U.S. negotiator describes talks with European signatories to 2015 deal as “constructive,” says not engaging in contingency planning would be irresponsible • “The Europeans may go out on a limb and still have the U.S. president walk away,” strategist warns.

News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

The United States has had constructive talks about the Iran nuclear deal with Britain, France and Germany but is making contingency plans should they fail, the lead U.S. negotiator said on Wednesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump gave an ultimatum on Jan. 12 to the European powers, saying they must agree to “fix the terrible flaws” of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal or he would refuse to extend the U.S. sanctions relief on Iran that it calls for. U.S. sanctions will resume unless Trump again waives them on May 12.

“We have had constructive talks with the Europeans towards a supplemental agreement but I can’t predict whether we will reach an agreement with them or not,” Brian Hook, the State Department policy planning director, told reporters in a conference call.

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Right-wing politicians and settlers had anticipated a surge in his first year, given that he did not have the same no-tolerance policy toward settlement building as did his predecessor, Barack Obama.

By Tovah Lazaroff, JPOST MARCH 21, 2018

The number of new housing units constructed in West Bank settlements dropped dramatically in 2017, the first year of US President Donald Trump’s administration.

The drop of 47% is well above the national average of 14%, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, which on Tuesday published its brief annual construction report.he did not have the same no-tolerance policy toward settlement building as did his predecessor, Barack Obama.

The advancement of settlement plans doubled last year, and Israel also took the unusual step of approving two new settlements. But in terms of actual building on the ground, the story looks different.
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Turkey’s capture of Afrin is a signal that with Russian acquiescence, it can now crush other Syrian Kurdish enclaves – but first it must eliminate the US presence in Manbij

By David Barchard, MIDDLE EAST EYE

Ever since the Syrian civil war began almost exactly seven years ago in March 2011, Turkey has chased the goal of becoming a major player in Syria, even though its initial dreams of overthrowing President Bashar al-Assad and replacing him with a Sunni-led administration have faded.

Now, at least in its own eyes, that moment has finally arrived. On Sunday, after an eight-and-a-half-week campaign, Turkish and Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces entered Afrin city, enabling President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to claim victory on the anniversary of an earlier Turkish victory at Gallipoli in World War One. “We have given a lesson to the world,” proclaimed Star, a leading pro-government paper, on Monday morning.
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The Jewish Agency is right to sound the alarm regarding the rejection of Israel by liberal Jewish youth.  However, such trends don’t occur in a vacuum. They are the political consequences of spiritual decline.

By Matthew M. Hausman, J.D., INN 

The Jewish Agency recently warned that young Jews are becoming estranged from Israel  because of perceived conflict with their liberal values, and commentary on the subject suggests that instead of acknowledging its own responsibility, the mainstream establishment is questioning what Israel and her supporters must do to stem the tide.

But the phenomenon is not a consequence of misdirected youthful exuberance or Israeli policies and is not a problem among the observant or politically conservative. Rather, it affects the progressive and culturally assimilated segments of American Jewish society and echoes the social priorities of an institutional leadership that has traded spirituality for secular political values.
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Jerusalem, March 22nd, 2018 – ECI Founding Director Tomas Sandell has met with Israeli Government MinisterZeev Elkin in Jerusalem to discuss closer cooperation between the Israeli government and ECI in standing against international efforts to distort the history of Jerusalem.

“There can be no doubt that Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel and that the Jewish people have a long and unbroken history, dating back more than 3000 years, in the city of Jerusalem”, Sandell said. Minister Elkin, whose government portfolio includes matters related to Jerusalem, thanked the European Coalition for Israel for its important work in defending the rights of the Jewish people.
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The deal is politically fraught but could create an energy powerhouse.

By Robin M. Mills , BLOOMBERG

Israel’s Tamar drilling platform

The discovery of Egypt’s giant Zohr gas field in August 2015 was heralded as the solution to the country’s energy problems. So why did Egypt cut a deal this year to import natural gas from Israel, its former enemy?

Dolphinus Holdings, a private Egyptian company, agreed Feb. 19 to buy gas from Noble Energy and its partners from Israel’s two largest offshore fields, Leviathan and Tamar. The controversial accord is but the latest chapter in an Egyptian gas saga that has gone from triumph to tragedy to tentative renaissance.

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T. Belman. Unmentioned in this article is the fact that often what is classified as anti-Muslim is legitimate criticism of Islam and its followers. A hate crime is a prejudice-motivated crime. A crime is a crime but why there a sub class of ones that are prejudice motivated.

