Trump adviser warns Palestinians that if they continue to reject Trump peace proposal ‘the situation is just going to get worse and worse for them;’ says US won’t ‘chase’ Ramallah

By Jacob Magid, TOI

In this Monday, Feb. 10, 2020 photo, a woman walks in the Israeli settlement of Mevo’ot Yericho, in the Jordan Valley near the Palestinian city of Jericho. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

NEW YORK — Senior White House adviser Jared Kushner said on Wednesday that the Trump administration’s peace plan is an attempt to “save the two state solution” because it stops Israel from further expanding its presence in the West Bank.

“The reality today is that a lot of this land is inhabited with Israelis,” Kushner told reporters during a phone briefing ahead of the White House signing next week of the Israel-UAE normalization deal.
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A long-buried street that led pilgrims to the Jewish Temple 2,000 years ago was commissioned by Roman governor Pontius Pilate.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2019/10/road-built-biblical-villain-uncovered-jerusalem/

As Israel records more than 3,000 new coronavirus cases a day, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents and also his ultra-Orthodox partners gang up against him.

By Ben Caspit, AL MONITOR

 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits the Israeli city of Beit Shemesh near Jerusalem on Sept. 8, 2020, after his government faced an uproar on its COVID-19 policy and then backtracked on it. Photo by ALEX KOLOMIENSKY/POOL/AFP via Getty Images.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger coined the famous aphorism that “Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic politics.” In the half century since this insightful pronouncement, the situation has only deteriorated. Today, Israel is a state in disarray. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has brought the lack of management and control to an art form of rare perfection. With the number of coronavirus infections breaking daily records, Israel is verging on anarchy.

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MEMRI

In her September 8, 2020 column in the Saudi London-based daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat, Amal ‘Abd Al-‘Aziz Al-Hazani criticized the Palestinian Authority (PA) for its total rejection of the UAE’s normalization agreement with Israel, as reflected, for example, in the emergency conference recently held by the Palestinian factions in Beirut, Ramallah and online to formulate a unified position against normalization and against the Deal of the Century.

Al-Hazani noted that, while many Arab countries hold ties with Israel, the Palestinians choose to focus their criticism on the UAE, which for years has been acting to promote their rights. She wondered why the PA does not condemn Qatar, whose influence on the Palestinian cause has been “negative,” for it maintains ties with Israel and at the same time supports terror organizations in Gaza and throughout the world. She noted sarcastically that, by prompting the Beirut convention, the UAE attained at least one remarkable achievement: it caused all the Palestinian factions to come together and adopt a unified position.

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Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is afraid that former Fatah strongman Mohammed Dahlan will return from exile with UAE backing, while Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh is looking over his shoulder at his predecessor, Khaled Mashaal.

By Oded Granot, ISRAEL HAYOM

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and PA President Mahmoud Abbas in Gaza City, March 2007 | Archives: AP/Khalil Hamra

Supposedly, the aversion within the Palestinian camp to the peace and normalization treaty between Israel and the United Arab Emirates has created a basis for cooperation between Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh. In reality, however, it is forcing both of them to seek salvation and gains outside the camp. In both cases, the “national issue” conflates with the personal interest, and pertains directly to the battles for succession transpiring in the background.

Abbas, after realizing he won’t be saved by the Arab League, is betting on the Turks. He knows, however, that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is an ardent supporter of Hamas (although their relationship has somewhat cooled as of late). Form Abbas’ perspective, though, this is less important right now.

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By Ron Ross, AM THINKER

A curious but fortunate characteristic of virus epidemics is their limited lifespans. No one knows why, but guesses include herd immunity and mutations of the virus.

The following graph from the Centers for Disease Control and the National Center for Health Statistics shows the time profile of the COVID-19 weekly death counts from February onward. (For an interactive version of the graph go here.)

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Whereas the US sees the terror organization as hindering much-needed government reform, France has shown a willingness to work with the political arm of the Iran-backed group

By Layal Abua Rahal, TOI 

Lebanese men watch Hassan Nasrallah, head of the country’s Shiite terror group Hezbollah group, during a televised speech, at a coffee shop in the southern suburbs of the capital Beirut, on August 30, 2020, (ANWAR AMRO / AFP)

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — When it comes to Lebanon, the US and France have similar outlooks, but one major point of difference involves the Hezbollah movement — shunned by Washington but tolerated by a pragmatic Parisian leadership.

While the United States seeks to isolate and curb the influence of the Iran-backed group it has designated a terrorist organization and punished with sanctions, France sees it as a key political actor whose cooperation is needed to lift Lebanon out of crisis.

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By Jonathan S. Tobin,jns

Four years ago, Hillary Clinton supporters talked a lot about then-candidate ­Donald Trump refusing to concede a presidential election they were certain he would lose. As it happened, they had it ­exactly backward: Trump wound up winning, and Democrats and their media cheerleaders have spent most of their waking moments ever since then trying to invalidate that result. They used false charges about Russian “collusion” and any other conceivable means — fair or foul — to make the bad dream of 2016 go away.

That’s the key fact to keep in mind amid the drumbeat of ­obsessive mainstream commentary and analysis about what Trump will do when he loses in November.
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BY AMIL IMANI / 8 SEPTEMBER 2020

It is a fundamental human trait to locate the source of anything bad happening and try to neutralize it. However, there are times that the source of the harm cannot be pinpointed or when successfully recognized; it cannot be eliminated. Failure to recognize the source or neutralize it can devastate our cities.

