Leon Wieseltier

About the author: Leon Wieseltier is the literary editor of the New Republic.

Although the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been under way for several decades, it is only since the second intifada, or Palestinian uprising, that the fight has escalated to the status of a full-scale war. When Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat refused the peace process advocated by the Clinton administration in 2000, he knowingly chose the horror of war for the Palestinian people. The Palestinians have demonstrated through their terrorist tactics and their constant refusal to honor calls for cease-fires that they prefer passion over politics, struggle over solution. It is the constant Palestinian attacks against Israelis coupled with the belief that such attacks will further the Palestinian cause that points to the Palestinians as the source of the conflict.

The...