In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.

Input: Consider Input: So Mike Tyson's tattoo artist tried to stop the worldwide distribution of "The Hangover Part II," based on the premise that the filmmakers had stolen his Maori-inspired design and stuck it on Ed Helms' face. I guess that wasn't much of a legal case, which is too bad, because as it turns out the guy was accidentally trying to perform a public service. Maybe he should have tried the argument that the movie sucks so bad that if anyone, anywhere, thinks he had anything to do with it that amounts to defamation of character. 
  
 Since we're talking about meta-narratives that are way more interesting than this bad and stupid movie, I guess we were supposed to think that director Todd Phillips and stars Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis and Helms were being principled, woman-friendly men by kicking Mel Gibson out of "The Hangover Part II." That's nice and all, but at least Gibson, when he's being funny, is pretty damn funny. Speaking strictly from the perspective of someone who sat on my ass through this entire terrible movie, I'd gladly trade in the whole thing for five decent minutes of Mel. 
  
 Can I keep vamping for a while, and stave off the movie review? In France this would-be huge hit is known as "Very Bad Trip 2." (Those words, in English.) In Spanish-speaking countries, it's called "¿Que Paso Ayer? 2." In German, it's ... oh, all right. In English, it really should be called "Sex and the City 2: This Time It's for Guys." If you seriously need any more evidence that the raunchy bromance comedy genre has become a played-out shell of its former self, huffing the fumes of last night's stale beer (mixed with other unidentifiable fluids) in a back alley at dawn, the great burst of sour flatulence that is this overcooked sequel should provide it. Even as transparent attempts to recapture the so-called magic of a big hit go, this new voyage into manufactured outrageousness is especially shameless. Phillips and his co-writers, Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong, seem to have launched into this project with a misguided faith in their own brilliance, but nothing resembling an idea or a story. 
  
 "Hangover II" simply recycles the bachelor-party-gone-awry gags from the 2009 summer hit, in a new and supposedly grittier context where the cast seems ill at ease, with much less comic effect and a lot more homophobia and xenophobia. It's a dumb, ugly and, most of all, painfully unfunny movie, which can't quite decide between competing touristic impulses: Bangkok as a pervy, nasty sex-trade destination and the mysterious East as the home of a superior, contemplative spirituality. It's like "Eat, Pray, Love," only with hot ladyboys to turn you gay and a cigarette-smoking monkey to steal your heart. 
  
 Do you really want me to provide some whimsical effort at plot synopsis, when you and I could both be using these few seconds for something else: reading about a maid-molesting French socialist or mocking the idiotic behavior of 2012 Republican presidential "candidates" or staring out our office windows in a melancholy stupor? OK, fine, but I don't want any complaints about how boring it sounds. So the "wolf pack" from the first movie reconvenes at a luxury resort in Thailand, where doofus dentist Stu (Helms) is supposed to marry a hot Asian chick named Lauren (Jamie Chung) whose dad hates him. (I went south on this movie as soon I realized that Stu had ditched the charming Vegas hooker he married in "The Hangover.") Cooper plays the douchey, studly Phil, who acts like a jerk all the time, and Galifianakis of course is the socially inept, passive-aggressive Alan, invited along for unclear reasons, since nobody likes him at all. 
  
 There's no big bachelor party or anything, just a late-night Budweiser around the campfire. But next thing these losers know they're waking up a day or so later in a sleazy hotel room in Bangkok, accompanied by the aforementioned chain-smoking monkey in his Rolling Stones denim vest, a severed finger that seems to belong to Lauren's med-student kid brother (Mason Lee), and the sleeping nude personage of Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong), the effeminate but kick-ass gangster from the first "Hangover." Actually, I was very, very glad to see Chow, because as much of a flaming stereotype as his character is, Jeong inhabits him with a ferocity that makes him by far the funniest and most real-seeming person in the movie. 
  
