On Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Saban Center in Washington DC. The video is in three parts throughout the transcript.
PART 1 OF 3
It has not been a week of progress for Palestinian officials. The reconciliation talks between Fatah and Hamas have failed to show any signs of reconciling, and Yasser Abed Rabbo, Secretary-General of Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), told reporters Sunday that he and his colleagues were in the dark on other important matters:
The Palestinian side is unaware of the details of the talks between the Israeli side and the Americans concerning finding a middle-ground form over freezing settlements. Once we receive an official American response, the Palestinian leadership would study it.
Beyond this feigned surprise, it is obvious that Ramallah is not confident with the proposal to West Jerusalem.
So far, Fayyad’s strategy is succeeding. His administration has started more than one thousand development projects, which include paving roads, planting trees, digging wells, and constructing new buildings, most prominently in the twin cities of Ramallah and al-Bireh. He has reduced dependence on foreign aid and started to carry out plans to build new hospitals, classrooms, courthouses, industrial parks, housing, and even a new city, Rawabi, between Ramallah and Nablus. But “reforming the security forces,” Ghassan Khatib, a spokesman for the Palestinian Authority, told me, “is the main and integral part of the Fayyad plan. Many of the government’s other successes, such as economic growth, came as a result.”
To its citizens, Fayyad’s government has presented reform of the police and other security forces as principally a matter of providing law and order—apprehending criminal gangs, consolidating competing security services, forbidding public displays of weapons, and locating stolen cars. But its program for “counterterrorism”—which is directed mainly against Hamas and viewed by many Palestinians as collaboration with Israel—is its most important element: targeting Hamas members and suspected sympathizers is intended to reduce the likelihood of a West Bank takeover and, as important, helps Fayyad make a plausible case that he is in control and that Israel can safely withdraw from the territory.
Sunday, December 12, 2010 at 3:35