So much for President Obama's Foreign Policy. I guess John Kerry won't be getting the Nobel Peace Prize this year. He and Obama should remember who gave the land to the Jews. And He is not very happy with either one or their liberal friends.Deputy Education Minister Avi Wortzman (Jewish Home) sharply criticized the Palestinian Authority (PA) on Friday for making endless demands to continue peace talks.
Avi Wortzman
''They demanded independence, and we gave it to them. They demanded recognition of a Palestinian state, and we gave it to them. They demanded weapons and we gave them to them. They demanded Hevron, and we gave it to them. They demanded Gaza, and we gave it to them. They demanded terrorist releases, and we gave it to them, again and again," Wortzman fired.
"In response: we received attacks, we received wounded and dead, we received damage to our economy," he continued. "Now they're coming back and demanding we withdraw to '67 borders, with eastern Jerusalem as their capital."
Wortzman rejected the PA's demands.
"If we do it, G-d forbid, what will they ask for tomorrow? It's time to demand that we stop giving," he stated. "It's time to put our existential needs and our security before their demands."
"The time has come to say it clearly: this is our country. Ours - period."
On Thursday, the PA imposed seven new conditions on peace with Israel. According to chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat, these conditions are:
1. A written letter from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in which he gives a commitment that the Palestinian state will be established and that its capital will be eastern Jerusalem.Responding to Erekat, Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett wrote on his Facebook page, “You wanted a commitment? Here it is: Eastern Jerusalem will never be your capital.”
2. The release of 1,200 terrorists, which the PA says was agreed upon when Ehud Olmert was prime minister. These include multiple-murderer Marwan Barghouti, PFLP leader Ahmed Saadat, and Fuad al-Shubaki, who was responsible for the attempt to smuggle a huge amount of arms into Gaza on board the Karine A.
3. Implementation of the agreement on checkpoints and removal of the siege on Gaza.
4. The return of the Church of Nativity expellees.
The IDF besieged the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem April 2 to May 10, 2002, as part of Operation Defensive Shield, after 39 terrorists had holed up there. The terrorists took shelter in the famous church, and used about 40 priests and nuns as a shield, knowing Israel would not take a chance on inadvertently hurting priests and nuns. The siege was ended through an agreement that involved exiling the terrorists to other countries.
5. The granting of full Israeli citizenship to 15,000 Palestinian Arabs in a process of family reunification.
6. A halt to construction in eastern Jerusalem and the reopening of PA institutions there which have been closed down by Israel.
7. No more entry by IDF forces into areas under PA control, no more arrests and eliminations, and the handing over of Area C to PA control.
SOURCE
From Frontpage Magazine:I contend that the destruction of Israel and the scattering/murder of the Jewish people is and has always been the plan that Obama and the Democrats have had.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has flatly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Such recognition is a key condition that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded for reaching an acceptable peace agreement on a two-state solution with the Palestinians.
Prime Minister Netanyahu explained the importance of such Palestinian recognition, which would amount to an expression of the Palestinians’ good faith intention to truly end the conflict by accepting Israel’s right of self-determination to once and for all live in peace as the Jewish state its founders envisioned:
“The central question at the end is of course ‘Are you willing to recognize that the state of Israel is the nation state of the Jewish nation?’. If you don’t have the brunt of the agreement, then why turn to the leftovers. Concentrate on the central and difficult questions that they need to provide an answer for, but they don’t provide an answer. If they do give an answer — its negative. They say that they will not recognize a Jewish state in order to leave the right of return on the table. So then what are we even talking about here? That a Palestinian state will be established but it will continue its conflict against the state of Israel with more preferential borders? We are a lot of things, but we are definitely not fools.”Incredibly, the U.S. State Department backs Abbas’ position. The spokeswoman for the State Department, Jen Psaki, stated in an interview Saturday with the “Al-Quds” newspaper that “[T]here is no need for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The American stance is clear in that it recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, but there is no need for the Palestinians to recognize it as such in a final agreement.”
Psaki is ignoring the Palestinians’ intent to throw out any Israelis still living in an independent Palestinian state. Abbas, for example, declared that “If we want an independent state, I will not accept any single Israeli in our territories.” He denied that he was against the Jews per se, but such antipathy is precisely what animates the xenophobic, anti-Jewish Palestinian ideology. This ideology starts with the Palestinian Authority’s attempt to falsely re-write the history of the Jewish homeland, denying that Jews have any historic connection to the land at all. Official Palestinian Authority outlets broadcast this lie over and over again. For example, in a documentary appearing last December on an official Palestinian Authority TV station, a woman proclaimed: “I’m not against Jews. They can live. They can live on Mars, Allah willing, but they cannot take over places that are not their places, or land that is not their land and a homeland that is not their homeland.”
On January 7, 2014, the official spokesperson for President Abbas, Nabil Abu Rudeina, accused the Israeli government of “falsifying history.”
Then there is the provocative statement by Palestinian Authority Minister of Religious Affairs Mahmoud Al-Habbash in a sermon delivered in the presence of Abbas and broadcast on official Palestinian Authority TV. Al-Habbash said that any peace agreement reached with Israel is just the first step towards defeating Israel, citing as the “model” Mohammed’s conquest of Mecca just two years after he had signed a treaty that gave his forces time to gain enough strength to carry out the conquest.
Recognizing Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state would be contrary to the Palestinians’ goal of returning millions of the descendants of the original refugees to pre-1967 Israel. In other words, while insisting that Israel withdraw to the pre-1967 lines to make way for an independent Palestinian state devoid of any Israeli Jews, the Palestinians still demand the right to undermine the Jewish character of Israel, even as it existed pre-1967, by flooding Israel with so-called “refugees” (actually many descendants several generations removed from the original refugees) rather than giving them real homes in an independent Palestinian state.
