Netanyahu is agitating for a Madrid-style regional conference, but its failure would be guaranteed from the start; meanwhile, Obama is looking for a way to ease tensions on the Palestinian front.

By Ron  Ben Yishai, YNET

It was clear that the Palestinian cause would not take center stage during Wednesday night’s meeting between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu. The White House allocated the prime minister 75 minutes, and even with an extension, the two had a great deal of ground to cover, and little area of agreement. Netanyahu wants the US to avoid a “bad agreement” in the nuclear talks with Iran and also made a stab at clearing the bad air in the relationship between the two administrations.

The two leaders may be in agreement on continued intelligence sharing and peacekeeping operations to combat radical Islam and Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, but the American president will not give up on the Palestinian issue. Not only because he is committed to ideological and political efforts to achieve a permanent settlement to the conflict, but primarily because the United States urgently needs calm on the Palestinian front. Read more…

By Arlene Kushner

In particular, I was distressed that he spoke about a readiness to make territorial concessions for an agreement with “rock solid security.”

This seems to me a very poor time to talk about such a thing – when Abbas is in bed with Hamas and the world is upside down.  It feels like a sort of super-eagerness to demonstrate readiness for concessions.  And it primes the world, not least the Arab world, to demand such concessions.
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By Uzay Bulut, ISRAEL HAYOM

“Just as it was in the past, if a leaf trembles in the Balkans, the Middle East, the Caucasus or Central Asia, Ankara will be the first to hear it and respond to it,” Turkey’s then-Foreign Minister and current Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in a speech in the Turkish parliament on July 1, 2010.

He also declared his stance on ?Jerusalem:”Jerusalem is our issue. East Jerusalem is part of the state of Palestine, not Israeli territory, and consists of territory that was invaded in 1967.”

Apartment prices jump 4.4% in second quarter of 2014 – price of new apartments up 13% – as Netanyahu’s construction freeze continues.

BY ARI YASHAR, INN

The Housing Ministry on Wednesday published figures showing that the priceof apartments in Israel rose in the second quarter of 2014 by another 4.4% compared to the same quarter last year, as the ongoing housing crisis only continues to grow more serious.

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The jump in prices during the period, which stretched from April to June, is thrown in more dramatic relief when looking only at new apartment prices, which rose by a whopping 13% compared to last year, with the average new apartment costing 1.6 million shekels (over $430,000), reports Calcalist.

When used apartments were thrown in, the overall average cost of buying an apartment was found to be 1.31 million shekels.
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Exacting standards designed to avoid unintended casualties do not apply to fight against Islamic State, White House says

BY STUART WINER, TOI

The White House revealed on Tuesday that its usually strict rules of engagement, intended to prevent civilian casualties of US airstrikes, have been relaxed in the current offensive against the Islamic State and other radical Islamist groups

National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden told Yahoo News in an email that a much-publicized statement last year by President Barack Obama that US drone strikes would only be carried out if there is a “near certainty” of no civilian injuries would not apply to the US campaign against jihadi forces in Syria and Iraq.

Hayden wrote that the “near certainty” rule was intended “only when we take direct action ‘outside areas of active hostilities,’ as we noted at the time.

“That description — outside areas of active hostilities — simply does not fit what we are seeing on the ground in Iraq and Syria right now,” she continued, but added that the strikes, “like all US military operations, are being conducted consistently with the laws of armed conflict, proportionality and distinction.”
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Haaretz continues to publish articles wherein prominent leftists introspect. This is one example. But this idea of “Arab world first, Palestinians later” was a key point made by PM Netanyahu at the UN this week. Ted Belman

For the past 12 years Israel has had at its doorstep a strategy that would enable a U-turn: One that goes from the general (the Arab world) to the specific (the Palestinians).

By David Zucker, HAARETZ

The two-state solution – if it still has any chance of realization – will not be implemented in negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. The path of direct negotiations between the two has been sterile for years, and no additional fertility treatments will help. How can something that has been infertile all these years become fertile? Why should something that has been unsuccessful so many times in the past succeed now?

