by Steve Kramer

At a special ceremony in Jerusalem to mark the unification of the city 49 years ago during the Six Day War, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared: “The idea of a divided, split, wounded city is one we will never return to.” That statement mirrors the Israeli consensus on the subject of Jerusalem.

But, the Europeans, and many others, feel they cannot remain on the sidelines without contesting the Jews’ claims to Jerusalem and its homeland. For whatever reasons, they yearn to establish a State of Palestine (despite the existence of the Hamas-ruled Gaza and Palestinian Arab-majority Jordan.)
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Uri Ariel calls for improving conditions in areas A and B, applying Israeli sovereignty elsewhere, says PM’s peace bid futile

BY RAPHAEL AHREN, TOI

MOSCOW – Israeli minister Uri Ariel proposed removing “a few thousand Arabs” from Area C of the West Bank –– the 60% of the territory fully controlled by Israel — and then annexing it.

In an interview with The Times of Israel on Tuesday, Ariel (Jewish Home), the agriculture minister, also said the Israeli right is unconcerned over recent peace overtures by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since they will eventually come to nothing. Nonetheless, Ariel, who opposes Palestinian statehood, complained that by invoking a desire for a two-state solution, Netanyahu is fueling the notion held by many Israelis that the creation of a Palestinian state is inevitable.
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The dictum of Aharon Barak, President of the Supreme Court of Israel (1995-2006), that “everything is justiciable”, makes nonsense of the rule of law, as well as Israel’s reputation as a democracy. It renders Israel a judicial despotism.

By Aviel Sheyin-Stevens, INN

On May 25, 2016, Yisrael Beytenu formally joined the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. This could give the government long term stability, and enable it to fulfill what it was elected to do: Defend the democratic Jewish state.

After the Oslo Accords, many left-wing Israelis believe that Israel should no longer be a democratic Jewish state, but should rather focus on its democratic aspects over its Jewish characteristics, adopting the Palestinian narrative of demonizing and delegitimizing Israel and Zionism, including “dispossession” as central to the creation of the State of Israel.
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T. Belman. This is the report that Debka referred to in the article just below this one. First of all Bibi is pushing it together with al Sisi. It satisfies the Arab League and their API demanding 100% withdrawal. I can’t see Hamas going along, or the Arab Israelis who end up in Palestine. Israel can’t cancel their citizenship and they could always move back into Israel. How can Israel provide services to the settlements deep in Palestine. Will the IDF be permitted to remain in the Jordan Valley. Jerusalem could remain undivided with Arab residents under Palestinian sovereignty and Jewish residents under Israeli sovereignty.

Was Lieberman made Defence Minister with this trade in mind.

By JNI Media June 5, 2016 , 7:30 am

A Russian state news agency TASS story in the wake of the Friday Paris conference for peace quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov who advocated concrete territorial exchanges between Israel and the Arabs in Judea and Samaria, in order to preserve Israeli settlements. “The border should be established between Israelis and Palestinians,” Bogdanov said, adding, “This border may envisage territorial exchanges, appropriate and adequate, taking into account that such an approach allows to resolve the problem of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.”
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DEBKA

During his 48-hour trip to Moscow (Monday and Tuesday June 6-7), Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will try and talk President Vladimir Putin into cutting Israel into the military teamwork evolving between Washington and Moscow for combating the Islamic State in Syria. As a quid pro quo, he will offer to elevate Moscow to senior broker in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, with Moscow or Geneva selected as the venue for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks, if they occur – and with US participation. Netanyahu is also keen on a role for Egypt’s Presidents Abdek-Fattah al-Sisi.
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Stolen Kremlin records show how the Soviets, including Gorbachev, created many of today’s Middle East conflicts

By Claire Berlinski, TABLET June 20, 2012

The dominant narrative of modern Middle East history emphasizes the depredations visited upon the region by European colonization and accepts as a truism that the former colonial powers prioritized the protection of their material interests—in oil, above all—above the dignity and self-determination of the region’s inhabitants. Thus did botched decolonization result in endless instability. The most intractable of the regional conflicts to which this gave rise, that between the Arabs and Israelis, is attributed in this narrative to Israel’s unwillingness to accede to Palestinian national aspirations. Thus did the region become a breeding ground for radicalism, intensified by Cold War rivalry between the superpowers, who replaced the European colonizers as the region’s meddling overlords. Then came Mikhail Gorbachev—a Westernizing reformer. At last, the Cold War was over. A new world order was at hand.

