More in ‘peace negotiations’

• The Palestine Liberation Organization formally dropped its requirement that Israel freeze all settlements before peace talks commence, in order to allow a new round of U.S.-mediated indirect negotiations. [AP/NYT]
• Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Israel today, ostensibly to kick-start those talks, but perhaps most of all to signal to Israeli leaders that America ...

It hasn’t been a good few days for the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Over the weekend, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat announced he would force the whole issue by going to the U.N. Security Council and demanding recognition of a Palestinian state covering the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded by ...

President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones, delivered a keynote address on the final day of the J Street conference this afternoon. Jones, who drew cheers for saying he was “honored to represent” Obama at the left-leaning Israel lobby’s first convention, got the crowd to its feet by saying that he thought reaching ...

• The United States and allies are close to an agreement in which Iran will ship its uranium to Russia for enrichment, not to weapons grade. But Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, issued a statement saying a must require “the cessation of enrichment by Iran, and not just the removal of the enriched material.” [NYT]
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The Palestinian Authority is ready for talks with the United States but not with Israel, according to chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who arrived in Washington yesterday to meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other U.S. officials. Erekat said the top priority for making any headway on a final-status agreement with Israel is ...

Jerusalem Post Palestinian affairs correspondent Khaled Abu-Toameh, the most prominent Arab Israeli newspaper columnist, spoke at Columbia University last night and, interestingly, placed the least blame for the current stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations on the Netanyahu government. Instead, Abu-Toameh faults President Barack Obama and the Palestinian leadership.
“He made three crucial mistakes,” Abu-Toameh said of Obama ...

A year ago, when Israeli President Shimon Peres got up to address the United Nations General Assembly, he chose to begin by donning a yarmulke—a showman’s touch that indicated, symbolically, that he was speaking not just as a head of state, but as a Jew. This year, Israel’s new Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu—who was not ...

With expectations set so low for today’s three-way meeting between President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, what counts as success? Netanyahu said after the session that he thought the important thing was that everyone showed up. “The importance of this meeting was actually its existence—in this case, ...

While reading about tomorrow’s scheduled meeting between Barack Obama, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Mahmoud Abbas, on the New York Times website last night, we were surprised to find a black, white, and orange banner ad that read, simply, “Gaza. Hamas. Conflict. Facts!” Clicking through brought us to the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s web site, which now features ...