Things look very bad among the Palestinians. Even devout leftists must admit that the street battles, their continuing failure to make peace at home, the incendiary talk and the murder in their eyes are frustrating to the most moderate of Israeli observers. What can be done with this terrible turmoil?

Even Yisrael Beiteinu leader MK Avigdor Lieberman has never said what Hamas and the Fatah are yelling about each other. Armed gangs have settled accounts in street battles. Fatah has demanded that the Hamas interior and foreign affairs ministers be put on trial. In the meantime, its people have shot at the deputy prime minister and kidnapped the finance minister. There are frightening energies there, of hatred and despair and a lust for revenge. This week's "Black Sunday" joins the worst of the bloody incidents between us and them. On that day, amid the inflamed passions, one of the heads of Hamas shouted to the masses at Jabalya that his movement would not recognize Israel even if all its members were killed.

What can be done? The Israeli instinct has always been to spill all the old cliches over such scenes, from "there is no one to talk with" to jets of racist scorn for "the Arabs." We are having a hard time with them? They are also having a hard time with us. When at the beginning of the week, 12 Palestinians were killed in Fatah-Hamas battles, this of course made front page headlines in Israel. But the hundreds whom Israel has killed just in the darkened and hungry Gaza Strip over the past few months have already become stale non-news. The riots in the territories are a big asset for all haters of any agreement with those rioting gangs.

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As though in periods of relative quiet, some spark of readiness to talk with a new government - heir to the leadership generation that Israel loved to hate - had ignited. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, like his predecessor, has been procrastinating over a meeting with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for months on end, as though he were a leper. No commission will investigate this failure in our backyard. Defense Minister Amir Peretz seemed to rub his hands together when he said that the defense establishment would continue to follow the clashes "with special attention." He did not do a thing, either before the war or when he found time afterward, to turn his special attention to the increasing pressure, the erupting anger, the terrible poverty and the signs of disintegration in an administration in whose stability Israel should seemingly have a special interest. Throughout, the defense minister has continued to bombard the tough neighborhood across the way.

Now, enters United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She came for a purposeless visit at perhaps the lowest point in the waning days of the Bush administration. Even if this intelligent woman has something to offer, she does not have the authority and the clout. She is walking in lockstep with a president who is not prepared to recognize Hamas and push Israel to talk with the most dynamic movement in the territories.

This is not how the Israeli majority thinks. It is marching ahead of its limping leadership. A survey by Hebrew University's Truman Center, together with the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, found that at the end of last month, 67 percent of Israelis (and 59 percent of Palestinians) supported negotiations with a Palestinian unity government. The government will be surprised to learn that 56 percent are even prepared to speak with just a Hamas government.

At a dinner with Olmert on Wednesday, Rice talked about ways of dealing with jet lag. Her entire waning administration is deep in the throes of jet lag. It is ridiculous to expect it to produce any initiative on the Palestinian issue. What concerns the administration is an attempt to create an Arab coalition against Iran. Our situation, which at one time brought Washington to formulate road maps for an agreement (but not to do anything about implementing them), has now been reduced to opening the Karni crossing "soon."

Olmert has no problem dragging his feet. In the aquarium - an apt nickname for his bureau - it is easy nowadays to formulate the "because": the justifications for why it is impossible to talk with them, to help them. However, Israel's interests demand the "despite" justifications: why it has long been incumbent upon us, and especially in this current crisis period, to make things as easy as possible for the Palestinian population and to talk with its leaders. This is also the right time because the old excuse, that Israeli moderation will play into the hands of Palestinian aggression, is absent. They are flat on their faces, stuck in crippling poverty the likes of which can be found only among the most failed of nations.

He knows what needs to be done, but does not want to do it. More than anything else, Olmert is afraid of what will happen to him in the shaky political arena. He is refusing even though the territories are the most dangerous and nearby stockpile of explosives threatening our national security.

What should be done instead of the declamatory "because?" Aid should be transferred to Gaza, the routes for agricultural exports should be opened, help must be given in restoring the electricity supply, the number of Palestinian workers in Israel ought to be increased, Palestinian prisoners should be released (in the same numbers that will in any case ultimately be released) and Gilad Shalit brought back, talks should be held with the PA chairman and prime minister, a unity government should be encouraged rather than sabotaged, there should be serious discussion of the Saudi initiative, and special attention - not Peretz's sort - has to be directed to the fact that the initiative, which has already been adopted twice, recently, by the Arab League summit, includes pan-Arab recognition of Israel as its culmination.

Quite a selection for anyone who prefers the "because" due to fear of the "despite."