 Does that sound exactly like the first "Hangover," except with the wildlife made cuter and an exotic setting that's only going to produce dumb-ass cultural clichés, and no Mike Tyson? That's all correct except that Tyson shows up at the end to perform a rap version of "One Night in Bangkok," and you'll really wish he hadn't. Once again our heroes' missing hours are not entirely explained, but this time that decision feels sloppy and slapdash in a way it didn't quite in "The Hangover." Oh, there's a drug deal gone wrong and a low-grade American mobster played by Paul Giamatti and a Buddhist monk in a wheelchair. There's a fair amount of naked male peener, and of course there's the frat-boy-centric audience's greatest fear and/or desire: anal penetration. (I've seen at least four movies in the last year that resort to this as the ultimate squirm gag: The hero might take it from behind and like it!) 
  
 Now, in fairness I should add that I didn't think the first "Hangover" was all that great either, but it had several good laughs and a profane, open-hearted American cheerfulness about it that was hard to resist. "The Hangover Part II" trades that in for a B-grade thriller atmosphere that isn't quite convincing but manages to make all three of the central so-called buddies seem like creeps who don't actually like each other and can't relate to the world. Cooper and Galifianakis, in particular, are talented-ish actors who are stuck in really bad grooves and on the verge of typecasting themselves into oblivion, the former as a male-model jerkass irresistible to certain women (i.e., the shallow ones) and the latter as a pitiable misfit who's supposed to make us laugh uproariously at his Asperger-like behavioral problems and 1988 leisure-wear wardrobe. 
  
 I suspect there was half an impulse here -- or 20 percent of an impulse -- to take the "Hangover" characters and put them in a genuinely dark and dangerous situation. That might or might not have been interesting; it isn't that great of an idea, frankly, but it's something. Then the commercial necessity of giving a huge international audience a C-minus imitation of what they've already seen took over, and we got this shockingly inept retread instead. With "Hangover Part II," the worldwide downturn in dude comedy hits its nadir. Time to chillax and recharge, bros; check out the success of "Bridesmaids"; let the ladies have a little oxygen. We can only hope. ||||| The Hangover Part II (2011) 
  
 The funniest, most reckless moments in “The Hangover Part II,” the largely mirthless sequel to the 2009 hit “ The Hangover ,” take place in the final credits, when still images flash by detailing the latest misadventures of the story’s overgrown lost boys. The outrages, most of which are once again carefully elided in the actual movie, involve a slipped knife, a tribal tattoo and Thai bar girls performing specialized party tricks. The final credits are the time when viewers meander or flee from the theater or sit in stunned or ecstatic silence or chattering communion. Here the credits just emphasize how deeply square this flick is. 
  
 Like the first movie, the new one involves a groom — here, the formerly married Stu (Ed Helms) — who, on the eve of his own wedding, experiences various forbidden pleasures. In other words, he briefly escapes his mundane reality as a nice-guy dentist before settling down with a soon-to-be wife, Lauren (Jamie Chung). As before Stu’s companions are a pretty boy, Phil (Bradley Cooper), and an odd duck, Alan (Zach Galifianakis), whose straight-man-and-dummy dynamic works along the lines of an R-rated Abbott and Costello. Stu, by contrast, is the everyman who journeys into the dark night — now, the jammed streets and clubs of Bangkok — on his way to enlightenment, though more likely another sequel. 
  
 The director Todd Phillips, who wrote the new “Hangover” with Craig Mazin and Scot Armstrong (the first was credited to Jon Lucas and Scott Moore), cleaves numbingly to the script of the previous movie. Stu, with Phil, Alan, another friend, Doug (Justin Bartha) and Stu’s teenage future brother-in-law, Teddy (Mason Lee), shares drinks, toasting his fast-approaching nuptials. A few edits later, and he, Phil and Alan are groggily waking up in a wrecked hotel room, as they did in the first movie, only this time there’s a capuchin monkey on board instead of a baby. Shrieks and panic ensue as the friends try to figure out what happened, where Teddy is and how a human finger ended up without its hand. 
  
 If you superimposed a diagram that mapped out all the narrative beats, characters and jokes in “The Hangover Part II” over one for “The Hangover,” the two would align almost perfectly. Banking on the studio adage that there’s no success like a previous box office hit, Mr. Phillips and company dutifully recycle the first movie to increasingly diminishing ends that include the baby-now-monkey, the giggly, swishy gangster Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) and the obligatory, obliging anti-wives (i.e., whores). Paul Giamatti shows up, as do Jeffrey Tambor, Mike Tyson, the director Nick Cassavetes and assorted extras filling in for monks, gangsters, strippers, merchants and gawkers. There’s a car chase, and at one point the monkey takes a computer-generated smoke, doubtless to take its mind off the movie. 
  
