JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns to the Middle East on Monday in another effort to bridge gaps holding up an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that Washington says could still be achieved this year. Few analysts believe Rice, who plans talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and negotiators from both sides, can secure a major breakthrough that would set Palestinians on a fast track to statehood.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns to the Middle East on Monday in another effort to bridge gaps holding up an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that Washington says could still be achieved this year.
Few analysts believe Rice, who plans talks with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and negotiators from both sides, can secure a major breakthrough that would set Palestinians on a fast track to statehood.
Better late than never? No. Whatever their plans were, they are too late.
Yet again, they botched it, and whatever they are trying to do, the opposite will occur. Unfortunately, there are too many opposites available in a multi-dimensional universe.
My prediction is that the opportunity for a two state solution is dead. It will be one big country and the Israelis are now fighting the horrible feeling of being hoisted by one's own petard.
Further prediction: Israelistine. Capital, Jerusalem. Population: 58% non-Jewish by June, 2010. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
Frank Delaney ~ Ireland
As for a single state, do you seriously think the likud are ever going to accept palestinians in the knesset ? that's another war.
Israel believes it can continue with this national security apartheid state forever. They have for the last 30 years, indeed much of the national mythology is built around that situation continuing. And with the USA totally beholden to supporting it, I doubt any politicians in the knesset sees any reason to change. keep to the Fen Causeway
The Israelis have the firepower, but I think that there is momentum building against the continued use of it...and the mentality of it. There is no denying that a large number of the population have been very trapped by their own propaganda, by the myth of Never Again.
But the movement is rising that Never Again means neither be The Effect or The Cause of the horrors.
And, the US is bankrupt. The time is coming when the rest of the world will trade other country's paper and no longer prop up the debt that supports the 100s of military bases and billions to Israel.
Negros in the Congress of the US? An integrated US Military only happened 50-some years ago. Palestinians in the Knesset? Notwithstanding that there have long been members of Israel's Arab population in the Knesset, I know what you mean and I agree that it is unbelievable. But the US is going to elect another person of Irish blood. And we used to be lower than dogs. Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
They are encased in fear, shrouded by it. Their only recourse is to lash out at anyone or anything that threatens it. the only solution to threat is force and repression. It's the only language the untermenschen understand.
"Never again" has come to mean "let us do it instead", yet they cannot recognise this. Palestinians are just a "dehumanised other" that cannot be reasoned with, bargained with, negotiated with. Simply bombed and shot if they fail to comply with their imprisonment. To even suggest such a thing would be treaonable, remember Rabin was assasinated for even suggesting a resolution with the palestinians.
I fear for Israel. The rhetoric, if not checked, will lead, obviously not to Death camps, but a slow attrition of the land available to Palestinians until they have nowhere to go but the desert, to die as the Armenians did under the Ottomans. Abandoned without water; not murdered, but still conveniently dead. keep to the Fen Causeway
I fear for Israel, you say. Yet it is the Armenians who died. And the Ottoman empire is no more. (Wasn't much by then either.)
Will that be the demise of Israel, you insinuate? Or will they just go on, not unlike Andrew Jackson after the long march orders? Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.
