US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is playing into the idea that the so-called “settlements” are the obstacle to peace.
"How long are you going to extend THIS freeze, Mrs Clinton?" (Photo: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton headed Monday to the Middle East urging both Israel and the Palestinians to find ways to clear the “hurdle” posed by a looming expiration on the Jewish settlement construction moratorium.
Flying to the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, Clinton repeated US President Barack Obama’s call on Friday for Israel to extend the 10-month moratorium on settlements that is due to expire on September 26.
But she left the door open to creative solutions, urging both sides to make reciprocal gestures that would maintain the momentum in the direct negotiations that were launched in Washington on September 2.
Clinton was due to hold the second round of negotiations in Egypt with both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. She was also to meet President Mubarak of Egypt, a key Arab mediator.
“We believe that the moratorium should be extended,” the chief US diplomat told reporters before her plane landed in Shannon, Ireland for refuelling.
“At the same time we recognize that an agreement that could be forged between the Israelis and the Palestinians on actions that would be taken by both sides that would enable the negotiations to continue is in the best interests of both sides,” she said.
“This has to be understood as an effort by both the prime minister (Netanyahu) and the president (Abbas) to get over a hurdle posed by the expiration of the original moratorium in order to continue negotiations,” she said.
Meanwhile, Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu is to present his ideas for ending the impasse.
Tuesday’s meetings are taking place in an atmosphere of uncertainty, since the Palestinians have said that they will walk away from the negotiations if the government does not extend its 10-month settlement construction freeze that expires at the end of the month, and Netanyahu has said that while the end of the moratorium will not be met by a massive building boom in the settlements, he does not intend to extend the freeze, and building for natural growth will continue.
One official said Netanyahu’s true challenge is to convince the Americans that his proposal to build quietly, along the parameters of construction that took place under the previous government when it was engaged in negotiations with the Palestinians, is a reasonable demand. If the Americans accept the proposal, the Palestinians will have little choice but to do so as well, the official said.
The Palestinians, however, are showing no flexibility on the matter, with chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat saying that a refusal to stop the construction would lead to the failure of the entire peace process.
The palestinians have stated they will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and have not ended terror in the 17+ years of the “peace” process. I suggest Netanyahu point this out, instead of implicitly accepting the idea that a building freeze is the answer.
And while he’s at it, perhaps he can point Hillary to this article.
Unless it was a palestinian who just happened to be holding an RPG.
5:50PM: Either the American, Swedish, Spanish embassies in Tel Aviv have been threatened, or we are seeing a rise in the phenomenon of drug-addict diplomats.
Support for Israel among Americans has jumped following the resumption of Middle East peace talks, according to poll findings released Tuesday.
A poll conducted for the Israel Project, a pro-Israel non-profit group based in the United States, showed a strong majority believing that the Israeli government is committed to making peace with the Palestinians.
Of 800 people questioned, 58 percent thought the U.S. should support Israel – a jump of 7 percent on a similar poll in July.
Seven percent thought the U.S. should support the Palestinians, while six percent said America should back neither side.
A majority of respondents (58 percent) also thought Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was committed to making peace, while 40 percent thought the same of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
“Support for Israel among Americans remains strong and steady,” said pollster Neil Newhouse of Public Opinion Strategies.
The poll of 800 likely voters conducted between September 9 and September 12 by Public Opinion Strategies and Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research found, with a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
4:15PM: The IDF has found that two palestinians killed on Sunday along the Gaza border were not engaged in terrorist activity after all.
They just happened to be standing next to a palestinian holding an RPG.
12:48PM: Israel has reportedly bought the @Israel twitter account from a Miami porn site owner!
It sounds shadier than it is, but the facts are these: The nation of Israel has finally secured the @israel Twitter account from a Spanish citizen living in Miami, a man who also happens to own a porn site.
You might be tempted to pass judgment and assume that the Miamian (excellent demonym, Miami!) is perhaps a savvy web denizen, the type who buys boatloads of domain names, hoping that one day a company will pay for one. But that’s not the case at all, and it appears he was just as eager to get rid of the @israel Twitter account as Israel was to get it.
The man’s name? Israel Meléndez. Meléndez secured the account back in 2007, apparently not aware that any online mention of the word Israel is likely to create a firestorm, and let the account go fallow as a result. “My account was basically unused because I was getting dozens of replies every day from people who thought the account belonged to the state of Israel,” said Meléndez. The New York Times adds that those dozens of replies included “a flood of anti-Semitic or anti-Israel comments.”
A spokesman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry confirmed the transaction, and noted that despite his disuse of the account, Meléndez did not let it go for free. The account is part of Israel’s recent push into social networking, which includes Prime Minister Netanyahu’s recently opened accounts on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube. Israel is eager to shape the conversation about itself, and views the @israel account as a key way to do so.
12:38PM: I have long maintained that Tony Blair’s sister-in-law Lauren Booth is no peace activist, but rather someone who hates Israel and is working towards our destruction.
In a recent interview with the Tehran Times, she has let down her guard and admitted as much.
Q: Do you believe that we will have a two-state solution in one territory at the end? Israel and Palestine side by side?
A: With Avigdor Lieberman ruling over Palestine, it would never be likely. But I’m interested in the one-state solution idea primarily because it scares the hell out of Israel.
12:35PM: There’s media bias..and then there’s this.
Washington hopes to bring the Israelis and Palestinians to a framework agreement within one year, yet the two sides remain deeply divided over even relatively minor issues, such as the Palestinian reluctance to recognise Israel as a Jewish state.
On the eve of the resumption of direct peace talks, the Palestinian Authority on Monday expressed hope that the Arab countries will finally keep their promises to help the PA financially.
Most of the Arab countries have failed to meet their previous pledges to provide the Palestinians with financial aid, the PA said. With the exception of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the Arab world was continuing to ignore the Palestinians’ repeated requests for help, the PA added.
Last week, PA President Mahmoud Abbas complained that the Palestinians haven’t seen “one cent” of the hundreds of millions of dollars that the Arab countries promised them, especially during the latest Arab summit in Libya last March.
Abbas said he raised the issue with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi during their meeting in Tripoli last week and voiced hope that the Arab countries would finally live up to their promises.
Earlier this week and under pressure from the US administration, the UAE agreed to donate more than $40 million to the PA budget.
According to a PA official, the donation is needed to pay salaries of civil servants and members of the Palestinian security forces.
The official pointed out that the UAE and Saudi Arabia were the only Arab countries who have made significant donations to the Palestinians in the past two years.
However, the official said that this year the two countries donated less than half of what they gave the PA last year.
In 2009, Saudi Arabia gave the Palestinians $240m. In comparison, the Palestinians received only $30m. from the Saudis between January 1, 2010, and the end of last month.
Hatem Abdel Kader, a former PA minister for Jerusalem affairs, said that most of the Arab countries refuse to give the Palestinians money. One of the reasons was the way the PA government was approaching the Arab countries.
“The Arabs are upset because the Palestinian Authority goes to the Americans and asks them to put pressure on the Arab governments to give money,” he said, noting that he recently visited Qatar to raise funds for Arab residents and institutions in east Jerusalem.
“The Arab governments have told me that they are offended by the way the Palestinians are asking for financial aid – through the Americans.”
According to figures released by the PA, only 22 percent of the $530m. received since the beginning of this year arrived from Arab donors. The rest came from Western countries and organizations, including the US.
“The Arab world doesn’t care about the Palestinians,” complained another PA official. “We have to beg them for money each time we face a crisis.” Because of the failure of the Arab donors to fulfill their commitments, the PA has been recently facing “financial difficulties,” he said.
The situation is bad, the official added. “We have about 150,000 employees, half of them living in the Gaza Strip, who need to feed their families. Without the money, we will lose control.”
8:50AM: The disgraceful CNN story on supposed IDF abuse – including sexual abuse – of palestinian children, which I posted about yesterday.
A senior official traveling with Netanyahu reacted to Palestinian threats to bolt the talks should Israel refuse to extend the settlement building moratorium saying, “We are going there looking for something else, it’s not an all or nothing proposition.”
The official pointed out that if Israelis and Palestinians are not able to find a compromise solution on this matter, then how will it be possible for them to overcome more difficult issues later in the negotiations.
“Israel is looking for ways not to ‘blow up’ the talks and to help make them work,” said the official.
I wonder if that particular choice of wording was deliberate.
5:54AM: Netanyahu may also want to bring up this type of thing as an impediment to peace.
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
A law school graduate, David Lange transitioned from work in the oil and hi-tech industries into fulltime Israel advocacy. He is a respected commentator and Middle East analyst who has often been cited by the mainstream media
