Oh Geezus, he's going to Saudi again?
I guess GWB will be begging our King to cut oil prices again, before awarding him an additional $30gb in military hardware that may be used against us someday?

"Yet Bush was the first American president to publicly commit to the need for an independent Palestinian state, the key to the "two-state solution'' for peace that Bush has been promoting for several years."

- Mark Silva

See. Now this here is part of the problem.

Bush may have been the first to publicly state this, but you would have had to be living on the moon not to realize that every president since Truman has realized that this is the end game.

The fact that no one stated it makes it seem as if this is a step that needed to be taken. And until it was taken, there could be no other progress toward a peaceful resolution.

It's all "dog and pony" show. It's pure nonsense.

Don't give any credence to "Bush's proclamation." It's nothing. It means nothing. It has meant nothing.

To give it credence is to expect that something would follow. And why? Why would something follow a proclamation that isn't substantive? This wasn't a step that either needed to be taken or moves the process further.

This administration has set back the negotiations Fifty years. President Bush should have taken a page from then President Carter and had the respective leaders come to Camp David and negotiate there!! Instead, it seems as though America has given its unspoken permission for Israel to go marauding all over the Middle East! Like America, this Republican administration has turned its back on the Middle East!!
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE. NOW.

Bush can never bring peace between Israel and its neighbors for the simple fact that Israel's neighbors don't trust him.

And why should they, when even Israel itself said Bush and Sharon made a secret deal all the time they were pretending to negotiate in good faith with the Palestinians?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/23/AR2008042303128_pf.html

I hope he says "pretty please" this time.

"Israel has never had a better friend in the White House than the 43rd President of the United States.".

Huh??? Better that all the Presidents who actually worked for peace in the Middle East, instead of ignoring the situation until now??

Seems like Cheney has joined McCain in the "lost their bearings" department.

It has been a mighty depressing sixty years.

We should start by asking, just what is Israel's present course?

If we judge by its actions, and not by its flood of propaganda, Israel’s overall purpose is to make 1.4 million people they keep penned up in a tiny enclave so miserable they will leave.

After all, the Chief Ashkenazi Rabbi of Israel suggested only weeks ago that all the Palestinians should be rounded up and left in the Sinai Desert as their "state," and that is among the more charitable words of advice from prominent Israelis, some of whom have called the residents of Gaza "cockroaches" and "vermin."

Only a limited amount of such words manage to get world publicity because Israel maintains an apparatus as active as China's in limiting the reporting and distribution of adverse material outside Israel.

Israel holds most of the members of an elected government as prisoners. It threatens the assassination of the elected head of government. It controls money from outside, assistance for Gaza, which is not theirs to control. It controls all access and egress for these people. It plays dirty games like turning off electricity or stopping fuel transport.

It freely murders anyone regarded as a "militant," whatever it is that that word means. This includes measures like firing Hellfire missiles at apartment complexes were one suspected “militant” is suspected of residing, generally killing many innocent people. There are Israeli secret service agents disguised as Arabs who murder anyone they suspect as the opportunity arises, often making it look like the work of rival Palestinian parties.

It is all a nightmare.

Hamas is no danger to Israel. It is incapable of being a serious threat. For years Israeli secret services actually subsidized Hamas to build it up as a rival to Arafat’s party. You don’t subsidize people who represent genuine threats.

No, Hamas, does not like Israel, and why should they? What has Israel ever done to win the friendship of any Palestinians? It was a former Israeli Prime Minister who said if he were a Palestinian, he would be a terrorist.

People, and nations, who do not like each other do manage to live as law-abiding neighbors in countless places in the world. Over time, they may even learn to be friends.

But Israel has never made any effort this way. None. Why? Because what Israel truly wants is the real estate without its residents. It talks about peace while constantly, unrelentingly maintaining conditions for human misery. This genuinely is 1984 double-speak.

Gaza has always been a headache for the Israeli government, and it would love to see some kind of solution, but that does not mean what any normal person would call peace.

The Palestinians are supposed to come to a peace table having already made every concession Israel wants, including matters like recognizing Israel and recognizing it as a “Jewish state.” What would be left of any interest for Israel to negotiate, that being done?

Remember, time and again, Israel has gone for long periods simply ignoring situations it does not like, so long as those situations cause no anxiety to Israel.

First, it is common in international affairs to not recognize states: the U.S. has done it many times. Recognition is gained by some compromise. But Israel plays by different rules.

Second, how do you recognize a place that has set no borders? Even Israelis do not know what Israel is as a piece of geography. This ambiguity has been deliberate because Israel’s leaders have always desired to take more territory, as they do gradually, inexorably in the West Bank.

Third, what are the implications of formally recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state”? Do the limited number of Muslims and Christians living there now (about 19% of population) lose some of their legitimacy as citizens? In fact, many prominent Israelis in the past have advocated pushing these people out of Israel. Perhaps only international views have prevented this.

Let’s see, for once, some genuine steps towards peace taken by Israel. Perhaps starting by releasing the elected government they hold as prisoners? Then treating Palestinians as human beings? It’s amazing what a little human decency can do towards peace.

"This nation [Israel] was forged in refuge, not imperialism."

So it seemed to most in, say, the 1950s, but that view may need serious reconsideration after 60 years of history.

I think Einstein had it right in his view of Zionism. He advocated Jews settling in the Mideast, but did not want to see a formal Jewish state with war-making capacity. And his reason for having this view he, in typical Einstein fashion, bluntly stated as certain characteristics of the Jewish people.

But Einstein's view clearly did not prevail.

What we see instead is an almost constant form of aggressive war by Israel, whether it is taking water rights or orchards or destroying homes or bombing all of its neighbors.

Of course, there is always a superficial rationalization for such savage acts as the attacks on Lebanon, but doesn't George Bush offer superficial rationalizations for his dreadful acts? Doesn't every aggressor, from Stalin to Hitler?

Democracies are just as capable of brutality as any other form of government. America's history with its black population proves that conclusively. Apartheid South Africa is another example. So is Israel.

Power is power, no matter how conferred, and if a people are motivated by such passions as hate or greed or fear, they will act horribly despite otherwise having fair institutions.

The U.S. had its much-vaunted Bill of Rights utterly ignored for centuries. Of course, the very purpose of a Bill of Rights is to protect the rights of minorities against the tyranny of the majority. Israel doesn't even have such a document.

Israel has a slow-moving, never-announced process of ethnic-cleansing underway. The land seized by its Berlin Wall, the houses regularly destroyed, the new settlements constantly built, the destruction of Palestinian commerce and normal life, and a thousand other measures.

I think the future is clear to anyone who views the situation objectively. Through patient, endless pressure exerted while ignoring the rest of the world, Israel will one day become the Greater Israel many Zionists have always advocated.

As to the Palestinians, they have been kept under the most miserable conditions for decades, so why would it bother Israel to continue this brutal behavior until they virtually go away?

Even when Israel has made the least effort to agree to a Palestinian state - as under Rabin, who paid with his life even for doing comparatively little or under Barak, whose concept of a Palestinian state was a permanent nightmare with the same unspoken end in view of slow ethnic-cleansing - the efforts are feeble.

Peace has never been possible without the United States exerting itself for fairness, and it is clear that the United States cannot summon the psychological force to do so.

The United States has tolerated, bit by bit, Israel's worst policies, and there is no reason to think this will change.

Not much to celebrate.