View from Jerusalem with Harriet Sherwood | World news

The Promise: powerful TV drama at its best | World news | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/view-from-jerusalem-with-harriet-sherwood/2011/feb/07/israel-palestinian-territories

I was lucky enough to see a preview of The Promise, the Peter Kosminsky four-part drama that switches between mandate-era #Palestine and present-day Israel and the Palestinian territories, the first episode of which aired on Channel 4 last night.

I wanted to write about it before it started showing, but Egypt intervened. Having just finished watching the whole series, I’m left drained and exhausted by its harrowing depiction of both periods, and the parallels it draws between them.

#série

Leaked documents: who was serious about a deal to end the conflict? | guardian.co.uk
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/view-from-jerusalem-with-harriet-sherwood/2011/jan/24/palestine-papers-palestinian-territories

From the papers I’ve read, there is little evidence of the Israelis matching this approach by making serious and painful concessions of their own. Indeed Tzipi Livni is fairly dismissive of the offer on East Jerusalem settlements, focussing on what the Palestinians would not agree to, rather than acknowledging the magnitude of what they were prepared to concede.

[...]

But it seems to me that after the disclosure of these papers, it will be very hard indeed for the Israelis to deploy their standard argument that the Palestinians are not serious about negotiating a deal and that they have no “partner for peace”.

#Palestine_papers