Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has pressed for the establishment of a Palestinian state and has urged Israel and Palestinians to agree to peace talks, starting with a conference sponsored by the US this fall (winter?).

I've been following this story curiously. I am embarassed to admit how little I really understand about the Israel/Palestine conflict. Even if Dr. Rice's trip is seen as a failure, it feels kinda important, or at least as if we'll look back and see this diplomacy trip as related to an eventual outcome (maybe?).

I suppose I'd like to know how/why this is important to the administration *now*, and I don't mean that sarcastically. Partisan-politics aside (seriously), could any important agreements be reached by year's end??? And if so, how favorably will history look back up Dr. Rice and President Bush?

Hi B Man,

I'm no authority on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict myself. But as Bill Clinton has repeated several times recently, there has been NO effort on the part of this Administration to get anything positive going in the region.

And so, my thinking is, a stitch not in time lost nine. Nearly nine years of nothing. (is that alliterative?.) Condi doesn't have any real credibility as Sec/State anymore, not that she really did ever anyway.

Hence, as my 88 year old grandfather remarked one day at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, when his granddaughter, my cousin, couldn't finish in the first Women's Olympic Marathon because of a known bone spur in her foot, "I expected nothing, so I got what I expected". Well, at least she started the race, right?

TRL

B Man, TRL's right. Look at it like this. In almost every case, things are *worse* for the US in the Middle East than they were before W took office. Colin Powell actually tried some semblance of Middle East diplomacy (outside of the Iraq mess), but Rice has been an unmitigated disaster. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict should have been the main focus on 2001 along with addressing the Al Qaeda problem, but instead, W was talking about missile shields and salivating on attacking Iraq. Then 9/11 made the latter wish possible. But the ramifications throughout the region have been horrible.

Since W took office, here's what's going on in the Middle East:

• Lebanon is MORE destabilized than it was in 2000, with its south controlled by the extremely anti-Israeli Hezbollah, its Christian party in freefall, the anti-Syrian politicians losing power (when not assassinated), and a potential civil war brewing. Just 7 years ago, Lebanon was *on the mend.*
• Israel attempted to rout Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in 2006 as a response to the abduction of Israeli troops, and was egged on by the W administration, but this turned into failure as Israel heavily bombed Shiite portions of Beirut to punish Hezbollah, yet was unable to dislodge Hezbollah from southern Lebanon, and in fact the battle turned into a stalement, northern Israel had to be evacuated, and Israel's PM nearly lost his job as a result of the ensuing scandal.
• In Gaza, Hamas, the most strongly anti-Israeli Palestinian party/social organization, was *democratically* elected by the Palestinians there, which led the US and Israel to try and isolate it, which has led to ongoing battles with Israel and with the Palestinian Authority's Fatah party, so things are worse in Gaza and parts of the West Bank than before 2001.
• Syria continues to meddle in Lebanon and is assassinating its politicians, and recently suffered a surgical military strike by Israel, since it was building a nuclear facility.
• Iran is stronger than before, because its chief nemesis, Iraq, has been turned into a disaster zone.
• Iran at the same time realizes that the US neocon's desires to attack it are serious, and could unleash a real horrorshow on our troops in Iraq if it were attacked.
• Russia just warned the various nations around the Caspian Sea not to permit the US to build a pipeline or build new bases, and is engaged in hostile rhetoric and military action because of Bush's insistence on building a "missile shield," a grossly expensive and unproven technology, in Poland and the Czech Republic, a plan the Russians find a direct provocation.
• Russian President and soon-to-be President Putin is currently in Iran meeting with Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who previously signed military and economic cooperation agreements with Iraq's president and PM, and agreed to cooperate with Syria, until recently not one of Iran's real allies.
• Saudi Arabia has been stockpiling jets and weapons because Iran is stronger, and also to assist the Sunnis in Iraq, who no longer control the government.
• Turkey has repeatedly threatened to invade Iraqi Kurdistan, and after massing troops on the border, has bombed alleged PKK (Kurdish liberation party) sites IN Kurdistan.
• Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia/Iraq did not exist before the 2003 Bush Gang invasion of Iraq, yet now is there.
• Al Qaeda the real thing is stronger today than ever before, and global, and its leaders have not been captured.
• The Taliban were not completely routed and continue to launch attacks on coalition forces outside the Afghan capital and capital region.

Rice's efforts are too late and have little effect. She and her husband boss have screwed up things so horribly that she'll be lucky if the two parties even pay her lip service.

Thanks for the thorough explication. So, to beg the question, why would they do anything at all right now? Just curious...

