Treasury prices slightly lower; Fed buys $7.8B

Obama's Mideast Peace Envoy Must Go, Says Bush Envoy
By Jay Solomon Inside-the-Beltway politics are getting nasty as the Arab-Israeli Peace process stalls. On Thursday, Elliott Abrams , the point man for Mideast Peace Talks in George W. Bush s White House, called for his successor under President Barack Obama , George Mitchell , to be replaced. Its October 2010. Were in a mess, Abrams told a media gathering at the Washington office of the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to the state of the Peace process. Whos really been the...

US urges Arabs to back continued Israel-Palestinian talks
Washington (AFP) – The United States stepped up efforts Tuesday to press Arab Ministers who will meet later this week to back continued Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks, which risk derailing over Jewish Settlements. Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas plans to decide at Friday's Arab League meeting in Libya whether he will carry out a repeated threat to walk out of the Peace Talks over settlement building in the occupied West Bank. "What we want out of the Arab League is continued...

Why Mahmoud Abbas is so committed to Israeli-Palestinian peace talks
Ramallah, West Bank – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is now in political limbo after having staked his career on the questionable proposition that a viable Palestinian state can be achieved through negotiations with Israel. Negotiations are what make Mr. Abbas tick. But the direct Talks with Israel, which began a month ago at the White House, are in danger of collapse after Israel's refused last week to renew a Moratorium on settlement construction in the occupied West...

Assad says peace chances with Israel up in the air
Damascus (Reuters) – Western efforts to renew Peace Talks between Syria and Israel are focusing on finding common ground, but nothing has crystallized yet and the chances of success are unknown, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad said. In his first public assessment of U.S. and French moves to relaunch the Talks, Assad told Turkey's TRT television that Envoys from the two countries are trying to accommodate Syria's demands for the return of the Golan Heights and Israel's...

Israeli premier weighing new settlement curbs
Ramallah, West Bank -   Israel's Prime Minister has been sounding out key Cabinet members on extending a freeze on new construction in West Bank Settlements in hopes of keeping Peace Talks with the Palestinians alive, but he is encountering stiff resistance, Israeli officials said Wednesday. In Ramallah, key members of the Palestinian leadership — in an increasingly tense waiting mode — expressed optimism that an extension nonetheless was imminent. The future of...

Henry Siegman: Netanyahu's Freeze Scam
Originally published on www.thenation.com Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's remarks at the formal White House launching of the resumed Middle East Peace Talks on September 2nd were the clearest indication yet of his lack of seriousness. But neither the host, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, nor any of the distinguished guests seemed aware of it. Indeed, they applauded his remarks. What they applauded was Netanyahu's dramatic declaration, as he faced Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas,...

Israel Weighs New Curbs On West Bank Settlements
Ramallah, West Bank — Israel's Prime Minister has been sounding out key Cabinet members on extending a freeze on new construction in West Bank Settlements in hopes of keeping Peace Talks with the Palestinians alive, but he is encountering stiff resistance, Israeli officials said Wednesday. In Ramallah, key members of the Palestinian leadership – in an increasingly tense waiting mode – expressed optimism that an extension nonetheless was imminent. The future of President Barack...

Jordan, Palestinians pull out of cycling tour with Israel
Amman (AFP) – Jordanians and Palestinians have pulled out of a cycling tour with Israelis to promote environmental awareness a week after Jordan's Islamist-dominated trade Unions urged a Boycott. "We wanted to promote awareness about Climate Change problems in the region, but those who are against normalisation with Israel have turned the matter into a political issue," Abdelrahman Sultan, deputy director of Friends of the Earth Middle East (FoEME) in Jordan, told AFP on...

Obama's cave-in to Israel: letter suggests US not honest broker
The disclosures were made by an informed source: David Makovsky, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a close associate of Dennis Ross, Obama's chief adviser on the Middle East, who is said to have initiated the offer. The letter's contents have also been partly confirmed by Jewish US senators who attended a briefing last week from Ross. According to Makovsky, in return for the 60-day settlement Moratorium, the US promised to Veto any UN Security Council proposal on the...

The U.S. Republican Agenda: Pathway Toward Inequality " La Jornada, Mexico
As we continue to discover, almost everywhere, whether it be Europe, Latin America, Africa or Asia, the Republican Party and Tea Party movement are anything but popular at the moment. The only stand outs seem to be some of the British and Israeli press. This article by columnist Arturo Balderas Rodriguez of Mexico’s La Jornada warns that a Republican victory would be a great defeat for social equality in American society. Why? Because a Midterm defeat for Democrats would resurrect the...

Egypt president warns of 'global terror' if Mideast peace talks fail
PM Netanyahu to convene inner cabinet Tuesday to discuss two-month extension of settlement, in bid to save Peace Talks....

Public Focuses More on Economy than Election
The 2010 congressional Elections dominated news coverage last week, but not the Public’s attention. Americans continued to focus most closely on news about the nation’s struggling economy and about four-in-ten (39%) say news reports portray The Economy “about the way it really is.” Smaller, roughly equal percentages say the media make The Economy seem worse (28%) or better (27%) than it actually is, according to the latest News Interest Index survey of 1,002 adults...

