By Jafar M Ramini

Call me a cynic, but when it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck why do they insist on calling it a swan?

I am having a moment of déjà vu here. The talks about talks about how to conduct talks are underway in Washington and I cannot feel but a sense of utter emptiness and disappointment.

How many times have we been here before? What have discussions and talks with the Israelis under the auspices of the United States of America brought us, but more loss of land, more deportation, more ethnic cleansing, more squandering of resources, more strangulation and more controls of every minute detail of daily Palestinian life? In fact, only this week, as the talks kicked off, the Israeli housing minister announced the approval of yet another illegal settlement in…