Free Republic

Ultimately, only diplomacy can bring about a durable solution to the challenge posed by Iran’s nuclear program. As President and Commander-in-Chief, I will do what is necessary to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. But I have a profound responsibility to try to resolve our differences peacefully, rather than rush towards conflict. Today, we have a real opportunity to achieve a comprehensive, peaceful settlement, and I believe we must test it. President Obama What was achieved last night in Geneva is not an historic agreement; it is an historic mistake. Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu I am a patriotic...

What is the significance of the Geneva Accord, just signed by self-appointed Israeli and Palestinian negotiators? According to some Palestinians, it is a betrayal of their most cherished national aspiration, which is to return by the millions to their ancestral villages and orchards and houses in Israel. According to some Israelis, it is a piece of reckless freelance diplomacy that creates dangerous expectations about what Israel can realistically give away in any genuine negotiation. But according to the editorial board of The New York Times, the Accord is a "courageous feat" that defies "the usual extremists" on both sides to...

Resolutions have been introduced in both the House and Senate praising the “Geneva Accord,” a “peace plan” devised by former leftwing Israeli politician Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo, a longtime advisor to PLO terrorist leader Yasser Arafat. Click here to tell your elected officials to oppose these resolutions. The “Geneva Accord” which former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak calls “a delusion,” is written as if the failures from the 1993 Oslo peace agreements never happened. Substantively, the Accord fails to resolve the issue of the so-called Palestinian ‘right of return’, re-divides Jerusalem, turns the Temple Mount over to the...

When it became clear the Palestinians would not live up to the road map, the paper of record found an alternative 'What is truly momentous" about the Geneva Accord, according to The New York Times, "is that Israelis and Palestinians of good will have... declar[ed] in concrete terms how their conflict can end." But lots of people, including prime minister Ehud Barak and president Bill Clinton, have declared how the conflict can end. The problem is not the terms of a peaceful two-state solution, but rather that the Palestinians are not yet ready to make peace with Israel. The moral...

Hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon demonstrated yesterday in protest of the Geneva peace document which was launched on Monday in Switzerland by Palestinian and Israeli sides. This was in response to the call made by the Palestinian groups which take Damascus as a headquarters, and for fear that the document talks of giving up the Palestinian "right of return." Hundreds of students demonstrated in the streets of al-Baddawi camp for the Palestinian refugees near Tripoli, and burnt tires at the entrance of the camp while raising the Palestinian flags and chanting slogan "we want to return back to Palestine."...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. administration is to establish a channel of communication with the brokers of the Geneva Accord and will follow its progress, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell agreed Friday during a meeting with the Israeli and Palestinian co-authors of the unofficial peace plan in Washington. Powell told Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo that he would discuss the initiative with President George W. Bush in the near future, and the two would work out the American stance on the issue. Speaking after their meetings with Powell, and United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in New York, Beilin and...

Two Jews were brutally murdered in Paris in the week that followed the torching of the Jewish day school Merkaz HaTorah in the Paris suburb of Gagny. In an interview with Boston's Jewish Advocate, French Jewish novelist Nidra Poller says that the two murders, of a 23 year-old Jewish DJ and of a recently widowed Jewish shopkeeper, were played down by the French press. In the case of the murdered young man, whose throat was slit and whose body was mutilated, the alleged assailant, a young male Muslim, reportedly told his mother after the fact, "Now I can go to...

<p>WASHINGTON — The architects of a far-reaching proposed accord between Israel and the Palestinians campaigned for Washington's approval Wednesday, but the White House said President Bush's blueprint for a Mideast settlement still was the best formula.</p> <p>"The path forward to peace in the Middle East is the road map," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, referring to the approach that has the endorsement of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia.</p>

NEW YORK- The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has condemned the rogue Geneva Accord, which would push Israel back almost to the nine-miles-wide pre-1967 borders, expel many thousands of Jews from their homes, and give away Judaism's holiest site. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's spokesman, Ra'anan Gissin, has described the Geneva Accord as "tantamount to Israel committing suicide." (Ha'aretz, Dec. 2, 2003) According to the Geneva plan, Israel would have to retreat virtually all the way to the narrow pre-1967 borders, and give up parts of the Negev region (which is now part of the State of Israel); a sovereign Palestinian...

Spokesman for Paul Wolfowitz confirms U.S. deputy defense secretary to meet Geneva Accord authors on Friday (Reuters)

Whether it’s Secretary of State Powell hosting the signers of the “Geneva Accord” on the heels of their grand ceremony in Geneva, President Clinton sending American spin doctors to help Ehud Barak win the 1999 Israeli elections, the 1995 Oslo II agreement passing the Knesset by a one-vote majority achieved by blatant vote-buying, or the drafting of the initial 1993 Oslo agreement (by — who else — Yossi Beilin) behind the backs of the official Israeli delegation to the Madrid Conference, those who claim the cause of Israeli democracy is dear to their hearts show a surprising contempt for that...

Oct. 30, 2003 Blair welcomes "Geneva Accord" By ASSOCIATED PRESS LONDON Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday he hoped that an informal Mideast peace plan reached by former Israeli and Palestinian negotiators would stimulate debate and complement the U.S.-backed roadmap. The "Geneva Accord," which has no formal standing, proposes a Palestinian state formed on nearly all the land Israel captured in the Six Day War. The Israeli government led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has condemned the unofficial negotiations and launched an effort to discourage foreign support for the agreement. But in a statement released by his office Thursday, Blair...

Strategic Slyness of the Geneva Accord by Stan Goodenough Oct 27, '03 / 1 Cheshvan 5764 So what's the big deal with the so-called Geneva Accord - the "agreement" concocted by a cabal of Israeli non-officials in cahoots with second-tier Palestinian leaders, and sprung upon the unsuspecting Jewish public just a few days ago? Certainly it has some very dangerous, potentially disastrous elements, chief among them the offering up of Israel's holiest site in exchange for another Palestinian paper promise, this time that they will no longer insist on the "right" of their people to "return" to pre-1967 Israel and...

Oct. 26, 2003 The people want a plan By NACHMAN SHAI Yosef (Tommy) Lapid, the justice minister, has sharp instincts, possibly going back to the time he was a journalist and later a television commentator in the early days of the television shoutfest Popolitica. As a panelist he always knew how to find the right word, the right reaction. It is very possible that those qualities, and others, are what carried him to the peaks of politics. He became a minister and head of the second-biggest party with 16 seats. Last week, he unexpectedly stood up and admitted: We made...