On second thought, I'm highly confident (where have we heard that phrase before) that even though statesmen over the past 2000+ years haven't solved the Arab-Isreali situation, a group of arm chair quarterbacks loosely held together by their love of tobacco will hammer out an eternal peace plan in the next five minutes. That or Mom is gonna band someone tommorrow morning.

Wouldn't it be funny if they actually made peace and Christian end of times predictions fell apart?!

We probably could come real close, but the 2,000 years in to the future is an arbitrary amount of time. Just 100 years would do just fine. What I cannot grasp is that they are biting off more than they can chew. Why not implement every little thing they already agree 100% on, saving the more contentious issue(s) (Jerusalem) for last. Agreed upon resolutions could be implemented little by little. If all goes as well as can be expected, that might lead to trust and easier bargaining on the bigger issues. However, this would be political suicide on both sides as neither can move forward without first securing the "big prize".

No, but it would be ironic for those who do not beleivet that prophecy. That prophacy is predominanly why the U.S. supports Israel to the extent it does.

Would be nice, but I doubt that region will ever know peace. Two groups of people have been fighting over the same piece of parch desert Biblical times. Neither group will ever be satisfied until the other group is completely annihilated.

I still trying to understand our national security interest.

I say we let them all fight in cage matches and televise the events and reimburse the USA for all the money we send them both.

That's part of prophecy. Peace WILL be made. Then, hell breaks loose but not for you 'cause you'll be in your cone of protection with agent 99 and the chief discussing successful, ponzi strategeries.

Aren't we supposed to get WW3 first?

Probably, but not sure. Guess it's meant to be that way. Know that there's an army from the north (Russia) that approaches with it's muslim allies to attack Israel. The antichrist and his minions will rise to protect her and a third of the world's population will be destroyed but the northern army will be defeated. 7 years of peace and then the REAL fun starts when the antichrist teams up with the 100 million man Chinese army approaching from the east towards Israel. THAT is when it ends for enemies of Israel but you'll be fine under your cone. Your hair will turn out NICE.

OK, that's what I thought. We gotta have a huge war before have the "big" war. We can't have an Arab-Israeli peace until after the first war or the whole prophecy falls down. I'm glad I'm gonna rapture out before all this happens.

So at least for now.......Booooo peace. Booooo!

I thought there was gonna be zombies & stuff.... 😕

No....Obama is term limited.

HD, Tarponman (and my wife) are probably better suited to discuss this but I believe that's what's going to happen.

I love Drafter. He always posts stuff that don't have anything to do with the topic at hand. That's a rare gift!=d>

Nice find! Thanks. And that's from Abbas, hardly representing the the terrorist/military/lunatic wing. Quite the contrary, they consider him a real lightweight. Won't be easy, very surprised Kerry even got this far.

I typed my post and then hopped in the waiting car and headed to The Cape. Had no idea how nicely everyone would play while I had a parallel vacation with the Prez.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has termed Israeli plans to press ahead with the construction of more than 1,000 homes in two occupied West Bank settlements "a violation of international law", according to his spokesperson.

The Israeli announcement to authorise the building of 550 housing units in Bruchin and 537 units in Itamar was also met with condemnation by the United States and Palestine.

"These are unhelpful decisions that undermine progress towards the two-state solution," Martin Nesirky, Ban's spokesperson, said on Friday, a day after the announcement.

"They constitute a deeply worrisome trend at a moment of ongoing efforts to re-launch peace negotiations.''

On Thursday, Rami Hamdallah, the Palestinian prime minister, said the plan to build the settlements was "killing the two state solution".

The continued building of Israeli settlements lies at the heart of an impasse over restarting negotiations on the terms of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

The Palestinians hope to build their state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, lands Israel occupied in 1967.

The United States is currently trying to get the long dormant peace talks back on track but the Palestinians say they will not return to the negotiating table as long as Israeli settlement construction continues.

Also on Friday, unidentified vandals set two vehicles on fire in an Arab neighbourhood of Jerusalem, in what police say appears to be the latest attach carried out by Jewish extremists.

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the words "price tag" were found sprayed on a wall near the cars in Sheikh Jarrah.

The phrase is usually used by Jewish extremists to protest what they perceive to be the Israeli government's pro-Palestinian policies, and to let Palestinians know who attacked them.

Vandals have targeted mosques, churches, dovish Israeli groups and even Israeli military bases with "price tag" graffiti over the years.

