Palestinian leadership is unyielding on a settlement freeze now because:

1. Obama had come out strongly against settlements, and the Palestinian leadership felt encouraged to take a similarly strong stance against settlements. Obama’s reversal – some call it a “cave in” – leaves Abbas flailing and swinging in the wind. This is similar to Bill Clinton’s invitation to Arafat for Camp David II despite the bad timing and lack of preparation. Clinton said “Hey, come on. If the talks fail, we won’t blame you.” And that’s exactly what happened: the talks failed, and Arafat was blamed for the failure. Here we have it again. It’s like Lucie, Charlie Brown and the football.

2. Palestinian elections are coming up. It’s amazing that the State Department did not see that Abbas can ill afford to change positions on this issue at this moment. He cannot give in, or be seen to give in. Just look what happened when he agreed to the American request not to pursue the Goldstone report in the U.N. There was a huge outcry. If the State Department wants to insure Abbas’s defeat in January, they’ll ask him to give in on the settlement issue. Someone didn’t do their homework.

A settlement freeze is not their precondition but an obligation Israel undertook when it signed on to the 2003 international roadmap for peace plan.

Netanyahu has spent many long months doing everything in his power to subvert Obama's peace initiatives, defying the demand to freeze settlements and inciting American and Israeli public opinion against the President and against peace.

Where Obama rallied near-universal international support for his vision of rapid progress towards a real two state solution and genuine Israeli-Arab peace, Netanyahu dug in his heels and fought every step of the way.

Illegal settlement expansion is made possible by some $3 billion in military aid the U.S. gives to Israel each year, and additional millions in subsidies provided by U.S.-based Jewish and fundamentalist Christian nonprofits.

In U.S. and internationally-brokered agreements, Israel has already agreed to end settlement construction. It is not a pre-condition but an obligation.

It's not natural growth, it's the excuse the Israeli government is using as a cover for continued settlement growth.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers mainly do nothing while settlers attack Palestinian farmers and their families.

Settlers threaten Palestinian lives and especially livelihoods in numerous ways - obstructing harvests, cutting down groves of olive trees, burning agricultural fields and intimidating people from their land so that settlers can claim it.

The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din says these Jewish groups perpetrate “systematic, organized and large-scale terrorist actions.”

The perpetrators are rarely brought to justice: 90 percent of complaints are closed by the police.

Here is how sneaky the Israelis are and the approach of some of them toward neighboring Palestinians, especially around Nablus in the north and Hebron in the south, has often been one of contempt and violence.

Sometimes placing their communities between Palestinian villages and the villages’ farmlands, the illegal settlers block the villagers’ routes and then take over the “abandoned” areas.

Imagine an Israel without settlements. It would be an Israel that could focus on its own problems at home.

It could focus on improving public health, education, and scientific research, and not squander its energy on defending a doomed enterprise.

Its armed forces could focus on defending the state itself, not on figuring out how to rescue settlers (some of whom have physically attacked the soldiers) who choose to live in the midst of an Arab population that hates them.

It would not be dispatching its eighteen-year olds to police West Bank cities or blocking needed supplies from getting into Gaza.

Transport the illegal settlers out of the West Bank. Period. Put their names on the lists at the border crossings and checkpoints so they can no longer cross the greenline into the West Bank. Israel can monitor Palestinians, they can monitor law-breaking Israelis too.

They can put up tin shacks in the Negev if they want to be "pioneers".

Israel can wage war in Lebanon, Syria, killing thousands in Gaza but finds it "difficult" to evacuate outposts? Ridiculous.

Settlements permanent? Good. The '67 borders should be returned to, and any settlement can stay in the new Palestinian State, with the provision that the settlers are subject to any and all Palestinian law, up to and including dispossession. Arab towns and villages in Israel have existed for centuries and longer than all those illegal Jewish settlements.

George H.W. Bush forced a showdown with Yitzhak Shamir over Israel's West Bank settlements by threatening to link $10 billion in loan guarantees to Israel's compliance with a settlement freeze.

All Obama has to do is cut their aid.

Bring in legislation to ban all bilateral trade with Israel until its government complies with international law, the UNSC and the Geneva Conventions.

