Within two months of the end of Camp David the Palestinian Authority birthed the second intifada – a terrorist war against Israel, but giving Israel a continual bloody nose would not yield the result desired. Israel defeated the second intifada moving the Palestinians back to square one. Present Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has a different tactic in mind: to get the UN to step in and impose a solution on Israel. Then US Secretary of State John Kerry restarted negotiations on July 29, 2013. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators met in Washington to restart formal negotiations after a more than three year void. A nine month deadline was set which ends on April 31st 2014.
How are the talks going? What is being worked out behind the scenes? No one is talking, at least not to the press. US Secretary of State John Kerry made clear at the outset of the talks he labored so intensively to restart that he would be the only one authorized to speak on their progress. Continue reading Vatican Moves on Temple Mount 2014