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Middle East Peace: Why Have We Failed?

(Foreign Policy) Gen. Anthony Zinni, former head of U.S. Central Command and U.S. envoy to the Middle East peace process in 2001 and 2002: "By now, we should realize what doesn't work: summits, agreements in principle, special envoys, U.S.-proposed plans, and just about every other part of our approach has failed. So why do we keep repeating it?" Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to the U.S.; historian of the Middle East: "Calling this an Arab-Israeli conflict today is largely a misnomer. We have two states that have peace treaties with Israel. The largest antagonist is Iran, which is not an Arab state....It's quite extraordinary: We now have a situation that existed before Oslo in '93 and before Madrid in '91 - we can't get the Palestinians to sit down face to face with us and discuss the issues.... Palestinians, and Arabs more generally, must feel that they have more to gain by participating in negotiations than not. If they believe that by staying out of negotiations they can win concessions over issues such as east Jerusalem, why would they participate in what can be a drawn-out, uncertain process?" Dov Weisglass, advisor to former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon: "The U.S. and Israel in the last year basically reshuffled the whole arrangement so that everything is back in debate; everything is an issue. That's why the conflict is far more complicated than it used to be." See also Yossi Beilin, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Saeb Erekat, Daniel Kurtzer, James Wolfensohn, Robert Malley.
2010-04-30 08:57:36
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