With Palestinian efforts going full steam ahead to get United Nations recognition of a Palestinian state in September, the Obama administration is attempting to refocus world attention on a negotiated agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, according to NPR.

Hillary Clinton speaking at the U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Washington

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was supposed to have attended a meeting of the Middle East Quartet (United Nations, Russian Federation, United States, European Union), which issued a statement in September, 2010, calling for recognition of a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders by September, 2011.

However, Clinton stayed away from the meeting, and instead announced that President Barack Obama would be giving a speech soon on the Mideast and North Africa, and to relaunch the “peace process.” Speaking to the U.S.-Islamic World Forum, she indicated that U.N. recognition would be inappropriate in the current climate, where the entire region is consumed by uprisings:

“The status quo between Palestinians and Israelis is no more sustainable than the political systems that have crumbled in recent months. Neither Israel’s future as a Jewish democratic state or the legitimate aspirations of Palestinians can be secured without a negotiated two-state solution. And while it is a truism that only the parties themselves can make the hard choices necessary for peace, there is no substitute for continued active American leadership. And the president and I are committed to that.”

The so-called “peace process” has been dead as a doornail for some time. The Palestinians blame the collapse of the peace process on the refusal of the Israelis to stop building housing settlements in east Jerusalem, and the Israelis refuse to stop building the settlements until a peace agreement is reached.

Clinton’s speech was well received, according to the Arab News, and Muslim leaders at the meeting said that they want Washington to take a more active role in seeking enduring solutions to the Middle East problems.

Speaking personally, I find this development astonishing. It’s like a broken record, where the same words are used over and over. As I’ve written many times, starting in 2003, when President George Bush announced his “Mideast Roadmap to Peace,” a Mideast peace is impossible, since Arabs and Jews will be refighting the genocidal 1948 war that followed the partitioning of Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel.

There have been three wars since then — the war between Israelis and Hizbollah, fought largely on Lebanon’s soil in 2006; the war between Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah in Gaza in 2008, that led to Hamas control of Gaza; and Operation Cast Lead, the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza early in 2009.

So now, apparently President Obama is going to be putting forth a new “Roadmap to Peace,” which I assume will sound very much like the old one. At the same time, tension is growing on the border between Gaza and Israel. (See “9-Apr-11 News — Gaza violence escalates after anti-tank missile strikes school bus.”) The realities on the ground are likely to be much more important than anything that the politicians do.

Czech president ‘steals’ expensive pen at ceremony

For today’s entertainment, here’s a video of Czech president Vaclav Klaus stealing an expensive pen during an official ceremony in Chile. This video has gone viral.

[youtube lFPH8rNEQd4 nolink]

More than 5,000 Czechs have signed up to a Facebook campaign to mail pens to the president, according to Associated Press.

Air strikes by U.S. fighter jets continue in Libya

Air strikes in Libya by U.S. fighter jets were supposed to have ended when the U.S. turned command of Libya operations over to Nato on April 4. But now it turns out that U.S. fighter jets have continued to conduct strikes on Libya’s air defenses. Reuters

Increasingly bitter Sunni/Shia divide in Bahrain

Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims used to get along pretty well in Bahrain, but the uprising and subsequent violent crackdown by security police has created an increasingly bitter sectarian divide between the two. Time

Public unrest in Iran over 10-fold increase in natural gas prices

Public unrest in Iran is increasing over the 10-fold increase in the price of natural gas since December, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cut off state subsidies. In addition to natural gas, prices have risen on fuel, electricity and bread. Washington Post

Hillary Clinton angry because State Dept. workers can’t have iPads

Hillary Clinton got angry when she was sitting on an airplane next to someone from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) who was using an iPad. It seems that USAID workers are allowed to have iPads, while people in the State Department are not. Fierce Government IT

RoboEarth — a world wide web for robots

If it takes you a month to learn a new skill, and your friend wants to learn the same skill, then it will probably take him a month also. But that’s not true of intelligent robots: If one takes a month to learn a new skill, it can simply upload the skill to another robot in a few seconds. That’s the idea behind RoboEarth, which is an online database of knowledge and skills that robots can exchange with one another. The project is sponsed by the European Union’s Cognitive Systems and Robotics Initiative. RoboEarth