“At UCLA, peacemaker Sen. George Mitchell gives insight Into Middle East”

May 1, 2009

“We must be patient and realistic in our expectation regarding the Middle East,” Sen. George Mitchell told an audience at UCLA on March 1.

Mitchell delivered this year’s Bernard Brodie Distinguished Lecture on the Conditions of Peace, and he struck a tone that was, perhaps appropriately, but not overwhelmingly, pessimistic about the dim prospects for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The architect of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 that paved the way for an end to the violence in Northern Ireland, Mitchell spent two and a half years as President Obama’s Special Envoy for Middle East Peace. Beginning in 2009, Mitchell tried but ultimately failed to help the Israelis and Palestinians break the impasse that has all but halted peace negotiations.

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