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What Mideast Crisis? Israelis Have Moved On

(New York Times) Ethan Bronner - Back in Tel Aviv for a recent visit a year after ending my tour as Jerusalem bureau chief, I was struck by how few even talk about the Palestinians or the Arab world on their borders, despite the tumult and the renewed peace efforts by Secretary of State John Kerry. Israelis are insisting that the problem is both insoluble for now and less significant than the world thinks. We cannot fix it, many say, but we can manage it. A former senior aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed that most Israelis considered the peace process irrelevant because they believed that the Palestinians had no interest in a deal, especially in the current Middle Eastern context of rising Islamism. "Debating the peace process to most Israelis is the equivalent of debating the color of the shirt you will wear when landing on Mars." An afternoon in Ramallah revealed no stronger sense of urgency among Palestinians. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who showed real competence in his job but is resigning, tells friends that if he believed Kerry's efforts had any chance of yielding results, he would not be quitting. All of which suggests that, as has long been argued, there can be no Israeli-Palestinian peace deal so long as outsiders want it more than the parties themselves.
2013-05-31 00:00:00
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