By Hillel Frisch,

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 425, March 15, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Reintegrating into the Jordanian state is an economic imperative for the Arab inhabitants of the Palestinian Authority. Only by once again becoming citizens of Jordan will they be able to challenge the economic stone wall imposed by domestic Jordanian economic lobby groups barring West Bank exports. A two-state solution would lead, not to an economy of peace, but to an economy of violence as lobby groups in both Israel and Jordan shut out the Palestinian state’s exports. The Palestinian state would inevitably react by threatening and committing violence to extract the international aid to which the PA has become accustomed.
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The Trump administration is threatening to withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council, citing the body’s “biased agenda against Israel.”

JTA

The Trump administration is threatening to withdraw from the U.N. Human Rights Council, citing among other things the intergovernmental body’s “biased agenda against Israel.”

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter this week to nine nonprofit groups opposed to withdrawal — including one affiliated with the American Jewish Committee — in which he explained that the United States may quit the council unless it makes reforms, Foreign Policy reported.

In the meantime, Tillerson said the U.S. would “reiterate our strong principled objection to the Human Rights Council’s biased agenda against Israel.”
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Jewish Home MK Smotrich warns that Netanyahu is drawing up a diplomatic move that will result in Palestinian state.

By Hezki Baruch, INN

MK Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) on Tuesday evening warned that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is drawing up a diplomatic move that will result in the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“In recent weeks, there have been too many indications that the Prime Minister is quietly cooking up a process that will lead to the establishment of Palestine,” Smotrich wrote on Facebook.

“All this talk about a ‘deal’ and a regional peace conference, the freezing of construction outside the blocs (those who do not build outside the blocs essentially say that the State of Israel is not going to remain there), and the reports about a ‘deal’ that Trump proposed to Abbas for negotiations in return for a construction freeze; reports in Haaretz on contacts between Netanyahu and Herzog to establish a unity government based on the renewal of the ‘political process’; Netanyahu’s desire to build an ‘Iran bypass route’ with moderate Arab states in which the price Israel will have to pay in order to build this axis will be on the settlement front,” he continued, listing what he perceived as indications of Netanyahu’s move.
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By Ted Belman

There is the possibility that Trump’s current moves with Abbas are a distraction covering what he really intends.

Remember he said he doesn’t believe in telling ISIS what his military plans are. Warfare as you know involves a great deal of deception.

Trump is the master of the art of the deal. He must know that a frontal assault on the peace process will not accomplish anything. The last thing he wants is to do what Kerry did and fail yet that is what it appears he is doing.

My article The Ultimate Alternate Solution, has got to appeal to him because it is out of the box thinking and really has a great chance of happening. The odds of him succeeding with it are many times higher than the odds of getting a two state deal with Abbas.

Yael Lempert is staying on at the White House, while Michael Ratney is still at the State Department ? though it’s not yet clear if this is for the long term.

By Amir Tibon, HAARETZ

Two career diplomats who served in senior positions related to the American policy on Israel and the Middle East under the Obama administration are currently filling an important role establishing the new administration’s policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yael Lempert, who was in charge of Israel and the Palestinians in Obama’s National Security Council, has been asked to remain at the White House for now, despite originally planning to return to the State Department.

Meanwhile, the State Department has announced that Michael Ratney, the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem from 2012 to 2015, is currently in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian file at the department.
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T. Belman. Trump is betraying Israel. He is not living up to his campaign rhetoric. If Trump won’t let us build in the settlement blocks, which everyone knows we will keep, he knifed us in the back. Israel must push for what it wants and not be hostage to obtaining his approval.

Now that Trump is making his moves in the peace process, we are better able to understand why he picked Mattis and McMaster for his cabinet.

Israel wants blessing for construction within settlement ‘city limits’ — potentially tripling enterprise, Army Radio reports, but Washington only on board with East Jerusalem building

TOI STAFF

After more than five hours of talks between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump administration envoy Jason Greenblatt on Monday, at which President Trump’s public call to rein in settlement building was discussed, very wide gaps remain between the sides. The complex bid to coordinate positions will now be taken up by Greenblatt and Israel’s Ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer, Israel’s Army Radio reported on Tuesday.

In principle, Israel wants to be able to build anywhere within the “city limits” (t’hum hashiput) of all settlements, potentially tripling the settlement enterprise, the radio report said. For its part, the Trump administration has thus far indicated only that building in East Jerusalem Jewish neighborhoods such as Pisgat Ze’ev, Neve Yaakov and Gilo can continue. As regards US support for any settlement expansion outside Jerusalem — be it at isolated settlements or inside the major settlement blocs — “there’s a problem,” the radio report said.
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By CONRAD BLACK, NY SUN

The ignominious collapse of the Democratic claims and insinuations that Donald Trump was improperly connected to the Russian government has de-escalated the Democrats’ campaign against the president — from a frenzied assault seeking impeachment and removal for a cause to be named later, to guerrilla war. Russian collusion has vanished down the same deep hole as the charges of sexism, racism, and a will to autocracy.

It is widely believed that press reports in the New York Times and other outlets accustomed to receiving and amplifying anti-Trump leaks from within the administration (a thoroughly illegal process), as well as an aside of Democratic representative Adam Schiff of California, to the effect that the House Intelligence Committee would want to know about the surveillance of the Republican campaign, confirm that there was such surveillance. Most intelligence-agency directors in the latter Obama era have volunteered that there was no evidence of such collaboration.
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The PLO is the Siren that drowns US administrations.The PLO is the Siren that drowns US administrations.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

US President Donald Trump is losing his focus. If he doesn’t get it back soon, he will fail to make America great again or safe again in the Middle East.

After holding out for a month, last week Trump indicated he is adopting his predecessors’ obsession with empowering the PLO.

This is a strategic error.

There are many actors and conflicts in the Middle East that challenge and threaten US national interests and US national security. Iran’s rise as a nuclear power and regional hegemon; the war in Syria; Turkey’s abandonment of the West; and Russia’s regional power play all pose major threats to US power, security and interests. The Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic State, Hamas and other Sunni jihadist movements all threaten the US, Europe and the US’s Sunni allies in the region in a manner that is strategically significant to America.
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By Daniel Greenfield

After Trump secured the nomination, Obama’s people filed a wiretapping request. As he was on the verge of winning, they did it again. After he won, they are doing everything they can to bring him down.

It was always going to come down to this.

One is the elected President of the United States. The other is the Anti-President who commands a vast network that encompasses the organizers of OFA, the official infrastructure of the DNC and Obama Anonymous, a shadow government of loyalists embedded in key positions across the government.

A few weeks after the election, I warned that Obama was planning to run the country from outside the White House. And that the “Obama Anonymous” network of staffers embedded in the government was the real threat. Since then Obama’s Kalorama mansion has become a shadow White House. And the Obama Anonymous network is doing everything it can to bring down an elected government.
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DEBKA

The landing of Russian elite units armed with attack drones was detected on Tuesday, March 14 at the big Egyptian air base of Sidi Barrani in the Western Desert near the Libyan border, US military sources reported The incoming Russian troops took up position 95 km from the Libyan border and 240km from the eastern Libyan oil and gas terminals at Tobruk port in eastern Libya in the wake of a major defeat sustained by their Libyan ally.

Officials in Washington, Moscow and Cairo declined to comment on whether or not the Russians had acted in coordination the Trump administration.
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T. Belman.  To my mind, I think it important that the Knesset demonstrate its will so that Trump has to deal with it rather than the much more compliant Prime Minister. Netanyahu wants to shut them up and preempt it.

Coalition chairman asks Jewish Home to postpone vote sovereignty over Maaleh Adumim.

By Hezki Baruch, INN

Coalition chairman MK David Bitan (Likud) on Monday asked the Jewish Home party to postpone the vote on the bill to apply sovereignty over Maaleh Adumim.

Bitan asked to delay the vote on the bill for three months, likely due to the desire of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to formulate policies with the Trump administration regarding Judea and Samaria.

MK Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) addressed the issue on Twitter on Monday evening, writing, “There is no justification in hiding from our friend overseas the public and political support for Israeli sovereignty over Maaleh Adumim. The law remains on the agenda.”
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By Colum Lynch, FOREIGN POLICY

State Department staffers have been instructed to seek cuts in excess of 50 percent in U.S. funding for U.N. programs, signaling an unprecedented retreat by President Donald Trump’s administration from international operations that keep the peace, provide vaccines for children, monitor rogue nuclear weapons programs, and promote peace talks from Syria to Yemen, according to three sources.

The push for such draconian measures comes as the White House is scheduled on Thursday to release its 2018 budget proposal, which is expected to include cuts of up to 37 percent for spending on the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign assistance programs, including the U.N., in next year’s budget. The United States spends about $10 billion a year on the United Nations.
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T. Belman. Apparently, Trump wants to promote the PA economy while at the same time retarding Israel construction to make it subservient to arriving at a formula that will promote “peace and security”.

Netanyahu and Trump’s envoy meet for five hours, discuss construction in Judea and Samaria.

By Nitsan Keidar, INN

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Jason Greenblatt, on Monday evening met for five hours in Jerusalem.

The two discussed a number of issues, but the meeting dealt mainly with the Israel-Palestinian Authority (PA) peace process.

According to a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office, Netanyahu and Greenblatt confirmed the shared commitment of Israel and the United States “to promote a real and lasting peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, that will strengthen Israel’s security and the stability in the region.”
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By Pallavi Kakoti-McHugh

As a former United Nations staffer and invitee to UN University, a question I have been repeatedly asked is should the United States cut ties with the UN and what the future relationship of the U.S. and UN should be like? Without the slightest hesitation my answer is a strong yes. The U.S. should back down from the UN, but that is just first part of my answer. The second part of my answer is replace the UN with an international organization that is worthy of being funded by American taxes and is in action, not mere words, in line with America’s values of freedom, liberty, justice and equality for all.
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By Daniel Greenfield

Tonight the celebration of the holiday of Purim begins. Purim is a Jewish holiday often neglected outside the more religious communities in America and the State of Israel because it commemorates an attempt to exterminate the Jews. And we all know that stopped being a problem long ago.

If Purim had culminated with some smart power diplomacy and a lesson on tolerance, liberal Jews might be more inclined to celebrate it. Unfortunately it ends with a genocidal madman being hung from a tree and the Jews fighting for their lives, winning and slaughtering their enemies.

And instead of feeling guilty about it, their descendants eat pastries, dress up in costumes and get drunk. At least those of their descendants who believe in survival instead of surrender.
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Computer chip giant Intel to enter autonomous vehicle market with $15 billion acquisition of Israel’s Mobileye, sources say.

By Omri Zerachovitz, HAARETZ

Technology giant Intel is purchasing Israeli company Mobileye for 14-15 billion dollars, in the biggest deal in the history of the Israel’s high-tech industry, sources told Themarker.

Mobileye’s market value is 10.5 billion dollars. The two companies are expected to announce the deal in coming hours, and did not confirm reports of the purchase.

Mobileye, based in Jerusalem, was founded in 1999 by Prof. Amnon Shashua, who serves as CTO, and CEO Ziv Aviram. The company develops driver assistance systems and is developing the technology for automated cars.
The company’s technologies are installed by traditional car manufacturers, which compete with technological giants such as Google, Apple and Tesla.  

T. Belman. The reason that this is important is that we have an understanding with the Bush Admin, and even with earlier administrations, that we could build within the agreed boundaries. If such boundaries are now going to be delineated, why not widen the boundaries so that each settlement bloc can hold perhaps 3 or 4 times the current population. If the US intends to limit construction to within the blocs, why not give us room to expand considering how desperate we are for land near thecenter of the country to build housing on.

[Dr. Aaron Lerner – IMRA:  This item recirculated today as Jason Greenblatt arrives in Israel.  Thanks to the Israeli tendency not to read anything longer than a sentence (in any language) – combined with the Israeli self confidence that anything they don’t already know isn’t worth knowing – even senior Israeli officials and top journalists think that the Bush era exchange of letters related only to settlement blocs.  This was hardly the case!]

Dov Weisglass to IMRA: Why settlement construction area never delineated as planned with US
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by BRIAN STEWART, NATIONAL REVIEW

With sympathy for his subject, James Kirchick in his new book surveys the continent in crisis. The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age, by Jamie Kirchick Yale University Press, 288 pages

It is tempting, especially for those in thrall to notions of American exceptionalism, to regard the election of Donald Trump as a singular episode in the history of our times. It is more properly viewed as the traumatic continuation of a populist trend that has been detectable across the democratic world for some time.

The rise of Trump exemplifies nothing so much as the crisis of liberalism roiling the West. With luck, it will prove the culmination of that crisis rather than its harbinger. For if it persists, it would herald the end of the liberal international order as we know it.
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