Ted Belman. This is not the first fundamental breach committed by the PA. In every case Israel chose not to abrogate the deal. The Accords are not just a contract, they are like a constitution in which powers are assigned to different levels of government. In Canada the provinces are given certain powers to legislate and the federal government other powers. The same for the US. Oslo defines the powers for the PA and for Israel. These powers vary depending on whether we are talking about A, B or C. Israel wants to maintain this division of powers. Having said that she also allows the PA to violate Israel’s powers over Area C. Israel, as they say, should fish or cut bait which means she should either enforce it or abrogate it.

By Alan Baker, JCPA

1. The peace negotiation process as set out in the Oslo Accords was intended to lead to peace between Israel and the Palestinian People and mutual recognition of each other’s “mutual legitimate and political rights” (Preamble, Oslo I and Oslo II).

2. In this context Israel was prepared to compromise on the historic and legal rights of the Jewish People in the area, through agreement for peaceful relations. To this end the parties agreed in the Oslo Accords not to initiate or take any steps that will change the status of the territories pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations (Oslo II, Article 31(7)).

Read more…

The video and transcript to the panel discussion “The War on Israel and the Middle East,” which took place at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s 20th Anniversary Restoration Weekend. The event was held Nov. 13th-16th at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach, Florida are posted at FPM

Daniel Pipes, Daniel Greenfield and Caroline Glick took part in this panel. You can either watch the video or read the transcript.

DON’T MISS IT.

Daniel Pipes:I’d like to make three geostrategic points in my few minutes, and I apologize in advance for having to leave, but the plane schedule is as it is.  The first point is that — and this has been said before, I’d like to reiterate it — that Iran is a far greater threat than ISIS, and we are making an extraordinary mistake in joining with the Iranians against ISIS.  Need one point out that ISIS has perhaps $5 million a day in oil revenue and 15,000 troops and, granted, a dynamism, but that Iran is a powerful state of 75 million people, an oil revenue in the hundreds of millions of dollars, billions of dollars, and an army of hundreds of thousands and, of course, a terror network and is building up their weapons?  I would predict to you, ladies and gentleman, that ISIS, which appeared so suddenly, will disappear suddenly as well because it has so many enemies, it is so overextended, it is trying to do so much at the same time that it is going to collapse before very long and it is going to disappear as a state whereas Iran is going to be a longer lasting entity.

CONTINUE

Read more…

The long years of propaganda on the vision of “two states for two peoples” blocked the most basic desire that exists in most Israeli citizens – not to give up the territory captured in the blood in a defensive war. The solution: the annexation of the whole country, without fear of the Arab minority who sits where

Tzipi Hotoveli
[Google translation]

Numbers on Levi Eshkol after the Six-Day War said “dowry beautiful but I do not like the Bride”. This sentence is the essence of the Israeli fear annexing Judea and Samaria: Dealing with the Arab problem. Left built a security fence and agreed to establish a Palestinian state would endanger Israel, and the right was waiting for a miracle – voluntary migration may occur, or you might decide to adopt Jordanians of Palestinian brethren. Both sides are looking for a magic solution would sweep the Arab equation. Over the years, got a huge settlement enterprise, but the political right political passivity socket. When Beilin ran Geneva, right running hills and squares – and as more and adapting his prophecies against vision Beilin, the greater the erosion of most Israeli leaders in the opposite direction. Lieberman, Netanyahu, torch and Yachimovitch, and even Bennett is willing to annex only the Area C, they all speak the language of Oslo.
Read more…

By by Raymond Ibrahim

Speaking before Al-Azhar and the Awqaf Ministry on New Year’s Day, 2015, and in connection to Prophet Muhammad’s upcoming birthday, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, a vocal supporter for a renewed vision of Islam, made what must be his most forceful and impassioned plea to date on the subject.

Among other things, Sisi said that the “corpus of [Islamic] texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the years” are  “antagonizing the entire world”; that it is not “possible that 1.6 billion people [reference to the world’s Muslims] should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants—that is 7 billion—so that they themselves may live”; and that Egypt (or the Islamic world in its entirety) “is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost—and it is being lost by our own hands.”
Read more…

T. Belman. TOI has chosen to side with Della Pergola instead of Yoram Ettinger, whom they call an extremist. Who can blame them because so does COGAT which is run by Yaalon and Netanyahu. I, for one am sticking with Ettinger.

Palestinian demographic survey highly inflated
By Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner, December 30, 2014

The latest demographic survey of the Palestinian population by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics overestimates the number of Palestinians resident between the Mediterranean Sea and the River Jordan by around 1.2 million, a leading Israeli expert on demography has told The Algemeiner.

