Spot on!

I am quite unimpressed by your "bold" prognostication as well. But not because it is pretty easy to assume there will be war during a war, but because you seem to think that a "regional peace summit" is "good news" in and of itself. What this article misses, and what you ignore, is that there is absolutely no reason to believe that anything positive would come out of a "regional peace summit" even if it were not disrupted by "an attack" of some kind. In fact, I see absolutely no reason to have a peace conference right now.

A perfect example of how a "peace" plan can be useless was the idiotic "road map". That plan, for example, did not take into any consideration the issue of justice, but only tried to deal with what Bush considered to be practical issues. But obviously, the practical things (like Palestinian attacks against the occupiers, or the israeli settlement policy) are the manifestations of deeper issues and not just blind hate. Any "regional peace summit" now would obviously not deal with the issues of justice, but would just be an Arab (government, not the people) attempt to placate the USA and express an image of doing something while actually just selling the Palestinian people out for their own stability and fear of becoming the next Iraq. The Arab governemnts have nothing to offer in terms of peace, and Israel has no reason to try to do justice to the Palestinians.

Regardless of a conference, obviously, for example, even if BOTH Israel and the Palestinians gave up all their weapons, it would not make peace. The fundamental issue are the reasons that there is not peace, it is not just a matter of weapons. and th efundamental issue is the fact that Zionism itself (because the Jewish immigrants have refused to share the land with the inhabitants of the land) has been a huge crime against the Palestinian people (ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity...). Until that is addressed honestly and fairly by the Jews (and the related issues like right of return, stealing 78% of historic Palestine, Jewish racism against Arabs, status of Jerusalem, the apartheid wall, settlements...), they can have as many peace conferences as they want and it will not help at all (well, maybe it will help Israel, because they have all the power and don't care to actually make peace, they are not the ones under occupation).

Calling Philip Tetlock?

How about some other predictions here:

* likelihood of renewed violence in Northern Ireland?
* likelihood of EU surviving another 50 years?

More seriously, at what point in the evolution of the Northern Ireland situation did it move beyond being vulnerable to a renewal of the violence? Was the Omagh bombing a turning point?