This time last year the big question about the last act of the outgoing administration of U.S. President George W. Bush was whether it would launch military strikes against Irans nuclear sites. For the past few weeks, the big question has been whether the United States would start diplomatic relations by opening an interest section in a friendly embassy in Tehran.

Whatever one may say about U.S. President-elect Barack Obama and his cabinet-in-the-making, there is no doubt that he seems to have abandoned, hopefully temporarily, his promises of change and bipartisanship that were front-and-center themes in his election campaign.

Israel is once again trying to teach the Palestinians, especially Hamas, the Islamist group in control of the Gaza Strip, a lesson that it has repeatedly failed to do despite its overpowering military arsenal. One would think that the Israeli establishment, now in a state of disarray thanks to the discredited leadership of the outgoing prime minister, Ehud Olmert, would realize that a new approach is needed if it wants to live side by side in peace with the Palestinians.

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised on Monday to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Israel would release 250 Palestinian prisoners next month ahead of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported.

PARIS -- Condoleezza Rice, U.S. secretary of state in the outgoing George W. Bush administration, has this week paid yet another of her pointless visits to the Middle East - her eighth in the past year since the Annapolis Conference of November 2007 - and very probably her last. The mystery is why she has bothered to come to the region, again and again and again. She has been indefatigable, but totally ineffectual.

GAZA CITY, Gaza -- Following intensive negotiations with Hamas, the de facto leadership of Gaza, a group of European parliamentarians has been told by the organization that it will accept a Palestinian state within the internationally recognized 1967 borders as well as offer Israel a long-term ceasefire.

CAIRO – U.S. President George W. Bush is making a last ditch effort toward forging a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians after U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scheduled a Nov. 9 meeting in Egypt between members of the Middle East Peace Quartet. Washington had hoped to reinvigorate a Mideast peace process before leaving office in January, but time has almost run out.

Here is the problem with the Israeli-Palestinian dispute: As one former Israeli official recently put it, the maximum the Israelis can offer in terms of concessions is less than the minimum the Palestinians can accept, and the minimum the Palestinians can accept is more than the maximum the Israelis can offer. This is the fundamental reason why the peace talks never get past the starting block.

PARIS -- A quiet move is afoot in Europe to persuade the next American president to give Colin Powell, the distinguished U.S. soldier-statesman, the difficult task of reviving the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

At no other time in recent history has the reputation of the United States reached rock-bottom levels as it has during these waning days of George W. Bush in the White House, because of his administrations failed foreign policies and the countrys near economic collapse.