Obama: "Do We Have the Wisdom" for Peace?

(CBS/AP)  Updated at 7:56 p.m.

President Barack Obama convened the first direct Israeli-Palestinian talks in two years Wednesday, challenging Mideast leaders to seize a fleeting opportunity to settle their differences and deliver peace to a region haunted by decades of hostility.

"Do we have the wisdom and the courage to walk the path of peace?" Obama asked, with the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, Israel and the Palestinians beside him in the crowded East Room of the White House. Earlier Obama had met with each individually, and they were gathering afterward for dinner.

In turn, each of the leaders spoke of his hopes for a breakthrough, with the U.S. playing the role of peace broker.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israelis seek a lasting peace, not an interlude between wars. He called Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas "my partner in peace," and said he came to Washington in search of an enduring agreement. "I came here today to make peace. Everybody loses if there is no peace."

Said Jordan's King Abdullah II: "Mr. President, we need your support as a mediator, honest broker and a partner. If hopes are disappointed again, the price of failure will be too high for all."

CBS News White House correspondent Bill Plante reports that the four main issues separating Israel and the Palestinians have been the same for decades:

• The borders of a Palestinian state;
• Israeli security;
• Jerusalem, whether Palestinians too can claim it as their capital;
• And refugees, whether Palestinians have a right to return to lands from which they were forced or fled.

Now there is hope. Cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority has been improving. For nine months, there's been a halt to Israeli settlement construction but that moratorium expires on September 26. Unless there is a compromise to extend it, the talks could fail before they really begin.

[xxxwilliam]

Why isn't there an impartial third party to act as negotiator? President Obama is an excellent man,but the US was instrumental in Israel's creation. The Palestinians have been treated like the Native Americans were in the US. To this day the Native Americans are second class citizens in the land they have called their home for thousands of years- thousands of years, continuously.

[enwr77]

This one of our President's strengths. He is not confrontational.

[pdchapin]

It's not clear that there is any overlap between the minimum conditions each side has for a settlement. If there's no overlap, a settlement is impossible.

The Palestinians don't realize that the longer they take to get a settlement, the worst the settlement is going to be. Until they realize that, and adjust their position accordingly, nothing is going to happen except Israel will continue it's creeping takeover of the west bank.

As for Israel, it's not even clear if they know what solution they want. Do they even have a vision of what the ultimate settlement should look like? It's hard to negotiate when you don't even know where you want to go.

It doesn't help that the world has a doubt standard towards Israel. Hamas launched as estimated 6000 missiles into Israel and world says nothing. Israel launches a counter-strike (after Hamas declares the "cease-fire" over) and the world is outraged.

[xxxwilliam]

A truck backfires-is it counted as a missile? Look at a map.You will see tiny crowded Gaza surrounded by farm land. Tell me how those over-sized bottle rockets are a real threat.Propaganda. Israel uses that latest technology and slaughters thousands in a month. They stop the press from investigation. They assassinate promising Palestinian Leaders in order to maintain their tyranny.

[superdem1]

But we're NOT an honest broker, this game is rigged, the fix is in, we are hopelessly bought out, we won't even pursue our own national interest when it is so obvious what that interest is, when our own national ideals are being abused and denigrated. Our own politicians sell our nation out and do so proudly, while allowing an atrocious injustice to go on day after day, year after year. We support apartheid, period. The best the Palestians will get out of us is some kind of human animal park, where they can appear to live a natural existence which is actually completely controlled. They will never have the sovreignty that the Israelis flaunt in our faces, their exiled brothers and sisters will never be allowed to return. But anyone from any corner of the earth wishing to be an Israeli can come, they have a duty to come ! It is not a matter of wisdom, a wise man can see who is right and who is wrong, a blind man can see it. No, not wisdom, but justice, and that is impossible when the judge is on the take.

[tsigili]

In a word......NO!

[Brokennews]

Hummm.
Usually when two conflicting entities come together to talk reconciliation, Obama cracks a keg of beer. Hey! Nobody has tried that yet! It might work!

