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More bad news:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday suspended peace talks with Israel following a spasm of violence in the Gaza Strip that has left more than 100 Palestinians dead since Wednesday as Hamas has continued its campaign of rocket strikes.

Amos Elon’s essay in the most recent New York Review of Books is the best introduction I’ve seen to Ehud Olmert, the history of Israeli settlements, and the prospects of success in the latest push for peace.

Olmert may be the most pragmatic Israeli leader since 1967. One hopes he does not come too late. According to Haaretz, he told an American delegation recently that in “Israel there are perhaps 400,000 people who maintain the state, leaders in the economy, in science and in culture. I want to make sure they have hope, that they’ll stay here.” His own two sons, it is well known, live in New York. He is the first Israeli premier who has expressed some empathy for the Palestinian tragedy. In his speech in Annapolis in late November, he said, “We are not indifferent to [the Palestinians’] suffering.” It is true that the next morning eight Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army but it is impossible to overlook what seems, at least, the beginning of a change. The leftist Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy was uncharacteristically optimistic, wondering whether perhaps an Israeli de Klerk was emerging here.