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Middle East Analysis

Rice’s Insistence on Palestinian-Israeli Talks Can Work- If She Means It

By The Daily Star, Editorial

posted on 03/07/08

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has achieved a major breakthrough for her country’s foreign policy by insisting that Palestinian-Israeli peace talks continue despite a dramatic increase in violence in the Gaza Strip. … This marks a radical departure from the tradition by which successive U.S. administrations have allowed the beneficiaries of their largesse to walk away from diplomacy at precisely those moments when bloodshed and increased tensions have made engagement more necessary than ever.

The primary drawback of the former policy was that it gave those who oppose the peace process—on both sides—a lever by which to scuttle it at the moment of their choosing. Now that Rice has seemingly reversed this approach, those who have used this "brake mechanism" so frequently in the past might desist if they conclude that it has been decoupled from the diplomatic machinery. Unfortunately, the matter is more complicated than all that, principally because it will take a lot more than Rice’s imposing her will on the hapless Abbas to prove that she can and will do something similar when Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert (or any of his compatriots) decides to throw a tantrum. Access the full article>>