LONDON -- Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas called for a "period of calm" when he took over the late Yasser Arafat's job in January, and for a while some people allowed themselves to believe that peace was within reach. But that delusion depended on the belief that Arafat had been the main obstacle to a permanent peace settlement, and it is now melting in the summer sun.
"This calm is dissolving," said Gen. Dan Halutz, the Israeli military's chief of staff, on July 15.
Mushir al-Masri, a spokesman for the radical Hamas movement, which rejects a permanent peace deal with Israel, sort of agreed: "The calm is blowing away in the wind, and the Zionist enemy is responsible for that."