Yet, despite history’s long train of failures, Hamas’s June 2007 seizure of control of Gaza, and its pariah status in the West, we are repeatedly told by the US that 2008 will be the year of a peace agreement. Meanwhile, the Arab peace proposal, which calls for a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders and a fair solution to the refugee problem in exchange for normalization of Arab states’ relations with Israel, appears doomed.