Dhimmitude from the Secretary of State. What did you expect? It isn’t as if she is Winston Churchill’s Foreign Minister.
First there was this: “Palestinian anger as Hillary Clinton praises ‘settlement concessions,'” from The Times, November 2:
The Palestinian leadership accused the US of caving in over Israeli settlements after Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, praised Israel for making concessions.
Having failed to force Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, to meet US demands for a total settlement freeze, Mrs Clinton switched tack during a one-day visit to Jerusalem when she called on both sides to resume peace talks.
“What the Prime Minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of settlements . . . is unprecedented,” Mrs Clinton said….
Nabil Abu Rudeinah, a spokesman for Mr Abbas, said: “The negotiations are in a state of paralysis, and the result of Israel’s intransigence and America’s back-pedalling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon.”
Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian Authority spokesman, said: “Calling for a resumption of negotiations despite continued settlement construction doesn’t help because we have tried this way many times.
“Negotiations are about ending the occupation and settlement expansion is about entrenching the occupation.”
The Palestinians insisted that only a total freeze would allow any new round of talks, prompting a call by Mr Netanyahu for them to “come to their senses and enter the peace process”. The Palestinians said that the settlements were filling territory that they had claimed as their future state.
Israeli officials said that they would consider a six-month freeze on settlements, but the US has been pushing for at least a year….
And then there was this:
“Clinton Says Israeli Settlements Not Legitimate,” from Reuters, November 4, 2009
CAIRO (Reuters) – Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that Washington does not accept the legitimacy of Israeli settlement activity but believes that getting to talks is the quickest way to achieve a freeze.
“We do not accept the legitimacy of settlement activity and we have a very firm belief that ending all settlement activity, current and future, would be preferable,” Clinton said after meeting with Egyptian officials including President Hosni Mubarak.