Talk about a full plate: This Wed., Pres. Obama begins one-year effort to achieve Middle East peace

[quiet.american]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/30/world/middleeast/30summit.html?_r=1&ref=barack_obama">NYT: Early Obstacle, and Test, at Start of Mideast Talks

excerpt:

....This latest peace effort — the ninth since 1979, when negotiators identified the final status issues that would bedevil them for three decades — is to begin on Wednesday night, when Mr. Obama sits down to dinner with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel; the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas; President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt; and King Abdullah of Jordan at the White House.

Mr. Obama, administration officials said, will call on the four leaders to do all they can to settle, within a year, the final status issues: the fate of Jerusalem, the borders of a Palestinian state, the right of return for Palestinian refugees who fled their homes and the issue of Israeli security.

But on Sept. 26, Israel’s 10-month moratorium on settlement construction will expire. Mr. Netanyahu appears unlikely to extend it, Israeli and American officials said. And Mr. Abbas has said that he will withdraw from negotiations if settlement activity resumes.

“This becomes the first test of the intentions of the two sides, a test of whether they’re serious,” said Martin S. Indyk, the former American ambassador to Israel and Middle East peace negotiator.

Quite frankly, the only hope I have for this is that Obama is involved. I pray that this effort succeeds.

(Any bets on how long it will take the media to make Obama's success in brokering this deal (or lack of it), into a referendum on whether he "deserves" his Nobel Peace Prize?)

[Cha]

1. It's positive news..all they can do is keep trying..

Of course the negative force will out speculating within an inch of their mediawhore lives on anything to keep their ratings up.

Good Luck to those who are serious about Peace in the Middle East.

[firedupdem]

2. I pray the efforts succeed too..

What a mess

[Number23]

3. The fourth issue will be contingent upon the 2nd and 3rd

Anyone that can achieve one of these, let alone all four, within a year deserves to have their face put on Mt. Rushmore. And the moon.

[Hekate]

4. I'm praying he can get some kind of stability brokered ...

... in a region that hasn't known "peace" in ... ahhh ... recorded history?

I'm probably wrong about that; I'll amend that to say: since the Versailles Treaty at least, when the map of the Middle East was redrawn by a bunch of Europeans and Americans using a T-square and compass and not much sense of the cultures there.

Hekate

[bobburgster]

5. Kudos to Obama!

At least he is trying!

The vast majority of the media gives him minimal credit, and maximum criticism....and I'm not just referring to Fox