Ambassador Yoram Ettinger, a former Israeli diplomat who now works as lecturer and consultant and is well-known in policy circles for his research on Palestinian and Israeli demography, said that the Palestinian statistics, released yesterday, “are inflated by more than 1 million in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) and by almost 400,000 in Gaza.” CONTINUE

The end of the monopoly of Israel’s “demographers of doom”

By Kobi Michael, senior researcher, INSS

“Strategic Assessment,” Institute for National Security Studies, , December 31, 2014

Excerpts from “The Weight of the Demographic Factor in Israel’s Strategic Considerations on the Palestinian Issue”

“The demographic issue has become a source of profound controversy in Israel. Many see the demographic processes as a threat to the future of Israel as a state that is both Jewish and democratic, thereby necessitating rapid disengagement from the Palestinians, whether by means of a negotiated settlement or unilateral steps. Others dispute the need for panic, pointing instead to data indicating much more moderate trends: the Jewish majority will continue and even grow, both in the State of Israel proper and in the whole of the western land of Israel, certainly if the Gaza Strip is excluded….

“…In 2013 the Institute for Zionist Strategies published an updated, comprehensive study…. The most significant differences [from the “demographers of doom”] indicate that the number of Palestinians in the PA is lower by 0.7-1.3 million than the number presented by the more alarmist approach and the data of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Moreover, the data shows a Jewish majority in all of [the area west of the Jordan River] today and a more significant majority in the coming two decades, especially if the Gaza Strip is excluded from the equation. CONTINUE

BY ELHANAN MILLER, TOI

The number of Jews and Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea has always been of interest to pundits and politicians on both sides of Israel’s political divide.

But as rampant Middle East violence and a fragmented Palestinian body politic make the prospect of normalization with the Palestinians seem more distant than ever to most Israelis, the “demographic issue” — as it is often called — has taken center stage, shifting the political debate in Israel from the likelihood of regional peace to the threat to Israel’s democratic character. Read more…

The pre 2nd world war Appeasement policy closely resembles today’s demands of “Proportionality”.

By Prof. David A. Frenkel, Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Business and Management, INN

The term “proportionality” is one of the remarkable inventions of the modern western legal systems. It enables the Courts find the desirable way in the interpretation of private rights versus the State in Administrative Law, solve disputes among litigants and set down appropriate punishments in criminal cases. However, this term is only appropriate where all conflicting parties act under the same legal frame and the values are accepted by all of them. The same rule may also be applied to conflicts in the international sphere, provided all parties in the conflict accept the same values and follow them.

However, in international conflicts, where not all the parties act in the framework of the international conventions, the term “proportionality” becomes an one way weapon applied and used against the party who does follow them and is called to restrain and abstain from any response against the attacking party, claiming that any response may escalate the conflict because, or despite the fact that, the attacking party does not consider himself bound by “proportionalities” or any other limits or accepted rules.
Read more…

Jan. 4, 2015 (Xinhua) — Israel’s cabinet on Sunday approved a new plan to enhance economic ties with Japan, amid efforts to boost Israeli exports to Asian markets.

The plan, sponsored by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, constitutes an investment of “tens of millions of shekels over three years,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement.

It did not elaborate on the cost of the plan, but said the government’s goal is to double exports of Israeli goods to Japan by 2020, so that exports would amount to approximately 1.1 billion U.S. dollars per year.

The plan includes opening a trade office in Osaka, in addition to another in Tokyo. Osaka is the largest city in Kansai, a region where many of Japan’s largest companies are located and has a gross domestic product (GDP) of about 1 trillion dollars.
Read more…

Voice of Israel

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner director of Shurat HaDin, Israel Law Center, speaks with VOI’s Daniel Seaman and Daniela Traub about the Palestinian’s latest appeal to the International Criminal Court in the Hague, and how her organization is initiating lawsuits against the Palestinian Authority and its leaders for crimes against humanity.

Listen now

by Efraim Inbar
BESA Center Perspectives
January 4, 2015

Turkey is officially a NATO ally, and President Barrack Obama has called the current President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a friend. But Erdogan-led Turkey does not behave as an ally or a friend of the US. This is not a new development.

Erdogan and his Islamist party, the AKP, have ruled Turkey since 2002. Erdogan’s Turkey has gradually distanced itself from the West, adopting domestic and foreign policies fueled by Ottoman and Islamist impulses.

Turkey has been on the road to an authoritarian regime for several years. Infringements on human rights have gradually increased. In truth, Turkey has never had a political system with checks and balances able to constrain attempts to consolidate power around one politician. In recent years, Erdogan has weakened further the few constitutional constraints against the ‘Putinization’ of the Turkish political system.
Read more…

By Janet Tassel 

“Don’t send my boy to Harvard,”

The dying mother said.