Israel and the Palestinians simply don’t know how to save themselves by themselves. And the involvement of the United States and the European Union in the past 20 years has also yielded spoiled fruit.
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JPOST

Netanyahu took the bitter criticism he leveled against the UN Human RIghts COuncil in the UN General Assembly on Monday directly into the office of UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday, saying the forum was badly stacked against Israel and defended Hamas.

Netanyahu, according to a statement issued from his office, complained to Ban that the council was focusing its investigation on Israel, rather than on Hamas which used UN facilities over the summer to attack Israel.

Jerusalem, Netanyahu said, will fight against this.

The prime minister stressed, as he did in his speech, that Israel did not intentionally target Palestinian civilians, and was sorry for every civilian casualty. He said that Hamas has taken the local population hostage, and compared the organization to Islamic State. He repeated his position that Hamas carried out a double war crime over the summer: firing on Israeli civilians, while hiding behind Palestinian civilians.
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In wake of Gaza war, defense minister says, land-for-peace formula is dangerous for Israel and likely deadly for Jordan

BY MITCH GINSBURG, TOI

The 50-day offensive against Hamas in Gaza over the summer proved that a withdrawal from the West Bank would be both irrational and outdated, mortally threatening the Hashemite Kingdom and the Palestinian Authority, and placing Israel in even greater danger, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Tuesday.

“Immediately after Operation Protective Edge we heard: now is the time for a diplomatic process,” he said with evident cynicism at a security conference at the INSS think tank in Tel Aviv.

Ya’alon said that there were calls, from within the cabinet — an apparent allusion to comments by ministers Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid — and elsewhere, for Israel to withdraw from the territory, despite the fact that from May to July the Shin Bet arrested over 90 Hamas operatives whose alleged plan was to both attack Israel and overthrow the Palestinian Authority.
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By Moran Azulay, Yitzhak Benhorin, Elior Levy, YNET

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Monday garnered mixed responses from US officials, Palestinian legislators and from Knesset members across the political spectrum, with right-wing MKs lauding Netanyahu for exposing what they called “Abbas’s true face,” while those on the left side of the map termed the speech “an official seal of Netanyahu’s failure”.

In his speech, the prime minister drew a link between the threat Israel faces from Hamas in Gaza, to the threat the international community at large faces from the Islamic State. “Hamas, like the Islamic State, wants a caliphate,” he said.

‘Islamic State different from Hamas’
The United States was reluctant to accept Netanyahu’s comparison between Hamas and Islamic State.
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AL MONITOR

Thirteen years after US President George W. Bush declared war on terrorism, the Middle East is no closer to victory. Instead, terrorism appears to have morphed into an even more dangerous beast in the form of the Islamic State (IS). Westerners, as expressed through the media, seem to be under the same impression as they were after Sept. 11, 2001 — namely, that the Sunni jihadist movement is linked to the Wahhabi brand of Islam emanating from Saudi Arabia. This has prompted renewed debate among Saudis about this supposed Wahhabist-jihadist connection.

After bombings in Riyadh by al-Qaeda in 2003, the relationship between terrorism and religious extremism was widely discussed in the kingdom, with the government establishing the King Abdulaziz Center for National Dialogue that same year. During the dialogue’s second meeting, Extremism and Moderation … A Comprehensive Methodological Vision, it was agreed that religious programs in Saudi Arabia were the primary force behind the spread of extremism in society. As a result of the dialogue, school curricula, the religious curriculum in particular, were modified by the Ministry of Education. Doubts remained, however, that religious education had been sufficiently modified given that radical Islamists were believed to dominate the education sector in the kingdom.
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JEWISH PRESS

More than two dozen Jews under heavy police escort moved into six more homes purchased by a Jewish investment company in Silwan Valley, including the City of David complex, in eastern Jerusalem Monday night.

A group of Arabs hurled firecrackers and stones at police in a failed attempt to enter one of the buildings, and one policeman was treated at the scene for head wounds.

Three of the homes are located in the City of David complex, located on the road opposite the Dung Gate that is the entrance to the Western Wall Plaza. At least one of the other homes is situated near the ancient Silwan Pool.
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By Ted Belman

I attended a half day conference at Bar Ilan University dealing with Protective Edge.

