Palestinians call off Israel talks

[IndianaGreen]

Palestinians call off Israel talks

UPDATED ON:
Thursday, March 11, 2010

The Palestinian president has called off recently-agreed indirect talks with Israel after the Israeli interior ministry announced it would build 1,600 new settler homes.

Mahmoud Abbas conveyed the decision to Amr Moussa, the Arab League secretary-general, by phone, Moussa told a news conference following an urgent meeting of delegates at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo on Wednesday.

"The Palestinian president decided he will not enter into those negotiations now ... the Palestinian side is not ready to negotiate under the present circumstances," he said.

Israel's interior ministry, controlled by the ultraorthodox nationalist Shas party, announced on Tuesday that it would build 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, a religious Jewish settlement in an area of the occupied West Bank annexed to Jerusalem by Israel.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/201031023521904316.html

[DesertFlower]

1. i'm losing hope that there will ever be peace. nt

[IndianaGreen]

2. We must end this charade called the 'peace process' and ask Israel to assimilate the Palestinians

into Israel as full citizens. Israel has de facto annexed the land taken in 1967, so let's accept that as a fact of life.

The only challenge for Israel is to decide to either assimilate the Palestinians into Israeli society, or expel the whole lot into neighboring Arab countries. Let's work that angle, and forget the stupid peace process!

[Ozymanithrax]

4. We should ask the Palastinians first if that is what they want...

I mean, what if you were told that your state no longer existed and you were being assimilated into Texas. Not asked to vote on a refferendum. Not asked to discuss it. Just told, now your a Texan.

[IndianaGreen]

6. Israel holds all the cards, and there has never been a Palestinian state

There is nothing left to discuss. Talk is all we got for the past 40 plus years.

Now we are down to what is Israel going to do with the Palestinians living in Israel. Israel could assimilate them as citizens, which would maintain democracy and would allow Palestinians to get political power that they would not have, even under a Palestinian state which would be autocratic by nature. The other choice is to expel the Palestinians. Let's settle this one way or the other, but the Occupation will end!

[Larkspur]

7. Israel won't assimilate the Palestinians

They'll practice apartheid against them, like they're doing now. Arab Israelis and Palestinians have a higher birth rate than Jewish Israelis, so within 1 or 2 generations, the Jewish state of Israel will have a non-Jewish majority. That's why the Jews in Israel don't want to assimilate the Palestinians.

[IndianaGreen]

8. Then they will have to expel them

and Palestinians will have a chance to take over the surrounding Arab countries into which they were expelled, and exact revenge.

The current condition, and the pyramid of lies that surrounds it, is not acceptable.

[Ozymanithrax]

10. Expelling Palestinians and claiming right of conquest removes the

every shred of difference between Israeli's and Nazi s's. It would be a monstrous war crime on par with the expulsion of Jews in World War II, or from Spain, or from all the countries we were expelled from over the centuries.

[Ozymanithrax]

9. But there is a Palestinian people...I know a family down the street...

and by the News stories I see there is very little desire to join Israel.

Nor have you asked the Israeli's if they desire such an end. There are 3.7 million Palestinian people in the west bank and Gaza, a total of about 9.7 million world wide if they were granted the right of return. It would be a very quick way of ending the Israeli state forever. Certainly Israeli's should have some say on the continued existence of the nation, as should the Palestinian people on theirs.

A two state solution remains the most realistic.

[ProgressiveMuslim]

11. My famiy would support a One State solution; and was in favor of 2-states for years.

Nor would any of them every exercise their Right to Return.

[gateley]

3. How disappointing. Why did we even bother going over there? Could have

saved the jet fuel.

[stranger81]

12. Israel conveniently waited to announce it has no intention of stopping settlement building in EJ

until after Biden was already on the ground in Jerusalem. I guess we could have anticipated that kind of an ambush, but our gov't tends to give the Israelis the benefit of the doubt (even when it's probably not deserved).

[DesertFlower]

5. there was an argument between biden and begin

in the 80s.

http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2008/08/biden-threatened-to-cut-off-aid-to.html