Olmert: We’ll Make Peace Some Day, Just Not Right Now

Sorry for the black humor but this is the Middle East after all.

Dueling headlines:

Olmert upbeat on Mideast peace talks

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Wednesday said he was optimistic that current negotiations would produce a lasting peace with the Palestinians.

–Los Angeles Times

Olmert Pours Cold Water On Peace Process

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Wednesday that he expected that only a framework of a peace deal could be reached with Palestinians by the end of the year, not an actual agreement.

–Daily Star

Go figure. It’s the Middle East. Your guess is as good as mine which is right and what any of it means.

Here’s some more odd I-P humor:

President Bush has invited Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas to the White House in an effort to give a kick to Mideast peace talks, the White House said Thursday.

—Associated Press

Just like Bush to kick a peace process when it’s down!

Shmuel Rosner is always good for a joke (unintentional that is) or an outrage and his current column is no exception. Get a load of the utter delusion both in Rosner’s judgments and in his informant’s:

U.S. President George Bush is finishing his tenure in office precisely as he began it: still determined not to repeat the mistakes of the previous administration, that of Bill Clinton…Bush saw his predecessor buried under the rubble of Camp David and found no reason to retrace that same path.

…The president is still determined not to repeat what the previous president did. Hopefully, he will be sufficiently determined. Well-positioned persons [like whom??] note that Clinton passed down to his successor a dysfunctional peace process. A violent intifada [Clinton’s fault of course]. The size of the abyss into which the two sides slid was commensurate to Clinton’s ambition to bring an end to the conflict.

A senior official described it thus: “Clinton drove an expensive race car in order to reach the end of the race, but spun at the curve. What Bush got from him was not a car but a pile of rubble.” The outgoing president – in 10 months – intends to leave his successor the keys to a car in working order.

Let’s leave aside the inapt transformation of a car into a “pile of rubble” (wouldn’t “heap of junk” have sounded better?). All I can say is that’s rich. Bush will leave for the next president the keys to a car that is a rusted hulk and utterly undrivable. When President Obama (let’s hope) puts the keys in the ignition it’s liable to blow up in his face. The car called “Iraq” will, as well, be in about the same state of disrepair when he hands over those keys.

Headlines thanks to American Task Force for Palestine’s Editor’s Picks.