In its report on George W. Bush speaking in Canada last week, The New York Times included the following quote, but left out the last sentence (bolded below):
Achieving peace in the Holy Land is not just a matter of pressuring one side or the other on the shape of a border or the site of a settlement. This approach has been tried before, without success.
As we negotiate the details of peace, we must look to the heart of the matter, which is the need for a Palestinian democracy.
The Palestinian people deserve a peaceful government that truly serves their interests, and the Israeli people need a true partner in peace.
Our destination is clear: two states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security.
And that destination can be reached by only one path, the path of democracy and reform and the rule of law.
The omitted sentence was the critical part of the entire quote, because it indicates, as Eli Lake reported in the New York Sun on Wednesday, that:
Instead of looking like a warmed-over version of President Clinton’s Near East diplomacy, the president’s approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict looks to be following the tone and substance of the ideas of [Natan] Sharansky, whom he met on November 11 before a critical meeting with Prime Minister Blair of Britain . . .
On Thursday, the Times published a piece by James Baker (one of John Kerry’s original choices for Middle East envoy) in which Baker endorsed "talking" as the "way to peace." He argued it was not even necessary to wait for the end of violence:
Israel should announce that upon the election of a Palestinian negotiating partner, it is prepared to resume substantive negotiations for peace without requiring that all terrorist activities cease in advance. To require the absence of any terrorist act in advance simply empowers the terrorists themselves to prevent the resumption of peace negotiations.
The raison d’etre of the PA in 1993 was that it agreed to cease all terrorist activities in advance. Moreover, in 2003, the PA endorsed the Road Map ("without reservations"), which includes, as a precondition of negotiation of other issues, that the PA must:
declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism and undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere.
Under Baker’s logic, it would "empower the terrorists" to insist on the implementation of even the first step of the Road Map — even though the PA has already agreed (twice) to do it.