Peace deals only paper over the issues at the very heart of conflict

NEXT year will mark the10th anniversary of the famous handshake between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn that put a seal upon the peace deal secretly negotiated in Oslo.

As both men were embraced by a smiling President Clinton, we were led to believe we were witnessing the beginning of the end of the world's most intractable conflict.

The front page of the New York Times the following day described the scenes of emotion and bewilderment: "The jaded were awed. Even for a New Age Presidency, there were a lot of men in the audience crying. George Stephanopolous, the Clinton aid, and Rahm Emanuel, the White House adviser who had helped arranged the logistics, were crying. So was the Hollywood contingent Ron Silver and Richard Dreyfuss along with Leon Wieselteir, the literary editor of the New Republic. 'Do you believe this?' Mr Dreyfuss asked Mr Weiseltier. 'And you're the guy who saw those aliens land in that movie,' Mr Wieseltier replied, referring to the actor's role in Close Encounters of the Third Kind."