Thus, Psaki’s dismissal of the importance that Israel attaches to the Palestinians’ recognition of Israel as a Jewish state, as part of any viable peace agreement, enables the Palestinians to continue to pursue their xenophobic, anti-Jewish agenda. However, Psaki is simply reflecting the Obama administration’s willingness to turn a blind eye to Israel’s core concern to maintain its Jewish identity. The Obama administration is willing to bend over backwards to accommodate Palestinian prejudices in pursuit of a vacuous peace. President Obama displayed this callousness during the course of an interview he conducted late last month with Jeffrey Goldberg, a columnist for Bloomberg View. Obama issued a veiled threat of diminished U.S. support for the Jewish state if Israel does not succumb to his demand for more concessions: “If you see no peace deal and continued aggressive settlement construction — and we have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we’ve seen in a very long time,” Obama said. “If Palestinians come to believe that the possibility of a contiguous sovereign Palestinian state is no longer within reach, then our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited.”
Obama made no mention of the Palestinian demand for the “right of return,” which could allow potentially millions of refugee descendants to descend on a land they did not come from in the first place. Why doesn’t he publicly upbraid Abbas for refusing to concede on this unreasonable destabilizing demand?
This brings us back to the issue of the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state as part of a final peace agreement. Perhaps there is an alternative solution which might be difficult for the Palestinians to refuse. They should at least be willing to explicitly acknowledge in the final agreement their support of the two-state principle declared in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 recommending the partition of Palestine into independent Arab and Jewish states. The Palestinian Authority would have a hard time refusing this proposal since the General Assembly resolution according it observer state status at the UN contains in its preamble the words “The General Assembly…Recalling its resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947.”
Moreover, the Application of the State of Palestine for admission to membership in the United Nations, which the Palestinians submitted to the UN Secretary General on September 23, 2011, states as follows:
“This application for membership is being submitted based on the Palestinian people’s natural, legal and historic rights and based on United Nations General Assembly resolution 181 (II) of 29 November 1947…”Part II of Resolution 181 contains Section A, entitled “THE ARAB STATE,” and Section B, entitled “THE JEWISH STATE.” Why can’t Abbas at least be willing to repeat these headings in an acknowledgment of the rights accorded both sides in the two-state solution embodied in Resolution 181, the resolution he now relies on as a basis for an independent Palestinian state?
Finally, President Abbas himself said he realized that it was a mistake for the Arab states to have rejected the General Assembly Resolution 181 partition plan. In an interview in 2011 with the Israeli Channel Two, President Abbas said: “At that time, 1947, there was Resolution 181, the partition plan, Palestine and Israel. Israel existed. Palestine diminished. Why? […] I know, I know. It was our mistake. It was our mistake. It was an Arab mistake as a whole.”
What the Obama administration should be telling President Abbas in no uncertain terms is to correct the Palestinians’ historic mistake once and for all by explicitly embracing the principle of a Jewish state and an Arab state living side by side, as outlined in Resolution 181. It is time to call Abbas’ bluff rather than having the State Department run interference for him.
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Fatah central committee member Mohammad Ishtayyeh said on Thursday that the Palestinian Authority had attempted to negotiate the return of Palestinian refugees from Syria, but Israel had refused.What really happened, from AP, January 10, 2013:
Ishtayyeh said in a meeting with diplomats organized by the Heinrich Böll Foundation in Ramallah that the PA had tried with all its might to "end the suffering" of Palestinians in Syria through international mediation.
Israeli officials, however, had refused to allow them to come to the Palestinian territories.
The Palestinian president said he has rejected a conditional Israeli offer to let Palestinian refugees in war-torn Syria resettle in the West Bank and Gaza, charging it would compromise their claims to return to lost homes in Israel.Hundreds of Syrian Palestinians have died since then. And it is all because Abbas didn't even give them the choice to live. His "principles" are more important than their lives.
Abbas said he asked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon last month to seek Israeli permission to bring Palestinians caught in Syria's civil war to the Palestinian territories. The request came after fighting between Syrian troops and rebel fighters in Yarmouk, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Syria. About half of the camp's 150,000 residents have fled, according to a U.N. aid agency.
Abbas told a group of Egyptian journalists in Cairo late Wednesday that Ban contacted Israel on his behalf.
Abbas said Ban was told Israel "agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee ... sign a statement that he doesn't have the right of return (to Israel)."
"So we rejected that and said it's better they die in Syria than give up their right of return," Abbas told the group. Some of his comments were published Thursday by the Palestinian news website Sama.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the White House tomorrow, President Barack Obama will tell him that his country could face a bleak future -- one of international isolation and demographic disaster -- if he refuses to endorse a U.S.-drafted framework agreement for peace with the Palestinians. Obama will warn Netanyahu that time is running out for Israel as a Jewish-majority democracy. And the president will make the case that Netanyahu, alone among Israelis, has the strength and political credibility to lead his people away from the precipice.I think it is time that Netanyahu reminds Obama what happened the last time Jerusalem was divided. How the Arabs shot at Israeli civilians from the walls of the Old City, creating a No-Man's Land between the two parts. Of how no Jew was allowed to worship at the Kotel. Of how one CANNOT defend a land only 9 miles wide.
In an hour long interview Thursday in the Oval Office, Obama, borrowing from the Jewish sage Rabbi Hillel, told me that his message to Netanyahu will be this: “If not now, when? And if not you, Mr. Prime Minister, then who?” He then took a sharper tone, saying that if Netanyahu “does not believe that a peace deal with the Palestinians is the right thing to do for Israel, then he needs to articulate an alternative approach." He added, "It’s hard to come up with one that’s plausible.”
Unlike Netanyahu, Obama will not address the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group, this week -- the administration is upset with AIPAC for, in its view, trying to subvert American-led nuclear negotiations with Iran. In our interview, the president, while broadly supportive of Israel and a close U.S.-Israel relationship, made statements that would be met at an Aipac convention with cold silence.
Obama was blunter about Israel’s future than I've ever heard him. His language was striking, but of a piece with observations made in recent months by his secretary of state, John Kerry, who until this interview, had taken the lead in pressuring both Netanyahu and the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, to agree to a framework deal. Obama made it clear that he views Abbas as the most politically moderate leader the Palestinians may ever have. It seemed obvious to me that the president believes that the next move is Netanyahu’s.
