UPDATE 25 JANUARY: Following a second meeting with Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, US Mideast special envoy George Mitchell met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday morning. Netanyahu said after the discussions that “new and interesting ideas” were raised for the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians. However, he offered no details.
During the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu repeated, “I expressed my hope that these new ideas will allow for the renewal of the (negotiating) process.”
The start of US Middle East envoy George Mitchell’s trip to the Middle East this week wasn’t too bad. He stopped in Lebanon to declare that the country would play a key role in efforts to build lasting and comprehensive peace and stability in the Middle East.
For the third time, Mitchell met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus. That brought the standard You’re Very Important line as well: “Syria, certainly has an important role to play in all these efforts, as do the US and international community.”
The Jerusalem Post reports that, following a meeting in Hebron with British millionaire David Martin Abrahams on Wednesday, Aziz Dwaik, a Hamas senior representative and the elected speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council in the West Bank, said that Hamas has accepted Israel’s right to exist and would be prepared to alter its charter.
Dwaik stated that all Hamas leaders, including Damascus-based leader Khaled Mashaal and Gaza-based leader Ismail Haniyeh, have voiced support for the idea of establishing an independent Palestinian state within the pre-1967 boundaries. He added: “The [Hamas] charter was drafted more than 20 years ago. No one wants to throw anyone into the sea.”
Meanwhile, Abrahams told the newspaper that he would urge British Foreign Minister David Milliband to “consider the implications of Hamas’s positive overtures.”
On the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, external yet powerful actors continued giving statements on Tuesday. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was welcomed by Egyptian officials and U.S. Mideast special envoy George Mitchell in Cairo on late Tuesday. On the same day, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband held talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
Milliband criticized the construction of settlements in the West Bank and stated that these “illegal” settlements represent an “obstacle” on the path of peace. On the two-state solution, which requires East Jerusalem as the Palestinians’ capital, Milliband said:
The current situation is obviously particularly tense in respect to Jerusalem. We view events there with considerable concern, along with our EU and international partners.
Any alternative to a two-state vision as a solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would be dark and unwelcome.
King Abdullah called on the international community to pressure Israel to stop its “unilateral actions” in East Jerusalem. However, the tone of Egyptian Foreign Ministry’s statement went further, calling on the international community to protect Jerusalem from the “racist steps” being taken by Israel to change the demographics of the city. Indeed, it was reported by Haaretz that a Foreign Ministry spokesman appealed to the United Nations Security Council with the complaint that Israel has been trying to change the demographic in all Palestinian territory.
The media is all excited over a Labour minister disparaging the term “war on terror” and saying things like “this isn’t us against one organised enemy with a clear identity and a coherent set of objectives” and “What these groups want is to force their individual and narrow values on others, without dialogue, without debate, through violence. And by letting them feel part of something bigger, we give them strength.”
Except the example above is not drawn from David Miliband’s Op-Ed piece in today’s Guardian that the paper highlighted on page 1 and which the BBC repeatedly reported on. Instead, it is from a speech that then International Development Secretary Hilary Benn gave in New York City in April 2007 that both the BBC and the Guardian reported on extensively.
UPDATE 25 JANUARY: Following a second meeting with Israel’s Defense Minister Ehud Barak in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, US Mideast special envoy George Mitchell met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday morning. Netanyahu said after the discussions that “new and interesting ideas” were raised for the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians. However, he offered no details.
On the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, external yet powerful actors continued giving statements on Tuesday. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was welcomed by Egyptian officials and U.S. Mideast special envoy George Mitchell in Cairo on late Tuesday. On the same day, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband held talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
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