U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is in the Middle East, speaking to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas about peace.
She represents an administration that is Johnny-come-late to the peace process. The current Bush White House has been pretty much hands off when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict until late until its second term.
Reaching a peace accord in the Middle East has been elusive for presidents who delved in early. but Rice believes one can be reached before the end of the president's term.
On this, there is finally some agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. Both sides are dubious.
Dubious and pragmatic.
Frankly, I hope Rice is right and Olmert and Abbas is wrong. I hope I am wrong. I hope peace can be achieved. But the reality is the administration has gotten so much in its foreign policy wrong over the past seven-and-a-half years that no one should be surprised that it's wrong about this as well.
1 comment:
It's all very well Israel and Fatah reaching some sort of agreement, but isn't the sticking point what Hamas intends to do?
I get confused when people talk about agreements between anyone and the PA since the 2 factions within Palestine don't agree.
However, I do have to view any agreement between Fatah/Abbas with a degree of scepticism since when you dig deep for Abbas's view on Israel it ultimately is not a million mies away from that of Hamas.
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