While we are asking Israelis and palestinians to take bold steps in the name of peacse, how about US taking a bold step first, and leading by example? At the vote in the UN Security Council, 14 countries out of15 voted to censure Israel for its illegal settlement activity, something that President himself had said in his Cairo speech. "America does not accept the legitimacy of contiued Israeli settlements". Yet at the UN, instead of walking the walk and taking a bold step, US vetoed the resolution, one country against 14 in a group of 15. As long as the US Congress is hungry for dollars from Israeli lobby, no speeches from President are going to bring peace to MiddleEast. We need a president who can take a bold step by himself first, then peace will follow.

This month, in the Middle East, has seen the unmaking of the President of the United States. More than that, it has witnessed the lowest prestige of America in the region since Roosevelt met King Abdul Aziz on the USS Quincy in the Great Bitter Lake in 1945.

While Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu played out their farce in Washington – Obama grovelling as usual – the Arabs got on with the serious business of changing their world, demonstrating and fighting and dying for freedoms they have never possessed. Obama waffled on about change in the Middle East – and about America's new role in the region. It was pathetic. "What is this 'role' thing?" an Egyptian friend asked me at the weekend. "Do they still believe we care about what they think?"

And it is true. Obama's failure to support the Arab revolutions until they were all but over lost the US most of its surviving credit in the region. Obama was silent on the overthrow of Ben Ali, only joined in the chorus of contempt for Mubarak two days before his flight, condemned the Syrian regime – which has killed more of its people than any other dynasty in this Arab "spring", save for the frightful Gaddafi – but makes it clear that he would be happy to see Assad survive, waves his puny fist at puny Bahrain's cruelty and remains absolutely, stunningly silent over Saudi Arabia. And he goes on his knees before Israel. Is it any wonder, then, that Arabs are turning their backs on America, not out of fury or anger, nor with threats or violence, but with contempt? It is the Arabs and their fellow Muslims of the Middle East who are themselves now making the decisions.

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Turkey is furious with Assad because he twice promised to speak of reform and democratic elections – and then failed to honour his word. The Turkish government has twice flown delegations to Damascus and, according to the Turks, Assad lied to the foreign minister on the second visit, baldly insisting that he would recall his brother Maher's legions from the streets of Syrian cities. He failed to do so. The torturers continue their work.

Watching the hundreds of refugees pouring from Syria across the northern border of Lebanon, the Turkish government is now so fearful of a repeat of the great mass Iraqi Kurdish refugee tide that overwhelmed their border in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war that it has drawn up its own secret plans to prevent the Kurds of Syria moving in their thousands into the Kurdish areas of south-eastern Turkey. Turkish generals have thus prepared an operation that would send several battalions of Turkish troops into Syria itself to carve out a "safe area" for Syrian refugees inside Assad's caliphate. The Turks are prepared to advance well beyond the Syrian border town of Al Qamishli – perhaps half way to Deir el-Zour (the old desert killing fields of the 1915 Armenian Holocaust, though speak it not) – to provide a "safe haven" for those fleeing the slaughter in Syria's cities.

The Qataris are meanwhile trying to prevent Algeria from resupplying Gaddafi with tanks and armoured vehicles – this was one of the reasons why the Emir of Qatar, the wisest bird in the Arabian Gulf, visited the Algerian president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, last week. Qatar is committed to the Libyan rebels in Benghazi; its planes are flying over Libya from Crete and – undisclosed until now – it has Qatari officers advising the rebels inside the city of Misrata in western Libya; but if Algerian armour is indeed being handed over to Gaddafi to replace the material that has been destroyed in air strikes, it would account for the ridiculously slow progress which the Nato campaign is making against Gaddafi.

Of course, it all depends on whether Bouteflika really controls his army – or whether the Algerian "pouvoir", which includes plenty of secretive and corrupt generals, are doing the deals. Algerian equipment is superior to Gaddafi's and thus for every tank he loses, Ghaddafi might be getting an improved model to replace it. Below Tunisia, Algeria and Libya share a 750-mile desert frontier, an easy access route for weapons to pass across the border.