 Mr. Phillips throws in one good visual joke in a flashback that reveals how Alan, an overgrown child of privilege, sees himself and his friends. Mr. Galifianakis is a naturally funny screen presence, and he gives Alan a strong current of menace, turning him into a combustible teddy bear whose naïveté ignites all the trouble and serves as its convenient excuse. A walking, toddling id, the guy can’t help it, and neither can the friends he accidentally on purpose drags into his mess. In “The Hangover” and “The Hangover Part II” grown men cast off the shackles of everyday existence, leaving behind girlfriends, wives, parents and jobs in order to play, feel, live, which is why these nominal comedies are better thought of as tragedies. 
  
 “The Hangover Part II” is rated R (Under 17 not admitted without accompanying parent or adult guardian). The film features knife and car violence, vulgar and sexist language, and female and she-male club performers. 
  
 The Hangover Part II Opens on Thursday nationwide. 
  
 Directed by Todd Phillips; written by Craig Mazin, Scot Armstrong and Mr. Phillips, based on characters created by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore; director of photography, Lawrence Sher; edited by Debra Neil-Fisher and Mike Sale; music by Christophe Beck; production design by Bill Brzeski; costumes by Louise Min- genbach; produced by Mr. Phillips and Dan Goldberg; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. 
  
 WITH: Bradley Cooper (Phil), Ed Helms (Stu), Zach Galifianakis (Alan), Justin Bartha (Doug), Ken Jeong (Mr. Chow), Paul Giamatti (Kingsley), Mike Tyson (Himself), Jeffrey Tambor (Sid Garner), Mason Lee (Teddy), Jamie Chung (Lauren), Nick Cassavetes (Tattoo Joe), Sasha Barrese (Tracy) and Gillian Vigman (Stephanie). 
  
  ||||| The Hangover Part II (Warner Bros.) isn't so much a sequel to The Hangover as a slightly blurred copy. Directed, like the wildly successful first film, by Todd Phillips, it airlifts the original characters, premise, and story structure out of Vegas and plonks them down in Bangkok in near-identical form, save for a few instances of ante-upping. 
  
 Several years after their Vegas bachelor party turned into a 48-hour nightmare involving drug-laced drinks, a prostitute's missing baby, and near-fatal encounters with both Mike Tyson and his pet tiger, the four friends meet again in Thailand for the wedding of Stu (Ed Helms), a seemingly straight-laced dentist, to Lauren (Jamie Chung), a nice, pretty Thai girl. (I'd provide a more precise description of Lauren, but that's all the movie gives me to work with: She's Thai, pretty, and nice, or, as one of Stu's buddies put it, "an angel with a solid rack.") 
  
 Besides the bridegroom, Stu, the gang includes Phil (Bradley Cooper), a handsome family man with a taste for debauchery; Doug (Justin Bartha), a bland foil who hangs around waiting to take expository phone calls; and Alan (Zach Galifianakis), a socially underdeveloped weirdo who explains his living situation as follows: "I'm a stay-at-home son." Once again, Alan has been invited along only out of grudging politeness; the other guys are creeped out by his overeager insistence that their shared experience in Vegas has bonded them forever. 
  
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 The night before the wedding, for reasons that aren't revealed until much later, an innocent round of beers around a beachside fire leads to another rabbit hole of amnesia and poor decision-making. The boys wake up the next morning in a grimy Bangkok hotel room amid various clues to the previous evening's excesses: There's a clothed monkey, a severed finger in a bowl of melted ice, and a coked-up Asian gangster (Ken Jeong) who remembers them from Vegas. Worst of all, one of their cohort—the bride's naive 17-year-old brother Teddy (Mason Lee, son of the director Ang Lee) has gone missing. 
  
