Word: washingtonization
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...that point, his fanaticism did not extend past cheering on his Washington Redskins. He did, however, regularly attend services at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md., helped at its homeless shelter and even applied to an annual matrimonial center that acts as a kind of matchmaking service. He described himself in his application as "quiet and reserved until more familiar with person. Funny, caring and personable...
...Abrams and other Middle East hands believe that no Israeli leader could have accepted the settlement-freeze demand, which Obama also made a centerpiece of his outreach to the Muslim world in his Cairo speech last April. Accepting Washington's demand would have brought down Netanyahu's government, says Abrams. Nor were the Arabs ready to reach out to Israel. "[The Administration] made it worse by not having a very good learning curve," says Abrams. "It was already clear last spring that Netanyahu was not going to accept the settlement freeze, and in June, when Obama visited Saudi Arabia...
...Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. peace negotiator now at Washington's Woodrow Wilson Center, agrees that the Administration's initial demands of Israel and the Arab states were misguided, created unrealistic expectations, and "have allowed both the Israelis and the Palestinians to say no to the United States without suffering any consequences." Still, he says, first-year errors in foreign policy are common in new U.S. Administrations and the Obama team will have time to rectify matters...
...Others see the stalemate as requiring a more forceful U.S. intervention - an international effort led by the U.S. to provide more detailed terms for a two-state solution, and press the two sides to accept it. Daniel Levy, an Israeli peace negotiator at Camp David now based at Washington's New America Foundation, says the reason the Obama Administration fared badly is that the underlying assumptions of the peace process are no longer valid. "The political factors that make it impossible for Netanyahu to accept the settlement freeze also make it highly unlikely that he could conclude a deal acceptable...
...Washington's push to re-engage Pyongyang probably won't be interrupted by the naval shootout. China, which views itself as the North's big brother, has invested a fair bit of diplomatic capital in getting Kim to agree to return to diplomacy. When Obama huddles with Chinese President Hu Jintao next week in Beijing before going to Seoul, the two will probably talk about North Korea. Obama will want a sense from Hu and the Chinese as to how serious the North is about a possible nuclear deal and what the components of such a deal might be. Obama...