Bill Clinton: Mideast peace would undercut terror
Cairo — Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict would take away much of the motivation for Terrorism around the world. He described the long-running Conflict as the key problem in the region and said resolving it would have a knock on effect that could result in Syria ending its support for the Lebanese Militant group Hezbollah and Iran turning back its Controversial nuclear program. "It will take about half the impetus in the whole...

Bill Clinton: Mideast peace would undercut terror
C AIRO — Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict would take away much of the motivation for Terrorism around the world. He described the long-running Conflict as the key problem in the region and said resolving it would have a knock on effect that could result in Syria ending its support for the Lebanese Militant group Hezbollah and Iran turning back its Controversial nuclear program. "It will take about half the impetus in the whole...

Bill Clinton: Mideast peace would undercut terror
Cairo -   Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said Tuesday that solving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict would take away much of the motivation for Terrorism around the world. He described the long-running Conflict as the key problem in the region and said resolving it would have a knock on effect that could result in Syria ending its support for the Lebanese Militant group Hezbollah and Iran turning back its Controversial nuclear program. "It will take about half the impetus in the...

The Peace Talks That Kill
When the Middle East Peace negotiations kicked off last month, people were killed; now that Talks are coming apart, there is more violence.

Empty Promises to Bibi
Josh Rogin reports on the non-progress in restoring the non-peace Talks: Special Envoy George Mitchell is back in the U.S. after a tour through the Middle East that included stop in Qatar, Egypt and Jordan. No progress reported on saving the Peace Talks and the key meeting of the Arab League where Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will speak has been postponed until Friday. Clinton phoned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the weekend. [State Department spokesman P.J.] Crowley...

For Bibi To Accept Freeze Extension, U.S. Might Have To Sweeten the Deal
Jerusalem Following reports of an unprecedented U.S. offer of a host of assurances in return for a 60-day extension of the freeze on building in West Bank Settlements, some political analysts are wondering why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not grabbed the deal with both hands. According to the reports, President Obama is offering Netanyahu pledges that the United States will: The price: Israel must agree to extend for 60 days the recently expired West Bank building freeze. If...

Tony Blair: Extremists have outmanoeuvred the west
Tony Blair has called for a "revolution in thinking" on international counter-terrorism, saying the "paucity" of the west's efforts have left it "outspent, outmanoeuvred and out-strategised" by Islamist Extremism. Speaking in New York to a thinktank, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Blair said a failure to challenge the "narrative" that Muslims were oppressed by the west was fuelling Extremism around the world. Instead, the majority had accepted the idea that Military...

Egypt, Jordan back Palestinians on settlements
Cairo — Key U.S. Mideast allies Egypt and Jordan backed on Sunday the Palestinian refusal to negotiate with Israel as long as it continues to build West Bank Settlements, but they urged more efforts to salvage Peace Talks mediated by Washington. U.S. Mideast Envoy George Mitchell held separate meetings with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo and Jordanian King Abdullah II in Amman. "We understand the Palestinian position which calls for setting the appropriate environment and...

Sami Jamil Jadallah " Ramallah, the best friend Israel can have!
Anyone familiar with the special if not strange relationship between the US and Israel would be shocked with this title, but it is true. Israel and its Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman could not have better friends these days than Mahmud Abbas, Saeb Erekat, Yasser Abed Rabbo, Nabil Abu-Rudeina and the Palestinian negotiating team. Forget about Washington, it is Ramallah that counts these days and for good reasons. Recently Mahmoud Abbas and his...

Israel: Loyalty oath to 'Jewish state' set to be approved
Changes to Citizenship law would require new citizens to declare loyalty to Israel as "a Jewish and democratic State"; Braverman says decision would encourage efforts to delegitimize Israel around the world. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, demanding that the Palestinian Authority recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, will bring to the cabinet on Sunday a proposal whereby naturalized citizens will be asked to take an oath of loyalty to Israel as a "Jewish and democratic...

MJ Rosenberg: The Lobby's Shame
Reading David Grossman's To The End Of The Land J Street is lambasted for accepting support from George Soros while the "pro-Israel" lobby is never called upon to account for supporting policies that have produced so much grief and mourning in Israel. I won't reveal the plot. It's fiction but, as is well-known, Grossman's 20 year-old son, Uri, was killed during the 2006 war in Lebanon. I am not giving anything away when I say that this would not be the same book if Uri had come home from...

Jerusalem eyes first new gate in Old City for 112 years
Jerusalem (AFP) – Planners in Jerusalem are considering creating the First new "gate" into the Old City in more than 100 years, settlement Watchdog Peace Now said on Wednesday. The gate would take the form of an underground tunnel which would run under the Old City's southern Walls between Zion Gate and the Dung Gate, and lead to a multi-storey car park in the Jewish Quarter. An outline of the plan, which would involve tunnelling through solid rock underneath the present...

The hallowed Israeli kibbutz" No Palestinians accepted
Two weeks ago, Jeff Halper , the Human Rights Activist, drove me south through the West Bank and I asked him about the blessed kibbutzes of my childhood memory, the Jewish agricultural cooperatives that were transforming Jewish Identity and making the desert bloom; and he exploded the myth with a simple truth: Palestinians were not welcome to join kibbutzes , in fact kibbutzes played a role in ethnically Cleansing Palestine. In the video above, Halper tells a disgusting story about the ...