By Sol Stern, ISRAEL BEHIND THE NEWS

After President Obama greased the wheels for the UN Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s settlements policy, then President-elect Trump tweeted that “things will be different after January 20th.” I didn’t vote for Trump, but for the sake of restoring some sanity to America’s Middle East policies, I fervently hope he fulfils that promise.

To make a real difference, our next president needs to understand how the United Nations’ hostility to the Jewish state is rooted in perverse institutions that have been abetted by previous US administrations. The most glaring example of this is the inaptly named United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). With its US$1.3 billion budget (30% of which comes from US taxpayers), this agency actually perpetuates the refugee problem it was created to solve, while promoting Palestinian rejectionism and Jew hatred. Trump will soon have the means to drain the UNRWA swamp. If he does so, he would increase the chances of peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
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By Yossi Fuch, ISRAEL HAYOM

The new Judea and Samaria Settlement Regulation Law is necessary because large areas of the territories were never properly registered in land registries. Moreover, the properties listed in the Jordanian land registry were not properly surveyed, resulting in thousands of buildings being built on privately owned land.

Under Israeli law, if a person builds on someone else’s land unintentionally and in good faith, he or she may stay on the property as long as the landowner is properly compensated.

The new law has a similar provision because, under Palestinian law, selling land to Israelis is punishable by death, making it all but impossible to buy the rights to contested plots. The law is constitutional and is in line with Israeli values. It is as valid as the other property laws passed by the Knesset because Israel does not consider itself to be an occupying power in Judea and Samaria and it believes that giving Israelis the same rights as Palestinians advances the state’s vision.
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By Ted Belman

What follows are three articles condemning Israel for the regulation law for many reasons, chief among them is that they make the TSS harder to achieve. Europe together with Obama set the parameters of such Peace agreement which itself was impossible to achieve. The problem is with them for supporting the PA rejection of anything remotely possible and the PA incitement to violence. Their criticism really pisses me off.

Outpost law damaging Israel’s credibility, French envoy charges

This is troubling for the international community, who is wondering if she should trust Israel when Israel says it’s ready to discuss with its neighbor, the Palestinians, to reach an agreement on the two-state solution,” ambassador Hélène Le Gal told Army Radio in an English-language interview.

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The first Jordanian condemnation came yesterday and it was decidedly sharp.

BY BEN LYNFIELD, JPOST

The Settlement Regulation Law passed on Monday night leaves Jordan in the lurch, poses a fresh challenge to the stability of the troubled kingdom and puts more pressure on the Jordanian-Israeli peace treaty.

With the majority of its population of Palestinian origin and with the kingdom’s legitimacy bound up with its role – recognized by Israel – as protector of the holy sites in Jerusalem, Jordan has a greater stake than any other country in a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Passage of the law is clear proof in Jordanian eyes that Israel is not interested in such a solution.
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T. Belman. This was a horrendous mistake by the Trump administration. They doubled down when they called the criticism “pathetic”. And now they are calling it “asinine”.

Deputy assistant to Trump says that criticism of statement on Holocaust was motivated solely by a desire to attack the president.

JTA

A deputy assistant to Donald Trump said that criticism of the White House statement on the Holocaust that omitted Jews was motivated solely by a desire to attack the president.

Sebastian Gorka lashed out after being asked Monday by conservative talk show host Michael Medved if he would acknowledge that it was “questionable” for the White House not to specifically acknowledge the Jewish people in its Holocaust remembrance day statement last month.
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By Roie Yellinek
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 408, February 7, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Donald Trump was intensely critical of China throughout his campaign, and tension between the two countries is likely to increase now that he occupies the White House – but only in the economic and diplomatic spheres. The Middle East, including Israel, could nevertheless be drawn into the conflict as a confrontation zone between the superpowers due to the region’s natural resources, intersecting sea routes, and overall geostrategic importance.
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Yesterday the Knesset passed the Regulation Law, which says more or less the following: “True, we robbed the lands of another nation, but wherever we have already settled the robbed lands, we will ignore international law and remain there.”
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By CONRAD BLACK, Special to the NY Sun

Appearances are deceiving, and President Trump, although the launch of the 90-day travel ban was botched, cannot lose on the issue. His opponents, in the United States and the world, have absurdly overreacted; an arriving onlooker would imagine that the president had caused great loss of life in some frightful act of malice or negligence.

