By John Irish and Sabine Siebold, REUTERS

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, trying to reassure allies that Washington was not tilting towards Moscow over the Syrian conflict, told them on Friday that the United States backed U.N. efforts to broker a political solution to the war, officials and diplomats said.

Tillerson also said military ties with Russia hinged on its stance towards rebels fighting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who Russia backs.

Countries opposed to Assad met on Friday for the first time since Donald Trump took office as U.S. president in a bid to find common ground ahead of U.N.-backed peace negotiations in Geneva next week.
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By Morton A. Klein, ZOA February 19, 2017

It’s important to examine the harmful records and anti-Israel actions of the five leftwing, hostile-to-Israel, pro-Iran deal former U.S. Ambassadors to Israel who signed a coordinated letter to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unfairly and falsely maligning Ambassador-nominee David Friedman. The five signatories – Thomas Pickering, Daniel Kurtzer, Edward Walker, Jr., James Cunningham, and William Harrop – damaged U.S.-Israel relations and exacerbated the situation in the Middle East. At least several of them have financial or other ties to hostile-to-Israel groups.

Revealingly, the very same five former ambassadors signed a letter in July 2015 promoting the Iran deal (which provided Iran with a path to a nuclear bomb and $150 billion to fund its terrorist operations throughout the world). (“Former US Ambassadors to Israel Back Iran Deal,” by Deb Riechmann, Times of Israel, July 27, 2015.)
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If the Trump administration wants to achieve peace in the Middle East Egypt will be an essential component, but deep anti-Israel propaganda in the country constitutes a serious stumbling block.

By HAISAM HASSANEIN, JPOST

According to a recent report in the British Telegraph, Israel withdrew its ambassador from Cairo quietly some time ago due to security concerns. Over the many years of exchanging diplomatic missions, while Egyptian diplomatic missions have always enjoyed their stays in Tel Aviv, security concerns have regularly curtailed the Israeli diplomatic missions’ movement in Cairo.

Commenting on the Palestinian rhetoric against Israel, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson stated before his senate confirmation hearing, “Sometimes it takes another generation that’s not carrying all that baggage of the past.”
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Leaders of Arab states, like many other observers, may not be sure exactly what to make of Trump’s remarks during his press conference.

BY BEN LYNFIELD, JPOST

Although seen by Palestinians as very dangerous, Donald Trump’s appearance of backing away from long-standing US support for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is likely to elicit only a restrained reaction among Arab states – at least initially.

For one thing, leaders of Arab states, like many other observers, may not be sure exactly what to make of Trump’s remarks during his press conference Wednesday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he said either a oneor a two-state solution was acceptable, provided the Israelis and Palestinians agreed on it. Before doing anything that could risk raising the temperatures in what are delicate relations with a new administration, they will want to gauge whether Trump is really intent on ditching what has been a cornerstone of US policy.
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The answer to Kerry’s peace proposal.

By Morton A. Klein, ZOA President

It was exhilarating to watch President Trump, at his press conference with PM Netanyahu, refuse to parrot the tired, irrational, dangerous mantra that a Palestinian Arab state is the only option for peace.  Instead, President Trump wisely spoke about real peace; creative solutions; ending the Palestinian-Arabs teaching of “tremendous hate” to their children in their schools; and the essential requirement that the Palestinian-Arabs must recognize the Jewish State.

The truth is, irreconcilable, diametrically opposed differences between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) have long made it clear that the creation of a Palestinian-Arab state is an impossibility.
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Kerry’s outline included Arab recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Netanyahu claimed he couldn’t get his coalition to back it.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took part in a secret summit in Aqaba a year ago where then-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presented a plan for a regional peace initiative including recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and a renewal of talks with the Palestinians with the support of the Arab countries.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi were also present at the meeting in the Jordanian city.

Netanyahu did not accept Kerry’s proposal and said he would have difficulty getting it approved by his governing coalition. Still, the Aqaba summit was the basis for the talks that began two weeks later between Netanyahu and opposition leader Isaac Herzog (Zionist Union) on establishing a unity government.
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By MARTIN SHERMAN

A rift is emerging among opponents of the two-state idea, between those who believe Israel can endure as the Jewish nation-state with a large permanent Arab population west of Jordan River, and those who believe it can’t.

