FEATURED JOBS
Comments (0)Hillary Rodham Clinton told a Palestinian-American audience that the only path to statehood is through direct talks with Israel.
The U.S. secretary of state’s remarks Wednesday to a gala dinner of the American Task Force on Palestine comes as the Palestinian Authority reportedly is seeking international recognition in case it decides to unilaterally declare statehood.
“As much as the United States and other nations around the world want to see a resolution to this conflict, only the parties themselves can take the difficult steps that will lead to peace,” Clinton said. “That is why the Obama administration is working so hard to support direct talks that offer a forum for both sides to grapple with the core issues in good faith. There is no substitute for face-to-face discussion and, ultimately, for an agreement that leads to a just and lasting peace. That is the only path that will lead to the fulfillment of the Palestinian national aspirations and the necessary outcome of two states for two peoples.”
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas suspended the talks last month, barely a month after they were renewed, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to extend a 10-month partial freeze on settlement building.
President Obama has called for an extension of the freeze, and has offered Netanyahu a wide-ranging package of security and diplomatic guarantees if he changes his mind. Netanyahu has been telling interlocutors that unless the Palestinians stop making arrangements for a unilateral declaration, he will not reinstate the building freeze.
Clinton’s address did not mention the U.S. government’s calls to extend the freeze and instead emphasized the need to return to direct talks—an implicit rebuke of Abbas.
She also said a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinians will reflect “developments” subsequent to the Six-Day War. An end-of-conflict agreement “reconciles the Palestinian goal of an independent and viable state based on the 1967 lines, with agreed swaps and Israel’s goal of a Jewish state with secure and recognized borders that reflect subsequent developments and meet Israel’s security requirements,” Clinton said.
Israel secured a letter in 2004 from the Bush administration recognizing some settlement blocs as “realities on the ground.” These were never specified, but are thought to include the Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem, Maaleh Adumim to its east and possibly settlements along the West Bank border north of Jerusalem. Israeli officials have been seeking a reiteration of the commitment from the Obama administration.
Clinton called on Arab states to contribute more concretely to advancing the process.
“It takes far more than commitments and plans to support making the state of Palestine a reality,” she said.
Clinton called for the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier kidnapped in Israel in 2006 and held since by Hamas-affiliated terrorists in the Gaza Strip. Her call was applauded by the audience.
The American Task Force on Palestine lobbies for two states and believes in engaging a broad array of Jewish groups.
Dad Who Took Daughter to Church is Cleared
A Chicago man who took his daughter to church despite a restraining order by her Jewish mother was cleared of contempt of court charges.
Joseph Reyes grabbed headlines last winter when he took his 3-year-old daughter Ela to church, accompanied by a local television crew, despite a temporary restraining order filed by his estranged wife that barred him from exposing their daughter to anything but the Jewish faith.
A court in Cook County, Illinois, found Wednesday that Reyes was not guilty of violating a court order when he took Ela to church before the child’s custody had been resolved. The ruling appears to rest on the fact that in video of the event the child is not visible, thus it cannot be definitively proven that she was there.
Reyes converted to Judaism when he married his wife, Rebecca, and she says Reyes promised to raise Ela in the Jewish faith. But after the couple filed for divorce, he returned to his Christian faith and baptized his daughter without his wife’s knowledge.
A divorce judgment handed down in April declared that Reyes could take his daughter to church during his visitation times, which include Christmas and Easter, even as she is raised Jewish by her mother.
Cost Overruns Force N.Y. Synagogue to Halt Construction
A leading Modern Orthodox synagogue in New York City has halted construction on its new building due to financial problems.
The president of Lincoln Square Synagogue, which is on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, has stepped down as well.
The synagogue last week posted a notice on its website saying that the cost of its new building at 180 Amsterdam Ave. “has run higher than originally expected. In order to raise additional funds, the synagogue will be seeking joint venture partners or a naming donor before resuming construction.”
A memo sent to members at the end of the week said the synagogue’s president, Scott Liebman, had stepped down, according to reports.
“Scott decided that it is in the Shul’s best interest to have a fresh start with new leadership to manage the building project,” said the letter signed by the synagogue’s vice presidents and reprinted in the Forward. “The expanded team now working on the project will continue to have the benefit of Scott’s knowledge and expertise, and we thank Scott for pouring his life into this project for the last eleven years.”
The synagogue has been a center of Modern Orthodoxy since Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, now the chief rabbi of Efrat and head of the Ohr Torah Stone institutions, joined the synagogue in the mid-1960s. Riskin moved to Israel in 1983.
The synagogue is in the middle of construction on a three-story, 50,000-square-foot building located 100 feet south of its current building. The cost was originally put at $28 million but has ballooned by as much as $17 million, which the synagogue reportedly does not yet have, according to The New York Jewish Week.
“I feel confident that we will resume construction on our new building and am gratified by the outpouring of energy and drive that has already burst forward as a result of the news,” said Rabbi Shaul Robinson, the senior rabbi at Lincoln Square, wrote in a statement on the synagogue’s website.
The synagogue has 650 membership units.