What if this conventional wisdom is nonsense? Russian exile Pavel Stroilov argues just this in his forthcoming book, Behind the Desert Storm. “Not a word of it is true,” he writes. “It was the Soviet Empire—not the British Empire—that was responsible for the instability in the Middle East.”
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By David Yin, FORBES

This is Part 1 of a two-part series on Israel’s success as an innovation hub. 

Eighteen and fresh out of high school, Yossi Matias reported for his first day of military service at the Hatzerim Airbase in the Negev Desert, approximately 100 km south of Jerusalem. As a reward for passing several rounds of standardized tests and a six-day selection test involving problem solving and disaster management exercises, Matias had been selected to train as a pilot for the Israeli Air Force, widely considered one of the most prestigious positions in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF). The program was intense, with only one out of six trainees completing it. But the next phase – operational missions in a volatile region in constant turmoil – was even more challenging. “I was responsible for flying airplanes in pretty demanding situations,” recalls Matias. “These challenges make later challenges in life look smaller.”
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T. Belman. The good news is that both support direct negotiations and acknowledge that a solution can’t be imposed and that it can’t be achieved now. The bad news is that the international community is unanimously backing the Arab Peace Initiative. They wont listen to any ideas other than a full withdrawal. Secondly they will do their level best to force Israel not to build housing east of the green line while at the same time encouraging and financing illegal Arab construction.

In effect they are imposing a mandate on Israel wherein Israel is expected to administer the territories on trust for the Palestinians until such time as conditions are right for a deal.

Rice, Mogherini deliver friendly, pro-Israel speeches at AJC confab.

By Herb Keinon, JPOST

WASHINGTON – US National Security Advisor Susan Rice and the European Union’s foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini gave lengthy addresses on Israel and the Mideast on Monday but barely mentioned the French initiative, a sign the initiative failed to gain significant traction since being launched Friday at an international meeting in Paris.

Speaking for some 30 minutes at the AJC Global Forum, Rice mentioned it only once, saying that US Secretary of State John Kerry attended the Paris parley to underscore that a negotiated two-state solution is the only pathway to peace. In the very next breath, however, she stressed that “a solution cannot be imposed on the parties,” something that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said on numerable occasions.
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T. Belman. You will also remember that in the Iran’s Deal, the US along with the P+5, committed to defending Iran nuclear facilities from attack and also agreed to help Iran improve their nuclear technology.

By Lee Smith, WEEKLY STANDARD

Last week pictures of Qassem Suleimani started to circulate on social media, which is always a pretty sure sign that an Iranian military campaign is about to kick off somewhere in the Middle East. And indeed not long after, Iranian-backed Shiite militias, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps units, and the Iranian Basij militia targeted Fallujah, the Sunni-majority Iraqi town under Islamic State control. If Suleimani, the IRGC commander, is able to vanquish ISIS forces, as he did in the Tikrit campaign, it will be largely thanks to U.S. air support. While no one was looking, the Obama administration bundled American and Iranian interests together.
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MEMRI

By: B. Shanee*

Introduction

The contacts with Israel, and especially the security coordination with it, are the topic of an ongoing internal debate within Palestinian political circles and among the Palestinian public. Calls for ending the security coordination and severing the ties with Israel are heard from time to time from officials in the various Palestinian factions within the PLO.

The debate on the security coordination reached a turning point on March 3, 2015, when the PLO Central Council resolved to “end all forms of security coordination with the Israeli occupation authorities,” on the grounds that Israel was not complying with agreements it had signed with the Palestinians.[1] Following this decision by the Central Council, calls were heard to implement it in practice, including from prominent Fatah members such as Marwan Al-Barghouti, ‘Abbas Zaki and Tawfiq Al-Tirawi.
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By Daniel Greenfield

When Jordan’s Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city– the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem possible.

Since then, the annexation and ethnic cleansing has become an international mandate. It would be inconceivable for the international community to denounce an ethnically cleansed group which survived attempted genocide for moving back into its own city. It is, however, standard policy at the State Department and the Foreign Office to denounce Jews living in those parts of Jerusalem that had been ethnically cleansed by Muslims, as “settlers” living in “settlements,” and describe them as an “obstruction to peace.” Peace being the state of affairs that sets in when an ethnic cleansing goes unchallenged.
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Israeli PM heads to Kremlin for fourth meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin; extended trip to last for 2 and a half days.

