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Posts Tagged ‘Palestine’

Israel ‘increasingly isolated’ in Middle East: U.S.

October 3, 2011 Comments off

rawstory

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the Arab spring has left Israel “increasingly isolated” in the Middle East and that its military might could not make up for a weakened diplomatic position.

Speaking to reporters aboard his plane bound for Israel as part of a Middle East tour, Panetta said it was crucial for Israel to shore up its relations with Egypt and other countries in the region that had proved valuable partners in the past.

“There’s not much question in my mind that they maintain that (military) edge. But the question you have to ask is it enough to maintain a military edge, if you’re isolating yourself in the diplomatic arena?” Panetta said.

“At this dramatic time in the Middle East, when there have been so many changes, it’s not a good situation for Israel to become increasingly isolated. And that’s what’s happening,” he said.

Panetta, who was due to meet Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Monday before heading to Read more…

Categories: Israel, Middle East Tags: , , , ,

Israeli envoy leaves Cairo after embassy attack

September 10, 2011 Comments off

 Protesters flee from tear gas during clashes in front of the Israeli embassy in Cairo September 10, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh

By Amena Bakr and Mohamed Abdellah

CAIRO (Reuters) – Israel flew its ambassador home from Cairo on Saturday after protesters stormed its embassy building, plunging Egypt’s military rulers into their worst diplomatic crisis since they took over from Hosni Mubarak.

Three people were killed and 1,049 wounded in clashes between protesters and police, the Health Ministry said.

The United States, which has poured billions of dollars of military aid into Egypt since it made peace with Israel in 1979, urged Cairo to protect the embassy after protesters hurled embassy documents and the Read more…

Categories: Egypt, Israel Tags: , , , ,

PM would accept pre-’67 lines as baseline for talks

August 4, 2011 Comments off

jpost

Israel to negotiate using 1967 lines, with mutually agreed swaps, if Palestinians accept two states, one Palestinian and one Jewish.

With the Palestinians set to seek recognition of statehood at the UN in just a number of weeks, Israel said Tuesday it would be willing to accept the 1967 lines as a framework for talks as part of a package in which the Palestinians would recognize Jewish state.

Israeli officials said this framework would be a package deal whereby Israel would agree to entering negotiations using the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed upon swaps, as the baseline of talks; and the Palestinians would agree that the final goal of negotiations would be two states, a Palestinian one and Jewish one.

Israel raised the formula as officials from both parties, the US, EU and Russia are continuing to work on a document to provide a framework for a return to negotiations that could make a Palestinian bid at the UN superfluous.

According to this formulation, one official explained, each side would get something: The Palestinians would get the 1967 lines as the baseline, something they have long sought; and Israel would get Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Israel, according to the official, has made Read more…

Categories: Israel, Palestine Tags: ,

Netanyahu says will give up some land for peace

May 25, 2011 Comments off

chinadaily

WASHINGTON – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said explicitly for the first time on Tuesday he was prepared to give up some settlements for peace, but he laid out familiar demands unlikely to draw the Palestinians back to the negotiating table.

Treated to standing ovations from US lawmakers just days after strained talks with President Barack Obama, Netanyahu said he was ready for “painful compromises.” But Palestinians swiftly rejected his list of conditions as unacceptable.

The right-wing Israeli leader’s speech to Congress capped a turbulent five-day visit to Washington that laid bare his differences with Obama on how to revive the moribund peace process and raised little hope for getting new talks off the ground any time soon.

Though Netanyahu recognized in the clearest terms yet that Israel would have to abandon some Jewish settlements built Read more…

Categories: Uncategorized Tags: , , , , , ,

Netanyahu speech eyed for sign of U.S.-Israel rift

May 24, 2011 Comments off

reuters

President Barack Obama meets with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, May 20, 2011. REUTERS/Jim Young

President Barack Obama meets with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, May 20, 2011.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Congress on Tuesday, many will be watching to see whether he escalates a war of words with the White House over how to make peace in the Middle East.

Netanyahu has a mostly sympathetic ear in Congress, where few lawmakers in either party speak up for the Palestinians, hewing to decades of Read more…

Categories: Israel, United States Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Netanyahu: Israel willing to ‘cede parts of our homeland’ for true peace

May 17, 2011 Comments off

haaretz

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Israel would be prepared to compromise and “cede parts of our homeland” for true peace with the Palestinians, but added that he did not believe the latter was ready to be a true partner for peace.

