In the summer of 2002, only 4 years ago, I attended a convention where former president Clinton was the keynote speaker. Clinton spoke about a variety of subjects, mostly about how American commerce would be affected in the aftermath of Sept. 11th, and then took questions from the audience. The first question asked "What do you think are the reasons that the Camp David Summit [of 2000, between Pres. Clinton, Israeli PM Barak, and Palestinian Chairman Arafat] failed to achieve a peace treaty?" Clearly invested in the topic, Clinton took almost as long to answer this question as he did the entire keynote that preceded it.

In a nutshell, what he said was that "believe it or not, almost all of the major points of contention between the Israeli negotiating team and the Palestinian team were resolved." All of the issues that everyone believes to be intractable: borders, refugees, Jerusalem, water, all were practically agreed upon. "The reason that Camp David failed was basically because of one clause: That the agreement meant the end of the Israeli Palestinian conflict. In order to achieve a deal -- and a Palestinian state -- Arafat needed to agree that the conflict would end then and there, and he was unwilling to do it." After telling a number of other stories regarding the negotiations, Clinton recalled a final phone call with Arafat three days before the end of his presidency in which Arafat told Clinton that he was a "great man." Clinton responded: "The hell I am, I'm a colossal failure, and you made me one."

I was recently thinking about Clinton's speech in the context of the present Israeli "incursion" into Gaza, observing how so much of the violence that has taken place in the last 4 years has been such an obscene waste. Whether at Camp David, Wye River, Taba, or other "summits," the Israelis and Palestinians have both basically understood what a final resolution to the conflict would mean and what it would look like. At least two Israeli Prime Ministers, Ehud Barak, and Ariel Sharon were willing to make very significant sacrifices to achieve it and both found no Palestinian partner to reciprocate. How many lives have been lost in the meanwhile, on both sides, because no Palestinian leader with enough courage, or enough power has been able to speak for and lead his people?

In the absence of a viable "partner," Israel has decided to slowly and unilaterally "disengage" from the Palestinians. Withdrawing fully from Gaza in 2005, dismantling a number of Jewish towns and villages along the way, Israel watched and waited to see how the Palestinians would run a mini-state of their own. The Palestinians then elected Hamas to lead them, a terrorist group firmly committed to the destruction of Israel and no peace process whatsoever. What does the Hamas government then do to lead its people? Since assuming power, Hamas hasn't built one new school or commercial center, instead they have smuggled as many weapons as possible into Gaza and lobbed rockets into Israel. In other words, instead of actually trying to make life better for the citizens that elected them, Hamas chose to provoke Israel into precisely the type of incursion now taking place.

Hamas would like to characterize themselves as the victims of Israeli oppression, however Israel had already left the Gaza strip entirely a year earlier. If the Palestinians would have stopped missile crews from firing on Israel, there would have never been an incursion. Israel would like nothing better than to wash their hands entirely of the Palestinians and have both societies live separately and quietly. As Thomas Friedman of the NY Times recently put it: "The Palestinians could have a state on the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem tomorrow, if they and the Arab League clearly recognized Israel, normalized relations and renounced violence. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't know Israel today. But those driving Palestinian politics seem determined to destroy Israel in its territory - even if it means destroying themselves in their own territory. "

Sadly, the lesson here for Israel, and the world, is simply that Palestinian government has not yet matured to the point that it can make peace with Israel. This is not an easy lesson to learn in the age of instant media and 4 year election cycles. We expect to be able to solve critical problems quickly, but as Henry Kissinger once put it "some problems can not be solved, we must resign ourselves simply to manage them."

It is unfortunate that Israel need disengage unilaterally from the Palestinians. It is unfortunate that Israeli citizens can likely expect no "peace" from this conflict in their lifetimes. It is unfortunate that Palestinians can expect to continue to live in squalor while their supposed leaders continue to exploit them to cynical ends. It is inevitable, however, that eventually Palestinian society will coalesce under increasingly strong leadership.

This is inevitable because the Palestinians will soon have no choice. When Israel launched its recent incursion, Egypt sent 2,500 troops to the border with Gaza, not to stop smuggling or to help broker a cessation of violence, but to stop any Gazans from making their way into Egypt. In a very real sense, Palestinians are on their own for the first time in their history. They will need to effectively govern themselves or they will continue to self destruct. Eventually, we hope, this will lead to a unification of the clan militias and mobs that make up Gaza today and the resulting government may one day be strong enough to actually lead its people into peace. This day will likely not come soon, but this day will likely come. The question is how many innocents need die in the meanwhile?