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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Will Annapolis talks achieve desperately needed Mideast peace? |
| 2007-11-22 |
| By Scott MacLeod The invitations have gone out. There will be an Amercan-sponsored Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, next Tuesday, the first such gathering in seven bloody years and four months. The International Crisis Group’s excellent “policy briefing” issued yesterday on Annapolis makes a convincing case for why Condi Rice’s efforts are serious and significant, and how the conference can be turned into a meaningful step toward peace. The ICG is not blind to the difficulties; to the contrary, in agonizing detail it describes the political weakness of Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and their utter failure to come up with a pre-conference understanding on the contours of a peace agreement—including the “final-status” issues like borders, Jerusalem and refugees. Yet, with the help of the ICG’s analysis, it’s worth taking stock of what has been accomplished and how this progress provides an opportunity that should not be minimized or missed. I haven’t been alone in expressing skepticism about Rice’s peace push or about her past excuses for the Bush administration’s appalling neglect of its international responsibility to uphold the peace process between 2001-2006. But it’s thanks almost entirely to Rice’s diplomacy that the administration has in fact dramatically and properly changed its basic approach to the conflict and now appears, in the ICG’s words, “committed to an intensive effort.” Once, an administration driven by neo-conservative ideologues believed that the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute was fighting the authoritarian rot in the Arab world that they believe produces hatred for the U.S. and Israel in the form of the 9/11 attacks and suicide bombings against Israelis. Rice has shifted the challenge back to where it should have remained: addressing the injustice experienced by Palestinians in their expulsion from what became Israel in 1948 and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Palestinian territories since 1967. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #13 Problem, miss Rice has nada to put on her resume. Now that's gonna leave a mark! |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-11-22 22:46 |
| #12 Where's the problem? Problem, miss Rice has nada to put on her resume. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2007-11-22 22:43 |
| #11 What Verlaine said. I'd say the status quo is quite satisfactory. Hamas and Fatah running around killing each other. Israel progressively isolating itself from Gaza and the WB. Where's the problem? |
| Posted by: phil_b 2007-11-22 20:24 |
| #10 "Occupied West Bank", huh? How about "Arab-occupied Judea"? Or consider this Obadiah Shoher |
| Posted by: Ann 2007-11-22 18:41 |
| #9 process-fixated diplomats Paging the Department of Redundancy Department to the white courtesy phone. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2007-11-22 11:21 |
| #8 (not really on topic, but piggybacking on #6...) Just out of curiosity, if the 2007 Dolphins go winless, will Steve Spurrier, Lee Roy Selmon and maybe one or two other members of the '76 Buccaneers pop champagne corks? |
| Posted by: eLarson 2007-11-22 10:35 |
| #7 Unless a "need" is a "want" it's a lie. |
| Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2007-11-22 08:34 |
| #6 Mideast 'peace process' = 2007 Miami Dolphins. Compare & contrast... |
| Posted by: Raj 2007-11-22 07:47 |
| #5 "Desperately needed"? Huh? Nah, don't think so, Scott. Seems to me the (long, long, inexcusably delayed) security barrier has left Israelis not very much in need of peace of any sort with their uncivilized and undeserving neighbors (Sderot residents excepted). This, plus of course the bizarre self-interest of Israeli politicians in stasis, may explain why a farcically ineffective PM stays on in Israel, and is allowed to engage in silly stunts like this Annapolis barfathon. Behold, just in this small excerpt, the bizarre alternative make-believe world idiots like McLeod inhabit - they fixate on process, including that which has been tried umpteen times to no avail given the hostility and depravity of one of the parties, as if that matters. They are caricatures - nearly implausible ones - of process-fixated diplomats. It's nauseating to contemplate the number of idiots, both here and abroad, who actually make well-paying careers out of this nonsense. In the process they pollute the minds of non-specialists as the equally clueless media feeds their crap into the news flow, non-stop. |
| Posted by: Verlaine 2007-11-22 04:02 |
| #4 No. Next question. |
| Posted by: Large Ebbaving6251 2007-11-22 02:56 |
| #3 And Mr. Scott MacLeod also wrote:"...galvanized into her own re-think of the Middle East crisis by her disastrous handling of Israel’s attack on Lebanon in the summer of 2006; as images of dead children filled the world’s TV screens, she called the war “the birth pangs of a new Middle East” and stubbornly refused to demand an Israeli cease-fire." I suspect Mr. MacLeod is a stringer for the BBC, or a front man for UNFIL. Surprised to read this on a conservative nationalist Lebanese news site. |
| Posted by: Phinater Thraviger 2007-11-22 01:04 |
| #2 460k Arabs left what became Israel on the eve of Arab war against the new state. 780k Jews were consequently expelled from Arab countries and 88% landed in Israel. I say it's more than even, Scott. |
| Posted by: twobyfour 2007-11-22 00:46 |
| #1 Is the Pope Budhist? Does a bear use indoor plumbing? |
| Posted by: Thor Angereling4351 2007-11-22 00:42 |