Terror wing of ‘moderate’ Abbas’s Fatah displays massive arsenal in Gaza video after taking part in Hamas war, vows to increase attacks.

By Dalit Halevy, Ari Yashar, INN

By Victor Davis Hanson, MERCURY NEWS

LIMASSOL, Cyprus — Cyprus is a beautiful island. But it has never recovered from the Turkish invasion of 1974. Turkish troops still control nearly 40 percent of the island — the most fertile and formerly the richest portion.

Some 200,000 Greek refugees never returned home after being expelled from their homes and farms in Northern Cyprus.

The capital of Nicosia remains divided. A 112-mile demilitarized “green line” runs right through the city across the entire island.

Thousands of settlers from Anatolia were shipped in by the Turkish government to occupy former Greek villages and to change Cypriot demography — in the same manner the occupying Ottoman Empire once did in the 16th century. Not a single nation recognizes the legitimacy of the Turkish Cypriot state. In contrast, Greek Cyprus is a member of the European Union.
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When all you seek is calm, while your adversary is committed to your total annihilation, what is a reasonable compromise? That he only annihilate half of you?

By Martin Sherman, JPOST

Screenshot via YouTube.
It’s medieval times, thanks to the Harper Government’s new citizenship bill—and not the fun one where guys in costumes beat each other up, either. This one involves exile.

Bill C-24 promises to shred the passports of Canadians who the Minister of Immigration deems terrorists—and deport them to countries they may have never seen before.

“It’s so wrong it isn’t funny,” says immigration lawyer Barbara Jackman. “Exile and banishment—those went out in the Middle Ages.” Read more…

By Barak Ravid, HAARETZ

[..] The administration refrained from any public response at the time, but it sent harsh messages to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office via diplomatic channels. A few days later, however, when Israeli shells hit a UN school where hundreds of Palestinian civilians had sought refuge, the administration issued harsh denunciations of Israel of a kind that hadn’t been heard from Washington in years.

That “Black Friday” in Rafah brought the administration’s frustration over Israeli tactics in Gaza, and over its inability to influence its closest ally, to a boiling point. The White House’s decision to delay a transfer of Hellfire missiles to Israel, as revealed by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, shows that the Americans subsequently decided to move from talk to action in their effort to restrain Israel’s use of force in Gaza and the resultant civilian casualties. Read more…

Deal reportedly reached to see calm in Gaza extended based on two-pronged formula: Ceasefire in return for rehabilitation of Gaza and redevelopment in return for demilitarization; meanwhile, Israeli Cabinet convenes, Islamic Jihad says: War has ended.

Elior Levy, Roi Kais, YNET

Palestinian officials expressed optimism Friday regarding current diplomatic attempts to reach a long-term ceasefire in Gaza, as Israel’s Cabinet convened, presumably to discuss the looming deal.

DEBKA
August 15, 2014, 12:09 PM (IDT)

After a month of fighting and at the onset of another surreal ceasefire, DEBKAfile offers some clues to those readers who, understandably, find themselves a bit baffled about the status of the war in Gaza and where Israel stands. Here’s a brief guide to the goings-on:

Is there a ceasefire?

Senior Fatah and Egyptian officials said late Wednesday, Aug. 14, that negotiators in Cairo had agreed to a five-day truce, extending the previous 72-hour ceasefire. But neither Hamas nor Israeli officials themselves have formally acknowledged this deal, nor do they seem inclined to do so. In short, no, there is no truce.
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Israeli official confirms US nixed arms shipment

WSJ report of frayed relations between Washington and Jerusalem, including combative Obama-Netanyahu phone call

While Hamas fires rockets, and ISIS beheads unbelievers, the Kurds build the second non-Arab state in the Middle East

[..] By contrast, Kurdistan has played a positive role in the region. While paying the requisite lip service to the cause of Iraqi territorial integrity championed by the United States, many Arab countries as well as Turkey and Iran did not hesitate to turn Kurdistan into a major business and political partner. These states’ pragmatism and realism had told them that the specter of another non-Arab, non-Turkish, and non-Persian entity in the region pales against the real dangers emanating from their Arab and Sunni brethren. Paradoxically enough, the country that went the farthest in embracing the Kurdish entity was also the one that had been the most vociferous against it: Turkey, which has become the midwife for a Kurdish state in Iraq with oil and gas as foundations for a strategic partnership that Turkey seems to see as a stabilizing force on its own borders. Read more…

Israel left Gaza in 2005 and now finds itself under relentless attack by the terrorists who took over. It deserves international support; instead, it’s being abandoned

BY DAVID HOROVITZ, TOI
August 14, 2014, 4:36 pm

Shipment of aerial anti-armor missiles stopped after White House, State Department learned that IDF requested transfer directly from Pentagon without asking for their approval, according to Wall Street Journal report.

