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UN chief: End occupation, divide Jerusalem

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March 27, 2024, 12:55:24 pm Mark says: Shocked Shocked Shocked Shocked  When Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida began a speech marking the 100th day of the war in Gaza, one confounding yet eye-opening proclamation escaped the headlines. Listing the motives for the Palestinian militant group's Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, he accused Jews of "bringing red cows" to the Holy Land.
December 31, 2022, 10:08:58 am NilsFor1611 says: blessings
August 08, 2018, 02:38:10 am suzytr says: Hello, any good churches in the Sacto, CA area, also looking in Reno NV, thanks in advance and God Bless you Smiley
January 29, 2018, 01:21:57 am Christian40 says: It will be interesting to see what happens this year Israel being 70 years as a modern nation may 14 2018
October 17, 2017, 01:25:20 am Christian40 says: It is good to type Mark is here again!  Smiley
October 16, 2017, 03:28:18 am Christian40 says: anyone else thinking that time is accelerating now? it seems im doing days in shorter time now is time being affected in some way?
September 24, 2017, 10:45:16 pm Psalm 51:17 says: The specific rule pertaining to the national anthem is found on pages A62-63 of the league rulebook. It states: “The National Anthem must be played prior to every NFL game, and all players must be on the sideline for the National Anthem. “During the National Anthem, players on the field and bench area should stand at attention, face the flag, hold helmets in their left hand, and refrain from talking. The home team should ensure that the American flag is in good condition. It should be pointed out to players and coaches that we continue to be judged by the public in this area of respect for the flag and our country. Failure to be on the field by the start of the National Anthem may result in discipline, such as fines, suspensions, and/or the forfeiture of draft choice(s) for violations of the above, including first offenses.”
September 20, 2017, 04:32:32 am Christian40 says: "The most popular Hepatitis B vaccine is nothing short of a witch’s brew including aluminum, formaldehyde, yeast, amino acids, and soy. Aluminum is a known neurotoxin that destroys cellular metabolism and function. Hundreds of studies link to the ravaging effects of aluminum. The other proteins and formaldehyde serve to activate the immune system and open up the blood-brain barrier. This is NOT a good thing."
http://www.naturalnews.com/2017-08-11-new-fda-approved-hepatitis-b-vaccine-found-to-increase-heart-attack-risk-by-700.html
September 19, 2017, 03:59:21 am Christian40 says: bbc international did a video about there street preaching they are good witnesses
September 14, 2017, 08:06:04 am Psalm 51:17 says: bro Mark Hunter on YT has some good, edifying stuff too.
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Author Topic: UN chief: End occupation, divide Jerusalem  (Read 86722 times)
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« Reply #390 on: July 20, 2013, 11:34:50 am »

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/20/19578342-israel-to-release-heavyweight-palestinian-prisoners-amid-peace-talks-drive?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=6
7/20/13
Israel to release 'heavyweight' Palestinian prisoners amid peace talks drive

JERUSALEM -- Israel has agreed to a long-standing Palestinian demand to release Palestinian prisoners in order to resume peace talks, but will not yield on other central issues, Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Saturday.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Friday that Israel and the Palestinians had laid the groundwork to resume peace talks after an almost three-year stalemate, but he warned that the deal was not final and required more diplomacy.

"There will be some release of prisoners," Steinitz told Israel Radio. "I don't want to give numbers but there will be heavyweight prisoners who have been in jail for tens of years," he said. The release would be carried out in phases, he added.

But when it came to other sticking points, Steinitz said Israel would not give way.

Palestinians have long demanded that Israel free prisoners who have been held in Israeli jails since before 1993, the year the two sides signed the Oslo Accords - an interim deal that was intended to lead to an independent state the Palestinians seek in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinians have said their future state must have borders approximating the boundaries of those territories before Israel captured them in a 1967 Middle East War.

Israel has balked at this demand, saying such borders would be indefensible for the Jewish state. Steinitz said there had been no Israeli concession on that point and on the Palestinian demand that Israel halt all construction in its West Bank and East Jerusalem settlements.

"There is no chance that we will agree to enter any negotiations that begins with defining territorial borders or concessions by Israel, nor a construction freeze,” he said.

Wasel Abu Youssef, a senior member of the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization, told Reuters on Friday after Kerry's announcement that "efforts will continue to secure the achievement of Palestinian demands ... Israel must recognize the 1967 borders."

Kerry said on Friday that the deal between Israel and the Palestinians was still being "formalized" and he would therefore not discuss it in detail, but that negotiators for both sides could begin talks in Washington "within the next week or so."
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« Reply #391 on: July 20, 2013, 11:46:26 am »

Quote
Israel to release 'heavyweight' Palestinian prisoners amid peace talks drive

these are the people that as soon as they get out they will go back and try to kill as many people as they can. And when that happens its going to start more attacks, and thus stopping the peace process. I mean neither side want peace. The Isaraelis, know these people will attack so they agrre to let them go each time peace talks start. The Muslims want them released on condition of peace talks, again knowing that they will attack stopping the peace process.

am i the only one that sees this? every time?  Roll Eyes
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« Reply #392 on: July 20, 2013, 11:53:42 am »

these are the people that as soon as they get out they will go back and try to kill as many people as they can. And when that happens its going to start more attacks, and thus stopping the peace process. I mean neither side want peace. The Isaraelis, know these people will attack so they agrre to let them go each time peace talks start. The Muslims want them released on condition of peace talks, again knowing that they will attack stopping the peace process.

am i the only one that sees this? every time?  Roll Eyes

Yep - which is why I don't think some "peace treaty" put out by Obama/Kerry(assuming the Daniel 9:27 prophecy is nigh around the corner) will be the 7 year covenant prophecized by Daniel.

Before the AC shows up on the scene, it's going to be utter chaos around the world. Maybe not violent world war, but more along the lines of CONFUSION chaos.
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« Reply #393 on: July 20, 2013, 01:15:14 pm »

Palestinians: US says 1967 lines basis for talks

A Palestinian official says President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to restart peace talks with Israel only after receiving a letter from the U.S. secretary of state guaranteeing that the basis of the negotiations will be Israel's pre-1967 borders.
 
The official said Saturday that the letter from Secretary of State John Kerry to Abbas also stipulated that both the Israelis and Palestinians must refrain from taking any steps that would jeopardize the outcome of the talks.
 
The official says Israel is not to issue new tenders for West Bank settlements, while the Palestinians are to refrain from pursuing diplomatic actions against Israel at international organizations.
 
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to brief the press.
 
There was no immediate comment from the State Department.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/israel-palestinian-prisoners-be-freed-talks
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« Reply #394 on: July 20, 2013, 01:37:00 pm »

these are the people that as soon as they get out they will go back and try to kill as many people as they can. And when that happens its going to start more attacks, and thus stopping the peace process. I mean neither side want peace. The Isaraelis, know these people will attack so they agrre to let them go each time peace talks start. The Muslims want them released on condition of peace talks, again knowing that they will attack stopping the peace process.

am i the only one that sees this? every time?  Roll Eyes

No, you know your not the only one. But I see it as not being a peace issue at all among those people of the area. I don't think it has ever been about trying to make peace, as far as the general residents are concerned. It's been about one side not wanting certain people living there. It's always been about who controls the area, and they in turn want to get rid of those they don't agree with. Culturally speaking, they have zero interest in making peace with their enemies. None. They just want them out.

We know from prophecy that only Jesus will bring peace to Jerusalem, so the "peace talks" angle is a moot point. It's all show put on by the world powers for an ignorant and unbelieving public to consume to their own demise. Lets' face it, the world wants to direct people in a way that will send their soul straight to hell. HELLO! Roll Eyes

"The thing that hath been, it [is that] which shall be; and that which is done [is] that which shall be done: and [there is] no new [thing] under the sun." Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJB)
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« Reply #395 on: July 21, 2013, 05:55:45 am »

Well some one is lying, and im betting that persons name is JOHN KERRY, as that has been his modus operandi his entire life. Someone should really call him on his lying, oh, wait they did.

Israel: PA dropped preconditions; Palestinians say talks based on pre-67 lines

Negotiations are in Israel’s interest, Netanyahu says; ministers confirm pre-Oslo prisoners with blood on their hands to go free


Amid conflicting accounts of the basis on which Israel and the Palestinians are set to renew negotiations, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday night hailed the resumption of the talks, announced Friday by Secretary of State John Kerry, as fulfilling Israel’s “vital strategic interests.”

