Anyone else think this is solid reasoning on the Obama team's part?  Given that Hamas and Hezbollah are Iranian proxies and Syria still in the Iranian camp, it doesn't seem like Iran can be separated from Arab-Israeli issues.

Wkipedia on Dennis Ross:

-- Currently, Ross is counselor and Ziegler distinguished fellow of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He is the first chairman of a new Jerusalem based think tank, the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, funded and founded by the Jewish Agency. Ross's involvement in the Institute led some to assume that he would not resume his role as Middle East peace envoy, M. J. Rosenberg of Talking Points Memo commented, "I had thought that former Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross hoped to return to mediation when the next administration comes in. Apparently, he's had it. He is currently in Israel chairing a major Jewish leadership conference on the future of Israel and the Jewish people -- with Netanyahu, Zuckerman, top AIPAC leaders and many of the other 'usual suspects.' This is not the kind of thing one does if one intends to get back into the 'honest broker' business. This is like George Mitchell (a Lebanese-American) chairing a session in Beirut on the Arab future. If he did that, Mitchell could still work on Ireland but not the Middle East.

No change. No hope.

No hope for you, macscumbag. The Jews are winning and you are losing.

ndmackenzie, the only change you would like would be Adolf Hitler. Or Osama, that's more like the rathole where you write from. Leeds is a prime place for murderous scumbags like yourself, anti-Semites by profession.

[via Matthew Yglesias]

Scott Macleod, Time's Cairo correspondent since 1998, writes:

-- The selection of a Dennis Ross would represent the past, which is to say the failure of U.S. policy in the region;

-- Ross' s deep personal role in past failed policy ought to be enough to disqualify him from any supremo role. You can read an exhaustive, self-serving account of Ross's statecraft in his 815-page memoir, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace but here's my critical, very abbreviated version. He's already held the job of chief U.S. Middle East envoy for 12 years, through the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations, and wasn't very good at it. After the landmark Madrid peace conference, he and his bosses proved unable to coax Israelis and Palestinians toward an agreement; the Norwegians stepped in and secretly mediated the Oslo Accords between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat in 1993. By then, Ross's task was to implement the Oslo framework agreement, which envisioned a comprehensive and final peace deal by 1999. But Ross should take a large part of the responsibility for the mismanagement of the subsequent negotiations, which gradually dissolved into another Palestinian intifada, the worst spasm of violence in the conflict in 50 years, and the rise of the anti-negotiations Islamist Hamas group against Arafat's party.

Ouch.

No change. No hope.

mideast.blogs.time.com/.../obama-mideast-watch-ross-vs-kurtzer

"...the Norwegians stepped in and secretly mediated the Oslo Accords between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat in 1993. By then, Ross's task was to implement the Oslo framework agreement, which envisioned a comprehensive and final peace deal by 1999."

The accords were flawed from the start, and Ross  pointed to it repeatedly. They were not clear enough, and did not have a mechanism for apportioning blame and responsibility. So that when one side violated the terms, it could always find justification based on the document itself.

Ross, even then, understood that if any agreement between P and I is to succeed, it has to leave no loose ends, no room for interpretations. A tight sequence of reciprocal to-do's, closely scrutinized by independent monitors. When a violation, delay, procrastination , occur, the responsible party should be published, with no sentiments,  no special considerations. Something like a zero-tolerance approach to the implementation of the deal.

Ross speaks a lot and often about the "drama" of negotiations. and how important it is. Clearly both Israel and the Palestinians court the world's good opinion and if such an agreement could be drawn up, with this factor in sight, it might just do the trick.

I think Ross is the person to manage it.

Such empty formulas like  "No change. No hope." express the disappointment of the usual pro-Palestinian crowds who want change to mean making Israel miserable. Obama is wiser than that. So it seems.