By Ben Ariel, INN

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said late Sunday he believed a nuclear deal with Iran could be reached, but insisted it must place an atomic bomb “beyond reach” for the Islamic Republic, reported AFP.

“We are here because we believe a deal can be done,” Hammond told reporters outside a Lausanne hotel as he became the last of the foreign ministers to arrive for talks with world powers.

“It’s in everyone’s interests that a deal does get done. But it has to be a deal which puts the bomb beyond Iran’s reach,” he added.
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The Middle Eastern Metternichs of Riyadh

by David P. Goldman, Asia Times Online March 29, 2015

Gaming the demise of the Saudi monarchy has been a flourishing industry on the think-tank circuit for the past dozen years. Not long ago I sat in private conclaves of US national security officials with a sprinkling of invited experts where the head-shaking, chin-pulling consensus held that the Saudi royal family would be gone in ten years. A premise of the “realist” view that American policy in the region should shift towards Iran was that the Saudi monarchy would collapse and Sunni power along with it. All of us misunderestimated the Saudis.
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My article Time for a Reevaluation was posted on American Thinker and received this comment:

There is a myth hanging over all discussion of the Palestinian problem: the myth that this land was “Arab” land taken from its native inhabitants by invading Jews. Whatever may be the correct solution to the problems of the Middle East, let’s get a few things straight:

* As a strictly legal matter, the Jews didn’t take Palestine from the Arabs; they took it from the British, who exercised sovereign authority in Palestine under a League of Nations mandate for thirty years prior to Israel’s declaration of independence in 1948. And the British don’t want it back.

* If you consider the British illegitimate usurpers, fine. In that case, this territory is not Arab land but Turkish land, a province of the Ottoman Empire for hundreds of years until the British wrested it from them during the Great War in 1917. And the Turks don’t want it back.

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By DAVID E. SANGER and MICHAEL R. GORDON, NYT

T. Belman. This is a good thing, not a bad thing as this article suggests. The Supreme Court in Israel is a tool that the left uses to suppress the will of the people as represented by the Knesset.

America requires judges and Attorneys General to be elected. Why not in Israel? At the moment many of the Court’s decisions overruling the Knesset are based on the Court’s interpretation of the the word “dignity” in *Israel’s Basic Law. What the reformers want to do is pass another basic law which enshrines Israel as the state of the Jewish people. The Court would have to give equal weight to both basic laws. I think that making them equal is not enough. The Court’s bias will still come out. What needs to be done is to legislate that when the issue is dignity v a Jewish state, the latter should trump the former and the same for when the issue is democracy or a Jewish state.

Just as the left characterizes things as being racist when they aren’t, they are forever claiming that they are protecting democracy when in reality they are thwarting democracy. The limitation of the Court will make Israel more democratic.

The judicial system worries a contrarian justice minister would not only fail to protect it from initiatives seeking to limit the court’s power, but actually lead the charge, with potential coalition partners already preparing several bill proposals in that vein, including the nationality bill.

By Tova Tzimuki, YNET

Coalition talks are still in their early stages, but the judicial system is already concerned at the possibility of the formation of an unbalanced right-wing government that could lead legislation against the law enforcement system, with no one to protect it.

This concern is not unfounded. Throughout Israel’s short history, right-wing elements have been trying to hurt the judicial system’s independence, change the judicial selection process and restrain the Supreme Court, among other things.
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Putin also spoke on the importance of synchronizing the efforts of the Arab League with those of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and Russia.

JPOST

Girls walk past a banner with a picture of Russian President Vladimir Putin along a bridge, in central Cairo. (photo credit:REUTERS)

Moscow will support the Palestinians in their efforts to build an independent state with a capital in east Jerusalem, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday according to Israel Radio.

Speaking at the 26th annual Arab League Summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik over the weekend, Putin said that “Palestinians have the right to establish an independent and habitable state with a capital in east Jerusalem.” Read more…

T. Belman. In my recent post, Bibi and Obama apparently cut a deal I saw this coming.

Israel pledges to release frozen funds accrued, but whether it releases upcoming revenues dependent on PA actions.