By Ari Sofer, INN

The meeting is the fourth one between Netanyahu and Russia President Vladimir Putin during the same period, after the pair also met at the sidelines of the recent UN climate change conference in Paris. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin has also met with Putin during that time, even cancelling a trip to Australia to visit the Russian leader at the Kremlin.

In an illustration of the growing alliance between their two countries, this time Netanyahu is scheduled to stay in Russia for an extended trip of two and a half days, meeting other leading Russian officials as well as the Russian President.
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Reuters, Al Monitor

Russia may be preparing to back a renewed assault by Syrian government forces to retake Aleppo, and perhaps even Raqqa, from Jabhat al-Nusra and allied groups in the coming weeks.

Mohammad Ballout wrote, in Al-Monitor’s partner publication As-Safir, “The Russians will put their Sukhoi fighter jets to the test and bet on direct ground offensives to weaken rather than defeat Syrian armed factions. It should be noted that isolating Jabhat al-Nusra from other armed factions, which is a difficult and complicated objective, would strike a painful blow to those factions since Jabhat al-Nusra’s military and ideological might form the backbone around which those factions unite.”
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Despite the security fence separating pre-1967 Israel from Palestinian Authority, infiltrators take advantage of bureaucratic gaps.

By David Rosenberg, INN

When then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began construction of the security fence more than a decade ago, he pledged that the barrier, which now separates the Palestinian Authority from Israel, would effectively block infiltrations across the Green Line.

Today, however, bureaucratic finger-pointing and indifference at the political echelon have enabled massive daily breaches of the security fence.
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By Malcolm Dash. ISRAEL HAYOM

“To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to the written law would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the ends to the means.” — Thomas Jefferson, September 20, 1810

“In Israel, the negative impact of the judicialization of politics on the Supreme Court’s legitimacy is already beginning to show its mark. Over the past decade, the public image of the Supreme Court as an autonomous and impartial arbiter has been increasingly eroded. … The court and its judges are increasingly viewed by a considerable portion of the Israeli public as pushing forward their own political agenda.” — Professor Ran Hirschl, “Towards Juristocracy: The Origins and Consequences of the New Constitutionalism”

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By Ted Belman

Peace plans are busting out all over.  First we hear that prominent “pro-Israel” American Jews are putting forward a plan for the next administration to consider.  Then we hear that 214 retired IDF Generals have put forward their plan. Both Plans essentially backed Obama’s parameters requiring:

– The ’67 lines to be the border subject to negotiated swaps;
– The division of Jerusalem; and
– A just settlement of the refugee claims.

Meanwhile, Tony Blair and others in the international community were working behind the scenes to arrange for the Zionist Union, led by Yitzhak Herzog, to join the present government coalition in Israel.  At the last moment, PM Netanyahu opted to include Avigdor Lieberman’s party instead. The deal was cinched by Lieberman dropping many of his demands and settling for his appointment as the Minister of Defense and the appointment of one of his associates as Minister of Absorption.
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Over the past decade, 2,641 of the 7,168 applications were approved, for an acceptance rate of 36.8 percent. By contrast, in 2015 the acceptance rate was 2.9 percent.

By Ariel ben Solomon, JPOST

Although the rate of applications by residents of east Jerusalem for Israeli citizenship has remained steady in recent years, the approval rate has plummeted.

Figures obtained by The Jerusalem Post in advance of Jerusalem Day being observed Sunday, provided by the Interior Ministry’s Population and Immigration Authority, reveal the ongoing decrease in the approval rate.
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Early this week it was reported that after a two-year hiatus, Iran is restoring its financial support for Islamic Jihad.

By Caroline Glick, JPOST

Strategic thinking has always been Israel’s Achilles’ heel. As a small state bereft of regional ambitions, so long as regional realities remained more or less static, Israel had little reason to be concerned about the great game of the Middle East.

But the ground is shifting in the lands around us. The Arab state system, which ensured the strategic status quo for decades, has collapsed.
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By Ted Belman

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon (Kulanu) on Saturday called on opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog to join the coalition, telling Channel 2 News in an interview, “At the end of the process there will be two states for two peoples here.”

Earlier he had said “The rumors and talk of a meaningful diplomatic process in our area have a much greater basis than some newspapers suggest. There is the possibility of a significant turnaround on the regional level,”

He also suggested that Lieberman and Netanyahu agree.
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