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President Obama, seeking to capture a moment of epochal change in the Arab world, began a new effort on Thursday to break the stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, setting out a new starting point for negotiations on the region’s most intractable problem.
President Obama’s endorsement on Thursday of using the 1967 boundaries as the baseline for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute — the first by an American president — prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to push back testily and the Palestinian leadership to call an urgent meeting.
We have been waiting for President Obama to lay out his vision of the promises and challenges of the upheaval in the Arab world. His speech on Thursday did not go far enough — there was no game-changing proposal on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — but he did promise strong support to those yearning for freedom and goaded American allies, including Israel, to take the political risks that are essential for peaceful change and the only way to build a lasting peace.
President Obama’s State Department speech Thursday has prompted a fevered debate among Middle East policy wonks about whether he has changed past U.S. policy on the terms for Palestinian statehood — not to mention a wave of inflated and mostly erroneous rhetoric from Republican presidential candidates.
The basic question is this: By saying that a division of territory between Israel and Palestine should be “based on” the “1967 lines” between Israel and the West Bank, with agreed “swaps” of land, did Obama move beyond the previous U.S. position on the subject?
In what was billed as a major address on recent developments in the Middle East, President Obama today backed pre-1967 borders as the basis for negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians on the contours of an eventual peace deal.
How does this shift U.S. policy?
President Obama plunged back into efforts to restart Middle East peace talks, pressuring both sides with a set of U.S. principles that appeared to catch Israeli leaders off guard and is likely to set up a tense meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday.
President Mahmoud Abbas has called an urgent meeting following US President Barack Obama’s speech on the Middle East on Thursday, a PLO official said.
Saeb Erekat said Abbas appreciated Obama's efforts to reach a comprehensive solution to the conflict and his remarks on the right to self-determination and dignity.
Erekat said the Palestinians remained committed to all previous agreements with Israel, "hoping that the Israeli government will do the same, to give the peace process the chance it deserves."
Israel's prime minister on Thursday gave a cool reception to President Barack Obama's Mideast policy speech, warning a withdrawal from the West Bank wold leave Israel vulnerable to attack and setting up what could be a tense meeting at the White House.
In his speech, Obama endorsed the Palestinian position on the borders of their future state, saying it should be based on Israel's lines before the 1967 Mideast war. Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip in the fighting, and the Palestinians claim those areas for their state.
A 20-year-old Palestinian woman who was thrown into a well and left to die in the name of "family honor" has not become just another statistic in one of the Middle East's most shameful practices.
The killing of Aya Baradiya — by an uncle who didn't like a potential suitor — sparked such outrage that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas scrapped laws this week that guaranteed sentences of six months or less for such killings.
Israel's military has rejected Russian charges that a military attache to Moscow was a spy as "unfounded."
The military said in a statement Wednesday that the officer underwent a "thorough investigation" after he returned to Israel.
Israeli media identified the officer as Col. Vadim Leiderman.
The military statement said the officer "was detained for investigation last week by Russian authorities,on suspicion of spying."
Channel 2 TV reported he was taken away by Russian agents during dinner. He was questioned and expelled.
Palestinian officials on Friday condemned an Israeli plan to build 1,550 housing units on annexed land around Jerusalem, authorised the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu left for talks in Washington.
An Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman said a planning committee had approved two building projects in Pisgat Zeev and Har Homa. These urban settlements were built on land that Israel annexed after a 1967 war, in a move not recognised internationally, and that it sees as Jerusalem neighbourhoods.
The spokeswoman did not say when construction was expected to start.
Israel said the United States "does not understand reality" as its leader arrived in Washington on Friday after President Barack Obama endorsed a longstanding Palestinian demand on borders of a future state.
In a policy speech on the eve of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit, Obama laid down his clearest markers yet on the compromises he believes Israel and the Palestinians must make to resolve the decades-old conflict.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed on Thursday U.S. President Barak Obama's efforts to renew talks with Israel that collapsed last year, a senior Palestinian official said.
"President Abbas expresses his appreciation of the continuous efforts exerted by President Obama with the objective of resuming the permanent status talks in the hope of reaching a final status agreement," said the official, Saeb Erekat.
