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A Halting Start

If the Secretary of States closing talk was any measure, last weeks conference in Annapolis, Md., got the Middle East peace process off to a halting start. Condoleezza Rice, usually full-voiced and self-assured, read her remarks in a weak and uncertain manner, like a rank amateur. Her obvious lack of confidence in her own message was a metaphor for the event. Apart from gathering representatives of 49 nations and international organizations, the conference achieved little more than setting a schedule for Israeli and Palestinian officials to meet regularly for negotiations over the next year. No new ideas were advanced, no schema for negotiation ratified, no pressure applied. Popular opposition to the talks was manifest on the streets of Jerusalem, Nablus and Gaza. If there is to be a new Palestinian state by 2009, then the major issues need to be worked out in no more than six months, so there will be time to bring the uncertain populations and fractious political coalitions on board and to plan for implementing the accord. The timing is critical. In particular, achieving peace requires that both sides find a new way to engage Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza and a majority in the Palestinian legislature. Only determination by the United States to grasp the nettles represented by Hamas will make this happen. But President Bushs parting remarks to the Israeli and Palestinian leaders augured no intense involvement on his part: I wish you all the best.

Demolitions in New Orleans

The scheduled mid-December demolition of 3,000 public housing units in New Orleans in the wake of the hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 has prompted over 40 human rights organizations to decry a move they see as an injustice to low-income residents. In a letter to federal officials, including Alfonso Jackson, secretary of the This article appears in December 17 2007.