As long as the Israelis pay no price for the occupation, the occupation will not end, and therefore the only way open to the opponents of the occupation is to take concrete means that will make the Israelis understand that the injustice they are perpetrating comes with a price tag.

Israel will continue on it's path of failed policies and apartheid ignorance into isolation and sanctions.

Let's put it to vote and see how many Americans want to continue supporting the world's biggest welfare client, Israel ?

Isolate, divest, sanction, and cut their aid. We voted for change. Where is it?

Mrs. Clinton's utter failure as Sec. of State is no surprise. The ugly condensation, of the endless childish Partisan demeanor, presented as "smart power" is a sincere embarrassment.

But why should anyone be surprised, after watching the Clinton Administration foolishly appease and empower a killer named Arafat in the 1990's?

This is a Secretary of State, who foolishly announced to the world, that the Obama Administration would not be making 'human rights' a priority while visiting China.

The list of embarrassments has been enormous, including Mrs. Clinton's bizarre hostility presented to a young Man in Africa, who referenced her husband.

Mrs. Clinton's visit to Pakistan has been a fiasco:

1. Sec. Hillary Clinton is being utterly dishonest by saying, "I spent my entire eight years in the Senate opposing him (GW Bush)". No, in fact she voted for the use of force in Iraq, authorizing the mission, in full support of the Bush Administration, using some of the most aggressive language in the Senate to justify this Military Operation.

2. Sec. Hillary Clinton again provides the overwhelming hypocrisy the Clintons have become famous for, as the evidence shows the Clinton Administration - President Bill Clinton, refused to take custody of Osama Bin Laden on at least two known separate occasions. How dare Mrs. Clinton be critical of the Pakistani Government in this sophomoric manner, complaining about their failures to capture or kill Al Qaeda terrorists?

3. Sec. Hillary Clinton reveals a bizarre sense of ignorance regarding the current state of the GWOT. It could be another a poor attempt to distort the record of the prior Administration's efforts in capturing and killing Al Qaeda, implying falsely no one who was behind 9-11 has been brought to justice. It is estimated, the Bush Administration eliminated some 75% of Al Qaeda after 9-11. But maybe this Obama Cabinet Member who is a principal "smart power" player, simply does not know who is currently being held in Guantanamo Bay. Perhaps Hillary Clinton doesn't even know who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is? The self-described mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

This is someone who dishonestly claimed once to be dodging sniper fire. It is a sign of using massive deceit, to cover a lack of experience and utter incompetence.

I don't think any outside source could garner a lasting peace short of turning the whole place to rubble.

Religion is ruling the politics. all 3 of the Abrahamic off shoots. none are going to settle . stupid to think God is connected to a piece of dirt.

It doesn't matter who tries to broker peace. fools.

One reason the negotiations between Israel and the various Arab interlocutors keep failing is that the Arabs have shown little respect for what international law actually says, and thus cannot reasonably be expected to abide by any commitments they might make in those negotiations. Instead, international law is abused; it is just one of many tools in their ongoing effort to destroy Israel and the Jews. The settlements are getting the most heat these days, so let's look at them:

The claim that Israel's settlements are in violation of international law was first made by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) after a closed-door session. The minutes of the meeting have never been made public, so no-one outside the group that made the decision knows what basis the claim has.

No attempt has ever been made to bring the issue to a serious court where actual law would be applied. The reason for this is that Israel's case for its right to build the settlements is much stronger under international law than is the claim that they are illegal. The case for their illegality is usually based on Article 49 of the Geneva Convention, but this article bans "forcible transfers," as when the Nazis sent Jews to concentration and extermination camps. The Convention does not address real estate deals. It is doubtful that international law even addresses the issue.

Meanwhile, since the Palestinian Arabs failed to establish the state awarded to them by the Partition Resolution, probably because doing so would have required them to accept the legitimacy of Israel, the applicable law in the territories remains that of the Mandate. That Mandate, awarded by the League of Nations, requires the authorities to facilitate the close settlement of Jews on the land. Settlements may be *required* under international law.

The ongoing claims by the Administration, whether Sec. Clinton or Pres. Obama, that the settlements are illegitimate undermines their credibility. They would be on much sounder footing claiming that they believe the settlements are an obstacle to the negotiations, since that would be no more than their personal opinions.

