MEMRI

Former Jordanian Prime Minister Abdelsalam Al-Majali defended the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, saying: “My mentality is a mentality of peace,” and talking about the fundamental issues that Jordan had achieved through the treaty. Jordan, he said, had got its land and water back and had restored its economy. “Israeli continues to give us more water than we are due,” he explained to the Jordan Today TV interviewer. “As for the Palestinian quota – we don’t intervene.” On the question of the Palestinians’ Right of Return, he said: “The Arabs do not have any power. If we ever have military power, will we let them keep Haifa? We’ll take it. If tomorrow, we become stronger and can take Haifa by force, will we really decline just because we have an agreement with them?” The interview aired on August 18, 2018.

To view the clip of Abdelsalam Al-Majali on MEMRI TV, click here or below.

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By Ted Belman

Most people accept the idea that there were about 700,000 to begin with. There is talk that they now total 5.5 million due to the fact that Palestinian refugee status is inherited and due to the fact that Palestinians are immortal.

Trump now says that there are only 500,000, He intends to release the caluculations by the State Department. I totally reject this number based on UNCHAR guidelines. I also don’t trust the State Department to give an honest report free of bias.
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By Victor Davis Hanson, NATIONAL REVIEW

Removing him would only make things worse — for his opponents & the nation.It has been quite a ride since Inauguration Day — or, rather, from Michael Wolff to Omarosa and Michael Cohen, or from the Emoluments Clause to the 25th Amendment, or from talk of decapitating Trump to talk of blowing up the White House.

Yet what might happen should Trump be removed from office, either by impeachment leading to conviction or resignation or by federal indictment from Robert Mueller?
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The ruling by Judge Arnon Darel further stated that the presence of the small community on the outskirts of the Kochav Hashahar settlement was legal.

By Tovah Lazaroff, JPOST AUGUST 28, 2018

T. Belman. I read about this in three other newspapers but none of them reported why the Courts felt Israel has a duty to treat them.

High Court overrules government ban on relatives of Hamas members receiving medical care in Israel, allowing five critically ill women into the country • Deputy defense minister: If these rulings continue, we’ll have to restrict court’s authority.

By Yair Altman, Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff

Kurds who joined PAK are from Iran, but fled the Islamic Republic’s repression to find refuge in the autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government areas of northern Iraq.

By Seth Frantzman, JPOST

Years from now, it will also likely be looked at as one of the most significant decisions Avigdor Liberman will have made as Israel’s defense minister.

BY Yaakov Katz, JPOST

The idea has long been in the works, but the Defense Ministry’s decision on Monday to finally purchase new precision ground-to-ground rockets for the Ground Forces is nothing short of a revolution. Years from now, it will also likely be looked at as one of the most significant decisions Avigdor Liberman will have made as Israel’s defense minister.

The idea to establish a “Missile Corps” has been floating around for years in Defense Ministry corridors but has traditionally run up against opposition from the air force. The thinking was simple: Proponents believed it was important to diversify Israel’s offensive capabilities, while opponents feared budgets would be taken away from the IAF, which until now has had a monopoly on Israel’s sole long-range offensive strike capability.
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By Barry Shaw, INN

We have built our border fences and, where necessary, border walls, despite the outpouring of condemnation, and we are, statistically proven, safer because of it.

Israel is affected by the way Western politicians fail to fully comprehend the machinations of the Middle East. The Western politicians and their diplomats are overly obsessed with doing business with dictators for the good of their national economies. It is far more important that their conglomerates and corporations are neatly intertwined with the ruling elite. It would be unseemly to be seen to be curious about the rumblings of discontent. That may disturb commercial relationships, and potential future lucrative non-governmental careers in the Arab and Islamic world. After all, good commercial ties with such regimes are ultimately good for the people.

Right? Wrong. Just look at Iran as a prime example of how wrong that platitude is.
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T. Belman. When I launched the Jordan Option, I advocated that UNRWA and the PA be wound up and that all monies that traditionally went to them be redirected to Jordan to assist in the absorption of former Palestinian refugees. It looks like my ideas are gaining traction

By Benny Avni, NYPOST

Slowly but surely President Trump is slaying the sacred cows of Palestinian-Israeli diplomacy.

Last week the State Department announced a $200 million cut in annual aid to the Palestinian Authority. Before that, America cut support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, a body created in 1949 to tend to some 750,000 Arab refugees from the war Israel’s neighbors launched to erase it off the map.

UNRWA now handles over 5 million refugee-camp residents in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza. It exclusively tends to Palestinians, while another UN agency deals with refugees everywhere else on the globe.
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Purchase of hundreds of millions of shekels in advanced rockets dovetails with Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s plan to equip IDF with projectiles covering range of 30 to 150 kilometers • Rockets meant to support Israel’s air force from the ground.

By Lilach Shoval and Israel Hayom Staff

An AccuLAR series precision rocket procured by the Defense Ministry

The Defense Ministry announced Monday it had signed a deal worth hundreds of millions of shekels with Israel Military Industries for the development and acquisition of advanced precision rockets.

”This precision fire capability significantly improves the IDF’s capabilities and allows for accurate strikes in remote launches, at immediate availability and at lower costs compared to other combat systems,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement.

The new rockets will include advanced technological systems suitable for modern battlefields.
The procurement follows a directive by Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman to equip the IDF with an array of advanced rockets and missiles covering a range of 30-150 kilometers (18-93 miles).
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By Saul Goldman, AMERICAN THINKER

The neologism “Islamophobia” seems to be a quasi-scientific effort to suggest that suspicion of Islam is simultaneously irrational and racist.  Even more of a concern is the attempt to employ science in the service of politics.

The Nazis in the last century concocted a scientific theory about the inferiority of the Jews in order to rationalize their plan to annihilate Jewry.  Now pseudo-science is used to defend Muslims.  The disturbing fact is that in both cases, we deploy social science in the service of a political agenda.  While some scholars such as John Denham have drawn parallels between modern Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, their implications are not only illogical, but dangerously deceptive.  
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The Syrian war is far from over and could blow up into a regional or even world conflict.

By Yochanan Visser, INN

Tensions between the United States and Russia escalated over the weekend after President Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton warned the administration would react “very strongly” in case Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad again uses chemical weapons in the upcoming offensive against Sunni Islamist rebels in the northwestern Idlib Province.

Bolton told reporters in Jerusalem last week the U.S. is very “concerned about the possibility that Assad may use chemical weapons again.”
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By Yoel Guzansky, Eldad Shavit

INSS Insight No. 1090, August 26, 2018

Examination of several issues on the agenda between the United States and the Gulf states, and Saudi Arabia in particular, indicates that both sides have found it difficult to live up to the high expectations regarding their relations created by the election of Donald Trump. A mutual sobering in this context requires them to reassess their ability to shape a policy that promotes their aims. For the US administration, this is particularly true with regard to its hope to rely more on the Gulf states to promote its aims vis-à-vis Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian political process. These gaps have direct implications for Israel, and accentuate where respective Israeli and Gulf interests do not converge, and highlight the limited room that the Gulf states, and Saudi Arabia in particular, have to maneuver, in order to translate shared interests into concrete action.
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