But the Qataris are also attracting Assad's venom. Al Jazeera's concentration on the Syrian uprising – its graphic images of the dead and wounded far more devastating than anything our soft western television news shows would dare broadcast – has Syrian state television nightly spitting at the Emir and at the state of Qatar. The Syrian government has now suspended up to £4 billion of Qatari investment projects, including one belonging to the Qatar Electricity and Water Company.

Amid all these vast and epic events – Yemen itself may yet prove to be the biggest bloodbath of all, while the number of Syria's "martyrs" have now exceeded the victims of Mubarak's death squads five months ago – is it any surprise that the frolics of Messrs Netanyahu and Obama appear so irrelevant? Indeed, Obama's policy towards the Middle East – whatever it is – sometimes appears so muddled that it is scarcely worthy of study. He supports, of course, democracy – then admits that this may conflict with America's interests. In that wonderful democracy called Saudi Arabia, the US is now pushing ahead with a £40 billion arms deal and helping the Saudis to develop a new "elite" force to protect the kingdom's oil and future nuclear sites. Hence Obama's fear of upsetting Saudi Arabia, two of whose three leading brothers are now so incapacitated that they can no longer make sane decisions – unfortunately, one of these two happens to be King Abdullah – and his willingness to allow the Assad family's atrocity-prone regime to survive. Of course, the Israelis would far prefer the "stability" of the Syrian dictatorship to continue; better the dark caliphate you know than the hateful Islamists who might emerge from the ruins. But is this argument really good enough for Obama to support when the people of Syria are dying in the streets for the kind of democracy that the US president says he wants to see in the region?

One of the vainest elements of American foreign policy towards the Middle East is the foundational idea that the Arabs are somehow more stupid than the rest of us, certainly than the Israelis, more out of touch with reality than the West, that they don't understand their own history. Thus they have to be preached at, lectured, and cajoled by La Clinton and her ilk – much as their dictators did and do, father figures guiding their children through life. But Arabs are far more literate than they were a generation ago; millions speak perfect English and can understand all too well the political weakness and irrelevance in the president's words. Listening to Obama's 45-minute speech this month – the "kick off' to four whole days of weasel words and puffery by the man who tried to reach out to the Muslim world in Cairo two years ago, and then did nothing – one might have thought that the American President had initiated the Arab revolts, rather than sat on the sidelines in fear.

There was an interesting linguistic collapse in the president's language over those critical four days. On Thursday 19 May, he referred to the continuation of Israeli "settlements". A day later, Netanyahu was lecturing him on "certain demographic changes that have taken place on the ground". Then when Obama addressed the American Aipac lobby group (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) on the Sunday, he had cravenly adopted Netanyahu's own preposterous expression. Now he, too, spoke of "new demographic realities on the ground." Who would believe that he was talking about internationally illegal Jewish colonies built on land stolen from Arabs in one of the biggest property heists in the history of "Palestine"? Delay in peace-making will undermine Israeli security, Obama announced – apparently unaware that Netanyahu's project is to go on delaying and delaying and delaying until there is no land left for the "viable" Palestinian state which the United States and the European Union supposedly wish to see.

Then we had the endless waffle about the 1967 borders. Netanyahu called them "defenceless" (though they seemed to have been pretty defendable for the 18 years prior to the Six Day War) and Obama – oblivious to the fact that Israel must be the only country in the world to have an eastern land frontier but doesn't know where it is – then says he was misunderstood when he talked about 1967. It doesn't matter what he says. George W Bush caved in years ago when he gave Ariel Sharon a letter which stated America's acceptance of "already existing major Israeli population centres" beyond the 1967 lines. To those Arabs prepared to listen to Obama's spineless oration, this was a grovel too far. They simply could not understand the reaction of Netanyahu's address to Congress. How could American politicians rise and applaud Netanyahu 55 times – 55 times – with more enthusiasm than one of the rubber parliaments of Assad, Saleh and the rest?

