A 'Guarantee' for Disaster.

The New York Times lead editorial today on the upcoming "peach conference" between Israel and the Palestinians is either hopelessly naive or a bad joke.

Crammed in amid the usual Bush-bashing and pro-Palestinian spin we get these two nuggets:

A guarantee to use the full resources of the Palestinian Authority to help protect Israel from future terrorist attacks is also essential. . . After years of broken promises and bloodshed, Israelis and Palestinians must also agree on concrete steps that would show their people that life is changing for the better — now. These should include a Palestinian commitment to hunt down violent anti-Israel militants and a halt to Israeli settlements.

Sound familiar? It should, because this is precisely the formula for disaster that was laid down in the so-called "Road Map for Peace," which was ignored by the Palestinians from as soon as the ink dried.

Yet once again, the Times repeats the tired old formula of demanding that Israel take real, irrevocable action while the Palestinians only make "commitments" that they have never carried out and "guarantees" that are not worth the paper they are printed on.