From time to time, when peace with the Palestinians has looked especially distant, Israel has toyed with having another go at a making a formal peace with Syria. Now seems another good moment. Israel will not talk to the Islamists of Hamas, now running the Palestinian Authority, who despite saying they would accept a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza still cannot bring themselves to renounce their claim to the rest of Palestine. In the absence of talks, Ehud Olmert's idea to leave much of the West Bank unilaterally, just as Israel left Gaza, looks dead after the Lebanon war: Israelis do not want the Palestinians left alone to build up an attack force like Hizbullah's. The fact that Mr Olmert never said he would pull the army out of the West Bank, only the settlers, has been lost in the noise.
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