My Way News - Clinton: US wants Israel settlement halt 'forever'
My Way News reports: "Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton defended the U.S. stance toward Israeli settlement building to worried Arab allies on Wednesday, saying Washington does not accept the legitimacy of the West Bank enclaves and wants to see their construction halted 'forever.' Still, she said an Israeli offer to restrain - but not halt - construction represents 'positive movement forward' toward resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations."

My Way News - Palestinians threaten Israel with 1-state solution
My Way News reports: "The Palestinians should give up seeking an independent state and pursue a single country in which they would enjoy equal rights with Israelis, the chief Palestinian negotiator in Mideast peace talks said Wednesday."

Comment: In today's Mideast peace developments, Hillary Clinton tried to pacify the Palestinians and Israel's Arab neighbors after making what they saw as a concession to Israel on the settlements issue. They had believed that under Obama the U.S. would no longer be as pro-Israel as the U.S. had been under Bush. Like Democrats in the U.S., they were dazzled by Obama's speeches and expected his actions to follow his words, but they didn't, and so they are now disillusioned. Clinton is doing her best to use the Clintonian wordplay that her husband was so famous for to say different things to different groups in a vain attempt to make everyone happy. It's clearly not working and no one has been fooled into believing that the former senator from New York is going to be anything other than pro-Israel. The danger for Israel is that she and Obama will now try to over-correct and end up pressuring Israel more than they were inclined to do, so let's watch for this. So far though, I don't see that happening.

And in another development, an influential Palestinian has suggested dropping the drive for a two-state solution and accepting a one-state solution in which Palestinians would be absorbed into Israel. I think that Israel should immediately seize upon this idea as a tactical move and accept it at once and call for a general Palestinian referendum on it. Israel need have no fear that the referendum would pass, it wouldn't, but forcing the Palestinians to vote on it would split the Palestinians even more than they are now and clearly expose the depth of their anti-Israel bias. At the end of the process, the Palestinians would be even more divided, the militant anti-Israel wing more clearly defined as anti-peace, and the other faction similarly weakened would accept the two-state solution on Israel's terms. Just an idea.