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Rice: Mideast peace by year-end no longer possible
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday all but conceded that an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal by a year-end deadline is no longer possible.
What was your fist clue, Condi?
But she also said upon arriving here that it is important to maintain momentum and support for the negotiations so that new governments in both Israel and the United States have "a firm foundation" to continue to the talks next year.
Because "momentum" in negotiations is how things get done in the real world, as opposed to negotiations mediating details and establishing commitments based on changes and facts in the real world. Right.
En route to the Middle East for her eighth trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories since the parties set the deadline for reaching an agreement at last November's summit at Annapolis, Md., Rice said political uncertainty in Israel is the main complication to the goal.
Sixty years of bitter treacherous genocidal hostility, duplicity, and barbarism from the Palestinians, who themselves are a collection of competing gangs and terrorist outfits, posing as a divided ramshackle clownfest of Third World political theater, is a subsidiary complication, I guess.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is being forced from office by a corruption scandal, and the country is set to hold new elections in February. Rice noted that the situation "is a constraint on the ability of any government to conclude" a deal."I've learned never to predict in this business," she said, "but it is clear we're in a different situation now because Israel is going to elections."
Damn Israeli democracy. I recall an Argentine diplomat, after the break-up of a mediation session with the UK over the Falklands issue - before the war - remarking drily to a journalist that it was difficult dealing with democracies, as they were so unstable. But, uh, Condi, the problem here ain't Israeli elections.
"It is our expectation that the Annapolis process has laid groundwork which should make possible the establishment of a Palestinian state when the political circumstances permit," Rice added. "I think that whatever happens by the end of the year, you've got a firm foundation for quickly moving this forward to conclusion."
Right. Because a "process" in a hotel in Maryland is what makes such things happen. Not actual behavior by real Palestinians. "Firm foundation"? WTF? Did I miss something?
The two sides for months have been backing away from the timeline pushed in Annapolis.
Which neither side ever took seriously. Duh.
Although Rice refused to absolutely rule out the chance of an agreement by year's end, her remarks reflect the first time that a Bush administration official has publicly not held out hope that the deadline could be met. Israeli and Palestinian officials have long said they believe the year-end deadline is unrealistic.
Probably starting, quietly to each other, as the deadline was being "agreed to" in Annapolis. Of all the foreign policy reverses, the 180 done on "Mideast peace" by Dubya was the most disappointing and damaging. Now, incredibly, the father of 10 years of taffy-yanking and terrorism, Ross, is headed back to the scene of his earlier crimes of cluelessness. So long as there is no press, there is infinite up-side to incompetence, even the kind that gets lots of people killed. Amazing.
Posted by: Verlaine 2008-11-06
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=254523