Love of the Land: Obama to Israel: Let’s start at the end

Obama to Israel: Let’s start at the end

Meryl Yourish
Yourish.com
10 January '10

As reported last week, the Obama administration is going to try to start at the end in order to report some kind of progress in Middle East peace talks. The thing is, you really can’t start at the end. You can work backwards in many things, but you can’t work backwards in a peace process where each side is supposed to show the steps it has taken to achieve the peace. But of course, the Palestinians have been arguing for the endgame from the very beginning, when the people doing the negotiating (or lack thereof) were the Arab states that had occupied Gaza and the West Bank from 1948 to 1967 (cf: Three No’s of Khartoum).

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday that once borders are agreed on, the dispute over settlements would be moot.

“Resolving borders resolves settlements, resolving Jerusalem resolves settlements,” Clinton said. “I think we need to lift our sights and instead of being looking down at the trees, we need to look at the forest.”

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Love of the Land: Obama to Israel: Let’s start at the end