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Source: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-miller-mideast-talks-failure-20140511-story.html
The Mideast Peace Gap
(Los Angeles Times) Aaron David Miller - In a fascinating postmortem, an unnamed American official involved in the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations said: "There are a lot of reasons for the peace effort's failure, but people in Israel shouldn't ignore the bitter truth - the primary sabotage came from the settlements." If you believe that, I have a bridge over the mighty Jordan River to sell you. Let's be clear: Kerry's peace process didn't fail primarily because of settlements. It has been on life support from the beginning. The maximum that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared to give on the core issues can't be reconciled with the minimum that PA President Mahmoud Abbas is prepared to accept. That's why every effort in the last decade has failed. Moreover, the notion that the Palestinians could be counted on to make concessions that would take them beyond their established consensus was an illusory assumption. The notion that Abbas could be depended on for major deliverables was a fantasy. The writer served as a Middle East negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations.