NIKE DIPLOMACY:

Drawing Israel's borders (Paul Reynolds, 8/14/05, BBC News)

The Israeli withdrawal from Gaza - and the wider disengagement plan of which it is part - represents a major shift in the political landscape of the Middle East of a kind that is seen only every decade or so.

It remains to be seen whether it also represents an opportunity to clear the way for a final two-state agreement or is an attempt by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to take matters into his own hands and draw Israel's final borders unilaterally.

It was excusable that people in the MSM and the reality-based community didn't get this at the start of the process, because it is revolutionary, but how can you near the end and still not grasp that the Sharansky/Bush/Sharon plan leapfrogs negotiations and goes directly to imposing statehood on Palestine unilaterally.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 14, 2005 6:56 AM