Middle East Peace Talks Begin

The Bush administration has persuaded a number of Middle Eastern nations into a new round of peace talks to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Annapolis, MD. While trying to avoid leading the negotiations (as Bill Clinton did unsuccessfully several years ago), Bush has stated that he is trying to help 'facilitate' them.

Bush has long been in favor of forming a Palestinian state, but to do that it seems that Israel has to be the one to give up the most.

Some say that nothing is the best thing that can possibly come from these talks. The crux of the dispute is that Palestinians want the right to return to their homes in present-day Israel. Of course, this would mean the end of the state of Israel, which Israelis refuse to accept. Another problem is that both Olmert and Abbas (the leaders of Israel and Palestine, respectively) are facing severe disapproval from their home nations. In summary, the editors of NRO say:

Barring that day of miracles in which the lion lies down with the lamb, what we must hope is that Annapolis will produce nothing more than handshakes and empty words. If so, it will be merely silly. If it gives us instead a weakened Abbas, an empowered Hamas, renewed anger among Arab masses over Palestinian grievances, and increased sympathy for the anti-Israeli, anti-American worldview that prevails from Tehran to Damascus to southern Lebanon to the West Bank to Gaza, then silliness will seem a luxury.

An interesting viewpoint, to be sure. But they're not alone. Gary Bauer, President of American Values (and former Reagan advisor), says the following of Olmert:

"He's walking into a so-called peace conference in which there are going to be over 20 Muslim-Arab nations there, all of whom oppose him," he points out. "He's getting pressure from the United States to make more concessions. You've got countries like Syria sitting at the table. Apparently they had a little bit of time that they could take off of subsidizing groups like Hezbollah, as well as causing other problems in the Middle East."

Bauer -- who describes the summit as "a prescription for disaster" -- says U.S. officials do not seem to grasp the spiritual nature of the conflict in the Middle East.

"I believe we constantly underestimate how much hate has been taught in the Islamic schools throughout the Middle East, in which young Muslim children are taught that Jews are apes and monkeys and that Jews and Christians must be killed in order to please Allah," notes the American Values president. "So if you look at that context, you can see why pieces of paper -- which is all [that] Annapolis will produce -- that promise peace will, in fact, not deliver peace."

Bauer's viewpoint is similar to Joel Rosenberg's, putting the struggle into a religious context that greatly affects world events. No matter what happens, this is potentially history in the making.

There's my two cents.