Editorial Note: The following news reports are summaries from original sources. They may also include corrections of Arabic names and political terminology. Comments are in parentheses.

 
New Round of Endless Palestinian-Israeli Negotiations, Another Distraction off the Ongoing Creative Destruction in the Middle East

Abbas pressured to resume negotiations with Netanyahu, on Israeli conditions, in a new round of endless negotiations, another distraction off the ongoing Creative Destruction in the Middle East

Editor's Note:

The US Secretary of State, John Kerry, has been finally capable of pressuring the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, to accept resumption of a new round of endless negotiations with the Israeli occupation government.

Past negotiations rounds in 1988, 1991, 1993, 2000, 2005, and 2010 (just to name some of them) demonstrated that these were endless negotiations, which functioned only as Israeli-US public relations, to give the impression that there was a peace process, but without leading to any results, particularly the establishment of a Palestinian state.

There is nothing different about this new round of endless negotiations, which may function well as a distraction from the ongoing Israeli "Creative Destruction" of the Middle East.

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Qassem slams PA's decision to return to negotiations

 

[ 21/07/2013 - 06:57 PM ]

 

WEST BANK, GAZA, (PIC)--

 

Professor of Political Science Abdul Sattar Qassem condemned the decision of the Palestinian Authority to return to negotiations and considered it treason.

 

Qassem told the Jordanian Sabil newspaper that the Authority's only concern is to get aid and money, and revealed that "the negotiations have never stopped, as meetings have continued in secret in Amman and Jerusalem."

 

He also considered the resumption of negotiations a deal to sell Palestine, demanding the Palestinian people to dismiss these "traitorous negotiators"

 

For his part, member of the central committee of Fat'h Abbas Zaki stated that pressures were exerted by the Arabs on the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to push him to accept negotiating with Israel.

 

He said in an interview with Sabil newspaper that America sees the region with Israeli eyes. It is not interested in freezing the settlement activity or in a Palestinian state on the borders of 67.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the authority has agreed to return to direct negotiations next week in Washington.

 

Dr. Ahmed Bahar, First Deputy Head of the Legislative Council, said in a statement that Ramallah authority's decision to return to negotiations according to the Israeli conditions is a political suicide, and direct liquidation of Palestinian rights and national constants.

 

He stressed that the authority's decision to resume negotiations with the occupation represents a complete acquiescence to the American attitude completely aligned with the Israeli position, and a disavowal of all the conditions set by the Palestinian Authority throughout the last stage for the resumption of negotiations.

 

Bahar noted that the resumption of negotiations would constitute a legitimate cover for the development of Judaization and settlement schemes in all the occupied Palestinian territories.

For his part; Hassan Khureisha, Second Deputy Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, also considered the resumption of negotiations "a political suicide", and revealed that the Authority leadership in Ramallah have accepted Israeli bribes to return to negotiations.

 

Concerning the Palestinian reconciliation file; Khureisha said that it "has become a part of the history and the past ... Who wants reconciliation does not return to negotiations and does not support the Egyptian media that incite against Hamas and the Gaza Strip and attack the Palestinians."

 

***

Resheq: The peace talks will lead to more loss of the Palestinian rights

 

[ 21/07/2013 - 02:07 PM ]

 

BEIRUT, (PIC)--

 

Member of Hamas’s political bureau Ezzat Al-Resheq reiterated his Movement's rejection of the Palestinian Authority's decision to restart new rounds of useless negotiations with the Israeli occupation.

 

In a press release on Sunday, Resheq said that the peace talks with Israel had already proved its failure to achieve the Palestinian people’s aspirations, warning that these negotiations would lead to further settlement and Judaization activities and further loss of the Palestinian rights.

 

The Hamas official also underscored that the Palestinian people would not be bound by the results of these talks because they would be held with no national consensus, and against the will of the Palestinian people.

 

He called on the PA and Fatah to reconsider their decision in this regard and stop selling illusions to the Palestinian people.

