OPEC’s ministers will hold their regular semi-annual meeting in Vienna this month, which coincides with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the organization in 1960 in Baghdad.

All of Britain is talking about the memoirs of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, which were entitled ‘A Journey’. However, another book published at the same time also deserves notice: Dr. Brian Jones is a scientist who worked for the scientific and technical directorate of the Defense Intelligence Staff and was responsible for intelligence on WMDS. He wrote a book about his experience with the British government on the eve of the war, entitled “Failing Intelligence: The True Story of How We Were Fooled into Going to War in Iraq”.

It is out of the question for the escalating crisis between Morocco and Spain to end through official containment, seeing how its repercussions have spilled over into the popular level.

Rabat found itself being led into opening a new front with Madrid against the backdrop of the violence to which Moroccan nationals were subjected to, at the hands of the Spanish police on the border crossings of occupied Melilla.

Iran was never as “present” at the Middle East negotiations table as it is present today. Indeed, in spite of Tehran’s absence from this table, Ahmadinejad and his allies stood at the Israeli border, from the North and from the South, facing Mahmoud Abbas, Benjamin Netanyahu, Hillary Clinton and George Mitchell – that negotiator ill-fated with such a task, who did not deserve an end like this one to his rich diplomatic career.

President Barack Obama declared the end of the combat mission in Iraq. We thank him for delivering on his promise of military withdrawal from Iraq, and we will thank him even more when the remaining U.S troops, which stayed behind on the pretext of ‘training’, will withdraw. The presence of 50 thousand U.S soldiers, mostly Special Forces, means that Iraq is still under occupation, and will remain so until the remaining U.S troops withdraw at the end of 2011, as the President promised.

Who will fill the vacuum after the withdrawal of the US Army from Iraq? It is a question which the Americans have asked, holding work meetings over it that have included politicians, members of the military and strategy experts. Some of those meetings have been of a secret nature, including the direct participation of allies of the United States, while others were public and held in research centers and universities.

The negotiators in Washington did not launch their action after they discovered new opportunities allowing them to move forward toward peace and turn the page of the conflict. They are actually meeting for the absolute opposite reason: their inability to achieve peace and their despair of seeing a breakthrough opening the horizon of a solution.

The US Administration has crossed yet another stretch of road on its path towards reshuffling priorities over the past two weeks, by announcing the end of military combat operations in Iraq, and by hosting the Palestinian-Israeli peace process summit, in the presence of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordanian Monarch Abdullah II, to launch direct negotiations. Those absent from both discussions in a direct sense, yet present in both in any case, include Iran and Syria, as well as the great powers holding permanent membership in the Security Council, especially China and Russia.

To surrender completely to memory is dangerous, especially in the Middle East. To search for the future without pausing at the lessons of memory is also dangerous. No observer in this part of the world can escape the trap of making comparisons and observations. It is probable that the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in Washington are taking place in another world and are seeking peace in a Middle East that has changed. It would be worrisome if the old rules are still followed when events practically show that the rules of the game have changed.

The Obama administration wants the Palestinians and Israelis to negotiate for a period of one year, six months of which in the United States and then six months in our region, with any resulting agreement to be implemented over a period of ten years, after which the independent Palestinian state would be established.