Yitzhak Benhorin, YNET, 08.14.14, 08:13

WASHINGTON – The US administration has halted a shipment of Hellfire aerial anti-armor missiles to Israel, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing government sources.

The sources noted that Israel had requested the transfer of ammunitions directly from the Pentagon, without receiving the approval of the White House or State Department officials.
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By Shlomo Pyotrkovsky, Ari Yashar, INN
8/14/2014, 1:00 PM

Mati Tuchfeld and Gideon Allon, ISRAEL HAYOM

National Post

PARIS — Calling the situation in Iraqi Kurdistan “catastrophic,” France said Wednesday it would start supplying arms to the Kurdish forces fighting Sunni extremists from the Islamic State group.

The sudden announcement that arms would begin to flow within hours underlined France’s alarm at the urgency of the situation in Iraq, where the Islamic State fighters are threatening the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.

The shipment of French arms, which the government refused to describe, follows the United States’ increased role in fighting back the Islamic State extremists.
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IDF to expand counteraction for Hamas rockets

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 12, 2014, 11:18 PM (IDT)

The seventh truce in the ongoing Israel-Hamas passage of arms is generally expected to end Wednesday night Aug. 13, with a fresh outbreak of hostilities triggered by resumed Hamas rocket fire. The indirect Egyptian-brokered talks between the parties in Cairo have never got off the ground. From the start, all three realized that the gaps between Israel and the Palestinians were unbridgeable and, moreover, that Hamas and the Palestinian Authority were totally at odds on a common negotiating stance.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report exclusively that Egyptian intelligence mediators presented separate papers to the Israelis and Palestinians, knowing – as they acknowledged informally – that the two papers were miles apart.
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By G Murphy Donovan, AMERICAN THINKER

[..] The so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) rampages through the created chaos in the Levant, a barbarian nightmare that has nothing to do with Jews and everything to do with American and European policy blunders. And now with the Arab and Muslim world aflame; a confederacy of the clueless in Washington and Brussels are picking a new fight with Russia too; a diversion to be sure.

Mister Obama may not be a Koran-thumping zealot, yet surely he creates as much suffering as any rabid Islamist. And just as surely, the Obama national security team is a milquetoast ‘ally’ of Israel.
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An expanded fishing zone, easier passage for people and goods between Gaza and Israel and other concessions have been offered, a senior Israeli official says.

HAARETZ

Israel has agreed to ease conditions in the Gaza Strip during the Cairo cease-fire talks, a senior official in Jerusalem said yesterday.

While no final agreement has been reached, Israel is prepared to ease conditions in a number of areas beyond those agreed to after Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, Israeli officials said.

They include:

1. Expanding the fishing zone off Gaza from three nautical miles to six. Israel made clear that if security conditions allow in the future it will consider expanding the zone to 12 nautical miles, as Hamas demands.
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Al Qaeda-Sinai targets US Negev military facilities

DEBKA

The Kurdish Peshmerga fight against encroaching Islamic State troops gained a broad new dimension Monday, Aug. 11, when the US began airlifting large quantities of military equipment, including ordnance, from Jordan and Israel to the semiautonomous KRG capital, Irbil. The US maintains 10,000 special operations and marine forces at the King Hussein Air Base in northern Jordan, with large stocks of ammunition that were originally destined for the rebels fighting Bashar Assad in Syria. They are now being redirected to the Kurdish effort to stop the rapid Islamist march on their republic, along with supplies from the US emergency stores maintained in the Israeli Negev.
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ALGEMEINER

Israel’s Foreign Press Association on Monday said it “protests, in the strongest terms, the blatant, incessant, forceful and unorthodox methods employed by the Hamas authorities and their representatives against visiting international journalists in Gaza over the past month.”

In a statement, the FPA said, “The international media are not advocacy organisations and cannot be prevented from reporting by means of threats or pressure, thereby denying their readers and viewers an objective picture from the ground.”
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