The Palestinian Authority will formally join the International Criminal Court on April 1, but – following Israel’s decision on Friday to release frozen tax revenues – is not expected at this time to take steps against Israel in the ICC regarding settlement construction.

In addition, The Jerusalem Post has learned that while the ICC prosecutor has – at the PA’s request – opened a preliminary examination on alleged Israeli war crimes during Operation Protective Edge over the summer, the PA is not expected at this time to take additional legal steps in the ICC regarding the Gaza operation.

As a result of Israel’s decision to free up the funds, the PA also does not intend now to stop its security cooperation with Israel, the Post also learned.

It was the PA’s steps to join the ICC at the end of December that led Israel to freeze the monthly tax transfers in the first place.
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By Hezki Ezra and Elad Benari, INN

Moshe Kahlon

Kulanu chairman Moshe Kahlon said on Sunday evening that his party’s only wish is to help out the weaker sectors of society, but warned, “If we’re not given the tools to do so, we will not be there (in the coalition -ed.).”

“In recent days, negotiations have been underway, we presented our demands and mind you – nothing has changed. We want one thing – to succeed where others have failed,” he said at a meeting of Kulanu party activists.

“Kulanu is the hope of hundreds of thousands of people in the country who hope that we succeed where others either did not want to succeed or failed. Solutions must be produced and Kulaunu will produce these solutions,” Kahlon continued.
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By David Daoud, ALGEMEINER

Students from an Israeli Arab high school in Umm Al-Fahm attacked the tour guide of an 11th grade Bnei Akiva Yeshiva class visiting the area on their school’s annual field trip, Israel’s NRG reported on Sunday.

Last Wednesday, on the day of the trip, the group of eight yeshiva students began its tour through the Banias Nature Reserve, accompanied by their guide Avraham Snir and another guide. On the narrow path, the yeshiva students crossed paths with three Israeli Arab students from “Chadash” high school.

The Arab students then began to curse them, according to the report. Snir objected to their insults, to which the Arab students responded, “we are a thousand and one, and you are nothing. Wait, wait.”
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Amir Hossein Motaghi tells Iranian opposition TV that US is ‘mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other P5+1 members’

By Jonathan Beck, TOI

Iranian journalist who was sent to cover the nuclear talks in Lausanne, Switzerland, defected over the weekend.

Amir Hossein Motaghi, who was instrumental in the election of President Hassan Rouhani when he served as his personal aide during the Iranian election, asked authorities in Switzerland to grant him political asylum.

Montaghi told an Iranian opposition channel broadcasting from London that he did not see any sense in his profession as a journalist since he could only write what he was told to write.
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By Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison, AMERICAN THINKER

It’s a phrase endlessly repeated since 1989. It’s been on the lips of Western diplomats, especially our own State Department types, for a quarter century: “Two-State Solution.” We must have a Roadmap to Peace and that destination must embrace a state for the Israelis and a state for the Arabs of Palestine. Anyone who questions that formulation is in danger of being marginalized. How can you oppose what Secretaries of State of both great American political parties have embraced? How can you say there are any people on earth who are not entitled to a state?

Are the Druze entitled to a state? Are the Kurds entitled to a state? How about the Chaldean or Assyrian Christians? It would seem that the state of Syria, ruled by the minority Alawites, is falling apart. What else do most Arab “states” in that region do?
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Israel fears world powers are rushing toward “very bad deal” with Iran • Minister Yuval Steinitz: Even minimal conditions for worthy framework deal are far from being realized • PM Benjamin Netanyahu speaks with Russian, Indian leaders about Iran deal.

