Let them stay in Palestine
Akiva Eldar; 25/8/08
The question Kadima voters must ask themselves on the way to the polls is not which candidate is most qualified to order the army chief of staff, at 3 A.M., to launch strikes against Iran. That decision will in any event be made at the White House. The question they face is tenfold more difficult and no less fateful: Which candidate is capable of instructing the chief of staff, at 3 P.M., to evacuate 110 settlements in the West Bank. After all, this was Kadima’s major promise to its voters. “No settlement will remain standing beyond the separation fence,” Ehud Olmert promised in late March 2006, just after his party won the election. In an interview Olmert gave to Newsweek, he explained that the one threat Israel did not know how to deal with is the threat of losing its standing as a Jewish-democratic state.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1014952.html
Top Palestinian negotiator toured West Bank with senior Israeli officials
Aluf Benn and Barak Ravid; 25/8/08
The head of the Palestinian negotiating team, Ahmed Qureia (Abu Ala), toured in recent weeks with senior Israeli officials the area near Ariel and other settlements whose future is disputed. Political sources in Jerusalem said that the tour of these areas was meant to highlight to the Palestinian negotiators the complexity of the problem in areas that pose the greatest difficulties in talks on matters of borders and territory. The same sources said that Qureia did not enter the settlements, and only viewed them from a distance. Qureia’s counterpart in the talks, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, did not participate in the tour. On the Israeli side there was disagreement on the utility of inviting Palestinian negotiators to the settlements, fearing that they would be abused.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1014944.html