Former U.S. envoy to Israel: Washington will regret its settlement freeze bribe

For far too long domestic politics have forced the US to put Israel's interests above those of America. No matter what Israel does it will be rewarded with American tax dollars and sheltered by vetoes in the UN. Were it not for domestic politics, US lawmakers would state the obvious ie. each and every settlement is illegal under international law and instead of rewarding Israel there will be sanctions and a loss of aid. Do I expect this to happen? No. Domestic politics will trump wisdom and justice which in the end will be bad for Israel and bad for America.

Shame on the U S government and on the Israeli government its a bribe in the open ,as far as I am concerned is real will be the looser in the long run if it continues with its hard headed and one way policy toward the so called peace process eventually the useless Palestinian government will collapse and is real will have to deal and bare the responsibility for the 2 million Palestinians living under its reoccupation of the west bank and Gaza the Israeli public must play a better roll in the decision making policy of its government at the end its either the moderates or the radicals on both sides is real and the us and the Palestinians must decide.

What the US is doing towards Israel has only one name: appeasement. But again, it's all the US has been doing since 1967.

Any deal will be believed when seen in writing, has each and every condition explicitly spelled out, and is signed of by all those party to the negotiations.

We are not doing any favor to USA by agreeing to a condition for a chance to advance peace even for one millimeter. What is it? Is it a Middle Eastern Suk?

1 Both the US and the EU should halt all aid to both the Jews and the Palestinians. 2 Give Fatah and Hamas 90 days to come with unified proposals to a permanent peace. On the 91st day if they do not come with unified proposals then they should forget about a Palestinian state but a One State solution starts taking place. 3 If the Fatah and Hamas comes up with unified proposals then lock them in a big room together with the Israelis until they come out with a solution. In the meantime all aid should be on hold to all of them. 4 If they manage to agree, financial help should only be given for a specified period of time to be spent in accordance with the donors wishes. They'l have to learn to live together as other civilized nations do. 5 The money saved could be well used both in US and EU.

The only thing Netanyahu - and Israel - understands is force. If the USA and the World wants peace in the mideast they must impose crushing punishment upon Israel until it crawls back within the Green Line. As the world and especially the USA do not have the guts to stand up to Israel the ONLY thing left to do is admit that there will never be peace and start evacuating the Palestinians from Judea and Samaria.

it is all about it. Freeze is just a piggy back.

Israel's occupation and settlement enterprise has absolutely NOTHING to do with its "security", and Israel's using the peace initiative to scam the U.S. out of goodies is nothing more than that - a scam! And the unfortunate part is that all the U.S. is going to get for its good intentions is screwed! Amazing that it's apparently unable to see what is quite obvious to any observer - that Israel has NO intention of relinquishing its illegal occupations.

The US has offered incredibly generous incentives for Israel to freeze settlements for an insufficiently short 3 months period (previously, only 2 months). Who was convinced to change his mind because of this offer? NOBODY. Of the Seven Wise Men group of ministers, B. Begin and Ya'alon are political idiots as well as ideologues, so the offer had no effect. Shas' Yishai is religiously motivated, and earthly (incl. airplanes) incentives count for nothing, and Lieberman of course was going to teach the US a "lesson". The two moderates, Barak and Meridor, would vote for continuing the freeze without any incentive at all. The one left is Netanyahu. But all Netanyahu needs (and will need), is enough to change the minds of his colleagues, not his own mind. (He follows pressure, not incentives). So these incentives are an exercise in futility and a waste of effort. What Obama needs to do is to "change his skin" and apply good old PRESSURE on Israel to act rationally. Learn from Jim Baker, dude.

Israel should freeze settlement construction (as it did earlier) for as long as it takes to agree with the Palestinians on the border in WB. (Jerusalem may be excluded at this stage.) The two sides will have an incentive to hurry up: The Palestinians, because they want their state, and Israel, because the settlers will be pushing to build. Once the border is known, the settlers can build in the area designated for Israel. There ought to have been no incentives for Israel to follow international law. It is a bad international precedent.

How bizarre, if not "unseemly" of Kurzer. First, he argues that the U.S. should go back to the stick rather than the carrot with Israel (deducting from the loan guarantees), and in the same breath says it will hurt Israel's security if it accepts the U.S. incentives package by making Israel's defense needs negotiable and subject to US political aims and so presumably Israel needs to stand on what's right for its security and not bow to the US. So I suppose Israel knuckling under to US deductions from loan guarantees avoid those issues, right? When will these guys--who failed so abjectly in their peace efforts the first time around--have the grace to just bow out quietly, get their sinecure in some "think tank" of no importance and confine their chatter to the D.C. cocktail circuit?