More bad news on the "peace process" front

Both Israel and some of the US's pals in the Arab world (specifically, Saudi Arabia and Jordan) are digging in their heels on Obama's push for compromises, and Hillary Clinton has slammed the Israelis for evicting about 50 Palestinian Arabs from their houses in East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, Helena Cobban has an excellent piece on Dennis Ross' unsuitability as a negotiator in any of this, and on the fact that (as the Saudis and Jordanians are insisting) the time for relying on "confidence-building measures" to further the peace process came and went a long time ago. The Arab leaders refuse to buy into that charade any longer - and justifiably so, because all it ever produced was photo ops as well as time and pretexts for Israel to keep claiming that it had no "partner" for peace - even as it continued to expand settlements and undermine the credibility of any Palestinian leader who tried to play ball. I think that anyone who understood all of that was truly depressed when Obama decided to bring Ross onto his team. If Obama wanted to inject some new forcefulness into his diplomatic agenda, he could do a lot worse than to sack Ross, give him some sort of medal, and let him go back to WINEP and working for the AIPAC bunch.