This is technological innovation, which we would wish to encourage — adopted by a new team of media advisers working for the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah — showing (on Youtube!) Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) receiving U.S. Special Envoy George Mitchell not very long ago in the Muqata’a presidential headquarters in Ramallah:
Now that my iffy satellite receiver is working again, I can report that Palestinian television is running cartoons. (The Mitchell visit was, however, at the top of an earlier news bulletin…)
It would be great if we could only get some real information — in English, please — of what actually happened in the meeting…
Later, it was reported (though not by the Palestinian presidential media service) that “President Barack Obama’s Mideast envoy failed Friday to lure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas back to peace talks with Israel, as Abbas stuck to his insistence that an Israeli settlement freeze come first … Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said the onus is on Israel, not the Palestinians. ‘When we say a settlement freeze that includes Jerusalem, that is not a Palestinian condition’, he said. ‘That is rather an Israeli obligation, and the same thing is applicable to our demand to have negotiations resume where we left them in December 2008’.” This was reported by the Associated press here.
It was reported elsewhere, however, that “Sa’eb Erekat said Mitchell is putting the ball for negotiations resumption into the Palestinians’ court”…