And what on earth did the Great Speechifier mean when he said that "every country has the right to self-defence" but that Palestine would be "demilitarised"? What he meant was that Israel could go on attacking the Palestinians (as in 2009, for example, when Obama was treacherously silent) while the Palestinians would have to take what was coming to them if they did not behave according to the rules – because they would have no weapons to defend themselves. As for Netanyahu, the Palestinians must choose between unity with Hamas or peace with Israel. All of which was very odd. When there was no unity, Netanyahu told us all that he had no Palestinian interlocutor because the Palestinians were disunited. Yet when they unite, they are disqualified from peace talks.

Of course, cynicism grows the longer you live in the Middle East. I recall, for example, travelling to Gaza in the early 1980s when Yasser Arafat was running his PLO statelet in Beirut. Anxious to destroy Arafat's prestige in the occupied territories, the Israeli government decided to give its support to an Islamist group in Gaza called Hamas. In fact, I actually saw with my own eyes the head of the Israeli army's Southern Command negotiating with bearded Hamas officials, giving them permission to build more mosques. It's only fair to say, of course, that we were also busy at the time, encouraging a certain Osama bin Laden to fight the Soviet army in Afghanistan. But the Israelis did not give up on Hamas. They later held another meeting with the organisation in the West Bank; the story was on the front page of the Jerusalem Post the next day. But there wasn't a whimper from the Americans.

Then another moment that I can recall over the long years. Hamas and Islamic Jihad members – all Palestinians – were, in the early 1990s, thrown across the Israeli border into southern Lebanon where they spent more than a year camping on a freezing mountainside. I would visit them from time to time and on one occasion mentioned that I would be travelling to Israel next day. Immediately, one of the Hamas men ran to his tent and returned with a notebook. He then proceeded to give me the home telephone numbers of three senior Israeli politicians – two of whom are still prominent today – and, when I reached Jerusalem and called the numbers, they all turned out to be correct. In other words, the Israeli government had been in personal and direct contact with Hamas.

But now the narrative has been twisted out of all recognition. Hamas are the super-terrorists, the "al-Qa'ida" representatives in the unified Palestinian leadership, the men of evil who will ensure that no peace ever takes place between Palestinians and Israeli. If only this were true, the real al-Qa'ida would be more than happy to take responsibility. But it is not true. In the same context, Obama stated that the Palestinians would have to answer questions about Hamas. But why should they? What Obama and Netanyahu think about Hamas is now irrelevant to them. Obama warns the Palestinians not to ask for statehood at the United Nations in September. But why on earth not? If the people of Egypt and Tunisia and Yemen and Libya and Syria – we are all waiting for the next revolution (Jordan? Bahrain again? Morocco?) – can fight for freedom and dignity, why shouldn't the Palestinians? Lectured for decades on the need for non-violent protest, the Palestinians elect to go to the UN with their cry for legitimacy – only to be slapped down by Obama.

Having read all of the "Palestine Papers" which Al-Jazeera revealed, there is no doubt that "Palestine's" official negotiators will go to any lengths to produce some kind of statelet. Mahmoud Abbas, who managed to write a 600-page book on the "peace process" without once mentioning the word "occupation", could even cave in over the UN project, fearful of Obama's warning that it would be an attempt to "isolate" Israel and thus de-legitimise the Israeli state – or "the Jewish state" as the US president now calls it. But Netanyahu is doing more than anyone to delegitimise his own state; indeed, he is looking more and more like the Arab buffoons who have hitherto littered the Middle East. Mubarak saw a "foreign hand" in the Egyptian revolution (Iran, of course). So did the Crown Prince of Bahrain (Iran again). So did Gaddafi (al-Qa'ida, western imperialism, you name it), So did Saleh of Yemen (al-Qa'ida, Mossad and America). So did Assad of Syria (Islamism, probably Mossad, etc). And so does Netanyahu (Iran, naturally enough, Syria, Lebanon, just about anyone you can think of except for Israel itself).

