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Revving up a lemon of a peace "process"

"Political factions Fatah and Hamas must reconcile in order to pursue a sustainable peace in the Palestinian territories, and if and when a power-sharing agreement is brokered, the international community must be willing to accept it, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group (ICG)."

Obvious, one might think! Not so, for the US, many European governments and Israel are seemingly intent on simply ignoring Gaza and Hamas. Dumb is the only word to describe it! If there is to be any sort of peace process all the principal "players" must be involved. And what is to happen to the 1.5 million people in Gaza? - now "isolated" and under effective siege.

".....according to Daniel Levy, a former Israeli peace negotiator and senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a think-tank based in Washington, Bush's speech "is best characterised as pushing down softly on the accelerator of a failed Middle East policy."

"The president continued to promote deepening divisions among the Palestinians, insist on preconditions to a two-state solution and display an unwillingness to outline his own parametres for an Israeli-Palestinian endgame deal," Levy told IPS.

"Even the 190 million dollars of money pledged to the new PA government was mostly a repackaging of old commitments," he said.

Read the full IPS piece here.

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