If Jews are not perceived as a nation but as a religious community, they have no authentic claim for sovereignty over any part of the land.

By Avi ShiloN, HAARETZ

The negotiations with the Palestinians are taking place under a shroud from which, from time to time, conflicting reports emerge: optimism on the part of John Kerry and pessimism expressed by Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas. A recent story in the New York Times might clarify these contradictions. According to this report, the squabbling over the Jordan Valley indicates that on the issue of borders and security arrangements the two sides are closer to an agreement. The real dispute is over the demand to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. At first glance, this appears strange. If agreement can be reached on practical issues such as borders, why should there be a confrontation over a historical narrative that is connected to a philosophical debate of nation versus religion as the defining core of Judaism?
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Pundits agree that PA action in the international arena drove Israel to negotiate; they differ on what’ll happen if talks break down

BY RAPHAEL AHREN, TOI, January 7, 2014,

Notwithstanding the best intentions of US Secretary of State John Kerry, the current round of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians may fail (shocking, we know). But what happens then? Well, most members of the current Israeli government may be fine with the status quo — the emphatic absence of a Palestinian state — but Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has vowed to resume steps to unilaterally advance the PA’s statehood bid, a move Jerusalem is extremely wary of.

Yet Israeli experts disagree whether Israel really has something to worry about. Is it just a “big bluff” (as one international law scholar claimed), or would a unilateral Palestinian statehood bid make it impossible for Israel to ever reach a peace agreement that takes its positions into consideration (as another academic argued)?
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By DAN BILEFSKY and SEBNEM ARSU

PARIS — About 350 police officers in Ankara, the Turkish capital, were removed from their posts overnight, Turkish news outlets reported on Tuesday, the largest single purge of the police force since a corruption investigation plunged the government into crisis last month.

Analysts in Turkey saw the dismissals as part of a continuing effort by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government to marginalize those it believes are driving the investigation. The government has already dismissed more than a dozen high-ranking police officials, prompting accusations of interference in the judicial process.
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By Melanie Phillips

The consequences of the Obama administration’s frivolous malevolence over foreign policy are now starting to become clear. The inevitable result of Obama’s decision to pull all troops out of Iraq has been to create a power vacuum – into which has stepped al Qaeda. Its operatives have surged into Anbar province, where so many American and Coalition soldiers gave their lives in an attempt to secure the peace.

Cue much wailing and gnashing of teeth and panicky promises by the US to send ‘support’ – whatever that might be in the absence of troops. The cause of the panic? That all those American and other coalition soldiers who died in Iraq will be soon seen to have died in vain, as America’s scuttling away from the battlefield turns fragile victory into baleful defeat and Iraq stares into the abyss of civil war.
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Govt. sources reveal that Kerry is responsible for EU boycott threats, keeps them in check during talks, ready to escalate if talks fail.

By Ari Yashar, INN

Governmental sources report that US Secretary of State John Kerry is behind theEuropean boycott threats on Israeli products and companies operating in Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights.

The EU published its guidelines last July, boycotting Israeli companies operating over the 1949 Armistice lines.

At the moment, Kerry is making sure the threats stay in check, but as soon as the peace talks fail he intends to open the floodgates and spur on full-blown international boycotts on Israel, reports Galei Tzahal (IDF Radio).

Palestinian Authority (PA) officials reported last September that Kerry was putting pressure on the EU to delay boycotts so as to give him an opportunity to push Israel into peace talks. That report also appears to support the new revelations regarding Kerry’s manipulation of anti-Israel boycotts.
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“THEY ARE POISONING PALESTINIAN CHILDREN WITH DEEP HATRED”

Israeli Official Points to ‘Incitement’ by Palestinians

By Jodi Rudoren New York Times January 7, 2014

JERUSALEM — Adolf Hitler is quoted on the websites of Palestinian Authority schools. A young girl appears on Palestinian television, describing Jews as “barbaric monkeys, wretched pigs” and the “murderers of Muhammad,” the Islamic prophet. Maps on the Facebook page of the Palestinian presidential guards do not show Israel. President Mahmoud Abbas himself embraced as “heroes” released Palestinian prisoners who killed Israelis. These are among dozens of examples highlighted by Israeli officials in a new presentation documenting negative statements about Israel and Jews in official Palestinian Authority media and textbooks.
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The NYT is obviously paving the way for the US/Iran partnership. The US aside from giving Iran a sweetheart deal on Nukes, is bringing them into the peace talks in Syria. Also both are working together to fight al Qaeda in Iraq. The US will also use Iran to help the US depart from Afghanistan. And so on. Ted Belman

New York Times

TEHRAN — Even as the United States and Iran pursue negotiations on Tehran’s nuclear program, they find themselves on the same side of a range of regional issues surrounding an insurgency raging across the Middle East.

