Middle East: Peace? - without a solution?

On ABC Radio National's Breakfast program this morning:

"US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice touched down in Israel a short time ago after her unannounced visit to Beirut earlier in the day.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert says he is prepared to accept the deployment of a European peacekeeping force in Southern Lebanon, provided it was robust and had a strong mandate.

Meanwhile Israel's peace movement appears divided over the conflict. Anti-war rallies held across Israel over the weekend were boycotted by the powerful anti-settlement group 'Peace Now'.

Even people on the left have been condemning the protesters for not caring about the value of Israeli lives. Shulamit Aloni is one of the country's leading human rights activists.

She's a former government minister and a founding member of the International Centre for Peace in the Middle East. She also took part in the largest peace demonstration in Tel Aviv last Saturday. She joins Breakfast from Israel.

Professor George Joffe is a lecturer at the Centre for International Studies at Cambridge University and he joins Breakfast from Cambridge."

Go here in order to hear the former Israeli Education Minister and the sober assessment of Professor Joffe on what needs to be done to bring about peace rather than a mere cease-fire.

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Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

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The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

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#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas stopped him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed behind his back into their patrol car, where they say he shot himself in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story, says in an interview that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?

Mahler's Prodigal Son

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