Middle East When Madmen Call the Shots

As Shamir stalls and a massacre reignites the intifadeh, progress toward peace is more urgent than ever

It shouldn't take a madman to remind the world that Israel and the Palestinians are stumbling toward disaster. Yet a deranged 21-year-old Israeli did just that last week, when he emptied three magazines from a Galil assault rifle into a crowd of unarmed Arab workers near Tel Aviv, killing seven and wounding eleven. The Israeli army promptly imposed curfews on most of the West Bank and all of the Gaza Strip and called for calm. But outraged Palestinians responded with strikes and stones, demanding revenge. By nightfall, another seven Arabs had been killed and at least 700 wounded in one of...

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