Let me expand on

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Let me expand on what I said yesterday about the Bush peace plan.

The problem with the plan is not that it’s foolish or misguided, though I think it’s both. The problem is that it’s not a plan. It is simply an endorsement of the position of the Sharon government. What’s dishonest is to present it as though it is in any way advancing the ball toward peace or a final settlement.

When Ariel Sharon came to power he said, in essence, that he just wasn’t going to do business with Yasser Arafat. I don’t agree with that position. But it’s a perfectly reasonable position. Bush has now endorsed that position. Why not just call this what it is?

It’s not unreasonable for the Sharon government or the Bush administration to say they won’t do business with Yasser Arafat’s government. It’s simply a judgment. If for instance, the next Palestinian government were a Hamas government I think it would be sensible and reasonable to say, “I don’t think the Palestinians should be under occupation. I think there should be a Palestinian state. But as long as the Palestinian government is run by Hamas, we won’t agree to anything, period.”

The question is whether the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are fundamentally the same thing.

Any government – let’s call it government A — has a perfect right to say it won’t do business with government B and that it wants government B thrown out. But let’s make sure we have the vocabulary right. There’s a word for this state of relations: war.

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