Islamic Hamas movement on Thursday rejected U.S. President Barack Obama's speech on the Middle East, accusing him of leaning towards Israel.
"Obama adopted Israel's position to boost himself in preparation for an electoral campaign," said Mahmoud Zahar, a Gaza- based leader of Hamas, which does not recognize Israel.
Obama delivered a speech Thursday in which he urged Israel and the Palestinians to resume peace talks, stalled over a dispute on settlement activities since last year.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday that the UN has an essential role to help the Palestinians establish their statehood.
"We will go to the UN to get the recognition of our independent state," Abbas said after meeting Tony Blair, the envoy of the Middle East Quartet, in Ramallah.
He added that an end to Israel's occupation and the creation of the Palestinian state will enable the Palestinian people to live in peace and stability with their Israeli neighbors.
Everyone is heaping praise - with some justification - on the reservists' restrained response to the demonstrators who infiltrated from Syria on Nakba Day, restraint that prevented a mass slaughter. However, it is best not to forget that what a series of previous Arab moves - including army invasions, cross-border infiltrations and terror attacks, airplane hijackings, suicide attacks and rocket barrages - failed to achieve, may be accomplished via mass marches to the borders, the settlements and the Israel Defense Forces roadblocks ahead of September.
This story begins as a clandestine affair of espionage marked by daring, adventurism, improvisation and imagination as embedded in the official Israeli narrative. In the 1940s, squads of young scouts from the Haganah, the pre-state army and forerunner of the Israel Defense Forces, collected information about the Arab towns and villages in Palestine for intelligence purposes: in preparation for a future conflict and as part of a more general project of creating files of target sites.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to Washington at what may be the last chance to turn the establishment of a Palestinian state from a global anti-Israel campaign into a joint Israeli, American and European project. The establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state is today a necessity, just as Zionism was a necessity. And about half of Israeli society apparently agrees with Western public opinion and Western governments on the principle that Palestinian Arabs have the same right to independence and sovereignty as do Israeli Jews.
The cold relationship between US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seems to have noted a new drop in temperature following Obama's Mideast policy speech, and according to the New York Times, tensions between Washington and Jerusalem are at an all-time high.
Obama has reportedly told close aides and allies that he does not believe Netanyahu will ever be willing to make the kind of big concessions that will lead to a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.
Next crisis with US underway? The Interior Ministry's district committee for construction and planning approved Thursday evening two major plans for some 1,550 housing units in contentious Jerusalem neighborhoods.
The construction plans for Har Homa and Pisgat Ze'ev, both located beyond the Green Line, were given the go-ahead as President Barack Obama was delivering his major Mideast policy speech.
Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's departure to Washington Thursday evening, the government secretary ordered the committee to proceed with the touchy session.
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni slammed Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Friday for "harming the relationship" between Israel and the US.
"Netanyahu spoke about consensus," Livni said, "and if there is a consensus in Israel, it's that the relationship with the US is essential to Israel, and aprime minister that harms the relationship with the US over something unsubstantial is harming Israel's security and deterrence."
Livni added that such a prime minister should resign. "I am saying this loud and clear."
On the eve of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, the State Department issued a bland announcement of a visit to the region by US Deputy Secretary of State, James Steinberg, in which it distinguished between Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank.
In a “media note” to the press on Wednesday, the State Department released a two paragraph statement on “Deputy Secretary Steinberg’s visit to Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank.”
The wording, however, led some to wonder: Isn’t Jerusalem inside Israel, and does this odd wording presage a subtle change of US policy?
US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu seemed on a collision course following Obama’s speech Thursday night where the president called for a return to the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed-upon land swaps.
Netanyahu’s position, which he highlighted in an unexpectedly negative response to the president’s speech, is that the 1967 lines are indefensible.
US President Obama did a great service in sketching out a new paradigm for American engagement with the Middle East in his State Department "winds of change" speech this afternoon, in which he raised the goal of reform and democracy to a top-tier US interest. Nevertheless, after critiquing Arab regimes that have used the Arab-Israeli conflict to distract their peoples from the important business of reform, he undermined the potency and effect of his own message by unveiling a new -- and controversial -- set of principles guiding US efforts to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Mr Obama has said a future Palestinian state must be based on the borders that existed prior to the 1967 war.
