A view of an entrance of the United Nations multi-agency compound near Herat November 5, 2009Reuters
A view of an entrance of the United Nations multi-agency compound near Herat November 5, 2009ReutersEgyptian president Anwar Sadat, left, and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin discuss peace in 1977.ReutersSoviet President Mikhail Gorbachev addresses the first meeting of the Mideast peace conference in Madrid October 30, 1991. Behind Gorbachev is U.S. President George Bush. At far right is Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.ReutersSyrian President Hafez al-Assad speaks with former U.S secretary of States James Baker in Damascus June 19. Talks centred on the possibility of the resumption of the Middle East peace process since leftist Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak came to power. Baker engineered the Middle East peace process which started in Madrid 1991 and has stalled in the last three years.ReutersThorbjoern Jagland, the foreign minister of Norway (R), embraces Palestinian President Yasser Arafat following their meeting in Bethlehem August 25, 2000. Jagland said after meeting Arafat that he was optimistic that both sides in the peace process would reach an agreement before the end of the year. Jagland's visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority was aimed at finishing the process they started in Oslo in 1993, and forge a final peace treaty.Reuters
The conflict has gone on for over a hundred years and it is 44 years since the Middle East war of June 1967, over this time there have been many peace plans and many negotiations. If some of these have been successful, including those between Egypt and Israel and Israel and Jordan, a settlement has still not been reached in the core conflict. Looking back at a history of negotiations, the results derived from the different signed treaties are more confusing than encouraging. With the recent appeal of US president Barrack Obama to find a final solution to the conflict in the hope of avoiding any more bloodshed, let us look at the peace talks that have marked the history of this conflict.
