News; Joe Biden seeks to boost peace talks in Israel(1)

JERUSALEM - U.S. Vice President Biden, arrived in Israel, marking a new stage of Arab Israeli diplomacy for the Obama administration. In less than a year for the first time, Israelis and Palestinians to resume peace talks, even though the United States through mediation.
But the day before, the U.S. special envoy George Mitchell dropped by the Palestinians demand settlement freeze as a precondition for peace talks, Israel authorized 112 new housing units in the West Bank. Israel had promised in October to suspend the construction of new settlements - not including occupied East Jerusalem.
But announced that the construction of settlements in the West Bank, Mon day, the Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said that he would drop his opposition to the construction in East Jerusalem, a new indirect talks, highlighting the progress made in the past year settlements thorny problem in the United States attempting to effect.
"Biden's visit opened up a new Obama administration's second action after the failure of the peace process in the first action of the full," said Greenstein, director of the Israeli negotiating the Camp David peace talks in 2000 members of the group. "Obama has done a lot to earn the government suspected the Israelis .... Biden is faced with a difficult journey."
The Associated Press quoted the new Israeli settlements could undermine the negotiations leading to Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat again. "If the Israeli government wanted to destroy, to take these steps to Mitchell's efforts, let's talk about Mitchell on may not be the case (indirect talks) if the price is too high," Erekat said.
Greenstein said that the Government decided to confront Israel's settlement expansion has stimulated the worst generation of diplomacy between the two allies cracks. Now, only 42 percent of Israelis believe that Obama's support for their own country, half believed that he was weak on terrorism, according to surveys commissioned by the New America Foundation.
Copyright:http://www.chairmenmao.com