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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Channel 2: PM spoke to secretary on eve of Friday’s Paris summit; conversation helped yield a mild concluding statement in French capitaL.

TOI

In a telephone conversation with Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “said yes” to new efforts led by Egypt and Saudi Arabia for regional progress toward peace, an Israeli television report said.

The call was made on the eve of Friday’s Paris peace summit, and was a factor in the summit’s vague concluding communique, which Kerry helped negotiate, and which did not set a firm date for the international peace conference Paris wants to host by the year’s end, the Channel 2 report said.
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Netanyahu’s double play in appointing an extremist defense minister may mobilize and unify the center, left, and soft-right against him.

By Leslie Susser, JPOST

On the face of it in choosing rightwing Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman over the Zionist Union’s Yitzhak Herzog as his new coalition partner, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has strengthened his position as leader of a uniformly right-wing government with enough seats in the Knesset to carry out its hardline ideology.

But his sharp turn to the right, just when it seemed he was about to form a more moderate peace-seeking coalition with Herzog, could rebound.
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In the new report, the Jewish population stats are broken down into towns and regions and detail growth since Dec. 31, 2010.

By Baruch Gordon, INN

The annual statistics on the precise number of Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank) have been released by former Knesset Member Yaakov “Ketzaleh” Katz.

Based on the Population Registry of Israel’s Interior Ministry, there are 406,302 Jews in Judea and Samaria as of December 31, 2015. As clearly stated in the report, the statistics do not include eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem (e.g. Pisgat Zeev, Ramat Shlomo, Ramot, Gilo, Ramat Eshkol, etc.) which are technically part of the West Bank and are home to another approximately 360,000 Jews.
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By David Weinberg, ISRAEL HAYOM

The European Union is on the rampage. Every Monday and Thursday it has taken to shelling out threats to downgrade diplomatic and economic ties with Israel, unless Israel does this or desists from doing that.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also acting foreign minister, should rebuff the escalating European intimidation.

This week the EU hit Israel with a double whammy. First, it fiercely warned the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories that Israel’s policy of demolishing illegal and unauthorized Palestinian construction is harming ties between Israel and the 28-member EU.
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DEBKA

Donald Trump, presumptive US president nominee, plans to visit Israel a few days before his Republican party convention opens in Cleveland July 18, DEBKAfiles sources in Washington and Jerusalem report. But still under discussion are the exact dates of the visit, the Israeli public figures he will meet and the sites he will visit.

The timing of the trip is planned for Trump to reach the convention hall in Cleveland directly from Israel, while issuing statements of support for the Jewish state along the way. Just as importantly he will guarantee to terminate the secret military cooperation deal between the US and Iran if he is elected President, while warning Iran against going forward with the development of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
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By Moshe Feiglin, JEWISH LEADERSHIP BLOG

“Pushovers don’t die, they are simply replaced by new pushovers,” says the Israeli adage. But in Israel’s Right, the pushovers don’t die and they aren’t even replaced by new pushovers. The Right always celebrates its political victory and in the blink of an eye, its leaders become tools in the hands of the Left.

Begin surrendered the entire Sinai Peninsula to Egypt and destroyed Yamit and an entire settlement bloc.

Shamir sent Israel to sit in rooms with plastic covered windows and doors, waiting for the Iraqi missiles to explode. For the first time in Israel’s history, he left the State’s security in the hands of the US.
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By Vic Rosenthal, ABU YEHUDA

I am sitting at my desk on a quiet day. There are no screaming sirens. Hezbollah isn’t bombarding us with its tens of thousands of missiles, and Hamas tunnels aren’t disgorging terrorists near kibbutz dining halls. Nobody has been stabbed yet today (as far as I know) by an Arab teenager. Iran’s nuclear project is not yet complete and the Islamic State is occupied with devising more ingenious ways to kill people. Bashar al-Assad is bombing hospitals, but they are in Syria, not here.

Nevertheless we are at war.

Israel is under severe and sustained bombardment from its enemies in the Muslim world and also Europe, the UK and the US, in two main non-physical spheres of combat.
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By Martin Sherman

Any allusion that Israel is somehow comparable to Nazi Germany is not criticism. It is a blood libel

Israel has been infected by the seeds of fascism …There are no serious leaders left in the world who believe the Israeli government – Former PM, Ehud Barak, Channel 10, May 20

Today we have a country afflicted with ultra-nationalistic extremism, infected with the seeds of fascism and chauvinism -Head of opposition, Yitzhak Herzog, Knesset, May 23

Israel has truly become today the last bastion of fascism, colonialism and racial discrimination in the world – Nabil al-Arabi Secretary-General of the Arab League, Cairo May 28
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Do we want to live in a sovereign democracy or a federal dictatorship?

