This morning I read a moderately uplifting article about improving relations in the West Bank due to the infrastructural successes of Salam Fayaad who in a short time has lessened Palestine's reliance on foreign aid considerably. Under his helm schools have been opened and the government has become a more reliable facet to the Palestinian people. With a stable and capable government the article was one of realizable hope, hope for both nations in what's always been their abstract futures but also more practically hope for the upcoming peace talks set for tomorrow in Washington.

I mean. I read this article and I certainly didn't feel good about the state of Israeli/Palestinian relations. I mean I think we're all pretty much trained to be skeptical of every bit of information disseminating from that region. Nothing lasts as they say. But rare is it that I hear anything good at all coming from either side, especially good news from Palestine. So I was uplifted, to a degree. Maybe something small is all that we need for something else small and then the smalls add up to a big.

A few hours later and Hamas is there to remind us just how spoiled our world is. 4 Israeli settlers were gunned down in their car.

Peace. Attacks. Peace. Attacks. Attacks. Peace. Attacks.

So it really doesn't qualify as peace does it? It's only periods of temporary abatement.

Nothing lasts right?