Ivanka Trump: I didn’t expect this “level of viciousness”

Cairo – The Council of the Arab League is holding an extraordinary meeting on Monday at the level of permanent representatives to discuss how to confront the growing Israeli infiltration into the African continent, and its implications on the Arab national security.

This session is being held upon the request of Palestine.

The participants will focus on the promotion of Arab cooperation with the African Union to renew the Palestinian issue in the African continent. They will also urge African countries not to participate in any Israeli occupation–African conference.

This comes amid preparations by Tel Aviv to organize an African–Israeli occupation summit in Togo in October 2017.
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“We must not accept a situation in which normalization with the Arab countries will be held hostage to [resolution of] the Palestinian issue,” says defense minister.

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Monday dismissed the possibility of a final Israeli-Palestinian peace deal that would end the conflict, just as US President Donald Trump has started to jump-start a peace process frozen for three years.

“The best-case scenario is to reach a long-term interim agreement,” Liberman said, addressing the meeting of the Knesset caucus on “a diplomatic vision for Gaza.”

Last week, Liberman told Channel 2 that Israel was closer than ever to a peace deal. On Monday, he honed his vision to explain that the best scenario would be for Israel to reach an agreement first with moderate Sunni Arab states, and only then to look toward a final deal with the Palestinians.
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The invention of eternal ‘refugeeism,’ which is passed on from one generation to another, aims to serve as one of the tools for Israel’s destruction. The Palestinian leadership cannot say it wants peace with Israel while supporting the return of refugees.

Daniel Friedmann, YNET NEWS

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T, Belman. There is only one reason for the continuation of UNRWA and that is to put pressure on Israel to capitulate. Is has gone on for nearly 70 years. Time to resettle all the refugees rather than holding them in concentration camps and indoctrinating the students to kill Israelis.

UN Secretary-General dismisses Netanyahu’s call to shut down UN agency for “Palestinian refugees”.

Elad Benari, INN

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Monday dismissed calls by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to shut down UNRWA, the UN agency for “Palestinian refugees”.

Netanyahu’s call came after terror tunnels were discovered underneath one of UNRWA’s schools in Gaza.

Guterres “is concerned about recent public criticism of UNRWA and the integrity of its operations,” spokesman Farhan Haq said, according to AFP.

“He wishes to express his support for UNRWA and his admiration for the role it plays in delivering essential services and protecting the rights of millions of Palestine refugees across the Middle East.”
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A majority of Israeli Jews believe it would be impossible for Israel to reach a peace deal with the Palestinian Authority anytime in the foreseeable future, a new poll shows.

According to a survey published by Channel 2 Monday, despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to bring the two sides together for negotiations, there is little optimism regarding the possibility of a final status agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
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“Exposed in the Turret,” a reissuing of the 1968 book published in English as ‘The Tanks of Tammuz,’ Kinneret Zmora-Bitan, 432 pages, 96 shekels ($27).

My hand reached almost automatically for the bookstore’s history shelf when I saw the new edition of “The Tanks of Tammuz.” I had been wondering if Shabtai Teveth’s 1968 work would reappear for the Six-Day War’s 50th anniversary, and here it was before me, an arm’s length away, with Paul Kor’s iconic cover in the Armored Corps’ green and black.

Leafing through the book the heroes of my childhood reading came to life: Maj. Gen. Israel Tal and Col. Shmuel Gorodish (Gonen), Lt. Col. Ehud Elad and Maj. Shamai Kaplan, Biro the regiment commander and Nati the company commander. And there were all the commanders and combatants who achieved the victory in the Sinai and Golan alongside their comrades who never returned, the widows and orphans, the wounded and crippled. Through them, Teveth documented the formation of the Israeli tank force from its beginnings to its bloody breakthroughs on the way to the Suez Canal and the slopes of Mount Hermon.
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DEBKA

Bashar Assad’s troops and his allies, the Iran-backed Lebanese Hizballah, are notorious for their barbaric cruelty to the populations they conquer. But even by their own appalling standards, the massacre they wreaked against the 100,000 citizens of the southern Syrian town of Daraa this week must stand out as a milestone from hell.

Posted in the town, just one kilometer from the Jordanian border, were 3,000 anti-Assad rebels, some of whom joined the Free Syrian Army to be trained and armed by the United States and Jordan. The offensive the Syrian government army and Hizballah launched against their positions on Sunday, June 11, left 140 dead and hundreds injured in its first hours.
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Congressional Testimony: Efforts to stop Iran’s terror-financing were systematically undermined by the Obama Administration

Why? To get a nuclear deal, says an insider from the Obama Administration
The testimony is stunning and deeply disturbing.

Efforts to stop terror financing not only involved Iran but also its partners, Syria and Venezuela.

US government efforts to investigate and roll up these networks were all quashed in pursuit of a nuclear deal.
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The prime minister retains power by deflecting political pressure and cleaving to his rightist flank; that the opposition doesn’t quite know how to respond doesn’t hurt

In public, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likes to project a calm confidence about his political future. “Likud is going to be in power for years to come,” he asserts roughly once a month at Knesset faction meetings or other forums.

