By Ted Belman
Isi Liebler writing in JPOST on the aftermath of the Gaza War, after saying we can’t give up security control, had this to say about what our policies should be regarding settlements :
That does not imply the long-term abandonment of a two state solution. We cannot retain our identity as a Jewish democratic state if we absorbed millions of additional Arabs. We must remain committed to achieving a separation as an ultimate goal and until that time, should encourage greater autonomy and enhance the living standards of the Palestinians.
Our leaders should now suspend their domestic squabbles and speak with one voice to the world, reiterating that a quick fix is impossible and that a Palestinian state will only be created when Israel’s security can be guaranteed. The Americans and Europeans must be persuaded that this approach is based solely on security concerns, not political or territorial goals.
by Daniel Pipes, The Washington Times
September 10, 2014
| Every map of the Kurdish peoples differs from the others. This one offers an estimate of their geographic extent, including a corridor to the Mediterranean Sea. |
UN and PA call for funds without specifying supervision of usage; admit countries hesitating to donate to Hamas terror govt.
The United Nations (UN) and Palestinian Authority (PA) on Tuesday called for international donors to supply $550 million to the Hamas terror enclave of Gaza, despite the fact that Hamas has already restarted construction on its terror tunnels to attack Israel.
The appeal seeks to repair damage caused in the 50-day Operation Protective Edge, which started in July after Hamas launched a rocket war on the Jewish state.
“The scope of damage and devastation is unprecedented in the Gaza Strip,” said UN Humanitarian Coordinator James Rawley in a statement, reports AFP. “The crisis is far from over.”
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Tzvi Mazel says reports of an offer by Cairo to enlarge Gaza at the expense of the Sinai are fabricated.
Former Israeli ambassador to Egypt, Tzvi Mazel, tells Arutz Sheva that the reports regarding an Egyptian offer to Palestinian Authority head Mahmoud Abbas, to enlarge Gaza by adding territory to it from the Sinai Peninsula, are a hoax.
“I find it hard to believe that an offer like that was made by the Egyptian president,” explained Mazel, who is currently a researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. “It does not fit in with the Egyptian ethos, that every square centimeter of land is sacred and must not be turned over to any foreigner.”
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HAARETZ published an article by Bradley Burston under the title How to lie about settlements, land grabs – and Netanyahu
No one believes you, Elliott Abrams. Not the settlers. Not Israelis as a whole. Certainly not Netanyahu. You can fool some of the people some of the time. But only at a distance.
Israel’s recent annexation of 1,000 acres of land in the West Bank doesn’t change anything on the ground, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has actually been remarkably constrained in settlement construction.
I for one, believe Abrams and not Burston.
By Elliot Abrams, FOREIGN POLICY
On Aug. 31, Israel laid claim to 1,000 acres of land in the West Bank. The land is in Gush Etzion — an area predominantly populated by Jews since before 1948 and one that both American and Palestinian leaders recognized in past negotiations would remain part of Israel in any future agreement. With its new formal status as “state land,” the area is legally open for new construction.
The knee-jerk condemnations immediately followed. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to try to convince him to reverse the decision, which the State Departmenttermed “counterproductive.” The British foreign secretary deploredIsrael’s “particularly ill-judged” decision, while the Palestinian Authority threatened that it “will lead to more instability … inflam[ing] the situation.” The New York Times quoted an official with the dovish Peace Now organization as saying it could be the single largest annexation of land in decades.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report September 9, 2014, 9:41 PM (IDT)
The Israeli government has radically changed tack on Syria, reversing a policy and military strategy that were longed geared to opposing Syrian President Bashar Assad, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and intelligence sources report. This reversal has come about in the light of the growing preponderance of radical Islamists in the Syrian rebel force fighting Assad’s army in the Quneitra area since June.
Al Qaeda’s Syrian Nusra front, which calls itself the Front for the Defense of the Levant, is estimated to account by now for 40-50 percent – or roughly, 4,000-5,000 Islamists – of the rebel force deployed just across Israel’s Golan border. No more than around 2,500-3,000 belong to the moderate Syrian militias, who were trained by American and Jordanian instructors in the Hashemite Kingdom and sent back to fight in Syria.
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The Charter of the UN does not give such power, ie to set borders, to the Security Council and for sure not to the GA. The SC can only act to maintain the peace.Of course they could always argue that the Israeli “occupation” threatens peace. And who but Israel is there to say otherwise. But even if they give us a deadline, we need not follow it. Then it is up to the SC to levy sanctions which I don’t believe the US Congress would endorse. They could also create a Military coalition to force us. This also is not likely. Ted Belman
Arab foreign ministers said on Monday they will back Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’s efforts to lobby the United Nations to set a deadline for Israel to withdraw from Judea and Samaria, The Associated Press (AP) reported.
