BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 886, July 8, 2018

Dr. James M. Dorsey

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: A United Arab Emirates-backed Saudi effort to wrest control from Jordan of Islam’s holy places in Jerusalem signals a sharper, more overt edge to Saudi religious diplomacy. The kingdom’s quest for regional hegemony risks deepening divides in the Muslim world.

The Saudi effort to take control of Islam’s holy places in Jerusalem serves, among other things, to support President Donald Trump’s plan for a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – a plan that has split the Muslim world even before it has officially been made public, and that has been clouded by Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

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by Linda Goudsmit, PUNDICITY

Dear America: Who’s Driving the Bus? is a philosophy book that offers a universal paradigm for understanding the often confounding and contradictory ways in which people behave.

America is currently embroiled in a second civil war that it is unaware of and that threatens our way of life. The civil war in this country is being fought over the same thing all great wars are fought over: power. But in this war, the adversaries are ourselves. Civil War II is not a race war, an economic war, or a war between states. It is a psychological battle between states of mind that will determine who has the power in our society, who is in control.

The human growth process is twofold; it has a physical component and a psychological component. Chronological age is an uncontested biological accomplishment. Psychological growth is another matter entirely. We struggle with the wish to become powerful, independent adults and the longing to remain powerless, dependent children.
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The bill, put forward by Bayit Yehudi MK Bezalel Smotrich would make it possible for anyone to directly purchase land in Area C.

By Tovah Lazaroff, JPOST

The Ministerial Legislative Committee is scheduled to debate a bill Sunday that would make it easier for Jews to purchase land in Area C of the West Bank.

The bill was put forward by MK Bezalel Smotrich (Bayit Yehudi), who has been among the leading legislators working to strengthen Jewish property rights in Judea and Samaria.

UAE foreign minister says crisis between Qatar and gulf states, Egypt will not be solved soon due to Qatar’s support for terror.

By Shimon Cohen, INN

Still isolated. Leader of Qatar, REUTERS

Anwar Gargash, United Arab Emirates State Minister for Foreign Affairs, published an article in which he asserted that the crisis with Qatar cannot conclude soon, as Qatar still supports terror.

The article was written by Gargash in the Saudi daily Al-Hayat and titled “Qatar – a year of shattered dreams.” In the article, translated and disseminated by MEMRI, Gargash argued that the crisis with Qatar was not created ex nihilo but crystallized after years in which Qatar acted opportunistically to consolidate its regional status while undermining the security of the region, undermining the stability of its neighbors and violating the agreements with them.
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By Amil Imani, INN

Former American and European bigwigs lobby for Iranian terror group. Why?

Historians have concluded that history is cyclic. Unless one learns from its mistakes, we will be doomed to endure an endless repetition of the cause and effects of poor management systems.

French author Charles Pinot Duclos, observed:  “We see on the theater of the world a certain number of scenes which succeed each other in endless repetition: where we see, the same faults followed regularly by the same misfortunes, we may reasonably think that if we could have known the first we might have avoided the others. The past should enlighten us on the future.”
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By David Israel, JEWISH PRESS

Raw sewage pouring on the beach in central Gaza Strip.

Trump administration officials are directing their attention to improving conditions in the Gaza Strip, opting to ignore the Palestinian Authority which has been boycotting US missions to the region – in the hope of forcing Ramallah to join the peace process before it becomes irrelevant, The Washington Post reported Saturday.

“We definitely have a Gaza focus right now because the situation is the way it is, and we want to try to help,” a senior Trump administration official told the Post. “But it’s not as though we think we need to fix Gaza first before we would air the peace plan.”
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Source explains why IDF does not raise response level to incendiary kite warfare and flare-ups from Gaza.

By Mordechai Sones, INN

A security source referred to the weekend incidents around the security fence adjacent to the Gaza perimeter communities.

“The reason for the army’s non-response lies in two areas,” he says. “The first area is negotiations that have been accelerated in recent days on the issue of Gaza as a whole and the prisoners in particular, and the second is the north.

“The army sees the northern sector as the main fighting task, with intensification of forces in the north and growing Iranian presence despite the developing agreements with the rebel organizations.”
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“The Palestinian goal was and remains not the end of the conflict, but the end of Israel’s existence.”

BY GIDEON SAAR, JPOST

Finding a solution to any conflict or disagreement between two sides demands the will and mutual understanding. It cannot be accomplished unilaterally.

This is just as true for the so-called, “two-state solution,” which on a practical level was never more than a “two-state slogan” or a theoretical idea – and not an especially successful one at that.

It is unsuccessful even theoretically, because Israel cannot live with the inevitable outcome – the loss of control between the River and the Sea in two crucial aspects: security and demography.

What can we learn from history? And in our case we are talking about a history of 100 years.
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As Iran suffers from economic stagnation, the country is ripe for more sustained protests and armed opposition to the regime.

BY SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPOST

ZOA

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) denounced the Muslim Congress for its plan to feature anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying, anti-gay, and pro-terrorist speakers at its 14^th annual conference – entitled “Islam: Religion of Hope”—on July 6-8 in Orlando, Florida.

