In a farewell interview he gave to the Yediot Ahronot newspaper on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert dropped a bombshell. "What Im telling you now," he said to his interviewers, "no Israeli leader ever said before me: We have to pull out from almost all the territories [in the West Bank], including in East Jerusalem, including in the Golan Heights."

What do Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and former U.S. President Bill Clinton have in common? Not much one might guess, and this is generally true. But when one examines their careers closely one would be surprised that the two lame-duck leaders attempted in the few weeks before they left office to resolve once and for all the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

JERUSALEM -- Following the state of Israels recent prisoner swap with the Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah, during which the remains of two Israeli soldiers, captured during the Second Lebanon War in 2006, were exchanged for four Hezbollah resistance members, the remains of over another 100, and the notorious Samir Kuntar, a former member of the Palestine Liberation Front (PLF), Israel has been busy licking its wounds and struggling to come to terms with the deal.

Egypt and Israel signed a peace treaty following the Camp David accords in 1978, yet it seems someone either forgot to inform the general public on Egypts side of the border, or that the Egyptian public is still reluctant to accept the fact that peace may exist with a former enemy.

Now that the U.S. primary season is over and both parties have their nominees, the end of the George W. Bush era is in sight. It has been a strange journey and nowhere more so than in the Middle East.