But as this nonsense continues, so the tectonic plates shudder. I doubt very much if the Palestinians will remain silent. If there's an "intifada" in Syria, why not a Third Intifada in "Palestine"? Not a struggle of suicide bombers but of mass, million-strong protests. If the Israelis have to shoot down a mere few hundred demonstrators who tried – and in some cases succeeded – in crossing the Israeli border almost two weeks ago, what will they do if confronted by thousands or a million. Obama says no Palestinian state must be declared at the UN. But why not? Who cares in the Middle East what Obama says? Not even, it seems, the Israelis. The Arab spring will soon become a hot summer and there will be an Arab autumn, too. By then, the Middle East may have changed forever. What America says will matter nothing.
source : indepedent

is that you continue to act as a reference on an issue that you caused its failure.

All this ,moaning about Obama and his failures can not hide your contempt for Obama s even-handedness with the Palestinians, something which is not accepted to the lawyers of Israel in the USA.

The dice has been cast Mr Miller, and you can do nothing about it.

I am looking forward to reading your next piece of Mideast peace moaning after the UN vote this Sptember.

Neither party here has much incentive to negotiate, and even if they did, neither party has the ability to deliver on promises made.

For example, if some how a peace treaty were negotiated, there are no concessions that violent, well-armed, and unbending minorities on either side would accept.

The leaders that tried would be thrown from office, or murdered.

Obama's a smart guy, so why bother? Because he's trying to win influence for the U.S. in the new regimes arising from the Arab Spring.

There's huge opportunities and risks with Arab Spring that requires a subtle policy. Sad that the Republican House is more interested winning points domestically by undermining Obama's policy.

Here are the minimum requirements for peace in the Middle East.

Full and unconditional diplomatic recognition of Israel

Full and unconditional recognition of Israel’s right to exist within secure borders

Full cessation of all acts of war against Israel, including but not limited to: full cessation of all economic boycotts and embargoes against Israel; full cessation of military action against Israel by independent states (Syria, Iran) AND their proxies: Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade, ET. AL. (that is, EVERY single proxy)

Fact: The Israelis pulled out of Lebanon and got Hezbollah and its rockets for their trouble. Fact: The Israelis pulled out of Gaza and got Hamas and its rockets for their trouble.

It’s long past time for Mahmoud Abbas to “man up” and say, “Together, we shall beat our swords into plowshares, and neither of us will make war on the other anymore.”

Until that happens, the Israelis and the rest of the world should say to the Palestinians: “No deals.”

How about it? Are you ready to lean on the “poor Palestinians” for a change? Isn’t it time for the Palestinians to show what they’re made of? Yes, it is.

.....ask the EU to put forward a proposal for a comprehensive agreement and then... agree with it.

Tell the Israelis and the Palestinians in no uncertain - and very, very public - terms that the first one of them who objects to that plan will get shafted, and then invite them both to step forward if they think he's bluffing.....

After all, playing nice isn't going to get Obama anywhere, and if that's the case (and it is) then he may as well collect a few scaps along the way.

Which won't help bring peace, but they'll sure look good displayed up on the wall of the Oval Office.....

The French have a very nice phrase for it, I believe: "pour encourager les autres"

Israel as a model has failed before and will fail again. Israel refuses a two state solution so there is only one solution left; One state solution. Give every Palestinian citizenship and full rights and establish a truly democratic state where people are not discriminated against due to race, religion or gender. Not Bibi's version of democratic state, a real one.

The longer Israel refuses to recognize the need for people to live with dignity and freedom the more likely it will be that there will be one truly democratic state governing all those who live in that land and gives everyone 100% equal rights. The difference is that the leadership of that new state will not be Jewish.

At this point, just like it was with the freeing of the slaves in the US, Israelis must stand up and demand dignity for the oppressed. They must decide whether they want to be part of a world that is looking forward or one that is living in the stone ages.

Even if more than 500 clowns in the US congress who care less about what happens to Israelis stood up and clapped for Natanyahu. the fact is, there is no Israeli who does not know the result of actions of their government to the Palestinians. Israelis must decide to become world citizens if they want a place in history. Otherwise, they will be swept away in the next stand storm and forgotten like a bad dream.

