“Preliminary” talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) are nominally supposed to give way to specific peace talks and an eventual settlement. The US is talking this goal up, of course, but the indications are neither side really believes it, and is setting up for a timely failure.
Instead of being about what the two sides can do to advance a settlement, the focus seems to be on what political advantage the leaders on either side can squeeze out of the lead-up to the talks, and treating the inevitable failure as an afterthought.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is hardly in a position to negotiate a real settlement, but may see his poll ratings boost with preconditions on getting a number of prisoners freed.
Hamas scored big points with the number of detainees freed in trade for Gilad Shalit. It didn’t even matter how many were re-detained in the weeks and months that followed, the gain was tangible, and Abbas seems eager to get the same boost.
For the Netanyahu government, a deal isn’t even really an option, with a lot of his coalition openly opposed to peace on general principle. Rather, officials say the real goal is to keep the talks going in some form through September so the PA has no excuse to go to the UN seeking a unilateral declaration of statehood at the General Assembly.
Selling the rest of his coalition on the non-talks is going to be key for Netanyahu, and keeping the detainee releases from being politically damaging is a risk, but managing to avoid another round of pro-Palestine votes in the General Assembly would be a big win for his coalition, and if the talks crumble shortly thereafter it can set another round of diplomatic grandstanding and blaming the other side for not making a deal.
Before even being nominated as US envoy to UN Samantha Power already started accusing Venezuela and other Latin American nations for human rights abuse and violations, yet there are hundred of thousands of casses which prove to be the act of human abuse and human rights violation committed by USA all over the world. Having said that, Israel is a apartheid regime with fundemental religious structure supported by USA foreign policies for every act against humanity there is and committed for last 60 years, what makes the matter different is that Israel, as usual, wants something for something as nothing in return, Obama administration want to have Israel as one of the five member of UN security consuls which Israel can vito the Palestinian for full UN membership and cooperate with USA and its hegemony around the world, in another word, Zionism and vulture capitalism producing illigimate babies by sharing their bed with Saudis. So this time is just a matter of wasting time as before, Palestinians need to go ahead with their UN bid and forget abut USA or Israel to help out, that's not going to happen, not the way theses regimes liy about their falsified democracy.
The so called "talk" is nothing but DECEPTION. Both Obama and Netanyahu are fraud.
As with all things Israeli/Palestinian, it's a train wreck in slow motion with Palestinians being carted off on stretchers. However, this farce does give SecState Lurch Kerry a chance to strut like a peacock on the global stage.
I think you would have had to just become aware of this "conflict" to think that much good would come out of these peace talks; i.e., stalling tactics.
'Going nowhere' is exactly where Israel wants these talks to go. The status quo is very profitable for Israel and also the Pentagon which needs these 'tensions' and conflicts to maintain its huge budget. It makes them both seem so important to a lot of people. They love it. Israel is not exactly suffering. In fact you get the sense that they are celebrating… while the Palestinians are coping every day with misery, despair and utter powerlesness.
The sole purpose of these talks is to burnish Obama's thoroughly undeserved Nobel Peace Prize – and divert attention from the fact that he's gearing up for war in Syria and Lebanon and then Iran. It's a stupid and narcissistic move that can only come from Obama.