“Don’t send my boy to Syracuse,

“I’d rather see him dead!

“Yes, send my boy to Princeton, or better still Cornell,

“But as for Bran-D-E-I-S

“I’ll see him first in hell!”

In that ancient fraternity drinking song, the original punch line was “Pennsylvan-I-A.” But now Brandeis,  certified (by Daily Caller) as America’s second “Most Rabidly Leftist, Politically Correct College for Dirty, Tree-Hugging Hippies,” walks away with the honor.
Read more…

By Rom Lerner, ISRAEL HAYOM

Reports last week said that the scope of immigration to Israel had reached a 10-year high. I was one of the sea of immigrants who chose to move here this year, arriving from Kenya with the help of the Israel Scouts youth movement’s Garin Tzabar project. I’m currently waiting to be drafted into an IDF combat unit. Our aliyah carries added value, because all of the 400 young Jews who moved to Israel this year under the auspices of Garin Tzabar did so with the intent of being drafted into the Israel Defense Forces and performing valuable service as lone soldiers.

Talking with my fellow members of the garin (a group of people immigrating to Israel together), I always seek the true reasons that led us to take this brave step. Many talk about the anti-Semitism that is rearing its head in recent years, forcing Jews to hide their identity, about fear of discrimination or about anti-Semitic incidents. A few even speak in whispers about a new threatening atmosphere that reminds us of stories from Jewish history we read about and heard Holocaust survivors tell chokingly. Others talk about the economic crisis Europe and the U.S. have undergone in recent years, which is even affecting the well-to-do Jewish communities.
Read more…

Ted Belman. I think that Berdishevsky is promoting Israel as a state of all its citizens rather than the nation state of the Jews. His arguments are not convincing at all. He espouses the opposite of what Martin Sherman espouses.

By Norman Berdichevsky

Many observers of the Israeli scene are convinced that the extreme views of the elected Arab Knesset members are a true measure of the community’s rejection of any accommodation of living peacefully and harmoniously with the Jewish majority. To do so is a common error in the mistaken and often ignorant understanding of Arab culture and the realities of Middle Eastern politics that characterize almost all of the so called “pundits” and reporters working in the field for major news gathering agencies. This includes the BBC at the top of the list with a huge staff of competent professionals and many years residence in the region. This short-sighted view has been put into dramatic relief by the universal praise accorded to the so called “Arab Spring” as a huge progressive step towards “democracy” and the recipient of extravagant praise from President Obama. He cavalierly abandoned his strongest ally. Egyptian President Husni Mubarak. in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood and its leader Muhammad Morsi only to see the Egyptian people rise in defiance against the islamists in what has been called the largest mass political demonstration in history.

How can one explain the apparent massive shift in sympathies and the ignorance of our State Department that continues to repeat the same mistake? Ignorance of Arab culture, language and mentality lie at the bottom of all these turnabouts.
Read more…

INSS Insight No. 652, January 4, 2015

By Oded Eran , Robbie Sabel

[..] Although not adopted, the text of draft resolution submitted to the UN Security Council by Jordan on behalf of “Palestine”1 merits examination. The submission of the draft resolution as such on behalf of the Palestinians was clearly a violation of the Palestinian undertaking under the Oslo agreement, in which Israel and the PLO agreed that “neither side shall initiate or take any step that will change the status of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations.”

Insofar as the UN Security Council is a political body making political decisions, even had the draft resolution been adopted it would not have been a judicial finding or a statement of international law, but rather a statement of the political views of the majority of members of the Council. The Security Council is authorized by the UN Charter to take binding decisions, but only when it determines under Chapter VII of the Charter that there has been “a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression.” None of the UN Security Councils resolutions since 1948 have used Chapter VII language in relation to the Israel-Palestinian conflict, including the Jordanian draft. Even Resolution 242 was not adopted under Chapter VII and only became binding when it was accepted by all the parties to the conflict.
Read more…

T Belman. Netanyahu should never have said that we won’t build because of the condemnation. I understand his desire to not attract attention from the ICC issue. To this end, there is no need to say we wont build. Better to not say anything on that score.

Lieberman: Palestinian moves at ICC show Oslo Accords have collapsed
Lieberman accuses European countries of abandoning Israel, points to support in UNSC for Palestinian statehood as proof of problematic ties.

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is preparing a harsh response to the Palestinian moves at the International Criminal Court in The Hague but clarified late last week that it will not include a declaration of settlement construction, Foreign Ministry Director-General Nissim Ben Sheetrit told Israel’s envoys to Europe at a conference in Jerusalem on Sunday.

