Dennis Ross, the State Department's Middle East envoy, canceled a trip to Israel in the wake of the terrorist attack on a Jerusalem market that left 15 dead and hundreds injured. That was okay by Abdel Aziz Shaheen, the supply minister in Yasser Arafat's cabinet. As he told the Washington Post's Barton Gellman: "You Americans are the worst mediators in history. I want Mr. Ross to go to hell. I ask God to take him straight to hell. We know the Soviets are finished, but you are not the sole governor of the world. You are imperialists, even now. All the world forgets this word, but I do not. [Ross says,] 'Be flexible, take it easy.' Son of a bitch!"
Minister Shaheen is one of those Palestinians who we suppose would be described, in the parlance of diplomats like Ross, as a moderate -- State Department code for "not yet caught with a bomb."