T. Belman. The only reason to bring the Zionist Union into the government is to back this new move . Bayit Yehuda is on the way out. It has already announced that they will leave the government should it decide to create a Palestinian state. This initiative will undercut the French move and a potential move by Obama.

Renewed Pressure to Add Zionist Union to Netanyahu’s Coalition Focuses on Livni
If terms that are acceptable to Livni can be found, the move could be carried out soon, source says; Habayit Hayehudi could end up paying the price.

By Jonathan Lis, HAARETZ

A senior coalition source said on Thursday that attempts to add the Zionist Union to the coalition have been renewed. Sources close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are pressuring in recent days faction co-leader Tzipi Livni, one of the prominent objectors to the move, in an attempt to persuade her to join the government.

A source in Netanyahu’s Likud estimates that if terms that are acceptable to Livni can be found, the move could be carried out very soon. Sources in the Labor Party also estimated on Thursday that Zionist Union co-leader and Labor chairman Isaac Herzog would find it difficult to enter the government if Livni doesn’t join him. According to a Likud source, officials close to Netanyahu considered turning the tables and offering Livni the foreign affairs portfolio in exchange only for her five Hatnua lawmakers joining the coalition, but the offer didn’t come to fruition.  
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Foreign investment in Israel has nearly tripled since anti-Israel ‘BDS’ movement launched in 2005.

By Ari Soffer, INN

The anti-Israel boycott movement has been the topic of headlines recently, with the Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations hosting a major “anti-BDS” conference at the UN just this Tuesday.

But according to an authoritative survey the BDS movement – promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions against the Jewish state – has failed miserably in its stated aim of cutting Israel off from the world economically.
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By Mudar Zahran, ISRAEL HAYOM

Days ago, King Abdullah II? of Jordan dissolved the parliament and appointed a new prime minister.

This came ?weeks after the king amended the constitution to expand his already swollen authority as the sole ?ruler, and has launched a wave of speculation in the Western and Israeli media. The media are puzzled and rather clueless about what exactly is happening in my country, Jordan. Some, including respected publications, jumped to the convenient conclusion ?that the king has “appointed a pro-Israel prime minister” and even that “Israel has a new friend ?in the Middle East, Jordan’s prime minister.” These statements by ?themselves are irrelevant to the status quo and the situation in Jordan is much more critical and ?dire than anyone in the Israeli media realizes.?
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Finance Minister says rumors about resumption of Israel-PA talks hold more water than some think.

By Hezki Baruch, INN

Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon (Kulanu) hinted on Wednesday that peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) may soon resume.

“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,” Kahlon said at a ceremony in Netanya.
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By David P. Goldman, ASIA TIMES

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan demanded that Turkish women abandon contraception in a televised address May 30, Reuters reported. “We will multiply our descendants. They talk about population planning, birth control. No Muslim family can have such an approach,” Erdogan said. The Turkish leader has denounced Turkish women for refusing to have more babies on many earlier occasions.

Erdogan has played every side of every issue, alternately courting and rejecting the European Union, claiming the United States as an ally against ISIS while aiding the terrorist army on the sly, succoring Hamas while proposing to rebuild relations with Israel, helping Iran run sanctions while claiming the Gulf States as Sunni allies. Christina Lin catalogued his double-dealings in a May 31 news analysis for this publication.
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By David Makowsky and Dennis Ross, THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST PEACE

As the Friday’s Paris peace conference approaches, the recent effort to broaden Israel’s government may emerge as one of the more consequential moves of Binyamin Netanyahu’s premiership — not for what it produced, but rather for what may have been foreclosed. Much of the public commentary on the latest developments has focused on his decision to replace the experienced, steady, and trusted defense minister Moshe Ya’alon with Moldovan-born arch-nationalist Avigdor Liberman, who has not hid his disdain for Netanyahu or his desire to become prime minister in the future. Indeed, the stakes are significant given Liberman’s controversial statements on Israeli Arabs, Egypt, and the need to reoccupy Gaza; in the immediate sense, Netanyahu brought in his former aide turned rival in order to widen his very narrow coalition majority from 61 to 66 seats in the 120-member Knesset.
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