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Great teamwork in the Obama administration, first you have President Obama demanding a complete settlement freeze from Israelis. In view of failure you have Secretary of State Clinton visit Jerusalem to praise great strides forward by Netanyahy in completing WB building program. You condemn PM Abbas for expecting a settlement freeze on disputed territory before negotiations are to start. Next you have her demand further concessions from Palestinian leadership and Arab states. Finally she changes itinery to visit Cairo and Mubarak to complete the US mystification in starting any fruitful negotiations between parties. No wonder many more nations are getting fed up with US “diplomacy”.
[Update 2009-11-06 1:00 AM PST by Oui]
BREAKING NEWS: Fort Hood Shooting A Palestinian Issue?
(Roanake Times) – Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is the son of Palestinian immigrants and Vinton residents Malik Awadallah Hassan and Hanan Ismail “Nora” Hasan. Both parents are deceased.
Nidal M. Hasan graduated from Virginia Tech in biochemistry in 1995 and served in the ROTC. He served eight years as an enlisted soldier. Hasan earned his rank of major in April 2008, according to a July 2008 Army Times article.
Troubling portrait of Fort Hood shooting suspect emerges
Hasan was a lifelong Muslim and attended a mosque in Silver Spring, Md. On a form filled out by those seeking spouses through a program at the mosque, Hasan listed his birthplace as Arlington, Va., but his nationality as Palestinian.
CAIRO — The Obama administration has concluded that an early resumption of high-level negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians over a Palestinian state is unlikely in the near future — an acknowledgment that it has fallen short, for now, on one of its major initial foreign policy goals.
“We recognize that things have stalled,” Clinton spokesman P.J. Crowley said. “We’re looking at a variety of ways that increase interaction between the parties in some form.” He described the proposals as “baby steps” that would eventually “create a momentum of their own, and the effort can pick up steam. If there’s a vacuum, there are lots of spoilers willing to take advantage . . . . We’ve too often in the past seen events spiral into violence.”
NETANYAHU CALLING THE SHOTS STALLING PALESTINIAN STATEHOOD
Netanyahu has used the baby-steps formulation to argue that cooperation on economic development and other issues would be more effective than “top-down” negotiations. Such cooperation is underway in some areas, particularly West Bank security, but Palestinians have been hesitant, in general, about the approach for fear that it would delay discussion of more basic issues such as borders.
Just six weeks ago, President Obama attempted to jump-start direct talks with a clarion call to action. “Permanent status negotiations must begin, and begin soon,” he said in a United Nations speech. “It is past time to talk about starting negotiations. It is time to move forward.”
The Arab-Israeli conflict in pictures (The Guardian)
In her conference remarks Tuesday morning, Clinton referred to Obama’s well-received speech to the Islamic world in Cairo last summer, saying that the administration is “determined and persistent in pursuit” of a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. But she appeared to chastise the Arabs for criticizing her support of the Israeli proposal. “All parties should be careful about what we say,” she said, warning that “recriminations . . . [were] understandable, but we have to work together toward a shared goal.”
CLINTON PUTS BLAME OF 2000 FAILURE ON PALESTINIAN LEADERS
In an interview with al-Jazeera television before leaving Morocco, Clinton expressed frustration with years of failure to make progress. Near the end of her husband’s presidency, she said, the two sides “came very close” to agreement. If they had succeeded, she said, “we would not be talking about settlement activity. We would have a Palestinian state. It would have East Jerusalem as its capital. It would be working to further the interests of the Palestinian people.”
(Haaretz) – Upon returning to power, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has changed the Israeli attitude toward Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen). Previous prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert depicted Abbas as “the good Palestinian,” a leader of moderates who are opposed to terror, in contrast to “bad Palestinians” like Yasser Arafat and the Hamas leaders. Abbas was the partner for peace, the interlocutor in a dialogue and a regular guest at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem. Olmert even visited Jericho once, as an expression of esteem for the Fatah leader.
Netanyahu, however, relates to Abbas as a foe who is waging a diplomatic war against Israel. In the premier’s view, Abbas represents the past, the struggle for “Palestinian rights,” the return of the refugees, the Palestinians’ lists of Israeli crimes and endless demands for “justice.”
One Israeli official has referred to Abbas as a “Holocaust denier,” based on his doctoral thesis in 1982, in which he questioned the number of Jewish victims at the hands of the Nazis.
PM FAYYAD JOINS ABBAS AS “PROBLEMATIC”
Netanyahu believed PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad represented a different approach from that of Abbas: trying to improve the present instead of concentrating on the injustices of the past. Fayyad does indeed focus on the creation of an independent Palestine – not on settling accounts from the wars of 1948 and 1967. Netanyahu had hoped that with him, it would be possible to advance economic peace and make progress from the bottom up. Improving the economic situation in the West Bank, and strengthening security coordination between Israel and the PA, were depicted in Israel as manifestations of the success of the new, non-Abbas way.
