During Secretary of State Kerry’s visit to Moscow, it seems we have proposed an international conference on Syria as a step toward peace there. Here is the BBC version:

Russia and the US have agreed to work towards convening an international conference to find a political solution to the conflict in Syria. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry announced it would follow on from an Action Group for Syria meeting in Geneva last June. Mr Kerry said they would try to “bring both sides to the table”. Read more »

Lady Catherine Ashton, the EU’s top foreign policy official, has received a remarkable letter from the “European Eminent Persons Group on the Middle East Peace Process.” This self-selected collectivity might more accurately be called the “Formerly Eminent Persons Group,” inasmuch as the first word describing each one of its members is “Former,” but I suppose that these Formerly Eminent Persons do indeed also represent the views of Currently Eminent European Persons. The letter and its list of signatories are copied below. Read more »

The Teachers Union of Ireland voted last week to commence a full boycott of Israel. Read more »

Last Saturday (March 30) Israel took a large step toward energy independence, as natural gas from the smaller of its newly discovered Mediterranean gas fields began to flow.

By the end of this decade Israel will not only be supplying its own needs fully, but exporting natural gas to the world market. It will be able to supply itself for at least 50 years and perhaps three times as long–reducing its energy costs, improving its environment, making the cost of production lower, and increasing prosperity and state revenues. This natural gas supply more than replaces what Israel used to receive from Egypt, but Egypt has become an unreliable supplier for Israel (and for Jordan as well). Read more »

President Obama spoke at a press conference in Ramallah today and then gave a major speech in Jerusalem. Read more »

The President leaves for Israel tomorrow. Here are eight suggestions for what he should say when there. No doubt his speechwriters could improve on the language, but these are thoughts it would be very useful for him to express. Such statements would have a serious impact in Israel and in the entire Middle East. Of course, it would be even better if these thoughts really reflected the President’s views and policies. Read more »

There must be something in the water over at the State Department that leads successive secretaries of state to decide, seemingly on their first day there, that now is the time for a big new push at a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Read more »

The London newspaper Al Hayat carried a story on February 21 about the intentions of EU states to support Hamas participation in a Palestinian “national unity government.”

It seems that “the European boycott of the Palestinian Government formed by Hamas after winning the 2006 elections will not be repeated,”  according to someone described as a “senior European diplomat.” France and Britain want to relaunch the “peace process,” and this time “on a new basis and without preconditions.”  The diplomat is quoted as saying “today there exists an international consensus on the need for the establishment of a Palestinian State….we welcome the entry of Hamas into the PLO and the fact that it accepted the PLO charter.” Read more »

This past week I participated in a conference on Iran convened by the Henry Jackson Society of London and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy of Washington, DC.

As the executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, Alan Mendoza, put it, “Having breakfast with the Supreme Leader of Iran is not something many people can boast of.  But the account of just such an occasion by Rafael Bardaji – former national security advisor to the Spanish Prime Minister – stood out as a highlight of the HJS Iran conference in Westminster earlier this week. Bardaji relayed to a packed hall his story of the meeting.” Read more »

Just for the record, it is useful to recall the New York Times’s analysis of Israel’s recent election campaign. Here is the prognosis by its chief Jerusalem correspondent, Jodi Rudoren, on the day before the January 22 election. Read more »