“There comes a point where you can’t manage this anymore, and then you start having to make very difficult choices,” Obama said. “Do you resign yourself to what amounts to a permanent occupation of the West Bank? Is that the character of Israel as a state for a long period of time? Do you perpetuate, over the course of a decade or two decades, more and more restrictive policies in terms of Palestinian movement? Do you place restrictions on Arab-Israelis in ways that run counter to Israel’s traditions?”
During the interview, which took place a day before the Russian military incursion into Ukraine, Obama argued that American adversaries, such as Iran, Syria and Russia itself, still believe that he is capable of using force to advance American interests, despite his reluctance to strike Syria last year after President Bashar al-Assad crossed Obama's chemical-weapons red line.
“We’ve now seen 15 to 20 percent of those chemical weapons on their way out of Syria with a very concrete schedule to get rid of the rest,” Obama told me. “That would not have happened had the Iranians said, ‘Obama’s bluffing, he’s not actually really willing to take a strike.’ If the Russians had said, ‘Ehh, don’t worry about it, all those submarines that are floating around your coastline, that’s all just for show.’ Of course they took it seriously! That’s why they engaged in the policy they did.”
I returned to this particularly sensitive subject. “Just to be clear,” I asked, “You don’t believe the Iranian leadership now thinks that your ‘all options are on the table’ threat as it relates to their nuclear program -- you don’t think that they have stopped taking that seriously?”
Obama answered: “I know they take it seriously.”
How do you know? I asked. “We have a high degree of confidence that when they look at 35,000 U.S. military personnel in the region that are engaged in constant training exercises under the direction of a president who already has shown himself willing to take military action in the past, that they should take my statements seriously,” he replied. “And the American people should as well, and the Israelis should as well, and the Saudis should as well.”
I asked the president if, in retrospect, he should have provided more help to Syria’s rebels earlier in their struggle. “I think those who believe that two years ago, or three years ago, there was some swift resolution to this thing had we acted more forcefully, fundamentally misunderstand the nature of the conflict in Syria and the conditions on the ground there,” Obama said. “When you have a professional army that is well-armed and sponsored by two large states who have huge stakes in this, and they are fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict -- the notion that we could have, in a clean way that didn’t commit U.S. military forces, changed the equation on the ground there was never true.”
He portrayed his reluctance to involve the U.S. in the Syrian civil war as a direct consequence of what he sees as America’s overly militarized engagement in the Muslim world: “There was the possibility that we would have made the situation worse rather than better on the ground, precisely because of U.S. involvement, which would have meant that we would have had the third, or, if you count Libya, the fourth war in a Muslim country in the span of a decade.”
Obama was adamant that he was correct to fight a congressional effort to impose more time-delayed sanctions on Iran just as nuclear negotiations were commencing: “There’s never been a negotiation in which at some point there isn’t some pause, some mechanism to indicate possible good faith,” he said. “Even in the old Westerns or gangster movies, right, everyone puts their gun down just for a second. You sit down, you have a conversation; if the conversation doesn’t go well, you leave the room and everybody knows what’s going to happen and everybody gets ready. But you don’t start shooting in the middle of the room during the course of negotiations.” He said he remains committed to keeping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and seemed unworried by reports that Iran's economy is improving.
On the subject of Middle East peace, Obama told me that the U.S.'s friendship with Israel is undying, but he also issued what I took to be a veiled threat: The U.S., though willing to defend an isolated Israel at the United Nations and in other international bodies, might soon be unable to do so effectively.
“If you see no peace deal and continued aggressive settlement construction -- and we have seen more aggressive settlement construction over the last couple years than we’ve seen in a very long time,” Obama said. “If Palestinians come to believe that the possibility of a contiguous sovereign Palestinian state is no longer within reach, then our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited.”
We also spent a good deal of time talking about the unease the U.S.'s Sunni Arab allies feel about his approach to Iran, their traditional adversary. I asked the president, “What is more dangerous: Sunni extremism or Shia extremism?”
I found his answer revelatory. He did not address the issue of Sunni extremism. Instead he argued in essence that the Shiite Iranian regime is susceptible to logic, appeals to self-interest and incentives.
“I’m not big on extremism generally,” Obama said. “I don’t think you’ll get me to choose on those two issues. What I’ll say is that if you look at Iranian behavior, they are strategic, and they’re not impulsive. They have a worldview, and they see their interests, and they respond to costs and benefits. And that isn’t to say that they aren’t a theocracy that embraces all kinds of ideas that I find abhorrent, but they’re not North Korea. They are a large, powerful country that sees itself as an important player on the world stage, and I do not think has a suicide wish, and can respond to incentives.”
This view puts him at odds with Netanyahu's understanding of Iran. In an interview after he won the premiership, the Israeli leader described the Iranian leadership to me as “a messianic apocalyptic cult.”
I asked Obama if he understood why his policies make the leaders of Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries nervous: “I think that there are shifts that are taking place in the region that have caught a lot of them off guard,” he said. "I think change is always scary."
Below is a complete transcript of our conversation. I’ve condensed my questions. The president’s answers are reproduced in full.
Finish reading here.
In its annual survey of American Jewry published last October, the American Jewish Committee found that 75 percent of American Jews agree with the statement, “The goal of the Arabs is not a peaceful two-state agreement with Israel, but rather the destruction of Israel.”I personally do not support the 2 state solution. The Fakistinians don't want a separate nation. They want Israel. They have vowed to destroy Israel and murder every Jew in the world. Yet our President demands that the Jews commit suicide to appease his Muslim masters.
And yet, American Jews supported the establishment of a Palestinian state 50% to 47%.
Next week over 10,000 predominantly Jewish Americansupporters of Israel will gather in Washington at AIPAC’s annual policy conference. Given their high commitment to Israel, probably most of those gathered belong to the 47% of American Jews who opposed Palestinian statehood.
Yet at the conference they will embrace the two-state formula. And on March 4 they will go up to Capitol Hill and tell their representatives that they support it.
They will do so not because they are addled. They will do so because for the past 20 years all they have heard is that Israel has no alternative to the two-state plan.
Israel’s fervent and committed supporters at AIPAC have been told that Israel needs a Palestinian state more than the PLO does. Only by bringing such a state into existence in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem can Israel get the Palestinian demographic albatross off its neck.
