Barack Obama on brink of deal for Middle East peace talks

[American]

Link

Ewen MacAskill in Washington and Julian Borger guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 August 2009 20.00 BST

Barack Obama is close to brokering an Israeli-Palestinian deal that will allow him to announce a resumption of the long-stalled Middle East peace talks before the end of next month, according to US, Israeli, Palestinian and European officials.
Key to bringing Israel on board is a promise by the US to adopt a much tougher line with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons programme. The US, along with Britain and France, is planning to push the United Nations security council to expand sanctions to include Iran's oil and gas industry, a move that could cripple its economy.
In return, the Israeli government will be expected to agree to a partial freeze on the construction of settlements in the Middle East. In the words of one official close to the negotiations: "The message is: Iran is an existential threat to Israel; settlements are not."
Details of the breakthrough deal will be hammered out tomorrow in London, where the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, is due to hold talks with the US special envoy, George Mitchell. Netanyahu met Gordon Brown today in Downing Street, where the two discussed both settlements and the Iranian nuclear programme.
Although the negotiations are being held in private, they have reached such an advanced stage that both France and Russia have approached the US offering to host a peace conference.
Obama has pencilled in the announcement of his breakthrough for either a meeting of world leaders at the UN general assembly in New York in the week beginning 23 September or the G20 summit in Pittsburgh on 24-25 September.
The president, who plans to make his announcement flanked by Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas – plus the leaders of as many Arab states as he can muster – hopes that a final peace agreement can be negotiated within two years, a timetable viewed as unrealistic by Middle East analysts.
Obama had hoped to unveil his plans before the start of Ramadan last weekend but failed to complete the deal with the Israelis or the Arab states in time.

We've seen this before, with Carter. They're still killing each other.

 

[Mika-El]

Using Iran as a common scapegoat or target of hatred to unite the rest of the Middle East sounds like something some bired writer fabricated on a slow news day.

I prefer reading about Lindsay Lohan's skin rashes.

 

[hammertime27]

We'll see what happens.

The people want it. Let's see if Abbas smartens up.

Doubt it though. Probably another stage of no compromise by the Palestinians.

 

[Sergeant Stinger1]

Link


We've seen this before, with Carter. They're still killing each other.

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So your saying to give up on them???:roll:
Ya, thats a bright idea!:roll::doh
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At least hes trying to prevent furthur bloodshed unlike bushey:toilet: boy that starts the killing.
Geeeezzzzzeeeessss, :roll:

 

[Kandahar]

I really hope that there aren't any serious sanctions against Iran's gas imports. That could unite Iranians against a common enemy at exactly the wrong moment.

I hate to say it, but Netanyahu is part of the problem. His stubborn refusal to deal with the settlements is a major roadblock, as is his reluctance to even acknowledge a two-state solution. Tzipi Livni would have been much better.

For the Palestinian part...Abbas does seem willing to negotiate in good faith, but he doesn't command the kind of power that Arafat once did. He's lost Gaza to Hamas and his control over the West Bank is tenuous at best. I question his ability to make good on any promises he makes on behalf of Palestine.

Israel and Palestine will one day have a peace agreement, but I don't see it happening anytime in the next few years. The stars have to line up perfectly, with leaders on both sides who are willing (unlike Netanyahu) and able (unlike Abbas) to make reasonable compromises, as well as no outside players (e.g. Iran and Hezbollah) who actively try to sabotage the process. At various moments in the last couple decades, all of those conditions have been met...but never concurrently.

 

[mbig]

Using Iran as a common scapegoat or target of hatred to unite the rest of the Middle East sounds like something some bired writer fabricated on a slow news day.

I prefer reading about Lindsay Lohan's skin rashes.

Actually, the proverb 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend', is an Arab one.

And the Sunni Arabs aren't happy about an Shia/Ayatollah Bomb.. especially the Gulf states.

 

[tumbleweed]

If the predictions outlined in the OP are correct I smell a rat. Israel hasn't issued any new permits for expanding the settlements construction since March of this year. I think the pressure that we have been putting on Israel to halt construction has already had the desired effect without offering additional concessions from the U.S. in the form of stiffer sanctions on Iran.