The President will eventually almost certainly be upheld legally, given the immigration legislation from 1952 and the constitutional powers of the president, which his six immediate predecessors have used. His abiding by the legal processes, if it does lead to judicial legitimization, will severely undercut his opponents.
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by Vic Rosenthal

Perhaps thanks to the shock of the expulsion of the Jewish residents of Amona and the razing of their community, the Knesset passed a “settlement regulation bill,” which is intended to make it possible to legalize a settlement that is discovered to lie partly or wholly on Arab-owned land by generously compensating the owners.

I am not going into detail on how the law will work, because it is certain to be voided by the Supreme Court. One might ask why pass such a law in the first place, and I will answer that question later.

But in order to understand the whole conundrum, let’s look at the Amona case in detail. I’m indebted to several articles by Moshe Dann (here, here and here) and Eugene Kontorovich (here) for much of this material.
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The very act of mentioning bad behavior carried out by members of a specific group seems inherently bigoted.

By CAROLINE B. GLICK, JPOST

One of the most important stories related to the September 11 attacks was the one that was deliberately left largely untold. That story is the response of some Muslims in America to the massacre of nearly 3,000 people by Islamic supremacists in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.

According to a Washington Post article published on September 18, 2001, in Jersey City, New Jersey, across the river from the destroyed World Trade Center, “Within hours of the two jetliners plowing into the World Trade Center, law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river.”
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Leftists and Islamists once again team up against America.

By Joseph Klein, FPM

The leftist multi-billionaire George Soros is the financier behind multiple progressive organizations including ACORN, Apollo Alliance, National Council of La Raza, Palestinian Center for Human Rights, Tides Foundation, Southern Poverty Law Center, People for the American Way, Media Matters, and Moveon.org. Among Soros’s leftwing causes is the eradication of national sovereignty in favor of open borders. “Insofar as there are collective interests that transcend state boundaries, the sovereignty of states must be subordinated to international law and international institutions,” Soros said nearly 20 years ago.
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By Nadav Shragai, ISRAEL HAYOM

A powerful wind is now shaking the settlement enterprise and bringing with it new possibilities and new calculations. The new administration in Washington is still learning and “consolidating,” but the settlements are surely no longer a thorn in its side: The radical Left succeeded in forcing the national “right-wing” government, though the High Court of Justice, to evacuate a 20-year-old settlement, and it is now investing its efforts in additional “Amonas.”

And there is also the Judea and Samaria Regulation Law, which is not really a milestone, but a byroad. The High Court of Justice will probably close it to traffic soon.
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DEBKA

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has given “diplomatic priority” to stressing the perils posed by Iranian-sponsored terrorism and its nuclear-capable ballistic weapons, and placed them at the top of his talks with British premier Theresa May in London Monday, Feb. 6, and with President Donald Trump in Washington on Feb. 15.

But it stands to reason that their national security and intelligence experts have advised the US president and the British premier that Netanyahu has been firmly advised up to the present day to stay clear of military involvement in the Syrian conflict by the IDF high command and his past and present defense ministers, Avigdor Lieberman and Moshe Ya’alon.
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By Eugene Kontorovich, JUST SECURITY

[Editor’s Note: After reading Eugene Kontorovich’s post, be sure to read a response to his post by Yaël Ronen and Yuval Shany, “Israel’s Settlement Regulation Bill Violates International Law,” which is being published simultaneously at Just Security.]

Israel’s proposed “Regulations Bill” has attracted broad international criticism, including from the U.S. State Department and the European Union, as well as from opposition Israeli politicians and some government lawyers. The bill seeks to solve a situation in which, over several decades, over one thousand Israeli homes in West Bank settlements have been built in open areas to which Palestinians subsequently asserted property claims, typically based on broad give-aways of state land by the King of Jordan during the Hashemite occupation (1949-67). The homes are in communities built with some level of government involvement. Thus the bill provides the government would compensate the landowners 125% of the value of the land, in order to allow the communities that have been built there to remain.
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By Ted Belman (originally published on Dec 3, 2016)

This post started out as an email to my daughter who is part of the liberal intelligentsia and a regular reader of Haaretz. She was apoplectic at the thought that Jews, myself included, would support Trump and Bannon both of who are in some fashion connected to the alt-right.

