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A settlement freeze is good for Israel and good for peace. Settlements are bad for Israel. They constitute a burden to Israel's security services. They create points of friction between Israelis and Palestinians. They drain Israel's financial resources. They create a false impression that Israelis are not interested in a two-state solution.
President Obama's public quarrel with Israel over the growth of Jewish settlements in the West Bank is developing into a test of the U.S. leader's international credibility, say foreign diplomats and other observers.
Obama and his senior aides have insisted for weeks that the Jewish state completely halt the expansion of its settlements. But now, with U.S. and Israeli officials apparently close to an agreement on the issue, it is widely expected in Israel and the Arab world that the administration will give ground and support at least some growth in the 120 communities.
I am old enough to remember when Israeli kibbutzim looked like settlements (“a small village or collection of houses” or “the act of peopling or colonizing a new country,” Oxford English Dictionary).
I am old enough to remember when Israeli kibbutzim looked like settlements (“a small village or collection of houses” or “the act of peopling or colonizing a new country,” Oxford English Dictionary).
It’s a long-held piece of Washington conventional wisdom—and, unlike most long-held pieces of Washington conventional wisdom, this one actually happens to be true!—that Democratic presidents tend to be more interested in domestic policy, while Republicans like making foreign policy.
A recent exchange with several people for whom I have respect and affection regarding the question of the right of return for Palestinian refugees and the Palestinian national strategy and interest raises a crucial point that needs much more serious examination in the conversation among Arab-Americans and their supporters regarding the role of outrage in political life. It boils down to this: being upset is not a strategy, and outrage, however moral, is not a political program.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Sunday he saw a chance to advance peace talks with Palestinians and that a policy speech by Israel's premier, dismissed by Egypt as flawed, was a major step forward.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed -- with tough conditions -- the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state in a policy speech a week ago, but Cairo said the proposal fell short of the Palestinian state Arabs seek.
AZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) -- Two years after Hamas seized power, the Gaza Strip is a jumble of absurdities: an economy sustained by smuggling through tunnels, a civil service that gets paid on condition it doesn't work, and a population no longer fearful of gangs but feeling muzzled under the thumb of Hamas.
Under a border closure enforced by Egypt and Israel, the U.N. says, shampoo can come in but conditioner can't. Nor can toys, candy or footballs.
OFRA SETTLEMENT, West Bank (AP) — It reads like a standard real estate contract between a Zionist institution and an Israeli couple. But it offers a rare glimpse into the bureaucratic smoke screen that helps ensure a strong Jewish presence on lands claimed by the Palestinians for a future state.
In July 2006, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice travelled to Lebanon in an effort to bring an end to the war raging there between Israel and Hizbullah. At the time, she tried to market to reporters in Washington a somewhat odd spin on the violence taking place, not only in Lebanon but also in Iraq and Israel and Palestine. "What we're seeing here is, in a sense, the growing - the birth pangs of a new Middle East, and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we're pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old Middle East," Rice explained.
The international guarantees Israel is seeking to ensure that a future Palestinian state remains demilitarized does not mean the introduction of foreign forces, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the cabinet at its Sunday meeting.
In a goodwill gesture to his political rivals Hamas, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has ordered his security forces to release all prisoners belonging to the Islamist organization before the renewal of inter-factional talks.
Representatives of Abbas' Fatah faction, which has been the dominant player in Palestinian politics since the inception of the Palestine Liberation Organization, will meet with Hamas officials later this week in an attempt to hammer out an agreement on national unity.
The skies lit up over Jenin last month, and it wasn't tracer bullets or flash bombs but celebratory fireworks, set off to mark the occasion of the opening of Hirbawi Home Center, a new luxury establishment on the city's outskirts.
The five-story building near the Jalame checkpoint cost $5 million to build, says its owner, and it is filled with deluxe, foreign-made products seen mostly in the pages of newspaper supplements.
The "anger" of Mahmoud Abbas directed at Benjamin Netanyahu is tantamount to a child who threatens his parents that unless they buy him an ice cream, he won't go with them to the circus.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/7632
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/7632
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/7632
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.acpus.org/donate_online
[6] http://www.peacenow.org/updates.asp?rid=0&cid=6329
[7] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-obama-settlements20-2009jun20,0,7224016.story
[8] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/22/opinion/22judt.html?_r=2
[9] http://nymag.com/news/politics/nationalinterest/57439/index1.html
[10] http://www.ibishblog.com/blog/hibish/2009/06/21/outrage_not_strategy
[11] http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE55K0VC20090621
[12] http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/ML_GAZA_STRANGE_DAYS?SITE=NYSAR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
[13] http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i77sAe90nl-RQAW_ipkWdCpbETPQD98UFNF00
[14] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=103223
[15] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1245184892341&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[16] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1094749.html
[17] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1094441.html
[18] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1094670.html
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