Peace Process

Between September 1993 and September 2000, the Middle East was the setting for a great historical experiment: the effort to negotiate a final resolution of the decades-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. The experiment failed, and disastrously so. Oslo diplomacy -- which takes its name from the site of the

Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher bravely told an audience at the American University of Kuwait recently that "we [Arab nations] have failed in taking a stand against targeting civilians in all sides, including Israeli civilians." His Jan. 13 comment is significant because it followed the "strong condemnation of terrorism in

It has been said that the world is still living the seventh day of the Six Day War. David Makovsky offered this look back at the consequential conflict at a 2004 State Department conference.

Although neither the Israeli mainstream nor the Palestinian public has accepted the Geneva Accord, its principles have had a profound effect on both societies. For the Palestinians, core existential issues are now subject to debate in an unprecedented way. For example, as one Fatah official pointed out, Palestinians have been

After years of frustration in which persistent Palestinian terrorism has held peace negotiations hostage, a security fence may be the first step toward disengagement and a precondition for resuming any political process.

A Ceasefire Proposal A cycle of violence has dominated the scene since September 2000. One fact has emerged: Israelis cannot impose on the Palestinians, and Palestinians cannot impose on the Israelis. Strategies of violence have failed on both sides and are producing more victims. However, [although] the Palestinians have issued

The identity of the state of Israel is based on two ideas: democracy and the existence of a safe home for the Jewish people. Yet, because of Israel's pressing security concerns over the past fifty-five years, the debate about how to reconcile these two ideas has never really begun. In

Despite its billing as an alternative blueprint for Middle East peace, the draft Geneva Accord for a permanent status agreementproduced by an Israeli opposition parliamentarian and a Palestinian confidant of Yasir Arafatis not primarily a bilateral Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Rather, its main innovation is the comprehensive and, in some cases

The bombing of a U.S. convoy in Gaza on Wednesday, which killed three American contract employees of the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv and injured a U.S. diplomat, was neither unprecedented nor unexpected. Indeed, U.S. embassy employees narrowly escaped injury in a similar attack last June, when unknown assailants detonated