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Appreciate some charm across the big pond @ET
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
BREAKING NEWS
(Middle-East Online) – Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has said he will not seek re-election when elections are held in January, Palestinian officials said.
“The president insists on not running in the upcoming election,” an official from the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) executive committee said.
“President Abbas has said more than once that he does not want to be a candidate because of his feelings of great frustration about the American position on the peace process,” senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath said.
He said Abbas’s frustration also applied to the international community, “Arab and non-Arab,” because of lack of progress on the Palestinians’ demand for a halt to illegal Jewish settlement building on the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank.
Abbas’s frustration was said to have peaked when US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised an Israeli proposal for some settlement limits as “unprecedented” after months of Washington demanding a full settlement freeze.
ME Visit – Clinton urges Arabs, Israelis to set aside differences (Video)
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence.".
(Roanake Times) – Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is the son of Palestinian immigrants and Vinton residents Malik Awadallah Hassan and Hanan Ismail “Nora” Hasan. Nora Hasan ran the now defunct Capitol Restaurant on the Roanoke Market. Hasan’s father owned the Mount Olive Grill and Bar and the Community Grocery Store on Elm Avenue. Both parents are deceased.
Nidal M. Hasan graduated from Virginia Tech in biochemistry in 1995, according to Roanoke Times archives.
Troubling portrait of Fort Hood shooting suspect emerges
(AP) – Hasan attended prayers regularly when he lived outside Washington, often in his Army uniform, said Faizul Khan, a former imam at a mosque Hasan attended in Silver Spring, Md. He said Hasan was a lifelong Muslim.
“I got the impression that he was a committed soldier,” Khan said. He spoke often with Hasan about Hasan’s desire for a wife.
On a form filled out by those seeking spouses through a program at the mosque, Hasan listed his birthplace as Arlington, Va., but his nationality as Palestinian, Khan said.
“I don’t know why he listed Palestinian,” Khan said, “He was not born in Palestine.”
Nothing stood out about Hasan as radical or extremist, Khan said.
“We hardly ever got to discussing politics,” Khan said. “Mostly we were discussing religious matters, nothing too controversial, nothing like an extremist.”
Hasan earned his rank of major in April 2008, according to a July 2008 Army Times article.
He served eight years as an enlisted soldier. He also served in the ROTC as an undergraduate at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg. He received a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry there in 1997.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."We are not and never have been an honest power broker in the middle east. That is known throughout the middle east.
Losing the puppet and him so broken he wont even run for election – well maybe he just knows his people dont love him anymore – is quite something. Losing a pliable puppet who would have signed off on pretty much anything Israel stuck infront of him pre-Netanyahu so that relations could be continued with an increasingly facistic state which remains the biggest threat to midle east peace in real terms and which started the nuclear arms race in the middle east and whihc has in recent history invaded any surrounding entity that doesnt fit its model is not just astonishing but also serves to emphaises quite how delusional our middle east policy is and add in hypocritical, murderous and any other negative adjective you fancy. That our so called educated and critically thinking people cannot see the obvious on this is also some damning indictment on something although I am no longer sure what.
Obama was never going to change anything in this area. He couldnt take on the whole US establishmnet not to mention the writers of our middle east policies (AIPAC), and at the same time get a health bill through (minus anything worth having pretty much).
With this statement, Hillary and thus the Obama administration has become part of the right wing Zionist propaganda machine. It is just incredible after, to an American audience (Charlie Rose Show, Jan 27, 2005), Ehud Barak, the PM at the time, stated that he was not able to remove a single settlement from the West Bank or Gaza, because no one in the Knesset, not even anyone in his own party, Labor, would have voted for it. Bill Clinton had to know that, but in spite of it, along with Dennis Ross, his ME envoy, he led a propaganda effort to blame Arafat for refusing the “generous offer.”
Shameful.
Go to Antiwar.com and see what Uri Averney, ‘A line in the sand’, has to say about Mr. O. He has betrayed the Palestinians, he is a traitor to them. By the way, does anyone ever understand what Mrs. Clinton’s talking about when she speaks as the top diplomat of the U.S.? Her praise of her husband (and indirectly herself because they worked and still operate in tandem) and deprecation of Arafat is pure hypocrisy. The gall! She’s too thick to realize how stupid the statement is. If Israel had evacuated the settlements, we wouldn’t be talking about settlements today. Hey, the settlements are pretty unpopular outside the U.S. But of course the U.S is making a huge stink about alleged mistreatment of the Tamils in Sri Lankh.
Thanks. Well put. Obama has apparently betrayed the Palestinians and is presently riding Netanyahu’s coattails around the conflict. No wonder every picture I’m seeing of Mr. N lately shows him smiling.