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Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/27/AR2007112702616.html
Gathering Israelis and Arabs May Have Been the Real Feat
[Washington Post] Michael Abramowitz - Some experts suggested that getting 16 senior Arab officials into the same room as the Israeli leader might have been the signal achievement of Tuesday's peace conference. The conference's joint paper skirted the toughest issues and essentially codified existing efforts by Olmert and Abbas to negotiate the contours of a Palestinian state. "The meeting was the message," said Martin S. Indyk of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy. The last time such a large number of Arab officials appeared with their Israeli counterparts was at the 1991 Madrid peace conference. "We've seen plenty of promising initial discussions regarding progress between the Israelis and Palestinians. The devil is in the details, and every process has broken down. So it's very dangerous to read too much into these processes too early," said David Rothkopf of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.