Israeli ministers said the government had held firm to its insistence on there being no preconditions for resuming the negotiations, while Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had given ground. According to the ministers, the talks would resume without Israel agreeing to a settlement freeze, without Israel agreeing to negotiations for a Palestinian state on the basis of the pre-1967 lines, and without there first being a release of longtime Palestinian prisoners. Still, Israel would release Palestinian prisoners, with Israeli blood on their hands — up to 350, according to some sources — in phases as the talks continued, they said.



However, a Palestinian official said Abbas agreed to restart talks only after receiving a letter from Kerry guaranteeing that the basis of the negotiations will indeed be Israel’s pre-1967 borders. The official, quoted by AP, said Kerry’s letter also stipulated that both the Israelis and the Palestinians must refrain from taking any steps that would jeopardize the outcome of the talks. Thus, the unnamed official said, Israel is not to issue new tenders for West Bank settlements, while the Palestinians are to refrain from pursuing action against Israel at international organizations.
 
In his statement Saturday night, Netanyahu said the negotiations were vital in order “to seek to bring to an end the conflict between us and the Palestinians” and important, too, “given the challenges we face, primarily from Iran and Syria.” Israel, he added, had two goals in the talks: “Preventing the creation of a single binational state between the [Mediterranean] Sea and the Jordan [River], which would endanger the future of the Jewish state, and preventing the establishment of an additional Iranian-sponsored terrorist state on Israel’s borders, which could endanger us no less.”
 
He thanked Kerry for his “great efforts” to get the sides back to the negotiating table and vowed that he would “insist upon Israel’s security need and its vital strategic interests.”
 
Israeli sources said the talks were set to last from 9-12 months. Israel would be represented by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Netanyahu envoy Yitzhak Molcho and the Palestinians by veteran negotiator Saeb Erekat.
 
Kerry said Friday he expected the talks to resume in Washington next week, but Israeli officials said logistics might require a further week of preparation.
 
Israeli sources added that Erekat would raise demands for talks on the basis of the pre-1967 lines and for a settlement freeze — but these would be issues to negotiate at the table, not preconditions. Also, they said, while Israel would release most or all of the more than 100 Palestinian security prisoners held since before the Oslo accords were signed 20 years ago, they would go free in phases, depending on the progress of the talks.
 
A first group of 82 such prisoners, many of whom have Israeli blood on their hands, could be released within four to six weeks, they said. No veteran Israeli Arab prisoners would be freed, Channel 2 reported on Saturday night.
 
Channel 2 also said Kerry had threatened to halt US aid to the Palestinians if Abbas did not come back to the table.
 
“It’s been proven that when we stand firm in our demands, we can enter talks without preconditions, without construction freezes, and certainly without the crazy demand that we base negotiations on the ’67 lines,” Economy and Trade Minister Naftali Bennett (Jewish Home) said Saturday. “As negotiations get underway, we will insist on continuing construction in Jerusalem and the West Bank. History has taught us that building produces life, while dismantling settlements produces terror.”
 
Bennett added that, in light of recent developments, Israel would not allow the European Union to be part on the negotiations. The EU last week issued a directive forbidding joint projects with institutions that are located over the Green Line or that are active in the settlements.
 
Former foreign minister and senior coalition partner Avigdor Liberman expressed deep skepticism regarding the chances of reaching a final-status agreement with the Palestinians. Liberman said in a statement Saturday that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could not be solved, only managed, at least for the next few years.
 
“Holding negotiations is important, but holding them based on reality and not illusions is more important,” said Liberman. “The best we can strive for is a long-term interim agreement based on security and economic cooperation.”
 
Earlier, Livni, Israel’s senior negotiator with the Palestinians, said there was no risk for Israel in restarting negotiations but real opportunity.
 
“Our agreement with the Palestinians and the Americans was that we would let Kerry be the spokesman of the agreement [on returning to the talks]. I believe trust is an essential part of talks and I don’t want to risk that by patting ourselves on the back,” a cagey Livni told Channel 2′s Meet the Press Saturday evening. “That said, it must be stated that Israel is entering the negotiations, which I hope will start soon, while maintaining its vital diplomatic and security interests.”
 
Livni stressed the fragility of the agreement to enter peace talks, but stated that there was nothing in the initial basis for the negotiations that should prevent anybody, including the right-wing members of the Israeli government, from going ahead with them. “I have no doubt that as people hear more about the details of the agreement [under which the talks are resuming], there will be more support for the process itself,” said Livni.
 
As if to confirm her statement, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon (Likud) said Saturday that, “We had insisted on entering talks without preconditions, including the Palestinians’ demands that we return to the ’67 lines, freeze settlements and release prisoners.”
 
“We are entering the talks with clean hands and with an honest desire to reach an agreement on ending the conflict. I only hope the Palestinians are coming to the table with the same attitude,” said Ya’alon.
 
“Everything is on the table,” said Livni, the Hatnua party leader and a former foreign minister. “But there is a difference between Israel’s position before entering the room for talks and the positions we will present when seated around the table. Along with my great satisfaction over the understandings we reached yesterday, I realize it is a great responsibility. Things will be on the table and we will have to act responsibly to protect Israel’s interests. I have done it before and I think that it is now understood that I maintained those interests last time around.”
 
Livni stressed that entering the negotiations doesn’t just pose a risk of future concessions, it also produces real opportunities for favorable developments for Israel.
 
Asked whether the current Israeli coalition can survive peace talks in which everything, including final borders, settlement evictions and the fate of Jerusalem is on the table, Livni said the government “has to go ahead with the talks because of their vital importance to Israeli interests.”
 
“When Netanyahu decided to enter the talks, he didn’t become a member of the Hatnua party. He made the decision based on his own principles. I believe the entire government, even the right, can accept those principles,” said Livni.
 
Livni made sure to temper expectations and stress the gradual nature of the process, but concluded on a positive note. “We have proven that there is hope,” she said.
 
Addressing the topic of the release of Palestinian prisoners as part of a peace agreement, Livni said she preferred that those released be terrorists who operated before there were any understandings between Israel and the Palestinians and have been serving their sentences for 25 or more years, over those who carried out their attacks in order to harm the process.
 
Livni was speaking in response to an earlier statement by Minister of Intelligence and International Relations Yuval Steinitz, who said Israel would release an undisclosed number of Palestinian prisoners in order to get talks off the ground. He added that a number of the Palestinian prisoners to be released were “serious” cases, but that a large portion of them had already served many years.
 
During an interview with Israel Radio, Steinitz said that the decision was in line with the government’s approach all along, meaning that it intends to free Palestinian prisoners in phases and would only do so as talks are resumed, not before. He also said Israel was not bound to a settlement freeze as a precondition for the resumption of negotiations.
 
On Friday, Kerry assured the Palestinians that Israel would free some 350 prisoners gradually in the coming months. The prisoners would include some 100 men convicted of terrorist crimes committed before the Oslo interim peace accords were signed in 1993. Israel had balked at freeing these prisoners in the past because many were convicted in deadly attacks.
 
In contrast to the Likud and Jewish Home, which were expected to have issues with the government’s intended concessions to the Palestinians, other parties in Netanyahu’s coalition and in the opposition came out in staunch support of Kerry’s announcement Friday that talks were resuming.
 
Opposition leader Shelly Yachimovich said she was hopeful about the relaunching of direct talks. She called on Netanyahu to clearly announce his approval of Kerry’s initiative and express his willingness to achieve an agreement with the Palestinians.
 
But Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon (Likud) told reporters Saturday that Israel “must learn from past mistakes and not release terrorists with blood on their hands as a goodwill gesture or a prize.”
 
“I trust the prime minister, who knows that talking about a return to the ’67 lines is out of the question. Ripping thousands of Israelis from their homes, like we did in the disengagement from Gaza, is a wrong that must not be repeated,” said Danon, who is associated with the hawkish flank of the Likud.
 
At a stormy late-night meeting of their leadership Thursday, Palestinians had balked at dropping a main condition for talks with the Israelis. They demanded a guarantee that negotiations on borders between a Palestinian state and Israel would be based on the ceasefire line that held from 1949 until the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and east Jerusalem. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.
 
Israel rejected preconditions for talks, and the split cast a pall of uncertainty over months of US mediation efforts.
 
Hoping to push Israelis and Palestinians toward talks, President Barack Obama asked Netanyahu to work with Kerry “to resume negotiations with Palestinians as soon as possible,” according to a statement released by the White House late Thursday.
 
Previous Israeli governments twice negotiated on the basis of the 1967 lines, but no peace accord was reached. Besides disagreeing over how much land to trade and where, the two sides hit logjams on other key issues, including dividing Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees.

http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-says-pa-dropped-preconditions-but-palestinians-claim-kerry-promised-talks-on-basis-of-pre-67-lines/
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« Reply #396 on: July 21, 2013, 06:59:13 am »

Well some one is lying, and im betting that persons name is JOHN KERRY, as that has been his modus operandi his entire life. Someone should really call him on his lying, oh, wait they did.

