Epstein Secrets

rusted, diminishing even further the European Union's role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Second, such a move could only undermine Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, which view Hamas as an enemy to be defeated rather than as a genuine partner. Third, peace talks would themselves be impossible if Hamas were part

that the president has been qualified for the power of life and death by his reading. Perhaps he once taught the texts and their arguments; but the Oval Office is not a seminar room. This raises an interesting scruple about the relation of ideas to power. It is that the relation should never be unmediated

. I doubted that even Arafat would have been ready to do so. But relations had only worsened, since his death in 2004, between the Fatah old guard in the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank and the Hamas overlords in Gaza. I doubted very much that Abu Mazen would want to get involved. I did send an aide to see him to ask

restart negotiations, declaring it “intolerable” that there was still not a Palestinian state. He was explicit about what Israel needed to do. In an Oval Office meeting with Bibi in May 2009, and in a speech in Cairo the next month, he called for a total halt to settlement construction on the West Bank. US op

. I doubted that even Arafat would have been ready to do so. But relations had only worsened, since his death in 2004, between the Fatah old guard in the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank and the Hamas overlords in Gaza. I doubted very much that Abu Mazen would want to get involved. I did send an aide to see him to ask

restart negotiations, declaring it "intolerable" that there was still not a Palestinian state. He was explicit about what Israel needed to do. In an Oval Office meeting with Bibi in May 2009, and in a speech in Cairo the next month, he called for a total halt to settlement construction on the West Bank. US op