The secret of successful diplomacy is finding hopeful possibilities in the midst of seemingly hopeless intransigence. By now everybody knows how, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy got two messages from Soviet Premier Khrushchev within hours of each other. The first was conciliatory and offered a basis for negotiating an end to the stalemate. The second was hard-line and indicated that there was nothing to negotiate over.
At first Kennedy assumed the second message rendered the first moot. But his advisers, led by his brother, Bobby, told him to ignore the second and simply respond positively to the first. That is what the President did and the world was saved.
Unfortunately, Israelis and Palestinians tend to do the opposite. Read more>>