Relations across the strait have never been better since Taiwan and China split in 1949, and Mr Ma can be considered the architect of that.Yet Taiwan's public remains wary about too close a rapprochement with China, which considers the island to be a part of its territory and which insists on the right to use force to achieve reunification.
A prisoner exchange, in the context of a wider deal encompassing the Israeli siege on Gaza, rocket fire against Israel, and accompanied by Fatah-Hamas rapprochement and close Quartet involvement, could spark powerful, publicly supported momentum toward the establishment of Palestinian statehood and an eventual solution of the conflict.
Yet those expecting an historic rapprochement, or even close collaboration, will be sorely disappointed.
From then until 1932 he virtually controlled the internal organization of the ministry, following a policy that he described as one of "close union with England and of rapprochement with Germany".
Meanwhile, on the foreign policy front, the president is close to achieving exactly the kind of diplomatic rapprochement with longstanding adversaries that he promised when he was a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for president back in 2008.
Of greater significance, however, is the sense that a window briefly opened after the 2013 election of the centrist Hassan Rouhani as Iran's president is closing, and that a unique opportunity for a historic rapprochement has been, or is about to be missed.
The public apology coincides with a diplomatic rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, whose shared border has been closed since the Nagorny-Karabakh war in 1993 and who have been locked in almost 100 years of hostility.
Ignoring clear signs of a rapprochement between the Tories and the SNP, he strayed close to politely telling the Scots off, bemoaning "the stain of separatism seeping through the union flag".
Ever since the close of the Second Vatican Council in 1965, the Roman Catholic Church has made interfaith rapprochement part of church teaching.
Klopp hinted at the possibility of a rapprochement in midweek, suggesting that Sakho was not yet fully fit but is "closer to everything".
