Killing peace

"By overturning the decades-old official U.S. position that the dispute over borders and refugees had to be resolved by direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians," Michelle Golberg writes in Salon, "Bush in effect conceded huge areas to the Israelis in advance of those negotiations. It's true that in any peace deal, some large Israeli settlements were likely to be folded into Israel proper -- with the Palestinians being given compensatory land -- and true as well that no wholesale right of return was likely to be acceptable to the Jewish state. But by prejudging these issues, Bush fundamentally shifted the entire dynamic of the [peace] process -- and," Goldberg concludes, probably "killed it altogether."