Is all prejudice bad. The left would have you think so when they work to equate all cultures. Everybody discriminates, i.e., chooses. That in it self is healthy. Yes, some discrimination is bad and has been legislated against. All cutures should have to compete for your affection. None should get a free ride or worse, protection from criticism. It is right to be Islamophobic considering what Muslims are doing to Europe. Some value systems should be banned. Christianity and Christians are constantly under attack by progressives. If they can do this, surely the same standards should apply to how Islam and its followers.. Criticsm of any religion must be permissible. Even moreso a political system. Islam is both.

This is a huge subject, one that requires pages and pages to address. I have just scratched the surface with a few provocative statements.

Thus the puzzling question remains: why does McMaster University not confront anti-Semitism, while it is careful always to complain publicly about other, perhaps more fashionable, forms of prejudice?

 by W. F. Smyth and Marianne Walters, HAMITON SPECTATOR

Benign tolerance of hate speech against Jews contrasts with swift reprisals against forms of expression that are without doubt reprehensible — but certainly no more so than explicit anti-Semitism, W. F. Smyth and Marianne Walters write. – Barry Gray , The Hamilton Spectator

A recent article in The Spectator deals with the response, or rather the absence thereof, by McMaster University to egregious anti-Semitic activity and commentary by “Palestinian” groups on campus over several years.
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NEW YORK, MARCH 21, 2018

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement criticizing World Jewish Congress (WJC) President Ron Lauder’s opinion piece published in the New York Times on March 18:

Lauder’s op-ed unconditionally demands a Palestinian State as the solution to the Arab war against Israel but ignores the fact that Palestinian Arabs rejected Israel’s statehood offers three times in the last 17 years, not to mention rejecting Statehood in 1937 and 1947 because it required accepting Israel, which they won’t do because their goal is its destruction.  Lauder also immorally and absurdly appears to equate “settlements” (Jews living in the Judea/Samaria) to the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s incitement and promotion of the murder of Jews.  Lauder’s op-ed also employs a false “demographic” argument (apparently relying on false, wildly overstated PA population figures and projections) and promotes a dangerous so-called “two-state solution” (a euphemism for the creation of a Palestinian Arab terror state) as the “only solution.”
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By Dr. Khaled M. Batarf, AL ARABIYA

Again, we make headlines! Again, Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman “MBS” is making waves in international media. And, again, Iran and company are in a media blitz against the prince and his nation.

“Tomorrow is going to be fully full!,” says Nabeel Maghrabi, the studio engineer responsible for TV satellite transmission at one of the top Jeddah providers. “I’ll be standby for the whole week, starting Monday. We had a lot of reservations and expect back-to-back recordings. Most of our clients are new. US, European and Asian TVs are taking every available spot, day and night,” he explains.

He is not alone. Other providers are busy, too. Commentators, like me, are expecting the same thrust. Not that we mind — not at all. We love to talk about our young prince and his “vision.”

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Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, noted the particularly tense and fragile state of relations between Fatah and Hamas.

BY Tova Lazaeroff, JPOST

The Palestinian Authority must control the Gaza Strip and the area must be part of a future Palestinian state, the European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said on Tuesday.“We see it very clearly: The West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza belong together. There is no State of Palestine without Gaza, nor with Gaza alone,” Mogherini said in advance of a Brussels meeting of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee that handles donor funds to the Palestinians.

“This is why we expect all Palestinian factions to defy the spoilers and continue on the path of reconciliation, with courage and determination,” Mogherini said.

She noted the particularly tense and fragile state of relations between Fatah and Hamas.
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Following petition against councils that never collected taxes, Court makes clear if no collection, sum will be deducted from their budgets.

By Mordechai Sones, INN

The Supreme Court is ending its leniency with Negev Bedouin councils Neveh Midbar and Al Kasum that have never collected municipal taxes from their residents.

The judges warned the councils that if they do not collect municipal taxes by August, the amount that should have been collected will be deducted from the total annual budget the State disburses them.

As early as 2011, the State Comptroller’s report stated that despite the high budgets allocated by the government, the regional council established in 2002 presents a deficit of millions of shekels year after year, without much effort to increase its own income.
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DEBKA

UNRWA IS IN CRISES NOW BECAUSE IT IS SHORT OF MONEY. THE LEFT WANTS THE WORLD TO PROVIDE THE MONEY TO SOLVE THE CRISIS. THE RIGHT WANTS TO USE THE CRISES AS A MOTIVATOR OF CHANGE.

