It was not that long ago — though it seems an age — when Yasser Arafat and Clinton and Co. were touting the latest round of peace initiatives.
With cosy pictures in print, editorials eagerly trumpeting a new day, it was appealing to believe that we were on the verge of a solution to the most troubled of troubled places on the earth. Since then the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has not only dragged on, it has flared into new entrenched hostilities. The ‘two-state’ solution to the area appears intractable. I’m reminded of a British Foreign Office report on the area from much earlier in the 20th century that simply calculated that no political solution was possible because the claims of the peoples were directly competitive.
No quick fix
Since Clinton, of course, the buzz word has shifted from the latest ‘round of peace talks’ to various attempts at ‘regime change’, or as Condoleeza Rice most recently put it, a ‘New Middle East’. Fundamentally, the current policy appears to eschew any quick fix solution in an attempt to restructure the foundational dynamics of the region. Good luck.
