The woebgeone G. Walker administration’s fatally flawed foundation of not recognizing and accepting that the region’s conflicts are inter-connected, inter-related and interdependent – is grudging change in the air? Frankly, their own chief policy architects and top-level promoters, their statements, actions and history belie and dash to smithereens even that miniscule nugget of hope.

While diplomatic sources describe repeatedly the main motive for America’s renewed interest in the Israeli-Palestinian ongoing violence as eagerness to have moderate Arab countries pressure Iraqi Sunnis into backing the government of Nuri al-Maliki, the administration formally maintains there is no linkage between the two. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said this week that the United States is interested in both achieving stability in Iraq and reaching a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but that the two goals are pursued “separately and apart.” Also viewed separately is the goal of stabilizing Lebanon’s democracy, a third trouble spot cited by the Jordanian king. “I don’t think these are linked in some kind of game,” Hadley said. [No, they are linked in actual, palapable reality. — voxd ]

The only senior figure in the administration known to have acknowledged a linkage between the Israeli-Palestinian dispute and the larger problems of the region, State Department counselor Philip Zelikow, resigned this week, due to what some administration sources described as frustration with the direction of American foreign policy. This past September, Zelikow said in a speech at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that easing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was a “sine qua non” to securing cooperation from moderate Arab countries on broader regional issues.

The State Department leadership publicly rejected Zelikow’s ideas at the time, but numerous sources close to the administration agreed this week that the notion of linkage between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the situation in Iraq, and to a certain extent in Iran, as well, is now emerging as the prevailing view guiding America’s Middle East policy. Article