Keep an eye on the Middle East peace talks...

While French politics is the key component of this blog, one cannot forget the significant initiation of peace  talks in Washington between Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and Mahmud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority.

According to the Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman's, the talks are doomed to fail: "I do not believe that a comprehensive agreement with the Palestinians is possible within a year, nor even during the next generation," Lieberman is quoted as telling members of his ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party at a function in advance of Wednesday's Jewish new year. "Since the Oslo accords 17 years ago, important politicians have made multiple pledges and statements that nothing ever came of. "We have not examined in depth the reasons why we have paid such a high price for each accord with the Palestinians which has had no results."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/09/20109685916466939.html

While both sides seem pessimistic, Helena Cobban discussed the need for a change of tactic, as described by  the American diplomatist Chas W. Freeman, Jr, who has called for European states to assume a greater role in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Cobban describes Freeman's  arguements in her latest blog post: "At the core of this process should, he said, be an ultimatum that if the two parties can't reach a peace settlement within a year, the world's states would impose one: This would be either a call for recognition of a Palestinian state within all the Palestinian areas that lie beyond Israel's 1967 borders-- or, recognition of Israel's sovereignty over all of Mandate Palestine and a requirement that it grant equal rights to all who are governed by Israel."  Freeman also promotes including Hamas, in some compacity, in the peace talks.

http://www.justworldnews.org/


I think this is especially necessary, as conflict between Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank poses a challenge to Palestinian unity, and ultimately will be integral in the peace-talks with Israel.