These committed supporters of the Jewish state have been sternly lectured that Israel is doomed if it doesn’t give the Palestinians an outlet for their political impulses outside of Israel, because within a year or two there will be more Palestinians than Israelis west of the Jordan.
The same day AIPAC’s delegates meet with members of both houses of Congress, my new book, The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East will be released by Crown Forum, a division of Random House.
In my book, I show that the demographic time bomb is a dud, and a malicious one at that.
In 1997, the head of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics Hassan Abu Libdeh told The New York Times that he was carrying out a census which would serve as a “civil intifada,” that is, as a statistical terror assault.
And he was right. The goal of terrorism is to force a target population to take actions it otherwise would not have taken. The goal of statistical warfare is to manipulate numbers to coerce a target society into taking actions that it would otherwise not take.
The Palestinian census claimed that by 2015, Arabs would be the majority west of the Jordan River. And once Jews were the minority, the Arabs could destroy Israel just by demanding the vote.
The Clinton administration, the US Jewish leadership and the Israeli Left rushed to embrace the findings, even though they were totally inconsistent with annual Palestinian population surveys the Israeli military government conducted from 1967 through 1996.
All crowed that true, the PLO still supports terrorism, but if Israel didn’t cough up the territories, it would be demographically overwhelmed.
It took seven years until an independent group of Israeli and American researchers studied the PLO data and exposed the fraud at their foundation. The American- Israeli Demographic Research Group showed that the Palestinian data inflated the Arab population by a whopping 50 percent.
The news for Israel has only gotten better in the intervening years. The Jewish fertility rate has increased as the Palestinian rates have collapsed along with those of the Muslim world as a whole. Israeli Jews now have higher fertility rates than the Arabs of Judea and Samaria, (3.04 vs. 2.91 children per woman). Israel’s immigration rate is high and rising. Palestinian emigration rates have skyrocketed over the past decade.
The demographic good news has percolated throughout Israeli society. And with the news, more and more Israeli politicians have come to favor applying Israeli law to all or parts of Judea and Samaria, just as Israel successfully applied its laws to united Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the past.
Most Likud members of Knesset and all members of the Bayit Yehudi party support partial or full implementation of Israeli law in the areas. 59% of Israeli Jews support such action as well and support doing so unilaterally.
Indeed, even leftist Israelis support Israel’s unilateral application of its laws to parts of Judea and Samaria. For instance, former ambassador to the US Michael Oren supports the unilateral withdrawal from parts of Judea and Samaria. But Oren foresees the retention of the major Israeli settlement blocs under Israeli law. In the absence of a peace deal, such a step can only be taken through the unilateral application of Israeli law to those areas.
In the current Knesset session, members have submitted two bills calling for the application of Israeli law to the large Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria and to the Jordan Valley, respectively.
But while all of this is going on in Israel, Israel’s supporters in the US remain in the dark about the existence of a better – facts based – alternative path for Israel.
In The Israeli Solution, I fill in the blanks that plague the American discourse on Israel and the Palestinians.
I provide a 360-degree analysis of a policy that I call The Israeli One-State Plan. That plan involves applying Israeli law – and through it Israeli sovereignty – throughout all of Judea and Samaria.
I divide the discussion into three parts. Part One provides the 90-year history of failure that has attended the two-state model, from the end of World War I through the present day. I also show how the US’s embrace of the two-state model has worked to blind US policymakers from both parties to the realities of the region and so guaranteed the failure of US Middle East policies.
Part Two presents the case for Israeli sovereignty from the perspectives of demography, international law, history and civil liberties.
Far from transforming the areas into a race-based state, as Israel’s opponents threaten, such a move by Israel will free the Palestinians from life under the PLO’s terror supporting kleptocracy and provide them with full civil and legal rights as permanent residents of Israel.
They will also have the right to apply for Israeli citizenship.
Even if all the Arabs of Judea and Samaria were to become Israeli citizens, Israel would retain a strong two thirds Jewish majority. And it would avert the only real demographic threat. That is the threat posed by a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria which would permit millions of hostile, foreign-born Arabs from Lebanon, Jordan and Syria to immigrate to its territory.
In Part Three, I discuss the probable responses of the Palestinians, the larger Arab world and the EU to a decision by Israel to apply its laws to Judea and Samaria and abandon the two-state policy model.
I also discuss how such a move will impact Israel and the United States.
Most delegates at AIPAC do not realize that Israelis have moved on from the failed two-state formula. It is my hope that in the year between this AIPAC conference and next year’s conference, they will read my book, and understand that they needn’t support the establishment of a Palestinian terror state. There is a better option. It is better for Israel. It is better for the Palestinians. And it is better for America.
If they do read my book, I hope it will open a long-belated discussion about Israel’s true options. If they do, I can assure them that next year’s AIPAC conference will be more realistic, and more optimistic than next week’s conclave.
SOURCE
Giving John Kerry's desire for the Nobel Peace Prize I wouldn't put it pass him to add this to the list of demands he will try to push onto Israel.A top Palestinian Authority official said that the PA was demanding sovereignty over all areas of Jerusalem Israel liberated in the Six Day War, including the Kotel (Western Wall).
Speaking to Channel Ten, Mahmoud al-Habbash, Minister of Holy Places in the PA, said that “there will be no peace until the end of the Israeli occupation that began in 1967. Every piece of land that Israel conquered then belongs to the Palestinians.” That includes Jerusalem, “the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Western Wall.”
Asked what would happen if Jews wished to pray at the Wall, al-Habbash said “they will be welcome, there will be no problem. There will be no limitations on freedom of religion and worship. Religious ceremonies are one thing, and politics are another.”
Under the Oslo Accords, Israelis are supposed to have access to several religious sites in PA-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria. In actuality, however, Jews are almost completely banned from these sites, including the Tomb of Joseph in Shechem and the Tomb of Joshua in Kifl Hares. Jews are rarely allowed to visit these sites, and then only under very strict security conditions. Several Jews, including Rabbi Hillel Lieberman h”yd, have been killed in area of Joseph's Tomb.
