Thomas Friedman once wrote, "Terrorism is not produced by the poverty of money. It's produced by the poverty of dignity.” 1 If that is so, then the Arab world only has itself to blame. It is the West, they maintain, that is to blame for their decline. That attitude is now common in the Middle East with villains ranging from the Mongols to Anglo-French imperialists to the Jews to Islam itself. But that is only a small part of a much larger story. The classic works of Bernard Lewis, Professor of Near Eastern Studies Emeritus at Princeton University go far in explaining how the great Islamic Empire of Moorish Spain has been reduced to the cultural and economic backwater that is the Arab Islamic world today.  Islamic hatred, according to Lewis, is the outcome of a collision between Western and Islamic civilizations and an Islamic historical response to secularism, the Renaissance and the Jewish-Christian heritage.

As the Palestinian Authority descends into chaos and the chances of Hamas winning the November parliamentary elections increase, other major undercurrents are occurring across the Jordan River. The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is no longer a passive observer.

If you were discussing the Geneva Accords with about 30% of the Israeli population, the likelihood is they would tell you that it’s the first step toward a new and better future in the Middle East. With great pride, they would maintain that it is the exact same Plan that was proposed by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former President Clinton at Camp David (and later at Taba) except that it confronts the two questions upon which the former Plans stumbled, namely, the status of Jerusalem and the “right of return.”

With no prospect of renewing political negotiations with the Palestinians or reaching an agreement with them, and barring any possibility of subduing the Palestinians militarily or motivating them to suspend the use of violence, Israelis are searching for a solution, short of all-out war, to keep the devil out. Unless one of the other military or diplomatic approaches (like the Saudi Initiative) suddenly looks serious, political separation is the next item on the Israeli agenda.