US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, is off to the Middle East. In some respects, it could be a defining visit.
The Washington Post in "Tough Options For Clinton on Trip to Mideast" analyses the visit and how it will be seen by the principal players in the region:
"Mitchell authored a plan in 2001 to reduce tensions and make progress. Israelis and Palestinians embraced the plan as fair, but it was never implemented. In a conference call with Jewish American leaders last month, Mitchell said that when he reread his report, he was struck by how much had changed in the past eight years, according to an account of the conversation published by JTA, a Jewish news service. Iran, he said, was not mentioned in the report, but every leader in the region brought up the problem of Iranian influence during his initial tour.
Any new peace effort would be complicated by other factors, including the prospect of a new right-wing Israeli government hostile to the idea of a Palestinian state and the splintering of the Palestinian leadership into a moderate faction that runs the West Bank and a radical group that controls the Gaza Strip. Israel waged war in December against the militant group Hamas, which controls the narrow coastal strip that is home to almost half the Palestinian population, and it has kept a tight grip on crossings into Gaza, making it all but impossible to begin reconstruction.
The administration faces tough decisions: How does it get aid flowing to the Gazans or encourage Palestinian unity without bolstering Hamas, and how does it encourage the new Israeli government to open up crossings, ease settlement expansion and begin to consider talks with the Palestinians? Increasingly, many analysts say, the goals are contradictory and virtually impossible to achieve.
The United States, for instance, intends to make a substantial pledge at the conference, American officials say, but whether much of it can be delivered is unclear.
"It will only be spent if we determine that our goals can be furthered rather than undermined or subverted," Clinton told the Voice of America in an interview Friday. She said aid dollars will "be spent only in service of the goals that will help people feel more secure in their lives and, therefore, more confident that progress toward peace would serve them better than retreating to violence and rejectionism."
The Washington Post in "Tough Options For Clinton on Trip to Mideast" analyses the visit and how it will be seen by the principal players in the region:
"Mitchell authored a plan in 2001 to reduce tensions and make progress. Israelis and Palestinians embraced the plan as fair, but it was never implemented. In a conference call with Jewish American leaders last month, Mitchell said that when he reread his report, he was struck by how much had changed in the past eight years, according to an account of the conversation published by JTA, a Jewish news service. Iran, he said, was not mentioned in the report, but every leader in the region brought up the problem of Iranian influence during his initial tour.
Any new peace effort would be complicated by other factors, including the prospect of a new right-wing Israeli government hostile to the idea of a Palestinian state and the splintering of the Palestinian leadership into a moderate faction that runs the West Bank and a radical group that controls the Gaza Strip. Israel waged war in December against the militant group Hamas, which controls the narrow coastal strip that is home to almost half the Palestinian population, and it has kept a tight grip on crossings into Gaza, making it all but impossible to begin reconstruction.
The administration faces tough decisions: How does it get aid flowing to the Gazans or encourage Palestinian unity without bolstering Hamas, and how does it encourage the new Israeli government to open up crossings, ease settlement expansion and begin to consider talks with the Palestinians? Increasingly, many analysts say, the goals are contradictory and virtually impossible to achieve.
The United States, for instance, intends to make a substantial pledge at the conference, American officials say, but whether much of it can be delivered is unclear.
"It will only be spent if we determine that our goals can be furthered rather than undermined or subverted," Clinton told the Voice of America in an interview Friday. She said aid dollars will "be spent only in service of the goals that will help people feel more secure in their lives and, therefore, more confident that progress toward peace would serve them better than retreating to violence and rejectionism."
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