• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Abbas-Olmert Talks a 'First' in Mideast Diplomacy

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: Aaron David Miller, Public Policy Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

April 30, 2008

Aaron David Miller, author of The Much Too Promised Land: America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace, served for much of the past two decades as a Middle East negotiator for various U.S. administrations. He says the regular talks between President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that began before the November 2007 Annapolis conference mark the first time there has been such a high-level Palestinian-Israeli dialogue. While he does not expect President Bush to achieve the “peace agreement” between Israel and Palestinians he set as a goal for his time left in office, Miller believes that in the next six months or so, the Olmert-Abbas discussion could lead to “a declaration of principles on these four issues—Jerusalem, borders, refugees, and security—that will go further than any Israeli and Palestinian elected politicians have ever gone before.” That could open the way for an energetic new president to seal a deal.

What do you think will happen with the Bush administration’s Annapolis initiative? President Bush said he expected a peace agreement between Israel and Palestinians by the end of his term. Was that a pipe dream?

Annapolis was always about creating an event which would change the channels on the Middle East TV set from confrontation, violence, and bitterness to a situation where Arabs and Israelis were talking. Annapolis by itself could never have created the kind of process that would have led to real progress. Annapolis was very much an American story, but now what is afoot in the region are two pieces of potentially great significance, although neither one is being driven by the United States.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.