The Muslim Congress represents itself as a charitable 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization whose objectives are “to promote Islamic knowledge, morality, divine values and cooperation among members living in various Muslim communities of North America.”  Yet the speakers that the Muslim Congress chose to feature at its conference do not endorse these benevolent objectives.  Instead, they promote hateful and divisive views, making false accusations against Jews, denying the Holocaust, inciting violence against gays, and promoting Islamic terrorist groups that have wreaked havoc on innocent civilians, including by kidnapping and raping young girls and women, and engaging in suicide bombings, beheadings, and other violence.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu never cared much about settlements, but he needed U.S. support to convince a pro-settler cabinet that restraint paid.

By Evelyn Gordan, JNS

(July 6, 2018 / JNS) The Jerusalem Post published a surprising report in June: According to data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of construction starts for housing in the settlements has been in a “downward spiral” ever since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January 2017 and hit a six-year low in the first quarter of 2018.

Granted, Israel’s government regularly approves plans for thousands of new settlement homes. But it rarely authorizes their actual construction. Moreover, even these “new approvals” are often just recycled plans that were previously approved but never built.
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Now is the time for American resolve and if need be significant consequences imposed on Turkey to advance our interests.

by Dr. Eric R. Mandel, JPOST

A Turkish flag flutters atop the Turkish embassy as an Israeli flag is seen nearby, in Tel Aviv, Israel June 26, 2016. (photo credit: REUTERS/BAZ RATNER)

Turkish antagonism to America, Israel, and the EU, and the Islamization of this once proudly secular nation must be seen in historical context. Relations between the US and Turkey today are, as they have been over the last 70 years, primarily based on shared national security interests, which often shift and have been unpredictable.

Modern American Turkish relations began at the dawn of the Cold War with the Truman Doctrine in 1947 guaranteeing the security of Turkey and Greece. Turkey remained a linchpin of American military strategy in the Middle East through the Cold War, a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. But times have changed in the 21st century with the ascendancy of the neo-Ottoman authoritarian strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
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#InsideJordan

As its economy falters and protests continue to rumble, Jordanian activists and tribes are demanding greater representation

Will cutting funds to PA empower Hamas, or force the PA to cut terror spending? Will rehabilitating Gaza improve the security situation?

By Yochanan Visser, INN

As the situation in southern Israel remains very tense and the so-called Kite Jihad continues unabated, questions arise how to end the stand-off between Hamas and Israel and how to achieve some progress in the renewed efforts to solve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

As Arutz Sheva reported earlier, renowned Middle East experts think the only way to restore calm to southern Israel is to get rid of the Hamas regime in Gaza by launching a large-scale military operation and then start a sort of denazification process similar to what happened in Germany, Austria and Japan after WW II.

The international community, including the Trump Administration and parts of Israel’s political and military establishment, however, think solving the humanitarian and economic crisis in Gaza is the key to solving the problem.
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By Owen Paterson, JEWISH POLICY CENTER

Britain’s Secretary of State for Exiting the EU David Davis at a press conference in Brussels on June 19, 2017 (Photo: Alexandros Michailidis)

The American Revolution and the 2016 Brexit vote had democratic control at their hearts; everyone is familiar with the rallying cry of “No taxation without representation.” As with the European Union today, American dissatisfaction with British rule was as a result of our overreach in the colonies. It went too far and America declared that enough was enough. You wanted to decide how to spend your own money – not be told to send it off to Great Britain.

On June 23, 2016, 17.4 million people in the United Kingdom – more than have ever voted for any issue or political party in our history – voted to leave the EU.

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T. BELMAN.  I AM OUTRAGED BY THIS SUGGESTION ESPECIALLY COMING FROM MEFORUM

by Rafael Castro and Efraim Karsh, BESA Center Perspectives 
July 03, 2018

https://www.meforum.org/articles/2018/jewish-west-bank-communities-the-kernel-of-a-tole

It is a historical irony that what was internationally recognized as an indisputable Jewish right nearly a century ago has become a foremost denigration of this very right.

In 1922 the League of Nations, the UN’s predecessor, endorsed the 1917 Balfour Declaration on the creation of a Jewish national home in Palestine and tasked Britain with facilitating this goal. It was taken for granted that the biblical areas of Judea and Samaria, the bedrock of Jewish statehood from time immemorial, would be part of that prospective national home (or, rather, state). Indeed, the mandate given to Britain even included the vast territory east of the Jordan River, or Transjordan as it was known at the time (it is now the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan).
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By David Israel, JEWISH PRESS

The Europeans are warning Israel against the destruction of the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar, where, as of 2018, there are 173 Bedouin residents, including 92 children, living in tents and huts. Khan al-Ahmar is located between the Israeli settlements of Ma’ale Adumim and Kfar Adumim. In May 2018, Israel’s High Court of Justice determined that its residents could be evicted, as per a 2010 Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories demolition order.

Three senior European diplomats on Thursday told Channel 10 News that the ambassadors of the five largest countries of the European Union—Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Spain—had met with the deputy national security adviser at the Prime Minister’s Office, Oded Yosef, to warn him that the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar would lead to a stern response from many European countries.
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