Went from playing the role of loser in 2004 by giving the re-election to his Skull and Bones buddy George W. Bush with all of his campaign "blunders", to being rewarded the role of Secretary of State this year and playing a big role in this "peace process".

Guess nothing's a coincidence in this world...
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« Reply #397 on: July 22, 2013, 03:47:46 pm »

http://news.yahoo.com/israel-premier-fast-tracking-peace-referendum-bill-155141189.html
Israel premier fast-tracking peace referendum bill
7/22/13

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's premier announced Monday he is fast-tracking legislation that would allow him to put any peace deal with the Palestinians to a national referendum — an apparent attempt to silence hard-liners in his party and coalition government.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke three days after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said progress has been made toward a resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, stalled for five years.

Kerry has invited Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to Washington for preliminary talks, though wide gaps remain on the framework of the actual negotiations.

Netanyahu said Monday that a referendum is necessary to prevent a rift in Israeli society.

Polls have suggested a majority of Israelis support the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but many groups are vehemently opposed, including hard-liners among Israel's West Bank settlers. Some issues to be settled in a peace deal are particularly explosive, including a partition of Jerusalem, home to major religious shrines and claimed by both sides as a capital.

Peace talks would also determine Israel's borders with a future Palestine and the fate of Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants.

Netanyahu said he would present legislation on a referendum to his Cabinet and parliament soon.

"Any agreement that is not approved by the people is not worthy of being signed," Netanyahu said in an announcement from Israel's parliament. On an issue as fateful as a peace deal, "it is desirable that it be presented to every single citizen to decide," he said.

Earlier Monday, one of Netanyahu's main coalition partners, Economics Minister Naftali Bennett of the pro-settler Jewish Home Party, linked crucial support in an upcoming vote on the government budget to progress on a referendum bill.

"The Jewish Home will support the state budget, but in order for that happen we demand the referendum law is being promoted by then," Bennett said.

Netanyahu's second main coalition partner, the centrist Yesh Atid party, has said it is studying the idea. Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, has said she opposes a referendum, insisting that important decisions should be left to democratically elected leaders.

Israeli media said Netanyahu will convene his Cabinet later this week to seek formal backing for a resumption of talks and for a possible release of dozens of Palestinian prisoners in several stages during the negotiations — a proposal bound to trigger vehement opposition from hawks in the coalition, including in his own Likud.

Government spokesman Mark Regev said he was not aware of plans for a Cabinet meeting on the peace talks.

Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher said pushing the referendum bill is an attempt by Netanyahu "to neutralize internal opposition from the right as early as possible."

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas also said in comments published Monday he would put any peace deal to a referendum, reiterating a long-standing position. He did not say whether the vote would include millions of Palestinians scattered across the globe or only those in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem — the lands captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and sought for a Palestinian state.

Speaking to the Jordanian daily Al Rai, Abbas warned that "all options are open" if Kerry's efforts fail — an apparent attempt to pressure Israel to accept the Palestinian terms for a resumption of talks.

Abbas did not list other options but suggested a renewed Palestinian push for U.N. recognition, a tactic Israel fears could increase its international isolation.

In announcing progress Friday, Kerry said a broad agreement has been reached on the framework for restarting talks, but that Israeli and Palestinian negotiators still need to work out some details once they get to Washington.

Palestinian officials say key issues still need to be resolved before actual peace talks can begin. They insist on a freeze in construction in Israeli settlements, and they want Netanyahu to accept Israel's pre-1967 war lines as a starting point and release dozens of veteran Palestinian prisoners.

Netanyahu has refused to start border talks from the 1967 lines. He has also rejected a settlement freeze, though Palestinian officials have said he is willing to slow construction in some areas without a public announcement.

The Israeli anti-settlement group Peace Now said the Netanyahu government has advanced plans for more than 5,000 new apartments in settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the past four months.

Without new restrictions, "construction in settlements will continue and it will continue at a relatively fast speed," said Hagit Ofran of Peace Now, calling for a halt in construction.
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« Reply #398 on: July 23, 2013, 04:23:19 pm »

http://www.france24.com/en/20130723-kerry-finalizing-mideast-peace-talks-team
7/23/13
Kerry finalizing MidEast peace talks team

AFP - Secretary of State John Kerry is finalizing his team to help shepherd Middle East peace talks and take on the heavy lifting on a day to day basis, a US official said.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki would neither confirm nor deny reports that a former US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, has been chosen to head up the American negotiating team.

In Amman on Friday -- at the end of his sixth trip to the region -- Kerry announced that Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed in principle to return to talks that have been frozen for three years.

Israeli chief negotiator Tzipi Livni and her Palestinian counterpart Saeb Erakat are due to travel to Washington in the coming days to start the talks.

"This is the first time in years the official negotiators for both sides have publicly agreed to meet at this level," Psaki told reporters.

But she could not give a precise date for the resumption of talks, saying US officials had been "in touch with both parties over the course of the last couple of days, but I don't have an update on the logistics of the date yet."

"Right now we are pursuing the way forward. There has been a great deal of work, compromise and sacrifice leading to this point," Psaki said.

But she stressed she was going to respect Kerry's commitment to keep the details of the negotiations secret in order to give them the best chance of succeeding.

The top US diplomat was now "focused on putting together the right combination of players to work with the parties," she said, adding no decision on a negotiator or envoy had been made.

Psaki said the talks are "going to be a challenging process. (Kerry) can't carry it all on his own shoulders day in and day out. And that's why he's looking to put together a senior team."

The State Department spokeswoman also stressed that the Israelis and Palestinians "have made clear they want to have substantive discussions as early as possible."

It is likely, however, that the agenda and process will be discussed first before the two sides try to get down to the thorny details on which they remain deeply divided.

Former US president Jimmy Carter, who helped negotiate the 1979 peace deal between Israel and Egypt in what became known as the Camp David accords, said he was "more hopeful than I was a month ago, or five years ago," about progress.

"It seems to us that this is a certainly propitious time, because it's been almost a five year absence of any real effort to bring the two parties together," he said, addressing a conference at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

"No-one knows what's going to happen, they might meet the first time and adjourn. But I think there's been a pressure from the Palestinian people and from the Israeli people to have a resolution on this issue."

White House spokesman Jay Carney meanwhile said the US administration felt "very cautious optimism" about the upcoming talks, stressing that the only way "to resolve these issues is if the two parties sit down in direct face-to-face negotiations."

Indyk, currently the head of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, is a veteran of Middle East diplomacy and was named by several US media outlets as Kerry's choice to head the American team.

Indyk was assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs under then president Bill Clinton and served as ambassador to Israel from 1995 to 1997.

He then again served as ambassador to Israel from 2000 to 2001. Indyk was born in London, but emigrated to Australia as a child. He became a US citizen in 1993.

"Obviously he's a very well-respected professional with a great deal of experience and background," Psaki said when asked about Indyk's qualifications.

"But I don't have any other updates on the personnel process," she added.
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« Reply #399 on: July 24, 2013, 08:04:38 am »

For third time in a week, rockets fired from Gaza land in Israel

Despite rising tension, Hamas is more concerned over a potential conflict with Egypt than the renewal of peace talks between Israel and the PA.


Two rockets were fired on Wednesday morning from the Gaza Strip, landing in open spaces in the Eshkol Regional Council, near the border fence. There were no casualties and no damage reported.

Rockets were also fired toward Israel last Friday, after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, as well as on Sunday evening. There were no casualties or damage in both cases.

According to security sources in Israel, extreme Islamist factions in Gaza are behind the attacks, likely carried out without consulting Hamas. After the first incident on Friday, Hamas arrested some of those involved.

rest: http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.537712
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« Reply #400 on: July 24, 2013, 10:19:33 am »

The EU declares Israel as occupier

For more than thirty years the European Union (EU) has issued statements critical of Israel, and has been supportive of the Palestinian cause. The EU Venice Declaration of 1980, the first statement it issued on foreign policy, supported the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination; asserted the unacceptability of any unilateral initiative to alter the status of Jerusalem; proclaimed the need for Israel to end its territorial occupation since 1967; and declared that Israeli settlements were an obstacle to peace.
 
Since the 1990s the EU has been a major aid contributor to Palestinians, though its monetary assistance did not substantially improve the Palestinian economy. This economy suffered from corruption, lack of a satisfactory legal framework and competent administration, absence of democratic practices, and the incompetence of Yasser Arafat, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority leader who instigated the disastrous second Intifada in 2000.
 