Everyone on earth but the Obama administration knows AIPAC et al are in charge of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and until Obama figures that out he's going to continue to make a fool of himself.

Under the circumstances the only face-saving role for a U.S. president is to do what he's told as quietly as possible so the fact that he's a puppet is kept on the down low as much as possible.

The article is a fairly good summary of Obama's serial failures, but Miller mistates the core issues:- "borders, Jerusalem, security, and refugees".

From the beginning of the conflict to now, there has only been one core issue: the existance of Israel. If the Palestinians accept that, negotiations on the other issues are possible. If they refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist, nothing else can be resolved.

Nothing.

Obama's call for a return to 1967 borders with agreed swaps won't solve the problem, because Hamas has publicly stated that will only be the first step to the complete liberation of all of "Palestine", from the river to the sea. Fatah occassionaly implies, in English or French, that they will settle for the 1967 borders, but they turn around and say in Arabic "from the river to the sea".

In 1948, the Palestininas were offered more more land than Gaza & the West Bank, and an open, shared Jerusalem. They refused it.

In 1967, they had the 1967 borders. Yet aagain the Arab armies attacked Israel. If it wasn't good enough then, why should anyone believe it would be enough today?

The history of the conflict makes clear, the core issue is not about the size of Israel or where the borders are. It's about the very existance of Israel.

The nice Chandler quotation that statrts the article has an error. The correct quote is:

"Her whole body shivered and her face fell apart like a bride’s pie crust."

The Big Sleep, p.30

I am mucho-gracias impressed with FP - makes me regret all the more having been out of touch with it for so long. Certainly, I'll be cancelling my NYTimes subscription (I'm so sick of their manipulation in the comments, as well as their general 'safeness' and status-quo protection) and switching to FP ASAP. Vive la vérité!

Anyhow, one thing I might mention with respect to Mr. Miller's analysis: things are moving so fast, week by week, that I can't help but wonder just how different things will be by September. Does it even make sense to think that the US will still be in a position to offer it's veto or that Likud's public perception won't have significantly deteriorated by then? AIPAC can't stand in the way of popular will, and the old media is losing control of opinion here like elsewhere. I can well imagine major American protests at the UN building in NYC come September...

Obama can try to play it safe, but in the end he will come across as having played it. He can speak the hard truth, and be the first president to successfully break from the old establishment - after all, with the Arab Spring underway and everything else going on, I doubt that assassinating a runaway president would achieve anything for the establishment pukes, as it would almost guarantee revolt.

It's not like he needs any more money to get re-elected, so what leverage could a special interest hold on him? As far as debts to his past investors: things are tough in the world of paid influence, and the main idea is to have a president who represents the people, anyway. There is no doubt that the US needs to stop the 3 Billion $ in direct transfers to Israel and all that jazz - let's not forget that part of the equation, so a general re-alignment should be an option as well, IMO. All this stuff is inevitable: he can be last or first to call for it, and history will remember the order in which it all comes to pass.

Oh, and impressive comment from MUSE above - well worth reading, from beginning to end. And to the CHRISBEREL/NO2ISLAM/... pukes: you guys are a stumbling joke. And as always, you don't manage to convince anyone with your patent lies, you only shame yourselves more.

That being said, I ended up on this page because I noticed there were a lot of comments, so maybe I should be thanking them? They are suckers as always.

There are really two issues addressed in Miller's article, Obama's approach to (foreign) policy and how to get the "Peace" negotiations back on track.

The simple fact is that Obama got himself elected by working very hard to ensure that the voters knew as little about him as possible. That was, at least in part, due to his not having views on many critical issues, something an alert observer would have discerned from the many times he voted "present" on important bills when he was a senator. He has now been president for more than two years, do the people know what Obama stands for even now? If we get to 2012, and you still cannot say with any certainty what he stands for, please vote for someone else; freed of the need to seek reelection, he might be capable of almost anything.

