THE GULF BETWEEN

Politics, according to Bismark, is the art of the possible. Judged by that criterion, the policies of the Israelis and the PLO on Palestine are wildly impolitic. Menachem Begin, invoking the divine right of kings, asserts Israel's unassailable claim on the West Bank on the basis of some myth-historical covenant with the Lord. Surrender of the territory is not, in his eyes, merely political and economic suicide; it is, in the literal religious sense, anathema. For the PLO, there can be no recognition of Israel until a de facto Palestinian state has been established. So the dogs of war pursue their tails in a vicious circle.