Israel parade goes on amid rising tensions

New York's Fifth Avenue was awash in the blue and white of the Israeli flag for yesterday's Celebrate Israel Parade, whose mood reflected rising tensions in the Mideast this year.

"We've always been saying, we're ready to negotiate," said Yuli Yoel Edelstein, Israel's minister of information and Diaspora, and grand marshal of this year's march. "But the Palestinians have a unilateral approach; this is not the way you reach statehood."

Thousands of marchers stepped off at 57th Street Sunday, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, followed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, and Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer.

Notably absent was U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, who has struggled to explain how a photo of a man's crotch in boxer briefs had been posted to his Twitter account and sent to a 21-year-old female student in Seattle.

Organizers say the annual parade, which started in 1964, is the largest in the world celebrating the founding of the Jewish state in 1948.

In recent months, "Arab Spring" uprisings and the formation of a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas dimmed hopes of renewed peace talks.

Sunday, Israeli troops battled hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters who tried to burst across Syria's frontier with the Golan Heights, reportedly killing 20 people. Scores more were wounded in the second outbreak of deadly violence in the border area in less than a month.

President Barack Obama has said Israel's boundaries before the 1967 Mideast war should be the starting point for talks on future borders.