 The rest of the movie spirals chaotically yet formulaically into the depths of the Bangkok underworld. Tattoo parlors are visited, transsexual prostitutes consulted, Buddhist monks rescued from drunk tanks, all in the service of finding Teddy in time for the upcoming wedding. Individual lines here and there are funny (most of them Galifianakis'), and Ed Helms has perfected his outraged splutter, but this film never achieves the anarchic liftoff the first one did. I didn't love The Hangover—it fell apart a bit in the second half, and none of these performers thrills me to my bones—but even in its weaker moments, that film had more comic integrity than this blatant cash grab. The Hangover Part II's big taboo-breaking set piece (every summer comedy is required to have one now, by order of the Ministry of Tastelessness) comes when the boys meet a "ladyboy" sex worker who claims to have provided services to one of them. The degree of horror displayed by the men when s/he reveals a set of unambiguously male genitalia is more than a little off-putting. Our heroes have, at this point, faced with equanimity the prospect that a teenage boy may be hurt and irretrievably lost in the squalor of the Bangkok underworld. Is the fact that one of them may or may not have had consensual gay sex really the worst possible thing they can imagine? 
  
 In case it's not obvious, the R-rated Hangover Part II is not suitable for children (a fact ignored by a couple of morally challenged parents at the promotional screening I attended.) It's raunchy, violent, offensive to every conceivable interest group, and liberally laced with profanity and male nudity. The whole point of this franchise is to make even jaded adults laugh in shock at the outrageous behavior on display. This strategy works best in the final credit sequence, which, in another shameless lift from the original, reveals in a series of rediscovered snapshots what happened on that one wild night in Bangkok. That minute and a half of still photos packs in more dense, economical laughs than all the laborious gross-outs and chase sequences that came before. Maybe The Hangover Part III should consider restricting itself to the slide-show format. 
  
 Like Slate Culture on Facebook. Follow Slate on Twitter. |||||

Output: If the first Hangover was a wild party, the second is, well, the hangover. Critics are savaging the latest effort from Todd Phillips: Writing in Salon, Andrew O’Hehir smacks the film’s “mind-boggling awfulness.” It’s a “clumsy, homophobic, cliché-ridden, and terminally unfunny sequel” that “takes dude comedy to its Sex and the City 2 nadir.” The guy who tried (and failed) to stop the film with a lawsuit was “accidentally trying to perform a public service.”


Input: Consider Input: SYDNEY, Australia — The Endeavour set off from England in 1768 and traversed a world that sailors’ maps had yet to document. The ship bounded through the Pacific Ocean, scraping up against the Great Barrier Reef and stopping in New Zealand and Tahiti. The journey also charted parts of Australia, leading its captain, James Cook, to become regarded as a central figure in the nation’s origin story. 
  
 A decade later, the vessel sank after having been sold, renamed (as the Lord Sandwich 2) and scuttled, apparently left to anonymously join about a dozen other ships in a mass grave of wreckage off the coast of Rhode Island. 
  
 But marine archaeologists said this week that after a search that spanned decades, the remains of the Endeavour, however decrepit, may have been located. The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project said that on Friday it would detail the results of its study of what lies at the bottom of Newport Harbor, and it is expected to announce that it has narrowed down the wreckage that belongs to the storied ship. 
  
 “We can say we think we know which one it is,” Kathy Abbass, the archaeology project’s director, told Fairfax Media. ||||| Marine archaeologists believe they have found the wreckage of the famous ship off Newport, Rhode Island 
  
 The possible discovery of HMS Endeavour off the east coast of the US has been hailed as a “hugely significant moment” in Australian history, but researchers have warned they are yet to “definitively” confirm whether the wreck has been located. 
  
 On Wednesday Fairfax Media reported archaeologists from the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project, or Rimap, had pinpointed the final resting place of the famous vessel in which Captain James Cook reached Australia in 1770. 
  
 The ship was later used by the Royal Navy in the American war of independence and was eventually scuttled with a dozen other vessels off Newport, Rhode Island in 1778. 
  
 Endeavour by Peter Moore review – the ship that changed the world Read more 
  
 Kathy Abbass, the director of the project, reportedly told Fairfax that “we can say we think we know which one it is”. 
  
 The director of the Australian National Maritime Museum, Kevin Sumption, confirmed to the Guardian that a “promising site” had been located, though he said it had yet to be confirmed as the final resting place of the Endeavour. 
  
 He said divers in the US were currently working to confirm whether one of five shipwrecks is the Endeavour by gathering samples from the location. 
  