With that, Channel Ten quoted sources in the PA that most of the issues brought up in the negotiations being conducted by US Secretary of State John Kerry, including land swaps, have been resolved. But the Palestinians are insisting that all areas of Jerusalem liberated in the Six Day War, including the Jewish Quarter, the Kotel, and Jewish neighborhoods such as French Hill, Ramat Eshkol, and Har Homa be placed under PA sovereignty. Kerry has spent much time and effort in trying to come to a compromise on Jerusalem, but has so far failed, PA sources said.
Speaking to Channel Ten, the PA's Jerusalem Minister, Abu-Ala, said that the current round of negotiations was one of the most intense ever between Israel and the PA, thanks to the strenuous efforts of Kerry to get the two sides to agree to a negotiation framework.
But he said that effort came with a risk.
“Given the intensity with which the Americans are approaching this, there will probably be undesirable consequences if the talks fail.”
SOURCE
A United Nations agency pulled an exhibit on the Jewish people's "3,500-year relationship" to the land of Israel, after the Arab League lodged a last-minute protest, according to a report.Why is the United States paying the lion's share of dues to the UN? Why isn't Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and/or Oman not paying the lion's share. After all they control the place.
The exhibit, entitled “People, Book, Land – The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People and the Land of Israel," was created jointly by the Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization, and was scheduled to open Jan. 20 at UNESCO's Paris headquarters. But less than a week before it was to open, UNESCO informed the SWC is was canceling it because the Arab League had claimed the exhibit “could create potential obstacles related to the peace process in the Middle East,” the U.S.-based Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner reported.
Invitations had already gone out, and the fully prepared exhibition material was already in place, the paper reported. The display was co-sponsored by Israel, Canada and Montenegro. Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Wiesenthal Center, called the move was an “absolute outrage.”
“The Arabs don’t want the world to know that the Jews have a 3,500-year relationship to the Land of Israel,” Hier said.
In a letter to Irina Bokova, president of UNESCO, Abdulla al Neaimi, from the United Arab Emirates, expressed “deep worry and great disapproval” over the program showing the age old connection between Israel and the Jewish people.
SOURCE
The European and American attempts to impose an academic and economic boycott on Israel increase in direct proportion to the signs that the Palestinian-Israel peace process is sinking into the mud. Boycotts, however, will simply make the Israelis more obstinate and worsen the situation. President Obama tried to reassure Israel recently by promising that the future final status agreement would not turn the West Bank into "a replica of Gaza." He was referring to the rockets the Palestinians began launching from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory as soon as Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip, and stressed that in any peace agreement, the United States would not allow another Palestinian terrorist state, this one in the West Bank, to shell Israel.Before he ran for the Presidency Barack Hussein Obama promised his Arab friends that he would do everything he could to have Palestine from the river to the sea. Until this year he couldn't work on that due to the fact he needed Jewish money for his reelection. (Jews would vote for Hitler if he had a "D" after his name.) Now he cannot run for the Presidency again and he doesn't need the Jews. He can throw them into the camps. Thus he will try to fulfill his promise to his Arab friends and save any legacy his Presidency might have. And in the process he will be instrumental to the murder of over 6 million more Jews. That should make his and Michelle's day!
The Israelis, who have already agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state bordering on Israel, justifiably demand that it be demilitarized and that Israel itself be responsible for security along the Jordan River. Their demand is based on past experience and meant to prevent rockets, mortar shells, explosives and arms in general from being smuggled into the West Bank. The Palestinians' outright rejection the West's demands might well raise suspicions in the objective observer. The Palestinians claim that Israel has a peace agreement with Jordan and therefore should have no fear that weapons will be smuggled into the West Bank. Such a claim is made only by those who conveniently forget about the thousands of rockets and other weapons used by Palestinian terrorists to attack Israel, and that have been smuggled into the Strip from Egypt, which also has a peace agreement with Israel.
Mahmoud Abbas not only refuses to recognize the State of Israel as the national homeland of the Jews, but, notably, he demands that Israel be forced to absorb Palestinians as part of the so-called "right of return," instead of demanding, more naturally, that they be absorbed into the future Palestinian state -- all the while demanding that there be no Jews in the Palestinian state.
What the Palestinians do not yet understand is that the West is losing both interest in and patience for the Palestinian cause. Millions of refugees, an unprecedented number since the 1930s, are massed at borders and seeking ports of entry all over the world. Today, millions of starving Syrian refugees -- having become burdens threatening the internal security and economy of countries such as Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon and even Bulgaria -- are freezing in cardboard cartons and flimsy tents.
Millions of Africans crowd into leaky boats and then drown seeking the shores of Europe, where they hope to find a decent living, while others are interned and humiliated by the Italian authorities on the island of Lampedusa. No one seems to care that in the Arab countries, masses of Muslims die in terrorist attacks at the hands of other Muslims.
In the meantime, industriously ignoring these humanitarian catastrophes, the West closely focuses on what it likes to call "finding a solution for the Palestinian problem." This focus has nothing to do with concern for the Palestinian people; it is rather a symptom of the West's complete inability to cope with the world's genuine refugee problems.
Only few of the real Arab refugees from the 1948 War in Palestine remain, and would be at least 65 years old today if their families had left when the Arab leadership called on the Arabs to flee from Palestine. All those who fled were promised that once the Arab armies won the war and slaughtered or expelled the Jews, they would return to their homes and could loot and despoil Jewish property as they pleased. Hundreds of thousands of Arabs therefore abandoned their homes in 1948 and settled in the neighboring countries, eventually engendering millions of descendants who have built their lives in the host countries and need only to receive citizenship.
The United States and the Arab countries perpetuate the issue of the so-called "Palestinian refugees" with the aid they give to relief organizations, primarily UNRWA. They waste time, money and energy on the Palestinians, in both "Palestine" and other countries, and delay interminably the day when the descendants of the original refugees become citizens of the Arab countries in which they now live, they live. It should be recalled that the Arabs who did not flee from Palestine in 1948, now live in Israel where they make up one-fifth of the population, hold equal rights to the Jews there, have their own political parties, members of Knesset, judges on the Supreme Court, senior diplomatic posts, serve in the army only if the so wish, and are welcomed in all leading professions, including professorships in university and as senior physicians in Israeli hospitals.
