Word: jerusalem
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Obama Administration is calling Israel out. "An insult," huffed David Axelrod after the Israeli government welcomed Vice President Joe Biden to the Holy Land by announcing plans to build 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem. The Israelis are sending "a deeply negative signal," Hillary Clinton told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a 43-minute phone call after Biden had left the country. Israel's ambassador to Washington was quoted calling it the biggest "crisis" between the U.S. and Israel in the past 30 years...
...what did all this venting of spleen actually accomplish? Not much. Netanyahu apologized for the timing of the housing announcement, but then the Israelis declared they would proceed with the construction of the new homes in Jerusalem anyway - and even started taking bids for 300 more. The Administration's tough talk may have helped placate some Palestinians who believe the U.S. is too soft on Israel - but it didn't stop several hundred others from staging riots in East Jerusalem. That's not to say that the Obama team is wrong to object to settlement construction in East Jerusalem...
...fight with Israel over settlements in East Jerusalem is never going to be easy for Washington to win. A majority of Israelis oppose halting the construction of housing in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967; many right-wing members of Netanyahu's coalition believe Israel should never give back any parts of the Holy City to the Palestinians. The hawks view Netanyahu's agreeing even to a 10-month partial moratorium on new settlement activity in the West Bank as a needless sellout to Obama, one of the least popular American Presidents in recent memory among Israelis. With...
...arrangement work? Among Palestinians, it would face opposition from Hamas, which runs Gaza but would be excluded from the deal; among Israelis, it would provoke conservatives who would object to the inevitable dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Many of the knottiest issues, including the status of Jerusalem, would still be unresolved. But a deal on an interim Palestinian state would provide some measure of hope and allow Obama to show he is capable of extracting concessions from both sides. At this point, the alternative is more misunderstanding, bitterness and despair - a grim legacy...
...Palestinians going to wait passively for what Senator Joseph Lieberman calls a "family dispute" to amiably resolve itself. After all, for the Palestinians, that "family" relationship has been a disaster, and they'll seek to drive a wedge on the issue by pushing back against Israeli encroachment in East Jerusalem and elsewhere. Palestinian activists have for weeks been protesting against Israeli construction activities in East Jerusalem, and on Tuesday those escalated with a "Day of Rage" called by Hamas, which led to fierce clashes between youths and Israeli police. The symbolic importance of Jerusalem throughout the Arab world makes protest...