T. Belman. Res 242 asserts two things.
1) Israel can remain in occupation until it has an agreement for defensible borders,
2) Israel does not have to withdraw from ALL the occupied territories,
Both of these tenants are independent of each other and are not meant to be synonymous.
This does not equate with the ’67 lines with swaps as Obama demanded nor with Bush’s formula:
Bush and Obama already helped destroy the region and damage U.S. interests there. How much worse could it get?
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, the United States, starting with the decision to oust Iraq’s Saddam Hussein launched a military campaign aimed at challenging the political status quo in the Arab world and transform U.S. policy in the Middle East.
The underlying assumption to what amounted to be a revolutionary change in American foreign policy was that only a process of political and economic reform in the Arab world along liberal-democratic lines — abetted by regime change and nation-building — would be able to deliver a blow to the forces of radicalism like those that helped perpetrate the 9/11 attacks.
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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive in Israel at the beginning of July in the first-ever trip to this country by an Indian prime minister. The visit reflects the significant expansion in relations between the two countries since they established full diplomatic relations in 1992.
Since Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party came to power in May 2014, his administration has shed its predecessors’ reservations about regular public discussions regarding India’s ties with Israel. It is worth noting that Modi’s trip to Israel is not planned to be “balanced” with a visit to the Palestinian Authority, indicating that India has freed its relations with Israel from its historical commitment to the Palestinian issue. Indeed, India has modified its voting pattern at international organizations by refraining from joining the automatic majority against Israel.
Amazing photography (by Tamir Orbaum) showing the chilling vulnerability of Israel’s coastal plain (Ashdod-to Petah Tikva) from the highlands earmarked for a prospective Palestinian state.
A grim warning for two-staters (Use “Zoom In” button and view in “Fullscreen” -See the Control Panel a bottom of screen )
http://www.360vr.tamiror.com/
Please share widely!!!!
http://www.360vr.tamiror.com/
BESA Center Perspectives No. 510, June 27, 2017
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: A close look at the situation in eastern Jerusalem reveals contradictory movements: radical Islamicization vs. closer integration with Jewish Jerusalem. Both trends are on the rise simultaneously. Despite the complicated circumstances, united Jerusalem under exclusive Israeli sovereignty is the key, not an obstacle, to peace and security in the city.
1. Islamicization in Jerusalem
T. Belman. Yes there are many similarities between Hitler’s imperialism and values and Islam’s. In fact Hitler started writing Mein Kampf while in prison in 1923.Jihad means struggle as does Mein Kampf.
There is hardly a difference between the atrocities committed by Hitler and his troops and the atrocities committed by the forces of ISIS.
Sultan Mehmet V greets Kaiser Wilhelm upon his arrival in Constantinople
Germany has a bizarre historical connection with Islam that lies beneath much of the present day crisis in Europe. One could argue that these connections are just the product of historical coincidences, but with Germany the coincidences seem to add up regularly.
When one studies the age of European imperialism, Germany came late to the game, almost as an afterthought. Bismarck, for all his authoritarian faults, felt that imperialism would do Germany no good, and wanted no part of it. He was overridden by public opinion, and Bismarck’s policy was later repudiated by Kaiser Wilhelm II, who wanted Germany to take her “Place in the Sun.”
T. Belman. No, the biggest threat to Israel would be in leaving Judea and Samaria.
At panel on Mideast peace, Yaakov Amidror says Israel must preserve possibility of 2-state solution, argues biggest threat to Jewish state is demography
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former national security adviser argued Monday that Israel must cease new construction in settlements outside of the so-called blocs, or risk losing its ability to uphold both its Jewish and democratic nature.
Yaakov Amidror, who served under Netanyahu from 2011 to 2013, said at a panel at Bar-Ilan University that while he though the current Palestinian leadership and the volatility of the current Middle East do not present the conditions for a peace deal, Israel must preserve the possibility of a two-state solution in the future.
Not only did Abbas reject their demand, he reportedly accused the presidential envoys of working as Israeli agents.
Should the United States pay Palestinian terrorists? For the overwhelming majority of Americans and Israelis this is a rhetorical question.
The position of the American people was made clear – yet again – last week when US President Donald Trump’s senior envoys Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt met with Palestinian Authority chairman and PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas and repeated Trump’s demand that the PA cut off the payments.
Read more…
Shas leader Deri: Decision reflects will of the people • Senior Reform rabbi decries “unconscionable insult” to most of world’s Jewry • Jewish Agency cancels event with PM Netanyahu in protest • PM orders top aides to formulate alternative solution.
The government on Sunday shelved a long-overdue plan to open a mixed-gender prayer area at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, a major policy reversal that infuriated the liberal streams of Judaism that represent most Jews in the United States.
The egalitarian prayer plan was approved in January 2016 as a compromise reached after years of negotiations between liberal Israeli and American Jewish groups and the Israeli authorities. It was seen as a significant breakthrough in promoting religious pluralism in Israel, where the ultra-Orthodox establishment controls every facet of Jewish life.
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The shells exploding on the Golan in the last 48 hours came from a battle between Syrian rebels and the Assad regime army plus Hizballah 3km from the Israeli border.
