‘Indescribably difficult’: As peace talks set to resume, Israel divided over release of Palestinian prisoners | National Post
Hours before Israeli and Palestinian envoys were set to resume peace talks for the first time in years, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged negotiators to reach “reasonable compromises on tough, complicated, emotional and symbolic issues”.
But with negotiators set to sit down together on Monday night and Tuesday, Israeli society was divided over a government decision to release 104 Palestinian prisoners as part of the pre-condition for the talks.
“These men are terrible murderers — how can they be let go?” asked Mika Bromberg as she stood outside the Israeli prime minister’s office at the weekend holding a black-and-white poster of Avraham Bromberg, her brother-in-law. Mr. Bromberg, an Israeli soldier, was killed while hitchhiking in 1981. The attackers shot him, stole his gun and pushed him out of a car.
The Unsettled Question - By Elliott Abrams and Uri Sadot | Foreign Policy
The numbers given by the Palestinian Authority, which show linear population growth over the past decade, reported that there were a staggering 544,000 Israeli settlers in 2012, which is 9 percent of Israel's Jewish population. Those figures, however, do not distinguish between Israelis who live east of the security fence and those who live in Jerusalem or in the major blocs that at Camp David, in the Annapolis peace summit, and in every proposed peace plan end up as part of Israel.
The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics would be the natural place to look for such figures, but as there is no single agreed definition of what constitutes a "bloc," its official number of 325,000 Israelis now living in the "Judea and Samaria region" provides only partial information. Like the Palestinian Authority's figures, the bureau's numbers do not tell us how many Israelis live in the large blocs that Israel is likely to keep, nor how many live in the areas of the West Bank that are expected to become part of the new state of Palestine.
Hours before Israeli and Palestinian envoys were set to resume peace talks for the first time in years, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged negotiators to reach “reasonable compromises on tough, complicated, emotional and symbolic issues”.
But with negotiators set to sit down together on Monday night and Tuesday, Israeli society was divided over a government decision to release 104 Palestinian prisoners as part of the pre-condition for the talks.
“These men are terrible murderers — how can they be let go?” asked Mika Bromberg as she stood outside the Israeli prime minister’s office at the weekend holding a black-and-white poster of Avraham Bromberg, her brother-in-law. Mr. Bromberg, an Israeli soldier, was killed while hitchhiking in 1981. The attackers shot him, stole his gun and pushed him out of a car.
The Unsettled Question - By Elliott Abrams and Uri Sadot | Foreign Policy
The numbers given by the Palestinian Authority, which show linear population growth over the past decade, reported that there were a staggering 544,000 Israeli settlers in 2012, which is 9 percent of Israel's Jewish population. Those figures, however, do not distinguish between Israelis who live east of the security fence and those who live in Jerusalem or in the major blocs that at Camp David, in the Annapolis peace summit, and in every proposed peace plan end up as part of Israel.
The Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics would be the natural place to look for such figures, but as there is no single agreed definition of what constitutes a "bloc," its official number of 325,000 Israelis now living in the "Judea and Samaria region" provides only partial information. Like the Palestinian Authority's figures, the bureau's numbers do not tell us how many Israelis live in the large blocs that Israel is likely to keep, nor how many live in the areas of the West Bank that are expected to become part of the new state of Palestine.