A Palestinian government that comprises representatives of Hamas, a movement that refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist, is not a government with which it would be possible to make peace, said Netanyahu.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses Knesset, on May 16, 2011.
Photo by: Emil Salman

Addressing the Knesset a day after an unprecedented wave of demonstrations marking Nakba Day, on which Palestinians annually protest the creation of the state of Israel, Netanyahu said Israel must stop blaming itself for the conflict and start looking at the “reality” of the situation with “open eyes”.

The root of conflict was not the absence of a Palestinian state, said Netanyahu, but Palestinian opposition to the creation of the State of Israel.

“This is not a conflict about 1967 but about 1948, when the state of Israel was established,” said Netanyahu. “The Palestinians call this a day of catastrophe, but their catastrophe is that their leadership has not succeeded in reaching a compromise. Still today, they don’t have a leadership Read more…

Categories: Israel Tags: , , , ,

Israeli forces open fire at Palestinian protesters

May 16, 2011 Comments off

bbc

Israeli soldiers confront protesters near the northern Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights
Israel’s army said it faced a “serious” incursion at Majdal Shams in the occupied Golan Heights, where a number of people were reported killed and injured.

Jon Donnison in Ramallah: “Palestinians are feeling emboldened and inspired by the uprisings elsewhere [in the Middle East]”

Israeli forces have fired on groups of protesters at borders with the Palestinian territories, Syria and Lebanon.

Reports say that at least 12 people have died and dozens more have been injured.

In one incident, thousands of Palestinian supporters from Syria entered the Golan Heights, Israel says.

Palestinians are marking the Nakba or Catastrophe, their term for the founding of the Israeli state in 1948.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced out of their homes in fighting after its creation.

Responding in a televised address to Sunday’s violence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hoped “calm and quiet will quickly return, but let nobody be mistaken, we are determined to defend our borders and sovereignty”.

Impetus

Clashes have been taking place at four separate borders or crossing points – at Erez in Gaza, near Ramallah in the West Bank, on the Golan Read more…

Categories: Palestine, Protests Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Egypt and Israel Headed for Crisis

May 6, 2011 Comments off

palestinechronicle

Israeli officials have expressed alarm at a succession of moves by the interim Egyptian government that they fear signal an impending crisis in relations with Cairo.

The widening rift was underscored yesterday when leaders of the rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah signed a reconciliation pact in the Egyptian capital. Egypt’s secret role in brokering the agreement last week caught both Israel and the United States by surprise.

The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, called the deal “a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism”.

Several other developments have added to Israeli concerns about its relations with Egypt, including signs that Cairo hopes to renew ties with Iran and renegotiate a long-standing contract to supply Israel with natural gas.

More worrying still to Israeli officials are reported plans by Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah crossing into Gaza, closed for the Read more…

Categories: Egypt, Israel Tags: , , , , , , ,

Leading Israelis push for two-state solution with new peace initiative

April 6, 2011 Comments off

guardian

Gaza funeral

A father weeps at the funeral of his 21-year-old son, killed on Tuesday by Israeli fire in northern Gaza. Photograph: Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images

A group of prominent Israelis, including heads of the army and security services, hope to revive the peace initiative by announcing details of possible treaties with the Palestinians, Syria and Lebanon.

The Israeli Peace Initiative, a two-page document, states that Israel will withdraw from the land it occupied in 1967 in both the West Bank and the Golan Heights, and pay compensation to refugees. The document has been given to Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, who has said he will read it with interest.

The authors of the document, which will be launched at a press conference in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, say that it is partly inspired by the revolutions that have taken place in the Middle East. It presents an opportunity for Israelis to participate in the “winds of change” blowing through the Middle East, they say.

“We looked around at what was happening in neighbouring countries and we said to ourselves, ‘It is about time that the Israeli public Read more…

Categories: Israel, Palestine Tags: , , , , , , ,

VERY INTERESTING” LEAK”- Resurfaced-The Map of the “New Middle East”

March 1, 2011 Comments off

patriotfreedom.org

The Map of the “New Middle East”
by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
A relatively unknown map of the Middle East, NATO-garrisoned Afghanistan, and Pakistan has been circulating around strategic, governmental, NATO, policy and military circles since mid-2006. It has been causally allowed to surface in public, maybe in an attempt to build consensus and to slowly prepare the general public for possible, maybe even cataclysmic, changes in the Middle East. This is a map of a redrawn and restructured Middle East identified as the “New Middle East.”
MAP OF THE NEW MIDDLE EAST

“Hegemony is as old as Mankind…” -Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor
The term “New Middle East” was introduced to the world in June 2006 in Tel Aviv by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East.”

This shift in foreign policy phraseology coincided with the inauguration Read more…

Categories: Middle East Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,