Maybe she thinks she's got to be seen doing something, and the administration cannot just neglect the Middle East, and particularly the Israel-Palestinian crisis, the way George H. W. Bush did. We were told that by ousting (and offing) Saddam, one of the supporters of the radical Palestinians, things were supposed to be rosy. But the Iraqis are no closer to supporting Israel, there's a new breed of terrorist trained in Iraq who will endanger both Israel and the US, Muslims all over the world loathe the US even more than before, and the Palestinians, following the call to DEMOCRACY, have elected Hamas.

BTW, she's a Russia specialist, but she and the Secretary of Defense just experienced a total diplomatic failure with Russia, over the missile shield debacle. Seriously, other than getting North Korea to agree to terms that are not even as good as the Clinton administration had secured, what has this woman succeeded at in her capacity as Secretary of State? I mean, I'm asking. In pretty much every area, she's been an abject failure.

It's really quite sad, when you think about it, because it never had to turn out like this. But then again, when you have people with no clue running things and you oust someone who does have good sense (if not always good judgment and courage), like Colin Powell, this is what you get.

He does drive an old PT Cruiser around Washington--which perhaps is testimony to his good sense, but sadly emblematic of poor judgment.

Is the decision to pursue Middle East diplomacy hers, or well, whose???? Is it a vestige or Karl Rove's grand scheme? Regarding her effectiveness, hasn't there been an acknowledgement that her tenure has been more difficult than those of previous Secretaries of State, given the personalities she's needed to corral (within the Executive branch)?

Thanks for the insight and safety to ask questions, seriously...

The decision is her boss's. George W. Bush has to at least pretend to pursue Middle East diplomacy, and more specifically, to attempt to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian political standoff. Does he even ACT like he really cares? But then this has been a recurrent obligation of American presidents for over half a century. In some cases--Jimmy Carter--there was real success. In others--George H.W. Bush--nothing at all. The right mocked Bill Clinton for his push to get Arafat and the Israelis to agree to a deal, but looking back, he nearly accomplished the miraculous. Things have gotten worse since then, not better. So her drive-by diplomacy this time is really more of the same, and as you've probably seen, the Israelis and the Palestinians are sniping at each other to the extent that the latter folks are saying they may not even show up in November at all. Oops!

Here's a letter signed by lots of intellectual types on the left and right, like Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, Carla Hills, and others, on the utter importance of the upcoming Annapolis peace conference, which, as I said, is already in serious danger of falling apart...New York Review of Books: "Failure Risks Devastating Consequences"

As for her tenure, well, if you work under horribly stupid, incompetent, know-nothing, arrogant people and go along with them, of course your tenure is going to be more difficult. For Lord's sake, her boss didn't even know the difference between Shiites and Sunnis when he pushed for the Iraq War!!! How can you not know something so basic about a country you're about to attack and occupy? The Sunni-Shiite rift was clear under Saddam. The State Department tried to school the moron on this, but he did not have a clue! And he didn't want to know, or he'd never have made the boneheaded assumption that Iran wouldn't have close ties to the Shiites who would take power! I mean, a number of the chief Shiite leaders were LIVING IN IRAN!!!

As for Rice, just consider the Secretaries of State during the 1967 War, the 1973 War, the Lebanese Civil War, the First Gulf War, and so on. She's not dealing with anything that much more difficult, except that she works for intransigent, incompetent nuts who cannot bother to learn anything from history or previous administrations, including Republican ones. If she couldn't deal with Donald Rumsfeld, Cheney, etc., then please, ma'am, resign and go live in your California home with your female filmmaker friend. Give the poor students and faculty at Stanford something more to get worked up about. You've done enough damage for about 10 administrations.

Rice's best personal bet would be to resign at once.....to save what might be the last vestiges of her reputation, much less her sanity. I'm saluting Colin Powell. Rice isn't dumb. She's just been pawnuated.

Maybe another duet on a fine tuned Steinway with Yoyo Ma on his cello? That was actually pretty good. World tour?

OK, I just augmented the English lauguage. Please permit me.

TRL

I'd say BINGO to that one. If there is anything that the three world powers agree on it is that their oligarchs cannot be pissed too much.

Leaders may be ego driven but military-industrial empires are built on following the bottom line.

Once any do-good project becomes a threat to that system it eventually gets bought off or marginalized.

World leaders who want to stay in power eventually learn that - if they are not raised on it. The same may become true of the next presidential election here, from the way things are going.

I only see any of the major candidates doing even worse than past presidents at solving this problem. A true democratic process, such as has occured in some European countries can ameliorate the consequences, but without world leadership from the major players will only be able to protect local populations.

The BIG BANG of Middle East policy could well come from a seemingly small spark that lights all of the oil that is polluting the regions politics and the worlds environment. I still think the US is the last best hope if you will, to turn the tide on myriad ways in which this concentration of wealth is taking place. We'll see.