The EU has been critical of many of the activities of Israel, including the alleged treatment of the Arab minority and of the Bedouins, but particularly and unrelentingly about Israeli settlements. On December 10, 2012 the EU issued a statement, “all agreements between the State of Israel and the European Union must unequivocally and explicitly indicate their inapplicability to the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, namely the Golan Heights, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
 
The EU discouraged companies from trading with and investing in settlements and suggested banning imports of settlement products.  At the same time Catherine Ashton, the head of EU foreign policy, pressed Israel to cancel the building of 3,000 new settler homes that, in accordance with EU policy, she considered “an obstacle to peace.” That EU policy had been made clear even before the European Commission poll taken in 2003 that the “country posing the greatest threat to world peace was Israel.” It was unclear whether the particular homes to which Ashton was referring are an obstacle to peace in Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, or Iraq, issues with which she seems somewhat unconcerned.
 
Whatever the answer, this did not prevent the EU decision to implement the December 10 statement by issuing a directive approved on June 28, 2013  and made known on July 16, 2013. This was a decision by the EU to ban all funding, collaboration, scholarships, research grants, and awards to “Israeli entities” in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. All future EU agreements with Israel must have a clause stating that the settlements are not part of the State of Israel.
 
By its declaration the EU was unilaterally deciding that the borders of Israel did not embrace East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, or the Golan Heights. It was making a distinction between the State of Israel and the “occupied territories” to which the ban on relations on factors such as economics, science, culture, sports, and academia will apply.
 
This is an extraordinary unwise and unhelpful decision at a time when Secretary of State John Kerry is making his sixth visit in four months to the region in his hope to revive peace talks between Israel and Palestinians. He must be troubled that the EU decision on the borders of the State of Israel may make the Palestinians unwilling to enter into direct negotiations. That unwillingness has been rewarded by the constant EU argument, one that was repeated on the very day that the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law and constitute an obstacle to peace. The EU argument is belied by the reality that facts and the history of the area prove the opposite; Israeli settlement has never constituted an obstacle to peace. Nevertheless, Ashton persists in saying that “settlement activity is detrimental to current peace efforts.”
 
The EU position makes it more likely that the Palestinian will reject negotiations. If they do agree to enter into direct negotiations, they will certainly continue to insist on a number of pre-conditions, including freezing all settlement construction and acceptance of the ceasefire lines of 1949 as the borders of a Palestinian state.
 
There are two issues involved in this. One is the bypassing of all international and bilateral agreements on the need for negotiations to decide on the final status of the disputed territories. The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement of September 28, 1995 is clear on this point.  Article XXXI states, “Neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank or the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.”  Legally, the demarcation lines between the parties of 1949 are not permanent boundaries; they do not purport to establish definitive boundaries between the parties. All issues are to be negotiated between the parties.
 
The other is the misapplication of EU activity that should more properly be focused on the development of the Palestinian economy and the introduction of human freedoms, rather on than the disputed settlements. The EU, after all, could be a major player in the Middle East with its own economy accounting for almost 20 percent of world trade and including a considerable number of real democracies among its 27 members. It could be playing a role in helping deal with current  problems: Iran’s nuclear proliferation; Islamist extremism in general; the development of terrorist networks; the recognition of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization; equality for women in the Middle East; and encouragement of human rights and democracy in the Arab countries.
 
It serves no useful purpose to insist that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the main security problem in the Middle East. It is one thing to propose two states as the only feasible solution to the conflict, even if there is disagreement on the issue. It is another to attempt to resolve the conflict by putting direct economic and political pressure on Israel. The EU has done a great disservice to the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and indeed has been counterproductive by making it less likely to come into effect.

http://balfourpost.com/the-eu-declares-israel-has-occupier/
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« Reply #401 on: July 24, 2013, 10:20:30 am »

Obama 'pushed boycott of Jerusalem,
biblical territories'
 
Israeli diplomats warn of crisis over controversial EU move 


A European Union boycott of financial dealings with Jews in the biblical West Bank, Golan Heights and eastern Jerusalem was fully coordinated with the Obama administration, a senior Palestinian negotiator told WND.
 
“Without the U.S. support, the EU wouldn’t have taken such measures,” the negotiator said.

On Friday, the EU published guidelines forbidding its 28 members from having any financial dealings with what it calls Jewish settlements or territories that have been “occupied” by Israel since 1967.
 
The preface to the guidelines states “the EU does not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over … the Golan Heights, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem … and does not consider them to be part of Israel’s territory, irrespective of their legal status under domestic law.”
 
“Only Israeli entities having their place of establishment within Israel’s pre-1967 borders will be considered eligible as final recipients” of funding such as “grants, prizes and financial instruments.”
 
A high-ranking Israeli foreign ministry official told Agence France-Presse on Friday that Israel met the ambassadors of Britain and France, and Germany’s deputy ambassador to convey a message that the boycott will cause a serious crisis in diplomatic relations.
 
On Sunday, the popular Israel Today newspaper reported that hundreds of legal experts are drafting a document to reply to the EU boycott. The legal response will reportedly state that the so-called Jewish settlements are not illegal and that the term “occupied” does not apply to those territories.
 
A translation of the current version of the appeal reads the EU boycott is “based on misguided and legally flawed assumptions about the status of the Israeli settlements and the validity of the 1967 lines as Israel’s borders.”
 
Continues the document: “The EU’s definition of Judea and Samaria as ‘Palestinian territories’ or ‘occupied territories’ is devoid of any legal or factual merit. The area was never defined as such [under international law] and therefore the EU’s continuous use of this terminology undermines the negotiations for a permanent [peace] deal. … The EU’s perception of the Israeli settlements’ illegality stems from various different interpretations of international law.”
 
Biblical land
 
Judea and Samaria, commonly referred to as the West Bank, is dotted with biblical, historically Jewish cities, including Hebron, the oldest Jewish community in the world, where Jews have lived for more than 2,500 years.
 
Hebron is home to the Tomb of the Patriarchs, believed to be the resting place of biblical patriarchs and matriarchs. There are accounts of the trials of the city’s Jewish community throughout the Byzantine, Arab, Mameluke and Ottoman periods.
 
In 1929, as a result of an Arab pogrom in which 67 Jews were murdered, the entire Jewish community fled the city, with Hebron – including the market – becoming temporarily devoid of Jews until Israel recaptured the land in 1967.
 
The West Bank is also home to Shechem, or Nablus. The book of Genesis says Abraham entered Israel at the West Bank city of Shechem and received God’s promise of land for his offspring.
 
The nearby West Bank town of Beit El – in anciently times called Bethel, meaning “house of God” – is where Scripture says the patriarch Jacob slept on a stone pillow and dreamed of angels ascending and descending a stairway to heaven. In that dream, God spoke directly to Jacob and reaffirmed the promise of land. Earlier, God had promised the land of Israel to Abraham at Beit El. In Exodus, the holy tabernacle rested just north of Beit El in Shiloh, believed to be the first area the ancient Israelites settled after fleeing Egypt.
 
Jewish Golan
 
News accounts routinely billed the Golan as “undisputed Syrian territory” until Israel “captured the region” in 1967. In actuality, the Golan has been out of Damascus’ control for far longer than the 19 years it was within its rule, from 1948 to 1967.
 
Even when Syria shortly held the Golan, some of it was stolen from Jews. Tens of thousands of acres of farmland on the Golan were purchased by Jews as far back as the late 19th century. The Turks of the Ottoman Empire kicked out some Jews around the turn of the century.
 
But some of the Golan was still farmed by Jews until 1947, when Syria first became an independent state. Just before that, the territory was transferred back and forth between France, Britain and even Turkey, before it became a part of the French Mandate of Syria.
 
When the French Mandate ended in 1944, the Golan Heights became part of the newly independent state of Syria, which quickly seized land that was being worked by the Palestine Colonization Association and the Jewish Colonization Association. A year later, in 1948, Syria, along with other Arab countries, used the Golan to attack Israel in a war to destroy the newly formed Jewish state.
 
The Golan, steeped in Jewish history, is connected to the Torah and to the periods of the First and Second Jewish Temples. The Golan Heights was referred to in the Torah as “Bashan”; the word “Golan” apparently derived from the biblical city of “Golan in Bashan.”
 
The book of Joshua relates how the Golan was assigned to the tribe of Manasseh. Later, during the time of the First Temple, King Solomon appointed three ministers in the region, and the area became contested between the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel and the Aramean kingdom based in Damascus.
 
The book of Kings tells how King Ahab of Israel defeated Ben-Hadad I of Damascus near the present-day site of Kibbutz Afik in the southern Golan; and the prophet Elisha foretold that King Jehoash of Israel would defeat Ben-Hadad III of Damascus, also near Kibbutz Afik.
 