He said "mutually agreed swaps" would help create "a viable Palestine, and a secure Israel".
But Mr Netanyahu said the pre-1967 borders were "indefensible".
An estimated 500,000 Israelis live in settlements built in the West Bank, which lies outside those borders.
The settlements are illegal under international law, although Israel disputes this.
The Zionist Organization of America urged AIPAC to rescind its invitation to President Obama after he called for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the basis of 1967 lines, saying Obama is the most hostile U.S. president ever to Israel.
"We urge AIPAC to rescind the invitation for President Obama to speak and we urge friends of Israel and enemies of Islamist terrorism to contact your Members of Congress to fight against Obama’s anti-Israel policy," said the ZOA's statement Thursday. ZOA President Morton Klein added, "President Obama is the most hostile president to Israel ever.”
At times, it seemed that Barack Obama thought that the Middle East did not include Israel or the Occupied Territories. "The United States opposes the use of violence and repression against the people of the region," the US president said last night. But there was not a word about 17 Palestinians killed earlier this week by Israeli security forces.
"We support a set of universal rights," Mr Obama said." Whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus; Sanaa or Tehran." If Gaza or Ramallah had been mentioned, more explanation would have been needed.
Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is coming under pressure to agree to the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiating a Palestinian state ahead of his address to the US Congress next week.
Critics and even some allies in Mr Netanyahu's right-wing government have strongly suggested he offer the compromise in the hope of reviving Middle East peace talks. That pressure received a significant boost by the US president, Barack Obama, who endorsed yesterday the idea of brokering a two-state solution with the 1967 lines as the starting point.
Two years ago, President Barack Obama reached out to the Muslim world in Cairo, promising a new beginning to America’s relationship with it.
The Muslim world responded enthusiastically. It reached back in hope having heard him say that it was his duty to fight negative stereotypes of Islam and declare solemnly that the Israeli settlements had to stop and that the US would not turn its back on legitimate Palestinian aspirations for a state of their own.
Many Jewish Israelis and their supporters have reacted with outrage to a New York Times Op-Ed on May 17 by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, particularly its invocation of the Palestinian historical narrative. Most troubling to them was Abbas’s description of how his family was “forced” to flee their home in what became Israel in 1948 — a word choice they feel implies that Abbas and his family were evicted by Jewish troops.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/19207
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/19207
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/19207
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.americantaskforce.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/middleeast/20speech.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/world/middleeast/20mideast.html?ref=middleeast
[8] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/opinion/20fri1.html?ref=opinion
[9] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/post/obamas-mideast-peace-gaffe/2011/04/19/AFyl0R7G_blog.html
[10] http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2011/05/the-us-policy-shift-on-1967-borders-explained.html
[11] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-obama-mideast-20110520,0,7117148,full.story
[12] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=389367
[13] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/israels-netanyahu-1967-borders-cant-be-defended-1485535.html
[14] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/harsh-west-bank-honor-killing-brings-tougher-law-1485605.html
[15] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/israeli-military-attache-to-moscow-expelled-as-spy-1483083.html
[16] http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/refile-palestinians-condemn-latest-israel-settlement-plan/
[17] http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/netanyahu-in-us-says-obama-misunderstands/
[18] http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/abbas-welcomes-obama-call-to-renew-peace-talks/
[19] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/20/c_13884173.htm
[20] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-05/19/c_13884095.htm
[21] http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/a-third-intifada-not-necessarily-1.362978
[22] http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/magazine/it-took-a-village-1.363015
[23] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/netanyahu-s-israel-is-on-course-to-become-a-pariah-state-1.362923
[24] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4071461,00.html
[25] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4071324,00.html
[26] http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=221472
[27] http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=221312
[28] http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=221401
[29] http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=221417
[30] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13466910
[31] http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/05/19/3087788/zoa-to-aipac-withdraw-obama-invite
[32] http://www.thenational.ae/thenationalconversation/editorial/obama-misses-another-chance-to-lead-for-peace
[33] http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/even-allies-say-netanyahu-must-put-1967-borders-on-negotiating-table
[34] http://arabnews.com/opinion/editorial/article415080.ece
[35] http://forward.com/articles/137976/
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