President Obama's Mideast peace envoy, George Mitchell, ended his latest shuttle mission to the region a few hours before the start of the Jewish New Year -- with prospects for resumption of high-level Israel-Palestinian peace talks as elusive as ever.  It's also clear that Mitchell struck out in his efforts to arrange a three-way summit of Obama, Netanyahu and Abbas next week at the UN in New York.This is the first time in recent years that an American president can't even arrange for Israeli and Palestinian leaders to get together in the same room, let alone conduct serious negotiations.It needn't have been so.  For more than a year before George W. Bush left the White House, Israeli and Palestinian leaders and negotiators met frequently and even went to far as to address final-status issues on the path to an eventual peace agreement.  Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas met without pre-conditions.  So did then-Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni with her Palestinian...(Read Full Post)