The Near Future of Middle East Peace

The Near Future of Middle East Peace

Gershon Gorenberg at The American Prospect wants Obama to to tackle the foreboding problem of Middle East peace right away, “Move fast, very fast. Ignore all advice from old diplomatic hands who’ll tell you to avoid big, difficult issues and to stick to crisis management and interim accords. Seek a full end-of-conflict agreement. And apply lessons from your electoral campaign: Enforce absolute message discipline in your own team, and employ dramatic public events and rhetoric to restore people’s belief that change is possible.”


Also of interest, my old colleague, Arsalan Iftikhar, says similar things in a ‘Letter to Obama on the Muslim World’, stating,”Please send Bill Clinton as chief diplomatic envoy for the Israelis and Palestinians; plus, tell him not to come back until he has a signed peace accord from both begrudging sides. He is probably the best qualified individual in America to serve as an honorable Middle East peace broker who will be respected by all sides because of his legacy at the Oslo Accords.”