In the last 48 hours, Israel has conducted air strikes on and aimed tank fire at Syrian army positions near Quneitra’s northern suburb of Baath city, 3km from IDF Golan border defenses. (See map). Those positions were the source of the mortar shells that exploded on the Israeli Golan – 10 on Saturday, June 24 and three the next day. They came from a battle in which Syrian and Hizballah units were fighting off a Syrian rebel offensive around Quneitra.
The rebel militias set up a coalition to coordinate their offensive. It is dominated by the Hay’at Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), which Damascus claims is an arm of Al Qaeda-Syria. In fact, it is an alignment of dozens of Islamist groups, some of which belonged and still do to Jabhat Fateh al-Sham – the former Nusra Front.
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On June 20, 2017, Hudson Senior Fellow Michael Doran delivered remarks to a United Nations Security Council briefing titled “The situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question.” His prepared remarks are reprinted below:
Mr. President,
Members of the Security Council,
It is an honor to appear before you today to discuss the fiftieth anniversary of the 1967 War, and the current state of Arab-Israeli peacemaking.
Mr. President,
Please permit me to focus my remarks on the key factors that prompted Israel to take control of the West Bank in 1967, and to discuss the continued significance of those factors today.
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Can Israel afford to defy U.S. presidential pressure to concede land, which is historically and militarily critical to the future of the Jewish state?
U.S. presidential pressure has been an integral part of the U.S.-Israel saga since 1948. However, in retrospect, U.S. pressure on Israel has been based on erroneous assessments of the Middle East, failing to advance the cause of peace, as evidenced by the only two peace accords (between Israel and Egypt and Jordan), which were the result of direct Israeli initiatives, not U.S. pressure.
In fact, U.S. pressure on Israel has forced Arabs to outflank the U.S. from the maximalist side, causing further setbacks to the peace process.
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T. Belman. How can Mandel say that Saudi Arabia doesn’t support “political Islamism”? At least he redeems himself later in the article.
There should be no illusions about political Islamism or aligning with conservative Sunni states.
After speaking with foreign policy experts and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle last week, there was a rare consensus that we shouldn’t harbor any illusions about our strategic Arab alliances in the Middle East.
US President Donald Trump’s realignment back to our Sunni Gulf “allies” makes sense on the surface, as we share the goal of curbing Iran’s obsession to dominate the region.
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Education Minister attacks idea to allow descendants of Arab refugees to settle Judea and Samaria, says they won’t stop at Israeli border.
Education Minister Naftali Bennett continued to criticize Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s plans to allow Arab construction in Area C, under full Israeli control, of Judea and Samaria. In an interview with Arutz Sheva, Bennett declared that Israel would not allow one Arab refugee or descendant of refugees to settle in Area C.
Liberman had previously stated that Israel would not accept a single refugee within the the pre-1967 lines. However, he left open the possibility of Arab refugees and their descendants settling in Judea and Samaria as part of a future Palestinian Arab state.
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27 Mar 2017
The crisis in the Gulf over Qatar’s ties to terrorism and Iran took an even more serious turn as Arab states issued an ultimatum to Doha demanding that it close the propaganda media outlet Al Jazeera, cut ties with Iran, remove a Turkish military base, and pay reparations.
Qatar is not expected to comply with any of these demands.
Reuters:
Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have sent a 13-point list of demands apparently aimed at dismantling their tiny but wealthy neighbor’s two-decade-old interventionist foreign policy which has incensed them. Kuwait is helping mediate the dispute.
A Qatari government spokesman said Doha was reviewing the list of demands and that a formal response would be made by the foreign ministry and delivered to Kuwait, but added that the demands were not reasonable or actionable.
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Decades ago, while walking across the campus of one of our elite institutions to receive an award, I was accompanied by Professor Charles Price, a brilliant chemist with degrees from Swarthmore and Harvard. Professor Price informed me that he was president of the World Federalists. I had never heard of that organization, and asked him what the group stood for. He told me that they were working towards one-world government. I was not consciously shocked by his statement, but at some level must have been stunned and confused since I never forgot it.
Like many of my naïve peers, I assumed that the United Nations had been created at the end of World War II as a forum to bring the nations of the world together, to enter into constructive, problem-solving dialogue, and to “put some teeth” into the world’s aspiration for peace. Vicious aggressions could be stopped. War could not be banished, but the most egregious invasions and acts of hatred could be mitigated and often prevented entirely.
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Angry politicians threatened to pressure Netanyahu to rescind the decision, which would prevent workers from breaking ground on new housing projects.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promised the United States that he would freeze the publication of tenders for new building projects in West Bank settlements through the end of 2017, settler sources told The Jerusalem Post.
They spoke with the Post after the Hebrew newspaper Makor Rishon broke the story on Friday morning.
Angry politicians threatened to pressure Netanyahu to rescind the decision, which would prevent workers from breaking ground on housing projects.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 507,
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: On September 25, a referendum will be held on the future of the Kurdistan region of Iraq. The vote will decide whether autonomous Kurdistan should disengage from Iraq and become an independent state or remain within the Iraqi state. The referendum will be the Iraqi Kurds’ first concrete step towards the realization of the more than century-long dream of an independent Kurdish state.
After WWI, the victorious powers promised independence for the Kurds. This did not materialize, however, mainly due to the opposition of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey.
Since then, the Kurds have suffered persecution and oppression in the countries where they reside: Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. The Kurds now constitute the largest national group in the world without a state to call their own.
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