[Netanyahu’s] rhetoric has changed, but his policy can still be summed up in one ominous word: politicide – to deny the Palestinian people any independent political existence in Palestine. This world view identifies him not as a genuine partner to President Abbas on the road to peace but as the proponent of permanent conflict.
Netanyahu
It should be perfectly obvious that talks aimed at the creation of a Palestinian state cannot possibly prosper while Israel continues its strategic colonisation of the land on which that state would be built. The US and its international partners must insist on a cessation of settlement-building.
Amr Moussa: “Let us see what kind of compromise Netanyahu is offering, we have never heard from the Israeli side any initiative or any concrete position.”
The only way out of the impasse is for Jews to recognize Palestinians as their equals and negotiate with them on that basis. A fair two-state solution requires the abrogation of all laws, both in Israel and the occupied territories, that raise Jews above Palestinians. This is a point the US, notwithstanding the recent dangerous demagoguery of some of its politicians in seeking to elevate Christian and Jewish religious rights over those held by Muslim Americans, should still understand.
[A] strategy predicated on the belief that a few more humanitarian truckloads will make the problem of Gaza go away is as deeply flawed as the notion that Ramallah’s surfeit of new high-street cafés will be a sufficient sedative for the aspirants to a Palestinian state. Gaza is a political, not a humanitarian, problem.
PLO official: “We are not afraid of the outcome of the talks. There is nothing Abu Mazan (Abbas) would or could accept. But going to the talks has undermined our battle to isolate Israel.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized on Sunday the theater figures’ boycott of a new theater in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, saying that the government doesn’t need to fund a group promoting a boycott of Israel from within.
Arab minister: “We have all been colluding in a gigantic confidence trick, and here we go again”…
[T]he heart of the question remains the continuing Israeli occupation. It is essential to remember that the biggest single increase of Jewish settlers on Arab land – a 50 per cent rise – took place in 1992-96 … at the high-water mark of the Oslo peace accords.
Netanyahu’s decision to cancel his meeting with Amano raised eyebrows on Monday, particularly given the premier’s fixation on Iran’s nuclear program. The prime minister and his aides have also been working feverishly to minimize the effects of last May’s Nuclear Non-Proliferation Review Conference, which adopted a resolution calling for a Middle East free of nuclear weapons.
Yesterday, the day before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan began, at 2:30 in the morning, workers sent by the Israeli authorities, protected by dozens of police, destroyed the tombstones in the last portion of the Mamilla cemetery, an historic Muslim burial ground with graves going back to the 7th Century, hitherto left untouched. The government of Israel has always been fully cognizant of the sanctity and historic significance of the site.
[Netanyahu’s] has so far avoided engaging meaningfully in the limited talks the White House is promoting with the Palestinians while the pace of settlement building in the WB has been barely affected by the 10-month freeze, due to end in September. In the meantime, planning officials have repeatedly approved large new housing projects in E. Jerusalem and the WB that have undercut the negotiations and will make the establishment of a Palestinian state – viable or otherwise – far less likely.
UPDATE Watch Video – Netanyahu: “At that moment I actually stopped the Oslo accord”
Forget the Bar-Ilan University speech, forget the virtual achievements in his last visit to the US; this is the real Netanyahu. No more claims that the Palestinians are to blame for the failure of the Oslo Accords. Netanyahu exposed the naked truth…: he destroyed the Oslo accords with his own hands and deeds, and he’s even proud of it. After years in which we were told that the Palestinians are to blame, the truth has emerged from the horse’s mouth.
Which is crueler? Expelling an urban family from its home in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, or bulldozing a meager tent encampment of shepherds living on private Jordan Valley land they leased, destroying their water tanks, their tents and their sheep pens, and expelling families with many children from the land on which they live? It’s hard to say.
Vague promises to extend the partial freeze on settlement building and to alleviate some of the daily hardships encountered by Palestinians are no more than the blackmail tactics Israel has always employed against those under its control.
The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions said one of the homes … was inhabited, although the family was not home at the time. The demolition is the first this year of an inhabited home, according to group … and four of the six people who lived there are children. In the Issawaieh village… one house was being built by a single mother of five, who fainted on the scene of the demolition and was taken to a local hospital.
Norman Finkelstein discusses the Obama – Netanyahu meeting with Laura Flanders of GRITtv, calling the “peace process” a “colonization process” and detailing Israel’s settlement enterprise.
A question for Obama and Netanyahu: Where to? … Where are they headed? What will improve in another year? What will be more promising in another two years? The Syrian president is knocking at the door begging for peace with Israel, and the two leaders are ignoring him. Will he still be knocking in two years? The Arab League’s initiative is still valid; terror has almost ceased. What will the situation be after they have finished compromising over the freeze in construction of balconies and ritual baths?
Meeting at the White House, President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized the “unbreakable” bond between Israel and the United States. Despite ongoing Israeli settlement expansion, roadblocks, closures and the attack on the Gaza-bound aid flotilla, Obama said he thinks Israel “has shown restraint.” Democracy Now! speaks to veteran Israeli journalist Amira Hass.
Uzi Arad: “The creation of a Palestinian state remains the choice of many … But in the process, have you failed to notice that the more we lend legitimacy to a Palestinian state, the more it comes at the expense of our own?”
IOA Editor: So much for Netanyahu’s commitment to a Palestinian state, and Obama’s.
