Talks Resume Between Israel And Palestinians Without Any Americans. Is This A Demand From Kerry/Obama Or Are They Doing It On Their Own?

April 13, 2014, 7:20 p.m. EDT

Mideast peace talks resume as tensions rise

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By Joshua Mitnick

TEL AVIV--Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on Sunday held a rare meeting without U.S. mediator Martin Indyk present, as they try to salvage peace talks before a deadline of April 29.

Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni called on the Palestinians to freeze their applications to the treaty organizations, but chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat declined. The Palestinians also declined Israeli requests to expel prisoners slated to be released as a goodwill gesture for the talks.

The talks came amid rising tensions over the Israeli government's approval of new settlements in the West Bank cities of Hebron and near Bethlehem, which is aggravating ties with Palestinians.

The U.S., Israel and the Palestinians are trying to defuse a crisis that erupted after Israel delayed a prisoner release and announced hundreds of new housing units in the West Bank, while the Palestinians applied for membership as a state in 15 international conventions.

Negotiation meetings continue to be held even though Israel responded to the Palestinian treaty applications by imposing economic sanctions and curtailing government relations.

Fresh expectations in Israel that the talks could yield a compromise on the prisoners prompted Economy Minister Naftali Bennett to threaten to pull out of the government.

The goal is to extend nine months of peace talks pushed by Secretary of State John Kerry beyond the April 29 expiration.

New settlement activity complicates those efforts. The Israeli army on Sunday allowed Jewish settlers to establish an enclave in a Palestinian neighborhood of Hebron. Settlers on Sunday began moving property into a four-story apartment building on a road linking the neighboring Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba to the Tomb of the Patriarchs holy site and four existing Jewish enclaves in Hebron.

Palestinians and Israeli peace activists said the move is likely to increase tension with Arab residents of the city by forcing the Israeli army to expand its footprint. The army controls around 20% of the city in order to secure tiny residential developments of several hundred Jewish settlers there.

"While some people are talking about continuation of talks, this clearly shows Israel's lack of commitment towards a two-state solution," said Mohammed Shtayyeh, a former Palestinian negotiator.

The move followed Thursday's move by the Israeli army's civil administration, in which it posted notices nationalizing 243 acres in the region west and south of Bethlehem--known to Israelis as the "Etzion bloc" of settlements-- as "government property."

Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, said, "This is Palestinian property. Israel is engaged in an act of grand deception and grand theft."

An Israeli defense official sought to play down the decision, calling it the culmination of a three-year survey by the army's civil administration to determine whether rural lands were privately owned or public lands.

The official added that the tracts are located in the Gush Etzion, one of several settlement regions that Israel would like to formally annex as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

"That is, territory on which there's a consensus that it will remain in Israeli hands in any case," the official said.

An Israeli peace activist who monitors settlement expansion said the size of the land appropriation was the largest in recent memory.

"The people who declared it want to make sure that the negotiations with the Palestinians fail," said Dror Etkes, who founded the settlement-watch division of Peace Now. "This is a finger in the eye of the Palestinians in the middle of the process."

The nationalized lands include an unauthorized settler outpost, "Netiv Ha'Avot," which Israel's military said in 2007 was likely erected on privately owned Palestinian property. Palestinians who claim title to the lands nationalized by Israel have 45 days to appeal the decision, according to the military notice.

Mohammed Najib in Ramallah, West Bank, contributed to this article.

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Will The Next Conflict With The Russians Be Over The Palestinians and Israel?

Hanan Ashrawi, a former Palestinian negotiator, writes the following blog regarding the negotiations in the Middle East. She, obviously is telling their story as best she can. However, in the midst of her blog, she telegraphs what the future tactics of the Palestinians will be. It reads:
 "Any approach that is not based on international law and the redress of Israeli abuses of Palestinian human rights, including theft of land and resources for settlements and denying Palestinian rights, is doomed to failure. If the U.S. is unwilling or unable to stop settlement growth, Palestinians have no other recourse than to pursue membership in multinational agencies and organizations and hold Israel accountable by judicial means."
In other words, unless the President and US negotiators do not do what the Palestinians want, they are planning to take Israel to the UN Criminal Court in the Hague and prosecute them there. One can only wonder how fair a hearing the Jewish state will receive there.  Our belief is that it like the balance of the UN is a kangaroo court and Israel will be charged with many offenses and of course, convicted of them regardless of the truth.
We are sure that the President's weaknesses in handling current mess in Syria has not been missed by the Palestinians. With this article, Hanan is putting pressure on the White House to not have "another failure" in the Middle East by allowing Israel to continue building the settlements for their growing population.
If the Palestinians had their way, Israel would not continue to exist. We cannot allow that to happen. However, we are concerned how Kerry and Obama will want to impress their wills on Israel in an effort to show they world they are not feckless frauds pretending to power.
Will we face Russia over the Palestinians also?  Who knows, but the one thing for sure, "King" Obama definitely has no clothes and Putin is willing to post the pictures on youtube!
Conservative Tom

