The reality, alas, is very different.

About the situation concerning terrorism in Yesha, the relevant JPost news report doesn't mince words:

Mortars fired at Gush Katif; IDF enters Khan Younis

IDF troops entered the outskirts of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip Friday night, several hours after a barrage of mortar shells fired at the nearby settlement of Neveh Dekalim wounded four Israelis.

Tanks were taking up positions to allow advantage points at the area from where mortar shells were fired at Gush Katif

...

An eight-year-old boy was seriously-to-moderately wounded in the attack, after shrapnel pierced his abdomen, causing bleeding in his inner organs.

Is this continued assault on civilians - especially children - the reasons for AP's upbeat optimism? Or should AP check out the news before imposing its analyses and appraisals on us?

Next, consider the enthusiasm about Mubarak. Apart from the empty words of praise he heaped on Sharon, and apart from the prisoner exchange (a normal practice even among enemies), rumours were floated that Mubarak would return his ambassador to Israel - part of the peace agreement, incidentally. On December 10, AP itself dispelled the rumours, saying:

President Hosni Mubarak said reports of a deal with Israel were exaggerated and denied that the Egyptian ambassador would soon return to Tel Aviv, a leading newspaper reported Friday.

"There is nothing like that at all," the semiofficial Al-Ahram newspaper quoted Mubarak as saying in an answer to a question about the return of the ambassador.

So much for the warming of Israel-Egypt relations and so much for the way Arabs keep peace agreements.

Why, then, does AP come out with headlines such as the one with which I started this piece? I cannot, of course, divine what's on the mind of AP writers and editors, but I can assess the motives according to the results.

In the immediate term, the result is to once again blame Israel; for example, a typical passage embedded in the report states

Still, the intefadeh, or uprising, isn't over, peace talks are a ways off and life for most Palestinians is as hard as ever.
...
But Palestinians say Israeli-imposed hardships - especially the ubiquitous roadblocks dotting roads and encircling towns - have not let up.

Second, the result is to build unrealistic expectations; and when tomorrow the negotiations fail and flounder because of the "right of return" issue, the soil shall have been prepared for another wave of accusations against Israel.

A third result is to make us forget that a condition for any progress, even by the malicious Roadmap, is the destruction of the Arab terrorist infrastructure in Yesha. The AP article makes us believe that peace and optimism are in place because,

Palestinian lawmakers are at work amending electoral laws that would make it easier for militants to participate in politics, hoping that a stake in the system will persuade them to halt attacks.

So who needs to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure?

Beware AP bearing reports!