Jerusalem: Under the aegis of Americans for Peace Now and Shalom Achshav, addended (I know, I know, but why not?) by meetings put together by an American Jewish inter-agency task force on Israeli Arabs (AKA Palestinian Israelis), I can now account for five senior cabinet ministers, sundry Knesset members, several Palestinians (Israelis and West Bank/Gazans). By and large, politicians get to be stars because they answer the questions they want to answer. If you are very lucky, there is a decent correspondence between the questions you have asked and the questions they want to answer. In the week at hand, the most open conversation – the one with the most give and take – was with Tzipi Livni, Israel’s new foreign minister and, by all accounts, the favorite political figure in Israel today, who actually responded with precision (and intelligence) to every question that was put to her. Before turning to the substance of that exchange, I want to say something on behalf of – as it were – the sponsor of this space, this bloggish conversation.
Read on…