Tag: confidence building measures

• August 2, 2009

  U.S. Pressure on Arab States Grows, But It Misses Where Hope Lies

  U.S. Pressure on Arab States Grows
  By Kim Ghattas

  The Obama administration has been frustrated by the lack of movement on all sides but has reportedly been particularly disappointed by how little Arab countries have been willing to do or even promise.

  Wary from past experience of negotiating with the Israelis, the official Arab position has been one of “show us the goods, then we will talk”.

  Link to BBC Article.

  This just about sums about what I have seen and heard in the region. No one is in the mood for more talk of rapprochement with Israel. With the United States, definitely. There is still a hope that the United States will provide the leadership to move governments in the region toward a new direction of engagement with their people. But the war on Gaza was far more of a watershed than anyone understands in Western capitals, especially in …

• November 25, 2008

  The Road to the State of Palestine Through Syria

  Aaron Miller writes an extremely pessimistic piece of advice for President elect Obama on the impossibility of Israeli/Palestinian peace right now. I think that it is a very well written piece, and that anything Aaron writes should be studied carefully. But there are two responses that should soften his pessimism.

  There is a myth out there driven by the Clinton parameters of December 2000, the Taba talks in 2001, the Geneva accord a year later, and the hundreds of hours of post Annapolis talks between Israelis and Palestinians that the two sides are “this close” (thumb and index finger a sixteenth of an inch apart) to an agreement. The gaps have now narrowed, perhaps impressively, but closing them, particularly on the identity issues such as Jerusalem and refugees, is still beyond the reach of negotiators and leaders.

  The dysfunction and confusion in Palestine make a conflict-ending agreement almost impossible. The

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• August 31, 2008

  Former prisoner tells tale of peace at Sulha

  Here is one of many stories emerging out of the days of Sulha that brought together thousands of Jews and Palestinians last week. The Jerusalem Post reports:

  While Sulha participants offer many different stories and personalities, Abu Awwad’s story is exceptional in that he truly comes from the “other side.” A resident of a village near Hebron and self-described “participant” in the second intifada who spent six years in an Israeli jail, Abu Awwad has seen his share of fighting and loss.

  “My brother Yusef was killed at a checkpoint in 2000,” Abu Awwad said. “And another one of my brothers, Said, was killed in 2004.”

  Abu Awwad explained that a third brother, Ali, who was in attendance at Latrun on Tuesday, had been shot and wounded during the intifada, along with his son, who was also wounded by gunfire in 2004.

  “We’ve been through it all,” he said. “And

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• August 12, 2008

  IT IS WHAT YOU DO THAT DEFINES YOU: A RE-ASSESSMENT OF DIPLOMACY IN THE ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT

  There is a desperation at work in the sad excuse for negotiations underway between Israel and Palestine. This is the latest:

  PA rejects Olmert’s offer to withdraw from 93% of West Bank

  _{By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters}

  Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday rejected an Israeli peace proposal, which included withdrawal from 93 percent of the West Bank, because it does not provide for a contiguous Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

  Nabil Abu Rdainah, Abbas’s spokesman, told the official Palestinian news agency WAFA that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s plan showed a “lack of seriousness.”

  Under the proposal, Israel would return to the Palestinians 93 percent of the West Bank, plus all of the Gaza Strip, when the Palestinian Authority regains control over the Gaza Strip, which the militant group Hamas seized from forces loyal to Abbas in June 2006.

  Olmert presented Abbas with the

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