God smiles on remorseful Mr Stafford, not the impenitent.

Some have even gone so far as to suggest that the peace process, to which those who favour a negotiated solution at all costs cling so desperately, has irretrievably collapsed under Israeli raids and bombing, burying the Mitchell and Tenet plans, with the active connivance of hardliners from both camps, paradoxically united by the apocalyptic dream of total war engulfing all the Middle East and bearing away the regimes scorned by these impenitent extremists.