Main focus of Thursday, September 2, 2010

Little hope for peace in the Middle East

The first direct peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians in two years begin in Washington today, Thursday. The press rates the success chances of the US-moderated talks as low and complains that Europe is not involved.

Die Presse - Austria

It is extremely unlikely that a Middle East peace agreement will be concluded, writes the daily Die Presse commenting on the start of the negotiations in the US: "Talking is better than shooting, they say. It's hard to argue with that. But when the talking goes nowhere and the shooting gets even worse afterwards? This is precisely what happened ten years ago. The American Mr. Fix It back then was called Bill Clinton. He hauled the prime minister at the time and current defence minister Ehud Barak, as well as the late PLO boss Yasser Arafat, over to Camp David to force them to make peace. The negotiations were ill prepared and failed. ... Obama is being more courageous than all the other US presidents before him, who waited until the end of their terms in office before tackling the risky Middle East problem. But he is raising in an unfavourable constellation exaggerated hopes that could morph into bitter anger. A flying school for camels would be more successful than his dangerous peace farce." (02/09/2010)

» full article (external link, German)
More from the press review on the subject » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Middle East
All available articles from » Christian Ultsch

The Independent - United Kingdom

The negotiation efforts by US President Barack Obama will lead to nothing as long as Israelis keep settling on the West Bank, writes the liberal daily The Independent: "The immediate challenge for Obama is to find a formula which can reconcile Netanyahu's reluctance to prolong a partial freeze on settlement building beyond 26 September - probably strengthened by Wednesday night's killings - and Abbas's threat to pull out of talks if he refuses. If the talks do survive, what will they be about? What they've always been about: ending the Israeli occupation which began with victory in the 1967 Six Day War when it took control of the West Bank and Gaza. And that means agreements on borders, which the Palestinians believe must be based on the pre-1967 lines, the future of Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as a shared capital, and the fate of the families of refugees that were forced from or fled their homes in what is now Israel during the 1948 war." (02/09/2010)

» full article (external link, English)
More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » U.S., » Middle East, » Israel
All available articles from » Donald Macintyre

La Vanguardia - Spain

The start of the Middle East summit in Washington prompts former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin to examine the role of the Europeans in the daily La Vanguardia: "I have to admit that I don't understand why the Obama administration is keeping Europe out of the negotiations. After all, over the past twenty years the main phases of the process have taken place in Europe. And Europe has dedicated time, experience and resources to the efforts to resolve the world's most enduring conflict since the end of the Second World War: the Madrid Conference initiated the whole process (with strong US engagement); Paris was host to the signing of the economic agreement between Israel and the Palestinians; and the most important compromises of all those reached between Israelis and Palestinians were achieved in Oslo and Geneva, which are not part of the European Union." (02/09/2010)

» more information (external link, Spanish)
More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » Europe, » U.S., » Middle East, » Israel
All available articles from » Yossef Beilin

Jyllands-Posten - Denmark

US President Barack Obama's role as mediator in the peace talks is a hopeful sign, the liberal-conservative daily Jyllands-Posten writes: "No one knows whether Obama has a trump up his sleeve. But it would be naïve to believe he had launched into these - in the eyes of many - hopeless negotiations without having very carefully weighed up the possibilities of dialogue, which is a key factor in the Middle East game, between Israel's [prime minister] Netanyahu and [Palestinian President] Abbas. Obama is playing a game with high stakes and it could be that his attempt comes too late to do what his predecessor George W. Bush omitted to do, perhaps because after the 9/11 terrorist attacks Bush saw the Middle East only as a battlefield for militant terrorists and moderate peace forces. But it would be premature to write off this meeting between Israelis and Palestinians as a failure even before it has begun." (02/09/2010)

» full article (external link, Danish)
More from the press review on the subject » International Relations, » Security Policy / Crises / War, » U.S., » Middle East, » Israel

» To the complete press review of Thursday, September 2, 2010