It was lucky for Sharon that he found in Bush a man who shared his realistic vision of peace and his courage to act. Bush and Sharon are demonstrating an almost Bismarkian diplomacy: shrewd, brutal, realistic, perhaps bloody, but effective. They have definitively rejected the Eleanor Roosevelt/Madeleine Albright/Rodney King/John Kerry/"can't we all just get along" style of diplomacy.

 The Palestinians are paying a high price for their revanchist fantasy that Israel can be made to go away, so that they can possess all the land from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. Until this week, the "right of return" to Israel for Palestinians and their descendants who left or were forced out at Israel's birth was still a negotiable item.

 Had the Palestinians chosen to participate in real negotiations, doubtlessly the United States would have paid them billions of dollars to waive that fantasy right. Now, unilaterally, that point has been extinguished.

 Likewise, Israel's unilateral departure from Gaza (combined with the U.S. guarantee that Israel can defend herself militarily from any danger coming from Gaza) has denied the Palestinians a voice in defining any limitations on those prerogatives of self-defense.

 What is the next thing Palestinians will lose out on by their continued inability to negotiate in good faith? They will have no voice in the final line of the fence/wall. Thousands of innocent Palestinians will have their lives and property permanently disrupted as the fence/wall goes up because their leaders won't or can't negotiate in good faith.

 It may take two to tango, but as Israel has the dominant military/economic force in the region, it takes only one to draw and enforce border lines.

 That will leave Israel reasonably secure from terrorism, but still bordered by an unstable and violent West Bank and Gaza. So, the next price Palestinians will pay for not engaging in good faith negotiations will be to leave a free hand for Sharon and future Israeli governments to manipulate Palestinian rule in their remaining territories.

 The recent Israeli acts of aerial executions of Hamas leaders reveals the modern version of the ancient practice of divide et impera -- divide and rule. Palestinians will be left in a pitiful, ineffective warlordism created by their own failure of governance and compounded by Israeli manipulations to leave them weak and divided.

 There is barely time for the better and wiser voices of Palestinian dignity and liberty to make the supreme effort to suppress their terrorism and get to the negotiating table before the old man in a hurry grabs all the remaining chips and leaves the room. Sharon is only doing what he has to do to protect his people. If only a Palestinian leader could give up the fantasy and do the same for his own suffering humanity.