T. Belman. Israel must insist on “annexation” now as a pre-condition to accepting the Deal of the Century.

U.S. Ambassador also briefed Israeli journalists about the plan in a way that emphasized annexation while downplaying elements less satisfactory to Israel’s right, American and Israeli sources say

A demonstrative shrug by a senior member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s entourage on the plane home from his visits to Washington and Moscow pretty much said it all on Thursday.

Reporters aboard the plane asked what had changed between the bombastic statements about annexing all the settlements as early as next week’s cabinet meeting, and the ice-cold water poured on it by the White House on Wednesday. “I hope nothing has changed,” he replied.

Later, a tortuous explanation was offered. It was all just a “technical problem.” According to another senior official aboard the plane, who was asked to explain the confusion, Israel wanted to annex the Jordan Valley, the northern Dead Sea and the West Bank settlements as a kind of first instalment, and then, in a second wave, the areas around those settlements, for a total area of 30 percent of the West Bank. “But the Americans only want it all in one go, and this will take time.”
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T. Belman. I don’t believe this explanation. After three years, what is left to define.  The key here is that Israel law apply to all Israelis living on this land.  There is no dispute as to who they are, requiring consultations. The official went on to say that the only disagreement which remains between Israel and the Trump administration is whether to carry out the application of sovereignty in one step, or whether Israel should apply sovereignty in stages. All their other explanations contradict this.

Trump administration wants Israel to apply sovereignty in single, comprehensive move, while Israel wants several phases, says official.

By Yoni Kempinski, INN 30/01/20 18:35


Trump and Netanyahu, Kobi Gideon/GPO

A senior Israeli official and confidant of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu played down the apparent split between the US and Israel regarding the timetable for the application of Israeli sovereignty over large swaths of Judea and Samaria.

On Thursday, the senior official said that the disagreement centered around technical issues only, while both sides had fundamentally agreed that Israel will extend its sovereignty over about 30% of Judea and Samaria, including all Israeli towns in the area.

“We’ve been working on this for three years,” the official said. “That’s not three meetings – but hundreds of hours to try to advance this – a deal which is good for the State of Israel.”
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Netanyahu and his wife greet Israeli-American at Moscow airport, after diplomatic efforts to release her from Russian prison, where she was since a conviction on drug charges

By RAPHAEL AHREN and TOI STAFF

Naama (R) and Yaffa Issachar (2nd R), along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) and his wife Sara (2nd L) at Moscow Airport, January 30, 2020. (Screen grab/Channel 12 News)

MOSCOW — Israeli-American backpacker Naama Issachar reunited with her mother on Thursday at Moscow’s airport after her release from Russian prison, and boarded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official plane on her way back to Israel as a free woman.

Netanyahu and his wife, Sara, greeted Naama in front of the cameras, along with Yaffa Issachar, after pushing for months for her release, which comes weeks before national elections in Israel.

Naama Issachar, 27, was sentenced by Russia to 7.5 years in prison after nearly 10 grams of marijuana were found in her luggage during a layover in a Moscow airport in April. She has denied smuggling drugs, noting that she had not sought to enter Russia during the layover on her way to Israel from India, and had no access to her luggage during her brief stay in the Russian airport.

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T. Belman. Yesterday, Israel was estatic believing they could start annexing immediately. Today, the US walked back its green light. What happened overnight. Do Ross and Makovsky have it right?

By Dennis Ross and David Makovsky, WaPo

Israeli security forces during a protest against President Trump’s Middle East peace plan in Jerusalem’s Old City on Wednesday. (Ammar Awad/Reuters)

Jan. 29, 2020 at 11:16 p.m. GMT+2

The Trump administration has now unveiled its Mideast peace plan. While we should expect plenty of debate about its terms, which represent a sharp departure from past U.S. peacemaking efforts, another development has essentially pushed the plan into the background. Israeli officials have announced that they plan to annex all West Bank settlements next week. If they do, this new phase of the process will be dead before it really starts.

The peace plan was supposed to take the interests of both sides into account. But the annexation move essentially makes any agreement superfluous, since Israel is already helping itself to the rewards that it’s supposed to gain from future negotiations over the plan. Any benefits for the Palestinians are left for the four-year period ahead designated by the Trump administration when both sides are to consider the plan. Israel has complained in the past that it is yielding tangible territorial assets for the intangible promise of peace. Now, Israel would be adding land immediately while the Palestinian land would be conditional on other benchmarks. The sudden urgency of the annexation plans seems designed to unite Israel’s right on the eve of an election, which might otherwise fracture the prospects of ceding territory to the Palestinians.

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Jordan’s King Abdullah is facing internal pressure, top officials say in assessment conveyed to political leaders, sounding the alarm about ramifications of any unilateral moves for relations with Amman and the situation in the West Bank

Amos Harel, HAARETZ

The helm of the Israeli security establishment has expressed worry recently about the future of the relationship between Israel and Jordan. With the presentation of the U.S. administration’s peace plan, and especially given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intent to announce the annexation of the Jordan Valley, the top brass has been warning against unilateral steps that could influence the future of ties with Amman.

