After all-night meeting with Netanyahu, Kerry going to Ramallah
US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday morning in Ramallah before leaving the region later in the afternoon, Israel Radio reported.
The sit-down with Abbas, which would be Kerry's third meeting with the Palestinian leader in the last three days, follows a late-night, hours long meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. There had been reports on Saturday that Kerry was on the verge of announcing a four-way peace summit in Amman, though this was denied by an Israeli official.
Sources told Israel Radio that military officials, legal experts, and political advisers sat in on the meeting between Kerry and Netanyahu, perhaps suggesting that the session was not routine.
Kerry is expected to convene a news conference later Sunday before his departure to Brunei.
While there were reports in the Jordanian media on Saturday that Kerry succeeded in securing an agreement for an Israel-Palestinian-American-Jordanian summit later in the week in Jordan, Home Front Defense Minister Gilad Erdan, a member of the security cabinet, denied that such a meeting was imminent.
"To the best of my understanding, Abu Mazen (Abbas) is still demanding the same preconditions, which we have no intention of meeting," Erdan said.
Abbas has consistently demanded a complete cessation of new construction in east Jerusalem and in the settlements, a release of Palestinian prisoners incarcerated before the Oslo accords, and an Israeli agreement to use the 1967 lines as the baseline of the talks.I am sure that after all this effort, Netanyahu is not going to willingly send Kerry away empty-handed. But since Netanyahu is the one who has shown flexibility, it is deeply disturbing that Kerry continues to try to press him, and is spending comparatively less time pressuring Abu Bluff. Netanyahu's coalition is unlikely to go along with the preconditions demanded by Abu Mazen, nor should they. It's long past time that the 'Palestinians' learned to compromise. If they can't it will prove once again that Naftali Bennett was right: The 'two-state solution' is dead.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Amman, Binyamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem, John Kerry, Middle East peace process, Ramallah
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:52 AM
3 Comments:
Whether in the pic or not, you missed a name: Robert Malley.
spit
For most of 1967 the border was right where it is now, at the Jordan river. Sounds like a good starting point to me.
From the article: Sources told Israel Radio that military officials, legal experts, and political advisers sat in on the meeting between Kerry and Netanyahu, perhaps suggesting that the session was not routine. ----------------------------- My bet would be he had these other people at the meeting to make sure Kerry didn't go out and lie about what was said.
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