Perpetuating the status of "refugee" to five generations of their descendants means the Palestinians and the West continue to foster the false hope of the "right of return," making it increasingly difficult to offer these poor souls -- whose ancestors chose to chose to displace themselves - the right to a productive life, as all other refugees and their descendants enjoy in the countries to which they chose to go.
The Americans and Europeans cynically manipulate the Palestinians, to whom they are nothing more than insignificant pawns in the plot to prolong and escalate the Arab-Israeli conflict in order to justify their continued involvement in the Middle East; in reality, their motives are in no way humanitarian.
The lack of a solution for the Palestinian problem is a tragedy; the situation should sadden every Arab with a conscience. The Palestinian leadership and interested parties throughout the Arab-Muslim world delude the Palestinians into thinking that some day in the slight-of-hand foggy future they will return to "Palestine," that is, the territory of the State of Israel. They manipulate the Palestinians even as it is perfectly clear to the entire world that the Jews will never agree to absorb the millions of descendants of the 1948 Palestinians refugees who today live in the Arab countries: to do so would mean destroying Israel by flooding it with its enemies. If the West were genuinely interested in peace in the Middle East, its top priority would be to clarify the situation for the Palestinians and campaign for their citizenship in the Arab world. It is clear, therefore, that the ultimate goal of the West, and particularly Europe, is to destroy Israel by using the descendants of these Palestinians as weapons -- first of displacement, then extermination. One need only look at how Muslims are currently treating Christians, as well as other Muslims -- as there no longer any Jews to speak of; as the saying goes: "First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people" -- in countries as diverse as the Sudan, Nigeria, Iraq, Mauritania and Egypt.
International law does not allow refugee status to be inherited, but both the West and our Palestinian brothers continue to use the unjustified and incidentally illegal status of refugees as profitable political-economic merchandise. The corrupt agencies of the United Nations, particularly UNRWA, perpetuate and fatten themselves on the obscene amounts of money flowing into the "Palestinian problem," which for years has not been a humanitarian issue. The Palestinian problem is nowhere on the agenda of the Arab countries, which are caught up in the internal chaos created by the Arab "Spring," and instead has become a lucrative economic project for a whole series of racketeers, rob the millions of genuine refugees around the globe, many of who are also Arabs, of their rights.
The situation in Europe is complex and complicated. Thousands of immigrants knock on the gates of the West in search of employment and a better life, even though the West itself is on the brink of bankruptcy. To them, compared to the countries they are fleeing, the West still looks like Paradise. The Europeans have also muddied the definition of "refugees seeking political asylum" -- people who genuinely need protection from persecution. Those who go Westward in search of work cross many poor countries where they are not in danger yet claim, unjustly, that they are refugees fleeing for their lives. This confusion also makes it difficult for the West to solve the problem of millions of genuine refugees who clearly are in imminent danger.
The worst problem of all, however, is the cynical game of manipulating world public opinion played by the rival Palestinian leaders in their undying efforts to perpetuate the Palestinian issue, which has now become Big Business, to ensure it is never resolved. Not only is Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of the Palestinian Authority, not considered the legitimate leader of the West Bank and was never elected in a fair and honest election, only a manipulated one but the Palestinians dispersed among the various Arab countries, and especially the West Bank and Gaza, do not consider him as representing them - as well as opposing any political arrangement with Israel for fear it might interfere with the glittering hypnotic promises of their return to "Palestine."
Mahmoud Abbas undoubtedly knows that the instant he signs an agreement with Israel, the Palestinian terrorist organizations will assassinate him. No Palestinian will agree to an arrangement that would limit his return to the future Palestinian state, currently the territory of the State of Israel.
No Palestinian leader will recognize Israel and certainly not one of them will agree to the final, definite end of the conflict. Mahmoud Abbas' refusal to recognize Israel as the national homeland of the Jewish people, his refusal to waive "the refugees' right of return," his refusal to stop adding to his endless list of demands to end the conflict and his refusal to allow Israel to oversee the Jordan River are all proof that the Palestinians' plan to destroy the State of Israel has not been altered since its inception, even if perhaps its methodology has been tweaked from time to time.
The real tragedy is that nowhere on the Palestinian horizon is there a mechanism in place for a democratic way to end the conflict. Many Palestinians favor the violent, radical Salafist-jihadi agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, while others reject the Islamist agenda and its lifestyle. The conflict between the two has trapped and dead-ended the Palestinians.
The Gaza Strip has been under the control of Islamists for years, and they are gradually taking over towns and cities in the West Bank. It is this situation that prevents the fractured Palestinian leadership from reaching an internal reconciliation and constructing a model for united governance that could end the confrontation between the Jews and the Palestinians. It is clear that if elections were held today in the West Bank, Hamas and other Salafist-jihadi organizations would win. It would seem there is only one model around which Palestinians can unite: the desire to end not their conflict but rather the State of Israel. The Jews are fully aware of the Palestinian model and refuse to accept any arrangement that will endanger their security.
Thus, tragically, Palestinian politics are at the moment leading the Palestinian people noplace. It was recently made known that the Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip, who lob rockets into Israel and mine the security fence separating Israel from Gaza, are currently having logistic problems of electricity, concrete, fuel and food -- the result of flooding caused by recent severe rainstorms. Faced with insurmountable problems, the Hamas leaders turned, indirectly, to Israel for help.
For years Hamas has been guilty of the criminal neglect of the people who live under its rule, and now its leaders are calling for help, claiming that they are "besieged" -- by the Egyptians as well as the Israelis -- and that they are facing a "humanitarian crisis," and are prepared to accept aid from Israel, but only secretly!
Since the violent takeover of the Gaza Strip, Hamas has poured millions of tons of concrete into building tunnels the sole purpose of which is to provide easy access for terrorist operatives seeking to infiltrate into Israel. Hamas could have used the concrete to build houses, schools and hospitals, but instead diverted it to reinforcing terrorism. Hamas evidently far prefers to spend its billions on weapons it can use against Israel rather than on the agriculture, economy, health and welfare of the people who are dependent on it.
