Saturday 4 September 2010

Arab League Asshole: This round of Israeli-Palestinian Talks Will Be the Last

04/09/2010 Arab League chief Amr Moussa predicted on Friday that the latest round of negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians will be the last.

Israeli-Palestinian talks resumed in Washington this week and are meant to continue later this month.

Speaking at a news conference in Italy, Moussa said Arabs are ready for full peace with Israel in exchange for a pullout from the lands Israel occupied in 1967, including occupied East Jerusalem.

He continued by stressing that Arabs were ready to have normal relations with Israel and that there was no alternative but to achieve a real peace.

Moussa's remarks sharply contrast comments he made this past Sunday, when he said that he had little hope that direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians would be successful.

"We are hoping that talks will succeed but we are all very pessimistic about the viability of the peace process because of the past experience," Moussa told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of a political conference in Slovenia on Sunday.

"The only reason [for the hope in the success of the talks] is the sincerity of President Obama and his wish to achieve something good in his presidency," Moussa said.

He said Obama had given the Palestinians assurances that Israel would stop settling new territory during talks that are due to last for one year.

"If we find that during that year Israel continues to build settlements, there is no use in waiting for the full year [of talks]" Moussa said.

The 10-month freeze is set to expire on September 26. Palestinian officials have declared that talks would break down if Israel resumed construction in the settlements after that date. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has remained mum on whether or not he would extend the moratorium.

Aides to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the Arabic language London-based newspaper Al-Hayat on Saturday that the skepticism which plagued the Palestinian camp prior to the relaunch of direct Middle East peace talks has all but disappeared.

Speaking at the launch of direct talks on Thursday, Abbas urged Israel to end construction in the West Bank settlements, on land that the Palestinians seek for a future state, saying that negotiations would face many hurdles, but that the goals were clear and the path to an enduring peace was known to both sides.

"We call on the Israeli government to move forward with its commitment to end all settlement activities and completely lift the embargo over the Gaza Strip," Abbas said.

According to the Al Hayat report on Saturday, those close to the Palestinian president claimed the atmosphere in the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks in Washington had "changed by 180 degrees" from the hesitance which prevailed prior to their arrival at Washington.

Sources told the London-based newspaper that the reasons for the change in attitude were both the United States' desire to settle all final-status issues within one year as well as U.S. pressure on Israel to extent its soon-to-be-expired moratorium on settlement building.




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