She's not entirely clear what madness Israel's "ultra-right-wingers" would engage in. Protests? A referendum? That's at least what they're calling for publicly. And is it fair to say that PM Sharon is coddling them? Aren't they upset because they're being ignored?
On the other side the extremists are "...engaging the Israeli Army daily with landmines, handmade rockets and suicide bombers." Actually not. For the most part "suicide bombers" are deployed against civilian targets. And the homemade rockets target Israeli cities outside of Gaza. It's hard to see what Israel's military presence in Gaza has to do with the violence against Israel.
Here's the central argument of Cooper's intemperate rant:

Mr. Sharon has been fighting mightily in the Israeli Parliament, or Knesset, to hold together a majority government that will stick for the estimated seven to eight months it will take to disengage from Gaza. Last week he achieved his goal by the skin of his teeth. But disengagement foes have continued to demonstrate and the news media remain filled with their outrage.

Such anti-disengagement extremists, one Israeli Army general warned last week, are "more dangerous than any flying rocket" lobbed by militant Palestinians in Gaza. But the government is loath to crack down on them - one Israeli official said the issue is too "emotional" - even when these settlers refuse to leave illegal settlements.

Instead, Israeli soldiers stand guard outside these settlements to protect them from Palestinian attacks, at the risk of their own lives. Israeli soldiers are routinely killed while patrolling the settlements.

So the extremists control the show, on both sides of the Green Line. Since assuming the presidency of the Palestinian Authority last week, Mahmoud Abbas has been devoting all of his time to trying to coax, cajole and threaten members of Hamas into laying down their arms and suicide bombs long enough for Mr. Abbas to get Mr. Sharon back to the table. But Hamas isn't even willing to stop the killing long enough to let Israel pull out of Gaza, something Hamas allegedly wants.

First it's interesting to note that even Cooper acknowledges that PM Sharon is not coddling his "ultra-right-wingers," contradicting one of her initial assertions. Soldiers also man Israel's border with Lebanon and are still getting killed there even though the pretext for Hezbollah's violence is gone. Does Cooper think that Gaza will be different? When Israel pulls out of Gaza will the terror from Gaza into Israel - rockets and suicide bombers - really stop?
According to Cooper who suffers because of the sins of both sides?:

So the people in the middle continue to pay the price. Last month, Israeli defense forces say, they spotted Hamas gunmen in a strawberry field in Gaza assembling a rocket to launch at Israeli targets. But by the time Israel tanks fired a single shell, hitting the field, the Hamas gunmen were gone, and in their place were 13 young boys, most from the same family, playing marbles. Seven were killed; their parents had to pick body parts from the bushes and trees.

The news account doesn't call the ones the Israeli army was seeking "gunmen," rather they were firing mortars into Jewish targets in Gaza. Mortars are quite a bit more serious than guns. Though guns are also quite lethal. This demonstrates, less the price moderates pay for extremists, but the price paid by civilians when terrorists operate in their nearby surroundings. But that doesn't fit with Ms. Cooper's questionable thesis, so it is conveniently ignored.
And so Cooper concludes:

No one here believes the violence will end any time soon. The people at the extremes will keep yelling and lobbing rockets. And the people in the middle, from the boys in the berry fields to the Israeli soldiers on guard duty to Shrook Ziad, will continue to be the real martyrs.

And what about the girl in Sderot who was killed while protecting her brother by shrapnel from a rocket? What will happen when those Israeli soldiers are no longer guarding inside Gaza? Will that violence persist as violence has persisted in the wake of Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon? But there's no good reporting that doesn't find some sort of equivalence between the two sides. The Israel extremists on one side who are using democratic means to protect their interests and the Arab extremists on the other who use mortars to attack civilians all victimize those "in the middle" are all the problem.
If Ms. Cooper was drawn into the cycle of equivalence, I was (pleasantly) surprised to see that the LA Times avoided it in a recent editorial, "Glimmer of mideast dialogue:"

Relations between Israeli leaders and the new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, started poorly, squelched the day before Abbas was sworn in by a Palestinian attack that killed six people at a Gaza border crossing. What offers a ray of optimism is what happened next on both sides.

The editorial then goes onto explain how Abbas took control and Israel rewarded his cooperation by re-establishing contacts with the PA in short order. My only quibble is this:

Israel's temporary end to meetings demonstrated the price it will extract for violence; the renewal showed its willingness to talk about ways to enforce peace. Abbas' attempts to negotiate with militants show that Israel may have the partner for peace talks it insisted it did not have in Yasser Arafat. Both sides at least seem able to see what the fruits of peace would be for their people and their economies.

To "negotiate" with militants is not enough.
As Michael Freund points out:

The fact is that even if Abu Mazen does succeed in bringing about a week or two of quiet on the Gaza front, this is beside the point. The main issue remains that the terrorist groups such as Hamas, Fatah and Islamic Jihad, all have the manpower and infrastructure in place to resume anti-Israel attacks at any time. Their agreement to a temporary cease-fire is tactical, not strategic – as far as they are concerned, this is little more than a chance to take a few days off and recoup before going back out to wage war on the Jewish state. The only way for Israel to ensure that the threat of rocket attacks from Gaza is eliminated once and for all is to eliminate the terrorists who pose the threat. Anything less is just biding for time, and nothing more.

Mahmoud Abbas may have started well, and perhaps should be applauded. But we still don't know enough about him. Even if he's seemingly moderate compared to his long time boss, that doesn't make him a peace maker. His statements condemn violence because it's counterproductive, not because it's wrong. We'll see how he does. He's done better than I expected him to so far. But the bar's a bit higher than many think.
Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.