A Daily Analysis
By Marc Schulman

November 18, 2010 Future of Settlement Freeze Unclear

The status of the Mid-East peace talks and the Israeli settlement freeze remain very cloudy today. It would seem that the hold up rests on the demand by Eli Yishai, from Shas. Yishai believes that Israel should not agree to the freeze, without explicit commitments from the US that the freeze would not include building in Jerusalem. That clarification is, of course, a stipulation that the US government would never be willing to explicitly give. The essense of any understanding with the US over Jerusalem has always been an agreement to disagree, or to agree with a wink and a nod. It is never official. Apparently, the worldly minister Yishai knows better. As of right now it's not clear whether Netanyahu has a majority to support a settlment freeze within his current government. In an interesting article, Al-Arabiya TV Director-General Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed slammed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over his insistence of a construction freeze in the West Bank.

The Charedi and Shas worlds continue to be rocked by Rabbi Amsalem, the maverick Shas MK. Amsalem continues to criticize the Shas leadership and the whole structure of the Charedi World. The Jerusalelm Post had an excellent editorial on the subject today called the Righteous Rebel