As Miller noted, Obama has made a mess of the Middle East negotiations. But Obama is so arrogannt that he doesn't learn from his failures. Rather, he doubles down, basically daring the victims of his earlier errors to defy him to protect themselves from his incompetence. That has become the central aspect of his relationship with Netanyahu. Most members of Congress are aware of this and know that his approach has been a dismal failure, which is why Netanyahu got such a warm reception in Congress.

That brings us to the second aspect of the article, why the "peace" talks have failed.

The issues in the talks fall into at least three levels of centrality.

At the top level is whether there will be a Jewish state of Israel, which the Palestinians and their legion of supporters on these blogs continue to answer in the negative. Some claim that Israel is seeking to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state, but Netanyahu has endorsed the two-state solution, (the Likud platform opposing one that is often cited comes from the 1980s) provided it doesn't become a base for continuing the war to exterminate Israel. Supporters of the Palestinians see this condition as unreasonable.

Every set of talks to date has foundered over an Israeli demand that whatever terms are agreed upon will be final and that the issues not be subject to being reopened. No Palestinian or Arab leader has ever been willing to agree to this, a concept central to the very nature of what negotiations are about. The Arab unwillingness to make a firm commitment to living by whatever terms they agree to establishes beyond any question that they have NEVER been serious about resolving the problem by negotiation. If the terms won't hold up, why should Israel give up real assets for a worthless piece of paper? And the current effort in Egypt to renounce the Camp David Accord simply serves to demonstrate the centrality of this issue.

Abbas' plan to get the UN to establish a Palestinian state is simply a way to get what he wants without having to negotiate. If this has been his strategy all along, then he was NEVER serious about the negotiations and was simply using them to give him time to get this other strategy to work.

Hamas makes no bones about its opposition to the existence of Israel and is openly committed to genocide against the Jews. This one fact should be enough for honest people to reject the many calls in this blog for a "one-state" solution as a vehicle for achieving justice: It will do no such thing and isn't intended to, even by the people who write claiming this is the case. Abbas and Fatah have learned to speak out of both sides of their mouths, telling the West what it wants to hear, and telling their people what they want to hear. We know from the Palestinian leaks that they understand why they should agree to various Israeli demands, even as they assure their people that they will never do so.

The secondary issues include borders, refugees, and Jerusalem. These are the issues the Palestinians want to talk about because in the absence of awareness of their position on the primary issue, they can sound reasonable discussing these.

Settlements are actually a tertiary issue; what happens with them will reflect agreements made on primary and secondary issues. That Obama chose to put a tertiary issue at the top of his agenda indicates how totally clueless he was about the situation. Moving up a notch to the issue of boundaries, while still avoiding the primary issue, doesn't do much to inspire confidence.

Anyone who seeks to see the Middle East conflict resolved has to start with the primary issue and demand an unambiguous statement from the Arab states and Palestinians that they accept that Jews have rights by acknowledging that the State of Israel exists as a manifestation of the rights of Jews. Only then can they demand that a Palestinian state be established to vindicate similar rights for Palestinians. But we all know that such a demand will be met with violent indignation in the Arab street as well as by the many posters here who claim that they are simply writing the "truth."

Miller: Arab public opinion will now be more influential and could become more radicalized. So, let's hurry up and make a deal.

Very strange statement for a diplomat. "More radicalized" Arabs would be obviously less influential in any "peace making". Besides, they are already radicalized up to their ears.

Miller is correct to blame Obama for foolishly blocking the Israeli-Palestinian contacts; after all Obama is not the brightest strategic mind among us. However, Miller's urge to hurry up is totally misplaced.

First, he needs to explain why Palestinians should be rushing to cut the deal when they are gaining lots of things by refusing to talk: looming UN vote, growing Egypt's and European's support vs. Israel's isolation, and so on. I see no reason for them to hurry.

Second, if Obama could completely screw up a relatively simple task to make another bombastic Arab (Winter, Spring) speech while, nevertheless, keep the Israeli-Palestinian talks simmering, who can guarantee that this unsurpassed genius would not ruin any negotiations?

