Latest Editions

Obama Mideast peace effort

Audio: Play | Download

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download MP3
President Obama met today with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to try and breathe new life into the stalled Mid East peace talks. Anchor Marco Werman finds out more from The World’s Matthew Bell, who’s in Jerusalem and was recently in the West Bank town of Nablus.

Read the Transcript
This text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman, and this is The World  a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston. We’ve seen this movie before.  Today, the President of the United States met with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to try to get peace talks back on track. The names have changed, but the disagreements remain pretty much the same.  The names now are Binyamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel, .Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and US President Barack Obama.  They met today in New York. But there was no indication of progress on the issues that have kept Israelis and Palestinians in varying states of hostility for generations.  The World’s Matthew Bell is in Jerusalem…And Matthew, what is keeping the two sides from resuming peace talks right now?

MATTHEW BELL: Well, the big issue that’s been hanging things up so far is the issue of Israeli settlements out in the West Bank. Now, the Obama Administration asked the Israelis to stop all building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.  The government of Netanyahu said that they wouldn’t do that. They gave approvals to number of housing units out there in the West Bank, and Mahmoud Abbas. said unless the Israelis do a total freeze on settlements’, we’re not gonna sit down and begin talks. So the big question was, how to sort of get these two guys in the same room.  And expectations were low for this meeting today, but Obama did get his handshake today.

WERMAN: What are President Obama and his Middle East envoy George Mitchell doing to try to make some progress on the settlement issue—I mean, to try and break this deadlock?

BELL: Well, there’s been a lot of reports on stuff going on behind the scenes.  There’s talk that the Israelis are gonna be willing to do to a temporary freeze of settlement building for six to nine months as a concession to the Palestinians. President Obama did say that he was gonna continue with this process in the coming weeks.  He’s gonna get the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton working on it, he wants Clinton to report back to him in the next few weeks. Mitchell’s  going to continue the shuttle diplomacy.  I suspect what the Israeli and Palestinian leaders heard today from Obama is a version of the line that the president gave Congress on health care, which is basically, the time for bickering is over, let’s get on with it.  There’s sort of a tone of impatience, I think, coming out of the President and the White House right now.

WERMAN: Matthew, you had an on the ground slice of life snapshot of some of this today in the West Bank.  Where did you go?

BELL: We’re in the middle of the three day Muslim holiday of Eid right now, which comes at the end of  Ramadan.  And I went out to the market in the city of Nablus in the West Bank to see how business is doing.

WERMAN: All right, let’s listen to your report.

BELL: For many people, the holiday means a day off work and a chance to get dressed up and do some shopping with the family. The old market in Nablus today was bustling.

[MUSIC, A STREET VENDOR SELLS HIS WARES]

People say the kanafeh is the best you can find anywhere.  It’s a super-sweet dessert of cheese and flour topped with crushed pistachios.  Abu Jassir runs a little kanafeh shop, and he’s selling the stuff as fast as he can scoop it up and wrap it to go.  He says business is getting better.

ABU JASSIR: It’s better.  It’s better than it has been in the last 8 years, because there’s better safety and security.”

BELL: A few years ago, Nablus was sealed off by Israeli military checkpoints.  There were no Palestinian police on the streets, and the frequent raids by Israeli soldiers led to violent clashes. Jewelry shop owner Ala al-Hawari points to bullet holes in the front door of his store as an example of what the bad old days were like not so long ago.

BELL: So, you were standing right here when the shots came through?

ALA AL-HAWARI: Yes.  There.  Over there.

BELL: So, you were lucky?

HAWARI: Thanks to God.

BELL: Thanks to God, he says, the situation has improved.  He says Palestinian security forces are back in control of Nablus. Inflation is down.  The Palestinian stock market is doing well.  And all of that means business at Hawari’s jewelry shop is up about 20 percent from last year.  The West Bank economy as a whole is on track to grow 7 percent this year.

[STREET NOISE, BUSTLING CITY]

Naeem Mansour is making another sale.   He runs a corner store that specializes in women’s headscarves.   He too says business is good.

NAEEM MANSOUR: [In Arabic language]

BELL: Mansour says one reason is that the Israeli Arabs are now allowed to enter the West Bank and shop in cities like Nablus.  But there’s bad news too. Mansour says he’s skeptical when he hears Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu talk about building an “economic peace” in the West Bank.  Dozens of checkpoints and roadblocks have been lifted., but hundreds of them remain.  Mansour says the idea of building an “economic peace” is a joke.

MANSOUR: [In Arabic language]

BELL: Mansour says investors are skittish about putting their money into the West Bank and they will be as long as the Israeli occupation continues.  That’s what the stalled Middle East peace process is aimed at ending. But the trilateral summit today of the US, Israel and the Palestinians showed again, that that process is having trouble just getting out of the starting gate. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell, in Jerusalem.

WERMAN: Matthew also shot some video today in Nablus.  Visit www.theworld.org and check it out.

Copyright ©2009 PRI’s THE WORLD. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to PRI’s THE WORLD. This transcript may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without prior written permission. For further information, please email The World’s Permissions Coordinator at theworld@pri.org.