Breitbart Editor Joel Pollak Insists They Have Nothing to Do With The Alt-Right, Calls NPR ‘Racist’ . This despite Bannon telling Mother Jones recently, “We’re a platform for the alt-right.”

“The only alt-right content we have is a single article, An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right, out of tens of thousands of articles, which is a journalist article about the alt-right by Milo Yiannopoulos and Allum Bokhari,” Pollak claimed. “Which basically went into this movement and tried to figure out what it was all about. That’s not racist, it’s journalism.”

My daughter was particularly disturbed by it arguing that such an article should never have been published by Breitbart.
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The legislation marks the first time that the Knesset has sought to impose Israeli law in Area C of the West Bank, which is under Israeli military and civilian rule.

BY TOVAH LAZAROFF, UDI SHAHAM, GIL HOFFMAN, JPOST

The Knesset late Monday night passed historic legislation hailed by the Right for legalizing some 4,000 settler homes and attacked by the Left as the first step toward de facto annexation.

Its passage by a vote of 60-52 marks the first time that the Knesset has sought to impose Israeli law in Area C of the West Bank, which is under Israeli military and civilian rule. That territory is considered to be outside the Knesset’s purview and such an action could be viewed as an initial application of sovereignty.
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MK Bezalel Smotrich says the Regulation Law is historic in more ways than one.

By Ben Ariel, INN

The Regulation Law which the Knesset approved on Monday evening is historic in more ways than one, said MK Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home).

“This is an historic day because for the first time in many years we are bringing the decision-making process back to the Knesset, back to the people. The decision about the future of the settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria will not be made in the rooms of the attorneys general, not in the halls of the judges of the Supreme Court and definitely not by the radical leftist organizations,” he said.
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The collapse of the Oslo Accords and the harm from the Left’s political plans have brought about several figures of the Right to develop a political alternative: the application of sovereignty ·

By Shimon Cohen, Besheva 2/2/2017

Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar have been leading the Sovereignty Campaign in recent years, to the point that it has changed from a random idea into a platform that is supported by many MKs and ministers in the coalition · At the upcoming Sovereignty Campaign various schemes will be proposed, all with the goal of finally doing away with the idea of two states

When the disillusionment from the Oslo idea began and the leaders of the Right in Israel knew how to point out the evils of that idea in learned articles and stormy interviews, they were still stymied by the question put by the late President Shimon Peres with the two words “What is the alternative?”. To this question, there was nothing in their sack besides the general idea about our rights to the Land and our obligation to settle it.
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By Prof. Hillel Frisch and Yitzhak Sokoloff, BESA, February 6, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Instead of fixating on an independent Palestinian state, the new US administration should look east to the Hashemite Kingdom as a stabilizing influence on Palestinian politics. President Trump has an opportunity to help Jordan prosper while furthering the interests of the US and its allies.

In his first meeting with President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is likely to stake out common ground on the issues that have most troubled American-Israeli relations over the past eight years: the problem of Iran, and Israel’s settlement policy in Judea and Samaria. Particularly in light of recent UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which labeled Israel’s settlement activity illegal, Netanyahu will need to seek American support for renewed Israeli building in Jerusalem and the blocs, and a renewal of the guarantees of the “Bush letter.”

Beyond that, the inauguration of a new American administration presents an opportunity for Israel to take the lead in advocating a far more ambitious initiative: a major investment in the economic prosperity and political stability of the Kingdom of Jordan.
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Neither Israel nor any other country is intervening to put a halt to Assad’s resumption of control.

By Amos Harel, HAARETZ  | Feb. 5, 2017

The regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad has reestablished effective control over the past month of the northern portion of its border with Israel on the Golan Heights.

After the surrender of the rebels in eastern Aleppo at the end of December, the Syrian regime began to apply pressure on villages that were under rebel control in various parts of Syria, including the northern Golan Heights region.

Many villages agreed to a cease-fire and, in practice, a surrender in the war with the Assad regime. Now the Syrian army and militias that support it have managed to establish nearly contiguous control in the area north of the road from the city of Quneitra, in the Syrian Golan, to the capital, Damascus.
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