In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don’t want it in...

Inevitably came the time when he angrily repudiated his former paladin Yasser Arafat. In fact, he described him to me as ‘the Palestinian blend of Marshal Petaín and Papa Doc.’ But the main problem, alas,...