And it would be a great headline!!

"The Israeli-Palestinian Peace Talks & BBQ, sponsored by Budwieser!!"

[dadirt]

He is so deep huh!

I can't stand even reading his speals. He is just a facade. He speaks but their is not truth or follow up.

[olyboy]

Obama is totally out of touch with reality. There will always be conflict. There are people, like the president, who believe that the non productive have a right to the fruits of other peoples labor and should be able to take it through government oppression or force of arms. The productive always will defend their families and themselves against this taking. The Israilies have turned the desert into a land of milk and honey. If he wants peace, he should explain to the Palistinians that they need to start doing for themselves instead of spending all their effort trying to take from and/or kill those who have struggled so hard to get what they have.

[knowerseeker]

"There are people, like the president, who believe that the non productive have a right to the fruits of other peoples labor and should be able to take it through government oppression or force of arms." -- Yes, there are people who think this way. Is Obama one? I don't know, but there are also people, like myself, who think that those who *are* productive should have a share of the profits from what they make or do -- not just the ones who finance them.

[AlwaysSmiling]

So, what you're saying is that if the ones who are productive do so by taking from the non-productive ones (like their land, food, clothing, lives) then it's ok?

First of all, the Isrealis (who are the "productive ones" should have considered "We have xxx amount of land, which can support yyy amount of people." before they said "Hey, if you're a Jew, come HOME to Israel." Maybe they should have taken the same stance as Muslims do, which is essentially "Make a pilgrimage here at least once in your life. But then GO HOME." It's like the sign at the bar that says "We don't care where you end up, but you can't stay here."

You're saying that it's ok for the Israelis to take the land for more people to become Israelis. Even though someone else is using the land (maybe not for "milk and honey" but for their livlihood). So, when I come to your house, and say "Move out. I want this property for my friends to build on.", then you're just going to pack up and move because I'm going to put it to a more productive use than you do? I THINK NOT.

[usunus]

Yes,they all have the wisdom and courage to seek peace,peace on their own individual terms.Obama knows this only too well,but he has to display some purely rhetorical fireworks to suit the occasion.Nobody is holding breath about the outcome of these talks.

[samael2014]

Obama: "Do We Have the Wisdom" for Peace?

Does the Obama administration have the integrity for due process?

It's pretty pathetic when the administrator of the U.S. government can't or won't even follow the rule of our own law, and with regard to Israel, prosecute them for killing our citizens -- at a minimum; let alone enact sanctions against Israel in place of postulates for "wisdom".

Hypocrite and worse -- when you count the number of times the Obama administration and the U.S. Dept. of Justice has just "decided" to not pursue prosecutions -- in direct violation of due process and equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution, you really have to ask yourself whether wisdom is at all the issue.

Start treating Israel like Iran -- and stop wasting our taxpayer dollars on this parasite nation of psychopaths that operate outside of international law, like they're an alzheimer's grandparent or something that you're afraid to reprimand and restrain for the saftey of us all and the human and territorial right and dignity of Palestine.

It's actually incredible to tally the list of atrocities -- including murdering U.S. citizens through hi-jacking at sea -- and even imagine Obama talking to this steaming pile of human garbage and our taxpayer dollars being sucked dry by these parasites, until these people are prosecuted, held accountable and aggressive sanctions put in place, along with U.N. peacekeepers ELIMINATING any obstruction in providing aid and relief to Palestine.

What kind of sick world would even allow this to continue, let alone seek solace and wisdom as an alternative to immediate condemnation and liberation?

[AlwaysSmiling]

And when did these crimes against our citizens happen? If they happened before 2008, then I ask you why didn't Bush, Reagan, Clinton, Carter, Nixon, Johnson, Ford, or any of the other Administrations and Department of Justice prosecute them?

If they happened after 2008, then for all you know, he's working behind the scenes to get reparations for the crimes. So, when did all of these crimes happen?