Sovereignty extended over territory confers citizenship to all residents of that territory.

Sovereignty applies equally to all the residents of the area—Israeli and non-Israeli. There is not one law for Israelis and another for non-Israelis.  It must be clear—if we apply sovereignty—it must be egalitarian…- President Reuven Rivlin, Jerusalem, February 14, 2017, in a staggeringly obtuse political declaration, suggesting that the Jewish nation cannot extend its sovereignty over its ancient homeland, unless it totally disregards any difference between its kinfolk and its implacable enemies, sworn to its destruction.
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis

Su-24 warplanes buzzed the USS Porter destroyer in the Black Sea.

Overlaying US President Donald Trump’s extraordinary, hour-long skirmish with reporters Thursday, Feb. 16, was bitter frustration over the domestic obstacles locking him out from his top security and foreign policy goals. Even before his inauguration four weeks ago, he had arranged to reach those goals by means of an understanding with President Vladimir Putin for military and intelligence cooperation in Syria, both for the war on the Islamic State and for the removal of Iran and its Lebanese surrogate Hizballah from that country.

But his antagonists, including elements of the US intelligence community, were turning his strategy into a blunderbuss for hitting him on the head, with the help of hostile media.
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BDS has failed to turn Israel into a pariah state.

by JONATHAN MARKS, COMMENTARY

At least as Gallup measures it, that effect has been zero.In 2005, 69 percent of U.S. adults held a favorable view of Israel and 25% held an unfavorable view. Today, those numbers are 71 percent and 25 percent.
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The organization has come to symbolize not hope for peace but the rage of a schoolyard bully.

by James Wilson, WESTERN JOURNALISM

American taxpayers contribute $400 million yearly to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine. The funds buy school textbooks for Palestinian children. The textbooks — supplied for all ages — call the founding of modern Israel a disaster of biblical proportions and look forward to the “end of days” when Muslims will eliminate Jews from the Earth. They are shot through and through with incitements to extermination Israelis in particular and Jews in general. Hitler would be proud of his spiritual children.

The issue is not whether Palestinians are entitled to teach their children whatever they wish, however disgusting that may be to civilized people. The issue is co-opting people who do not share these views to fund them. The vast majority of Americans are repulsed by the hate with which these books and their teachers indoctrinate the children under their control.
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Editorial of The New York Sun

A star is born is our reaction to the first press briefing by President Trump’s new ambassador at the United Nations. The ex-governor of South Carolina was ridiculed by the Left when the president first sent her nomination up to the Hill, owing to her alleged lack of foreign policy chops. She certainly rang the wake up gong for that crowd this morning, after emerging from her first meeting of the Security Council. Tough as nails but with a smile and a layer of Southern charm.
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T. Belman. I watched part of the Senate hearings on David Friedman and felt sorry for him as he was made to eat his words, words that many of us agree with including J Streeters being like kapos. So I am posting this article on a speech he gave in Jerusalem with me in the audience. This is what he and Trump have agreed on. We have yet to see if they can stand by these words.

In the hearings, Friedman was taken to task for saying that the State Department is anti-semetic and has been since Israel was created and even before. The Senators were outraged that he should have said such a thing. Friedman was forced to bob and weave and obfuscate to get out from under their glare. But the truth is that he spoke the truth about the state Department.

David Friedman, Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel, told a Jerusalem rally in October that Trump will not force a two-state solution on Israel.

By Allison Kaplan Sommer, HAARETZ DEC 16/16

Twelve days before the United States presidential election in November, David Friedman stood on a rooftop with a glorious view of the Old City of Jerusalem to address a rally organized by Donald Trump supporters living in Israel.

For those who took Friedman’s words seriously in his October 27 speech, the news that Trump, now the president-elect, plans to buck the policies of past Republican and Democratic presidents and move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem should come as no surprise.
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T. Belman. This is an extract from article written by Aryeh Eldad in 2004. I have been promoting a similar plan as set out in my article, “The Ultimate Alternate Israel-Palestine Solution “. I have known and respected him since I arrived in Israel. Lately we began communicating to see how we can further this Plan along. Although it was written in 2004, it remains the only plan that can succeed.

By Aryeh Eldad, NATIVE ONLINE

[…]

Concurrently, Israel must present an alternative plan. This plan can be proposed during the crisis which will result from the failure of the Road Map.

The alternative plan is based on the fact that the Palestinians already have a state of their own, Jordan, which was established after the territory which was allotted for the Jewish National Home in Mandatory Palestine was divided into two parts, three-quarters given to the Arabs. Palestinians today already constitute 75% of the population of Jordan. Our alternative plan presents the need for a regional solution to the refugee problem by settling the refugees in Jordan; the rate of natural increase of the Palestinians prevents the solution of their problem within the areas of Yesha wherein they live at present, not to mention the three million Palestinians and Palestinian refugees that currently are living in other Arab countries and might be expelled to the territory of “Palestine” if such a state is established according to the Road Map plan.
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The two-state model is widely viewed as the formula for Middle East peace. But the fact of the matter is that it makes peace impossible to achieve, by holding normal relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors hostage to grandiose peace deals.

BY CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

When they met on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin were both walking wounded.

Netanyahu arrived in Washington the center of a criminal investigation the chief characteristic of which is that selected details of the probe are regularly leaked to the media by anonymous sources who cannot be challenged or held to account.

These anonymous sources, from inside the police and state prosecution, use hand-picked reporters who all share a visceral hatred of Netanyahu, to present a version of the probe to the public that besmirches Netanyahu and his family.
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“We absolutely support the two-state solution but we are thinking out of the box as well.”

BY REUTERS

Trump said that the United States would work toward peace but said he was leaving it up to the parties themselves ultimately to decide on the terms of any agreement. He said such a deal would require compromises from both Israelis and Palestinians.

Trump’s announcement appeared to loosen the main tenet of U.S. Middle Eastern policy dating back three administrations and stunned the international community, which has crafted it diplomacy based on the premise of a Palestinian state co-existing alongside Israel.
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Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked says annexing all of Judea and Samaria would be demographic disaster, but Area C should be annexed.

INN

Justice Minister and Jewish Home MK Ayelet Shaked criticized suggestions that Israel should annex the entirety of Judea and Samaria Thursday and argued that such an annexation would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state, as the state would not be able to be able to handle giving citizenship to approximately 2 million Arabs.

In an interview with Radio 101.5FM Shaked said: “I agree with [Zionist Union and Opposition Leader Yitzhak] Herzog that the annexation of Judea and Samaria would lead to an end to the Jewish state.”
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HAARETZ

U.S. President Donald Trump lashed out on Thursday at an ultra-Orthodox Jewish reporter who asked him what his administration is prepared to do against anti-Semitism, apparently interpreting the question as a personal accusation of anti-Jewish sentiment.

Trump was taking questions from reporters at the East Room of the White House, his first solo press conference since taking office. About an hour into the conference, Jake Turx, a reporter for the haredi Ami Magazine, asked Trump about the administration’s plan to handle the rise in anti-Semitic incidents across the United States, and noted the recent waves of bomb threats against Jewish centers throughout the country.

Though Turx started his question by telling Trump that no one in the Jewish community is accusing him or his staff of anti-Semitism, Trump took it personally.
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Trump created the first new paradigm for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a quarter of a century and became the first US president to set aside the principles of the 1993 Oslo Accord.

BY TOVAH LAZAROFF,  JPOST

In diplomatic parlance, nothing says “I love you” more than telling a right-wing Israeli leader that perhaps a Palestinian state isn’t necessary after all.

He could have gone for the more traditional type of Valentine’s Day present. Nothing wrong with champagne, cigars, roses or even chocolates hearts.

But then, US President Donald Trump is hardly the run of the mill politician. Touching the third rail of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by appearing to disavow a two-state solution is in keeping with his torch and burn attitude to tried and true staples of Washington policies.
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