US support for two-state solution must be more than 'lip service'

By Hanan Ashrawi - 09/13/13 10:00 AM ET

  

Twenty years ago today, Palestine Liberation Organization Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin shook hands in an historic ceremony on the White House lawn heralding the signing of the Declaration of Principles of the Oslo Accords. The Oslo process was supposed to lead to a permanent peace agreement between Palestinians and Israelis by 1999, which Palestinians believed included the creation of an independent Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Unfortunately, successive Israeli governments had other ideas, rapidly expanding Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian land and entrenching rather than rolling back the occupation, undermining the two-state solution envisioned by Palestinians and supported by the international community.

As a participant in the Madrid conference in 1991, which preceded Oslo, and subsequent negotiations, I regret to say that current U.S. officials seem to have learned little from more than two decades of failed U.S. peacemaking efforts. Today, as fragile talks between Israelis and Palestinians have restarted after three years of inactivity, Israel once again seems intent on using negotiations as a cover to expand Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, and once again it seems that the U.S. will take no serious action to prevent Israel from doing so. In just over a month, Israel has advanced plans for the construction of 3090 new settlement units in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. This ongoing escalation of illegal settlement activity gravely threatens the success of negotiations and the realization of the two-state solution that is the ostensible endgame of the current talks.

Secretary of State John Kerry invested much time and effort to restart negotiations. However it is not enough to simply bring the two sides to the table. It is imperative that the U.S. not only pressure Israel to halt all new and existing settlement activity, but that it stop tacitly endorsing Israeli claims regarding the legal status of East Jerusalem and the future of large settlement “blocs.” International law and relevant UN resolutions must form the basis of any negotiations. Otherwise, Israel, the much stronger party, will simply attempt to impose its will on the Palestinians. Any approach that is not based on international law and the redress of Israeli abuses of Palestinian human rights, including theft of land and resources for settlements and denying Palestinian rights, is doomed to failure. If the U.S. is unwilling or unable to stop settlement growth, Palestinians have no other recourse than to pursue membership in multinational agencies and organizations and hold Israel accountable by judicial means.

For decades, every U.S. Secretary of State has told the Palestinians that negotiations are the only way to end Israel's occupation and relentless expansion of settlements. Yet, in practice, negotiations have served the cause of expanding Israel’s settlement project, not ending it. During the 1990s, while the Oslo Accords were being negotiated, Israel nearly doubled the number of settlers in the West Bank, destroying Palestinian faith in the peace process and our hopes for an independent state and freedom from decades of Israeli military occupation. Today, there are more than half a million Jewish settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. The huge network of infrastructure that Israel has built to serve the settlements, including Israeli-only highways that dissect the West Bank, which, along with the settlements themselves, isolate Palestinian population centers from each other and the outside world, are expressions of Israeli extraterritoriality and essentially make the settlement enterprise permanent. Israel has already annexed East Jerusalem in a move regarded as illegal by the international community, including the U.S., and has de facto extended Israeli sovereignty over large areas of the West Bank.

After the collapse of Oslo and the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, Benjamin Netanyahu boasted that, during his first term as prime minister from 1996-1999, he “de facto put an end to the Oslo Accords,” adding, "America is a thing you can move very easily.” Based on the actions of his current government, Netanyahu seems intent on sabotaging the current negotiations as well, and evidently still believes that he can manipulate the US and continue to undermine its policies with impunity.

If the Obama administration truly wants to broker a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, as opposed to forcing an unjust and unworkable agreement on Palestinians, it must learn from the mistakes of Oslo. Secretary Kerry’s recent statement that the U.S. "views all of the settlements as illegitimate" must be reflected in U.S. policy in overseeing the conduct of negotiations. The real test is whether Secretary Kerry and President Obama will translate their words into action, or whether they will continue to pay lip service to peace and the two-state solution while failing to take concrete measures to prevent Israel from destroying both.

Ashrawi is a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Executive Committee and a former Palestinian negotiator.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/321969-us-support-for-two-state-solution-must-be-more-than-lip-service#ixzz2emhMtURX 
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