Tag: settlements
Danziger: Art Of The Smear

Danziger: Art Of The Smear

Jeff Danziger’s award-winning drawings, syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group, are published by more than 600 newspapers and websites. He has been a cartoonist for the Rutland Herald, the New York Daily News and the Christian Science Monitor; his work has appeared in newspapers from the Wall Street Journal to Le Monde and Izvestia. Danziger has published ten books of cartoons and a novel about the Vietnam War. He served in Vietnam as a linguist and intelligence officer, earning a Bronze Star and the Air Medal. Born in New York City, he now lives in Manhattan and Vermont. A video of the artist at work can be viewed here.

Biden Says Israel Settlements Raise Questions About Commitment To Peace

Biden Says Israel Settlements Raise Questions About Commitment To Peace

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Vice President Joe Biden called on Israel’s government on Sunday to demonstrate its commitment to a two-state solution to end the conflict with the Palestinians and said settlement expansion is weakening prospects for peace.

“Israel’s government’s steady and systematic process of expanding settlements, legalizing outposts, seizing land, is eroding in my view the prospect of a two-state solution,” Biden said in a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a leading pro-Israel lobbying group.

Biden said he did not agree with Israel President Benjamin Netanyahu’s government that expanded settlements would not interfere with any effort to settle the conflict.

“Bibi (Netanyahu) thinks it can be accommodated, and I believe he believes it. I don’t,” Biden said.

Biden said the region instead seems to be moving toward a one-state solution, which he termed dangerous.

“There is no political will at this moment among Israelis or Palestinians to move forward with serious negotiations. And that’s incredibly disappointing,” Biden said.

Israel says it intends to keep large settlement blocs in any future peace agreement with the Palestinians. Palestinians, who seek to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, say they fear Israeli settlement expansion will deny them a viable country.

Palestinians have cited Israeli settlement activity as one of the factors behind the collapse of U.S.-brokered peace talks in 2014, and a surge of violence over the past five months has dimmed hopes negotiations could be revived any time soon.

“We’ve stressed to both parties the need to take meaningful steps to demonstrate their commitment to a two-state solution that extends beyond mere words,” Biden said.

“There’s got to be a little ‘show-me.’ This cannot continue to erode,” he said.

Biden was cheered for criticizing what he called Palestinian actions at the United Nations to undermine Israel, and he said changes in the region, including the united fight against Islamic State militants, could help thaw relations between Israel and its neighbors.

Israel and the United States are also in talks on a generous military assistance agreement, he said.

“It will, without a doubt, be the most generous security assistance package in the history of the United States,” Biden said of a pact expected to be worth billions of dollars annually to the Jewish state, the largest recipient of such U.S. assistance.

 

 

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; Editing by Richard Pullin)

Photo: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden speaks as he delivers a joint statement with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during their meeting in Jerusalem March 9, 2016. REUTERS/Debbie Hill/Pool 

Kerry Holds ‘Constructive’ Talks With Palestinians

Kerry Holds ‘Constructive’ Talks With Palestinians

Washington (AFP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met for over two hours with Palestinian negotiators for “constructive” talks on future relations with Israel, a U.S. official said.

The talks come just days after Israel announced its biggest grab of Palestinian land since the 1980s, and as a new showdown looms at the United Nations with the increasingly frustrated Palestinians planning to push a resolution setting a three-year deadline to end the Israeli occupation.

It was Kerry’s first face-to-face talks with Palestinian negotiators since Washington found itself sidelined from the Gaza ceasefire talks in July, when the top U.S. diplomat failed to broker a truce in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.

“Kerry met with Saeb Erekat and Majid Faraj for about two hours this afternoon,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

“It was a constructive conversation that covered a range of issues, including Gaza, Israeli-Palestinian relations, and recent developments in the region,” she said, adding they had agreed to talk again in coming weeks.

Kerry had also spoken Tuesday by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he expressed his concerns about new Israeli plans to confiscate some 400 hectares (988 acres) of land in the occupied West Bank for settlement building.

The United States has called on Israel to reverse the decision.

Kerry’s high-profile bid to hammer out a full peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority collapsed spectacularly amid bitter recriminations in April, despite more than a year of shuttle diplomacy.

State Department officials told AFP the Palestinians had requested Wednesday’s meeting “to brief the secretary on current Palestinian plans on the way forward and next steps in Gaza.”

More than 2,100 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, nearly 70 percent of them civilians, which ended last week with an open-ended ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militant groups, brokered by Egypt.

The two sides are supposed to meet soon in Cairo for negotiations on a long-term truce, but no date has been announced yet for the start of the talks.

The Palestinians now intend to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution setting a three-year deadline for ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.

But the resolution will likely be voted down by a veto from the United States which has long opposed unilateral moves by the Palestinians to seek statehood.

AFP Photo/Mahmud Hams

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