The PA’s ambassador to Egypt, Jamal al-Shobaki, said that the Arab League resolution issued a day earlier calls for the head of the Arab League to push the idea in the UN Security Council and other regional and international groups.
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Egypt and Jordan have already experienced the spillover of the Palestinian jihad.
Egypt’s President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi. (photo credit:REUTERS)
Something extraordinary has happened.
On August 31, PLO chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told an audience of Fatah members that Egypt had offered to give the PA some 1,600 kilometers of land in Sinai adjacent to Gaza, thus quintupling the size of the Gaza Strip. Egypt even offered to allow all the so-called “Palestinian refugees” to settle in the expanded Gaza Strip.
Then Abbas told his Fatah followers that he rejected the Egyptian offer.
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Analysis: If Israel fails to act on the threats it made against Hamas, it will pay a heavy price, especially in the face of Hezbollah’s 100,000 missiles in southern Lebanon.
It was expected. Two weeks into the ceasefire, a “state official” informed us on Sunday that Hamas is already busy digging new terror tunnels, which will reach the Gaza vicinity communities.
And that’s not all. The rocket industry is working overtime, and the organization is still smuggling missile parts and launching equipment from Sinai into the Strip.
It was also expected that the defense establishment would express its amazement, to the point of denial, over the information disclosed by the “state official.” After all, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon has linked his fate with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s future in the Likud party and in the public opinion, and the result is the cooperation in the response of the system under his authority. In simpler words, the response says: “Missiles? What missiles? Where?”
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DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis September 9, 2014, 1:13 AM (IDT)
An anonymous Western diplomat’s reported to Reuters Monday, Sept. 8, that “Israel has provided satellite imagery and other intelligence in support of the US-led aerial campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq.” He added that after “being ‘scrubbed’ of evidence of its Israeli origin, the information has often been shared by Washington with Arab and Turkish allies.”
DEBKAfile’s intelligence and counterterrorism sources reports that this claptrap is part of a deep game. While willing to share intelligence on Al Qaeda with the US, Israel would certainly not hand over satellite imagery or any other intelligence, knowing it would reach the hands of Turkey and possibly also Iran. Satellite imagery is far too sensitive to part with and gives away far too many secrets, like the its path, its capabilities, sensors and the resolution and angles of its cameras. Such material, if passed to anyone, would only be handed to a friendly head of state, a defense minister or a spy chief in exceptional circumstances. Read more…
Notwithstanding the denial, there are many reasons to believe the offer is for real. Abbas has made it clear that he rejected it. He does not want to give up on the ’67 lines, part of Jerusalem and the “right of return”. Let’s take him at his word. Israel should propose to El Sisi that the land be given to Israel in trust for the “refugees” on the condition that Israel would use their best efforts to prevent infiltration into Gaza and perhaps work with Egypt to pacify the Sinai. Thus both Egypt and Israel would get an immediate benefit. Israel could then build housing in the newly acquired territory and offer it to all “refugees” and other Arabs in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, numbering according to UNRWA about 2 million. Overtime, Israel could make this work. Ted Belman
El-Sisi says it was his Muslim Brotherhood-backed predecessor who made the offer — not him.
No maps have been drawn yet, but one possible map of the Egyptian Sinai Initiative for Peace/Palestine (ESIPP) could look something like this – with a massive, coastal area from Sinai, contiguous to Gaza, being transferred to the Palestinian Authority for a state.
Photo Credit: Courtesy
Egypt’s Foreign Ministry says President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi never offered the Palestinian Authority a chance to establish a new state in the Sinai Peninsula, according to i24 News.
On Monday morning, Israel Army Radio had reported the Egyptian president had made the suggestion to to Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas earlier this week in Cairo.
Daniel Pipes says The West Lacks a Plan
Sher Zieve says, Obama has No Intention of Stopping ISIS
Kissinger: Iran is a bigger threat than Islamic State because the threat posed by the militants is “more manageable” than a confrontation with Iran.
My concern is that ISIS and the MB both share the same goal of installing Sharia in America though their means may vary. While we are focussed on the violent Jihad, we are ignoring the stealth Jidad.
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is preparing to carry out a campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria that may take three years to complete, requiring a sustained effort that could last until after President Obama has left office, according to senior administration officials.
