WASHINGTON: Time was running out when Secretary of State George P. Shultz returned home in April 1988 after flying 16,000 miles in a failed mission to persuade Arabs and Israelis to negotiate their differences. Shultz said he would keep trying.
Whos afraid to struggle against odds? he asked.
And so he did, in futility, until the Reagan administration ended in January 1989 without putting the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel on a course to a settlement.
But he shaped the future by legitimizing the Palestinian Arabs as a people with a defensible stake in determining their future.
Shultz, who died Saturday at age 100, was one of Americas most respected 20th-century statesmen. He served in President Richard M. Nixons Cabinet as secretary of labor and as secretary of treasury and then pursued accommodation with an evolving Soviet Union as President Ronald Reagans top diplomat for 6 years.
A lifelong Republican, Shultz negotiated the first-ever treaty with the Soviet Union to…