[kabar]

He offered a ten month freeze in settlement building in exchange for restarting the peace plans.

Sounds like a sign of weakness to me. He sounds desperate to get the peace talks going again. He is giving up a bargaining chip for what? Starting peace talks again?

And this undermines Israel's basis position that they were not expanding settlements beyond natural growth. How can Israel defend stopping all settlement building for just ten months? Why not a year or five years? Netanyahu just caved.

[ClearCase_guy]

I suspect that the goal is to set the Palestinians up and wait for them to torpedo the peace process (again). I don’t think Netanyahu is taking a big risk here.

[uncbob]

Sounds like a sign of weakness to me. He sounds desperate to get the peace talks going again.

It is Israel is dependent on the USA --That is a fact of life --They have almost no choice other than to go down fighting or gradual surrender