In the meantime, while the Palestinian Authority announced that it did not intend to pay the salaries of its Gazan employees, it was Israel that recently agreed to help Hamas out of its difficulties and provide it with fuel, concrete, medicine and food, despite the fact that throughout the years Hamas has killed hundreds of Israelis with its rockets, bombs and suicide bombers and is still overtly planning to wipe Israel off the map. How lucky for the Palestinians that their enemies are the Jews. While the Palestinian and Islamic terrorist organizations plan their attacks on Israeli civilians, the government of the Israeli occupation, despite the apparent indifference of their leaders, regards the Palestinians themselves as human beings.
The rampant mismanagement by Europe, the UN's treatment of the Palestinians and Mahmoud Abbas's floundering and weakness as a policy-maker have prepared the ground for a general takeover of the Palestinian issue by radical Islamic elements, and it will occur in the foreseeable future. On the West Bank it is claimed that in the meantime, only Israeli intelligence, which props up Abbas, has prevented the Islamists from taking complete control.
It is shocking, but not surprising, that in such a complex situation people such as the EU's Foreign Minister Catherine Ashton and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry are trying to force Israel to give up assets critical to its security. They are exerting their pressure in the wrong direction: they should instead campaign for citizenship for the Palestinians in the Arab countries, a quest that would quickly clear their heads of the nonsense of the "return;" stop the tide of money flowing into UNRWA and end the fiction of the "Palestinian refugees."
As the Arab countries -- relatively new artificial creations temporarily pasted together with the lies of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, disintegrate into their original warring tribes and sects -- Ashton, Kerry, et al are nevertheless trying to create yet another artificial state, "Palestine," which will quickly become another Islamist country, officially refusing, as a matter of policy, to recognize the State of Israel and seeking to destroy it.
At his last meeting with Kerry, Abbas rejected the Israeli demand for security control along the Jordan River. Abbas and his supporters are planning to smuggle weapons into the West Bank from Jordan and to transfer them to the local Palestinian terrorists who will use them to attack Israel from the east -- exactly as Hamas began attacking from the south the instant the IDF withdrew from the Gaza Strip. Obama's recent assurances that the United States will not allow the West Bank to become "a replica of the Gaza Strip" are as valid as his assurances regarding other cardinal issues, such as Syria and Iran -- further "replicas of promises" never kept.
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From Debka:The Arab world is terrified that Iran will develop an Nuclear Weapon. So much so that the Saudis have bought Nuclear Weapons from Pakistan. I wonder who else will be buying these weapons? Syria? Jordan? Egypt? Obama's appeasement policy is having the effect of an nuclear arms race extraordinaire. All this just so he can get rid of Israel.
Israel announced early Thursday, Nov. 7, that it is utterly opposed to the new proposal for Iran’s nuclear program which the United States plans to put before the two-day Geneva conference beginning later today.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, when he met US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jerusalem Wednesday night, bitterly accused the Obama administration of yielding to the Russian-backed Iranian position. Should Tehran renege on the deal, the US proposal leaves it with the capacity for enriching enough weapons-grade uranium in 10 days to build several nuclear weapons. This US proposal calls for Iran to halt enrichment of uranium up to 20-percent grade (a short jump to weapons-grade) and slow construction on the Arak heavy water plant for plutonium production. In return, the US offers a start on selective sanctions relief. This proposal is likely to be approved by the six powers at the Geneva conference.
Kerry was reminded of his pledge that “no deal is better than a bad deal.” This deal is bad, Israel says because it leaves Iran wth all the stocks it has already built up of 20-percent enriched uranium and the ability to continue the production of low 5-percent grade unrestricted.
debkafile’s sources report that the Palestinian issue did not come up in either of the two conversations Kerry held with Netanyahu Wednesday. Both were dominated by the Iranian row and ended with differences as wide as ever. Israel accused Washington of capitulating to the plan Moscow and Tehran handed in to President Barack Obama last week. That plan, according to our sources, entails suspending the work of 10,000 centrifuges on all grades of enrichment (3, 5 and 20 percent). However, Iran has a total of 19,000 machines of which only 9,000 are active anyway. Therefore, the offer to freeze 10,000 already idle centrifuges was a subterfuge. It is nonetheless being presented by the Russians – and now by the Americans, too – as a major Iranian concession.
The truth is that Iran is being allowed to keep its full stock of centrifuges intact, operational and available for use at any time. This means that if Tehran decides tomorrow to renege on its deal with Washington and the world powers - after its approval in Geneva – it will retain the capacity to restart centrifuge operations in full and within 10 days accumulate enough weapons-grade material to build several nuclear bombs or warheads.
By the time Washington or the nuclear watchdog catch on, it will be too late: Iran will have The Bomb. Last week, Moscow claimed that Iran had agreed to “restrain the weaponization processes.” This admission alone belied Tehran’s insistence that its entire nuclear program was peaceful and exposed as false Moscow’s denials of proofs that Iran was engaged in developing nuclear arms.
According to our sources, the “restraint” on offer refers only to the process of miniaturizing a nuclear bomb for use in a missile warhead or dropped from an airplane.
In sum, therefore, the US president has agreed in essence to “photograph” Iran’s nuclear program and freeze it as it stands now. Tehran would place nuclear development in suspension without, however, relinquishing a single component of its program.
The new American proposal broke surface Wednesday, as the seven delegations gathered in Geneva for the morrow’s session.A nameless US spokesman told reporters that America was now proposing that Iran, as a first step, stop its nuclear program advancing any further and start rolling parts of it back. In return, Washington offered "very limited, temporary, reversible sanctions relief.”
The spokesman said: “This phase must involve levels of Iran's uranium enrichment, its stockpiles of the material as well as international monitoring.”
Israel is not buying this plan.
From Debka:
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lamented Monday, Oct. 28 that the release Tuesday night of 26 jailed Palestinians serving life sentences for murdering Israelis, the cause of widespread popular ire, was “one of the hardest decisions” he has ever made. But he faces much harder decisions from the list of tough demands, debkafile's sources report were presented Israel by the Palestinians in ongoing US-sponsored negotiations, The prime minister has not made them known to the Israeli public. The new Palestinian terms are so harsh as to surely defy even US Secretary of State John Kerry’s skills in bridging differences.
