This week is gridlock week in New York City. The General Assembly of the UN is convening, Clinton's Global Initiative is convening-and while most New Yorkers have no idea why the traffic is even worse than ever, the fact is that there is a critical mass of world leaders in the borough of Manhattan, ready to talk to each other--and some of them are going to get an audience with President Bush. This morning, I met for breakfast with some Palestinian businessmen. Behind us, in the hotel dining room, were several members of the Jordanian cabinet. The cross-town traffic was at a crawl. But, our discussion over coffee--like many informal and formal talks this week--was about whether or not there could be renewed talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and the role of the U.S. There was also an interesting news article in today's New York Times about Israeli visa policy, where Palestinian businesspeople are caught in a catch 22 Israeli policy that is bent on discouraging more Palestinian settlement in the West Bank, but is especially harmful to Palestinian businesspeople, many of whom lived in the diaspora and returned to the West Bank to build a future Palestine--exactly the sort of folks Israel might want, one would think, to anchor a future state--but instead, they are finding themselves unable to work and travel because the Israeli system of granting temporary visas for travel is now culminating in Israel cutting off travel outside of the West Bank or Jerusalem after a certain number of visits. I heard about this from people I met with this summer when I was in the region, people whose livlihood depended on frequent trips between Jerusalem or Ramallah and Amman or Frankfurt or Dubai, but who were being restricted by Israeli policy, people whom Israel needs to build a viable state on its border.

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