‘Gaps remain’ after latest Livni-Erekat meeting | The Times of Israel

Are these peace talks really at an end? Might they still have some mileage left in them? Or is it time to admit defeat, batten down the hatches, ride out the coming storm and wait for another round of negotiations to make an appearance – whenever that might be?

Prospects for any positive results from this latest initiative now seem few and far between. And yet so much depends on what view is taken of its outcome.

Is the glass half-empty or half-full?

On the face of it, nothing at all has been accomplished except to show just how far apart the two sides still remain. The gulf between them appears to be unbridgeable, the major issues even more hard-edged and irreconcilable than ever before. Where is there anything positive about that?

Although it may be hard to appreciate at first, there is another aspect to these talks that may have escaped notice. They appear to have clearly demonstrated that, no matter how badly both parties might wish to settle their differences and move on, they are quite unable to do so within the confines of a situation that has stayed much the way it is for generations.

As we have all seen, even the most intense diplomatic activity cannot bring about closure in this dispute nor can any agreement be expected while the narrowness of its parameters continues to defy both remedy and result.

Then it should be obvious – and this to the meanest intelligence – that these parameters must be expanded to include provision for a success story here, some alternate means of extracting pure gold from the dross of dismal failures that have been dredged up for so long in times past.

Www.laxiankey.com – ‘for those of us with better things to do.’

As some of the ladies here might well know:

‘You may have to kiss an awful lot of frogs before you find your prince.’