Last year, I held out some hope that the Palestianians would seize the opportunity presented to them by the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and begin building a state that could live in peace with Israel. After all, leftist Ha'aretz columnists assured readers that the main reason Palestinians did not embrace Oslo and the "peace process" was their belief that Israel would never truly withdraw from territory occupied in 1967.

I was wrong, and now see the withdrawal from Gaza, and especially the failure to retain control at the Egypt-Gaza border (which raised my eyebrows even last year) as reckless and counterproductive. And here's what Krauthammer has to say:

What is so remarkable about the current wave of violence in Gaza is that the event at the origin of the "cycle" is not at all historical, but very contemporary. The event is not buried in the mists of history. It occurred less than one year ago. Before the eyes of the whole world, Israel left Gaza. Every Jew, every soldier, every military installation, every remnant of Israeli occupation was uprooted and taken away.

How do the Palestinians respond? What have they done with Gaza, the first Palestinian territory in history to be independent, something neither the Ottomans nor the British nor the Egyptians nor the Jordanians, all of whom ruled Palestinians before the Israelis, ever permitted? On the very day of Israel's final pullout, the Palestinians began firing rockets out of Gaza into Israeli towns on the other side of the border. And remember: those are attacks not on settlers but on civilians in Israel proper, the pre-1967 Israel that the international community recognizes as legitimately part of sovereign Israel, a member state of the U.N. A thousand rockets have fallen since.