مسؤول فلسطيني: التوسع الاستيطاني الاسرائيلي يهدد "بانهيار المفاوضات"

37 years ago, thousands of palestinian civilians were killed in Tal al Zaatar by Hafez al Assad's and Bechir Gemayel's forces, may they both burn in hell...

It is really outrageous and a terrible show of bad faith on the part of the Israelis that they would approve an unprecedented amount of housing starts now as peace talks are being launched.
Either Netanyahu is trying to torpedo the entire effort, or he is testing the Palestinians to see if they really want to do this. If it is a test, then it is crossing the line into slapping the Palestinians in the face and in the Middle East, you just don't do that expecting that the other side will turn the other cheek. It doesn't happen.
What is required for a serious effort to reach agreement is for each side to treat each other with mutual respect and equal respect. The asymetrical nature of the Israelis and Palestinians with the Israelis flaunting their short term advantage is an outrage.

However, what the Isaelis fail to respect and they fail at their own peril, is that long term, Israel is a losing proposition in that part of the world. The demographics are against them. Their use of water in a semi-arid land is against them. The Palestinian fertility rate will overcome them and their voracious use of scarce water resources will undo them.
There is a window between now and 2020 when the Palestinians may go for a 2 state solution, but after that, the demographics will catch them, and in the land between the sea and the river, the Jewish population will dip below 50%.

The Palestinians are just looking for an excuse to halt the talks. The very fact that just today a leading politician there claimed that even if the talks fail, Israel will have to release all the prisoners it promised.
They know that even if they cause the talks to be halted, the Arab world and quite a lot of the non-aligned countries will automatically blame Israel, so why should they worry. They'll use it as an excuse to go once again to the UN.
In order for the talks to restart Israeli agreed to release over 100 terrorist prisoners, what did the Palestinians agree in return - at the least nothing, at the most a breakdown of the talks.

Palestinian leadership was never interested in peace. Why ? Think MONEY i.e. International aid.

And Israel gave them a damn good excuse. Sorry phillipo, I say it is the opposite, Israel is doing its best to torpedo the talks, their tactic is do unilateral decision on settlements and this gives Israel a win/win scenario and a lose/lose for the Palestinians. Power corrupts, we see it with HA and with Israel and with every dictator in the Middle East.