Word: palestinians
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...same dramatic formula for two decades and looks set to continue in the same vein, never reaching a denouement. Word from the region ahead of next week's visit by the Obama Administration's special envoy, the retired Senator George Mitchell, is that the U.S. plans to restart Israeli-Palestinian talks on a two-year deadline for the creation of a Palestinian state. That time frame was immediately dismissed as unrealistic by Israel's Foreign Minister. Skeptics might remember that President George W. Bush's 2002 road map to peace envisaged Palestinian statehood and an end to the conflict...
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a meeting of his Likud parliamentary faction on Monday that he sensed a "change in the atmosphere" that would bring his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, to the table despite Israel's having refused to meet Abbas' - and President Obama's - demand for a freeze on Israeli construction on land that was conquered in 1967. Abbas hastened to correct that impression in statements on Tuesday, making clear that he won't talk to an Israeli government that continues to build in East Jerusalem or publicly commit to the 1967 borders as a basis for negotiations...
...black humor was intended in Monday's statement by the Egyptians that, after two decades of talks between Israel and the Palestinians, the peace process ought not be rushed. Cairo was simply cooling expectations. "This is a protracted process and needs patience, clarity and prudence so that the Palestinians do not find themselves in a difficult position," Egypt's Foreign Minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said on Monday. Translation: The gulf between what the Palestinian leadership needs and what Israel's government is prepared to offer remains too large to bridge; therefore, trying to force both sides to tip their hands...
...sobering reality is that Abbas - both as President of the Palestinian Authority and in his previous capacity, as Yasser Arafat's chief negotiator - declined the best offers of two of Netanyahu's more dovish predecessors, Ehud Barak in 2000 and Ehud Olmert in 2008. And with the median in Israeli politics having swung steadily to the right, the idea that Netanyahu might offer more than Barak and Olmert did is fanciful. It's not that Abbas is an obstinate man; he simply knows what it will take to sell any peace agreement to his skeptical public. Still, Abbas has staked...
...Iraq have provided plenty of willing recruits for what remains of the organization.) Obama has tried to transform relations between the U.S. and the Muslim world through a dialogue outreach that he began with his Cairo speech last spring, but the realities of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have hampered that effort. The fact that the Nigerian man accused of the Detroit bomb plot was allegedly trained in Yemen has raised questions about whether Obama should initiate a new "war on terror" front there. But it's a complicated country that many analysts warn would be antagonized...