Juan Cole in Salon on Israel's failed-state strategy:

[Olmert's] actions indicate that his ultimate goal is to ensure that no Palestinian state emerges any time soon that can challenge Israeli plans to annex more of the West Bank and keep its stateless residents divided and weak, prone to outbursts of ineffectual violence and easy to label as "terrorists." If the elected Hamas government falls over the crisis, all the better. But the Israelis had a PLO government until this year and would not negotiate with it, either. The point is not to negotiate. The larger issue, that such a policy will prevent this terrible conflict from being solved, and will inevitably create blowback against Israel and the United States, does not seem to concern Olmert, the U.S. government or the U.S. media.