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Mission [almost] impossible? - or completely hopeless?

George W has arrived in Israel as part of a swing through the Middle East. There is little reason to expect anything concrete or positive will come from his trip - as two veterans, one writing in the IHT and the other in a Q & A in Newsweek suggest.

Yossi Bellin is a Knesset member and outgoing chairman of the Meretz-Yachad Party. He is a former justice minister and the architect of the unofficial Geneva Initiative. He writes on Haaretz:

"Seven years after taking office, U.S. President George W. Bush is making his first visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority. But if he does not bring with him a serious plan for concluding a full peace agreement by the end of his term next year, he might as well stay home.

The urgency cannot be overstated. Bush knows full well that if a peace agreement is not achieved in 2008, it won't be done in 2009 and perhaps for a very long time afterward. This is because of the political timetable in both the Palestinian Authority and the U.S."

Meanwhile, on Newsweek:

"As George W. Bush arrived in the Middle East today—his first trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories since taking office—at least he had one thing going for him: rock-bottom expectations. The U.S. president stepped off the plane in Tel Aviv touting the visit as "a new opportunity for peace here in the Holy Land," but he'll be hard pressed to sell that message to the region's war-weary skeptics. Since the Annapolis peace summit fizzled last November, Israelis and Palestinians have looked closer to being on the verge of a renewed conflict than they have in months. Shortly after the conference last fall, Israel announced plans to expand Har Homa, a key settlement in East Jerusalem; last week a long-range Katyusha rocket launched from Gaza landed deep in Israeli territory; and the Israeli military has been conducting increasingly deadly raids into the West Bank and Gaza. Rob Malley, an aide to President Clinton during the Camp David peace talks and now program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the nonpartisan International Crisis Group, sees little to be optimistic about as Bush's trip kicks off."

The Q & A with Malley is here.

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