Olmert and Abbas to start negotiations on core issues -Gil HoffmanIsraeli and Palestinian negotiating teams will be instructed to start talking about core issues such as Jerusalem, the refugees and the contours of a future Palestinian state, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas decided after a meeting in Jerusalem.
Strategic Affairs Minister Avigdor Lieberman announced earlier this week that he would quit the government and pull Israel Beiteinu out of the coalition if core issues were put on the negotiating table. Likud called on Israel Beiteinu and Shas to quit the coalition following the new development.
[Jerusalem Post]
4 comments:
Sad, the way Olmert is pressured to make, what will inevitably be, another fruitless deal without peace guaranteed first!
By the way, besides the "seprated at birth" juxtaposition, I am sure Olmert, like Shrek, is just a nice guy trying to get it right while getting bad advice from powerful people and being buffeted by forces outside his control.
I hesitated to use that graphic as it is fairly disrespectful of a standing Prime Minister. But it was so perfect for the soundbite, i couldn't resist.
Olmert's popularity ratings, by the way, are actually lower than Bush's. He does, however, have a keen sense of how to stay in power, which is not always easy in Israeli politics.
A lot of people blame Israeli administration after administration for botched peace effort with the Palestinians and giving too many concessions. It never works, it rarely seems in israels best interest, and yet it keeps occurring. Surely, Israelis included, everyone must see that it is outside pressure, threats and promises that Israel is acting on. The world loves to act on the Middle East, but only makes real demands on Israel; the only party the rest of the world knows will listen to reason and respond to cajoling as the rest of the civilized world does, instead of irrationally, and threateningly, as does most of the Middle East.
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