Peace Moves - Not In A Good Direction

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Sep 22, 1997

This past week, US Secretary of State Madeline Albright visited the region in an attempt to jumpstart the peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians. This very modest goal wasn't even reached as both sides suggested the other side was at fault. Secretary of State Albright's use of public diplomacy (going in front of the people that will have to live with the agreement rather than the diplomats) was unique since most diplomats usually try to get agreements with their counterparts first before going public with the decisions.

US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was a master of using the secret negotiations and back-channels approach to get both Israelis and Arab Countries to make concessions and reach agreements that would become public upon completion. The brokered disengagement of forces between Israel and Egypt in 1973 and the similar agreement between Israel and Syria were both conducted in private. This successful trend was continued in the Oslo Accords which are now currently in doubt as the Israelis and Palestinians are both suggesting through words and deeds that the Oslo Accords are dead.

It is unfortunate that neither the Israelis or Palestinians want to revive the peace process. Secretary Albright's style of public diplomacy apparently does not work in the Middle East since both the Palestinians and Israelis have fragmented public opinions. In fact, Israeli President Ezer Weizmann suggested that Albright use private means to try and get both Arafat and Netanyahu to come to some ommon ground and work from there. Albright chose not to use this method and in the process of several public interview sessions, including one at a Jerusalem school, Albright appeared to cozy up to the Israelis and this didn't go over well with Palestinian leaders although later Albright would suggest that Israelis need to stop further development on the West Bank. That didn't go over well with some Israelis who continue to believe that Israel should not be told what to do by anyone else, including the United States.

In Other News...

Egypt is continuing to have problems with terrorism, having suffered from a major attack at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. Egypt has had a long history of fundamentalist attacks, including the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in the early 1980s. The Egyptian military has long felt that the fundamentalists are a major threat to Egyptian prosperity and movement towards the future while the fundamentalists are trying to preserve the culture and heritage of a strict Islamic culture. Violence along these lines will continue so long as the secular culture is in opposition to the Islamic heritage and neither side chooses to accept the other. Similar problems have occurred elsewhere in the Middle East, including in Turkey and Lebanon.

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