Daily Archives: November 9, 2009

The picture above, of Mahmoud Abbas, is by Rina Castelnuovo for The New York Times. It was taken on November 11, in Ramallah at a rally on the 5th Anniversary of the death of Yasir Arafat.

Administration’s peace efforts, and relentless Israeli colonization of the occupied West Bank, the reality is dawning rapidly that the two-state solution is no more than a slogan that has no chance of being implemented or altering the reality of a de facto binational state in Palestine/Israel.

This places an obligation on all who care about the future of Palestine/Israel to seriously consider the democratic alternatives. I have long argued that the systems in post-apartheid South Africa (a unitary democratic state), and Northern Ireland (consociational democracy) — offer hopeful, real-life models.

Mr. Netanyahu didn’t offer any new commitment about Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem — which the Palestinians have demanded be fully stopped as a precondition for peace talks — or list any specific terms for holding new negotiations.

http://tinyurl.com/y9f554d

Without a unified Palestinian government, there is no two state solution. Israel’s long pretense of wanting a “partner for peace” is over. The hope vested in President Obama has been dashed against an iron wall of Israeli intransigence.

In 1948, some 600,000 Jews, their backs against the sea, fended off the assault of much larger enemies sworn to our destruction. We were aided by many of our fellow American Jews. You gave money, arms, and most important, tremendous moral support.

You helped Israel absorb waves of immigrants, you spearheaded the historic struggle to free Soviet Jewry and you have tirelessly worked to strengthen the American-Israeli alliance which is a cornerstone of Israel?s security.

Jewish Federations of North America GA

Haaretz Correspondent Barak Ravid http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1127029.html

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to tell U.S. President Barack Obama that he was “very serious” about wanting to advance peace talks with the Palestinians during the two leaders’ scheduled meeting on Monday.

The last-minute scheduling of Netanyahu’s White House meeting, after Israeli officials said over the past several weeks that Netanyahu hoped to see Obama, was widely seen as a sign of strained relations between the two leaders.

“We mean business,” Netanyahu planned to tell the American president, and add that Israel was ready to be “generous” in scaling back the construction in West Bank settlements.
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