In recent weeks, there has been a steady stream of such incidents, including an Arab Christian graveyard vandalised on Thursday and a Jerusalem church defaced two weeks ago.

Rosenfeld said police were searching for the perpetrators.

(Reuters) - A 10-minute drive from where negotiators will sit down on Wednesday to resume long-stalled Middle East peace talks, Israeli bulldozers are busy reshaping land that Palestinians want for their future state.

Settler homes are popping up across East Jerusalem and major roads are being built to burgeoning Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israel has just approved plans for 3,100 new homes on the territory it seized in the 1967 Middle East war.

The non-stop building on the land that is at the heart of the conflict raises serious doubts about whether the latest round of U.S.-brokered talks can result in a deal to create an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

"The two-state solution by now is unobtainable," said Dani Dayan, a former chairman of the settler movement, arguing that any accord palatable to the Palestinians would involve removing so many settlers that it would be impossible to enact.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, the driving force behind the resumption of talks following a three-year hiatus, agrees it is a major problem, but says there is time for a final push.

"What this underscores is the importance of getting to the table, getting to the table quickly," he told reporters in Colombia on Monday when asked about the series of Israeli building announcements in the run-up to the new negotiations.

Israel has rejected criticism of its construction plans, saying the new homes would be erected in settlements within blocs it intends to keep in any future peace deal with the Palestinians.

The settler numbers are imposing. In 2010, when the Palestinians quit negotiations over settlement building, some 311,110 Israelis were living in the West Bank. Today, according to Israel's Army Radio, this has surged to 367,000.

Adding in East Jerusalem, then the number of Israelis living beyond the 1967 lines rises to nearly 600,000. Few, if any, would willingly quit their homes as part of a peace deal.

After an initial round of meetings in Washington at the end of last month, the real discussions start on Wednesday, with Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni facing Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat in Jerusalem's King David Hotel.

The negotiations will be moderated by U.S. envoy Martin Indyk, with the next encounter already penciled in for later this month in the West Bank city of Jericho.

Bowing to a Palestinian condition to get the talks going, and eager not to antagonize an anxious Washington, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to the staggered release of 104 Palestinian prisoners, many convicted of murder.

The first 26 are due to go free early on Wednesday, and political analysts say the recent splurge of settlement moves was a bid by Netanyahu to placate his legion of supporters who reject the so-called two-state solution.

But the sheer quantity of planned new homes has stunned outsiders and led the Palestinians to issue a clear warning.

"If the Israeli government believes that every week they're going to cross a red line by settlement activity ... what they're advertising is the unsustainability of the negotiations," Erekat said on Sunday.

Kerry told reporters that while some movement on the settlement front had been expected, the wave of announcements may have been "outside of that level of expectation".

Daniel Seidemann, a lawyer and an expert on settlement expansion, said that in the last 24 hours, Israel had approved a 3.26 percent increase in the number of housing units in East Jerusalem alone, saying this could prove fatal to peace chances.

"I think Mr. Netanyahu may have miscalculated this. He won't shed any tears if the talks fall apart, but he will shed tears if he is blamed for this," he said.

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have set a goal of reaching a peace deal within nine months that would resolve many problems confronting them, including agreeing to borders, the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Palestinian refugees and the sharing of scarce water resources.

While pessimists abound, a few optimists still stand up, including Israeli President Shimon Peres.

He argues that not only do Israelis want peace, but that the recent instability caused by the Arab uprisings has left a number of Arab states eager to settle the decades-old conflict.

"People who are skeptical are wrong. There is a difference between this and previous attempts," he said on Sunday.

Fact is that I, like many Jews in the USA, find these settlements to be abhorrent and intentionally provocative. I also believe that there is a long term strategy involved relating to eventual borders as it would be too capricioius (is that the word?) to be happening just to mess around for laughs. I still do not approve, they still do not care how I feel.

I also believe that none of this comes close to being as damaging to peace efforts as refusing to accept the legitimacy of Israel and refusing to take steps to ensure Israel's safety from attack. Simple, nothing can be a bigger issue than that.

To refuse to come to the table to accept land for your new country until your demands are met has the appearance of saying that said land for your country is not really what you want. Perhaps the not so hidden agenda is to rid the area of Israel? It is possible, I don't know for sure. But if so, then stalling talks ad nauseum makes sense from the Arab perspective.

None of this makes settlement construction palatable to me, but it's not why peace talks may end before they begin. If anything, Arabs should fast track the talks before they lose even more lfuture land.