Min Steinitz who was the key speaker essentially laid out the policy of the government. He said that Israel had no illusions about Abbas or the prospects of peace negotiations, or the state of antisemitism, the BDS movement etc, nonetheless Israel has managed through out her 67 years or so to grow, develop and prosper. Therefor Israel will continue to endure but will not change course with some dramatic action.

As it happens the same thing was told to me before Rosh Hashanah by an insider friend of mine.

Vic Rosenthal in his article, What’s the Alternative? wrote,
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First I posted The peace camp still doesn’t get it by Ari Shavit in Haaretz. Then I posted Israel really hasn’t silenced dissent  from Haaretz just earlier tonight. And now this.  Haaretz is trying to tell the left something. Talk about taking ownership of your own failure. Good for them.

It’s ironic: those who claim to be the biggest advocates of democratic government seem to have the most difficulty accepting the verdict of the electorate.

By Moshe Arens, HAARETZ

Judging by a recent exchange of op-ed pieces and letters to the editor in this paper, despair seems to have gripped some of the Israelis who identify with the left. There are those who declare their intent to leave Israel, while others urge them to stay and keep up the good fight against the right.

They have yet to explain why it is those claiming to be the advocates of democratic government that have most difficulty in accepting the verdict of the electorate that has brought to power a government not to their liking. After all, changes of government are the essence of democratic rule. It is true that for many years the left was in control in Israel, and even before that for many years in the pre-state days. But it was the “upset” that brought the right to power in 1977 which demonstrated that Israel was a real democracy. And the changes of governments we have had since then have confirmed it, over and over.
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A New York Times op-ed suggests that a right-wing cabal has shut us Israeli leftists up, and we can do little do about it. But we haven’t been silenced. We’ve just failed to make our case.

By Noah Efron, HAARETZ

Thank you, Mr. President.

Distinguished delegates, I come here from Jerusalem to speak on behalf of my people, the people of Israel. I’ve come here to speak about the dangers we face and about the opportunities we see. I’ve come here to expose the brazen lies spoken from this very podium against my country and against the brave soldiers who defend it.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The people of Israel pray for peace.

But our hopes and the world’s hope for peace are in danger. Because everywhere we look, militant Islam is on the march.
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JPOST

UNITED NATIONS – Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has lost his legitimacy to speak on behalf of the Palestinian people, and his strident rhetoric at the United Nations is an effort to improve his domestic status, Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman said Monday.

Liberman, at a brief press conference in the halls of the UN an hour before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was to address the General Assembly, characterized Abbas’s UN speech last week as a “message of hate and incitement.”

“It is clear that he has no intention to make peace with Israel,” Liberman said.

Questioning Abbas’ ability to speak on behalf of the Palestinians, Liberman said that not only does he have no control over the Gaza Strip, but that he has also postponed Palestinian parliamentary and presidential elections for more than four years.
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Defense minister says IDF killed 40 senior Hamas officials, responds to criticism of government’s decision-making during Protective Edge. Ya’alon: Gaza artillery inventory down to 20 percent

Yoav Zitun, YNET

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said on Monday that only 20 percent of Gaza’s artillery arsenal remained intact after Operation Protective Edge.

The defense minister recounted the military’s military achievements, saying the IDF killed “40 senior Hamas officials and 10 from Islamic Jihad. As of today, only 20 percent of the rocket and mortar inventory remains from before the operation, when there were some 10,000 rockets and mortars.”

At a Bar Ilan University conference, Ya’alon claimed that “Hamas felt it was prepared for a conflict before the operation, and when it was desperate it tried a kidnap and kill mission in the southern Strip; we tracked the preparations for this attack and we thwarted it using airstrikes, and that is how we entered the operation.”
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Bedouin leaders fire back at the minister who dared to challenge their right to marry several women.

By Shimon Cohen and Gil Ronen, INN

By Vic Rosenthal

All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer. – Machiavelli

Recently, in response to my saying that the Palestinian Authority was more trouble than it is worth, a reader asked “what exactly is the alternative?”

To broaden his question a bit, we might ask “what is the alternative to what Israel is doing now,” which is essentially as little as possible — reacting to threats, but taking no initiatives.
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