It is imperative that Israel not back down…no matter what. A victory by Israel in this matter will take the wind out of the anti settlement postures of the Europeans and the US. As a result, Israel will have more freedom to build in the future. Unfortunately, Israel stresses that she is only building homes in settlements that everyone knows will remain with Israel. That implies that where we are not building, we’re not keeping.

[Save for the probability of an American veto, the UNSC would have passed a resolution condemning Israel’s settlement construction plans. The UNSC, without an American veto, can call settlement construction, a threat to peace, rightfully or wrongly, thereby justifying sanctions or military intervention.]

Similarly, Israel keeps stressing she won’t compromise her security needs in any deal. This implies that the kind of deal represented by Olmert’s offer or Obama’s ’67 lines with swaps is acceptable by Israel so long as she is satisfied with the deal on the security side. Ted Belman

By Yitzhak Benhorin, YNET

The four European members of the UN Security Council – France, Britain, Germany and Portugal are criticizing Israel and demanding an immediate halt to new settlement construction.

Representatives of the 14 council members stepped to the microphone outside the chamber after their monthly Mideast briefing Wednesday to denounce the Israeli settlement plans, which they warned is threatening a two-state peace settlement with the Palestinians. The council president said they did so because efforts to get all 15 members to agree on a resolution or statement had failed, almost certainly because of US opposition.
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By Ted Belman

I just returned From the Begin Centre where I attended a discussion between Dennis Ross and Uzi Arad on American policy in the Middle East.

Ross explained the American position on a number of matters:

1. Obama was incredibly supportive of Israel in its latest round with Hamas. He supported Israel’s right to self defence and got Europe to do so likewise.

2. The announced construction pissed off America because it smacked of ingratitude.

3. Peace isn’t anywhere in sight but that doesn’t mean America should drop the peace process ball now. It is important to keep the process alive even if no results because without it things could get out of control.
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By Ted Belman

Abbas is at it again. Told the UN that he would take in the Palestinian refugees from Syria. Even if the UN was willing to back the request, Israel’s consent would be necessary. When pigs fly.

Secondly he asked the UNSC to pass a resolution condemning Israel’s new construction plans for east of the green line. It would have passed but for the US advising that she would veto it. That surprised me.

by Abha Shankar, IPT News

The Obama administration’s efforts to conquer hearts and minds in the Muslim world as part of its broader strategy to battle Islamist terrorism may be a laudable goal. But the administration’s continued pandering to radical Islamists both at home and abroad continues to baffle and frustrate opponents of political Islam and Islamist organizations.

The administration has been swift to embrace newly-elected Islamist regimes in the Middle-East despite their violent and pro-jihadi rhetoric. Last month for example, it heaped praise on Egypt’s new Islamist leader Mohammed Morsi for helping broker a truce between Israel and Hamas after eight days of fighting. In lauding Morsi, the U.S. government overlooked statements supporting Hamas issued by Morsi’s colleagues in the Muslim Brotherhood and their celebration of rocket attacks on Israel. Morsi was a senior Brotherhood official for years before seeking office.
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Israel Hayom

Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin sends message to parliament heads around the world chiding them for condemning Israel over Jerusalem construction • “There is a sense that nations in Europe are more interested in a Palestinian state than in ensuring the safety of the Jewish state,” he writes.

A day after Israel approved the construction of 1,500 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in the northern part of Jerusalem beyond the Green Line, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud) issued a message to his colleagues around the world insisting that Israel’s decision to build in Jerusalem was “not negotiable.”

“Israel refuses to accept the fact that mere weeks after rockets were fired from Gaza into Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, there are still those who see Israel’s decision to hold on to strategic territory surrounding Jerusalem, and to build within its capital, as the biggest obstacle standing in the way of peace,” Rivlin wrote in a New Year’s message he sent to the heads of parliaments across Europe and around the world on Tuesday.
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By Barry Rubin

In his article, “The Revolt of Islam in Syria,” Jerusalem Post, December 12, 2012, Jonathan Spyer, senior fellow at the GLORIA Center, points out compelling information about the new Western-backed leadership in Syria.

