Great expectations

Condoleezza Rice with Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank today. Photograph: Omar Rashidi/AP
With the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, meeting Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank, now seems a good time to read a profile of the new Palestinian president. The New York Review of Books comes up with the goods, detailing the politics of the man popularly known Abu Mazen. Hussein Agha and Robert Malley describe Abu Mazen as opposed to violence on the practical grounds that it does not deliver for Palestinians and plays to Israel's strength. After four years of intifada and more than four thousand dead, a fatigued Palestinian electorate has made the only choice it could, the piece argues. The authors are mightily impressed by Abu Mazen's integrity and cool rationality, but they offer little hope that a mutually acceptable settlement to the Palestinian and Israeli conflict is within his gift.