Word: palestinian
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...concerned about his commitment to the Jewish state, then presidential candidate Barack Obama declared, "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." Those words, which he later qualified, may now be coming back to haunt the President as he seeks to restart the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process by getting Israel to freeze all construction outside its pre-1967 borders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn a line in the sand over Jerusalem, vehemently rejecting Washington's demand that he halt a construction project in the Arab eastern portion of the city that was occupied...
...finding a formula for sharing Jerusalem, the eastern part of which the Palestinians claim as their future capital, is fundamental to the peace process that Obama has sought to revive; there will be no Palestinian or Arab takers for any deal that leaves all of Jerusalem under Israeli control. So by picking the Holy City as the battleground for a test of wills with Obama, Netanyahu is mounting a broader challenge to the President's peace agenda...
...Meanwhile, Abbas is under pressure from Fatah leaders who openly challenge his fealty to Washington. Even in the best-case scenario of rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas, the Palestinians are still set to hold elections in January of next year - and could very easily keep Hamas in power. (Netanyahu has insisted that he will not deal with a Palestinian government that includes the organization...
...achieving agreement under the circumstances may be, the Obama Administration is all too aware that time is running out for the two-state solution. Populations on both sides of the divide have lost faith in the concept, but while Israelis are largely content to live with the status quo, Palestinians are not - and they are losing faith in the path of negotiations. The expansion of the Israeli presence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank in recent years has eroded faith in the prospects for a territorially viable Palestinian state; the idea of resolving the conflict on the basis...
...next phase despite the obvious lack of confidence of either side in the other. That would involve defining some sort of process of talks on a timetable aimed at resolving the key questions of where to draw borders between Israel and a state of Palestine, the terms of Palestinian sovereignty, how to share Jerusalem and the fate of Palestinian refugees. But both sides have been through such a process before and failed to conclude a deal. For many Middle East watchers, the key question will be whether Obama sets a deadline for such talks. And what it plans...