Israel-Palestine: Abbas "We Are Considering the US Proposal" For Talks

Following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to release hundreds of Fatah prisoners as part of an efforts to jump-start peace talks, the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas said on Saturday that he was considering the U.S. proposal to start indirect talks with Israel.

Abbas also added that there was no pressure from the Arab states to restart negotiations, and he reiterated the need for a complete freeze in the building of settlements as a pre-condition for the talks.

Israel: Netanyahu's Speech on Evil at Auschwitz

Last Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, in front of the Auschwitz extermination camp ,that the world must learn from the Holocaust to unite against new threats. His reference to "impending danger" and an "existential threat", as well as "murderous evil [which] must be stopped as soon as possible, before it can realize its schemes", was of course aimed at the "nuclear threat" of Iran.

To prevent this "evil", Netanyahu emphasized the need of a strong state and a powerful army and added:

We must warn of the impending danger to the rest of the world and at the same time to be ready to defend ourselves.

We the Jewish people learned the lesson [of the Holocaust] well after we lost one-third of our people.

I pledge as prime minister that we will never let the hand of evil harm our people and our state, never again.

All enlightened nations must absorb this lesson.

At the end of his speech, Netanyahu set out the "holy" defense line and said that he would not to allow a "new Amalek", a reference to a Biblical king who waged war against the Jews,  to threaten again to destroy the Jewish nation.