You will know Michael Oren from TNR (see here, here, here and here). His book , Six Days of War, established him as one of the leading political and military historians of our time. His more recent book, Power, Faith and Fantasy, on the American involvement and enchantment with the Middle East, proved him to be a narrative historian in the tradition of Simon Schama, Arthur Schlesinger, and Hugh Thomas. I reviewed this last book in the Wall Street Journal . He is also an American-born, Princeton-educated political strategist who lives in Jerusalem. He sure hopes for peace between Israel and its neighbors. (He has a wife and three children who live there with him). But, given his terrible habit of seeing history for what it is, he is skeptical of its prospects. Still, the Bush Doctrine for Israel and Palestine gave him some hope, largely because the president's expectations put many of the burdens of establishing peace on the Palestinians themselves. Unless the Palestinians carry these burdens, both Oren and I believe, nothing that Israel might do will ever satisfy the Arab lust for a past that never existed. We have the example of Israel leaving Gaza in the hope (actually in the confident expectation) that the Palestinians would make something--at least, something--out of a Gaza that belonged to them. Two years later, we see what they made of it. I won't use an expletive. Think of one yourself. What Gaza exports to Israel are rockets. And that's what a "liberated" West Bank will export, too, unless Palestinian attitudes and behavior change. And change fundamentally. This is something that George Bush grasps, and grasps fully. He understands it better than Bill Clinton did, and--unless I'm very much mistaken--also better than a very smart man now in the Middle Eastern trade, Tony Blair. Oren wrote about Bush's Monday speech in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.