Sure, this may be bluster in part, but it does demonstrate the damage Obama did by adopting the Palestinian position that a peace agreement must be based on the pre-1967 border plus land swaps.
As reported by The Jerusalem Post:
Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the Palestinians were ready to restart peace negotiations if based around the principles US President Barack Obama laid out in his State Department dress on the Middle East, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
According to the report, Erekat, who met Monday with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other senior White House officials, said that if Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accepted Obama’s platform of a return to pre-1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, then he would have a partner for negotiations.
Remember, the Obama formula was the previous Palestinian formula, and the prior U.S. position was that negotiations between the parties had to resolve differences.
So the new Palestinian position post-Obama Middle East II speech is that Israel has to accept the Palestinian position for talks even to start. Nice job.
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Comments
Either I have E.S.P., or this was a completely predictable result of "smart diplomacy."
I wish Bibi had a twin brother with a birth certificate showing he was born in America.
If the President truely didn't change the U.S. position on Isreal (as many liberal pundits suggest), then he needs to step up and squash this right now.
The problem for Israel is that there are Israelis who will negotiate based upon the Obama position.
I read that the Israeli president was in discussions with the Palestinians.
I pray that the Israelis will walk away from these "peace" negotiations.
Fine, then. No talks.
Keep in mind one thing: Israel's neighbors weren't happy about the 1967 borders back in 1967. Why in the hell do people think they'd be happy with them now?
Don't give them an inch.
Want a place for a 'palestinian' state? Hows about Jordan or Syria coughing up some turf?
I'm so glad we've finally got the smart kids running the show.
You can't negotiate with barbarians.
Israel needs to do what's best for Israel and screw what the koranimals and their ignorant supporters want.
I stand with Israel, unlike our POSPOTUS that stands with the koranimals.
I thought he resigned after the release of the Palestine Papers in February 2011. No matter…..
Not a chance. Saeb Erekat has been the pony that the PLO (sorry, "Palestinian Authority") trots out every so often to make a statement that -sounds- reasonable, but the moment that you get him into negotiations, he turns on the other party like a vicious dog.
If you look at Erekat's statements over the past several years, you'll see that he constantly and consistently moves the negotiation line so that Israel can't meet it (first it was "withdraw from Gaza, then it was freeze settlements, then it was don't respond to attacks, now it's the 1967 lines or bust). He was at Oslo in 95 with Arafat, The Camp David meetings in 2000, the Taba negotiations in 2001, and after a hiatus at the Annapolis conference in 2007. In 95 and 2000, the Palestinians were offered EVERYTHING they asked for, minus about 5% of the land, and Arafat (through Erekat) said no and walked out.
By the way, the Settlement building "freeze" is still a must before any negotiations. So the 1967 lines are moot.
I honestly can't believe any institution (even Bradford in UK) gave this guy a PhD in "Peace and Conflict Studies."
ha ha ha ha ha ha no.
Here's what I want: repayment for land, bank accounts, and other property stolen by Arabs from Jews who fled the pogrom in Islamic countries.
No talks? No problem. There's nothing to talk about … unless the Arabs want to discuss their permanent exodus from the land. There's lots of space in all the other Islamic countries. They can then choose another stone and claim they saw Mo or Al's face in it.
What happened post-1948 is a population swap pure and simple. Part of the "Palestinian" Arabs left awaiting the victory that never came, another part was 'encouraged' to leave after shooting too much at Jews, and the remainder stayed. Part of the Jews in Arab countries were expelled, part had their lives made so unpleasant that they left of their own accord (leaving all their possessions behind), and the rest left after the French closed up shop in North Africa (partly to France, partly to Israel).
If the Arabs want to open up the 'return' Pandora's box, let them pony up the monetary value (adjusted for inflation) of abandoned property, lost wages,… and let Israel use the money to resettle the 'Palestinian' Arabs (who only discovered that they were 'Palestinian' after 1967) in other Arab countries.
The brutal truth is: this problem has been kept alive artificially as this was politically expedient for Arab potentates as a distraction from their own failed states.
/sarc
'67 borders with mutually agreeable land swaps sounds good. Give the Palestinians San Francisco and Berkeley, and the Isralis the West Bank and Gaza.
Win-Win. And we won't even notice a difference in the language from the West Coast….