The online Jewish Virtual Library has an account of how in the late 6th and 5th centuries B.C., the Golan was settled by Jewish exiles returning from Babylonia, or modern day Iraq. In the mid-2nd century B.C., Judah Maccabee’s grandnephew, the Hasmonean King Alexander Jannai, added the Golan Heights to his kingdom.
 
The Golan hosted some of the most important houses of Torah study in the years following the Second Temple’s destruction and subsequent Jewish exile; some of Judaism’s most revered ancient rabbis are buried in the territory. The remains of some 25 synagogues from the period between the Jewish revolt and the Islamic conquest in 636 have been excavated. The Golan is also dotted with ancient Jewish villages.
 
‘Secret Obama plan’ forfeits Temple Mount
 
The EU boycott came as Secretary of State John Kerry announced that both Israel and PA President Mahmoud Abbas have agreed to open negotiations to create a Palestinian state.
 
WND reported yesterday the Obama administration has quietly presented a plan in which the PA and Jordan would receive sovereignty over the Temple Mount while Israel would retain the land below the Western Wall, according to a senior PA negotiator.
 
The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism.
 
Israel has not agreed to the U.S. plan regarding the Temple Mount, with details still open for discussion, stated the PA negotiator.
 
The negotiator, who is one of the main Palestinian figures leading the Arab side of the talks, further divulged Kerry’s proposed outline for a Palestinian state as presented orally to Israel and the PA.
 
He said Jordan has been invited to play a key role in the discussions surrounding both the Temple Mount and Jerusalem while it will be the PA, with some Jordanian assistance, that would ultimately receive control of some of those areas.
 
WND was first to report in 2007 that Jordan had been quietly purchasing real estate surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem hoping to gain more control over the area accessing the holy site, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials.
 
Meanwhile, regarding the rest of Jerusalem, Kerry’s plan is to rehash what is known as the Clinton parameters. That formula, pushed by President Bill Clinton during the Camp David talks in 2000, called for Jewish areas of Jerusalem to remain Israeli while the Palestinians would get sovereignty over neighborhoods that are largely Arab. Most Arab sections are located in eastern Jerusalem.
 
WND previously reported the Palestinians are building illegally in Jewish-owned areas of Jerusalem, resulting in Arab majorities in some neighborhoods.
 
For the strategic Jordan Valley, Obama’s proposal calls for international forces to maintain security control along with unarmed Palestinian police forces, the PA negotiator said. Israel will retain security posts in some strategic areas of the Jordan Valley, according to the leaked plan.
 
When it comes to the West Bank, which borders Jerusalem and is within rocket range of Israel’s main population centers, Israel is expected to evacuate about 90 percent of its Jewish communities currently located in the territory, as outlined in Kerry’s plan.
 
Israel would retain strategic security posts along with the West Bank’s main blocs, Maale Adumin, Ariel and Gush Etzion. In return, Obama is calling for an exchange of territory with the Palestinians in other locations inside Israel, with discussion being open for the Palestinians to possibly receive land in the Israeli Negev in the country’s south.
 
The PA negotiator further said Israel rejected a Palestinian request that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree not to place the final peace plan up for referendum in the Knesset.
 
Indeed, Netanyahu announced that any plan must receive final approval in a national poll.
 
“I am committed to two objectives that must guide the result … if there will be a result. And if there will be a result, it will be put to a national referendum,” he said at the start of the cabinet meeting.
 
“Negotiations with the Palestinians will not be easy, but we are entering them with integrity, honesty and hope,” Netanyahu added.
 
The PA negotiator, meanwhile, said Netanyahu agreed that as a gesture to restart talks, Israel will enact a temporary freeze on all Jewish construction in the West Bank outside the main settlement blocs. According to Israeli sources, such a freeze has largely already been in place for several months now anyway.
 
The negotiator warned that one of the toughest issues centers on control of water, with Kerry already reaching out to Turkey about the prospect of selling water at a cheaper rate to a future Palestinian state.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/obama-pushed-boycott-of-jerusalem-biblical-territories/#MDbxHD3j9l6Y3ikE.99
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« Reply #402 on: July 24, 2013, 10:21:15 am »

'Secret Obama plan' forfeits Temple Mount to Palestinians
 
Formula for Israel-Arab talks leaked to WND


The Obama administration has quietly presented a plan in which the Palestinian Authority and Jordan will receive sovereignty over the Temple Mount while Israel will retain the land below the Western Wall, according to a senior PA negotiator speaking to WND.
 
The Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism.

The proposed plan is part of the basis for U.S.-brokered talks that are set to resume in Washington next week after Secretary of State John Kerry announced that both Israel and PA President Mahmoud Abbas have agreed to open negotiations aimed at creating a Palestinian state.
 
Israel has not agreed to the U.S. plan over the Temple Mount, with details still open for discussion, stated the PA negotiator.
 
The negotiator, who is one of the main Palestinian figures leading the Arab side of the talks, further divulged Kerry’s proposed outline for a Palestinian state as presented orally to Israel and the PA.
 
He said Jordan has been invited to play a key role in the discussions surrounding both the Temple Mount and Jerusalem while it will be the PA, with some Jordanian assistance, that would ultimately receive control of some of those areas.
 
WND was first to report in 2007 that Jordan had been quietly purchasing real estate surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem hoping to gain more control over the area accessing the holy site, according to Palestinian and Israeli officials.
 
Meanwhile, regarding the rest of Jerusalem, Kerry’s plan is to rehash what is known as the Clinton parameters. That formula, pushed by President Bill Clinton during the Camp David talks in 2000, called for Jewish areas of Jerusalem to remain Israeli while the Palestinians would get sovereignty over neighborhoods that are largely Arab. Most Arab sections are located in eastern Jerusalem.
 
WND previously reported the Palestinians are building illegally in Jewish-owned areas of Jerusalem, resulting in Arab majorities in some neighborhoods.
 
For the strategic Jordan Valley, Obama’s proposal calls for international forces to maintain security control along with unarmed Palestinian police forces, the PA negotiator said. Israel will retain security posts in some strategic areas of the Jordan Valley, according to the leaked plan.
 
When it comes to the West Bank, which borders Jerusalem and is within rocket range of Israel’s main population centers, Israel is expected to evacuate about 90 percent of its Jewish communities currently located in the territory, as outlined in Kerry’s plan.
 
Israel would retain strategic security posts along with the West Bank’s main blocs, Maale Adumin, Ariel and Gush Etzion. In return, Obama is calling for an exchange of territory with the Palestinians in other locations inside Israel, with discussion being open for the Palestinians to possibly receive land in the Israeli Negev in the country’s south.
 
The PA negotiator further said Israel rejected a Palestinian request that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agree not to place the final peace plan up for referendum in the Knesset.
 
Indeed, Netanyahu announced today any plan must receive final approval in a national poll.
 
“I am committed to two objectives that must guide the result … if there will be a result. And if there will be a result, it will be put to a national referendum,” he said at the start of the cabinet meeting.
 
“Negotiations with the Palestinians will not be easy, but we are entering them with integrity, honesty and hope,” Netanyahu added.
 
The PA negotiator, meanwhile, said Netanyahu agreed that as a gesture to restart talks, Israel will enact a temporary freeze on all Jewish construction in the West Bank outside the main settlement blocs. According to Israeli sources, such a freeze has largely already been in place for several months now anyway.
 
The negotiator warned that one of the toughest issues centers on control of water, with Kerry already reaching out to Turkey about the prospect of selling water at a cheaper rate to a future Palestinian state.

Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/07/secret-obama-plan-forfeits-temple-mount-to-palestinians/#p0cyB4XvSbrhig8E.99
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« Reply #403 on: July 24, 2013, 04:30:24 pm »

Quote
The Obama administration has quietly presented a plan in which the Palestinian Authority and Jordan will receive sovereignty over the Temple Mount while Israel will retain the land below the Western Wall, according to a senior PA negotiator speaking to WND.
 

What leak? That's no plan. That's how it is right now! Jordon controls the Temple Mount under the Waqf, and has for years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waqf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerusalem_Islamic_Waqf

http://images.jordan.gov.jo/wps/wcm/connect/gov/egov/government+ministries+_+entities/ministry+of+awqaf+islamic+affairs+and+holy+places/general+information/ministry+of+awqaf+islamic+affairs+and+holy+places+general+information

Quote
When the Palestinian National Authority assumed its responsibilities and requested to be entrusted with Awqaf affairs and the religious courts, the government in Jordan agreed to administrative and legal disengagement with religious courts and Islamic Awqaf in the West Bank. By this, the courts came under the jurisdiction of the Palestinian authority according to the laws and provisions in force at the time and before the agreement. Nevertheless, Jordan excluded eastern courts and Awqaf in Jerusalem from the disengagement agreement as the issue of Jerusalem was postponed until the time of the final negotiations. Up to this date, Jordanian laws regarding Islamic Awqaf in the holy city are still applied.
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« Reply #404 on: July 25, 2013, 05:48:32 am »

Thanks! Good catch on this!