 

For her part, Hamas lawmaker Samir Halaiqa said, in a press statement to Quds Press, that the Palestinian authority did not leave the negotiation table in the first place in order to return to it.

Halaiqa affirmed that the covert and overt meetings between PA officials and their Israeli counterparts never ceased.

 

She underlined that the sponsors of the peace process aim to extract more concessions from the PA taking advantage of the internal chaos in the Arab region and the absence of the Egyptian role.

***

Netanyahu, dogged by hardliners, to put Kerry peace ideas to cabinet

 

By Allyn Fisher-Ilan

Sun Jul 21, 2013, 8:13pm EDT

 

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will seek formal cabinet backing for reviving U.S.-sponsored peace talks with the Palestinians, an Israeli official said, after pro-settler ministers threatened to try and thwart the initiative.

 

Netanyahu's plan seemed to cast some doubt on how soon U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry might be able to relaunch talks stalled since 2010, with neither Israel nor the Palestinians having agreed to renew them, in spite of his announcement of a breakthrough on Friday.

 

An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said late on Sunday that no date had been set for sending negotiators to Washington, confounding Kerry's expectations that talks there could begin "within the next week or so".

 

Before negotiations resume, Netanyahu would first ask his cabinet "to empower him to renew the diplomatic process with the Palestinians", the Israeli official said.

 

The official said it had yet to be determined whether the full cabinet would vote on Kerry's proposals at its next session on July 28, or whether a smaller security cabinet would debate the matter later this week.

 

The Israeli leader would also seek cabinet authorization to answer Palestinian demands for a release of dozens of prisoners as a goodwill gesture, with a plan to free them in a four-stage process lasting over nine months, the official said.

 

Palestinians have demanded that Israel free inmates held from before a 1993 interim peace accord. Right-wing Israelis oppose such a step because many of these prisoners were jailed for attacks in which Israelis were killed.

 

Netanyahu will seek to overcome the objections of far-right ministers to a prisoner release and to yielding land captured in a 1967 war to the Palestinians for a state, by presenting the talks proposed by Kerry "as a strategic process to tighten relations with the United States," the official said.

 

He would hope to persuade ministers of the importance of sticking close to Washington to cope with the threats posed by Iran's development of nuclear weapons and spreading civil strife in Syria and Egypt, the official said.

 

REFERENDUM FOR PEACE

 

Netanyahu has pledges from the centre-left Labour party in the opposition to support any peace moves should any cabinet members rebel and bolt his coalition.

 

The Israeli leader has already pledged to seek a popular vote for any agreement involving territorial concessions. The official said Netanyahu would seek to have legislation passed that would force such a popular vote to be held.

 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has also not formally agreed to terms for relaunching talks with Israel and has pressed for more explicit guarantees that Israel would negotiate a withdrawal based on borders from before the 1967 war.

 

The on-again-off-again negotiations have spread across years and last broke down in 2010 in a dispute over (illegal) Jewish settlement construction on Palestinian (lands).

 

At the end of his sixth peace shuttle to the Middle East in four months, Kerry announced on Friday that the sides had laid the groundwork for a breakthrough, although details of how talks may resume were still being "formalized."

 

Netanyahu's pro-settler governing partners have ridiculed the efforts and hinted that they may seek to scuttle the process.

 

Transport Minister Yisrael Katz of Likud mocked Abbas, whose U.S.-backed administration holds sway in the occupied West Bank while the Palestinian enclave of Gaza is controlled by Islamist Hamas rivals opposed to co-existence with Israel.

 

"Abu Mazen (Abbas) rules over Palestinians less than (President Bashar) Assad rules in Syria," Katz told reporters, referring to the more than two-year-old Islamist-led insurgency wracking Damascus.

 

"Just as no one would consider ceding any territory to Assad in the current situation, so certainly no one is thinking seriously of ceding territory to Abu Mazen at time when he doesn't completely rule over most of the Palestinian population."

 

(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by David Brunnstrom)