US hopes to get immediate Arab League approval for proximity talks; PA official: DC meetings ended without progress on east Jerusalem construction freeze.
... the US is demanding of Israel ... commitments by Saturday so it can take them to the Arab League meeting in Libya and receive that organization's backing for starting proximity talks.
... the administration’s treatment of Netanyahu during his meeting with Obama created the impression of a deep crisis in relations. As Jackson Diehl wrote in The Washington Post, the White House’s refusal to allow non-official photographers record the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, and the fact that no statement was issued afterward, led to the impression that “Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arms length.”
According to various Israeli sources, the Obama administration is asking for Israel to commit to some type of limitation on building in east Jerusalem; to show a willingness to deal with the so-called core issues of borders, refugee and Jerusalem already in the indirect talks; and to agree to a number of confidence building measures, including the release of hundreds of Fatah prisoners.
There were also reports, not confirmed, that the administration had asked for a commitment to extend the moratorium on housing starts in the West Bank settlements beyond the 10-months originally declared.
One source in the Prime Minister’s Office said the goal of the dialogue with the US was to find a way to start the proximity talks and “put these problems behind us.”
The key problem with the US has to do with Jerusalem, with the administration making it clear in recent days that it did not accept Netanyahu’s declaration at the AIPAC conference on Monday evening that Jerusalem was not a settlement, but rather Israel’s capital, and that building would continue there.
It was in Egypt that Israel celebrated the very first Shabbat Ha-Gadol on the tenth of Nissan, five days before their redemption. On that day, the Children of Israel were given their first commandment which applied only to that Shabbat, but not to future generations: On the tenth day of this month [Nissan]... each man should take a lamb for the household, a lamb for each home (Exodus 12:3).ON THIS SHABBAT HAGDOL, OBAMA IS ASKING JEWS TO SACRIFICE JERUSALEM FOR THE ARABS.
Just 9 percent of Jewish Israelis think US President Barack Obama’s administration is more pro-Israel than pro-Palestinian, according to a Smith Research poll taken this week on behalf of The Jerusalem Post.I WISH THE JEWS HERE IN THE USA WOULD WAKE UP ALREADY!
Forty-eight percent said that the Obama presidency favored the Palestinian side, 30% said his administration was neutral and 13% chose not to express an opinion for the survey, which has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points.
The poll of a representative sample of 500 Israelis was conducted on Sunday and Monday after weeks of heightened tensions between Obama and Israel, but before the crisis intensified during Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to the White House.