Thursday September 29, 2011

I've Been Thinking:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it first. Then United States Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said it again.

They said there should be no preconditions to talks between the Palestinians and Israelis.

They said the United States does not think that a settlement freeze must be in place before talks can begin.
This was the mistake that President Obama made after taking office in January 2009.

Obama made it clear that the expected a cessation of building before talks would begin. That, in turn, gave Palestinian leadership the license they were searching for to not participate. Even after a 9 month and 1 week freeze out of a total of 10 months, the Palestinians only came back to the negotiation table to discuss extending the building freeze.

This all happened exactly. Not much has happened since.

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