Obama's Israeli/Palestinian Diplomatic Plans

http://www.npr.org/2011/05/20/136491809/obamas-ideas-on-israel-face-tough-reception

For those of you who read NPR, it's great. For those of you who don't, it is (in my opinion) the most reasonable, fact-based news source. Some claim it has a liberal bias, but if you notice closely those people tend to be conservatives (the hard-core kind).

Yesterday Obama laid down groundbreaking new plans for the negotiations between Israel and Palestine. For once, the USA doesn't look like it is fully on Israel's side. Obama stated that Israel should accept it's 1967 borders, and Palestine should recognize Israel as a Jewish state.

"The new approach is balanced. Palestinians have to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. Israel has to accept the 1967 lines as the baseline for the future borders."

- Yoram Peri, director of the Institute for Israel Studies at the University of Maryland

 The darker blue borders would probably have to be released, or at the very least the big one in the middle (The west bank). The orange towns are solidly palestinian communities, and the black dots are clearly israeli communities. Obama has put in place negotiations to allow the possibility of this to happen, by having two part negotiations. According to Peri (guy quoted above), the negotiations would be divided by "first, questions surrounding borders and recognition, and secondly, the even more intractable problems of the status of Jerusalem and the right of Palestinian refugees to return." 

This is a new way of looking at the negotiations, but unfortunately Israel has received this poorly (why would they like it, they have to give up more land). Also, big brother USA has somewhat abandoned blind Israeli support, something they also don't like. It will be interesting to see if the negotiations finally start getting somewhere with this recent development, but don't get your hopes up, because it doesn't look great yet. Expect both sides to reject this new (and frankly reasonable and compromising) proposal and argue this in the United Nations in September.