Agence France Presse is reporting that Middle East Peace talks are likely to begin on February 20, following an agreement in principle by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, to “indirect talks with Israel under US mediation.”

The details from an unnamed Palestinian official, include:

“These contacts will be aimed at creating a better climate and reaching an understanding on the borders of the Palestinian state, and they will begin on February 20,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

“They will last three months, with the Americans negotiating directly with the two sides after determining a timetable and agreed-upon mechanisms for implementation.”

The official said US Middle East envoy George Mitchell would shuttle between the two sides, either travelling between Jerusalem and the West Bank political capital of Ramallah or between separate rooms at a hotel or other location.

Under the proposal, Israel would implement a five-point initiative proposed by Mitchell that would include the freeing of Palestinian prisoners and a halt to Israeli incursions in Palestinian cities, the official said.

Israel would also transfer additional areas of the West Bank to Palestinian control, reopen Palestinian political offices in east Jerusalem, and allow building materials and other goods into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Abbas has also demanded that Washington present a document with its position regarding final status issues, including the fate of Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem and final borders, the official said.

This appears to confirm Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s comment last week at the Herzliya conference: “I have reasons to believe, realistically, that we will resume the peace process with the Palestinians, without prior conditions, in the coming weeks.”

This news, if it proves true, could help explain why there was such thunder last week from the religious right – including an anti-peace political caucus formed in Israel’s Knesset, and the extremist tactics of a group called Im Tirtzu involving the Jerusalem Post. These folks see Israel’s withdrawal from any of the occupied West Bank as a mistake, despite all the violence and despair the 42-year-old occupation has caused with neighboring Muslim states – and with followers of Islam around the world.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz, offering a moderate voice for peace, had some great advice yesterday for Netanyahu:

A resumption of peace negotiations centered around an almost total Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank presents Netanyahu with a two-fold challenge. If he takes positions in keeping with the sentiments of the Land of Israel lobby, he will be thrust into a confrontation with the U.S. administration and denounced internationally as an opponent of peace. But if he takes the path proposed by Secretary of State Clinton, he will run into confrontation with his own Likud party and his right-wing coalition partners….

Netanyahu has thus far avoided making a decision and for some time has relied on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ refusal to engage in direct negotiations….

Instead of senselessly courting the right, he should take a courageous stand and state clearly to his political partners that a withdrawal from the territories and the evacuation of the settlements are what is needed. Otherwise Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s warning that without partition Israel will become a binational apartheid state will become a reality.

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Americans right-wing groups are financing another destructive pro-settler, anti-peace organization in Israel, this one fomenting trouble on university campuses. It’s just what the Middle East doesn’t need: another extremist group stirring racial, ethnic, and religious conflict at a time when moderate Israelis and Palestinians are trying to find a road to peace.

The new organization, known as Im Tirtzu, created a ”Zionist Index” with which it evaluates Israel’s university professors. Its preposterous claim: ”On average 80% of the courses offered in political thought at Israel’s major universities are highly skewed towards anti-nationalist and anti-Zionist thought.” The group, which claims 1,000 members, sponsors lectures by right-wingers, such as the recent talk at Hebrew University by Moshe Ya’alon, the notorious Vice Prime Minister in the current rightist regime, who last August  called the human rights group Peace Now “a virus.”

The same group spread a false rumor that Haifa University invited Palestinian activist Raed Salah to speak and barred Jewish students from attending. This lie was repeated in media throughout the world, including this account in something calling itself the Canada Free Press, which at least had the decency to publish a letter from the university’s head of communications refuting the inflammatory account, asserting that “nobody was banned from entering the auditorium based on their being Jewish.”

The organization’s student thought police are copying what they see in the political right wing, according today’s account in Haaretz, which quotes the editor of the student newspaper at Hebrew University, Eli Osheroff: “Their tactics are borrowed from [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman, which means sowing hatred, factionalism and violence. For example, during Operation Cast Lead there was a demonstration by Arab students at the university, and Im Tirtzu activists shouted things at them like ‘We will burn your village,’ and ‘We will meet in reserve duty.’ But it doesn’t stop there. Every lecturer who proposes a different way of thinking about the situation here is accused, not of being a post-Zionist – which is the usual allegation – but of engaging in ‘anti-Zionist incitement.’ The goal is to frighten and intimidate everyone who thinks differently from or dares to criticize them.”

Rabbi David Saperstein, Director of the Religious Action Center of Reformed Judaism, whom Newsweek named America's most influential rabbi, issued a statement supporting the New Israel Fund and its "long, accomplished history of defending human rights, civil liberties, religious pluralism, and social justice. Its efforts have helped make Israel a more equal, more just, more fair and more compassionate society."

Liberal Israeli and American intellectuals are outraged. Wrote Amir Paz-Fuchs, a professor at Israel’s Ono College of Law:

This is McCarthyism, pure and simple. Now more than ever we must remember the words of Edmund Burke: ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.’

The American journalist Philip Weiss describes this as “the war between Israelis over the right to dissent from misguided state policies.”