Third, Miller should not be sending himself an invitation to chair or goad any future talks. His time - together with Baker or Clinton style ME diplomacy - is over. Whatever the future is - war or talks, it will be entire new ball game. Feeble minded, but still President, Obama will not include Miller in his team.

I bet a good bottle of wine on that.

“The idea that to try and fail is somehow better than not trying at all is quintessentially American. It’s one of our most endearing qualities”

On the contrary, it is one of the least endearing. Patience is the missing US virtue. Not doing anything isn’t ‘not doing anything’, it is waiting, like you wait while the kettle boils or the fruit ripens. It is perfectly clear that there needs a serious adjustment in the US/Israel relationship. The events of the last two years and particularly the last 12 months suggest that this is happening and Israel is getting ready to leave home. Sure, their first few pie crusts will crumble but the US can keep an eye on them, see they come to no real harm.

It is one of the stumbling blocks of the problem that while Palestinians simply want to get back to their land and on with their lives, they are asked to accommodate mythopeic enthusiasms that make no sense, and Obama is doubtless as fed up with these as the rest of us. He did his best, which is honourable, but there is no point in flogging a dead donkey. Obviously the US will defend Israel’s security but so will the UN, NATO and the rest of the world – no big deal. Whether ‘Israel’s security’ should or would include land belonging to the Palestinians is an issue under consideration. The Russians have hosted an effort to bring Hamas and Fatah closer, the Egyptians have opened the Rafah crossing; things are happening and the motives are not to harm Israel but to inject some common-sense and common humanity into an ugly situation with which the world is fast losing patience.

The idea that peoples of different culture, colour, religion and so on come together is a fundamental US social ideal, and if one were to attempt to synthesise US public opinion on this matter it would likely show little knowledge of the issues and no particular interest in them, rather a growing sense of bafflement that the two sides cannot simply share the place, and Obama has a feel for the public pulse.

Let me add an option I didn't see in the list: Cut off all foreign aid to Israel until they stop undermining US interests globally.

Aaron David Miller's point, clearly made: "The president hasn't achieved things exactly as ADM wants him to, and in exactly the way ADM requires. Since he pollutes the stream of Raymond Chandler quotations, it seems best to turn to The Big Chill's hilarious scene of a group of TV watchers eyeing titles of a private cop drama in which a lead actor throws himself on the stone floor of a church aisle, pistol resting almost within the lens hood. A viewer proffers "I want a margarita, and I want it now."

Quite a lot of Obama punditry takes this form, and most of those proclaiming his failures turn out pretty soon thereafter to have had little idea of what the president intended and how he was working to achieve it. ADM has joined in, a week or so late, with the cluster of pundits saying the president's new points about Middle East peace are wrong or pointless. At least, unlike many other pundits, he had the decency to wait until the speech was made. That doesn't make him right or suggest he knows much of what the government's up to in this. We'll see. Possibly at some time Mr Assange will help out.

"There's great temptation in all of this to saddle the Obama administration with the lion's share of responsibility for this unhappy state of affairs."

-- not at all. what are we, a bunch of self-hating liberals?

I put the responsibility squarely on Netanyahu. Obama gave huge concessions and huge, huge security assurances in his speech preceding the Israeli prime minister's visit, and the Israeli prime minister shat all over him for that -- publically, Then Congress gave a huge welcome to Netanyahu after he did that. Netanyahu was hugely aggressive and acted -- effectively -- to cut the President away from his own party and his own government.

There is no choice but for Obama to withdraw. Probably the US will not have to use the veto when the Palestinians go to the UN this September, they can work it through the General Assembly.

It's up to the Israelis now. There is a political opposition in Israel, it's up to them to remove Netanyahu from power. This is not all up to the US. We've taken it as far as we can.

There is a vote coming up in September.
Netanyahu is toast if the USA declines to veto that resolution.
Abbas is toast if "more than the USA" vetos that resolution.

So do this....
Dust off the USA's best proposals for a final agreement and hand it over to Sarko or Cameron with a note that reads "Here, yours to use as you see fit".

