When the Secretary of State was traipsing round the Middle East on his fool's mission last summer, the Defence Secretary (who served as Reagan's envoy to the region) was asked about the "occupied territories" and made you wish he'd been the one sent over to Yasser's boudoir: "My feeling about the so-called occupied territories," he replied, "is that there was a war, Israel urged neighboring countries not to get involved in it once it started, they all jumped in, and they lost a lot of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that conflict."

"So-called occupied territories": There's one for Chris Patten, the EU's leading proponent of the theory of Yasserite inevitability. The Arabs would benefit from a little more straight talk: They're very bad at confronting the consequences of their recklessness.