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| Daily News Brief April 4, 2014 |
Top of the Agenda
U.S. to Review Role in Mideast Peace Talks
Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that the Obama administration planned to reevaluate its approach (NYT)
to the Middle East peace talks, and that it would decide whether it was
worth continuing the effort in light of the faltering process. Israel
and the Palestinian Authority have reached a recent impasse over
Israel's refusal to release Palestinian prisoners, as well as the
Palestinian Authority's applications to join a number of international
organizations. Some critics posit (WaPo)
that Kerry has devoted too much attention to pursuing Middle East peace
at the expense of other pressing foreign policy challenges, including
Syria, Ukraine, and Iran.
Analysis
"There is no doubt the Americans are investing major efforts
in an attempt to solve the disputes. Even the most minor agreements
over the past 25 years have usually been accompanied by crises until the
very last minute, with mutual threats and American warnings they would
abandon the mediation - and that the mediator cannot want peace more
than the parties themselves. But Abbas is not Yasser Arafat," writes
Amos Harel for Haaretz.
"However
justified the criticisms of Secretary of State Kerry's approach, the
Obama administration, having launched this high-profile effort at
comprehensive peace, cannot simply disown its own initiative just as it appears to be on the verge of collapse," writes CFR's Robert Danin.
"Kerry's process, by a contrast, set itself the more limited goal of simply managing the conflict.
But that's something the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority were
doing more or less effectively before the Secretary of State called them
to the table – and it's unlikely to change despite the collapse of the
latest talks," writes Mairav Zonszein for al-Jazeera.
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