George Mitchell: Deja Vu All Over Again

Today is George Mitchell's first day shuttling as the new Middle East envoy, and it must seem familiar to him: though a lot of commentary has noted his successes in Northern Ireland some years back, he also headed the Sharm al-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee set up in 2000 and 2001 to study and make recommendations following the collapse of Camp David II and the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Intifada.

Reading the conclusions of the Mitchell group today is somewhat depressing to say the least: eight years later, almost every recommendation to both sides has yet to be implemented. Although his mission is a different one this time, since he is a representative of the US government rather than an international fact-finding group, he's likely to recognize most of the issues: settlements and security, refugees and terrorism and borders. He'll doubtless find better cell phone coverage and more Wi-Fi in the hotels, but pretty much the same problems he had to wrestle with in 2001. It doubtless seems, as Yogi Berra supposedly said, "like deja vu all over again."