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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Analysis: Israel bound to feel the heat ahead of Annapolis |
| 2007-11-02 |
| This week, for the first time, word began filtering out that the US was starting to lean on Israel to take some steps to ensure a successful meeting at Annapolis. The US, according to diplomatic officials, sent a clear message that Washington has spent a great deal of time, energy and political capital on this event, and wants to make sure it succeeds. The message to Jerusalem was that Israel would have to start evacuating settlement outposts, obligations spelled out under the road map, if it expected the Palestinians to fulfill their own road map obligations. Words fail |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #1 On the one hand Israel IS commited to evacuating the outposts, and AFAIK this isnt all that controversial, I dont think even Bibi has said he wouldnt do that. OTOH, doing so in a few weeks, at a time when Abbas is hardly able to deliver enough on HIS side of the road map, doesnt seem at all realistic to me. ISTR seeing something about Barak working on a plan for outpost evacuation over several months. It could be that this unsourced JP article is wrong. Or it could be that Rice, seeing that the agreement at Annapolis wrt a political horizon is likely to be limited, is trying to throw something else to the Pals. It seems clear that having the summit this early is not a good idea from either the Israeli or PA perspective, and is mainly a US (IE Bush-Rice-Hadley-Gates) initiative. The pessimistic view is that this is just them angling for "history". The optimistic view is that theyre looking for something positive for the muslim world, before they do something VERY BIG somewhere else. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2007-11-02 15:24 |