• End game on Palestine and US Presidency

Looks like things are speeding up on Palestine.

Hamas has included Marwan Barghouti in the list of the first 500 Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for the Israeli POW they are holding.

Expect more twists and turns, but when Barghouti emerges as a national leader both Fateh and Hamas can unite behind, the last remaining official Israeli rationale for not negotiating suddenly collapses and final status negotiations based on Israeli withdrawal to 1967 boundaries can begin (accompanied of course by lots of hysteria about Iran).

Still far too early to predict results of US elections but a draft Condi movement looks more and more plausible.

So far I see no sign that the Republicans could agree on any other candidate capable of beating Hilary Clinton and no sign of the Democrats getting their act together sufficiently to beat Condoleeza Rice.

Condi doesn't even have to be a candidate in the primaries. There just has to be enough delegates opposed to both the two leading Republican candidates for them to remain deadlocked until one (or both) of them throws it to Condi.

I have noticed that there are interesting signs on the diplomacy stakes that are even coming through on the nightly news - what do you make of the Pelosi visits to Israel, Syria and Saudi Arabia? - did anyone else see the hug she gave to Olmert on TV? It was almost indecent - especially compared to the cold shoulder Israel seems to be getting from the Bush administration - i note Israel's female (dpty PM?) did not meet with Condi until the very last days of her recent visit to the U.S., and that Condi meets with Israel after she has met with the Palestinians and it seems that this is a significant change in the pattern of meetings - i also saw recently that Condi is attending fortnightly meetings between Israel and Palestinians in ?Egypt.

I don't know about Condi for President but certainly there is movement at the station on the two state solution.  I can't wait to see the celebrations around the world when that happens -  I feel sort of outraged that Pelosi seems to be assisting the Israelis stall for time - pushing an end to the occupation further from sight and past the Bush Presidency.  I'd like others thoughts  on the above observations.

Re Pelosi

Former Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami has a fascinating op-ed The US, but not democracy is losing among the Arabs.

Leaving aside the obligatory silly stuff ("collapse of American grand strategy"), its the closest I've seen so far to actually analysing the success of American grand strategy in reversing direction and enabling democratic change throughout the region.