WND has some decent news stuff to glean upon, but nonetheless they are playing their part in this false left/right paradigm(where they're playing the role of the "right"), which is why they end up putting out propaganda as well.
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« Reply #405 on: July 25, 2013, 09:49:07 am »

An American General Warns the Israeli Right

Last weekend, Marine Corps General James Mattis, the recently retired leader of U.S. Central Command and a man known inside the White House for his sharp opinions (which is one reason he’s no longer leading Central Command) issued a very sharp opinion about Israel’s future.

Speaking at a security conference in Aspen, Colorado, Mattis warned Israel that time was running out for it to reverse its West Bank settlement project.

“We have got to find a way to make the two-state solution that Democrat and Republican administrations have supported, we’ve got to get there,” he said. “And the chances for it, as the king of Jordan has pointed out, are starting to ebb because of the settlements and where they’re at, are going to make it impossible to maintain the two-state option.”

After blaming the lack of peace squarely on the settlements, he went a step further, and raised the incendiary question of apartheid: “If I’m Jerusalem and I put 500 Jewish settlers out here to the east and there’s 10,000 Arab settlers in here, if we draw the border to include them, either it ceases to be a Jewish state or you say the Arabs don’t get to vote -- apartheid. That didn’t work too well the last time I saw that practiced in a country.”

Mattis has homed in on the precise issue that alienates liberal-minded Americans and Israelis: the West Bank double standard. Although Israel, within its 1967 borders, is a democracy in which Arabs have legal and voting rights, the West Bank is a two-tiered political entity: Jewish settlers in Hebron have the rights of Israeli citizens, but their Arab neighbors -- people who sometimes live mere yards away -- are under military occupation, without the same rights. This is a politically and morally untenable arrangement, and Mattis was right to call it out.

He was wrong to blame the lack of peace solely on Israel -- the Palestinians have rejected one compromise offer after another, and the Gaza Strip, which would make up about half the future Palestinian state, is under the control of Hamas, which seeks Israel’s elimination -- but he isn't wrong to identify the settlements as an enormous impediment to compromise.

Mattis is also conveying conventional Pentagon wisdom, and this is why the settlers, and their advocates in the cabinet of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, ought to be paying close attention, because they can't forever stand against the opinions of men like Mattis (who, by the way, couldn't be considered “anti-Israel” by any stretch of the imagination).

Mattis went on to make another assertion that Netanyahu’s cabinet ought to heed: “I paid a military security price every day as the commander of Centcom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us, because they can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t show respect for the Arab Palestinians." He went on to say that John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state who's trying to restart peace talks, "is right on target with what he’s doing. And I just hope the protagonists want peace and a two-state solution as much as he does.”

Arab rulers who complain about U.S. support for Israel to generals like Mattis are playing their American counterparts a bit: It’s very hard to imagine the Saudis and the Emiratis and the Kuwaitis and the Jordanians not taking American help -- or not providing bases to the U.S. -- because they’re upset by settlements. The Arabs uniformly fear and loathe Iran more than they fear and loathe Israel. Still, it's true that American military commanders wouldn’t have to sit through quite so many lectures about Palestinian rights if there was movement on the peace process. It's also true that men like Mattis make their own weather -- that is, whether he’s right or wrong, this is what he believes, and it would be foolish for the Israelis, a dependent power, to ignore the feelings of powerful American generals.

What Israeli army generals know -- and what many of their political leaders don’t seem to recognize -- is that Mattis's views are commonplace in the American defense establishment. The Israeli right can only ignore this reality for so long without doing its country permanent damage.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-25/an-american-general-warns-the-israeli-right-.html
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« Reply #406 on: July 28, 2013, 06:46:19 am »

http://news.yahoo.com/israeli-cabinet-weigh-prisoner-release-palestinian-talks-181552730.html
Israel to approve prisoner deal in push to revive Palestinian talks
7/27/13

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel was expected on Sunday to approve releasing more than 100 Arab prisoners as a step to renew stalled peace talks with the Palestinians ahead of plans to convene negotiators in Washington later this week.

Ministers will vote on the move at the cabinet's weekly session, as well as proposed legislation to require a public referendum or vote on any peace agreement reached involving a withdrawal from land Israel captured in a 1967 war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected to win support even from pro-settler hardliners for the prisoner release, seen as critical to relaunching negotiations stalled since 2010, by sidestepping a thornier issue for his political allies of Palestinian demands to halt settlement expansion.

In a dramatic appeal for public support posted on his Facebook page on Saturday night, Netanyahu urged Israelis to back his "very painful decision" to free prisoners jailed more than 20 years for deadly attacks.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had demanded the release of these prisoners jailed from before a 1993 interim peace accord took effect. Israel has jailed thousands more Palestinians since that time, citing security offences.

Netanyahu said Israel must seize what he saw as the opportunity presented by "monumental changes" in the Arab world and give Israel a boost in what he called a "complex global reality" to try to resolve decades of conflict with the Palestinians.

He said the negotiations, which a senior Palestinian official has said may convene in Washington on Tuesday, "will last at least nine months with the aim of examining whether it is possible in this period to achieve an agreement with the Palestinians."

"I did agree to release 104 Palestinians in defined groups after the start of negotiations, and in accordance with the circumstances of its progress," he said, adding that he had rejected other Palestinian demands for a settlement freeze.

"With all the importance I attach to the diplomatic process I wasn't ready to accept the Palestinians' demands for (military) withdrawals and (settlement) freezes as preconditions for entering in negotiations," the Israeli leader wrote.

The U.S.-brokered talks broke down three years ago in a dispute over settlement construction Palestinians say denies them the land needed for a state they seek to establish in territory Israel captured in a 1967 war.

Officials said Netanyahu's plan calls for freeing inmates in at least four stages stretched over a nine-month period, with the first group being released over the next few weeks. Netanyahu said prisoners would be freed only after talks began.

The latest diplomatic push follows months of intense shuttle diplomacy by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry who said a week ago the groundwork had been laid for a breakthrough, while setting no specific date for talks to reconvene.

The two sides still differ widely over core elements of a deal to establish a Palestinian state alongside Israel on land Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Abbas had pressed for explicit guarantees that Israel would negotiate a withdrawal based on borders from before the 1967 conflict. Israel has resisted, insisting it would keep several settlement blocs and East Jerusalem, a city it annexed as part of its capital in a move never recognized internationally.

(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by David Evans)
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« Reply #407 on: July 28, 2013, 04:43:26 pm »

Israel OK's prisoner release, step to peace talks
7/28/13
http://news.yahoo.com/israel-oks-prisoner-release-step-peace-talks-191102552.html

JERUSALEM (AP) — A divided Israeli Cabinet agreed Sunday to release 104 long-term Palestinian prisoners convicted of deadly attacks, clearing a hurdle toward resuming Mideast peace talks and giving U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry his first concrete achievement after months of shuttle diplomacy.

The U.S. said preliminary talks would begin Monday. Release of the prisoners is linked to progress in the talks, meaning many could well remain behind bars.

Neither side appeared upbeat, despite the possibility of renewed talks. Each has blamed the other for the lack of success in 20 years of negotiations, and Kerry's success so far has been only to get the parties back to the table.

The prisoner release, approved 13-7 with two abstentions, is a key part of the Kerry-brokered deal.

Next, Israeli and Palestinian teams meet in Washington on Monday, the State Department spokeswoman said, to prepare for six to nine months of negotiations on setting up a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The State Department said Kerry called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and invited them to send teams to Washington.

State Department spokeswoman Jan Psaki said in a statement that talks would begin Monday evening and continue Tuesday. It said the talks would "serve as an opportunity to develop a procedural work plan for how the parties can proceed with the negotiations in the coming months."

Officials said chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and Abbas aide Mohammed Shtayyeh would represent the Palestinians, and Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and adviser Yitzhak Molcho would attend for Israel.

Netanyahu, seeking to overcome stiff opposition from ultra-nationalists, told his Cabinet that "resuming the political process at this time is important for Israel," noting that any deal would be submitted to a national referendum.

Erekat welcomed the vote on the prisoners as a "step toward peace," one he said is long overdue.

Negotiators made progress in previous rounds, and the outlines of a deal have emerged — a Palestinian state in most of the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, lands captured by Israel in 1967, with border adjustments to enable Israel to annex land with a majority of nearly 600,000 settlers.

