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Doomed from start to finish

Last night CNN's "World Report" reported that Condy Rice was on her way back to the Middle East where her "diplomatic skills" would be tested as she attempted to get the Palestinian-Israel negotiations underway and sought support generally in the region for the latest Bush initiative - "the surge" as it has become known - with respect to Iraq.

What diplomatic skills? It is impossible to think of one thing Rice has successfully negotiated or even mediated either as Bushs' Security Advisor or now the US Secretary of State.

That aside, it looks very much like the the scenario the Americans see in relation to resolving the Palestinian-Israeli issue is doomed. All simplistic and totally unrealistic! - as this piece in the IHT clearly steps and spells out:

"The latest American and European bid to revive the long-dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace process apparently goes something like this:

Tighten the squeeze on Hamas's government to curtail its acquisition of money and weapons. Tip the military balance by pouring in tens of millions of dollars to train and equip security forces loyal to Fatah. Strengthen the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, politically with the kinds of immediate, tangible concessions — money transfers, prisoner releases, lifting of roadblocks — mentioned by the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, at his dinner last Saturday with Abbas."

Comments

Anonymous said…
the moral solution to the palestine question is simple: dissolve the zionist state, re-create a secular palestine where jew, muslim, and christian can live in equality.

the technical solution is to implement the moral solution along the lines demonstrated by nelson mandela.

it may be that the intransigence of zionists and their american backers make a moral solution impossible, this may be a place where evil wins.

unfortunately for the evil winners, morality is just the label we put on longterm winning social strategy. the israeli's have won all the wars and are very angry that the losers won't lie down and die, or at least live humbly on the scraps that israeli society is willing to spare.

immoral winners always talk like this:" we beat them, we allowed some to live, why aren't they grateful, why don't they beg for mercy?"

but the palestinians may understand that the conflict is not over yet, and may feel that while they have a bullet, they they will fight. they don't have to win a battle, merely survive until the tide turns. it does turn, almost always.
January 14, 2007 10:08 am
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