Im Tirtzu’s most notorious action to date [as chronicled by Neal Ungerleider here on True/Slant] is a personal attack on the distinguished international academic and liberal Israeli women’s leader, Naomi Chazan, who heads the New Israel Fund, a progressive foundation respected around the world. [Check out Chazan's bio, which includes a stint at Harvard and service in the Knesset, here.] Im Tirtzu’s protestors picketed during the night outside Chazan home in “Hamas” costumes, published a shocking ad campaign depicting her as a beast with horns, and spread a “study” claiming that NIF-funded NGOs were anti-Israeli. As Professor Chazan told Haaretz:

“I’ve seen everything,” she said in a phone interview this week of the posters released by the movement depicting her with a horn emerging from her forehead and labeling her Naomi Goldstone Chazan. “I don’t know why they chose me – I can think of plenty of human rights supporters they could pick on. But I’m ever so proud to be a symbol of Israeli democracy. No doubt about it.”

“They’re using me to attack in the most blatant way the basic principles of democracy and the values of the Declaration of Independence: Values of equality, tolerance, social justice and freedom of speech,” she added.

Ironically, as Neal pointed out, funding for Im Tirtzu comes from one who has made blatant anti-Semitic statements: Pastor John Hagee and his Christians United for Israel organization. Haaretz has some additional info on right-wing sources of Im Tirtzu’s funding:

“The main channel for donations to Im Tirtzu is the Central Fund of Israel. In addition to Women in Green and Im Tirtzu, it supports Honenu, an organization sponsoring legal defense to radical right-wing activists in trouble with the law. Honenu boasts of financially supporting the families of the Bat Ayin underground, convicted for trying to bomb a girls’ school in East Jerusalem in 2002; of Ami Popper, who shot four Palestinian laborers during the first intifada; Yishai Schlissel, an ultra-Orthodox man who stabbed participants in a Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem in 2005; and Haggai Amir, brother of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassin Yigal Amir.”

[Read more on the Central Fund of Israel and its financing of extremist settler activities in the occupied West Bank here on Phil Weiss's blog.]

Haim Oron, head of Israel’s Meretz party, entitled his Maariv op-ed this week about Im Tirtzu’s action, ”Before Fascism Strikes,” and noted:

“Ironically, their thuggish campaign draws its graphic inspiration from the worst anti-Semitic propagandists. And maybe it’s not so surprising that both have a common denominator, since hatred is hatred, racism is racism, and fascism is fascism, whether it’s directed against Jews by the haters of Israel, or whether it’s directed by Jewish racists against the objects of their hatred.”

To me, this intimidation campaign bears a resemblance to another right-wing organization claiming to be an independent watchdog, NGO Monitor, which is run by Gerald Steinberg, a professor at the politically  conservative Bar Ilan University. NGO Monitor and Steinberg have continually criticized liberal and moderate nonprofits funded outside Israel. Yet NGO Monitor, which promises “independent and critical analysis” of nonprofits’ activities, has never analyzed the powerful network of right-wing NGOs active in Israel-Palestine – including millions of dollars funneled by American millionaires such as Irving Moskowitz into Israel’s extensive network of pro-settler NGOs. Last month, Steinberg announced that he was initiating a lawsuit against the European Union for funding NGOs in Israel. Just this week, one of Steinberg’s associates published a Jerusalem Post op-ed attacking the NIF.

It’s sad to see the Middle East’s traditional media getting involved in this. The Jerusalem Post has just told Professor Chazan that it is discontinuing her column – one of that paper’s few liberal writers. Not surprising, I guess: It was the Post that ran the Im Tirtzu ads depicting Chazan with horns.

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For the second time in as many weeks, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has warned his countrymen that unless they make peace with the Palestinians, they are headed toward an apartheid state.

Here are  his latest comments from the Herzliya security conference in Israel:

“My feeling about the Middle East is that the weak will not be spared. Peace will not prevail as long as our neighbors seek to destroy us. However, as leaders it is our responsibility to do all in our powers to pursue peace. A Jewish democratic Zionist state will be secure only when we have peace with our neighbors. There are 12 million people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea–7.5 million Israelis and 4.5 million Palestinians. If there is only one political entity in this area it will eventually be either non-Jewish or non-democratic. If that bloc of millions of Palestinians vote, then there will be a bi-national state, and if they don’t vote, then there will be an apartheid state. Neither is the Zionist dream…..

The circumstances dictate our paths. We don’t do the Palestinians any favor but rather this is our interest.”

Great stuff, huh?  As reported here, Barak said something similar on January 27. The former Prime Minister from the moderate Labor Party, who held his nose and became a political bedfellow of far-rightists like Yisrael Beiteinu’s Avigdor Lieberman (a nutter who’s famous for staging an insult to the Turkish ambassador and just this morning was silenced by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for trying to goad the Syrians into another battle) returns to sanity. Sanity being the recognition that the occupation of the Palestinian territories is not a good thing for Israel’s future. Call it enlightened self-interest.

