Epstein Secrets

e that Kerry's diplomacy is based on fantasy. Who can imagine Syrian President Bashar al-Assad placidly agreeing to step down? Or Netanyahu ceding East Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley to the Palestinians and their security forces? Diplomatic breakthroughs, like arms control agreements, don't happen in a vac

ugh the pursuit of a political settlement in Syria as well as an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Here lies another problem. Virtually no one outside the State Department — including the nominal parties to the talks — takes seriously the possibility that Kerry's plan for a Geneva conference to settle the Syrian war

nyahu. Free and democratic Arab countries won't shrink from supporting this Palestinian right under any circumstances. Muslims will not give up on East Jerusalem, either. Arab regimes have been weak in the past. Democracy will strengthen them, but also add reason to Arab governance. Most Arabs have accepted

as well as deliver a major speech on Middle East policy. But the resignation didn't come as a surprise to those who worked closest with Mitchell. A State Department official described to Newsweek a man increasingly annoyed by both parties' constant moving of the goal posts and the constraints of the administra

ey throw at Israel with a map delineating how, for peace, they would accept getting back 95 percent of the West Bank and all Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and would swap the other 5 percent for land inside pre- 1967 Israel. Such an arrangement would allow some 75 percent of the Jewish settlers to remai

such treatment of a U.S. ambassador unthinkable. He specifically pointed out that "only in Russia" was such behavior possible. Meanwhile, the U.S. State Department issued statements in defense of its ambassador. But all of this did not stop Obama from being kindly disposed toward President Dmitry Medvedev duri

ogether. Yet in the 15 months from May 2011 to July 2012, the Quds Force and Hizballah attempted 20 attacks, by the count of Matthew Levitt, a former State Department counterterrorism official. “Hizballah and the Quds Force traded speed for tradecraft and reaped what they sowed,” Levitt writes in a January report f

he incoming parliament. The overall message is depressingly familiar to Palestinians: creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem is simply not on the list of priorities for Israel at the current time. And the Palestinian Authority is proving itself to be an increasingly fragile

ld of the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, the State Department poured hundreds of millions into a new public- di

this mighty American republic—the commercial empire in New York, the military power embodied by the Pentagon— had been hit. Sweets were handed out in East Jerusalem, there were no tears shed in Cairo for the Americans, more than three decades of U.S. aid notwithstanding. Everywhere in that Arab world—among the We

ogether. Yet in the 15 months from May 2011 to July 2012, the Quds Force and Hizballah attempted 20 attacks, by the count of Matthew Levitt, a former State Department counterterrorism official. "Hizballah and the Quds Force traded speed for tradecraft and reaped what they sowed," Levitt writes in a January report f

the incoming parliament. The overall message is depressingly familiar to Palestinians: creating a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem is simply not on the list of priorities for Israel at the current time. And the Palestinian Authority is proving itself to be an increasingly fragile

etanyahu. Free and democratic Arab countries won't shrink from supporting this Palestinian right under any circumstances. Muslims will not give up on East Jerusalem, either. Arab regimes have been weak in the past. Democracy will strengthen them, but also add reason to Arab governance. Most Arabs have accepted Is

, as well as deliver a major speech on Middle East policy. But the resignation didn't come as a surprise to those who worked closest with Mitchell. A State Department official described to Newsweek a man increasingly annoyed by both parties' constant moving of the goal posts and the constraints of the administratio