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Israelis and Palestinians are sparring over the very premise for their peace negotiations as envoys from each side head into talks in Washington that have been trumpeted as the revival of diplomacy after three years of stalemate. While the US remains mum on the negotiating terms, the two parties are sparring over the central question of whether the talks are based on Israel's 1967 borders or not. The argument comes amid widespread skepticism on both sides that the US-brokered diplomacy will lead to a breakthrough to end more than a century of conflict. "They have zero chances of reaching an...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Friday the resumption of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. "I'm pleased to announce that we've reached an agreement that establishes a basis for resuming final status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis," Kerry told reporters in Amman, Jordan, according to AFP. "This is a significant and welcome step forward,” he added. “The agreement is still in the process of being finalized so we are absolutely not going to talk about any of the elements now." The top U.S. diplomat added that PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and Israeli...

WASHINGTON: The United States will begin formal talks with the Taliban, including the Haqqani network, in Doha, Qatar, in a couple of days, Obama administration officials said in a major announcement on Tuesday. The engagement, the first of its kind since the post 9/11 conflict, follows key concessions made by Washington, including dropping the pre-condition that Taliban immediately break ties with al-Qaida, in return for much broader, generic, self-serving commitments by the unyielding terrorist group. In a conference call from Northern Ireland where President Obama is attending the G8 summit, US officials said they expected Taliban to issue a statement...

Many more Americans continue to side with Israel rather than the Palestinian Authority, but - with President Obama's first visit there days away - most also prefer to leave peace negotiations to the two protagonists, rather than having the United States take the lead. Fifty-five percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll sympathize more with Israel, vs. 9 percent who side more with the Palestinian Authority, with the rest favoring neither, or undecided. It's been a similar gap for many years, including polling back to the 1980s testing Israel vs. the Arab nations of the Middle East. See PDF with...

When President Obama and Afghan President Hamid Karzai announced Jan. 11 that a negotiating office for the Taliban was about to open in the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, optimism soared within the administration that peace talks would soon be back on track. But January’s optimism has become February’s reality check: There is still no agreement to open the office, and Karzai, back in Kabul after his Washington visit, says there will be no deal until Qatar meets his conditions in writing. As the Obama administration nears a decision on the pace of U.S. combat troop withdrawals from Afghanistan between...

This column was co-authored by Bob MorrisonSen. John Kerry has a long and dubious record in foreign policy. In the 1970's, he testified against his fellow Vietnam War veterans before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He charged that they were violating the Geneva Conventions every day in Vietnam. Some POWs were outraged at Kerry's disloyal statements. They said they had been tortured by their Communist captors trying to force them to make such untrue statements. Worse, Kerry went to Paris in 1971. There, he met with North Vietnamese Communists. We need to see all his notes from those meetings....

Gaza truce agreed, Hamas says, to take effect in hours By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Jeffrey Heller | Reuters – 30 mins ago GAZA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An Egyptian-brokered ceasefire in the Gaza conflict will go into effect later on Tuesday, a Hamas official said. There was no immediate Israeli comment. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier he was open to a long-term deal to halt Palestinian rocket attacks on his country. "An agreement for calm has been reached. It will be declared at 9 o'clock (1900 GMT) and go into effect at midnight (2200 GMT)," Hamas official Ayman Taha told Reuters...

U.S. intelligence officials acknowledged Tuesday that the United States may release several Afghan Taliban prisoners from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as an incentive to bring the Taliban to peace talks. Meanwhile, Afghan officials told The Associated Press that a plan to give Afghanistan a form of legal custody over the men if they are released satisfied their earlier objection to sending the prisoners to a third country. Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper told Congress Tuesday that no decision had been made on whether to trade the five Taliban prisoners, now held at Guantanamo Bay as part...

*snip* As part of the accelerating, high-stakes diplomacy, Reuters has learned, the United States is considering the transfer of an unspecified number of Taliban prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay military prison into Afghan government custody. It has asked representatives of the Taliban to match that confidence-building measure with some of their own. Those could include a denunciation of international terrorism and a public willingness to enter formal political talks with the government headed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The officials acknowledged that the Afghanistan diplomacy, which has reached a delicate stage in recent weeks, remains a long shot. Among the...

The Middle East is usually full of deception, duplicity, and backstabbing in its political both intra-country and inter-country. There is often a huge gap between actions and words. At times, it appears that nobody says what they mean and nobody means what they say. So, it comes as little surprise that the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should go through an intermediary, the United States, and that there is deceit galore, at levels beyond anything I can remember. The Palestinian Authority in their dealings with the United States perpetrates the first deceit, and then there is the deceit in the approach and manipulation...

