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US Middle East envoy George Mitchell has urged a swift return to peace talks on his first day of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
"We all share an obligation to create the conditions for the prompt resumption and early conclusion of negotiations," he said in Jerusalem.
US relations with Israel are said to be tense since President Barack Obama's speech to Muslims in Cairo last week.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is under pressure to back a two-state solution.
By virtually every measure—name, race, origins, and upbringing—Barack Hussein Obama was a revolutionary presidential candidate. In Mideast policy at least, there is little reason to imagine that he will be a revolutionary president. The radical break with traditional US policy came with the Bush administration, during which the US invaded and then occupied Iraq, shunned Syria, and engaged in an effort, at once ambitious and irresponsible, to reshape the region.
A veteran U.N. war crimes investigator acknowledged his probe of possible war crimes by Israel and Hamas — which included interviewing dozens of victims and poring through the files of human rights groups — is unlikely to lead to prosecutions.
Israel has refused to cooperate, depriving his team access to military sources and victims of Hamas rockets. And Hamas security often accompanied his team during their five-day trip to Gaza last week, raising questions about the ability of witnesses to freely describe the militant group's actions.
A U.S. general training Palestinian police in the West Bank said more officers are needed to prevent Hamas from gaining strength.
Lt.Gen. Keith Dayton plans to increase the number of Palestinian police battalions operating in West Bank cities from three to 10, media reports said Monday.
Israel, satisfied with the way the Palestinian police force operates in Palestinian villages and cities, has already approved sending additional recruits to undergo training in Jordan.
Five families in the West Bank hamlet of Hadidiya are under threat of immediate eviction. At least 12 others are fighting eviction and demolition orders in the Jordan Valley area.
In total, more than 150 people, many of them children, risk losing their home and being evicted from the area.
The Israeli army destroyed the homes of 18 Palestinian families and their animal pens in the nearby hamlet of Ras al-Ahmar on Thursday morning. More than 130 people, many of them children, lived in the hamlet.
With President Barack Obama seeking to engage the Arab world with his speech in Cairo, Americans' confidence that there will ever be peace in the Middle East is at near-record lows. Only 32% of U.S. adults surveyed by USA Today and Gallup in late May believe "there will come a time when Israel and the Arab nations will be able to settle their differences and live in peace"; 66% disagree.
Underscoring the need for a two-State solution and a durable peace in the region, UN Secretary-general Ban Ki-moon on Monday called on Israel to allow fuel and building materials into Gaza, freeze settlements in the West Bank and make fundamental changes in its security practices and policies.
In a message to the two-day meeting of the United Nations Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, Ban expressed his serious concern over the humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip.
Most observers welcomed President Obama’s speech in Cairo last week, but some pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian commentators have taken issue with the President’s emphasis on ending Israeli settlement activity and Palestinian violence, respectively, as crucial measures in laying the groundwork for a successful peace agreement. These choices were not arbitrary. They reflect the principal commitments and obligations of both parties under Phase One of the Roadmap.
Speaking at Cairo University last week, US President Barack Obama put his credibility on the line. He told the Israelis to stop colony-building and to ensure that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have the opportunity to lead normal lives.
Moreover, he stressed his commitment to a two-state solution, which he intends to make a personal priority, and equated the Palestinian cause with struggles against South African apartheid as well as the African-American civil rights movement.
The US envoy George Mitchell met with Israeli leaders today seeking to launch immediate talks on core issues of the Middle East conflict amid deep disagreements between Washington and the Jewish state over settlements and the two-state solution.
Mr Mitchell’s visit comes days ahead of a key speech by the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which the hawkish leader is due to lay out his cabinet’s policies on the stalled peace process the US administration has been trying to restart.
It was a good speech by any measure, and it will go some way towards lessening the mistrust of the world’s Muslims towards the United States. But when it comes to the core issue that has put Americans and Arabs on different sides of the fence over the past decades, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it will take more than words.
Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, has said his government is close to hitting a "brick wall" because it is not receiving enough aid to balance the budget.
The Palestinian Authority, or PA, has been forced to take loans because of the shortage of aid money, but that is not a sustainable solution, he told a donors' conference in Oslo, Norway, on Monday.
Blaming delinquent Arab donors, the International Monetary Fund said last week that the PA faces a serious cash crisis after receiving only half of the aid money it needs to function every month.
The decision to prosecute 12 Israeli Arabs over what the local media have described as the “lynching” of an Israeli soldier on a bus shortly after he shot dead four passengers has been greeted with outrage from the country’s Arab minority.
The inhabitants of Shefa’amr, one of the largest Arab towns in the Galilee region and the location of the attack, are expected to stage a one-day strike today in protest against the indictments. Seven of the 12 face charges of attempted murder.
United States President Barack Obama has presented to Egypt and Israel a plan for a two-state solution to be finalized within two years, the London-based A-Sharq al-Awsat reported on Tuesday.
A source in Cairo told the newspaper that Obama raised the plan with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter's visit to Washington last month. According to the report, the plan envisions a Middle East peace deal by 2011 and would encompass an agreement for a Palestinian state.
American pressure is penetrating the hearts of mainstream settlers. People like Uri Elitzur - who saw from a government office what many settlers do not see from the West Bank - understand that Barack Obama has changed the rules of the game between the United States and Israel, and that despite the right's victory in the elections, the Palestinians are not planning to go anywhere. What this means is that after 42 years of occupation, the time has come for the settlers to choose between Jewish land and a Jewish state.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited the Shizafon Armor Corps' training base in southern Israel on Tuesday, where they observed an officers' course drill simulating a joint Armor, Infantry Engineering and Artillery corps operation, complete with aerial assistance, meant to take a Syrian village.
"Future comprehensive operations will not resemble Operation Cast Lead, but will be designed to go deeper and wider and to take more chances," Barak told the cadets.
The Palestinian Authority said it has exposed a plot by Hamas to carry out a string of terror attacks against the Authority's officials and institutions in the West Bank city of Nablus and the surrounding area.
PA officials said Monday evening that a Hamas member who was recently detained admitted to receiving 1.5 million euros from the Islamist group's leadership in Gaza in order to establish infrastructure aimed of undermining President Mahmoud Abbas' regime. He said that among the targets were headquarters of the Palestinian security services in Nablus.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/7436
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/7436
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/7436
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.americantaskforce.org/donate_online
[6] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8090761.stm
[7] http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22731
[8] http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ghkSXq6duVntcHTttztLESj3ja8AD98N3A280
[9] http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/06/08/West-Bank-Palestinian-Police-force-boosted/UPI-81721244460819/
[10] http://www.amnestyusa.org/document.php?id=ENGNAU2009060810873&lang=e
[11] http://www.gallup.com/poll/120728/Americans-Remain-Skeptical-Middle-East-Peace.aspx
[12] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-06/09/content_11510479.htm
[13] http://www.ibishblog.com/blog/hibish/2009/06/08/settlements_and_violence
[14] http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10320943.html
[15] http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090609/FOREIGN/706099998/1133
[16] http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=17414
[17] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/20096881834138225.html
[18] http://www.thenational.ae/article/20090609/FOREIGN/706089809/1140
[19] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1091465.html
[20] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1091455.html
[21] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3728661,00.html
[22] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3728366,00.html
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