Friday, September 03, 2010

Same "Peace", Different Decade

Robert Duncan

3:59 p.m. Sept. 3, 2010


This Thursday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Neranyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to begin a number of “direct talks” that will be taking place over the next year. The talks will be somewhat bi-weekly, the next happening in the middle of this month. The Palestinians are demanding statehood from Israel, separate from the predominantly Jewish nation. The Palestinians are demanding that the Israelis not continue the settling of the “West Bank” area that the Palestinians claim, and construction in the area is set to resume at the end of September. The Palestinian group Hamas, which controls the “Gaza Strip” has promised to continue killing Israelis, killing four in the past week. The Palestinians have promised to pull out of the negotiations completely if the Israelis continue their construction in the areas in question. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton hosted the talks on Thursday, seems to believe that there is hope in this attempt where there was none in others. She will also be attending the next meeting in Egypt, in which the leaders hope to bring more issues up front and come to an understanding about the construction issue.

In my personal view of the events between Israel and Palestine, I think that both of the peoples are trying to gain as much as possible, and running all over each other. Both sides would need to make some concessions in order to make this sort of agreement fair. This fact places the Palestinian government under enormous stress. Especially considering that they have to deal with Hamas, who will be killing Israelis no matter how the peace talks go. Hamas is just complicating things in this situation, rather than helping their cause, they are being short-sighted, and seek to win their goals simply through violence, which is costing their country’s politicians dearly.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/africa-mideast/israel-palestine-agree-to-second-round-of-peace-talks/article1693896/?cmpid=rss1

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