Here’s the thing: this amounts to a local zoning and development issue. Calling it, as U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon did, a “fatal blow” to the peace process is both overwrought and, in the week following the U.N.’s passage of an ill-advised and self-defeating upgrade of the Palestinian status at Turtle Bay, more than a bit curious. If we’re looking for a fatal blow to the peace process, I would suggest it was when Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas refused to negotiate with the Israelis … THREE YEARS AGO. Or when Hamas began lobbing thousands of rockets into Israel … EIGHT YEARS AGO. Or when Yasser Arafat started the Second Intifada terror war against Israeli civilians ELEVEN YEARS AGO.

I think we’re well past the time when we need to wonder why the world is so interested in this issue. Now we should wonder why we or anyone else should care what Europeans think.