Settling for indefinite warfare

Here is Tamar Mayer on the latest "peace overture" by Bush and Sharon: "A perilous line to be drawing." Writes Mayer:

Territorial homelands, where nations believe they were born, are crucial. They differentiate us from them and here from there. Boundaries that mark national territory, whether real or imagined, are intertwined with identity, collective memory, myths about the nation's creation - and security. To protect the nation's territory, its boundaries must be well defined.

In Israel, this has never been the case. For thousands of years the Jewish nation has had a clear notion that its ancestral homeland is in Zion, but the boundaries of the homeland were never clearly defined - not on the ground and not in the nation's mind. . . .

[T]he United States, Israel and the other signers of the 1993 Oslo Accords were careful not to discuss specific boundaries. They never mentioned directly the 1949-1967 borders, or the Green Line, referring to these areas instead as the West Bank and the Gaza strip. . . .

Now we seem to be on the verge of something more final. While previous U.S. administrations engaged Israel in discussions about withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, the Bush administration appears to support Sharon's settlement policies, his plan to annex parts of the West Bank and his vision of a Greater Israel. . . . The great risk is that with Sharon's new map imposed in perpetuity, the bloodshed will continue in perpetuity as well.