If the U.S. leads the charge of imposing new sanctions on Iran it will erase any headway we have made in easing tensions between Iran and the U.S., Israel won't really be offering any new concessions in this deal because there is an unwritten freeze of expansions already in place, and the U.S. will bear most of the backlash that is bound to take place from Iran due to the economic impact of placing sanctions on their gasoline supply.

If peace talks do resume I hope they don't take place as a result of details outlined in the OP.

 

[mbig]

Rejectionists Readying to Counter U.S. Peace Push

With rumors in the air of a U.S.-brokered, mid-September meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, various regional actors are busy positioning themselves for the coming round of diplomacy. Analysis of these dynamics provides some useful perspective on the road ahead, beyond the usual focus on the minutiae of settlement construction, prisoner exchanges, or other immediate concerns. Especially noteworthy in this context are the latest maneuvers by members of the rejectionist or "resistance" axis: Iran, Syria, Hizballah, and Hamas. Their positions have hardened even further as the United States, Israel, the Palestinian Authority (PA), and Egypt keep talking about peace talks. This drawing of lines at least has the virtue of clarifying the real possibilities -- and the real partners -- for any regional peacemaking efforts.

Iran: "Annihilation of the Zionist Regime Is within Reach"

Tehran, preoccupied as it may be with internal troubles, has not lost sight of its opposition to Israel's existence and to what it derisively labels the U.S. "agent" Arab "conciliation camp," supposedly led by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. On August 25, for instance, Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani, sometimes termed a relative moderate, or pragmatist, asserted that President Obama's concept of peace "does not address even one of the Palestinians' basic rights." Since late June, Tehran's two main hardline dailies -- almost the only ones still allowed to publish there -- have amplified this theme on at least three separate occasions. Kayhan editorialized that "the establishment of two states, Palestinian and Zionist, would be the same as totally crushing the rights of the Palestinian people."
Rather, the paper declared, "a solution can only be achieved by completely Eradicating the Zionist regime." Similarly, Jomhuri-ye Islami warned that the "Palestinians must not be satisfied with anything less than the annihilation of the Zionist regime -- a goal that is within reach."
[........]
The rest at:
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC05.php?CID=3112

 

[obvious Child]

Link


We've seen this before, with Carter. They're still killing each other.

Correction, every president since Nixon. Don't make this a partisan issue. No US president has been able to achieve this and Obama is just a man. He will fail in this just as every president before him as.

What does this tell us? Stop trying to make peace there.

 

[Mika-El]

Actually, the proverb 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend', is an Arab one.

And the Sunni Arabs aren't happy about an Shia/Ayatollah Bomb.. especially the Gulf states.

Actually its not just limited to the Arabic language or culture. Its simply the primal traits of humans engaging in primate (pack) behaviour. Been going on since we walked on all 4's.

Humans are no different then baboons. We define each other's pack and whether they are friendly or not by the constellation of the growths on their anises and the size of our fangs and by the alpha males that lead us and surround themselves with weak mates. When we feel threatened we prance up and down and chatter no different then apes do.

We chose to survive in packs to increase our chances of survival only we have gone to hell with the concept of throwing rocks or hitting other apes with sticks. I preferred it when apes simply engaged in ceremonial dancing and never actually hurt each other.

The point is-alliances come quickly by the hour and day in the Middle East like sand in the wind. Anyone who thinks the form of sand they see will stay that way with the constant wind blowing is a fool.

Claiming to know what the shape or agenda of those alliances are to me is just another person spinning a story to get attention or trying to claim they see a clear vision in a raging sandstorm.

The real agenda you and I do not know.

What I also know is all the talk about Israel attacking Iran often comes from Iran or Hamas or Hezbollah and their numerous web sites. They play the spin game and disinformation game to dettract from internal turmoil as good as anyone else. What better way to focus attention away from Iran's internal economic collapse and its internal uprisings then uniting the people by claiming Israel will blow them up.

What better way for even Mr. Netanyahu to dettract from his problems on the West Bank and East Jerusalem then draw attention to an Iranian threat.

Everyone does it but to take it literally I think is a fool's game.

:spin: