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US PRESIDENT DONALD Trump has halted Washington’s quest for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying he would back a single state if it led to peace.
The new president warmly welcomed Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the White House and hailed the “unbreakable” bond between their countries.
And – while he urged Netanyahu to “hold back” from building Jewish settlements for a “little bit” – Trump broke with the international consensus insisting on a two-state future.
A two-state solution would see two separate states created, while the one-state solution would see both Israelis and Palestinians granted citizenship and equal rights in the entity which combined Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza strip.
“So I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and I like the one that both parties like. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I can live with either one,” he said.
I thought for a while the two-state looked like it may be the easier of the two but, honestly, if Israel and the Palestinians are happy, I’m happy with the one they like the best.
This change in the US stance was calculated to please Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition, and Trump’s views on the shortcomings of the Palestinian position will delight them.
“I think the Palestinians have to get rid of some of that hate that they’re taught from a very young age,” he said, echoing Netanyahu’s argument that the Palestinians are not ready for peace.
Netanyahu had warm words for the Israeli-US alliance, and hammered home his own prerequisites for peace.
“First, the Palestinians must recognise the Jewish state. They have to stop calling for Israel’s destruction,” he said.
“Second, in any peace agreement, Israel must retain the overriding security control over the entire area west of the Jordan River,” he added.
This region contains the entire West Bank area that would represent the heart of any Palestinian state as conceived in all previous international agreements.
Arab capitals
The previous US administration of Barack Obama had warned Israel that if it did not reach a two-state deal with the Palestinians, it would never reach an accommodation with the Arab world.
But Netanyahu insisted he was already developing closer security ties with his Sunni neighbors, who share Israel’s concerns about Iranian subversion and “radical Islam.”
And he urged Trump’s administration to get on board.
“For the first time in the life of my country, Arab countries in the region do not see Israel as an enemy, but increasingly as an ally,” he told Trump.
“I believe that under your leadership, this change in our region creates an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen security and advance peace.”
But whatever the view in Cairo and in Riyadh, the change in the US position, which was revealed overnight by a White House official, triggered Palestinian despair and consternation in international capitals.
The second-ranking official in the Palestine Liberation Organisation, Saeb Erekat, denounced it as an attempt to “bury the two-state solution and eliminate the state of Palestine.”
And he implicitly warned Israelis that any single state that emerged would not be a specifically Jewish nation.
“There’s only one alternative,” he told a news conference. “A single democratic state that guarantees the rights of all: Jews, Muslims and Christians.”
Victory cry
The new US message deliberately echoed the long-standing Israeli position: No peace deal can be imposed from outside and the agenda for talks must reflect the reality on the ground.
Naftali Bennett, the right-wing leader of the hardline Jewish Home party and an opponent of any Palestinian state, cried victory.
“A new era. New ideas. No need for third Palestinian state beyond Jordan and Gaza. Big day for Israelis and reasonable Arabs. Congrats,” he tweeted.
But Trump’s decision flew in the face of an international consensus that any final status agreement must be based on a return to Israel’s 1967 border — albeit with land swaps.
Just five days before Trump’s 20 January inauguration, Obama’s outgoing US administration was among 70 countries to endorse this vision at a peace conference in Paris.
And just a month before that, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations allowed a Security Council motion that criticised Israeli settlement building to pass without the usual US veto.
Addressing a US-Israeli conference in December, the then secretary of state John Kerry called settlements a “barrier” to progress.
Under Trump, that vision appears dead, and Washington has aligned itself with Netanyahu’s government and its supporters in the right-wing settler movement.
Speaking in Cairo after talks with Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, UN chief Antonio Guterres warned that “everything must be done” to preserve the two-state solution.
France, which organised the January peace conference, was also unimpressed.
Its ambassador to the UN, Francois Delattre, told reporters “our commitment to the two-state solution is stronger than ever.”
Trump has tapped son-in-law Jared Kushner and lawyer Jason Greenblatt to lead peace efforts.
Kushner had dinner with Netanyahu – a long-time family friend – and US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on yesterday night and attended the White House news conference with his wife Ivanka Trump.
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Another suicide. If we’d only seen the signs.
Can they just not capitalise on the fact that they have a unique tourist attraction in their town – turn it into a unique heritage centre – Yes, some mad ones will want to hijack it for glorifying Hitler but the law can deal with that . What an attraction to have in ones town from a historical and tourist point of view.
I say milk it for what’s it’s worth
Only difference between ends and Hitler is hilter mass killed people . Enda and his government are drivng people to death with their austerity measures. A lot of people who have taken their own life is put down to the recession and austerity measures . What happened in Germany was horrific but this country now has dictatorship wether you want to believe it or not.
Shut up!
“This country now has a dictatorship”
*except that you get to vote the ‘dictator’ out at the next election…
Do you actually understand what a dictatorship is? If Ireland was a dictatorship there’d be no elections next year or no referendums.
Idiots like Dave really drag the Journal down.
Dave, actually suicide statistics are a downward trajectory since the early 2001 – 2012. Some link below, so Rates have suicide have dropped during the austerity years!
and the illusion continues that we live in a democracy.
And Dave just Godwinned
It’s not fair to compare Enda to Hitler. Hitler actually fixed his economy.
Didn’t he die in Berlin?
Argentina. He died there. People who have been saying that were called ‘nutjobs previously but according to newly released FBI documents that’s were he was. The FBI believed he fled to Argentina on a U Boat and agents searching for him there. For political reasons, not much more was made of it and the whole affair was let go silent.
http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/fbi-opens-files-proving-hitler-went-to-argentina
As usual, due to very low standard of journalism these days nothing is mentioned about this above.
Tell you what Horgay, why don’t you become a journalist and improve the system from the inside since you’re always complaining about poor journalistic standards….
There is also speculation that he was actually helped over there by the U.S. Government in exchange for the nazis scientific innovations. But again this is all speculation and conspiracy theories.
Why the red thumbs for the chap stating facts that he escaped …cos he did
Did The Bush Family Help Hitler Into Power?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBKMN-pdp6M&feature=player_detailpage#t=0
He did flee to Argentina and lived out his life in some quiet mountain town. Was discussing it online with an Argentinian woman who said it was common knowledge since the 70s over there. Again the level of real journalism has gone down big time.
There will be many a tear shed in the SF/IRA offices today in memory of their great hero.
Brian, Girvin, Dan Breen wept all day,The Emergency, Macmillan, p1.
Off to work with yis all!
Anti-fascists stomping around demanding something gets “out”! The irony.
I visited the Eagles nest last year, all that is left of its residence is the defence tunnels. Everything I have seen condemns Hitler, I have seen nothing that praises him.
The “West” German monument in Mauthausen Concentration Cam starts with the line “o mother, poor Mother, look what your sons have done to you —-
We can trust the Austrians to handle it well
…you should talk to the older generation of austrians/Germans. …people who were alive during the 33-45 period
The Russians took his dead body. He did not R.I.P. after they finished with him. Some nazis ended up in South America but Hitler most certainly did not.
Should 70 years today Hitler escaped and lived in South America ..don’t forget Hitler was never convicted in absentia ….escaped with the help of the CIA and Alan Dulles ….All orchestrated by Martin Bormann and took vast amount of wealth with …All the evidence is in the book and film Grey Wolf by Gerrard Williams and Simon Dunstan 2 well respected journalists ….you will never see that movie on TV as they wanted us to think he died ….
Boorman died in Berlin during the breakout from the bunker. If Hitler made it to South America then there is very little evidence to support it. Unlike Mengele, for example who did make it and to which there is plenty of concrete evidence left behind. Good story though!
When did Enda die
Get a life Dave.
A better title would have been.
Inhumane monstrous coward takes own life and dies pathetically.
^you should also talk to the older generation of austrians / Germans. ..
Isn’t it a known fbi fact that hitler fled to Argentina then America . Dna from the skeleton s proved it wasn’t hitler at all ..
Yes, it’s a “known fbi fact”
Didn’t realise the FBI now published all their ‘facts’…
“FBI facts” are a special class, right up there with “recent wikipedia edits made from secondary school libraries”
de Valera was gutted, or should have been the imbecile, the only clown on the planet to sympathies when Adie finally got something right. Even if Inda’s “madly deeply European’ gibberish was just as cringe worthy.
There was a documentary on sky about it ..
Martin and Glenn know this all for a fact. After all, they saw it on the History Channel!
What ! OMG…
He did Nazi that coming
Read “doppleganger” by Hugh Thomas. .a Welsh forensic scientist who makes an incredible argument for Hitler being murdered in the bunker in the last hours before the soviets arrived.it is very well thought out and makes compelling and logical conclusions based on historical fact and the man’s widespread forensic experience..though he leaves the final question up to the reader to answer.mr Thomas has written a number of well recieved books on the period and I remember while spending a week in Berlin in the company of a gentleman who new Rudolf hess quite well,same gentleman becoming rather flustered when Hugh tomas’ writing on Hitler and hess was mentioned.food for thought.
Without a body and given the bunker was destroyed almost seventy years ago, not sure how much of that book would guess work rather than factual, Hitlers secretary is the only interview I heard about the bunker and shortly after he dictated their (his and Eva’s) will killed himself. The Russians got the body cremated the remains and sometime in the 1970′s disposed of them in a Russian river. Nice to think it wasn’t his own doing though..
@HRH The brummie.Actually there was a fair amount of access and photos taken in the summer of 45.The problem is most things re the bunker were like a case of Chinese whispers.for instance when those released from soviet captivity realised their version was at odds with western captives they promptly changed it and so on and so forth.The bible on the bunker for the first 40 yrs has always been Hugh Trevor roper’s the final days of Adolf Hitler.A book where Mr Thomas successfully points out many inaccuracies, a number of which were in the end admitted to by Trevor roper.Mr roper a very famous historian himself… who by the way signed off on the fake Hitler diaries published many editions of his book and more than once had to backtrack on information thought solid in previous editions..SPOILER ALERT….in the end Mr thomas’eveidence strongly points to Hitler being strangled by his valet waffen ss standartenfuher linge. I guess in the end the butler did it.
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