Those negotiations broke down before the sides could tackle the most explosive issues, a partition of Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees and their descendants, now several million people.

Abbas remains leery of negotiating with Netanyahu, fearing any offer made by the hard-liner would fall far short of Palestinian demands, so he has insisted on a clear framework for negotiations.

Abbas said over the weekend that Kerry assured him the invitation to the negotiators will say border talks are based on the 1967 line — though Netanyahu has not said whether he has dropped his long-standing opposition to that demand.

In Washington, the Israeli and Palestinian teams are supposed to close the remaining gaps on the framework for talks, and they could well falter at that early point.

Israel's release of veteran prisoners could help Abbas persuade a skeptical Palestinian public that it's worthwhile returning to negotiations.

Netanyahu has repeatedly called for a resumption of negotiations that broke down in 2008, but he has not sketched the outlines of a deal he would be willing to strike, except to say he opposes a partition of Jerusalem.

In Sunday's Cabinet meeting, he pushed through the prisoner release despite opposition by two ministers in his Likud Party and by those from a main coalition partner, the pro-settler Jewish Home Party.

Outside the government complex, hundreds protested against a release. Among them were families of Israelis killed in attacks by Palestinian militants. Some held up pictures of their loved ones.

Naftali Bennett, the head of Jewish Home, briefly joined the protesters before attending the Cabinet meeting. "It's a hard day, the decision was made and I hope we won't pay a horrible price for this in the future," he said after the vote.

In the West Bank and Gaza, some relatives of prisoners anxiously awaited word. "Now there is a big relief," said Walid Abu Muhsen, 45, whose brother Jamal has been in prison for the past 22 years for killing an Israeli farmer.

The first disagreements emerged just hours after the Cabinet vote, reflecting the hostility and deep mistrust between the two sides.

Under the deal brokered by Kerry, Israel is supposed to free 104 prisoners who carried out attacks before the first interim peace agreements of the early 1990s.

Palestinian negotiators handed Kerry a list of 104 prisoners, arrested between 1983 and 1994. They said Kerry assured them Israel would release the prisoners in four stages over several months, with each release linked to progress in negotiations.

Among the 104 prisoners on the Palestinian list are two dozen who either have Israeli citizenship or come from Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem. In the past, Israeli media have said Israel would not free them.

On Sunday evening, an official in Netanyahu's office said that no Israeli Arabs are among the 104 whose release was authorized by the Cabinet. Asked to explain the discrepancy, he said Israel holds more than 104 "pre-Oslo" prisoners, suggesting the two sides apply different definitions.

Issa Qarakeh, the Palestinian minister of prisoner affairs, responded angrily.

"The agreement with Kerry was that all the pre-Oslo prisoners, including Israeli Arabs and east Jerusalem residents, will be released," he said. "If they (Israelis) exclude any of them, there will be a problem that might hinder the talks."

Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher said that a prisoner release in stages gives Netanyahu additional leverage during negotiations.

"Netanyahu has given himself a carrot that he can hold out to the Palestinians," he said. "Netanyahu can refuse to release the later batches if there's no progress."
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« Reply #408 on: July 29, 2013, 08:49:31 am »

http://nycdailymail.com/2013/07/27/obama-signs-executive-order-sends-500-million-to-terrorists/
7/27/13
Obama Signs Executive Order, Sends $500 million to Terrorists

Citing “national security interests,” President Obama effectively sidestepped Congress by signing an executive order which enables him to send $500 million to fund Muslim terrorists in the West Bank.

The executive order, addressed to Secretary of State John Kerry, was quietly signed Friday afternoon, as the media’s full attention was focused upon a royal birth.

In the order, President Obama writes, “I hereby certify that it is important to the national security interests of the United States to waive the provisions of section 7040(a) of the Act as carried forward by the CR, in order to provide funds appropriated to carry out chapter 4 of part II of the Foreign Assistance Act, as amended, to the Palestinian Authority.”

The move comes on the heels of a 2012 executive order in which Obama waived a congressional ban on funding the Palestinian Authority and sent the Hamas terror led organization $147 million American taxpayer dollars. He also removed all spending restrictions on that money, restrictions which dictate what the funds can and cannot be used for, ie. humanitarian assistance, education, betterment of society, etc.  Thus enabling the money to be used for military equipment.

Ed Brown, a DC watchdog writes, “When the next Palestinian/Israeli conflict erupts because Hamas led Palestine is lobbing rockets over the fence into Israel —– don’t forget who paid for those rockets: you did, Mr. & Mrs. American taxpayer.”

Brown’s assertion is backed by those made by political commentator Dean Garrison.  Garrison says, “I am not sure why we even have a legislative branch in 2013, because it’s obvious that Obama and company are going to do what they want anyway.”

“Whether this money eventually finds its way into the hands of terrorists, or not, is not entirely the point. Americans are sick of hearing how we need to make cuts, tighten our belts and sacrifice while our government keeps sending money elsewhere.”
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« Reply #409 on: July 29, 2013, 03:49:46 pm »

Quote
“Whether this money eventually finds its way into the hands of terrorists, or not, is not entirely the point. Americans are sick of hearing how we need to make cuts, tighten our belts and sacrifice while our government keeps sending money elsewhere.”

See, even that ends up being a misdirection from the real problem; a president thumbing his nose at law, and send money to foreign interests solely on his decision. Spending money we don't have outside of Congress is a whole separate legal issue.

So in 2 years, he's sent the "Palestinian Authority", $647 million, just by his own executive orders? And he's not in handcuffs why?

Talk about misappropriation of funds!  Roll Eyes
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« Reply #410 on: July 30, 2013, 07:23:41 am »

http://www.timesofisrael.com/rocket-strikes-western-negev/
Rocket strikes western Negev

No injuries or damage reported


7/30/13

A Kassam rocket struck the western Negev region Tuesday morning, Army Radio reported. The rocket was launched from the northern Gaza Strip and landed in an open area.

No one was injured and there were no reports of damage.
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« Reply #411 on: August 01, 2013, 05:35:47 pm »

http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/01/19820902-senate-confirms-power-as-next-un-ambassador?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=4
8/1/13

Senate confirms Power as next UN ambassador

By Carrie Dann, NBC News

The Senate has confirmed Samantha Power to be the next ambassador to the United Nations.

The vote was 87-10.

Power, who has served as a foreign policy adviser to President Barack Obama, replaces Susan Rice, now the president’s national security adviser.

She won a Pulitzer Prize in 2003 for her book “A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.”
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« Reply #412 on: August 05, 2013, 09:21:37 am »

http://www.timesofisrael.com/first-26-pre-oslo-prisoners-to-go-free-on-august-13-pa-says/
8/3/13
First 26 pre-Oslo prisoners to go free on August 13, PA says

Livni: Talks to resume in Jerusalem, Palestinians are ‘serious’ about the process


Israel is set to release a fist group of 26 long-serving Palestinian prisoners on August 13, the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told the Palestinians news agency Ma’an on Saturday.

Erekat also confirmed that Israel has agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners who have been serving sentences since before the 1993 Oslo Accords in four phases as the new peace talks progress.

Justice Minister and chief negotiator Tzipi Livni (Hatnua) had told Channel 10 Friday that the next round of talks between Israel and the Palestinians would be held in Israel in the second week of August, and that some Palestinian prisoners would be freed by then.

Israel Radio reported Saturday morning that the talks are due to recommence on August 14.

The Israeli government on Sunday established a ministerial committee to handle the prisoner releases. The releases will be individually scrutinized, and leave given for opponents to appeal the releases to the Israeli Supreme Court, which is deemed unlikely to intervene.

Former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman (Yisrael Beytenu), for his part, told Channel 10 on Saturday that “there is no chance” of the new talks achieving an accord, “and anybody with a brain knows it.”

Livni said she believed the Palestinians were serious about the process, and that both sides ought to have a good sense already of “roughly how the talks should end.” She said the sides had agreed on alternating venues for the talks — which resumed in Washington on Monday-Tuesday after a three-year hiatus — as they progress over coming months.

“We and the Palestinians both determined that the first meetings would be held once in Israel and once in the Palestinian Authority … we want to do it directly (and close to home). The next meeting will be in the second week of August in Israel,” she said.

“The release [of the first group of Palestinian prisoners] will take place between now and the second week of August,” she added.

Livni also addressed the 9-month timetable for talks announced last week during the first round of negotiations in the US, telling the channel that the timeline was of less importance.

“All the relevant sides have a vested interest in an agreement. If [the talks] are serious and we’re at the eighth month and we find that we need more time, then of course we will carry on talking. If after a month, we see it’s not serious, then why carry on talking for the next eight?