There is some really bad news for the lunatic anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) brigade. Virtually every electronic device in the world is now produced using Israeli technology. The systems manufactured by Yavne-based Orbotech are used globallyto produce almost every printed circuit board on the planet. So when you tell the BDS crazies to dispose of all their electronic equipment, here are some recent news reports relating toother everyday items that they also need to steer well clear of.
1. Doctors and medicine
BDS advocates must never approach hospitals or GP surgeries because Israeli discoveries, treatments and life-saving devices dominate the medical arena. Latest advances include treatments for pancreatic cancer and bladder cancer; a vaccine against avian flu; improved methods for diagnosing ADHD and blood clots; a new durable material for hip replacements; an app for diabetics; a watch that prevents heart attacks and safer cancer radiation therapy.
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Click here to watch: Israel Preparing for ‘Very Violent’ war Against Hezbollah, TV Report Says Just 10 days after a ceasefire ended a 50-day Israel-Hamas conflict, the Israeli army is “making plans and training” for “a very violent war” against Hezbollah in south Lebanon, an Israeli TV report said Friday night, without specifying when this war might break out. The report, for which the army gave Israel’s Channel 2 access to several of its positions along the border with Lebanon, featured an IDF brigade commander warning that such a conflict “will be a whole different story” from the Israel-Hamas conflict in which over 2,000 Gazans (half of them gunmen according to Israel) and 72 Israelis were killed. “We will have to use considerable force” to quickly prevail over the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, “to act more decisively, more drastically,” said Colonel Dan Goldfus, commander of the 769th Hiram Infantry Brigade. |
Part 4: Is the queen of Europe’s Far Right, and possible future President of France, an enemy of Islamists, Jews, or both?
By Marc Weitzmann, TRABLET, August 12, 2014
The National Front, the xenophobic populist party that stands in the vanguard of the fight against Islamists in France, is doing its best these days to drag French Jews into its ranks. As I’m finishing this piece, one of the most prominent figures of the party, Gilbert Collard, is coming out with a new statement defending Israel against the so-called “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations. The Front’s headquarters, where last month I interviewed the party’s leader Marine Le Pen for Tablet, are located in an ugly two-story house with gray concrete walls in Nanterre, a western suburb of Paris of sad quiet little streets spreading in the shadow of the nearby glassy skyscrapers of the La Défense business center.
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Manuel Valls says Le Pen’s National Front could win presidential election if left wing doesn’t step up
BOLOGNA, Italy — The far-right National Front is at the “gates of power” in France, Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Sunday in a stark assessment of the crisis embroiling the country’s center-left government.
Valls’s warning follows weeks of turmoil for the ruling Socialists which culminated in an opinion poll Friday showing that National Front, or FN, leader Marine Le Pen would beat President Francois Hollande in presidential elections in 2017.
Questions are emerging over possible conflicts-of-interest after The New York Times highlighted Qatari funding for U.S. think tanks, including the Brookings Institute, employer of former U.S. envoy Martin Indyk, who was directly involved in recent negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
“Qatar, the small but wealthy Middle East nation, agreed last year to make a $14.8 million, four-year donation to Brookings, which has helped fund a Brookings affiliate in Qatar and a project on United States relations with the Islamic world,” according to The Times.
The report comes just weeks after Israel vociferously voiced objection to Qatar’s funding of its major adversary, terror group Hamas.
In July, then Israeli President Shimon Peres told United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who was visiting the region, that Israel would not stand by while Qatar continued to finance Hamas militants.
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“The Sons of Pigs and Apes”: Muslim Antisemitism and the Conspiracy of Silence
by Neil J. Kressel
Amazon Review
From the 1950s through the 1990s, antisemitism everywhere seemed to be on the wane. But as Neil Kressel documents in this startling book, the Muslim world has resurrected in recent decades almost every diatribe that more than two millennia of European hostility produced against the Jews, and it has introduced many homegrown and novel modes of attack. Though it is impossible to determine precisely how many of the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims hold anti-Jewish beliefs, Kressel finds that much bigotry comes from the highest levels of religious and political leadership.
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Obama wants to
1. undo Israel
2. transform America
3. have detente with Iran
4 inter alia.
IRBIL, IRAQ — Kurdish leaders are postponing plans for a referendum on independence and say they instead will devote their efforts to forging a new Iraqi government.
Years of tangling with outgoing Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, a Shiite Muslim, made Kurds skeptical about their future in an Iraq of squabbling Sunni and Shiite Muslim Arabs. Doubts rose in June after Islamic State extremists, supported by local Sunnis, took over northern Iraq, and the Shiite-dominated national army collapsed.
In early July, Massoud Barzani, leader of the largely autonomous Kurdistan region, ordered his advisers to begin preparations to hold a referendum on independence.
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