The prime minister also kept mum about his offer to the Palestinians of financial compensation for land remaining under Israeli control – the first time any Israeli leader has put a price tag on disputed territory.
The 16 Palestinian demands, which debkafile reveals exclusively for the first time below, make the release of convicted Palestinian murderers a dangerous exercise in futility, because each demand is enough to drive the negotiations into impasse, just as Mahmoud Abbas did two years ago.
After seeing the Palestinian list, Netanyahu should have put the release of prisoners on hold until Abbas comes around to a rational perception of the negotiations as a give-and-take process for the object of reaching an agreement – not an opportunity for outrageous extortion.
Israel’s senior negotiator Justice Minister Tzipi Livni tried arguing that the Palestinians were just making an opening bid and they expected it to be driven down in the bargaining process. However, negotiations have been going on for three months and the process is into the fourth month of the nine-month period assigned up to deadline.
Mahmoud Abbas, rather than seeking common ground, has used the time to raise his price for a deal to an exorbitant level, while keeping his hand firmly on the terrorist spigot.
It is a matter of record that a large proportion of jailed terrorists have reverted to violence after they walked in the past through the exits of Israeli jails.
First published list of Palestinian demands:My advice to Bibi Netanyahu is to immediately cease all negotiations with this idiot, tell Obama to shove off and annex every inch of Judea and Samaria. An ultimatum to the Fakistinians giving them 1 hour to get their sorry asses off of Jewish land before they are wiped off the face of the Earth would also be in order. Anything less is capitulation and will lead to the genocide of every Jewish person living in Israel. A concept that Barack Hussein Obama is not only working towards, but eagerly planning.
The United States and Israel must acknowledge that the Palestinian state is
“under occupation.” (This is the Palestinian response to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s demand to recognize Israel as the Jews’ national state.)
Israeli must repeal legislation extending Israeli law to East Jerusalem
The Palestinians will have full sovereignty over their air space. (This will bar Israeli air force flights over Judea and Samaria and the Gaza Strip).
The Palestinians will have exclusive control of all border crossings to neighboring nations. i.e. Israel and Jordan.
Israel’s withdrawal to the pre-1967 boundaries is not enough. Its pull-back must go all the way to the 1949 armistice lines, additionally annexing to the Palestinian state broad strips of Israeli land that were demilitarized at that time. Among the areas which the Palestinians want to lay hands on are the Ayalon Valley, the Latrun enclave and the Armon Hantatiz district of Jerusalem between the Old City and West Jerusalem; the Huleh Lake Valley; the Golan slopes running down to the Sea of Galilee; and the Nitzana belt north of the Gaza Strip – plus one third of Dead Sea water and shore.
( The Palestinians hope to grab substantial Israeli territory beyond the pre-1967 borders by invoking the long moribund 1949 accords.)
Electromagnetic space (radio frequencies, satellite and other communications) will be under sole Palestinian control
The Palestinians are ready to relinquish 1.9 percent of West Bank territory.
All parts of East Jerusalem including the shrines sacred to Muslims, Christians and Jews will come under sole Palestinian authority against a pledge of freedom of worship.
Israel and its armed forces will draw back from the Palestinian state over a three-year period. Six months after the draw down is complete, the Palestinians will be willing to sign final peace treaties with the State of Israel
The US and Israel must accept the settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem as “a just and agreed solution.”
Every Palestinian refugee (as per the Palestinian Authority’s definition of up to the fourth generation) will be free to choose between three options: settlement in Israel or the Palestinian state or staying at their present locations.
Whichever option is chosen, the refugees will be entitled to appropriate restitution.
Only when the refugee issue is finally resolved will the Palestinians agree to declare their dispute with Israel at an end
An international mechanism will be tasked with administering the disposition of the Palestinian refugees and their resettlement. It will be composed of Palestinian, Israeli, American, European, Canadian, Australian, Japanese and Arab League representatives
The Palestinian state will be authorized to sign treaties including military pacts without the intervention of a third party, such as Israel.
All parts of the Palestinian state will be clear of Israeli civilian and military presence.
Show me where in the Arab or Muslim world that Christians, Druze, Jews, Hindus, or Buddhists not only serve in their militaries but rise to high rank and offices. You will not find one single example. In the Middle East is a man or woman judged not by their religion, not by their tribe but by their merit. Nor will you hear any condemnation of this appointment from the citizens of Israel either. There will be no riots, no protests about his appointment.Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, Chairman of the Bayit Yehudi faction, expressed satisfaction Thursday with the planned appointment of Col. Rassan Alian to head the Golani Brigade. Alian will be the first Druze to command the brigade.
Col. Rassan Alian
The appointment will be formalized once Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon signs it.
"Rassan is a Druze," Bennett told his Facebook friends. "Rassan is also a brother: we went through Officers' Training Course in the same company at [the Officers Training School,] Bahad 1, we navigated and trained together, and he ran faster than I did, and I do not forgive him for that to this day."
Col. Alian fought in the Second Lebanon War as Commander of the Rotem Battalion and was wounded in the course of that war. Married and a father of one, he lives in Shefaram, in northern Israel.
Alian was commander of the Duchifat Battalion in the past, and was also Deputy Commander of the Golani Brigade, among other command positions he has been posted to.
The next commander of the Nahal Brigade will be Col. Uri Gordin, formerly commander of the elite infantry commando, Sayeret Matkal. Col. Yair Valensky will be the commander of the "Iron Tracks" tank formation, Col. Yoram Knafo will be commander of the Golan artillery formation, Col. Sasi Aka will be in charge of the Kela' David missile formation, which specializes in anti-tank warfare, and Col. Y will command the Active Defense Wing.
The IDF will also soon have its first Bedouin tank commander, Cpl. Mustafa Tabash.
The appointments of members of minorities to sensitive military positions belie the oft-stated claim, by Israel's foes, that it practices "aparheid" toward its minorities.
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