Peace Process

One can discern two general schools of thought -- pessimists and optimists. Pessimists tend to believe that the conflict is due to a discrepancy between ideas of legitimacy. Pro-Israel members of this camp doubt that Palestinians will accept Israel's right to exist. The implications are clear -- jumpstarting the so-called

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has taken a turn for the worse. On Wednesday, a suicide bomber blew himself up on a bus in central Jerusalem, killing at least 16 Israelis and wounding scores of bystanders. Within hours, Israeli attack helicopters fired rockets into the Gaza Strip, killing nine people, including four

Even as President Bush invests his considerable personal prestige and the power of his office in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking, his initiative is threatened by the continued flow of financial and logistical support for Hamas terror attacks through the group's social-welfare infrastructure. The first phase of the road map requires the Palestinian

If there was ever a moment to end the ongoing war between Israelis and Palestinians and return to the path of peace making, this is it. In Israel, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has established a new baseline for the Likud Party, speaking of the need to end the occupation of

President George W. Bush will be holding three summits next week that will have a strong Middle East orientation. A G-8 summit will followed by a meeting with Arab leaders in Sharm al-Shaykh, Egypt, and a summit of Israeli and Palestinian leaders in Aqaba, Jordan, representing a new phase in

Israel's cautious approval of the Roadmap opens a new phase in Middle East peacemaking. Although media focus will now turn to the next episode of high-level engagement by President George W. Bush—perhaps at a Jordan- or Egypt-hosted regional summit in early June—the real test for Washington and its Quartet colleagues

After last week's synchronized terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia and the management shake-up of the U.S. occupation team in Iraq, Americans were reminded that victory over Saddam Hussein did not miraculously compel the region's lions to lie down with its lambs. If dealing with these and other challenges were not

In the last week the prospects for peace between Israelis and Palestinians appeared to be improving. The Palestinians approved Mahmoud Abbas as their first-ever prime minister, and he declared that terrorism threatened to destroy the Palestinian cause -- language one never heard from Yasir Arafat. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of

With last week's formal unveiling of the Roadmap, the Arab-Israeli peace process has moved into a new phase that is its most internationalized in a quarter century. The establishment of the Roadmap's all-important "verification mechanism"—the structure of which has largely been worked out among the Quartet's U.S., European Union (EU)