Plan For U.S.-Led Peace Talks Hit Wall Of Skepticism In Israel
By Agence France-Presse
Sunday, July 21, 2013 11:02 ED
A US announcement that Middle East peace talks are to resume, possibly as early as next week, was met Sunday with a wall of scepticism from Israeli officials and commentators.
Analysts said the negotiations, announced on Friday by US Secretary of State John Kerry, were doomed to fail, while cabinet ministers and senior officials reacted with caution and even outright opposition to the plan.
“Such talks were held 21 years ago. They failed utterly,” wrote Nahum Barnea, right-leaning columnist for top-selling daily Yediot Aharonot.
“Negotiations aren’t a goal,” he continued. “They are just a means. The way in which Kerry is dealing with the conflict will almost certainly lead to yet another failure, and the resulting crash.”
The centre-right Maariv daily agreed: “(Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu … got a process with no peace right from the start; no negotiations based on the 1967 borders with a land swap… (and) no freeze of the settlements,” it said in an editorial.
Palestinians have long demanded that peace talks be based on the 1967 lines that existed before Israel occupied the West Bank, and have stressed that settlement building in the territory must be frozen before they would resume talks.
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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/07/21/plan-for-u-s-led-peace-talks-hit-wall-of-skepticism-in-israel/