By Sher Zieve, CFP

With regards to the Mueller ‘investigation’ of President Trump, I have been asking the title’s question (from many) for quite awhile:  “How is conducting an investigation based upon fake evidence legal?”  Thus far, I haven’t received even a mediocre reply or one that resembles a modicum of logic.  Others merely try to change the subject.  As a Special Counsel was assigned to the Trump case (although there doesn’t seem to be a factual let alone truthful case against him), in checking the requirements for the USAG assigning a Special Counsel—§ 600.1 Grounds for appointing a Special Counsel—states:

“The Attorney General, or in cases in which the Attorney General is recused, the Acting Attorney General, will appoint a Special Counsel when he or she determines that criminal investigation of a person or matter is warranted and – (a) That investigation or prosecution of that person or matter by a United States Attorney’s Office or litigating Division of the Department of Justice would present a conflict of interest for the Department or other extraordinary circumstances; and (b) That under the circumstances, it would be in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter.”

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Measures aim to annex settlements to city and turn Palestinian areas into a no man’s land, warn rights groups

By Jonathan Cook, MIDDLE EAST EYE, (WARNING. This site is anti-Israel)

January 1, 2018

The remains of a house after it was destroyed by Israeli troops in Beit Surik near Jerusalem, 15 November (AFP)

JERUSALEM – Israel is putting in place the final pieces of a Greater Jewish Jerusalem that will require “ethnically cleansing” tens of thousands of Palestinians from a city their families have lived and worked in for generations, human rights groups have warned.

The pace of physical and demographic changes in the city has accelerated dramatically since Israel began building a steel and concrete barrier through the city’s Palestinian neighbourhoods more than decade ago, according to the rights groups and Palestinian researchers.

Israel is preparing to cement these changes in law, they note. Two parliamentary bills with widespread backing among government ministers indicate the contours of Jerusalem’s future.

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In recent years, only one to two percent of Palestinians in eastern Jerusalem have participated in municipal elections. However, with a stalled peace process, Palestinian Authority intransigence and rising frustration with Palestinian political parties in Jerusalem, experts for the first time are seeing a shift in Palestinian participation in Jerusalem.

By Israel Kasnett, JNS

(March 20, 2018 / JNS) At the center of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute has been the city of Jerusalem. Since Israel united its divided parts in 1967, the ancient city has seen a remarkable shift towards modernity with major infrastructure upgrades and a thriving economy. Yet at the same time, the predominately Arab eastern half of the city has largely been cut off from these upgrades—and their resulting successes—because of complex political and nationalist motives.

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By Efram Inbar, ISRAEL HAYOM

The likelihood of Israel agreeing to divide Jerusalem or concede control over the Temple Mount anytime in the near future is slim. Jerusalem is central to Israel’s national ethos as well as critical to Israel’s national security. Israel’s control of Jerusalem provides strategic depth for the densely populated coastal plain and vitally links the coast to the Jordan River as Israel’s eastern security border.

However, demographic realities in the city and accompanying political developments worryingly suggest that Israeli-Zionist political control of the city is in danger. Consequently, the most pressing Zionist challenge is to settle Jews – Zionist Jews! – in Jerusalem.

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By Hana Levi Julian, JEWISH PRESS

The Regavim NGO watchdog organization says it plans to petition the High Court of Justice for a second time, regarding a school that was built by the European Union in the heart of an archaeological site in the Southern Hebron Hills region – in defiance of an earlier decision by Israel’s High Court of Justice.

Over the past few weeks, Arabs living in the “Hirbet Z’nutah” outpost situated in the center of an archaeological site adjacent to the local municipality’s offices, have built an illegal structure with support from European Union funding.
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From Israel’s point of view, close cooperation between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and US in eastern Syria to block Iran’s influence would be welcomed.

By SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPOST

The United States administration is trying to determine its long-term goals in eastern Syria as Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visits Washington.

Since the visit of Saudi Gulf Affairs Minister Thamer al-Sabhan to eastern Syria in October last year, there have been hints that the kingdom could play a role in reconstruction efforts. Now The Washington Post has reported that US President Donald Trump asked the Saudi King in December for up to $4 billion in commitments to help rebuild eastern Syria.
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The crown prince charts a course toward moderation, which prevailed before the 1979 attack on Mecca.

By Adel Al-Toraifi, WSJ

The year 1979 was a watershed for the Middle East. Iranian revolutionaries overthrew the shah, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and Sunni Islamic extremists tried to take over the Grand Mosque of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Islam’s holiest shrine. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman hadn’t been born, but he is fighting the ghosts of 1979 as he dramatically reforms the kingdom.

The attempted takeover of Mecca was a defining event in my country, mainly because of what happened next. Saudi rulers, fearing Iran’s revolutionary example, decided to give more space to the Salafi clerical establishment in hope of countering the radicals. Traditional Salafi preachers are neither violent nor political, but they hold a rigid view of Islam. Their legal rulings and attempts to police morals made the kingdom increasingly intolerant, setting back the gradual opening up that had occurred in the 1960s and ’70s.
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