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TEL AVIV — Local leaders often take visitors to Jewish settlements occupying the high ground of the northern West Bank to lookout points from where, on a clear day, they can see the glass towers of Tel Aviv, the shimmering waters of the Mediterranean and the contours of Israel’s heavily populated coastal plain.
The aim is to underline the strategic dangers that the leaders say would be inherent in any Israeli withdrawal from the area to make way for a Palestinian state.
JERUSALEM — Israeli officials have tried to float a trade-off in which they would extend the temporary moratorium on settlement construction in exchange for the release by the United States of Jonathan Jay Pollard, the American who pleaded guilty to spying for Israel and is serving a life term in an American jail, Israel’s Army Radio reported Monday.
After decades-long hostility, Israelis and Palestinians are tiptoeing their way, at the urging of the United States, through talks toward a peace that has been as elusive as a desert mirage.
The goal is to provide security for Israel and nationhood for the Palestinians, ordered by boundaries yet to be defined and agreed upon.
Ironically, the wild card in all this may be the nation not even seated at the negotiating table: Syria.
NEW YORK (Ma’an) -- All Israelis are watching negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians attentively hoping for success, Israeli President Shimon Peres said Monday in New York.
At a news conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, Peres addressed questions from the Palestinian press as to whether he was taking a leadership role in the ongoing talks, and whether he had intervened in the process.
JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- The EU has contributed over €3.58 million in its second disbursement to the Palestinian Authority to aid rebuilding of Gaza's private sector, a statement issued Monday said.
The EU will contribute a total of €22 million towards the project, the statement added.
The Private Sector Reconstruction in Gaza program was launched by the PA following Israel's December 2008 offensive on the coastal enclave, Operation Cast Lead. The program targets businesses whose buildings and assets were destroyed in the war.
JERUSALEM — Israel's leader is demanding that Israeli troops remain on the eastern border of a future Palestinian state, further antagonizing the Palestinians at a time when they are already threatening to walk out of peace talks.
The negotiations, which resumed this month in Washington after a two-year breakdown, are foundering over Palestinian demands that Israel extend a curb on Jewish construction in the West Bank. That curb, in place for 10 months, is to expire Sunday.
JERUSALEM — An Israeli Arab charged with spying for Hezbollah has been released from jail in a plea bargain.
Courts spokeswoman Nitzan Eyal said Monday that Omar Sayid was freed last week after five months behind bars. He pleaded guilty to contact with an enemy agent — a crime that could have carried up to seven years in prison.
NEW YORK, Sept 20 (Reuters) - The Quartet of Middle East peace mediators will on Tuesday call on Israel to extend its settlement moratorium, saying the freeze has had a positive impact as the two sides seek a peace deal within the next year, according to a draft statement seen by Reuters.
RAMALLAH, Sept. 20 (Xinhua) -- A Palestinian official on Monday accused the Hamas movement of trying to introduce itself to the international community as an alternative to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).
Member of the PLO Executive Committee, Hanan Ashrawi, told Voice of Palestine radio that Hamas "is trying to open dialogue with the United States and European countries by several means in order to gain legitimacy and the recognition of the United States. "
The United States is concerned that the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians could collapse in the coming days over the dead end in the talks on the settlement building freeze. America's ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, on Monday told European Union envoys in a briefing that the Obama administration's worry stems from the fact that both sides are holding steadfast to their positions.
Want to know what's happening in the West Bank settlements in real time? In addition to 'Sudoku' and 'Street Fighter,' iPhone owners will now be able to install the "Facts on the Ground" application, which monitors the expansion of settlements in Judea and Samaria, created by Americans for Peace Now.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai said Tuesday that he sees "absolutely no point" in holding direct peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
In an interview with the Shas newsletter Day to Day, the party chairman said that "as long as there is no significant change on the Palestinian side, there should be no advancement in talks."
"I do not in any way believe that these talks should be held, point-blank," said Yishai. Another summit, another conference, another meeting, from the Madrid conference to the Sharm conference, and nothing has come out of this."
The heads of the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams, Yitzhak Molcho and Saeb Erekat, are scheduled to meet sometime during the next 48 hours, Palestinian sources told Ynet on Monday.
The sources say the two will meet in order to prepare for another round of direct talks between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, which has not been scheduled yet.
Meanwhile, In New York
Erekat is currently on a visit to New York, while Molcho is in Washington meeting with US officials. Netanyahu's office refused to comment on the report.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in a Monday night interview with Palestinian news source Ma'an that "Israel was free to call itself the Israeli Zionist Jewish Empire."
The PA leader made cynical remarks to Maan shortly after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called upon Abbas to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
ON A DAY IN LATE AUGUST, Rabbi Ya'akov Meidan, head of the Gush Etzion Yeshiva in Alon Shvut, a settlement south of Bethlehem in the West Bank, the most prestigious yeshiva of the moderate Zionist religious movement, began his daily lecture with a different lesson than the usual one on Jewish law.
He held up a copy of “Torat Hamelekh” (“The King’s Torah”), a book with a marblepatterned cover and embossed gilt letters, to his students.
“This is a challenging book, written by learned men,” he said to the assembly of students.
On Sunday, Israel’s unsavory Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened Palestinian negotiators that if they refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, Arab Israelis could have their rights to citizenship withdrawn. This “needs to be one of the central issues on the negotiating table in light of the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state,” he told his Cabinet colleagues.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/15351
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/15351
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/15351
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.americantaskforce.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/world/middleeast/21mideast.html?_r=2&ref=middleeast
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/21/world/middleeast/21israel.html?ref=middleeast
[8] http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/John-Hughes/2010/0920/Could-Syria-become-a-force-for-peace
[9] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=316476
[10] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=316338
[11] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/premier-wants-israeli-troops-at-palestinian-border-926736.html
[12] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/israeli-arab-accused-of-spying-freed-in-plea-926475.html
[13] http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N21120392.htm
[14] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-09/20/c_13521760.htm
[15] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/u-s-concerned-peace-talks-will-soon-collapse-over-settlement-construction-1.314876
[16] http://www.haaretz.com/culture/west-bank-settlements-can-now-be-tracked-on-your-iphone-1.314817
[17] http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/interior-minister-yishai-direct-peace-talks-are-completely-pointless-1.314954
[18] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3957861,00.html
[19] http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=188733
[20] http://www.jpost.com/JerusalemReport/Article.aspx?id=188561
[21] http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=30073
[22] http://arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article143199.ece
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