Geoffrey Wheatcroft in the Independent:
For a time Blair also persuaded his credulous followers that the invasion would revive the "peace process" and lead to a just settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. That has proved even more of a tragic illusion, which is one reason why watching Barack Obama in Oslo on Thursday was almost unbearable, quiet apart from the fact that a man who had just increased hostilities in a barely justifiable and very likely unwinnable war trying to explain why he should accept the Nobel Peace Prize.
What was even more dispiriting was to compare his flowery words with what an unnamed western ambassador in Israel was quoted as saying on the BBC World Service the other day: President Obama and Hillary Clinton had between them "driven the peace process into a ditch". The bleak truth is that a settlement is much further off today than 10 years ago.