According to this assessment, which has been conveyed to the senior politicians, King Abdullah of Jordan is under a host of domestic pressures that are making things difficult for his regime.

Abdullah is under fire for the country’s economic situation and the many cases of government corruption that have been uncovered. Many elements in Jordan, including the Muslim Brotherhood, vehemently oppose to the close diplomatic and security ties the kingdom maintains with Israel. An uncoordinated move by Israel, especially an announcement about annexing the Jordan Valley, could challenge those ties. Some assessments say that annexing the valley might even undermine the peace treaty between the two countries.
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He clarified that Israel would first need to present detailed maps to a joint US-Israel committee before receiving official US recognition of the move.

By OMRI NAHMIAS, JPOST  JANUARY 29, 2020 17:19

US Ambassador David Friedman,  (photo credit: MATTY STERN/US EMBASSY JERUSALEM)

WASHINGTON – US Ambassador David Friedman said Wednesday that applying Israeli law to all Jewish settlements in the West Bank is a “process that requires some effort.”

His comments came after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to delay a planned vote on Sunday to annex settlements in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley.

Friedman clarified that Israel would first need to present detailed maps to a joint US-Israel committee before receiving official US recognition of the move.

“The agreement that we have with the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] is that in exchange for Israel agreeing to freeze the territory that is allocated to a [future] Palestinian state and accepting our plan, we will form a joint committee to convert the conceptual map into more details, and calibrated, so recognition could be immediately achieved,” 

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T. Belman. The White House document is long on the “vision” but short on what happens in the interim.

For instance I couldn’t find where it says that Israel can extend sovereignty over the land allocated to her by the map immediately, nor what rules apply to her governance over the land designated for the future state of Israel. Did I miss something?

Now in the article below Kushner confirms that “the technical stuff” needs to be worked on.

Arutz Sheva

Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law, said on Wednesday that the administration believes that Israel should wait until after the March 2 election to apply Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria.

“The hope is that they’ll wait till after the election, and we’ll work with them to try to come up with something,” Kushner told GZERO Media in an interview that will air in full on public television starting January 31.

“We’ve agreed with them on forming a technical team to start studying taking the conceptual map. The Jordan Valley can mean a lot of different things,” he continued. “I want to make sure that we have all of the parameters defined and that we have also a situation where we know what the freeze is.”
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by Rabbi Pruzanski

The most pro-Israel American president in history just released the most pro-Israel American peace plan in history, and the first that doesn’t call on Israel to make “painful sacrifices” up front or expect Israeli concessions in exchange for empty words, gestures and ceremonies. Do I think it will bring real peace? Certainly not. But it leaves me cautiously pessimistic for the future (optimism in the Middle East is misplaced until the coming of Moshiach).

The negative: recognition of a Palestinian state is a bone in the throat of every Torah Jew (or should be), as is the potential loss of sovereignty over parts of the heartland of the Jewish people that G-d granted us for eternity. As one rabbi once put it, no generation has the right to compromise the boundaries of the land of Israel that were given to us by the Creator and delineated in the Torah. That land is the possession of the Jewish people for all time and no single individual, group or generation has the moral, halachic or legal right to waive that possession. This sentiment was expressed not by a Religious Zionist but in 1937, by the vociferously anti-Zionist Rav Elchanan Wasserman HY”D, in encouraging opposition to the Peel Commission’s partition plan.
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President Trump has sided with Israel on the right side of history. To make the most of the opportunity the US has created for Israel to expand its sovereignty, we need a statesman – not a politician.

by  Boaz Bismuth, ISRAEL HAYOM

A general view of construction in the Jerusalem suburb of Givat Zeev | Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad

US President Donald Trump has spent months formulating the much-anticipated counter-Oslo Accords measure.

Yes, it is precisely this president, who many allow themselves to disrespect, who understood Middle East reality better than countless pundits, experts, statesmen, diplomats worldwide, and other advisers who, out of loyalty to magical-yet-misguided paradigms, and with a fixed mindset, bound our future and our fate with that of the Palestinians.

We are no strangers to slogans such as “give land to get peace” or “give them a state and the world will recognize us.” In practice, we gave land and got terrorism, blood, and agony. But then we were told it was happening because we were “occupiers,” and if we wanted it to stop, we needed to cede more land and give more. And more.
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Following Trump’s release of his Israeli-Palestinian plan, world leaders have responded to his proposal of a two-state solution with Israeli settlements. The plan calls for a minimum four-year freeze in settlements.

DW

Leaders from around the world have responded with mixed reactions to US President Donald Trump’s long-awaited Middle East plan unveiled on Tuesday.

The proposal was released alongside Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington. Palestinian leaders said they were not invited to attend the talks and preemptively rejected the plan. Trump’s proposal made concessions to Palestinians — but under terms that they have previously ruled out, such as accepting West Bank settlements.

Europe and the UN were lukewarm and cautious after the peace plan was released.
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PA leader rejects Trump peace outline in speech to Palestinian leaders, saying ‘Jerusalem is not for sale’; reaffirms commitment to opposing terrorism

By ADAM RASGON, TOI Today, 2:14 am

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas speaking to Palestinian officials in Ramallah on January 28, 2020. (Credit: Wafa)

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas firmly rejected the Trump administration’s plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Tuesday, calling it the “the slap of the century.”

