And the threats begin
Prime Minister Netanyahu and 'moderate' 'Palestinian' President A 10-month Israeli settlement freeze in the West Bank is set to expire on Sept. 26. Tel Aviv could choose to extend the moratorium or let it expire.Someone needs to tell The Hill that our capital is Jerusalem, not Tel Aviv. In fact, perhaps that needs to be said now more than ever.
An expiration, the chief Palestinian negotiator told media outlets, would mean that his side would step away from the talks.
“If we launch the talks and then Mr. Netanyahu will choose to poke us in the eye by tendering and ending the moratorium, he will have killed the negotiations,” Saeb Erakat told Bloomberg on Friday.
"If the Israeli government decides to announce new tenders on September 26, then we won't be able to continue with the talks," he told Al-Jazeera.
Palestinian Liberation Organization leaders met overnight Friday and decided to accept the U.S. invitation to negotiations, Agence France-Presse reported.
Netanyahu has said that construction will continue in East Jerusalem, also a sore spot with Palestinians as they wish to claim East Jerusalem as their capital in a Palestinian state.
“The prime minister has been calling for direct negotiations for the past year and a half,” Netanyahu's office said in a statement. “He was pleased with the American clarification that the talks would be without preconditions.”
I certainly don't expect Netanyahu to disclose any decision about extending the 'settlement freeze' before the 26th. Let's see where these 'talks' go. I don't expect them to go anywhere, although unless they have broken off completely by then, I expect that (unfortunately) the freeze will be extended for some period of time.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:57 PM
1 Comments:
As Barry Rubin noted, Israel and the Palestinians have completely different world views. That is why he expects direct talks to end in failure. And even extending the revanant freeze would make no difference in averting that outcome.
There will be no peace in the Middle East in our lifetime no matter how much a deluded West wants convince itself to believe otherwise. The Arabs want to see Israel destroyed. Why is that so hard for ostensibly intelligent people to grasp?
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