Word: israelism
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...Middle East. Obama has sent a special envoy, George Mitchell, to launch negotiations, but the Mitchell process has moved slowly and seems to be slouching toward catatonia. The Israelis have refused to freeze their illegal West Bank settlement-building; the Arabs have refused to make any gestures toward recognizing Israel's sovereignty until such a freeze is imposed. Deadlock. At the same time, though, there is the rarest of Middle East commodities - some actual, tangible good news - beginning to bubble up on the West Bank. The situation there is improving dramatically. The Israelis and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad have...
...what he thinks a Middle East peace plan should look like." The elements of such a plan are widely known. Bill Clinton announced a version of it in December 2000, as he was leaving office. Brzezinski cites four major components: a return to 1967 borders, with land swaps enabling Israel to keep many of its existing settlements; no right of return for Palestinians who left, or were forced off, their lands when Israel became a state; Jerusalem as the capital of both Israel and Palestine; and an international peacekeeping force replacing the Israelis currently patrolling the Jordan River Valley...
...notion of putting enormous pressure on the Israelis to do anything has proved problematic for U.S. Presidents over time, however - and Brzezinski's well-known desire to apply such pressure has made him unpopular among Israel's noisy neoconservative and Evangelical supporters. But there are others, including well-known supporters of Israel like David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who think a breakthrough is possible. Makovsky's idea is to start with what seems the toughest problem: the Israeli settlements. "It is actually possible to work out a land swap that would satisfy both sides...
...noncommittal," Makovsky says. Indeed, if Netanyahu agreed to the land swap, his right-wing coalition would atomize. But he could still form a new government by aligning with the centrist Kadima Party. And then he would have the chance to be remembered as the man who finally secured Israel's borders - the sort of achievement that actually might merit a Nobel Prize...
...pictures of 60 years of Israel...