The bottom line: If this is Syria’s new government then Syria now has an Islamist regime. This is happening with the knowledge and collaboration of the Obama Administration and a number of European governments. It is a catastrophe and one that’s taking place due to the deliberate decisions of President Barack Obama and other Western leaders. Even if one rationalizes the Islamist takeover in Egypt as due to internal events, this one is U.S.-made.
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By Pinhas Inbari, WJC

The latest developments in Syria challenge the validity of the doctrine of Political Islam that has guided Western diplomacy during the ‘Arab Spring’ and has triggered the fall of secular, pro-Western Arab regimes, which have been replaced by Muslim Brotherhood offshoots. The doctrine rested on the assumption that the West and the Muslim Brotherhood were united against al-Qaeda as their common enemy. Political Islam called for cooperation to defeat al-Qaeda’s brand of terror, which could only be done together with forces within the Islamic world.

Today, however, there are visible cracks in the Obama administration’s belief in the doctrine. President Obama formally proclaimed his support for the Muslim Brotherhood-led coalition of Syrian oppositional forces, headed by Muaz Khatib, as the officially representative body of the Syrian people. And, true to the doctrine, the US president made a distinction between the Brotherhood-led coalition and the group led by the Nusra group affiliated with al-Qaeda, which the United States has classified as a terrorist organization. Read more…

By Ted Belman

YNET reports:

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland responded to the Israeli decision to build 1,500 housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in Jerusalem, saying that the administration’s position regarding settlement building has not changed.

Nuland reiterated the US’s opposition to unilateral actions by either Israel or Palestine, noting that once a final agreement is in place the settlement issue will be put to rest.

A few facts should be noted:

1. Israel annexed 70 sq km of land after the Six Day War but before Res 242 was passed by the UNSC. That resolution made no mention of this fact which legally means acceptance of it. Jerusalem expanded its boundaries to include these land. Israel applied Israeli law to these lands which she didn’t do for the remainder of the liberated land.
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By Craig Whitlock and Carol Morello, WaPo

Last week, fighters from a group that the Obama administration has branded a terrorist organization were among rebels who seized the Sheik Suleiman military base near Aleppo, where research on chemical weapons had been conducted. Rebels are also closing in on another base near Aleppo, known as Safirah, which has served as a major production center for such munitions, according to U.S. officials and analysts.
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It was reliably reported that Obama had his people counsel the Europeans to vote as they did at the UN and to dress Israel down by berating her ambassadors.

Here’s more:

U.S. AMBASSADOR TELLS REPUBLIC OF GEORGIA TO VOTE FOR A PALARAB STATE!!!!

CAROLINE GLICK: CHUCK HAGEL FOR DEFENSE? BRING IT ON!!!

Balazs, 37, left his extremist, right-wing party, disgusted with the decline of its radical standards.
By: Lori Lowenthal Marcus, JEWISH PRESS

A few weeks ago there was a call in the Hungarian parliament for Jews to be screened to assess whether they are a national security risk. This past weekend, a member of the Hungarian government burned an Israeli flag during an anti-Israel protest outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

That lawmaker, Lenhardt Balazs, is currently unaffiliated with any party, but he used to be member of the far-right Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary) party. Jobbik opposes any relationship between the Hungarian government and the State of Israel. The Jobbik party holds 47 seats in the Hungarian Parliament.
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Channel 10: Netanyahu wants a centrist government, not one with a hawkish image.

By Gil Ronen,INN

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu does not want the religious Zionist Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) party, led by Naftali Bennett, in his next coalition, Channel 10 has reported.

Netanyahu has been conducting consultations with his political partners in advance of the elections, from which he is widely expected to emerge victorious.

The reason Netanyahu does not want Bayit Yehudi in his next government, sources close to him told the television channel, is that he wants “a more centrist” government, which will include a hareidi party and at least one party from the “center,” in order to avoid “the ultra-rightist image that the current coalition suffers from.”
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This article, which appeared a few months ago, somehow was never sent out. Al-Jazeera originally commissioned it and then chose not to publish it.

by Daniel Pipes, The Dorchester Review
Spring/Summer 2012

http://www.danielpipes.org/12145/israel-at-peace