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.

DUBAI, UAE -- At the height of the Asian financial crisis and meltdown of Russia in the 1990s, a pundit said that Russian President Boris Yeltsin went to bed drunk and Brazil woke up with a hangover.

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.

Once considered the safest country in Europe, if not the world, Switzerland is now a potential target of a terrorist attack. Why? In the past few months something has happened to this quiet and neutral country where outside of an occasional banking scandal nothing much went on; at least nothing that merited international focus.

BEIRUT -- One of the great hopes and subsequent disappointments in modern Middle Eastern diplomacy has been the "Quartet" of four major international players that was supposed to monitor, shepherd and promote Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking during the past five years. The group – comprised of Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations - has not only failed to advance the peace process since its establishment in 2002; astoundingly, it has also whittled away the political credibility and impact of two of those parties - the E.U. and U.N.

I was asked recently to explain why Israel was "ghettoizing" the Palestinians by constructing a security barrier in areas that have served as transit points for terrorists entering the country. The questioner noted that, as a Jew, I should be more sensitive to the concept of a ghetto, and its dehumanizing effects on human beings. I responded that the security barrier was neither built for reasons of discrimination nor motivated by racism, but as a deterrent to protect the lives of Israelis from Palestinian suicide bombers; and in fact it has, to a great extent, accomplished its purpose.

GAZA CITY, Gaza -- A dramatic confrontation in the Mediterranean Sea could break out within hours between the Israeli navy and two vessels sailing toward the Gaza coastline – the SS Free Gaza and the SS Liberty – in an endeavor to break through the Israeli blockade of the poverty-stricken Palestinian Strip.

AMMAN -- When an Arab becomes the first incumbent head-of-state wanted for war crimes and genocide by the International Criminal Court, it is bound to have political implications and raise concerns about hidden political agendas that may underlie legal allegations.