Word: palestinians
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Israel Obama, Unsettled President Obama's hopes of delivering important Israeli concessions to Arab leaders during his landmark Middle East trip dimmed after Israel demurred on his call for a halt to the expansion of Jewish settlements into Palestinian territories. Despite repeated U.S. calls for a freeze on new construction, settlers justify expansion as a way to accommodate the "natural growth" of their communities, shipping in trailer homes, building illegal houses and bulldozing new roads to connect them...
...problem is not simply his partners, but also his own Likud party. Former Likud leader Ariel Sharon was forced to quit the party - in the face of a challenge led by Netanyahu - when he pulled Israel out of Gaza. Likud's party platform specifically opposes the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. Rather than a prisoner of the right, Netanyahu has until now been its most presentable leader...
...Opinion polls often find a majority of Israelis willing to give up West Bank settlements in exchange for a genuine peace, and that same majority is unlikely to be willing to jeopardize Israel's relationship with the United States in order to defend the settlers' right to build on Palestinian land, a right the settlers say is based on the argument that it forms part of the Biblical Land of Israel. (A poll commissioned by a settler university published Friday showed 56% of Israelis calling for the Prime Minister to resist Obama's demands...
Peled's proposals aren't likely to be adopted, but they are a sign of the deep anxiety in Israel's right-wing government over the Obama Administration's intention to move quickly toward the creation of a Palestinian state at peace with Israel. Particularly irksome to Netanyahu is Obama's insistence that Israel immediately freeze all construction in settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem - territories conquered by Israel in 1967 - that together with Gaza are envisaged as the basis of a Palestinian state. Netanyahu's government has thus far refrained from embracing the two-state formula...
...Sunday's speech, reports suggest he'll adopt language compatible with Obama's goals, and even use the term "Palestinian state" as the wrapper for his own, far more restricted conception of Palestinian sovereignty. Israeli reports from sources close to the Prime Minister say the speech, over which he is still consulting allies, will embrace a limited, conditional version of the two-state solution, but will at the same time push back against the call for a settlement freeze. Nobody knows yet exactly what Netanyahu will say in his effort to harmonize his government's positions with Washington...