Tony Blair to seek path back to peace talks in effort to avert collision over Palestinian bid to win UN recognition of statehood
Harriet Sherwood
The Guardian [UK]
4 September 2011
Tony Blair is expected to meet Palestinian and Israeli leaders this week in an attempt to find a path back to peace negotiations and avert a potential diplomatic collision over a Palestinian bid to win UN recognition of their statehood.
The former British prime minister has reportedly been entrusted with the task of finding a formula to restart talks that would be acceptable to the members of the Middle East quartet – the US, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations – as well as to both sides in the conflict.
Blair met Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, last week and has further meetings scheduled for this week.
The US is accelerating efforts to forestall the Palestinians’ bid to win recognition of their state, according to a report in the New York Times. Barack Obama is anxious to avoid a situation where the US has to veto such an attempt, thus risking the anger of the Arab world. The US has made it clear it will wield its veto if the issue comes to a vote at the security council.
Blair is said to be pushing for a consensus around the key issues of borders and acknowledging Israel as a “Jewish state”. However, Israeli officials are unhappy with Obama’s speech in May in which he spoke of a Palestinian state “based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps”, saying this should not be the starting point of talks…
The article continues at The Guardian.
Update: Erasing Jews from Jerusalem
Also, The Chicago Way – Are Democratic Party Operatives Behind Israel’s Anti-Government Protests?
A major Israeli newspaper says yes. According to an investigative report by Maariv’s Kalman Libeskind, Democratic operative and pollster Stanley Greenberg, who, along with James Carville, Bob Shrum, and others, was part of a team sent by Bill Clinton to drive Netanyahu from office in 1999, is again trying to influence Israeli politics.
His mission: stoking economic discontent into a protest movement intended to again, replace Benjamin Netanyahu with a leader more willing to sell out to American leftists and make concessions the Palestinians…
At Blazing Cat Fur, Alfred Hitchcock – The Holocaust Documentary
Update 2: Britain’s “Friends of Al-Aqsa” helping to delegitimize Israel
“Friends of Al-Aqsa (FOA) is a pro-Hamas British organization based in Leicester which advocates Israel’s elimination. The organization takes part in all aspects of the campaign to delegitimize Israel in Britain: boycotts of Israel, dissemination of anti-Israel propaganda, involvement in convoys and flotillas for the Gaza Strip, and anti-Israel demonstrations in London,” according to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Center in Israel...
Update 3: RedState, The Democratic hypocrisy of DeLauro & Greenberg.:
…And then there’s King Stork and his Israeli Trip:
Large scale protests / pop concerts dominated by secular Israelis are being held in Tel Aviv, Haifa and Jerusalem and will include free performances by well known artists. The protesters demand “social justice” and a more equitable economy but their exact demands are not clear.
According to an investigative report by Maariv’s Kalman Libeskind, the protests were engineered by a group of media strategists who are directed by prominent Democratic strategist Stanley Greenberg, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, John Kerry and others. Greenberg directed the strategists to create a protest that was not led by one specific group, in order to create social ferment. An unnamed left-wing leader would eventually step into this ferment and take the reins, Greenberg predicted.
So… Greenberg is attempting to destabilize a loyal ally’s political structure in order to bring about an unspecified change in leadership that might prove more ideologically suitable. Didn’t the CIA supposedly used to do this all the time in Latin America? And didn’t the Left freak out about it all the time, too? And does that mean that, starting in 2013, it’ll be OK for the CIA to start doing it again? – Because, frankly, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is a horse’s rear end…
