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Peace Process

Momentum picking up towards 'Palestine'


By Stan Goodenough
August 05, 2007

Last week's Middle East visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appears to have given a push to the international effort to create a Palestinian state on occupied Jewish lands.

According to a report in the Saturday edition of the Saudi Arabian newspaper al watan, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is now set to meet with terrorist PA chief Mahmoud Abbas in Jericho Sunday to discuss ways to achieve "the goal the sides are striving for" in order to see Palestine established "alongside Israel."

A substantial piece of the territory demarcated for this Muslim Arab entity - which will be the 23 Arab state - is land specifically given by God to the Jewish people as an "everlasting inheritance."

Among other cities, it encompasses Hebron and Bethlehem, Bethel, Shiloh and Shechem - population centers comprising the cradle of Israel's nationhood.

The world's 320 million Arabs possess 540 times more territory than the tiny land of Israel that is so precious to its less than six million Jews.

Olmert's office confirmed that the meeting has been scheduled, although a PA spokesman said it was set for Monday, and not Sunday.

The prime minister's readiness to meet with Abbas in a PA town (for the first time as prime minister) in order to move this process forward signals "a softening of his position," analysts said.

It indicates the intensity of the international pressure on Olmert to make concessions to Abbas since Hamas threw the PA chief and his Fatah forces out of the Gaza Strip last month.

Olmert had previously insisted on Abbas putting an end to terrorist violence in his ranks before Israel would be willing to talk substance. But Washington - which has chosen for the sake of expediency to paint Abbas and Fatah as "moderate" terrorists compared to the "extreme" Hamas terrorists - let the Israeli know that it saw a not-to-be-missed opportunity in the Hamas coup.

President George W. Bush plans to convene an international Middle East peace conference in the fall this year, and Rice is believed to have instructed Olmert and Abbas to work out agreed-upon principles in time to present them at the event.

Despite the optimism reportedly radiating from the Israeli and PA leaders, veteran "peacemakers" in Jerusalem - among them President Shimon Peres and Labor Party leader and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak - are said to be skeptical.

A political pundit in the extreme leftist Ha'aretz newspaper wrote at the weekend that serious negotiations are only expected to be seen when the men are on their way to the actual conference, which it is thought will take place in Washington in November.

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