Word: palestinians
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...seek re-election and would step down after his party's Sept. 17 leadership vote. Olmert, currently under two separate criminal investigations over allegations of corruption, had already vowed to resign if charged. The news clears the way for a new government but will probably delay progress on Israeli-Palestinian relations...
...hand. Obama and his aides have said Hill's efforts in North Korea offer a model for dealing with other rogue regimes, and on his way back from Europe, Obama backed the Bush overture to Tehran, telling Reuters "the Iranians should take that gesture seriously." When he visited Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah on July 23, Obama even endorsed Bush and Rice's three-track approach for an accelerated Arab-Israeli peace process and pledged to continue it if elected. McCain has also endorsed the Bush diplomatic moves, while stressing that they are the result of strategies that Obama...
...whom who has used the intervening period to burnish his or her own claims. And despite his dire domestic political prospects, Olmert focused his energies on Israel's relations with its neighborhood. He has called time on his tenure at a moment when he is engaged in talks with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas over the terms of a future peace agreement, as well as indirect negotiations with Abbas' rivals in the Hamas movement that controls Gaza and also with Syria. He has also been lobbying international support (particularly the U.S.) for tough action to deter Iran from pursuing nuclear...
...short, very little is likely to change on any of those fronts. The significance of Olmert's talks with Abbas, at the behest of the Bush Administration, were routinely overstated. The Palestinian leader may not have substantially greater standing among his own people than Olmert does in Israel, yet the talks were confined only to Abbas' Fatah organization - which is not actually at war with Israel - and were expressly designed to avoid Hamas, which remains engaged in confronting Israel. And their purpose was not to arrive at a deal for implementation, but rather to achieve a hypothetical settlement that would...
...fact that the Israeli government, the Palestinian Authority and the Bush Administration have been willing to engage in this hypothetical peace exercise at all may have had less to do with the state of the conflict than with the political needs of the leaders involved. The Bush Administration is desperate for foreign policy success in a region littered with its failures. President Abbas needs to show that he can deliver through negotiation what his more-popular rivals in Hamas are unable to achieve through violence. As for Olmert, addressing Israelis' long-standing desire to resolve the conflict with their neighbors...