Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas are meeting in Annapolis to begin negotiations for 2 separate states and a possible peace between the two groups. Aside from my really bad play on words in the title, is this going to work? Or will we see a repeat of what happened during the Clinton administration? Some say that Clinton pushed so hard for peace talks in the region that it actually created more problems and led to further conflict between the two.
The recent talks are contrary to Bush's words in 2001 at his first meeting of the National Security Council where it was said that the administration would not be drawn into the peace talks between Israel and Palestine. Many doubt to see any real outcome to the talks. The meeting is being held to set up an outline for negotiations to begin before the end of the Bush administration. Bush believes the talks should have an open ended goal to "bring an end to bloodshed, suffering and decades of conflict" that doesn't focus on disagreements of the past.
What is different in these talks from those of the Clinton administration? Will these prove to be more successful? Why did the current administration turn from "not being involved" to suddenly being at the forefront?
I believe that Condoleeza Rice is doing her best to be diplomatic and make changes in the region, and has gotten more involved in it especially because of the war in Iraq. The region has been politically unstable for as long as I can remember and our presence there compounds the problems. It's hard for me to believe that there can peace for the region anywhere in the near future; there are too many warring factions, sects and idealists for anyone to ever come up with a compromise. And, when one leader tries to do well, some fundamentalist religious leader shows up and tears it all down. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, whom Abbas has been struggling with for power, denounced any kind of peace agreements with Israel on television saying that, " The Palestinian people will not be bound by anything the Palestinian Authority agrees to in Annapolis."
Can there ever really be peace in the Middle East? (I had to say it)
http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/11/27/mideast.summit/index.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/26/washington/26rice.html
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9 comments:
I don't think that anything we do will help create peace in the middle east! I forsee things getting worse!
There will always be some kind of strife because of political, religious, and ethnical diffrences, however we have that here too so there might be hope.
For what reasons could it become worse?
Although America is a melting pot of different ethnicities and religions, I really don't see a parrallel between theirs and ours. Our neighboring countries don't want us dead because of old religious feuds and land issues, and terrorism isn't a common political tool in our country.
What good can come of these talks? What bad?
These talks are basically pointless. Neither side really listens to what the other has to say simply because they hate each other. To say that it is just going to change now is naive. But I guess to be "diplomatic is necessary so no one can say that you havent tried.
Your title really and truly didn't work. I also noticed how you shoved in that last minute cliche at the end *Nice one*. We should give them a better democracy like we are doing for Iraq. Democracy for everyone whether you like it or not. If they had a greater mixture of cultures like the United States everyone would eventually forget what they were warring about in the first place.
My title was flawless.
haha
I'm still unconvinced of the success of the democracy in Iraq.
>If they had a greater mixture of cultures like the United States everyone would eventually forget what they were warring about in the first place.
And I'm sure they are saying "If America had less ethnic diversity like us, they'd be better off."
I guess it's all about your perception.
Honestly though who cares what they say? We are America. . . If we weren't so awesome then people wouldn't be 'dying' to get in. We also don't have wars within our country like that either. Whether we say something good or bad we are the first into the lime-light.
>I don't think that anything we do will help create peace in the middle east!
Too many students use this line of argument. Whenever you say "any" or "all" or "never" or anything that means the same, you are committing numerous fallacies. Any problem can be improved upon. That doesn't mean it will, but it can. If you don't believe it, ask your history teachers what the big world problems were in the 1400s or 1800s or 1950. You'll find that almost none of the problems are the same and that most, if not all, of those earlier problems have actually been largely eliminated.
>Although America is a melting pot of different ethnicities and religions, I really don't see a parrallel between theirs and ours. Our neighboring countries don't want us dead because of old religious feuds and land issues, and terrorism isn't a common political tool in our country.
It's not really about "neighboring countries." It's about two groups of people occupying the same land. We've had that exact problem here. Once, we handled it by killing off most of the other group and putting the rest of them on reservations. The other time, with African-Americans, we did a much better job of fixing it, although problems still remain.
>To say that it is just going to change now is naive. But I guess to be "diplomatic is necessary so no one can say that you havent tried.
Diplomatic talks, though, have solved many problems. In fact, the only reason we aren't all dead in a nuclear war is because of diplomatic talks.
>If they had a greater mixture of cultures like the United States everyone would eventually forget what they were warring about in the first place.
Actually, they have a big mix of cultures, that's the root of the problem. Worldwide, the least conflict is in places where there is only one culture. The more cultures you have in an area, the more conflict.
>If we weren't so awesome then people wouldn't be 'dying' to get in.
Actually, that has more to do with the fact that they are next door and can walk here. If they were next door to Norway and us, I'd wager they'd all go to Norway, where social programs are much broader and cheaper.
>We also don't have wars within our country like that either.
Like the deadliest civil war in the history of the planet? Keep in mind Israel has only existed since 1948.
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