The Hamas-Fatah fighting has so far wounded about a dozen Palestinian children, but Western media do not show their faces. When Israelis wound someone, his face is all over the TV screens, bloodied and screaming.

Palestinian society is not political, but oriented on leaders. Things there won’t settle down through elections. A strongman must come to power. Abbas is not a proper candidate - he is too old. Israel needs a strongman in Palestine whose ambitions could only be realized on a state level, thus necessitating accommodation with Israel. Unless Israel wants to finance such leader from scratch and with unpredictable results, the options are three. One, accept Hamas as a legitimate if hostile representative of the Palestinians and talk to Haniyeh. Two, fix the “moderate” Fatah in power by immediately granting the Palestinians statehood. Three, drive the Palestinians to Jordan and finish the burdensome rivalries at Israeli border.

Olmert dishonorably asked Jordan to mediate between Israel and the Palestinians. Israel used to defend Jordan against Syria with merely a threatening move of the IDF. Now Olmert elevates the Jordanian princeling into international mediator. As if Israel is unable to finish off the Palestinian problem.

Jordanians are unusually shortsighted in pushing for the Palestinian state. Jordan is two-third Palestinian, and the Palestinians locked in minuscule Palestine would work to subvert Jordan to create a Greater Palestine. Monarchy won’t survive in Jordan, as in other countries, and two Palestinian states will merge.

One thing is interesting about the Saddam’s trial video which shows chemical attack on the population: it did not surface for almost twenty years. For all the freedom of speech and Western aversion to genocide, apparently no media channel was interested to run the footage. On other hand, Vietnamese could produce similar clips about the American napalm attacks, Chechens – about the Russian bombing, Germans – about Dresden, and so on. Saddam was singled out for prosecution among the world leaders.

Almost hilariously, the US establishment is now saturated with the doctrine of surge in Iraq: bring 20-50% more troops for 3-6 months, finish the job, and go back. That’s very American way of thinking. The world is less rational. It would take months to deploy more troops. More troops would provoke more hostility and do nothing; how are they supposed to fight guerrillas without facing court-marshal for civilian deaths? 100,000+ troops did not win the war when Iraq was relatively quite; to expect that another 30,000 would end the civil war in three months is unrealistic. New troops would likely be stuck in Iraq for years.

Bulgarian nurses are sentenced to death in Libya. It wasn’t a good idea to move to the People’s Jamahiriyya in the first place. America conducted McCarthy’s witch trials only half-century ago, and Muslim countries have lower standard of justice. This is no news and no reason to stop the rapprochement with Libya. The West already tried isolation in regard to North Korea; isolated Libya will also go nuclear, if only to gain international respect.