Palestinian Sees Prospects of Deal Receding
By ISABEL KERSHNER
NYT
JERUSALEM — After President Obama’s high-profile speech on Thursday in which he laid out broad principles for reaching an Israeli-Palestinian deal, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called an emergency meeting at his headquarters in Ramallah in the West Bank. He advised his associates not to comment on the speech, according to a senior Palestinian official who attended the meeting, but to wait instead for Mr. Obama’s meeting with the prime minister of Israel in the White House “and see if there are any positive signs.”
By the end of that meeting, judging by the statements of Mr. Abbas’s associates, the prospects of renewed negotiations leading to a swift agreement appeared at least as distant, if not more, than before.
The official, Nabil Shaath, a leader of Mr. Abbas’s party and a veteran negotiator, said that Mr. Obama’s speech had “contained little hope for the Palestinians,” except for the one sentence that spoke of the borders of a future Palestinian state being based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, a shift in American diplomatic language that addressed a long-held Palestinian demand.
But sitting alongside Mr. Obama after a two-hour meeting in the Oval Office, Mr. Netanyahu publicly and forcefully shot down that notion. Ignoring the element of land swaps, which would afford negotiators some flexibility, the Israeli leader totally rejected the idea of withdrawing to the pre-1967 lines, reiterating that they are “indefensible” and do not take into account the “demographic changes,” meaning the large Israeli settlement blocs that have taken hold in the West Bank over the last 40 years.
(More here.)
NYT
JERUSALEM — After President Obama’s high-profile speech on Thursday in which he laid out broad principles for reaching an Israeli-Palestinian deal, the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, called an emergency meeting at his headquarters in Ramallah in the West Bank. He advised his associates not to comment on the speech, according to a senior Palestinian official who attended the meeting, but to wait instead for Mr. Obama’s meeting with the prime minister of Israel in the White House “and see if there are any positive signs.”
By the end of that meeting, judging by the statements of Mr. Abbas’s associates, the prospects of renewed negotiations leading to a swift agreement appeared at least as distant, if not more, than before.
The official, Nabil Shaath, a leader of Mr. Abbas’s party and a veteran negotiator, said that Mr. Obama’s speech had “contained little hope for the Palestinians,” except for the one sentence that spoke of the borders of a future Palestinian state being based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps, a shift in American diplomatic language that addressed a long-held Palestinian demand.
But sitting alongside Mr. Obama after a two-hour meeting in the Oval Office, Mr. Netanyahu publicly and forcefully shot down that notion. Ignoring the element of land swaps, which would afford negotiators some flexibility, the Israeli leader totally rejected the idea of withdrawing to the pre-1967 lines, reiterating that they are “indefensible” and do not take into account the “demographic changes,” meaning the large Israeli settlement blocs that have taken hold in the West Bank over the last 40 years.
(More here.)
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