But in private, Netanyahu seems less certain. Across a wide range of audiences, the message often seems to be that his government teeters on the cliff’s edge.
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“At a Party meeting the Party leader addresses the audience:
– All of you will be hung tomorrow. Do you have questions?
Silence.

The Party leader:
– I will repeat the question. Tomorrow you all will be hung. Does anybody want to say anything?

A timid voice is heard from the audience:
– Shall we bring our own rope and soap or they will provide it to us?”

This was a Soviet anecdote of the 70s.
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Netanyahu withdrew demand from draft of U.S. peace framework in early 2014 following pressure from right, senior Israeli officials say

By Amir Tibon, HAARETZ

In the course of negotiations with the Palestinians over the framework document at the beginning of 2014, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that the Obama administration insert a provision stating that Israeli settlers and settlements in the West Bank would be allowed to remain in a future Palestinian state under Palestinian jurisdiction. This is according to a working draft of the document obtained by Haaretz and from conversations with senior Israeli and U.S. officials who were involved in the talks at the time.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 493, June 10, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Erstwhile Western Sunni allies (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan) and a former Soviet client (Egypt) seem increasingly amenable to uniting in active defense against “Islamist extremists.” They share an adversary in Iran, which has tentacles in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, and Kuwait, as well as an unsavory history with North Korea and Pakistan. Prospects seem to signal potential for NETO, a Near East Treaty Organization (not a resurrection of CENTO, or an extension of NATO) that would embrace the span between the Eastern Mediterranean (including Israel), the Red Sea, and the edge of the Indian Ocean. Should such an organization materialize, it might well contribute to novel approaches to resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
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BY JOEL H. GOLOVENSKY

Yedidia Stern, an eminent and widely respected professor of law and vice-president of the Israel Democracy Institute, argues in his Opinion column, “Why The Proposed `Basic Law’ Is Bad For Israel” that the proposed law favors particularist values at the expense of universalist ones.  This is wrong and the reasons he cites are fallacious.

The truth is that Israel needs this law because it has a constitution which leaves it out. That Israel has a constitution and a bill of rights is taught in every law course in the country. This constitution was self-proclaimed by the Supreme Court in the early 1990s when the Court transformed “basic laws” into constitutional provisions; those provisions now basically require the nullification of Knesset laws deemed by appointed judges to be in conflict.  Before this judicial revolution, “basic laws” were regular laws labeled as such merely to mark them as sources to be used by the Knesset when formulating and enacting a written constitution.
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Cairo also accuses Hamas of harming its interests by sponsoring the digging of tunnels and arms smuggling along the Egyptian borders, as well as training militants who have carried out terror attacks in Sinai, including the assassination of Egyptian prosecutor-general Hisham Barakat in 2015.

The crisis between Cairo and Doha continues to deepen, with the former accusing the latter of regional meddling and supporting terrorist organisations

Ahmed Eleiba , AHRAM

Earlier this week, Egypt severed diplomatic ties with Qatar, imposing a series of sanctions on the small Gulf state in coordination with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain.

The four countries accuse Qatar of supporting terrorist organisations, interfering in Arab states’ internal affairs, and boosting strategic ties with Iran, challenging a general policy of other Gulf countries towards Tehran and thus threatening the national security of Arab states.

Sources in Cairo say Egypt has accumulated evidence showing Qatar’s meddling in many local and regional issues.
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T. Belman. Don’t forget that Obama worked closely with Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood in overthrowing Qadaffi and Mubarak. They also planned to over throw Assad. Turkey was their accomplice. The in the last Gaza war Obama tried to impose a ceasefire together with Turkey and Qatar that met what Hamas wanted. Fortunately Israel and Egypt stayed strong and prevailed.

By the way Brookings have a division in Doha and are very tainted with pro Arab policies. Martin Indyk is a key player there.

“Willfully bad” Gulf state sought role in brokering solution to Israel-Palestinian conflict while under fire for financing terrorism.

BY SETH J. FRANTZMAN, JPOST

In 2007, then-Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad told the US Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence Stuart Levey that Qatar provides “more support to fundamentalists than Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.”

Qatar was “willfully bad,” Fayyad said.

Saudi FM to Qatar: Enough is enough, stop supporting Hamas, other terror groups
Middle Israel: The sheikhdom that roared
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T. Belman. That’s axiomatic if you foresee most of the land going to the PA. If we refuse to follow the Kerry framework then only good comes out of settlement construction.

[JPOST used this sub-title “Israel’s continued policy of settlement expansion is illegal under international law.” They are so far left that they are in the ditch.]

By Tova Lazaroff, JPOST

The United States and the European Union over the weekend accused Israel of harming the peace process by advancing plans to build 3,178 settler homes.

US President Donald Trump “has talked about this consistently and he has said, in his opinion, unrestrained settlement activity does not help advance the peace process,” US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters in Washington on Thursday.

• Israeli settler activity triples, 7,721 homes planned or approved

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