So as best as I can understand the Obama administration’s framework for a final-status agreement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — as reported by Yedioth Ahronoth — it’s to get the contours of a deal in place and then flesh out the implementation of the deal “within a number of years, apparently up to ten years [...]

Mahmoud Abbas: When asked what he could offer Israelis to show that he was serious about peace initiatives, Abbas reminded the participants that he had addressed the Israeli public in an interview on Channel 10. “Why wouldn’t Bibi go to Palestinian TV and do the same?” said the Palestinian president. “I would never deny [the] [...]

So this is what I was at this morning: Henri Barkey, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Program, had an idea for Israel to turn the diplomatic tables on Hamas for the first time since establishing the Gaza blockade. They can reiterate their call for Hamas to release captured soldier Gilad Shalit; rely [...]

I have little to add to Marc Lynch and Kristin Lord’s excellent post about the flotilla raid as a crisis point for the Obama administration’s outreach to the Muslim world. Just read every word. All that I’d care to add is that it underscores how much wishful thinking is involved in asserting that the Israeli-Palestinian [...]

The definitive last word on Bret Stephens, Lady Gaga, Haifa Wehbe, Nancy Ajram, Palestine-or-Western-decadence-as-takfiri-motivator, Sayyid Qutb and deliberate stupefaction belongs to the Norse God Of Counterterrorism. By Odin’s Beard! How do we know that Palestine is more important than Westernization for the anti-American jihadists? First, al Qaeda’s leaders have spoken more often about Palestine and other [...]

And yet that’s what most of the entries in this NRO symposium do when analyzing the current U.S.-Israel spat. My personal favorite is this entry from Daniel Pipes: It concerns not a life-and-death issue, such as the menace of Iran’s nuclear buildup… Two things. First, “nuclear buildup” presupposes that Iran has a nuclear arsenal already, [...]

Laura Rozen sizes up the role of Mideast envoy George Mitchell in the “indirect talks” between the Israelis and the Palestinians: “No terms of reference [for negotiations], no clear mechanism or modality, no timetable, no list of issues,” have been agreed by the parties, observed former Israeli consul general Alon Pinkas, implying the Herculean effort [...]

Goodness, gracious me! Glenn Kessler and Howard Schneider just posted a doozy on the WaPo site, which will put the cat among the pigeons! And why am I not surprised to find the fingerprints of our dear old friend and pardoned Iran-Contra criminal, Eliot Abrams, on this one.