Despite announcing departure, US envoy leaves door open if peace plan gains “traction.” “I have my family’s support.”

By Tal Polon, INN

Despite declaring his planned departure from the White House last week, Mideast Envoy Jason Greenblatt on Thursday left the door open for a continued stay in his position if the Trump administration’s peace plan gains “traction.”

“Although I have announced my departure, I am trying to stay until the plan is launched,” Jewish Insider on Thursday reported Greenblatt as saying in a recording from an event in New York City.

He added, “If the plan is launched soon, I will stay. And if the plan is launched and we get traction, I hope to stay longer — and I have my family’s support for it.”
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By Barry Shaw, TOI

On September 10, Benjamin Netanyahu pulled off one of his famous political masterstrokes when he made a dramatic announcement one week before a contentious national election in which it looked far from certain that he would hold onto his record-breaking office as Israel’s prime minister.

The polls were showing a tight race between his Likud Party and the Blue & White Party, with neither showing the electoral ability to form a coalition government.

The master tactician had to find a way to break the Gordian knot by applying his version of Dale Carnegie’s famous book. How to win voters and influence people.
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Given the two major departures of pro-Israel figures like the now former national security advisor and the upcoming resignation of U.S. special envoy Jason Greenblatt, questions remain as to the direction of the Trump administration. Photo: Then U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton holds a joint press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s office in Jerusalem, June 23, 2019.

Credit: Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy Jerusalem

By JewishWebSight

With John Bolton ousted as national security advisor on Tuesday, questions remain regarding the Trump administration’s posture on both the U.S.-Israel relationship and the Iranian threat.

T. Belman. I am with Bolton and Bibi on this.  All the pressure is on Iran. They are in need of a resolution, not the US. If Iran makes moves on the nuclear issue, the US should make them pay. Lifting some sanctions in order to get a meeting undermines one’s negotiating position. I think the US should actively be working for regime change.

Bolton was key architect of ‘maximum pressure’ campaign

By Jennifer Jacobs, BLOOMBERG

John Bolton Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Religious scholars in Gaza have tried to issue a ruling that prohibits emigration from it, but that does not help: more and more Palestinian middle-class boys and girls are choosing to try their luck elsewhere. The difficult humanitarian situation and the desperation of the political situation only strengthen the decision

Tell Al Sultan is a middle-class in Gaza whose family has a pharmacy. Compared to most Gazans, his situation was good: he had a steady income, he did not suffer from poverty – but still felt choked. Al Sultan blamed Hamas for the dismal state of Gaza and even participated in the rare protests against the organization. His mysterious death this week, on his way to finding a better life in Belgium, became the talk of the day in the Strip, prompting reactions of frustration and despair by middle-class people who see no future: “Everywhere is better than Gaza.”
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By Thomas Lifson, AMERICAN THINKER

Watch the above speech in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag, by AfD’s co-leader Alice Weidel, and start to realize that populism is a global force in the highly industrialized world and that the complaints we Americans feel against our elites, and the complaints Brits have against ceding control to the E.U., are all of a piece.  She does not hesitate to point her finger at France, which is leading the resistance to a negotiated Brexit.
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Despite lip service offered by senior French officials, Jew hatred still runs rampant in France as it did during the Dreyfus Affair. The similarity is striking.

By Barry Shaw, INN

The Venice Film Festival awarded their Grand Jury Prize for best movie to Roman Polanski’s ‘An Officer and a Spy.’

The film is about the trial and wrongful conviction of a Jewish officer in the French military in 1894.

The Dreyfus case symbolized the rise of French anti-Semitism. The Jewish officer, Alfred Dreyfus, was wrongly accused and sentenced to life imprisonment on distant Devil’s Island on charges of being a traitor spying for Germany.

He was innocent. The real traitor was Major Walson-Esterhazy.
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The departing national security adviser embraced a hawkish strain of Cold War-era Republican foreign policy that the president has largely sidelined

By Gerald F. Seib, WSJ Sept. 10, 2019 5:48 pm ET

Longtime Republican thinking on national security, which embraces American intervention abroad and is comfortable with military action, just collided with Trumpian thinking on national security, which is dubious of intervention abroad and deeply skeptical of foreign wars.

In a nutshell, that is the story of the abrupt departure of John Bolton as President Trump’s national security adviser Tuesday. Obviously, Mr. Bolton’s departure roils the Trump national-security team once again.

More important, though, the Bolton exit represents something far broader: It underscores a significant turn in Republican national-security philosophy, as least as Mr. Trump envisions it today.

Mr. Bolton is a longstanding figure in a hawkish wing of the Republican party that was prominent, and sometimes dominant, in the party’s national-security thinking from Ronald Reagan’s presidency until Mr. Trump arrived on the scene.
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This is in line with the Jordan Option.

T. Belman. Netanyahu first said he would annex the settlements. And now he has added the Jordan Valley. Next it will include all of Area C. He is moving toward the Jordan Option. Thus his policy proposals are falling in line with the Deal of the Century which is slated to be tabled shortly after the election.

I just read another article that said Bibi announced he would apply sovereignty over “Judea and Samaria and other areas,” starting with the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea region.

Netanyahu said the steps would be taken in coordination with the administration of US President Donald Trump.

BY JERUSALEM POST

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Tuesday that if he is re-elected, he will express Israeli sovereignty over all the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria, starting with the Jordan Valley.

Netanyahu said the steps would be taken in coordination with the administration of US President Donald Trump. He revealed that Trump intends to announce his Middle East peace plan the day after the September 17 election.

“This is an historic opportunity that we may not have again,” Netanyahu said in his statement that he delivered at Ramat Gan’s Kfar Hamaccabiah Hotel.
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 Trump tweets services no longer ‘needed’

President Trump said Tuesday he fired his national security adviser, John Bolton, because he “disagreed” strongly with his suggestions and so did others.

….I asked John for his resignation, which was given to me this morning. I thank John very much for his service. I will be naming a new National Security Advisor next week.

By Giran Ozcan, The National Interest, Sept. 8, 2019

Last month, the United States and Turkey reached a temporary agreement on a proposed “safe zone” in Northeastern Syria, marking the latest installment in a pattern of threats and negotiations that has characterized the past several years of the two countries’ relations. While the United States appears to have staved off a unilateral Turkish military operation against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) for the time being, the details of the plan are vague—and it is likely to prove to be little more than a stopgap measure. Rather than negotiate from a position of strength, American diplomats intervened at the last minute, and prioritized a solution that would allow Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to save face rather than force his government to address the root causes of the conflict at hand. In doing so, they have averted a temporary escalation by pushing its resolution further down the diplomatic road.
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T. Belman. This is interesting. I always thought that they were only interested in maintaining their religious privileges. This is a right wing nationalist position which I would like Likud to embrace. Good for them.

MKs from the Knesset’s haredi UTJ party promise to oppose agreements which require relinquishing control of Israeli land.

Arutz Sheva Staff,