NEWS
By New York Times News Service | March 27, 2007
JERUSALEM -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert yesterday to agree to peace talks that would include three issues that have bedeviled Middle East negotiations since 1979. Late last evening, Olmert had not agreed to allow negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to include discussions about the status of Jerusalem, the borders of an eventual Palestinian state or the question of whether Palestinian refugees who fled, or were forced to leave, their homes would have a right to return to Israel.
NEWS
By Chicago Tribune | March 28, 2007
JERUSALEM -- After three days of intensive diplomacy in the Middle East, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced yesterday that the Israeli and Palestinian leaders have agreed to meet every two weeks to discuss day-to-day issues and "a political horizon." The agreement steps up the pace of face-to-face discussions between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, but falls well short of starting substantive negotiations on the core issues of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
NEWS
By Matthew Hay Brown | November 26, 2007
WASHINGTON -- Tomorrow's Mideast peace conference, behind the walls that guard the U.S. Naval Academy campus, is surrounded by misconceptions. For starters, it's not a negotiation. No one will be locking Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas into a room, there to stay until they've solved some of the Middle East's thorniest problems. Much of the arm-twisting associated with the conference will already have occurred by the time the leaders arrive in Annapolis -- it's what President Bush and the State Department have been doing for weeks, just to get them to show up. Nor is it clear that the one-day meeting will produce anything very substantial.
NEWS
By David Nitkin and David Wood | November 28, 2007
The leaders of Israel and the Palestinian Authority agreed yesterday at a U.S.-sponsored conference in Annapolis to begin "vigorous, ongoing and continuous" negotiations to try to reach a comprehensive peace settlement by the end of next year. President Bush read a joint agreement by the two sides at the start of a daylong gathering at the U.S. Naval Academy that illustrated both the promise and pitfalls that lie ahead. Middle East analysts said the agreement fell short of a breakthrough, and Bush emphasized that the pact was only a beginning to further negotiations.
NEWS
By Bay Fang.. | January 15, 2007
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a diplomatic push in the Middle East, met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas yesterday, but the idea of a two-state solution brought up differences between the officials. At a news conference at the Fatah Party headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Rice and Abbas smiled, shook hands and emphasized their mutual determination to move forward in establishing a Palestinian state. But while Abbas mentioned the importance of moving toward a two-state solution, as laid out in the U.S.-backed "road map," he rejected the plan's phased approach of first establishing a provisional Palestinian state.
NEWS
By NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE | April 30, 1999
JERUSALEM -- Palestinian leaders decided yesterday against declaring statehood Tuesday, retreating from a pledge that the Israelis saw as a threat and defusing a potentially volatile situation.At the urging of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, the Palestinian Central Council ended a three-day meeting in Gaza City by postponing the idea of pronouncing the West Bank and Gaza Strip a Palestinian state.Under the terms of the Oslo peace accord, Tuesday was the target date for completing final peace negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians, but the negotiations have barely begun.
NEWS
November 2, 1999
ALTHOUGH the United States was not part of the Oslo negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in 1993, President Clinton dominates the commemoration.This two-day memorial to the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli peacemaker assassinated by an Israeli extremist four years ago, is theater.But President Clinton's presence is serious business. His own place in history rests on the success of the ambitious timetable for peace that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Ehud Barak set for themselves.
NEWS
By George F. Will | March 25, 1999
WASHINGTON -- Hillary Clinton may make of herself a gift to the state of New York, which must replace Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who is retiring. So she may wish to prepare answers to the sort of questions she can expect, such as:In upstate New York (yes, Mrs. Clinton, there is such a place; it is somewhat north of the Carlyle Hotel), the industrial corridor from Schenectady-Troy to Buffalo is hurting. The corridor includes Seneca Falls, birthplace of women's suffrage, to which you have made a pilgrimage.
NEWS
By Mark Matthews | December 2, 1999
JERUSALEM -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat provided unsettling evidence this week that if a Palestinian state comes into being, it could fall far short of the democracy that his people say they want.During the weekend, his security forces arrested 11 critics who had signed a harsh condemnation of the Palestinian National Authority's alleged broken promises and who accused Arafat of fostering corruption.The Palestinian government's past attempts to silence opponents have drawn strong criticism from human rights organizations.
NEWS
By LOS ANGELES TIMES | December 15, 1998
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Of many standing ovations at the Shawwa Cultural Center yesterday, one of the warmest went to the other Clinton in the house, the U.S. president's wife, Hillary.Welcomed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a "great and generous guest," Hillary Rodham Clinton beamed to the audience, her daughter, Chelsea, at her side. Mrs. Clinton and Arafat's wife, Suha, seemed genuinely friendly, walking arm in arm and whispering to each other as though sharing confidences.Mrs.