For well over a year now, I've been asking this question: Is it peace yet? Through all of the concessions and the withdrawals and the goodwill gestures and the terrorist prisoner releases, somewhere, somehow, has lurked the promise of an end to perpetual conflict. But it's only gotten worse. The gestures have only added flames to the fire. And today, yet another escalation. Israel's enemies are clearly smelling blood.
So it's time to change the question. Clearly, peace is nowhere in sight. But now another possibility is looming ever larger. It's time to abandon the euphemisms and the denials and the false hopes. It's time, as Prime Minister Olmert seems tentatively to have done (for now), to acknowledge that Israel is at war. And to respond accordingly.
(And to Kofi Annan, I say: please just STFU.)
