Annapolis ongoing

I received dozens of emails from friends and colleagues in response to the notes on Annapolis below, many with salient and valuable information, insight, and opinion. I wish to express my sincere thanks to my correspondents on this vital matter.

It is never proper or reasonable utterly to dismiss events of this magnitude, indeed any efforts to resolve crisis and difficulty. I expressed great reserve regarding the Annapolis meeting, and hold by this. Press today similarly seems to continue in a similar vein, for which I list major and respectable media reportage. For all who wish to see the commentary in context, the links wherever it reads "clipped by," always take the reader to the entire article or commentary.

More importantly, I will address important issues that have been identified by those who wrote me above.

Thank you sincerely.

Here is a sampling of today's views on Annapolis:

International Herald Tribune

clipped from www.iht.com

Polls show Israeli skepticism over Annapolis peace summit

JERUSALEM: Less than one in five Israelis believe this week's U.S.-hosted peace conference was a success, and more than 80 percent of the public thinks the Israeli and Palestinian leaders will not meet their goal of reaching a peace agreement next year, according to two polls released Thursday.

Despite the dire outlook, the polls showed that a majority of Israelis still favor a peace agreement creating a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

San Francisco Chronicle

clipped from www.sfgate.com

Annapolis packs skeptical punch for Arab media

Few give much hope for Mideast peace by end of next year

In cafes and blogs in the Arab world, the Annapolis conference prompted little more than wisecracks. Commentators made much of a linguistic coincidence: In Arabic, ana polis means "I am the police."

The Wall Street Journal

clipped from online.wsj.com

Mr. Bush and Ms. Rice run the risk of repeating the mistakes of the Clinton Administration, which made a fetish of photo-ops, left the hard issues to the end and tried to substitute atmospherics for substance. That was the road map to failure at Camp David in 2000, the squandering of Presidential prestige and the bloody five-year intifada. Barack Obama's assertion that talk alone can make things better is not always true.

Only the churlish could wish the sincere Annapolis peace makers ill. But neither does it help to cheer them down a path that has led to failure so many times before.