Now we know. Israel had a peace partner

„Where does this leave the peace process itself? The pessimistic view is that what little life remained in it has now been punched out. On the Palestinian side these revelations are bound to strengthen Hamas, who have long rejected Fatah's strategy of negotiation, arguing that armed resistance is the only way to secure Palestinian statehood. Hamas will now be able to claim that diplomacy not only fails to bring results, it brings national humiliation.

But the despair will not be confined to the Palestinians. Others may well conclude that if a two-state solution is not possible even under these circumstances – when the Palestinians go as far as they can but still fail, in Livni's words, to »meet our demands« – then it can never be achieved. This is the view that sees Israelis and Palestinians as two acrobats who, even when they bend over backwards, just cannot touch: the Palestinian maximum always falls short of the Israeli minimum.

The optimistic view will hope these papers act as a wake-up call, jolting the US – exposed here as far from the even-handed, honest broker it claims to be – into pressing reset on its Middle East effort, beginning with a determination to exert proper pressure on Israel, pushing it to budge. It goes without saying that in any wager between optimists and pessimists in the Middle East, the smart money is usually on the latter.”