And when the EU unveals that "plan" then the USA shouts "Why, gosh, that's GENIUS!!!!!" and the Russians shout "Fantastic!", and the UN cries out "Brilliant!!".

Then all four of them should issue this communique:
1) The Quartet has adopted this plan as its official plan to end this conflict
2) If Israel won't agree to it then there will be **no** veto come September
3) If the Pals refuse then there will be **four** vetos come September

What can Bibi do?
After all, if he rejects that plan then he's toast come September.

What can Abbas do?
After all, if he rejects that plan then he's toast come September.

Worth thinking about......

Guys like USMARINE2010 are a strange bunch. Beyond outright lies, the self-contradictions, the denial and constant rationalizing, there still remains the greater question: do these guys think they are helping their cause? If you are gonna Troll, ya gotta do it with a purpose, with some craft. USMARINE2010's spectacle makes one want to turn away, certainly, but it also serves as a poor caricature of the pro-Israeli...

Conversely, USMARINE2010 might be a pro-Palestinian counter-Troll acting like a repulsive pro-AIPAC Troll, all just to advance some other agenda. It is hard to tell, sometimes.

Regardless, I apologize for feeding this one - clearly he thrives on punishment.

USMARINE2010, I know your game: you don't even bother with attempting to follow a true path. It doesn't matter how good my counter arguments or original arguments, how miserably false and failed your own arguments: your game is just to ignore all that and come back with more VOLUME. In any case, your thread hijacking is also going to fail: re-read the article we are commenting on and learn to focus a bit.

where the article's response thread was cluttered with a 24x7 barrage of responses posted by what seems to have been relay team of professional Israeli explainers/hasbarists posing/logged-on as an Israeli marine (I didn't know they had them). Anyway, as I looked through that article, recently, it seems that an editor has purged/flushed all the "marine"s comments.

Will the interesting stuff get un-deleted, or is this over?

...it is a maneuver to try to get you to play on their court, and they will try to frame the discussion in the same old tired way, their way. but it is a wearing game and I think I'll opt out. I hate getting my buttons pushed first thing in the morning.

someone did a great job of cleaning up this thread, I don't mind if anything of mine disappeared along with that bullying faux marine. the persona he (or she!) projected put me in mind of that little shop of horrors plant, the one that fed on blood.

Outsider, thanks for the feedback on the Ha'aretz piece, it settled me down considerably. I'll be visiting you on your website, maybe it will be quieter there and more opportunity for grown-up discussion without faux marines roaring through knocking away everyone's cocktail glasses.

Almost 100% think the show was confirmation that Jews control America.

If the U.S. was surrounded by neighbors like those Israel has you bet we would think twice about making a deal. The Pals have never lived up to any agreement they have made. When Israelis moved out of Gaza they were attacked almost daily with thousands of rockets on a daily basis karmaloop promo codes 2011. When the Israelis pulled out of Lebanon same thing. Shooting rocket artillery at civilians is not acceptable. If our neighbors pulled that kind of thing on us what do youn think we would do? The Pals could have had peace 60 years ago or any time since.
Don't waste your Crocodile tears on these savages. Support the only democracy in the entire middle east

It's not like he needs any more money to get re-elected, so what leverage could a special interest hold on him? As far as debts to his past investors: things are tough in the world of paid influence, and the main idea is to have a president who sázkové kanceláre represents the people, anyway. There is no doubt that the US needs to stop the 3 Billion $ in direct transfers to Israel and all that jazz - let's not forget that part of the equation, so a general re-alignment should be an option as well, IMO. All this stuff is inevitable: he can be last or first to call for it, and history will remember the order in which it all comes to pass.I do not see major conflict escalations elsewhere being purposefully exacerbated to extreme heights, simply because every single country out there sázkové kanceláre is destabilized by this: the old secrets are coming out. You can't hide the Special Pork in an indexed database having billions of interested parties interested in discovering said Special Pork... Our indices and tables may not be much good yet, but they are improving and are under our control, effectively. Those fat cats are hopeless: a good computer programmer can build his stack on any network (it doesn't even need to be wired), so even their best stratagems are quickly surmountable.