No, I am not defending the Occupation. There is a difference. The Occupation and Settlement policy was an act of monumental strategic stupidity on the part of the old Labour governments that left most of the political initiative in the hands of the ultramontaine right (the Kahane crowd and other settlers and rightists that some poet in Great Britain wants to see lined up against the wall and shot...). I believe that there exists a consensus within the Israeli body politic to withdraw to borders which are just east of the '67 "Green Line" boundary, one that is more acceptable. It will be for the next, post-Sharon government to withdraw the borders from the most untenable settlements leaving few, if any of them, left (only those which are tactically defensible and contiguous with the Old Israel). What I object to is the demonization of Israel for the act of defending herself against a corrupt, criminal gang of terrorists that some call the Palestinian Authority. Arafat and his people made a conscious political decision to reject peace because, as Dennis Ross pointed out, he couldn't think of any other way to coexist with the Jews save conflict. They then instituted, through front groups like the Tanzim and the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade, a campaign of mass terror aimed at Israeli civilians, not at the Army. At the same time, Arafat maintained a veneer of deniability in order to maintain contacts with the Americans and, of greater importance, to make sure that he had access to the money that the European Community was sending him (a lot of Arafat's political contortions are done in order to secure the money that the Eurotrash send him every year.). A lot of that cash probably ended up in a few Swiss accounts, by the way.
The more recent killings were done almost certainly at the behest of Saddam. Saddam sees the Pallies as his first line of defense. What he didn't count on was the fact that the Israelis crushed the PA so decisively. He also didn't count on the fact that George W. Bush has basically put the Pallie issue on the backburner while plans for the "Fuhrerbunker" operation in Iraq are finalized and weapons stocks restored.
So what you'll see is low level diplomacy between the Israelis and the Pallies conducted by mid-level envoys like Zinni, punctuated by the presence of Powell to move things along from time to time. Meanwhile, the real action shifts to Baghdad, and Saddam.
Be Seeing You,
Chris