Rice seeks Mid-East breakthrough
It is crunch time for the Bush administration as it continues to hold out hope for a peace agreement between the Palestinians and the Israelis.
But even US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice let out a sign of her frustration at the lack of progress on the ground, particularly on the part of the Israelis.
Once again, the indomitable US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visits the world’s most intractable conflict. Once again, nothing is going to come out of it. Rice’s optimism that a solution could be found by year’s end is another promise that belongs to the trash bin of history. More than anything else, it is a signal of tired retreat. US President George Bush’s time in the Oval Office is fast coming to an end, and this is undoubtedly his Administration’s farewell to the Promised Land- kind of like a “no-hard-feelings” handshake that has been two presidential terms in the making.
Christian Zionists, that powerful lobby that ‘protects’ Israel for its own rather sinister reasons, have won another year of reprieve for the Jews they “know” will one day repent of their rejection of Jesus, convert to Christianity and ultimately help fight the dark minions of the anti-Christ.
If any lesson is to be had, it is this: Maintain bull-headedness in any phrase or statement, and you’ll get away with the most outrageous things. Take for example, our
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s reply to Rice’s concern over the growth of settlements in the Occupied Territories. “No growth,” Ms Livni says, even when everybody knows Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had earlier agreed to build 750 new homes in the West Bank.
I think the incongruence did not go unnoticed, and as a backdoor, Ms Livni assures us that in any case, Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza Strip was proof that Jewish settlements were “not obstacles” to peace.
Perhaps, and I am guessing here, Ms Livni is promising the same kind of dismantling that took place in Gaza when the time is ripe. Ominous news for the settlers, of course. I have my doubts, though I think that Ms Livni’s ambiguity is understandable. The pro-settlement lobby in Israel is a small but very vocal and influential group.
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