By Shlomo Cesana, Eli Leon, Yoni Hersch, Israel Hayom Staff and Reuters, TOI

With less than 72 hours remaining before the deadline for a framework nuclear agreement between six world powers and Iran,Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday the emerging deal “bears out all of our fears, and even more than that.”
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By Herb Keinon, JPOST

The international community should create a new “peace architecture” to replace UN Security Council Resolution 242, outgoing UN Mideast envoy Robert Serry said Thursday during his final briefing to the Security Council.

Serry – speaking just days after the US said it will reassess its Middle East diplomacy, leading to speculation it may support a UN Security Council resolution setting parameters for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal – said that since the parties at this time do not seem ready to restart talks, “we should not rush them back to the table.”
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Read also: Boehner: Obama’s ‘Animosity’ to Israel is ‘Reprehensible’
House Speaker, who is set to visit Israel, says US pressure on Netanyahu over 4-5 years ‘pushed him to the point where he had to speak up.’

By Yaakov Levi, INN

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met Sunday with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who is on a visit to Israel. Speaking before the meeting, Netanyahu said that Israel was “very worried about our common interests in the wake of recent development in the Middle East. As we speak, Iran is acting wildly in Yemen. This is correctly seen by all the countries in the Middle East as a strategic move to dominate the region and therefore we are witnessing something quite unprecedented.”
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By Dan Williams, Yahoo

Jerusalem (AFP) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday denounced as “dangerous” a nuclear accord that world powers are negotiating with Iran, saying it goes beyond what his government had feared.

“The dangerous accord which is being negotiated in Lausanne (Switzerland) confirms our concerns and even worse,” Netanyahu said in remarks at a meeting of his cabinet broadcast on public radio.

Netanyahu denounced the “Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis which is dangerous for all of humanity and which must be stopped,” making a reference to the Swiss city where the talks are taking place.
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By Anne Bayefsky, FOX NEWS

What country deserves more condemnation for violating human rights than any other nation on earth? According to the U.N.’s top human rights body, that would be Israel.

Last week, Israel was the U.N.’s number one women’s rights violator. This week it is the U.N.’s all-round human rights villain.

The U.N. Human Rights Council wrapped up its latest session in Geneva on Friday, March 27 by adopting four resolutions condemning Israel.  That’s four times more than any of the other 192 UN member states.
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As Tehran hails ‘massive progress’ in talks, Jerusalem protests that regime ‘is working against American-Arab-Israeli interests without paying a price’

BY AVI ISSACHAROFF, TOI

As Iran hailed “massive progress” toward a deal on its nuclear program, an Israeli official described the terms of the looming agreement as “incomprehensibly” bad and rejected the Obama administration’s contention that it would keep the regime a year away from accumulating enough fissile material for a bomb.

Estimating that a framework deal would indeed be signed soon, and that a full agreement would follow in June, the official lamented the US-led negotiators’ apparent readiness to remove sanctions without Iran being required to halt its global terrorist activities, and listed a host of areas in which Tehran was working against American, Israeli and moderate Arab interests without being made to pay a price.
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By John Bolton, NYT

FOR years, experts worried that the Middle East would face an uncontrollable nuclear-arms race if Iran ever acquired weapons capability. Given the region’s political, religious and ethnic conflicts, the logic is straightforward.

As in other nuclear proliferation cases like India, Pakistan and North Korea, America and the West were guilty of inattention when they should have been vigilant. But failing to act in the past is no excuse for making the same mistakes now. All presidents enter office facing the cumulative effects of their predecessors’ decisions. But each is responsible for what happens on his watch. President Obama’s approach on Iran has brought a bad situation to the brink of catastrophe.

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By Ted Belman

Apparently, Obama has agreed to veto the proposed French resolution recognizing Palestine.

“We’re not going to get ahead of any decisions about what the United States would do with regard to potential action at the UN Security Council,” a U.S. official told AFP, hours after French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced the plans.

“We continue to engage with key stakeholders, including the French, to find a way forward that advances the interest we and others share in a two-state solution,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Israel paid a high price by cancelling the 1500 units in Har Homa and in turning over to the PA the withheld taxes.

Of course I am speculating.