Who else was at the security conference: the Palestinians’ Prime Minister, Salam Fayyad, and he stood for a peaceful photo with Barak:

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Palestinian PM Fayyad and Israeli DM Barak spoke at a conference panel entitled "Prospects for Peace." [AFP photo

The very first question at President Barack Obama’s town hall event in Tampa, FL, yesterday underscored the political foolhardiness of his omission of the MidEast peace process from the State of the Union speech on Wednesday night. A young woman who had worked in his campaign came at him with both barrels over the human-rights situation associated with Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. His response showed he was totally unprepared for the question:

“The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued a region for centuries, and it’s an issue that elicits a lot of passions, as you heard,” Obama said. “Here’s my view: Israel is one of our strongest allies. It is a vibrant democracy. It shares links with us in all sorts of ways. It is critical for us, and I will never waver from Israel’s security. … What is also true is that the plight of the Palestinians is something that we have to pay attention to.”

The best line he could muster, according to Politico: “I make no apology for trying to fix stuff that’s hard.”

Watch it here on CBS News:

A new piece in Time magazine looks at a group of policy experts, convened regularly by the United States Institute of Peace, to funnel advice to Middle East Special Envoy George Mitchell. Their general view:

“The status quo is not sustainable,” says a senior member of the group. “International tolerance of Israeli policies is eroding and Palestinian democrats are coming under increasing pressure. The prospects for a two-state solution are eroding as well as Palestinians lose confidence that peace is possible.”

…. One senior member of the group, expressing his own opinion, says that in the wake of Mitchell’s failure last weekend, the Administration has two options: taking a “minimalist approach,” in which the U.S. goes through the motions of pushing for peace for appearances’ sake, without actually driving a process that could achieve it; or putting specific ideas on the table about the contours of a final peace agreement.”

Looks like Obama has opted for going through the motions thus far. Does he lack the political will to take on AIPAC, the neocon lobby, and a major U.S. ally – hard stuff indeed.

In spending only nine minutes of his State of the Union speech last night on national security, according to the New York Times, President Barack Obama “spared little time for the subject of America’s relations with the world,” notably uttering “no mention at all of stalled Middle East peace proposals.”

Americans right now are “wounded and looking inward,” the Times quoted former Clinton administration official David Rothkopf.

Left-wing pundit Ralph Nader was more blunt, telling Al Jazeera that Obama had “given up” on Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, an issue “at the core of so much of our problems in the Middle East, spreading all throughout the Islamic world.”

President Barack Obama devoted only nine minutes in his State of the Union speech to foreign policy. [AP photo

The surprising omission came despite a plea from a Jewish-American group friendly to the administration, Americans for Peace Now, asking Obama to use the State of the Union speech “to boldly and decisively lead the way to peace.” This was accompanied by congressional pressure: 54 Democratic members of Congress, including two Jewish Americans, signed a letter asking Obama to take action on the Gaza blockade; while California Rep. Howard Berman, the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman, in a speech to the Democratic-leaning J Street political action committee, decried “the immense toll the occupation is taking on Israel.”

Probably the President’s advisors considered the Israeli-Palestinian issue too sensitive and complex right now. given the enormity of three sets of stalled negotiations (peace process/withdrawal from the occupied territories, prisoner exchange of Gilad Shalit with Hamas, and Fatah-Hamas peace agreement), cool relations with the right-wing regime in Tel Aviv, and the need to respect the Holocaust Remembrance Day events going on all over Europe (with some Palestinian politicians attending.)

Obama apparently preferred to speak via his diplomats on this issue at the United Nations Security Council yesterday, joining diplomats from France and Turkey, and Assistant-Secretary-General Oscar Fernandez-Taranco in decrying settlements, home demolitions, and other issues plaguing occupied East Jerusalem.

Yet our president and of these folks apparently missed one of the most important admissions of reality “on the ground” in Israel-Palestine by Israeli Defense Minister (and former Labor Prime Minister) Ehud Barak. Barak has puzzled may MidEast watchers by participating in, and willingly supporting, the human-rights and political excesses of the Netanyahu coalition that took over Israel nearly a year ago from the center-right, pro-peace-process Olmert government. But yesterday, at a university lecture in Tel Aviv, Barak, as Reuters reported, sounded more like his old self:

“In the absence of a solution” involving an Israeli and a Palestinian state, “any other situation — and not an Iranian bomb or any other external threat — is the most serious threat to Israel’s future,” Barak said in his lecture.

In his speech putting peace ahead of concerns over Iran, Labor Party member and current Defense Minister Ehud Barak appeared to break with the policies of his right-wing Prime Minister, Binyamin Netanyahu and his extreme right-wing Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman.

The Jerusalem Post quoted Barak saying something even more surprising – shocking, really – mentioning the “Jimmy Carter” word: apartheid.

While Israel is the strongest country in the region, Barak said that time “is not on our side. We need to stand with our eyes open and stable feet… to look for a crack or a window to make peace,” he said. “We have a paramount interest in establishing defined borders between ourselves and the Palestinians, that will set the stage for two states for two peoples.”

In addressing the ramifications of a continued stalemate in negotiations, Barak said: “It must be understood that if between the Jordan [River] and the [Mediterranean Sea] there is only one political entity called ‘Israel,’ it will by necessity either be not Jewish or not democratic, and we will turn into an apartheid state….”