 “It’s not definitive that this is Endeavour,” he said. “We’re carefully gathering very specific samples of timber and we’re going to conduct forensic analysis to see what we have. Most of the ships that were scuttled in Newport in August 1778 were built of American or Indian timbers [but] the Endeavour was built in the north of England of predominantly oak. 
  
 “With some good detective work we can sample the timbers of this promising site [and] then we might have evidence that this ship is at least British in origin.” 
  
 Cook departed Plymouth in August 1768, and in April 1770 the Endeavour became the first European ship to reach the east coast of Australia when Cook arrived at what is now known as Botany Bay. 
  
 The ship was renamed the Lord Sandwich 2 and in its later life was used by the British as a prison for Americans captured during the war of independence. 
  
 It was scuttled in 1778 along with 12 other ships to act as a blockade in the lead up to the battle of Rhode Island. 
  
 Sumption said divers believed the wreck may be the missing Endeavour because of the dimensions of the timber samples found at the bottom of the harbour. 
  
 “Basically what we know is the size of the Endeavour hull [and] a ship of that type uses certain dimensions of timber,” he said. “We’ve found samples that look like they may be consistent with a ship of that size.” 
  
 If the timber samples turned out to be British in origin, the researchers would seek approval from local authorities in the US to dig around the wreckage to seek further evidence. 
  
 The search for the Endeavour is a joint project between RIMAP and the Australian National Maritime Museum. 
  
 On its website Rimap published a statement saying they had “identified a possible site in Newport Harbour that might be the Lord Sandwich ex Endeavour” but that it required “detailed work … to prove it”. 
  
 The Rhode Island state government also claimed official ownership of the fleet of shipwrecks in 1999, and while Sumption said it would be “hugely significant” to find the Endeavour, it would be “very, very unlikely” the wreck would be in a condition to travel to Australia. 
  
 “What we can see on the seabed in Rhode Island is that all the 13 wrecks look somewhat similar, they really are a jumbled collection of timbers and stone ballast,” he said. 
  
 “It’s very unlikely that significant parts of the vessel are intact, so the chances are that all you really have are samples of timber and if we’re very lucky maybe materials which relate to its last use as a prison ship.” 
  
 The Australia National Museum is planning an exhibition to mark the 250th anniversary of Cook’s arrival in Australia in 2020. 
  
 Ian Coates, the director of the exhibition, said it was an “amazingly timely discovery”. 
  
 “We have a tendency to think the story stops when the Endeavour leaves Australian waters, but to think about what it did back in England in 1771 and on to the east coast of the US, it’s fascinating.” 
  
 He said he held out hope some part of the wreckage could make it to Australian shores again. 
  
 “In a museum you’re aware of the power of objects to take people back to the moment when these things are used or created,” he said. “To have something like the Endeavour as part of the story of the Cook voyage would be amazing.” 
  
 • This article was amended on 20 September 2018 to correct the title of the Royal Navy. ||||| New York: Marine archaeologists believe they have finally identified the resting place of HMB Endeavour, the ship James Cook commanded to Australia on his first voyage of discovery, an achievement that would solve one of the greatest maritime mysteries of all time. 
  
 The breakthrough has raised hopes the remains of the vessel will be excavated next year, in time for the 250th anniversary of Cook's arrival in Australia. The ship is historically significant to many countries - including the US, Britain, New Zealand and Australia - and its excavation could spark a battle over where the wreckage should be housed. 
  
 A painting of HMS Endeavour, which researchers believe they have discovered off the coast of the United States. 
  
 The Rhode Island state government claimed official ownership of the fleet of shipwrecks including Endeavour in 1999, suggesting Australian officials would have to negotiate for any remnants to be brought to Australia. 
  
