by Avi Issacharoff, Barak Ravid and Natasha Mozgovaya – Haaretz Israel and the Palestinians are at odds over which subjects will open their next round of peace talks, set to start Tuesday in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to begin with security arrangements, recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and…
by Israel Today Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas clarified for his people on Monday that he intends to make not even one concession or compromise in direct peace negotiations with Israel, and that for a final status peace to be achieved, Israel will have to fully meet all Arab demands and abandon its own conditions. First…
by Moshe Arens, Haaretz This time it’s not going to be deja vu. The negotiations between Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, promoted and orchestrated by Barack Obama, will not be anything like the negotiations that took place during sixteen years, successively, between Yitzhak Rabin, Netanyahu, Ehud Barak, on the Israeli side, and Yasser Arafat. Arafat…
by George Will, JewishWorldReview.com ‘Twas a famous victory for diplomacy when, in 1991 in Madrid, Israelis and Palestinians, orchestrated by the United States, at last engaged in direct negotiations. Almost a generation later, U.S. policy has succeeded in prodding the Palestinians away from their recent insistence on “proximity talks” — in which they have talked…
by Bennie Begin The Palestinians are after a ‘two-stage solution’ and not a two-state solution. There is no other rational explanation for the total, vehement rejection of the far-reaching proposals by two previous Israeli governments. Under the banner of the 2008 Annapolis process, the Israeli government and the PLO leadership failed to reach a lasting…
by Caroline B. Glick, Jerusalem Post The Israeli Left is on a collision course with the Obama administration. It is reportedly trying to undermine negotiations between the Netanyahu government and Fatah. The Obama administration is earnestly seeking to initiate them. According to an unnamed eyewitness interviewed by Israel Radio, during a July 8 meeting between…
by Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post Two important statements this week shed a light on the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Both were barely noted by the media. On Saturday, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas gave US mediator George Mitchell a letter detailing a number of concessions that…
by Daniel Pipes, National Review Online Under Yasir Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization notoriously said one thing to Arab/Muslim audiences and the opposite to Israeli/Western ones, speaking venomously to the former and in dulcet tones to the latter. What about Arafat’s mild-mannered successor, Mahmoud Abbas? Did he break from this pattern of duplicity or continue it?…
by Caroline Glick, Jerusalem Post Just ahead of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s trip next week to Washington, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas went on a charm offensive towards the Israeli media. On Tuesday Abbas invited representatives of the Hebrew-language press to his office in Ramallah and assured them of his good intentions towards Israel. We…
By Israel Today Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas indicated in his meeting with US envoy George Mitchell that he has a problem with Israel behaving like a democracy when it comes to the land-for-peace process. Details of the meeting provided over the weekend to Ha’aretz revealed that Abbas pressed Mitchell to in turn press Israel to…