palestine
Peace talks are under way again in Jerusalem. If the past is any guide, the two sides are stymied over difficult issues like settlements and borders. The negotiators badly need a new approach, and one is right beneath their feet, in the Kidron Valley, the deep ravine that runs from the Old City through the West Bank toward the Dead Sea.
As our tour bus full of Christian pilgrims rolls out of Jerusalem, the Jewish guide reads a poetic description of the Israeli settlement Itamar, a place where, we are told, the fields are carpeted in scarlet poppies and blue pansies and the deer “run free … and skip from hill to dale.” Mid-poem, a woman snaps a photo of the Israeli-built cement separation wall just before we cross a checkpoint into the West Bank. Now we’re heading into the heart of the land where Palestinians want to build a state and Israeli settlers want to build Greater Israel.
CNN food and travel host Anthony Bourdain's excellent hour-long special on Israel-Palestine, in he which he explores both sides of the green line, begins with a line that could not ring truer for me. "It's easily the most contentious piece of real estate in the world. And there's no hope – none – of ever talking about it without pissing somebody, if not everybody, off," he says of Israel-Palestine and particularly Jerusalem.
In January 2001, mere months into the second Palestinian intifada that followed the collapse of the Camp David peace talks, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said: “In a few years, we will bury our hundreds of dead, and they will bury their thousands of dead, and we will go back to the negotiating table, and we will face the same issues.”
Now in its tenth year of construction, Israel's separation wall stretches almost 450km. In some places, it cuts deep into the occupied West Bank, excluding Palestinian communities and annexing land around illegal Israeli settlements. This film introduces some of the people protesting against the wall: from Palestinian villagers to Israeli and international activists.
Getting the Israelis and Palestinians to the peace table wasn’t easy, and keeping them there is proving a challenge for a very determined Secretary of State John Kerry. His greatest worry has to be that both sides may be looking for a blame-avoiding excuse to take a walk. That may have been part of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s decision to announce he was calling off the fourth session of secret talks, which was to have been held Monday in Jericho.
The BBC is due to cut comments made by violinist Nigel Kennedy about “apartheid” in Israel when it broadcasts his concert, performed with Palestinian artists as part of the Proms musical festival, on British television channels next week. The concert, held at London’s Royal Albert Hall last week, featured 17 musicians from the Palestine Strings, the troupe performed Vivaldi’s Four Seasons alongside Kennedy. Kennedy likened the situation in Israel to apartheid in South Africa.
It seems the entire internet is extremely pessimistic about the new round of John Kerry-brokered peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians. But seeing as most people online don't have a decent grasp on the Israel-Palestine situation, I decided to find out what the real world thinks about the issue. And since I live in Palestine, it was pretty easy to find people who will be directly affected by the outcome (or lack thereof) of the negotiations.