 The breakthrough, to be officially announced on Friday, follows an arduous 25-year search for the historic ship off Newport, Rhode Island, on the north-eastern coast of the US. |||||

Output: Americans know the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria; in Australia, the Endeavour is the ship that's burned into memory. It set sail from Plymouth, England, in 1768 with Captain James Cook at the helm and was in 1770 the first European ship to chart parts of Australia during Cook's round-the-world voyage. Now, what the Sydney Morning Herald calls "one of the greatest maritime mysteries of all time" may have been solved: the ship's final resting place. It's long been known that the Endeavour came to rest off the coast of Rhode Island; the New York Times reports the ship was used by the British during the Revolutionary War and then sunk as a means of thwarting French ships coming to assist the Americans. For the last 25 years, it has been believed to be one of 13 wrecks, and in 2016, that group was narrowed to five. Now, "we can say we think we know which one it is," says the head of the Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project. RIMAP on Friday released the results of its study, which reportedly centers around a site off Goat Island in Narragansett Bay in Newport. But the Guardian sounds a note of caution, quoting the director of the Australian National Maritime Museum as saying a confirmation has not yet happened, and that divers are retrieving timber samples that will hopefully provide verification that the ship is British in origin. The Morning Herald notes the ship was constructed from oak and pine, and it's not clear how much of it has survived after two centuries underwater.


Input: Consider Input: Netanyahu says he is ready to return to negotiations with PA "today"; Olmert says Gov’t has bolstered Hamas and weakened PA. 
  
 Photo: Wikicommons 
  
 President Shimon Peres called his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, on Sunday, as Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and right-wing politicians continued to criticize Abbas’s plea for renewed negotiations based on the pre-1967 lines. 
  
 Both former prime minister Ehud Olmert and former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, who each negotiated with Abbas, confirmed that his comments to Channel 2 on Friday night, were consistent with what he had told them during their talks. 
  
 Abbas appeared to give up on the “right of return” to Israel for Palestinian refugees and their descendants when a final-status agreement is reached. 
  
 Olmert said Netanyahu, former US president George W. Bush and former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice all knew this. 
  
 Under Netanyahu’s government, Olmert said, negotiations had been frozen and there had been an effort to prove to the Israeli public that there was no partner for peace. 
  
 “The government has taken steps to strengthen Hamas and to weaken the PA, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, an organization which espouses nonviolence and negotiations for peace,” Olmert said. 
  
 “This kind of policy toward the only possible peace partner between us and the Palestinians is irresponsible and harms the vital interests of the State of Israel. The interviews that Abbas gave in recent days are proof to the Israeli public that we have somebody to talk to in order to end this bloody conflict between our nations, which has lasted far too long,” the former prime minister continued. 
  
 Abbas later told Egyptian television that he upheld the “right of return,” but that he was free to state his personal opinion, that he did not believe he would live in the Galilee city of Safed where he was born. 
  
 At the weekly Sunday cabinet meeting, Netanyahu dismissed the significance of Abbas’s remarks and urged him to immediately hold peace talks with Israel. 
  
 “I watched President Abbas’s interview over the weekend. I have heard that he has already managed to go back on his remarks,” the prime minister said. 
  
 “This only proves the importance of direct negotiations without preconditions. 
  
 Generally, I can say that if Abu Mazen [Abbas] is really serious and intends to advance peace, as far as I am concerned, we can sit together immediately. Jerusalem and Ramallah are only seven minutes apart; I am ready to start negotiations today,” Netanyahu said. 
  
 He also took issue with Abbas’s statement that the Palestinian Authority planned to ask the UN General Assembly this month to upgrade its status to that of a non-member state. 
  
 “Peace may be advanced only around the negotiating table and not via unilateral decisions in the UN General Assembly, which will only push peace further away and will only lead to instability,” Netanyahu said. 
  
 A Israeli official added that such a step would be a fundamental breach of the Oslo Accords, in which the Palestinians committed themselves to resolve all issues through negotiations. 
  
 If the Palestinians made good on their threat to head to the UN, Israel would be forced to respond, the official said. 
  
 It could lead to a chain of events that would create instability in the area, the official added. 
  
 Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz warned that Israel could withhold the transfer of tax funds to the PA. 
  
 Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman called Abbas a “liar” and accused him of interfering in the Israeli election. 
  
 “Abbas is interfering, to the benefit of the Left, [Labor chairwoman] Shelly Yacimovich and [Meretz chairwoman] Zehava Gal-On, who represent Palestinian interests in Israel,” Liberman told Army Radio. 
  
 “Let’s compare what he said just two months ago to the UN General Assembly, or last year to that same body. Or what he says in Arabic and not in English,” the foreign minister said. 
  
 He added that Abbas had spoken of Israeli actions as “land theft” and “crimes against humanity.” Abbas called suicide bombers who killed Israelis “heroes,” Liberman said. 
  
