Obama to meet with Netanyahu, Abbas

Source: Associated Press


WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama will host a meeting Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in an effort to lay the groundwork for renewed negotiations on Mideast peace.

The three-way meeting will take place after Obama meets separately with each of the two leaders, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Saturday.

Special Envoy George Mitchell says it is another sign of Obama's commitment to comprehensive peace. The meetings will take place in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly meeting.

On Friday, the possibility of a three-way meeting had been in doubt because Mitchell failed to bridge wide gaps between Israelis and Palestinians.

Over four days, Mitchell met twice with Abbas and four times with Netanyahu, including twice on Friday before Mitchell left the Middle East.



Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090919/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_obama_mideast;_ylt=AgIV560EdyXVJcbVTUBKPrSyFz4D;_ylu=X3oDMTJoNzJiMG1wBGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkwOTE5L3VzX29iYW1hX21pZGVhc3QEY3BvcwMxBHBvcwMyBHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcnkEc2xrA29iYW1hdG9tZWV0dw--

Look here you two, get your act together and make peace.

Source: CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Obama will host meetings Tuesday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the White House announced Saturday.


Israel has ignored President Obama's calls to freeze construction of settlements.

The meetings come as hopes for renewed Israeli-Palestinian talks have dimmed despite diplomatic efforts of former Maine Sen. George Mitchell, the U.S. envoy for the Middle East, who capped off last week's visit to the region with a second round of talks with both sides.

Next week's meetings are "another sign of the president's deep commitment to comprehensive peace that he wants to personally engage at this juncture, as we continue our efforts to encourage all sides to take responsibility for peace and to create a positive context for the resumption of negotiations," Mitchell said in the White House statement.

Obama will talk with each leader separately before all three meet together, the White House said.

Mitchell failed to get a trilateral meeting on the sidelines of next week's U.N. General Assembly session in New York, according to an Israeli government official Friday, who declined to be named because of the sensitive nature of the talks.



Read more: http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/19/obama.mideast.diplomacy/index.html

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What Bush's Open Mic Revealed

Bombs were exploding and innocents dying, from Beirut to Haifa to Baghdad, and yet George Bush managed to pose for yet another photo op, smiling as he gave the thumbs up at the close of the G8 summit. Thanks to an unsuspected open mic, however, we could also glimpse the mindset of a leader unaccountably pleased with his ignorance of the world.

What seemed to interest him most at that farewell get together of leaders bitterly divided over a disintegrating Mideast was not some last-minute proposal for peace but rather the fact that it would take China President Hu Jintao eight hours to fly home from St. Petersburg to Beijing.

Bush had started the exchange by noting, absurdly, that, "This is your neighborhood, doesn't take you long to get home." Uh, yeah, incurious George, sure thing. Never mind that St. Petersburg is in Europe, on Russia's northwestern corner, due north of Turkey, and Beijing is on the eastern edge of mainland Asia.

"You, eight hours? Me too. Russia's a big country and you're a big country," he said when corrected, sounding for all the world like an earnest kindergartner, processing new information. "Russia's big and so is China."

Unfortunately, Bush's private remarks to British Prime Minister Tony Blair several minutes later also revealed a cluelessness about more important matters: Israel's bloody assault on Lebanon, its causes and possible solutions.

"See, the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over," he said, apparently referring to the guerrilla force's firing of rockets into Israel. "I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with {Syrian leader Bashir} Assad and make something happen."

More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-scheer/what-bushs-open-mic-revea_b_25357.html

Israel will continue on building settlements, and you can't pound on the podium and get anything going..

And the cycle continues.

Hardly Israel is willing to give up land, hence no peace. Palestinians are negotiating with land but have nothing to negotiate with given the pace Israelis building settlements in the occupied Palestine.

Eventually they will give up more land.

And some faction of the Palestinians will lob more missiles into Israel, aimed at a City and most here on DU will cheer.

Good luck President.

I don't think anybody on DU cheers missiles lobbed one way or another. Most people here want Israel to give back all land illegally taken by Israel since 1967. Terrorism also comes from guys on bulldozers taking a family's olive grove or home or pasture.

Nobody here is after the Jordanians who threw their Palestinian brethren out on the street when Israel was being formed. Why not have the US give back all the land they "stole" from the Indians too while you are at it. Nobody has to give back land but Israel, and they have to give it to a people who have claimed they want ALL of israel and won't stop until they have it.

Good luck with that.

By those standards, Netanyahu's Israel is still "being formed" when he allows more settlements. What you might call "forming" Israel when an Israeli takes a house away from a Palestinian, the Palestinian would call "stealing". And it's not very persuasive to use the history of native Americans as a parallel. If you don't think Indians were lied to, cheated, and exterminated, then try studying the subject again. It's hardly a moral precedent for Israel.

Good luck with that too.

They treat them better than ALL their Arab brethren. For once I'd like to see just a little indignation from the left towards that treatment. otherwise it looks like something else.

"Wake me up before you go-go

You put the boom-boom into my heart
You send my soul sky high when your lovin' starts
Jitterbug into my brain
Goes a bang-bang-bang 'til my feet do the same
But something's bugging you
Something ain't right
My best friend told me what you did last night
Left me sleepin' in my bed
I was dreaming, but I should have been with you instead.

Wake me up before you go-go
Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo
Wake me up before you go-go
I don't want to miss it when you hit that.."

Wham!