EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton called on Israeli and Palestinian leaders to make "bold" proposals for peace / European Parliament, Flickr
Abbas declares exploratory talks with Israel “over”, PLC speaker to be held in Israeli prison for six months without charge, and Hamas allegedly distancing itself from Syria in this week’s top #Palestine stories.
Continue reading “Week In Review, Jan 27th” »
There are hundreds of thousands of apps available for smartphones and tablets, but none let me play lead peace negotiator for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. None let me play with border configurations, settler and refugee moves, housing, water distribution rights or police and military placements. I can’t even play with who gets to administer and guard Jerusalem holy sites. All I can download are a few anodyne Palestinian or Israeli apps primarily geared toward a boorish target demographic.
Why not a Gaza blockade app? There’s got to be a market to play something like Brick Breaker with the smuggling tunnels, now that the Egyptian” and Turkish Flotilla “springs” have sprung a leakier blockade. Why not build off of the bestselling iPhone Pocket God game to create different winning (and supremely enforceable) Palestinian and Israeli peace scenarios?
Continue reading “Gaming Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations” »
This piece was originally published at LobeLog
The anticipated meeting of the Middle East Quartet (the United States, Russian Federation, United Nations and European Union) took place Monday. The result was what has become pretty standard for Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy and peacemaking: nothing.
The Quartet is incapable of doing anything unless the US can do something, and the US refuses to take any action outside the realm of “direct negotiations between” the Israelis and Palestinians. The goal of this meeting was to try to come up with a formula that would bring the Israelis and Palestinians back to the table.
The failure to come up with that formula led to the Quartet ending the meeting without a statement. There was simply nothing to say.
Continue reading “Quartet Meeting Produces Nothing, Highlighting American Failures” »
Faris Ghawi - With June 5th marking the 44th anniversary of the start of the 1967 War and the recent speeches by Obama and Netanyahu bringing the issue of 1967 borders to the forefront, it is important that this issue is seen in the correct context.
In his speech on the Middle East, president Obama said what many had said before him: “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps”. As evidenced by the reactions from both sides (though much louder by Netanyahu), this is a pretty loaded statement.
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The real problem of course, is if/when the more likely scenario takes place and the parties do not agree.
Continue reading “The 1967 Borders, Land Swaps and U.N. Recognition of Palestine in September” »
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