Palestinian officials say Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad has resigned.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has tendered his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas.
Secretary of State John Kerry may not be returning to U.S. soil with a new Middle East peace deal, or a diplomatic solution to how America might best deal with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's reported resignation – which leaves in charge the less friendly President Mahmoud Abbas. And the question of Iran's nuclear program still hovers.
U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry urged Turkish leaders Sunday to speedily restore full diplomatic relations with Israel, two American allies the U.S. sees as anchors of stability in a Middle East wracked by Syria's civil war, Arab Spring political upheavals and the potential threat posed by Iran's nuclear program.
Thousands of Palestinians took to the streets in the West Bank in a show of outrage Thursday over the deaths of two Palestinian protesters killed in clashes with Israel and a third Palestinian who died of cancer in an Israeli prison. In Gaza, militants fired a rocket that landed in southern Israel, causing no casualties.
One key shift in U.S. policy was overlooked in the barrage of news about President Obama's eventful 50-hour visit to Israel last week. That would be the demand that Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state, called by Hamas leader Salah Bardawil "the most dangerous statement by an American president regarding the Palestinian issue."
Symbolism matters, and President Obama knows it. When the president spoke at Georgetown University in 2009, his advance team asked that the Roman Catholic university cover an image derived from the first three Greek letters of the name of Jesus Christ.
Israel is a land of symbols. It's fitting then that President Obama's arrival in the Holy Land on Wednesday was bedeviled by a breakdown. The wrong fuel for the president's limousine (diesel instead of gasoline) was quickly remedied, but four years of U.S. policies that have fueled turmoil in the region won't be fixed so easily.
A late education is better than no education at all, even for a president of the United States. The man who is a mighty legend in his own mind is even showing a little humility. Barack Obama, who usually finds someone else — usually George W. — to blame for every little thing that goes awry, finally admitted this week in Israel that even a synthetic messiah can make mistakes.