Israel will no doubt respond that the real obstacle is that the Palestinians ultimately will not honor any deal that is struck, even if Fatah somehow finds a way to retain control over the Palestinian state; that concessions made starting with Oslo have led to more violence, not less; that incitement has been escalating, and endorses a second Holocaust; and that Palestine would come into existence as a "failed state". Every step toward an actual deal has been met with increased violence, and there has been no indication that reaching a deal would result in an end to it. There is so far no indication that the Palestinian will accept that any deal that might be reached would be final and would preclude a continuation of the violence.

Since the settlements offer a mechanism by which the Palestinians might actually lose by delaying reaching a viable peace agreement, Israeli agreement to a settlement freeze might kill the negotiations for good.

The Obama Administration needs to recognize that reality, not rhetoric, is the key to getting this deal done.

The only progress that either side has seen in the 60 years since nearly a million Palis were driven into the "temporary" camps we now call "Gaza" et al, is the success of the Jewish Agency's hasbara campaign. There are now millions of non-Jews who honestly believe that the Palestinians have been the traditional aggressor; that the terrorist attacks by Irgun leader and soon-to-become Israeli PM Menachem Begin are mere exaggerations told by dishonest Muslims in order to make the poor Jewish settlers seem like they have no right to leave their French and Moroccan apartments behind and opt to take up residence in one of the orchard homes the previous tenants had "abandoned".

Yes, good people now believe that Palestine was empty desert with no real tenants save the Jews themselves, invaders who had managed to work the land into the green oasis they now claim credit for.
Lies, lies, lies..and more lies. Or "Hasbara" as it is officially called by the government agencies who craft these things.

People now accept that because the surrounding Arab countries rejected a UN proposal that said we wish to have 100s of thousands of European Jews travel to Palestine and displace the existing occupants of certain areas... and because the countries that neighbor these areas said, "No Way!. We think that's a terrible plan!" And that somehow it's the Arabs fault that the Zionists did it by force anyway!

Yes. Now hardly anyone realizes that they did it against the wishes of the UN who now knew that the Arabs had officially rejected such an obscene offer...one that no country, diplomat, or sane person would have accepted regardless? Why? Hasbara of course?
Now the vast majority of people believe that whether or not the Arabs gave their permission, at least the UN gave its full backing and authority to he move.
That too is a lie however. Note how easily the word "proposal" morphed into the word "permission" in the hands of skilled propagandists.

All a ruthlessly brilliant job of deceit done by Israeli agencies who decided to take advantage of our natural leeriness over demanding that any Jew do anything so close after the War. A natural decision taken out of respect and the kind of sadness normal people feel over the terrible loss and soul-destroying violence that had just recently been visited against the many Jews....... who were somehow able to take up residence in Palestinian homes! Even Albert Einstein was appalled and called these people fascists and terrorists in a 1948 LTE he and 26 other Jewish intellectuals placed in the NY Times. Evr hear about that? Do you think you would have if such a letter really existed? Of course you would have. But you haven't because that's a measure of how tightly Isreal has been able to control the message after the US became serious about the same thing out of worry over Stalin. But it's now online. Google it. Do "Homeless In Gaza" s well. (Times UK 1951 article telling the ugly truth)

Except for Zionists and extremist Americans, everyone knows (even if they don't say it) that Isreal is guilty as hell of committing crimes against the very people they drove from their houses. Over 60 years now they've been promising to settle the excesses taken back then, but do nothing but lie ever since. And if it were up to me I'd ask Israel to either begin acting like the nation it demands others accept or start being treated like the band of cut-throats and liars your leadership has always been.

But not for much longer. You've lost control of too much damning information. So choose decency or cease to exist!

Arabs were living in the region long before a Hebrew people existed !! A bit of fact that all seem to gloss over. That Arabs and muslims were kicked out of their homeland !

Not all Jews forget this. I myself am Jewish ( on my mothers side ) and there are plenty of Jews , soldiers and Orthodox as well , that agree. That have protested against Israel . Their voices are ignored by the media.

Many ignore for centuries Hebrews and muslims lived fine without a problem side by side. Religious politics .. have consumed all. And that is a problem on both sides. with religious beliefs in the way there is no way I can see overcoming this problem.