Originally posted by schwarzchildradius
Do you think that the presence of Bush will help or hurt prospects for near-term peace?
It don't think it will hurt, it will help if he is willing to put enough pressure on Sharon for Sharon to step beyond what he has already declared a willingness to do..dismantle outpost, a few of the settlements that are convenient to get rid of. see Ruby Rivlin in Ha'aretz today, according to rivlin (knesset speaker) sharon is planning on taking down Nokdim- the home of Minister Avigdor Lieberman - Tekoah, Ganim, Kadim, Homesh and other
settlements, while leaving Netzrim,Kfar Darom and all the Gush Katif settlements in place.
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/299899.html
On the other side Mazin is talking about a temporary ceasefire with hamas, PNA, Fatah etc. This is not the required disarment, and even if he desired to disarm them I don't think he has the capability. So expect this portion of the deal to blow up in the face of it all.
Unless Bush has sufficiently frightened Syria, they will continue to fund and incite hezbollah and attempt to undermine any longterm peace in Palestine, Syria still sees the Palestinian and Israeli areas as part of the larger Syrian state.
So, with all of this I expect that Sharon will give a good show and wait for the terrorist to undermine the peace iniative and then he will wash his hands of it, come back as fierce as ever all the while saying.."We did our part" and maybe he will be right in a sense, but not morally correct in another. After all of this, if Bush is still in office I expect he will push for a nato mission to enforce peace and sort the thing out..of course this will come with a trillion dollar price tag and many new contracts to arms producers.
end of my rambling thoughts, don't make too much of them or criticize too harshly...they are not presented in supportive debate like form.