Israel offers to ease restrictions for Palestinians in the West Bank

In the UK and international media today, most papers report that Defence Minister Ehud Barak met yesteday with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and proposed a package to ease restrictions for Palestinians in the West Bank. The package included the removal of fifty roadblocks. Sky News Online carries an exclusive interview with exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal who said that captured IDF soldier in Gaza, Gilad Shalit is alive and receiving good treatment. In other news, the Times notes that Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni yesterday expressed her support for legislation that would compensate settlers who voluntarily move to Israel.

Over the weekend, the Times and the Financial Times on Saturday noted that the annual Arab League summit opened that day in Damascus. The Scotland on Sunday noted that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas addressed the summit calling on Arab leaders to send peacekeepers to protect Palestinians. The Observer and the Times on Saturday reviewed the Israeli movie Beaufort on the Israeli army outpost in southern Lebanon during the first Israeli-Lebanon war.

In the Israeli press, all papers report on the meeting yesterday between US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defence Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in Jerusalem. The papers note that Barak presented a list of concrete steps in order to ease restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank. The papers also note that a German paper quoted US President George Bush saying on Sunday that he is still upbeat that an Israeli-Palestinian deal could be reached before the end of his term. Several papers note that exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told Sky News in an interview that captured IDF soldier in Gaza, Gilad Shalit, is still alive. Meanwhile the Jerusalem Post notes that the Syrian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Bushra Kanfani confirmed that Turkey had mediated secret talks between Syria and Israel. In other news Haaretz reports that the Czech Defence Minister Vlasta Parkanova said yesterday that the new missile defence system deployed in his country would diminish the threat posed by Iran on Israel. And both the Jerusalem Post and Ynetnews note that CIA Director General Michael Hayden told NBC television on Sunday that in his personal capacity he believed Iran was developing a nuclear weapon. Finally, Ynetnews reports that King Abdullah of Jordan met with Secretary of State Rice yesterday and warned that a failure to achieve progress in the Israeli-Palestinian talks would threaten the future of the whole region.

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