 Abbas had not given up on the “right of return” and had no intention to do so, he said. 
  
 A number of Likud ministers and MKs also spoke against Abbas and Olmert. 
  
 Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar accused Olmert of complicating matters for Israel by offering Abbas far-reaching concessions during his tenure as prime minister, including agreeing to an Israeli withdrawal to the June 4, 1967, lines and the partition of Jerusalem as part of a peace deal, which Abbas now considers a baseline for negotiations. 
  
 Sa’ar said it was “outrageous” that Olmert had “not leveled even one word of criticism at the Palestinian Authority despite [Abbas’s] deliberate refusal for four years to negotiate with Israel.” 
  
 Likud MK Danny Danon said Olmert had no right to criticize the government, given that he was recently convicted of breach of trust and in light of his past leadership failures. 
  
 “If Olmert wants to protect the security of Israel, then he should remain outside the political system so as not to cause any more damage,” Danon said. 
  
 Olmert is considering running in January’s election, but does not plan to decide until November 15. 
  
 Defense Minister Ehud Barak defended Abbas in an interview with Army Radio, saying the Palestinian president “is not joining ‘Likud Beytenu’ and not Zionist youth movements, because he is the Palestinian leader, but you can’t say we have no partner with [Abbas].” 
  
 In an interview on Channel 2 on Sunday night, Livni blamed Netanyahu for the lack of trust that has existed between the two sides for the past four years. 
  
 She said that one needed only to look at the sound bites of blame that had come out of his government in response to Abbas’s interview. 
  
 She charged that Liberman was leading a campaign to topple Abbas, something that would only strengthen it. 
  
 This was bad for Israel’s security, Livni said. 
  
 “Anyone who is interested in preserving a secure Jewish, democratic state, including those on the Right, must embrace what [Abbas] said in the interview, that he wants to end the conflict on the basis of the principle of two states,” Livni said. 
  
 “We have become a nation where peace has become a dirty word. Anyone who speaks of an agreement has become a delusional leftist. I represent the Israelis who want to live here with security in a Jewish nation,” Livni said. 
  
 Peace Now plans to project text from Abbas’s on the wall of the Likud Party headquarters in Tel Aviv on Monday evening. 
  
 Greer Fay Cashman and Lahav Harkov contributed to this report. ||||| The controversy could further complicate Mr. Abbas’s planned bid for nonmember statehood at the United Nations General Assembly this month, a move that has generated intense opposition from Israel and the United States but that has failed to generate much enthusiasm among his own people. His popularity had already nose-dived over the past year amid a stalemate in the peace process, severe budgetary shortfalls, a worsening rift with the rival Hamas faction that controls Gaza and growing dissent within his own party, Fatah. 
  
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 “He has been doing many mistakes, and this is one of them — his vocabulary was totally wrong,” said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, chairman of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, based in Jerusalem. “He underestimated the reaction; he underestimated the anger and the frustration in the society; he underestimated his constituency. It’s very clear that he’s not the hero, he’s not the liberator, he’s not the leader.” 
  
 There are about five million Palestinians scattered around the world who are descendants of the 750,000 who lost homes during the war that led to Israel’s establishment, many of them still clutching keys in hopes of someday returning. But Israelis see such ambitions as an existential threat to their state, and negotiators have tried to distinguish the moral question of the “right of return” from the practical one. Documents released in 2011 show that the two sides have traded numbers about how many Palestinians would be allowed into Israel, ranging from 5,000 to 100,000, and that Mr. Abbas himself said in 2009 that “it is illogical to ask Israel to take five million, or indeed one million.” 
  
 Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al Azhar University in Gaza City, said Palestinians “are willing to make big compromises on the right of return,” but only in exchange for a state along the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital (a point that Mr. Abbas emphasized in the television interview, though it was largely lost in the frenzy over his Safed remark). 
  
 “Unless there is a final peace settlement with Israel,” said Mr. Abusada, himself the child of refugees from a village near the Gaza Strip, “they are going to keep holding onto these keys, to keep holding onto these memories.” 
  
