Holding back the night
Read more: Kerry’s framework reportedly left Abbas fuming in Paris | The Times of Israel
This would seem to indicate that these past seven months have been nothing but a complete waste of time, money, effort and lives.
Indeed, the same might equally be said of the past seven decades.
It could be that not even the good offices of the US can ever bring about peace and harmony between Israelis and Palestinians. Only a wider distancing of one side from the other would appear to have been derived from the intense amount of diplomatic activity that has occurred of late.
I do hope Mr. Kerry’s ‘framework,’ when fully revealed to us in due course, will have something about it of a more substantial and even-handed nature than this report implies.
But, whatever the final draft document, somehow I suspect neither of the two principals will be 100% happy with it and this, in turn, is most likely to see the agony and the conflict still with us at year’s end.
So, in 2015, it may be back to the drawing-board once again with even fainter prospects of getting matters to come right. And none at all if they have deteriorated past the point of no return to negotiations and some workable plan of action.
A stop-gap position this may be but it has real possibilities. It can hold back the night as it were, providing space and time to cement agreements, guarantee results and maintain a new status quo far in advance of the one that’s already been in place for generations.