Abbas addressed the plan in a speech to senior Palestinian leaders, including representatives of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups, at the PA presidential headquarters in Ramallah.

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T. Belman.  I agree with everything he said.  Sovereignty now, a Palestinian State never.  Normally one year would be enough for the Arabs to demilitarize and meet all conditions. So why a 4 year period to do this. I believe that the long period is to enable Israel to consolidate her hold on the land granted to her including the Jordan Valley. 

Also, holding  out the prospect of the creation of a Palestinian state will stifle the voices against the plan. The EU will have to decide if they will work to achieve such a state or work to destroy Trump’s plan. They probably will do both.

The prospect of a Palestinian state also gives the Gulf states a fig leaf for their reconciliation with Israel.

During that 4 year period, probably within 4 months.  Abdullah will abdicate and Mudar Zahran will take control of Jordan. Abbas and the PA won’t last much longer. When this happens, Israel will look to Zahran to replace the PA as administrator. 

Meanwhile, Israel will strengthen its hold on what has been given to her. 

By Min Smoltrich, JEWISH PRESS

[…] The plan, as it was presented today by President Trump, also has bad and dangerous parts that, even if no one believes – including the Americans themselves – that it will be implemented, it should not even have even been declared.

The good news is that the Israeli government is not required to accept the plan.

The Americans are content with Netanyahu’s general and personal “yes” in his speech to negotiate in the future if and when the Arabs fulfill their conditions, and in fact become Scandinavians – which of course will never happen.

The government’s decision will only include the good part of the plan – applying immediate sovereignty to the entire settlement. For everything else, only President Trump spoke and that doesn’t bind us. For us, it is sovereignty now, and an Arab state never.
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By Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar
The Sovereignty Movement

We have now seen and heard the primary official details of the Deal of the Century, and it is, indeed, a bad deal for Israel. Presumably, the
intentions that led to the formulation of the program were good intentions; however, they lack the basic understanding of the essence
of the Land of Israel.

The Land of Israel is the sole homeland of the Jewish people. The Land of Israel belongs to us, to the generations that preceded us and the
generations that have yet to come. One does not conduct business or make deals on a homeland. Any compromise regarding this absolute,
historic principle, any agreement to relinquish sections of our land will be interpreted by history as an admission that the occupation
falsehood is true. A people cannot be an occupier of its own land. Read more…

T. Belman. The most important point is that Trump has taken 30% of Area C off the table and given it to Israel. Sunday, Israel will vote to apply Israel law over these lands thereby making them an integral part of sovereign Israel.

By Lahav Harkov and Herb Keinon, JPOST

Palestinian and Israeli flags overlook Dome of Rock and Western Wall (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)

Borders: Trump’s plan features a map of what Israel’s new borders will be, should it enact the plan fully. Israel will retain 20% of the West Bank and will lose a small amount of land in the Negev near the Gaza-Egypt border. The Palestinians will have a pathway to a state in the vast majority of territory in the West Bank, while Israel will maintain control of all borders. This is the first time a US president has provided a detailed map of this kind.

Jerusalem: The Palestinians will have a capital in east Jerusalem based on northern and eastern neighborhoods that are outside the Israeli security barrier – Kafr Akab, Abu Dis and half of Shuafat. Otherwise, Trump said Jerusalem will remain undivided as Israel’s capital. Read more…

By Joseph Dolstein, JTA

Reactions to President Donald Trump’s Israeli-Palestinian peace plan unveiled Tuesday took a predictable path, with Jewish groups on the right praising the much-anticipated proposal and those on the left criticizing it.

The proposal, which Trump presented at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, would give Israel the Jordan Valley and parts of the West Bank while freezing for four years the areas that the U.S. proposes as part of a future  Palestinian state. A Palestinian state would be made up of Gaza and the majority of the West Bank, which would be connected via high-speed rail, and have East Jerusalem as its capital.

Israel would also get “overriding security responsibility and control over entire territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea,” U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman said in a follow-up call with reporters. The White House released a 180-page document that elaborated on the details of the plan.
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T. Belman. It is more than a map. This map is not  the basis for negoting borders.  It fixes the borders so that Israel is free to exercise sovereignty over all land shown as theirs.

What is significant, is that this is the first time any plan has come with an actual map.

By HERB KEINON, JPOST

The new Israeli-Palestinian border map (photo credit: WHITE HOUSE)

One of the landmarks of US President Donald Trump’s diplomatic plan that was introduced Tuesday night is that it presents an actual map – a map that shows how the US administration envisions Israel’s final boundaries. This marks the first time any American Mideast plan has come with a map.

Maps have been talked about, maps have been suggested, maps have been drawn up and shown in private meetings. But during the Oslo negotiations, and at Camp David between Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat, no formal, clear maps delineating Israel’s future borders and the borders of a future Palestinian state were presented to the public.

Until Tuesday night.
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