Word: processing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...initial phase of President Barack Obama's effort to jump-start the Israeli-Palestinian peace process called for confidence-building. While the results haven't exactly inspired confidence in its prospects, Obama may have no choice but to move forward. The President's Middle East envoy, Senator George Mitchell, is scheduled to visit the region during the week of July 20, amid reports that Washington is moving toward outlining a new negotiating process, possibly with fixed timetables for resolving issues. But the palpable distrust each side has shown of the other during Obama's initial mediation effort casts a pall...
...interlocutor. He is engaged in an epic power struggle with Hamas, which not only controls Gaza but also is the ruling party of the democratically elected Palestinian legislature. And his influence is waning even in his own Fatah organization. It has become conventional wisdom internationally that no credible peace process is possible without the consent of Hamas, with whom the Israelis have had to negotiate over a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit. The movement's leaders believe that Israel will cut a deal with Hamas to free Shalit and ease the blockade...
Recognizing the urgency of completing a two-state solution to the conflict, Obama has moved energetically to restart a peace process that petered out under the Bush Administration. The President has demanded that Israel demonstrate good faith by freezing all settlement construction outside its 1967 borders and that Arab states reciprocate by allowing Israeli commercial planes to use their airspace and by easing up on visa restrictions. Results have been less than encouraging on both counts. (See pictures of life in the West Bank settlements...
Indeed, even though a mechanism for sharing Jerusalem has been one of the "final status" issues in the peace process since Oslo, Netanyahu on July 19 responded to U.S. pressure to halt a construction project in the eastern part of the city occupied by Israel in 1967 by insisting that Israeli control over Jerusalem is non-negotiable. It's not clear what Washington will accept. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who previously insisted that there could be no exceptions with a settlement freeze, was asked on July 16 to comment on reports of a compromise. She said she was "certainly...
...Administration is expected to move to the 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...