“It is my impression that the Palestinians are serious — this is a test for them… Anybody who enters the [negotiating] room knows roughly how the talks should end.” said Livni.

Last week, Israel approved the phased release of the 104 Palestinian prisoners in order to facilitate the resumption of peace talks, a move that drew criticism from those on the right of the political spectrum, many of whom see the freeing of convicted murderers and terrorists as a price too high to pay for a return to the talks. Others regard it as a necessary evil, meeting a Palestinian demand to enable the resumption of negotiations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that approving the releases was a deeply painful decision, but one that served the wider interests of the state.

The parties held their first talks in three years in Washington last week, brokered by US Secretary of State John Kerry who traveled to the region no fewer than six times in recent months to get the sides to agree to a renewal of talks.

On Thursday, President Barack Obama called Netanyahu and  Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to praise both leaders for their roles in the resumption of talks. He also reportedly urged them to “move fast” and make “speedy progress” toward a permanent accord.

The US has indicated that it intends to remain involved and follow developments very closely. Last week, Kerry announced the appointment of former ambassador Martin Indyk to serve as US envoy for Mideast peace and the top American negotiator for the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
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« Reply #413 on: August 07, 2013, 01:57:16 pm »

EU, Israel headed for showdown over settlement rules

Brussels insists it won’t back down on West Bank ban, as Jerusalem considers balking at research cooperation program


Despite heavy criticism from Israel, the European Union will not cancel, modify or delay the implementation of recently published guidelines that block EU funding from Israeli institutions either located or maintaining any links beyond the Green Line, a top EU official said this week.

“The guidelines will take effect as they are. This is how they were published [in the EU’s Official Journal], as a legal act, and that’s how it will be,” Ambassador Andreas Reinicke, the EU’s special representative to the Middle East peace process, told The Times of Israel last week. In certain areas where the guidelines are still unclear, “a closer look” at the details might be have to be taken, he allowed. But their main points will not be changed and will take effect by January 2014 as planned.

The EU’s directive, published last month, mandates a denial of European funding to, and cooperation with, Israeli institutions based or operating over the Green Line, and a requirement that all future agreements between Israel and the EU include a clause in which Israel accepts the position that all territory over the Green Line does not belong to Israel.
 
The exact formulation of this so-called territorial clause has yet to be determined and will likely be the subject of heated discussions between Israeli and European officials.
 
Brussels is also determined to introduce a labeling regime for settlement products by the end of 2013.

rest: http://www.timesofisrael.com/eu-israel-headed-for-showdown-over-settlement-rules/
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« Reply #414 on: August 12, 2013, 09:15:28 am »


Israel approves new housing for settlers days before peace talks


Israel has issued tenders for the construction of nearly 1,200 housing units in occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank, defying US and Palestinian opposition to expansion of Jewish settlements three days before the scheduled start of peace talks.

more: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/7f05fbe0-0280-11e3-a9e2-00144feab7de.html
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« Reply #415 on: August 13, 2013, 08:19:53 am »

Netanyahu: EU directives undermine efforts to achieve peace

In a meeting with German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu attacked the new EU directives restricting interaction with Israeli entities beyond the pre-1967 lines, saying they "undermine efforts to achieve peace."   

At his residence in Jerusalem, the prime minister clarified: "We both want the same thing: peace. We are committed to peace and work towards achieving it. Unfortunately, the new EU guidelines undermine the efforts to achieve peace."

"These guidelines stand in the way of a solution, which will only be achieved by negotiations between the two sides, and not by a third-party dictation," Netanyahu added.

For his part, Westerwelle said Germany would support the peace process.

http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Netanyahu-EU-directives-undermine-efforts-to-achieve-peace-322813
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« Reply #416 on: August 14, 2013, 12:53:16 pm »

‘Camp Jihad’: U.N.-Sponsored Camps Encourage Palestinian Kids to Destroy Israel

Summer at United Nations-funded camps in Gaza and the northern West Bank include playing with parachutes, jumping on trampolines, and racing down inflatable slides.
 
In between those kid-friendly activities, counselors convey belligerent, anti-Semitic lessons to the children who are repeatedly taught to take back “their land” Palestine by means of war, martyrdom and jihad, as seen in a new video.

All this is being sponsored by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) which is funded predominantly by the United States and the European Union, according to a video called “Camp Jihad” released this summer by the Nahum Bedein Center for Near East Policy Research, which documents some of the activities at the camps.
 
“Peace starts here” is the camps’ motto, according to the video excerpts of which were aired on Israel’s Channel 2 Tuesday night.
 
The campers are third- or fourth-generation descendants of Arabs who either fled or were forced out of their homes during the 1948 war when Arab armies attacked Israel after it declared independence. None of them has ever visited their ancestral “homes,” yet their schools and camps promote the notion that they will one day violently uproot “the Jews” whom their teachers compare to wolves.
 
Ahmad Souje, a counselor at the Balata camp near Nablus, told the film crew, “The only alternative to implement the ‘right of return’ is blood for blood, an eye for an eye. In the same way they expelled us, we will expel them.”
 
Shahed Arja, a girl attending the UNRWA camp in Gaza said, “This summer camp teaches us that we have to liberate Palestine.”


VIDEO: http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/08/14/camp-jihad-u-n-sponsored-camps-encourage-palestinian-kids-to-destroy-israel/
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« Reply #417 on: August 14, 2013, 01:22:39 pm »

Israeli official: Mideast peace talks between Israel, Palestinians have begun in Jerusalem - @AP

 Cheesy
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« Reply #418 on: August 14, 2013, 03:33:32 pm »

"For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when [there is] no peace." Jeremiah 8:11 (KJB)
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« Reply #419 on: August 20, 2013, 05:20:58 pm »

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/20/20086358-20-years-after-historic-oslo-peace-deal-few-signs-of-hope-for-new-mideast-generation?lite&ocid=msnhp&pos=2
8/20/13
20 years after historic Oslo peace deal, few signs of hope for new Mideast generation

TEL AVIV – It was a historic handshake that heralded a moment of genuine hope that the decades of violence in the Middle East might finally come to an end.

The Oslo peace accord – agreed in secret 20 years ago on Tuesday – triggered the White House photo-op a month later between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat as a smiling Bill Clinton patted both men on the back.

The Oslo generation should have lived in a very different world from their parents.

But despite peace talks recently revived with help from Secretary of State John Kerry, there is little sign of optimism for today's 20-somethings, while their parents have seen it all before.

For Nihad Ilian, 50, mother of five daughters and two sons, Gaza has become “a closed cemetery, a big prison” with movement outside restricted by the Israelis.

But in 1993 she was optimistic that her newborn daughter Alaa, now an "ambitious and talented" 20-year-old, would have a “good future.”

“The situation before Oslo was bad and we hoped to have a better life, and that Alaa … will not hear of wars,” Ilian said.

“Following Oslo, we lived for a brief period in stability, expecting Gaza to become like Singapore.”

As the years passed by, hope faded.

“Alaa grew up and nothing changed," Ilian said. “This is the fate of the new generation that came after Oslo. We feel overpowered and subdued. We wish to live like other people.”

Ilian, who lives in in Jabalyah refugee camp in Gaza City, added, “You keep promising your children that this will be the last war … but five years later there is another war. Wars became the routine after Oslo.”

Alaa Ilian, who studied English at Al-Azhar University, has never left Gaza.

“Since I was young, I can remember wars and intifadas,” she said. “Oslo solved the conflict for only a limited period.”

“I’m a girl who wants to study, travel abroad and live my life,” she added. “I have studied but cannot find a job. I feel estranged while living in my homeland … The situation is bad."

Alaa had little hope for the new peace talks.

“Negotiations should be for the good of both sides, but all the rights will go for the stronger side,” she said.

In the Oslo accord, Israeli and Palestinian representatives agreed “it is time to put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict … and strive to live in peaceful coexistence and mutual dignity and security and achieve a just, lasting and comprehensive peace settlement and historic reconciliation.”

It laid out a plan for Palestinian democracy and a future state based on borders from before the 1967 Six-Day War.

Clinton declared “the peace of the brave is within our reach;” Rabin, Arafat and Shimon Peres, then Israeli’s foreign minister and now president, received Nobel Peace Prizes.

Two years later, Rabin was assassinated by Israeli extremist Yigal Amir; then came the second Palestinian “intifada” uprising in 2000 that shattered Israeli relations with Arafat; the Second Lebanon War in 2006; and a major Israeli military operation prompted by rocket attacks in Gaza in 2008.

Palestinian democracy took a blow in 2007 with the Battle of Gaza between the Fatah and Hamas movements. While Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah retain power in the West Bank, outright control of Gaza was taken by Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the United States.

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