While the two governments quietly continue to pursue their often conflicting interests, they are being drawn together by their mutual opposition to an international movement of young Sunni fighters, who with their pickup trucks and Kalashnikovs are raising the black flag of Al Qaeda along sectarian fault lines in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.
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Let us assume that an end of conflict agreement is arrived at that did not include such recognition. What possible tractionwould the refugeeshave to force Israel to satisfy them in whole or in part? Ted Belman

By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL, JERUSALEM POST

BERLIN – An editorial in a regional paper denying Israel’s right to be a Jewish state unleashed on Monday a sharp wave of criticism from Israel’s embassy, German Jews and experts in modern anti-Semitism. According to the chairman of the region’s Jewish community, the commentary is anti-Semitic.

The Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung (Neue OZ), located in the city of Osnabrück in the German state of Lower Saxony, published an editorial on Thursday entitled “Israel as Jewish state: Unacceptable demand.” It compared Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s goal of having the Palestinian leadership recognize Israel as a Jewish state to the creation of an “Apartheid state” or a “theocracy” such as the “Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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The accord the U.S. is pushing essentially means creating three-plus Palestinian states, without Jews.

By Moshe Arens, HAARETZ | Jan. 7, 2014

John Kerry has arrived in the area once again and in his pocket is a framework agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority which he expects Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas to sign off on, sooner rather than later. It presumably addresses the “core issues”: the borders of the Palestinian state-to-be, its capital, the Palestinian refugees, the territorial “swaps,” security arrangements, and Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. In other words, the whole lot – everything that has made an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority a mission impossible until now, but which according to the U.S. secretary of state will now turn it into mission possible.

But the bottom line, the be-all and end-all of the suggested agreement, is that once implemented there will be three Palestinian states without a single Jew in any of them: East Palestine (Jordan), West Palestine (Judea and Samaria), and South Palestine (the Gaza Strip).
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Netanyahu is obviously trying to sell the Kerry Framework. What difference to us does it make, that the other side doesn’t like it too. We should have our red lines period. No wonder Shaked and Bennett are telling Netanyahu that Jewish Home will leave the coalition if Kerry’s Framework is accepted even with reservations. Netanyahu is making minimal demands and certainly sounds like he is willing to negotiate based on the ’67 lines plus minor swaps. He has also bought into the need for an agreement. When one side needs an agreement, it will accept anything. Ted Belman

By HERB KEINON, GIL HOFFMAN, KHALED ABU TOAMEH, JPOST

PM says at faction meeting, that he has been trying to persuade Kerry that Israel must maintain West Bank settlement blocs.

[How quickly we forget.]

by Yaakov Amidror, Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2004

…Israel must realize that it would be a grave risk if it were to cede
total territorial control to the Palestinians in any future agreement.
Israel suffered heavy casualties when the PA was only on the road to
sovereignty; the price might be even higher were a fully sovereign
Palestinian state to decide to go to war. In those circumstances,
reoccupying Palestinian population centers, as Israel did in April 2002,
would be more difficult, complicated, and costly. Indeed, given the IDF’s
structural limitations and the exponential growth of Palestinian
capabilities from the intifada to the present war, it may not even be
possible for Israeli forces to retake Palestinian cities in a future war.
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Eli E. Hertz, Myths and Facts

Resolution 242 is the cornerstone for what it calls “a just and lasting peace.” It calls for a negotiated solution based on “secure and recognized boundaries” – recognizing the flaws in Israel’s previous temporary borders – the 1948 Armistice lines or the “Green Line”– by not calling upon Israel to withdraw from ‘all occupied territories,’ but rather “from territories occupied,” now legally occupied by Israel with the consent of the Security Council.

The United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 242 in 1967 following
the Six-Day War. It followed Israel’s takeover of the Sinai Peninsula and Gaza Strip from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank from Jordan. The resolution was to become the foundation for future peace negotiations. Yet contrary to Arab contentions, a careful examination of the resolution will show that it does not require Israel to return to the June 4, 1967 Armistice lines or “Green Line.”
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Abbas Zaki, close associate of Mahmoud Abbas, says a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders is only first stage in the PA’s program because “the inspiring idea cannot be achieved all at once. [Rather] in stages”

http://palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=157&doc_id=10494

by Itamar Marcus and Nan Jacques Zilberdik

Senior Palestinian official Abbas Zaki posted on his Facebook page an interview he gave to Syrian TV in which he said the PA will only agree to a treaty with Israel if the Palestinian state is established on the 1967 lines. However, he stressed that ’67 lines would only be the beginning. After that, the Palestinians will continue with the stages plan:

Click to view Read more…

Inbar agrees that the Jordan Valley must remain in Israel hands for security reasons. But he argues so must the only highway connecting Israel to it. Thus he argues that Israel must build in E1 thereby connecting Jerusalem to Maaleh Adumin. He is willing to cede parts of Judea and Samaria to get approval for E1 remaining part of Israel. Ted Belman

Prof Efraim Inbar, ISRAEL HAYOM

Decisions and planning increasingly concentrate around PM, who has enlarged role of key advisers, placed more value on inner cabinet, marginalized certain ministries