Sorry to start another thread about Israel, I just thought it would be useful to have a thread which can be updated with what's going on with peace talks. Who knows, maybe by some miracle, they come to a decent agreement. Although the talks were meant to be without pre-conditions as per Hillary Clinton's instructions, at the moment, the following requests have been made: Palestine: - Settlement freeze remains in effect (due to expire 26 September). Israel: - Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. - Demilitarized future Palestinian State. - Guarantee Israel security through Israeli millitary presence in future Palestine. - No right of return for Palestinian refugess. Please correct me or add things if you see fit. I think these talks are key because I don't think there will be any appetite for talks if these ones fail. Hamas and Fatah have, obviously, critisized the negotiations and have stated that they will just buy time for Israel's image and that Israel won't give anything up anyway to sabotage the talks. I'm not aware of any resistance to talks on the Israeli side, but I'd love to hear about it. Please post any articles about the talks and discuss. Thanks.
I personally think they are demanding way too much. Demilitarized future Palestinian state? Guarantee Israel security through Israeli millitary presence in future Palestine? Isn't that already what it's like right now? I don't see any of these "Peace Talks" coming to fruition. I think Palestine should agree to all this only if Israel gives them all of Jerusalem
Israel has set any talks to fail before they even get started really with their list of pre-conditions. Also, Palestine is not serious about peace, either. They just want to see what Israel is offering...so they can show how much of a sham it is trying to make peace with Isreal. Any agreement coming out of these talks would be worthless. Israel will just point fingers at Hamas and company of not being part of the deal...and it will fall apart. Or, Israel will purposely sabotage it by direct incursions, assassinations, etc. . Maybe...once and for all...they can put the peace process to rest and just go on hitting each other until the end of times. I'm sick and tired of reading about it and building up hope where no hope is to be found. Israel and Palestine don't even know how to spell peace. They spell it piece meaning how many pieces of the pie can they control.
Of course it's more important. These talks will almost certainly lead nowhere, but that Muslim community center will lead to Sharia law in America within our children's lifetimes.
I agree that Israel is asking for too much, especially with the military thing. It seems that all they're offering is to maintain the status quo with regards to the settlement freeze, but they're demanding legitimacy for their continued occupation of Palestine. That's not going to help guarantee peace.
Those Israeli demands are a joke. And even if they wanted to do something like keep Israeli troops in Palestine, you should at the very least start with some low level demands to generate some confidence in negotiations. Its stuff like this why no one will take the Israelis seriously at the bargaining table.
Yea...Israel wants to dictate peace. It is not a negotiation. It is a "here is what we must have" and "here are the breadcrumbs we leave to you".
I wonder if the existence of a common enemy in the Hamas gives these peace talks a better chance of succeeding. As soon as they have this issue resolved, Israel can probably use direct military intervention in the Gaza Strip without too much backlash.
- Recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. So Israel is either a theocracy or racially defined state? What happens when the Israeli Arabs outnumber the Israeli Jews? - Demilitarized future Palestinian State. Seems highly unlikely as the current militarization of Palestine is not centrally organized, yet weapons are abundant even under current Israeli occupation. If anything a free Palestine would inherently be more militarized. - Guarantee Israel security through Israeli millitary presence in future Palestine. - No right of return for Palestinian refugess. Sounds like the status quo already, which certainly is not working. Sounds like a preconceived no deal.
If you could map out a deal based on where both sides stand now...do you see any chance at all? How could a deal like that possibly look like? Or is it just hopeless?
Israel should just re-offer the deal offered by Barak and rejected by Arafat. That is really the best deal the Palestinians can realistically hope to negotiate, and as Israel builds settlements changing the facts on the ground, even that becomes less and less likely.
There were some big problems with that deal but Arafat definitely ****ed that up. The deal wasnt great but Arafat's failure was his refusal to even negotiate about the details of the deal and just walked away. But there's zero chance in hell that Israel ever offers that deal again. That deal was almost everything the Palestinians wanted (something like 95% of the west bank and east jerusalem) except it allowed Israel to maintain security enclaves and didnt recognize a right of return.
any good faith negotiation assumes there's a desired outcome, in this case peace, and that both parties are willing to work to find constructive solutions to reach the desired end. setting preconditions is inherently antithetical to the process. this doesn't mean i think israel should give up Jerusalem, or some part thereof, but i'd think all other issues are probably solvable, and the goodwill generated by solving them would point towards some sort of solution even for that most vexing of questions (i don't pretend to know what that might be.)
Netenyahu with the fake! lol So they will extend the freeze on construction only in places which we likely won't own for much longer. This has nothing to do with the fact that there is no point spending money on construction since they will not own what they construct much longer. Brilliant - say that you are compromising by saying that you'll do something you will have to do anyway. In reality, you give nothing up. In the media, you are making sacrifices for the sake of negotiations. If I'm Mahmood Abbas, I say extend the freeze on settlement blocs, and allow construction in the isolated posts. At least that way, when Palestine takes the isolated posts, there will be some nice construction already under way!! haha Netenyahu is too concerned with pleasing all these different people. I don't think anyone will fall for these PR stunts anymore. Israel has to sacrifice something which is valuable to Palestinians if they want to improve the security situation. I'm sure Mahmood Abbas will come out with his own set of asinine requests soon enough, but so far he has been very careful to only highlight settlement freezing as a core issue.
If Bibi put an offer on the table that had any credibility at all, his fragile coalition of wingnuts would crumble. Some optimists like to think he'll do something, but can't risk upsetting his base prematurely, others say this is the same old Bibi and that nothing has changed. For an Israeli politician (like most politicians) protecting their own incumbency is way more important than any other concern.
