One of those ever-ubiquitous "senior Israeli officials" held a briefing today for members of the international media and offered an interesting insider's view of the post-Annapolis/pre-Bush visit peace talks with the Palestinians:
"We are starting discussions now from scratch," he said.
According to this well-informed source who can't be named, Abbas and Olmert were making progress on a joint statement for Annapolis when, as always seems to happen in these kind of negotiations, things fell apart at the end.
When the two sides brought their four-person drafting team together to put on paper the agreements Olmert and Abbas reached in their informal talks, this official said, they found that they couldn't agree on what had been agreed upon.
Well that certainly helps explain why the first round of post-Annapolis talks last week got off to such an inauspicious start. And it probably means that there won't be any significant progress between now and the president's visit in early-January.
Bush is expected to arrive on Jan. 9th for a three-day working visit (his first as president) that is expected to take him to Jerusalem and Jericho.
Today, Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper put things succinctly -- and in context:
"The visit by US President George Bush is going to make the lives of many Jerusalem residents hell."
Plans to ferry the president around by helicopter have apparently been scuttled. Instead, Bush will travel by motorcade. The streets apparently have to be cleared so the whole of downtown Jerusalem could be paralyzed.
According to YA, the US has told the advance team to reserve between 800 and 1,000 rooms for the visit.
One has to wonder if "they" have heard of modern technology; like recording the Abbas/Olmert meetings, audio and video. Then again, the idea may be neither side really wants to be held to their promises. No recording = excuses not to implement anything.
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