Rice and Abbas

Today Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met in Ramallah to talk about the the prospects for peace. Abbas rejected the idea of a provisional Palestinian state with temporary borders saying that they will eventually end up with a state that has truncated borders. Rice went to the Middle East with no real plan to bring peace to region and the trip has been seen as more of a mission to boost support for the US's addition of 21,000 troops to Iraq. What I find interesting about this story is that, 1) Rice didn't have any plan when she went to the Middle East. This is so odd, she went to talk about the Road Map for Peace and the prospects for peace based on that plan. The Road Map seemed dead, I haven't heard anyone talk about it for years already so when I read that she was using it as a framework for discussion it didn't make any sense. 2) Why would the Palestinians ever go for a plan that doesn't solidify its borders. The rejection of this plan is the only move that the Palestinians can make or else they would see a state that didn't accurately reflect the Palestinian population and no hope of control over the Temple Mount. 3) Although not specifically mentioned in any article about this that I read, the Temple Mount is perhaps the most contentious issue in this debate and a discussion on final borders cannot even begin without a plan for the Temple Mount that includes such groups as the Vatican, the US, and even France as the country with the most Roman Catholics.
The reality of the current situation is that Iran and Israels desire to wipe out the Iranian nuclear program is a much more pressing issue then provisional borders of a Palestinian state. On the Palestinian side the civil war between Fatah and Hamas that seems inevitable needs to be resolved before they can seriously think about a state.

Currently listening to Amadu and Mariam's "La Realite"