John Kerry’s doomed peace process is deja vu all over again
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- Written by Phyllis Bennis Phyllis Bennis
- Published: 13 August 2013 13 August 2013
Secretary of State John Kerry’s latest foray into Middle East negotiations should be called the Einstein peace process. Doing the same thing over and over again and still expecting different results is the great scientist’s definition of insanity. This time around, indications are that Kerry actually believes, all evidence to the contrary aside, that this latest iteration of the decades-old industry known as the “peace process” might really succeed. But unfortunately for Kerry, his political calculations are about to run aground on the unforgiving shoals of political reality.
Whatever Kerry’s beliefs, the timing of this latest version of the talks clearly has a lot to do with the crises erupting across the Middle East region. The escalating civil and regional war in Syria, the growing sectarian and religious-secular divides exploding across the region, and even the Pentagon-backed Egyptian military’s coup against the Muslim Brotherhood all reflect broader U.S. weakness and failures in the Middle East. The inability of the U.S. to respond strategically to those challenges is certainly part of why plunging back into Israel-Palestine talks, however repetitive of earlier failures, might have seemed a useful move – for distraction, for reassurance of Israel’s backers, for reassertion of a weakened empire’s fading but still extant power.
But despite all those reasons, these talks are doomed to the same failure as the 22 years of failed diplomacy that precedes them.
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