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Peace Talks: A new low.... and they're off anyway

In the midst of today's news that the Palestinians have called a halt to the so-called Middle East Peace Talks unless Israel stops all work on settlements - see the latest report, here, in The Washington Post - Stephen Walt in his blog on FP castigates the US Administration for pandering to the Israelis in order to have them cease work for at east 60 days on expanding the settlements,

"Yesterday the Jerusalem Post reported that the Obama administration has offered Israel a generous package of new benefits if it will just extend the settlement freeze for another two months. The source for the report was David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a key organization in the Israel lobby. Makovsky is also a co-author with Obama Middle East advisor Dennis Ross, so presumably he has accurate knowledge about this latest initiative, which is said to take the form of a personal letter from Obama to Netanyahu.

Assuming this report is true, it marks a new low in U.S. Middle East diplomacy. Just consider the message that Obama's team is sending the Netanyahu government. Netanyahu has been giving Obama the finger ever since the Cairo speech in June 2009, but instead of being punished for it, he's getting rewarded for being so difficult. So why should any rational person expect Bibi's position to change if this is what happens when he digs in his heels?

Although failure to achieve a two-state solution is ultimately much more of a problem for Israel than for the United States, we have been reduced to begging them and bribing to stop building settlements -- please ... please ... pretty please? ... and then only for a mere 60 days."

M. J. Rosenberg writing an op-ed piece "Netanyahu humiliates Obama again" on Al Jazeera, covers the same subject-matter.

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