president rains in the file. democrats hoping the current president hits and where it hurts. plus, trump says he has picked a vpn continues to ramble on the issue of naming them. fake videos claim to show a wobbly biden. there is a true problem for the president. let s do it. we are just days from the first presidential debate. though it may appear like a rerun, this is far from a repeat. thursdays standoff between president joe biden and donald trump comes with huge stakes for them and for all of us. for the better part of the year polling has shown the race is essentially tied. depending on the poll that you are looking at, trump has held a narrow advantage. as the washington post highlights he has held a slightly larger advantage in some of these key battleground states, which certainly has democrats nervous. as for the rest of us, this will be the first time we see trump and biden in the same room since they last debated in 2020. of course, since then you would recall w
i think the purpose of this focus is to stop things getting worse both in politics and in terms of violence. it doesn t seem likely that this current israeli government and this current palestinian government will resume talks on a two state solution. but the framework allows the us government to say it is not a good time to build more israeli settlements. it s not a good time to change policies on the status of palestinians in the west bank. but it is basically conflict management. it is stopping things getting worse. it is not an expectation that there will be a peace agreement. but it may be designed to keep the idea of a two state solution on life support so that perhaps in the long term future, things could change. that is really interesting. i want to come now to this tension,
those discussions of the potential two state solution, the establishment of the palestinian authority to try to make that happen, now does not feel like a moment where we are close to a solution of any kind to this conflict. on monday, mr blinken held high level talks with the israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu, injerusalem. remember, the government there has pledged to accelerate the issuing of gun licences to israeli citizens in response to the attacks. it s also reinforced its troop numbers in the west bank. and called for measures against the families of terrorists that support terrorism. for more, i spoke to jane kinninmont earlier she s a long time scholar and observer of the middle east. it s a long time, but in the foreseeable future, most israelis and most palestinians do not believe that a two state solution is coming. so there is a major problem of confidence for the parties on the ground. your correspondent mentioned the oslo accords happening in the mid 1990s.
secretary blinken is right to say there is a shrinking rise of hope, there is a shrinking horizon for a political solution of ending the aggression, and he is right to call for a two state solution in line with international resolutions, and he s absolutely right, insisting the need for equal measures of freedom, of security, of opportunity, of dignity to the palestinians and the israelis. he s right on all of that, but we see no approach by the us administration to do that, to achieve that, we even see the wrong approach, because that would not happenjust, this has been happening for a long time. let s remind ourselves of the context here the recent violence. palestinian health officials say israeli forces shot dead a palestinian man at a military checkpoint in hebron on monday. israeli forces say that their troops had identified a suspicious vehicle. on thursday, ten palestinians were shot dead injenin in the occupied west bank by israeli forces. israel said that it was acting on i