In November 2012, after the Palestinian Authority’s status at the United Nations General Assembly was upgraded to non-member observer state, Netanyahu ordered a wave of settlement construction to the tune of thousands of housing units and the advancement of plans for the Mevasseret Adumim neighborhood in the E-1 corridor between Ma’aleh Adumim and Jerusalem. Read more…

JPOST

Both Jews and Arabs are proud to be Israeli, according to the extensive annual Israel Democracy Institute Democracy Index, which IDI president Yohanan Plesner and academic director Tamar Hermann presented Sunday to President Reuven Rivlin.

The poll of 1,007 respondents representing a statistical sample of the Israeli adult population has a margin of error of only 3.2%. Since 2003, the Index has served as a critical barometer of Israeli public opinion for Israeli politicians, government decision-makers, and newspapers of record around the world.

The poll found that 86% of Israeli Jews and 65% of Israeli Arabs described themselves as either very or quite proud to be Israeli. Only 13% of Israeli Jews and 34% of Israeli Arabs are not so proud or not proud at all to be Israeli. Read more…

THE AUTHOR IS NO FRIEND OF ISRAEL

Ben White, ME MONITOR

Speaking to the Security Council on Tuesday shortly after voting against the doomedPalestinian-drafted resolution on statehood, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power referred three times to an “unsustainable status quo” between Israel and the Palestinians.It is of course Washington itself that bears most responsibility for this status quo, through its diplomatic, military, and economic support for the occupier, and leadership of a decades-long ‘peace process’ that has given Israel the cover to de facto annex its way to a permanent occupation.

There is another ‘status quo’, however, that is already shifting: U.S. public opinion. In a poll conducted last November for the Brookings Institution, when asked about their preferred solution to the conflict, 34% of Americans said their government should push for one state with equal citizenship. That was up from 24% a year previously, a significant difference.
Read more…

By David Brooks, NYT

METULA, Israel — If I were a political novelist, I’d try to write a novel about Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel.

The story would be partly Nixonian. Netanyahu is surpassingly brilliant, as even his opponents here concede. He knows the minute guts of Israeli politics and has read deeply into big history and grand strategy. He is also said to be suspicious, solitary and insular. It is hard to stay on good terms with him, whether you are on his staff, or his nation’s closest ally.

The story would be partly Kennedyesque. The Netanyahu clan was presided over by Benjamin’s brilliant father Benzion, the great medieval historian. The eldest brother Jonathan was the golden child. When Jonathan died in the raid on Entebbe in 1976, hopes shifted to Benjamin, who is known as Bibi. Political analysts have spent decades psychoanalyzing the family dynamic, with mixed results, but a novelist who studied Sophocles or Tolstoy might be able to make some sense of it.
Read more…

UN Resolution 242 is recognized as the key UN resolution relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict which could alter how many reveal the issues in dispute especially as regards to borders.

By Yonah Jeremy Bob, JPOST

THE ISRAEL-JORDANIAN border fence. The future holds a very uncertain prognosis.

As the UN Security Council and International Criminal Court return to focusing on Israel, an about-to-be-published study reveals new sides to Council Resolution 242, recognized as the key resolution relating to the Israeli-Arab conflict, that could alter perceptions of issues in dispute, especially regarding borders.

According to an article by Prof. Eugene Kontorovich of Northwestern University, to be published soon in the Chicago Journal of International Law, a new side has emerged in the unending debate over the meaning of UNSC Resolution 242, which establishes principles for setting Israeli borders and withdrawal from territories conquered in 1967.
Read more…

Israel faces a twin peril, far more menacing to its survival as the nation-state of the Jewish people than the Iranian nuclear program or a Palestinian state.

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

The minute we leave South Lebanon we will have to erase the word Hezbollah from our vocabulary, because the whole idea of the State of Israel versus Hezbollah was sheer folly from the outset.It will most certainly no longer be relevant when Israel returns to its internationally recognized northern border.
– Amos Oz, “Try a Little Tenderness” (Interview),Haaretz, March 17, 2000

The ultimate test of this agreement will be a test of blood. If it becomes clear that [the Palestinians] cannot overcome terror, this will be a temporary accord and… we will have no choice but to abrogate it. And if there is no choice, the IDF will return to the places it is about to leave in the upcoming months.
– Yossi Beilin, Ma’ariv, November 26, 1993

The nightmare stories of the Likud are well known. After all, they promised Katyusha rockets from Gaza as well. For a year, Gaza has been largely under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. There has not been a single Katyusha rocket. Nor will there be any Katyushas.
– Yitzhak Rabin, radio interview, July 24, 1995
Read more…