novel proposal; the problem, he suggests, is that both Arafat and Sharon are too focused on the long term to take an opportunity that is available right now:

Each leader thinks he can eventually grab the whole territory between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Mr. Sharon is right to think that his settlement and road-building policies will prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state. Mr. Arafat is right to assume that, in the long run, these same policies will bring Israel's downfall. Yet both are also wrong: without partition, neither people will have its own state.