Emanuel: "...If you don't make progress you give Hamas and Hezbollah & Iran ... a veto"

Link

Eldar, in Haaretz/ here

"... According to Emanuel, whose father is Israeli, Obama told both parties: "First of all, I have a lot of other challenges. I don't have an inexhaustible amount of time, but I'm going to spend whatever time it takes to help. But not more than you're willing to take."

"I will spend political capital, as [I did] in the heart of the Arab world, in Cairo," Emanuel quoted the president as saying. "Talk about the right of the state of Israel to exist in that region, as a secure country. And America will always have that friendship, and it runs deep."

Obama "also said he is willing to challenge the Israeli government and friends when he thinks they're wrong, as he has shown on the settlement[s], in a public way as well as in private," Emanuel added. This, he said, ensures that both sides trust Obama "to be an honest broker; don't miss that opportunity in his story."
Obama, Emanuel said, believes Israeli settlements "can be provocative to a peace process, in a negative sense."

But even more importantly, he believes that both parties, Israeli and Palestinian, need to "put aside the negotiations about the negotiations and begin their negotiations," Emanuel told interviewer Charlie Rose. "And you can't start as if there hasn't been a process." "If you don't make progress and engage in the process of making peace," he continued, "you give Hamas and Hezbollah and Iran, who are enemies of the peace process, and vocal opponents of it, a veto."

Referring to Netanyahu, Emanuel said Obama views the prime minister as a "practical person," adding that Netanyahu "has shown" this "in the past," at the Wye Plantation talks in 1998. "He'll take risks," Emanuel said of the prime minister. And "the risk[s] for peace, in the president's view, are less than the risks of not making peace." ..."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 10:54 AM