Peacemaking takes strategic skill. But we see no sign that President Obama and Mr. Mitchell were thinking more than one move down the board. The president went public with his demand for a full freeze on settlements before securing Israel’s commitment. And he and his aides apparently had no plan for what they would do if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said no.
Most important, they allowed the controversy to obscure the real goal: nudging Israel and the Palestinians into peace talks. (We don’t know exactly what happened but we are told that Mr. Obama relied more on the judgment of his political advisers — specifically his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel — than of his Mideast specialists.)
But then the writer (Tom Friedman?) goes too far on another point:
At some point extremists will try to provoke another war. and the absence of a dialogue will only make things worse.Now, we know there are Arab extremists capable of launching a war but are there Jewish/Israeli extremists who can?
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