… an escalation of violence.

Hamas in Gaza is in serious trouble and could be becoming Iran’s next proxy army as a result of a crisis in the relations with the Palestinian Authority and the new isolation of Qatar, which has been Hamas’ main sponsor over the past few years.

The crisis in the relations between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority dates back to 2007, when the Islamist terror organization violently took over Gaza, resulting in the split of the PA and three wars with Israel.

In recent years there have been numerous attempts for a reconciliation between the Palestinian rivals and the formation of a unity government. But they all stranded on Hamas’ refusal to cede power in Gaza and the PA’s fear that Hamas would eventually try to take over the Palestinian Authority.

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Trump’s envoy Jason Greenblatt has been meeting with members of Congress and Jewish organizations ahead of his next visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority

Amir Tibon and Barak Ravid

Ahead of another visit to the region by President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, Jason Greenblatt, the White House is making efforts to recruit support on Capitol Hill and in the American Jewish community for its peace initiative. Greenblatt met last week with members of Congress and delegations of Jewish groups affiliated with the right wing, to explain Trump’s desire to reach “the ultimate deal” between Israel and the Palestinians.

On Thursday, Greenblatt met with a group of six members of Congress – three Democrats and three Republicans – to discuss Trump’s policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and see if there are ways to create bi-partisan support for renewing the peace process.
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T. Belman.  Don’t assume that pro-deportation means anti-immigration. Of course, Stephen’s pro-immigrant stance begs the issue of whether the US should allow into the US, Muslim immigrants who don’t share our values or don’t want to integrate or don’t want to become Americans.

In the matter of immigration, mark this conservative columnist down as strongly pro-deportation.

The United States has too many people who don’t work hard, don’t believe in God, don’t contribute much to society and don’t appreciate the greatness of the American system.

They need to return whence they came.

I speak of Americans whose families have been in this country for a few generations. Complacent, entitled and often shockingly ignorant on basic points of American law and history, they are the stagnant pool in which our national prospects risk drowning.

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Let me take you on a short UN safari around the world, beginning and ending in Washington, D.C., to see just how effectively the United Nations spends our tax dollars.

In 2009 in Washington, the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the world was threatened by an H1N1 global flu pandemic. It recommended that almost everyone be vaccinated. Then, in 2010, the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published its evaluation of the WHO. It pointed out that the medical scientists who had advised the WHO to declare this pandemic were also paid consultants of the large international pharmaceutical companies, who stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on this upsurge in the purchase of global vaccines. There was no subsequent UN financial investigation by the WHO to look into the BMJ’s initial findings.
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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 500, June 17, 2017

By Jiri Valenta and Leni Friedman Valenta

“…if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.”
– Sun Tzu

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: “America will not lead from behind. America First does not mean America alone. It is a commitment to protecting and advancing our vital interests…” So wrote President Donald Trump’s NSA, General H.R. McMaster, with Gary Cohn, head of the National Economic Council, in the Wall Street Journal. What follows is a discussion of US leaders’ failed strategies in several wars, Trump’s team of generals, and the emerging Trump doctrine, which is here termed “strategic savvy”.
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TIMES OF ISRAEL

Border Police officer Hadas Malka was killed on June 16, 2017 in a stabbing attack near Damascus Gate. (Courtesy)

Hadas Malka, 23, the Border Police officer stabbed to death by a Palestinian assailant in a terror attack outside Jerusalem’s Old City on Friday evening, had sent a final selfie to her friends just minutes before the attack, wishing “Shabbat Shalom to my loving friends.”

Staff Sergeant Malka was a resident of Moshav Givat Ezer in central Israel. She will be laid to rest on Saturday night at midnight in the southern city of Ashdod. She leaves behind parents and five siblings, three sisters and two brothers.
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‘This Issue Is Not Subject To U.S.-Israeli Extortion’

By: Y. Yehoshua and C. Jacob* MEMRI

Since its establishment, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has been paying allowances to Palestinian security prisoners in Israeli prisons, both past and present, as well as to the wounded and to the families of individuals “martyred,” including in carrying out attacks against Israelis. Recently, the PA has come under pressure to stop these payments. According to reports, during PA President Mahmoud ‘Abbas’s May 3, 2017 visit to the White House, the Trump administration demanded that the PA stop making these payments. Likewise, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently confirmed that the issue of stopping the payments has been discussed by U.S. President Trump and ‘Abbas. On June 13, 2017, Tillerson told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that during his visit to Bethlehem on May 23, 2017, the PA had promised him that both it and the PLO had “changed their policy… and their intent is to cease the payments to the family members of those who have committed murder or violence against others… We’ve been very clear with them that this is simply is not acceptable to us.”[1]
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“This brand new SteynPost was taped hours before this morning’s shooting of House Majority Whip Steve Scalise and others at a GOP team practice for the Congressional baseball game. Mark looks at recent examples of political violence, and the left’s preference not for winning the debate but for shutting down the debate – by any means necessary.”

This is an increasingly common pattern among Leftists and Islamic supremacists. I discuss it in detail in my upcoming book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies).

Elliott Abrams, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, served as deputy national security advisor under George W. Bush, supervising White House policy for the Middle East. Mr. Abrams briefed the Middle East Forum in a conference call on May 30, 2017.

Summary account by Marilyn Stern, Communications Coordinator for the Middle East Forum.

Unlike past U.S. presidents’ “inside out” approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict (i.e., resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would lead to wider Arab-Israeli peace), Trump has subscribed to the “outside in” strategy whereby improved Israeli-Arab relations could broker an Israeli-Palestinian deal.
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Education minister reportedly seeks to require a two-thirds Knesset majority to hand over parts of the capital under a peace deal

Education Minister Naftali Bennett is reportedly set to propose legislation that would require a special two-thirds Knesset majority on any decision to divide Jerusalem under a future peace deal with the Palestinians.

Bennett, who leads the pro-settlement Jewish Home party, wants to amend the Basic Law on Jerusalem so that votes to divide the city will require the approval of 80 MKs to pass, as opposed to a regular majority, Israel Hayom reported on Friday.
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Professors for a Strong Israel, an extra-parliamentary organization of academics, on Friday sent an urgent letter to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Donald Trump’s advisor Jason Greenblatt, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

“The history of fifty years of negotiations has shown one thing: No gesture and no concession has promoted any negotiations and certainly has not brought any agreement closer. On the contrary, the concessions created a dynamic of gradual progress towards Arab empowerment in Judea and Samaria and a constant war – but without any progress towards peace,”

“We call upon the Government of Israel to be aware of the reality in which we are living and to refrain from any Israeli concession on the ground. Do not allow Palestinian construction in Area C so long as a final agreement on ending the conflict has not been reached. If the Palestinians need land on which to build, they must wait until the final arrangements are completed on the ground, not on paper.”

T. Belman. Bennett tried to make the point that he wants peace as much as the left does, except they want to achieve it through concessions and he wants to achieve it through strength. While I agree with this, I think it begs the question. Should Israel give away the land in search for peace or should it hold on to the land and peace be damned. Peace should not be the highest value. Some things are worth fighting for.

Israeli newspaper reported Monday that Herzog and Netanyahu secretly flew to Cairo in April 2014 for a meeting with Egyptian President Abd El-Fattah El-Sisi.

The crowd at the dovish Haaretz newspaper’s Peace Conference booed Education Minister Naftali Bennett Monday for saying that keeping Jerusalem united is preferable to a diplomatic agreement with the Palestinians.

Bennett quoted from a Ma’agar Mohot poll published 10 days ago in the pro-Netanyahu newspaper Israel Hayom that found 84% of the public opposed a deal in which Israel would give up all of Jerusalem’s Old City and 67% said they were against an agreement in which Israel relinquished part of it.
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T. Belman. This is wrong for a number of reasons. In principal we shouldn’t be making their life easier, so long as they are committed to our destruction in word and deed. We should keep the pressure on. If the change their covenant, their propaganda war, stop the incitement and stop the terrorism, then and only then should we consider expanding Area A in exchange for them agreeing to the expansion of all our settlement blocs including Arial, Maaleh Adumin and Gush Etzion. And they must acknowledge that these Jewish cities will be part of Israel in any settlement.

But our policy on Qalqilya should be to have it removed, not expanded.

Right-wing politicians are up in arms over the idea of expanding Palestinian cities in Area C.

BY TOVAH LAZAROFF, GIL HOFFMAN, HERB KEINON, JPOST

Israel notified the Palestinian Authority that five Palestinian cities – Ramallah, Hebron, Tulkarem, Jenin and Kalkilya – would be allowed to expand from Area A into Area C, MK Ahmed Tibi (Joint List) told Army Radio on Thursday night.

Tibi spoke prior to the anticipated return of US envoy Jason Greenblatt to the region, who was last here two weeks ago to speak with Israelis and Palestinians about US President Donald Trump’s peace efforts.
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President Donald Trump has clearly seized on good relations with Riyadh, Cairo and Abu Dhabi as a lever for pushing Israel and the Palestinians into peace talks.

US President Donald Trump’s goal of generating a rapid improvement of Israel’s ties with the Arab world, including the Palestinians in 2018, is not just up to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, but depends largely on how the Trump administration handles the continuing conflict between Qatar and its powerful Arab opponents, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Up until the end of this week, Trump had turned down the efforts of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis to resolve the Gulf conflict by diplomacy.
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In a Friday sermon, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, advisor to PA President Abbas on Religious and Islamic affairs, said that the Al-Aqsa Mosque, along with the Al-Buraq Wall (the Western Wall) was an Islamic religious endowment and could never belong to non-Muslims. “We cannot possibly relinquish a single millimeter, a single stone, a single micromillimeter of the Al-Buraq Wall and of the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque,” he said in the sermon, which was delivered on June 9 and broadcast by the official Palestinian Authority TV.
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