 Khalil Shikaki, director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, in the West Bank, said his polls had consistently shown that a majority of Palestinians would support a deal in which only a fraction of the refugees, 100,000 or 150,000, were allowed back. But 30 percent see the right of return as their “most vital goal,” second only to the establishment of a Palestinian state, according to the most recent survey, in September. 
  
 “This is a battle over narrative,” Mr. Shikaki explained. “Normally when people say something along the lines of what he said, they would distinguish that from the right of return. He’s now essentially given Hamas an opportunity to try and use this occasion to mobilize against him.” 
  
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 Hamas seized it. The party’s prime minister, Ismail Haniya, called Mr. Abbas’s remarks “extremely dangerous,” and hundreds of Hamas’s supporters took to the streets in Gaza on Saturday evening, carrying banners reading “Abbas does not represent me,” and “Pioneer of concessions, it’s time to quit.” Some burned posters showing Mr. Abbas with Israel’s current and former prime ministers. 
  
 In Jordan, the Islamic Action Front, the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood, called Mr. Abbas’s statements “grave and unprecedented.” From London, Abdel Bari Atwan, the editor of Al Quds Al Arabi, wrote a column under the headline “Please Do Not Speak on Our Behalf.” 
  
 “How can we expect President Abbas to defend the right to return seriously and faithfully while he himself disbelieves it and has no intention to achieve it for himself and for his children and grandchildren?” asked Mr. Atwan, who was born in a refugee camp. “This is our land and this is our right; and thus, we demand him not to speak on our behalf if he does not wish to be one of us.” 
  
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 Although Mr. Abbas may have damaged himself among his own people, he did succeed in what many believed was the goal of the interview with Channel 2 News: inserting the Palestinian question into Israel’s election campaign, which has so far been more about Iran and domestic social issues. His tone was far more conciliatory than his United Nations speech on Sept. 27, when he accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and apartheid. 
  
 President Shimon Peres, who is being courted to challenge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, issued an unusual Saturday-night statement calling the comments “courageous” and Mr. Abbas “a real partner for peace.” Mr. Netanyahu, in turn, said there was “no connection” between the statements and Mr. Abbas’s “actual actions,” asserting that he had refused to negotiate. 
  
 On Sunday, Israeli leaders from the right and left rushed to radio programs to either denounce or embrace Mr. Abbas’s comments: Uzi Landau of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, which recently struck a partnership with Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party, called Mr. Abbas “a serial trickster, an obsessive liar,” while Amir Peretz of the Labor Party said Mr. Abbas had given “some sign to the Israeli public to make it clear to them that there is a partner” for peace. 
  
 Two centrist politicians who are considering political comebacks — Ehud Olmert, a former prime minister, and Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister — each used the remarks to contrast their productive negotiations with Mr. Abbas with Mr. Netanyahu’s stalemate. 
  
 Yossi Alpher, co-editor of a Web site on the conflict that recently shut down, bitterlemons.net, said that on a “metaphoric level” Mr. Abbas had “offered Israelis a genuine concession.” 
  
 The interview, in which Mr. Abbas also vowed that there would not be another violent Palestinian uprising, was a “fairly obvious attempt to present a more moderate point of view in hopes of strengthening the Israeli left and center,” Mr. Alpher said. “The test will be whether he is consistent and whether this is part of a more general campaign to present a softer Palestinian negotiating position.” |||||

Show your work and conclude with the exact phrasing "Therefore, the final answer is [answer]." where [answer] is just the final number or expression that solves the problem.
user
Output: Protests broke out across the Gaza Strip this weekend, with angry Palestinians burning Mahmoud Abbas' picture in protest, as pundits and rival politicians denounced him as a traitor, all over what, to an outside observer, might sound like less-than-outrageous remarks. In a Friday interview on Israeli TV, Abbas was asked if he'd want to return to the northern Israeli city he was born in. Only to visit, Abbas replied; he wouldn't want to live in Israel. Palestinians read the remark as a concession on the emotional "right of return" issue, the New York Times explains—Palestinians want the right to return to their pre-1948 homelands. Abbas yesterday clarified that he was speaking personally, and that the rights of refugees were "a sacred matter," but the topic had already caught fire, and could complicate his bid for UN recognition. Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the remarks as unimportant, the Jerusalem Post reports. "This only proves the importance of direct negotiations without preconditions," he said. "I am ready to start negotiations today."


