Brute force does not provide a solution. Even a month of total occupation in the Palestinian cities, ongoing curfew and suffocation which brings the population to the edge of starvation, provide no solution and bring us no security. On the contrary - the acts of the soldiers who enforce the daily curfew prevent some terrorist attacks - but only at the price of increasing the hatred from which ever-new attacks spring. Today's lethal attack on a bus near the settlement of Immanuel on the West Bank is a new and painful reminder. As long as the people of Israel go on blindly following the Sharon government, this government will go on leading the two peoples on the road to mutual killing and destruction. It is not the escalation of oppression and the deepening of the occupation, which will give Israel peace, security and prosperity. That can be achieved only by an end to the occupation and withdrawal of the army, both from the recently reoccupied Palestinian cities and from the Occupied Territories as a whole. For that, Israel must again talk to the Palestinians - to the representatives chosen by the Palestinians themselves, not to supposed "leaders" which the Sharon government dreams of appointing.
