LONDON — U.S. President George W. Bush sounded much less uncertain of his peace "vision" when he received the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas in Washington on Sept. 25.
Certainly much has changed since the November 2007 conference in Annapolis, Maryland, where Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice exhorted that a Palestinian state could be created only by moderate forces, thus designating Hamas and other Palestinian groups as enemies of peace. They marked the end of 2008 as the deadline for an agreement to create that state.
If the last 10 months are a lesson, it is that the Bush administration is not ready to abandon its pro-Israel position — which has jeopardized any real chance at true peacemaking. Nor is the Israeli government under Ehud Olmert ready or willing to advance the cause of peace.