President Bush has stated that he wants peace between Palestine and Israel before he leaves office. He has about a year to go.

If this can be accomplished, it will be the great and lasting achievement of the Bush administration. Can it be done before 2009? Can it be done at all?

I think George Bush is trying to put an optimistic face on things, but I seriously doubt a lasting peace can be achieved before 2009. The biggest reason is because there are too many forces both inside and outside the West Bank/Gaza (and to a lesser extent, within Israel itself) that has have an interest in strife and violence continuing.

Unfortunately, I fear neither Ehud Olmert nor Mahmoud Abbas have the personal or political clout to enforce any mutual agreements they might come to.

However, the latest news that Egyptian President Mubarak is openly endorsing the peace accords puts a new spin on things but it's still too early to see if this will be enough of a positive to overcome the negatives.

I think peace in the region is rather unlikely simply because neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians actually desire peace...what they both desire is victory. Neither side seems willing to give up enough to achieve peace because that would mean failing to achieve victory. Peace will come when one side achieves total victory over the other. That is likely to mean either Israel is destroyed or any realistic prosepct of a Palestinian state is destroyed by Israeli annexxation of all Palestinian lands and expulsion of the Pals to the surrounding nations.

In a word, Dax--No.

Seven year peace deal is what I am looking for, granted it will fail in 36 months. If the agreement is reached in late 2008, that puts us in June of 2012, works for me.