All Policy Analysis by Dennis Ross

This Sunday, Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem will cast their votes at more than 3,000 polling places and elect a new president of the Palestinian Authority. The turnout is expected to be high, and Israelis have promised to lift checkpoints that otherwise might impede the voting

Something is stirring in Gaza. There is a sense of hope and possibility, a belief that it is time for a change. And there is a new discourse that includes all Palestinian factions and an open questioning of violence. I witnessed all this in an extraordinary event hosted in Gaza

The United States has had critical interests in the Middle East for as long as it has been a global power. Securing the flow of the region’s oil to the world economy has always been a central priority. During the Cold War, competition with the Soviet Union for Middle Eastern

Yasser Arafat has dominated the Palestinian national movement for the past 40 years. He has been a fixture on the landscape of the Middle East. He came to embody the Palestinian cause and was determined that no other Palestinian figure could emerge as a possible alternative to him. Not surprisingly

As the Middle East negotiator for the United States during the Clinton administration, I met with Yasser Arafat more than any other non-Palestinian -- probably more than 500 meetings in a series of windowless negotiating rooms, in his office overlooking the Mediterranean in Gaza, in the Oval Office with the

Nowhere are the paradoxes of the Middle East more evident than in Gaza. Ariel Sharon, Israeli prime minister and architect of the settler movement, is now being castigated by Israeli settlers for his decision to withdraw from Gaza. To win Knesset approval of his controversial plan, he had to depend

Before peace can be initiated, Israel, the Arab world, and the Palestinians must undergo a change in behavior and, in the case of the latter, find new, legitimate leadership. The Clinton administration was correct to put Yasser Arafat to the test in 2000. During the Camp David talks, even the

The recent bus bombings in Beersheba reminded Israelis that the lull in suicide attacks in Israel had less to do with the Hamas intention to conduct such acts and more to do with Israel's capability to prevent them. Israel's presence in the West Bank, including continuing raids into cities such

Nobody spent more time with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat during the years of the Oslo peace process than I did. Why didn't I see that he was incapable of ending the conflict with Israel? Certainly there were those who claimed he could not be trusted and would never make

There is no doubt that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is absolutely determined to carry out disengagement despite the political problems within his own party. The demographic issue of ensuring a long-term Jewish democratic majority in Israel and the associated political pressure has fueled his determination to proceed with disengagement. Sharon

While the world remains riveted on Iraq, Egypt has signaled a new -- even unprecedented -- readiness to play an intensive leading role in ending the Israeli-Palestinian war. In Egyptian eyes, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's intention to withdraw from the Gaza Strip has created an opening, and Egypt is

There have been several positive developments in Iraq in the past several weeks: An interim government was formed and the largely discredited Iraqi Governing Council was disbanded. The U.N. Security Council unanimously embraced the new Iraqi government and declared that it should be sovereign even on security matters. After months

Once again, the Bush administration must prepare for the "day after". This time the preparations apply not only to Iraq, but to the Israelis and Palestinians, as Israel has declared its determination to withdraw from Gaza and part of the West Bank and George W. Bush has endorsed the disengagement

In diplomacy, there are times when process and substance take on equal importance. Ideas that might be acceptable, or at least tolerable, if presented one way become wholly unacceptable when presented another way. That may help explain some of the backlash against President Bush's announcement Wednesday that the U.S. would

Israelis and Palestinians are locked in a stalemate that is worsening over time. The withdrawal initiative by Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon creates an opportunity to transform the situation, but the direction of that transformation remains an unanswered question. Many Palestinians view an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an evacuation

Lest there be any doubt, the assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, is a reminder that there is a war going on between the Israelis and Palestinians. For the last three years, there has been no real process for resolving it: the road map