Israel Matzav

Livni's role in bringing about Annapolis

If any of you think that foreign minister Tzipi Feigele Livni is going to reign Olmert in at all at Annapolis, consider this from today's New York Times:

Ms. Rice’s credibility was further damaged when she delayed calling for a cease-fire as Israel plunged into a two-front war in Lebanon and Gaza that summer. By the end of 2006, with the peace efforts in shambles and the administration’s time running out, Ms. Rice began to pick up the pieces.

Over Christmas, she took home reports written by the State Department historian on previous American efforts toward a peace agreement in the Middle East, and met alone in her Watergate apartment with Ms. Livni. There they worked out an ambitious plan to get Mr. Olmert to meet with Mr. Abbas, not on the incremental steps of the road map, but on the big “final status” issues of a Palestinian state.

In other words, Livni, who has pretended that she's just along for the ride (and that she insisted on being chief negotiator to maintain her status as foreign minister) is in reality the driving force behind Annapolis on the Israeli side.

By the way, the upshot of this article calls into question the entire characterization of Condi believing the 'Palestinians' are like the Blacks of Selma, Alabama in the 1960's. It says she supported Bush's initial decision to stay out of the Arab - Israeli conflict and forced Colin Powell to stay out of 'peacemaking' efforts in the aftermath of the 2002 Passover massacre when Powell was Secretary of State and Rice was National Security Adviser. She only got into 'peacemaking' when she became Secretary of State.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:44 AM