These things do end, someday, somehow. It's not a matter of brains, it's a matter of people having the courage to try to stand in the other person's footsteps. That and exhaustion.

Reprisal and counter-reprisal and it lasts for ever. The best way forward, of course, would be if the Palestinians could turn away from the strategy of counter-atrocity, and adopt a strategy of non-violent resistance, with the same willingness to face death that they have shown in the intifada, but without the willingness to inflict it. Things as hard and strange have happened in the past. But anyone attempting that is likely to find themselves under fire from two directions.