Tel Aviv

So here we are. It's déjà vu all over again. Or is it?

Last time around, in 1991 following the Gulf War, Bush 41 and his forceful partner, Secretary of State James Baker, pushed and cajoled all the relevant parties, including a very reluctant Likud Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, to attend the Madrid peace conference. That led to the 1993 Oslo accords, a process that was suspended after the breakdown of the Camp David summit in 2000 and the outbreak of the second intifada.

Now, following the latest Gulf War, the formation of a new Palestinian government and the official US presentation of the road map "to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict," it appears as if a new window of opportunity for possible progress toward peace has opened.

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