Between President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and Head Negotiators Yasser Abed Rabbo and Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian spokespeople have threatened every conceivable position regarding the moribund talks with Israel over the past couple of weeks. These threats include but are not limited to, unilaterally declaring an independent Palestinian State along the border of the Green Line, taking the entire negotiations to the United Nations for a final dispensation, dissolving the Palestinian Authority and throwing the whole of the West Bank back on Israel to maintain, and cutting all relations and cooperation with Israel declaring the Roadmap and Oslo...

The package Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has accepted for US-sponsored talks with the Palestinians contains more substantial concessions than merely a freeze on settlement construction and goes far beyond the one-year deal put before the security cabinet Saturday night, Nov. 13, debkafile reports from Jerusalem and Washington. The deal unveiled in Jerusalem early Sunday is only stage one of a larger secret package to which only Netanyahu and his close adviser Yithzak Molho are privy - not even Defense Minister Ehud Barak or the Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi.

Over the past year and a half, Hezballah has been restocking their inventory of rockets storing many in the Bekaa Valley. Hezballah has also been in violation of the United Nations resolution that ended the conflict between them and Israel back in 2006 by rebuilding military positions and bunkers and storing rockets and other war supplies south of the Litany River. Further acts in violation of the so-called rules of law have been manifest by Hezballah having placed their weapon caches within hospitals, schools, mosques, and residential homes. Through all of this, Europe, the United States, the United Nations, Russia,...

Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel has offered to renew the moratorium on building settlements in the West Bank in order for peace talks with the Palestinians to continue. Palestinians have said that that they will not continue with the talks if the moratorium was lifted. Netanyahu has acceded to their wishes, asking in return that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinians have categorically replied that they are unwilling to do so, which means that the peace talks are dead and that they have killed them. Anyone who doesn't recognize that Israel is a Jewish state and...

Ever since Israel’s miraculous victories in the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973), the world has pressured Israel to return the land gained in defense against her neighbors’ belligerence. Egypt was the first country to break with the “Three No’s” (no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel) position defined by the Muslim world during the Khartoum Conference. This led to the return of the entire Sinai Peninsula, an area of land significantly larger than all of Israel, to Egypt in exchange for what has become a chilly peace. A member of...

KABUL, Afghanistan – Taliban officials have engaged in periodic, discreet contacts with Afghan and U.S. officials for months but are unwilling to move to formal peace negotiations until the U.S. agrees to a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, according to a Pakistani intelligence official and members of a newly formed Afghan peace council. The White House said Wednesday that President Barack Obama supports attempts by the Afghan government to open peace talks with Taliban leaders, but still wants the insurgents to renounce violence and their support of al-Qaida. However, press secretary Robert Gibbs said the United States...

In Israel, politics is the national pastime. Israelis follow politics the same way certain New Yorkers absorb every statistic, past and present, about the Yankees. Last week, which was sandwiched between the Jewish new year and the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur, Israelis were still following the news - just not the latest round of Middle East peace talks. News outlets gave what felt like obligatory coverage, but the talks typically ranked as the second or third item. This is a pronounced shift from past go-rounds, in which the primarily left-of-center news industry breathlessly provided wall-to-wall coverage. This...

Mr. Prime Minister; Many Jews both from Israel and in the Diaspora have reacted with horror and revulsion to the latest Time Magazine Cover Story, “Why Jews Don’t Care About Peace.” Time’s base use of the Shylock blood libel is beyond false, it is disgusting. But perhaps there is a lesson beyond the obvious hatred against Jews in general, Israel specially, and you, Mr. Prime Minister, can take from this journalistic episode. Time has unwittingly pulled back the veil and shown exactly how the world media will, for the most part, depict the breakup of the current peace talks should...

I would like to say I’m shocked but the only surprise is it took this long for President Obama to call for the continuation of the building freeze on Jewish areas in Judea and Samaria while making no comment on Arab and Muslim building of illegal structures throughout the same area and especially in and around Jerusalem. President Obama has still not made mention of the illegal buildings erected by Arabs, Muslims, and Druze illegal building within the Green Line in uncontested Israel, especially in the Negev where the problem has become endemic lately. The one positive consequence of this...

First, we need to identify what the Palestinian demands will consist. The extension of the building freeze is probably the most obvious. Many of the other demands are a rehash of long standing demands including Right of Return, total control of Jerusalem’s Old City, return to the Green Line (pre 1967 borders), release of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, free passage between the West Bank and Gaza, end of the blockade of Gaza, removal of all IDF troops, checkpoints, travel restrictions, and other prohibitions imposed to prevent terror attacks. The truth is that even should Israel concede and meet...