Reading the New York Times’ editorials on Annapolis, full of praise for “moderates” and worrying about who shook whose hand, I am reminded of why I barely read that newspaper anymore. The reporting is occasionally good, such as the very nice long feature on radicalism in northern Morocco a few days ago, but when it comes to Israel just forget about it. This piece for instance quotes, aside (current) US officials, Martin Indyk, Dennis Ross and John Bolton. Never mind the jovial hamster and his bosses.
I mean, is there anything more to Annapolis than providing a mechanism for boosting Mahmoud Abbas while keeping the Palestinian Authority subservient to Israel and the US, thus isolating Hamas and preparing the ground for booting it out of Gaza? And in the meantime recreating the illusion of a peace process Palestinians will never credibly endorse while divided and many in the Israeli political establishment (and certainly the current ruling coalition) have no intention of ever finalizing? Or am I missing something? The NYT could celebrate that if it wanted to, but enough with the bullshit.
(Most links through Angry Arab.)