1115.org

Back in March, President Bush explained to us why he was hopeful that he and Condi would be able to bring us peace in the Middle East before they left office:

With only 10 months left in his term and Israeli-Palestinian talks collapsed over renewed violence, President Bush said Tuesday there is “plenty of time” to get a Mideast peace deal before he leaves.

That must be why he still doesn’t feel the need to actually do very much to help the peace process along. Still plenty of time, I guess.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas came here last week to ask for “more active American intervention” in the peace talks.

Here’s what he left with, according to AP. The headline read: “Abbas says no progress in talks with Bush“. The lede:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Friday he failed to achieve any progress in Middle East peace talks with President Bush and was returning home with little to show for his visit.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the Palestinian leader sounded pessimistic about the prospects of achieving any deal with Israel this year despite a big U.S. push that began five months ago at a summit in Annapolis, Md.

“Frankly, so far nothing has been achieved. … “

And here’s what he left with, according to Press Secretary Dana Perino yesterday:

Q Dana, following up on the Mideast, President Abbas left town with some discouraging words about his meeting with President Bush, saying he failed to achieve much progress and left home (sic) with little to show for it. What does the White House think of that assessment? Does it cast a shadow at all over this upcoming trip?

MS. PERINO: I think you should go back and look at the comments in full from the President and President Abbas, as well as remember what the purpose of the meeting was. I don’t think anyone anticipated that there would be some sort of breakthrough at a meeting between President Abbas and President Bush.

The breakthroughs are going to come between the Israelis and the Palestinians. That is where the negotiations are more mature for a peace settlement than they are in other parts of the region, because you have two leaders who are committed to it. So I would point back to the fact that they had a — the President welcomed President Abbas here in advance of his trip.

That’s the most positive thing she could point to, that the President welcomed President Abbas here in advance of his trip?

Funny how Perino thinks negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians are ripe for a peace settlement. Somebody who might have a slightly better handle on it doesn’t seem to think so:

The foreign minister of the Palestinian Authority on Thursday offered an unusually bleak assessment of the status of the negotiations with Israel and said that President Mahmud Abbas would be asking for more active American intervention when he meets with President George W. Bush in Washington this month.

Riad Malki, who also serves as minister of information in the West Bank-based government appointed by Abbas, told a gathering of the Foreign Press Association here that the talks on the core issues of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict had yielded “no results.”

Malki also doesn’t seem to share Bush’s ten-months-is-plenty-of-time vision very enthusiastically:

“How long will it take? Nobody knows.”

Actually, in terms of the role he’s playing in this peace process, Bush is indeed looking very much like a nobody.

Perhaps this hands-off approach to achieving peace in the Middle East is just Bush’s way of implementing his declared strategy? Our role is to make sure we take one step back; the rest is up to all those madmen over there.

“This is a process that always has two steps forward and one step back,” Bush said after meeting at the White House with Jordan’s King Abdullah II. “We just need to make sure that it’s just one step back.”