LONDON — "We are at the beginning of a process," said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after her four-day tour of the countries closely involved in the Arab-Israeli confrontation. But the "peace process" really began with the Oslo accords in 1993, and it died when Ariel Sharon became prime minister of Israel in 2001.
The last nail was hammered into its coffin with the takeover of the Gaza Strip this year by Hamas, which flatly rejects the idea of Palestinian and Israeli states living side by side. Rice can make the corpse twitch, but she cannot make it walk.
Faced with almost universal cynicism about her proposed Middle East peace conference in the state of Maryland next month, she protested that "I have better things to do than invite people to Annapolis for a photo-op." Nevertheless, the suspicion lingers that this is just a last-minute legacy project to salvage President George W. Bush's reputation.