The current rioters’ sense of victimization is a reaction that frequently goes hand-in-hand with displaced aggression on a convenient, safe target. The aggression can be verbal, physical, or a combination of the two.

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CANDACE IS BRILLIANT. SHE TOWERS OVER SHAPIRO IN HER FIELD OF EXPERTISE

Draft resolution to be discussed by Arab League doesn’t include call to condemn, or act against Israel-UAE deal.

By Elad Benari, INN

The Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership has watered down its criticism of the normalization deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates before an Arab League meeting in Cairo on Wednesday at which the accord will be debated, Reuters reports.

A draft resolution presented by the PA envoy, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, does not include a call to condemn, or act against, the Emirates over the US-brokered deal.

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By Simon Watkins, OIL PRICE – Sep 07, 2020,

The next phase of the 25-year deal between China and Iran will focus on a large-scale roll-out of electronic espionage and warfare capabilities focussed around the port of Chabahar and extending for a nearly 5,000 kilometer (3,000 mile) radius, and the concomitant build-out of mass surveillance and monitoring of the Iranian population, in line with the standard operating procedure across China, senior sources close to the Iranian government told OilPrice.com last week. Both of these elements dovetail into Beijing’s strategic vision for Iran as a fully-functioning client state of China by the end of the 25-year period. By that time, Iran will be an irreplaceable geographical and geopolitical foundation stone in Beijing’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ project, as well as providing a large pool of young, well-educated, relatively cheap labor for Chinese industry.

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T. Belman. Singer is right to point out that Saudi Arabia is not accepting the Trump Plan in place of the API. Trump has invested a great deal in his vision including his first trip to Riyadh where he demanded that the Arab states stop supporting the Islamists and their ideology and Kushner’s trip to trip to Bahrain a year later which netted him pledges amounting to $50 Billion to assist the Palestinians. Over three years of intense effort culminated in the tabling of his Peace to Prosperity Plan in January of this year.

King Salman’s recent insistence on the Arab Peace Initiative as a stepping stone to peace was perhaps a mortal blow to Trumps efforts and Plan. Will this result in a change of position by UAE. Possibly.

Will Trump proceed with his Plan without Arab or EU support just as he did with recognizing Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan and Jerusalem as Israel’s capital? At a minimum, I think he will wait until he is reelected.

Netanyahu has welcomed the Saudi and Bahrain historic air space concessions as stepping stones to Arab-Jewish reconciliation. Op-ed.

By David Singer, INN

Saudi Arabia and Bahrain’s decisions to allow their airspace to be used by commercial Israeli planes flying the Israel-United Arab Emirates (UAE) route are the first of what could be termed continuing acts of soft diplomacy by Arab and other Islamic states to help end the 100 years old Jewish-Arab conflict.

Soft diplomacy avoids Arab loss of face in having to jettison the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative in favour of President Trump’s 2020 deal of the century – allowing peace to evolve without peace treaties being signed now.
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But it’s still supported by so many Americans.

By Dennis Prager, FPM

Four months ago, I wrote a column titled “The Worldwide Lockdown May Be the Greatest Mistake in History.” I explained that “‘mistake’ and ‘evil’ are not synonyms. The lockdown is a mistake; the Holocaust, slavery, communism, fascism, etc., were evils. Massive mistakes are made by arrogant fools; massive evils are committed by evil people.”

Regarding the economic catastrophe in America and around the world — especially among the world’s poor who are dependent upon America and other first-world countries for their income through exports and tourism — I wrote, “It is panic and hysteria, not the coronavirus, that created this catastrophe.”

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By Raymond Ibrahim, AM THINKER

Today in history, on September 8, 1380, Russia began its long march to liberation from the Tatar yoke, by way of a battle that is as important to Russian history as the battles of Tours and Vienna are to the West.

Although pagan when they conquered Russia around 1240, by 1300, the Mongols were thoroughly Islamized.  Arabic was adopted; “the entire Muslim religious establishment of qadis, muftis, and the like arose in Sarai, the Golden Horde’s capital on the lower Volga”; and “sharia, Muslim religious law,” reigned supreme.  “With this the Russo-Tatar conquest society entered the mainstream of Medieval Christian-Muslim frontier life” — that is, it entered into a familiar paradigm of enmity and war, punctuated only by vast sums of gold and slaves flowing from Russia to the Horde.
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T. Belman. This is an enormous setback for Trump’s plan to bring peace to ME. We are back to square one. It is also a setback to the prospect of Israel extending sovereignty to 30% of Judea and Samaria with Trump’s approval. Now we have to wait to see if a peace Treaty with UAE is signed. It seems to be that it is being delayed.

It is more important for Israel to extend sovereignty than to have peace treaty with Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman speaks to Trump, says kingdom wants to see a solution based on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.

By Elad Benari, INN

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz told US President Donald Trump on Sunday there would be no normalization with Israel without Palestinian statehood, Reuters reported, citing the kingdom’s state news agency.

The leaders spoke by phone following the historic US-brokered accord last month under which the United Arab Emirates agreed to become the third Arab state to normalize ties with Israel after Egypt and Jordan.

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