Israel's Ze'ev Schiff says that facing up to the truth is indispensable to success in achieving peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Just so. President Bush has shown more interest in facing reality than many past presidents. That's one of the things that drives the professional diplomats (and the nomenklatura in general) crazy about him. I just hope he and his people will follow through.
The failure of the Oslo agreements stems primarily from the flawed implementation and not from the inherent desire to reach an agreement between the two peoples. These flaws, which cropped up quickly along the way and were based on lies and covering up for these lies, led to the armed confrontation that began in September, 2000.The Americans usually ignored the lies because for them the main thing was rapid progress, which was subsequently revealed to be a journey on shifting sands. If the system of lies and whitewashing continues after the "road map" - failure is assured. Even now there are negative signs of the perpetuation of this shoddy system when the Americans say to the breaking of a substantive promise by the Palestinians that the main thing is to move forward. If there is not immediate attention to substantive violations, once again we will find ourselves in the post-Oslo mine field.