PA: Israel undermined peace process first with ‘unilateral moves’
Ma’an – 06/04/2014
BETHLEHEM – A spokesperson for Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas accused Israel on Sunday of undermining the peace process first, minutes after Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the Palestinians of making “unilateral moves” that had harmed the talks.
Nabil Abu Rdeina told Ma’an on Sunday that “it was Israel who took unilateral steps to thwart the peace process,” pointing out that Israel precipitated the current impasse in the talks by refusing to release the fourth batch of veteran Palestinian prisoners jailed before the Oslo Accords as had been previously agreed upon.
Abu Rdeina added that Israel has continued to expand settlements in the West Bank throughout the peace process, which also constitutes a unilateral move to undermine hopes for peace.
The statements came immediately after Israeli prime minister Netanyahu responded to the growing negotiations crisis on Sunday, accusing Palestinians of undermining the talks through “empty declarations” and “unilateral actions” at the beginning of the weekly government cabinet meeting according to Israeli media.
Other Israeli officials also denounced the moves, with strategic affairs minister Yuval Steinitz going so far as to say that Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas was “spitting” in Israelis’ faces by trying to join international rights conventions.
“Unilateral steps by the Palestinians will be answered with unilateral steps on our part,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying by Israeli news site Ynet, in his first public comments on the deterioration of talks in recent days.
“The Palestinians will get a state only though direct negotiations, and not through empty declarations, nor through unilateral actions that will only keep the peace agreement further away,” he added during the meeting.
The comments come after the Palestinian Authority submitted letters to accede to a number of international conventions after Israel failed to release a group of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails for more than two decades. Israeli leaders condemned the move, decrying Palestinian attempts at international recognition and potential intervention.
“Throughout these talks, we have taken tough steps and demonstrated willingness to continue executing difficult in the upcoming months as well to create a framework to allow ending the conflict.”
“Unfortunately, as we approached the talks’ deadline, the Palestinian leadership rushed to unilaterally join 14 international treaties. Thus the Palestinians significantly violated the agreements that were achieved. The threats to turn to the UN do not affect us. The Palestinians have plenty to lose in a unilateral step.”
Netanyahu’s comments followed remarks from other top Israeli politicians slamming the Palestinian Authority’s move.
Economy Minister and right-wing Jewish Home party chairman Naftali Bennett was quoted by Ynet as saying that the Palestinians “shut down the negotiations by unilaterally going to the UN against all agreements. This is a flagrant violation of the accords, including the Oslo Accords. The negotiations with the Palestinians, even though they only turned unilaterally to the UN, makes the State of Israel a shelter for extortion.”
“If the seller runs off with the merchandise, you don’t need to chase him — cash in hand — begging to buy his goods. In short, if they retract the UN application we’ll negotiate, and if they don’t the negotiations must stop.”
Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz joined the critical remarks against the Palestinians, and said: “Truth be told, (Palestinian President) Mahmoud Abbas is spitting in our faces, he tells us he is not interested in peace, he is willing to recognize the existence of the Jewish people and its right to its own state, and now he shuts down the negotiations,” according to Ynet.
“This Palestinian Authority exists thanks to us. Not only because of the Oslo Accords, but because of the funds we transfer them, and the security we give them. Otherwise, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, as they control Gaza, would also taken down Abbas and take over Ramallah.”
The statements come amid a wider breakdown in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority that followed Israel’s refusal to release the fourth batch of veteran Palestinian prisoners as promised as part of a trust-building measure to restart US-backed peace talks.
Peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians were relaunched in July under the auspices of the United States after nearly three years of impasse, but over the course of the talks Israel has announced plans to build thousands of homes in illegal settlements across the West Bank, angering Palestinian and US officials.
Israeli officials now fear that the Palestinian Authority may attempt to appeal to international bodies against Israeli policies.
The internationally recognized Palestinian territories of which the West Bank and East Jerusalem form a part have been occupied by the Israeli military since 1967.

Palestinians demand settlements freeze as condition for extending negotiations
MEMO | April 1, 2014
The Palestinian leadership is demanding that Israel freezes its settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territories as a condition for extending the negotiations.
Maan News Agency quoted on Tuesday the Secretary-General of the Palestinian National Initiative, Mustafa Barghouti, as saying that the Palestinian leadership has demanded for Israel to freeze its settlement activities, including government tenders to construct settlements, in order to extend the negotiations. The leadership has also decided to seek recognition for the State of Palestine from United Nations organisations if Israel does not release the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners as previously agreed.
Barghouti, who attended the Palestinian leadership meeting on Monday to discuss the recent development in the peace process, added that the Palestinians plan to send a delegation of five people to discuss with Hamas ways to end the split with Al-Fatah and reach national reconciliation.
The meeting brought together Al-Fatah movement’s Central Committee, the PLO Executive Committee and the secretaries-general of the Palestinian factions in Ramallah.
Barghouti said the Palestinian leadership will resume its meeting on Tuesday to further discuss the latest developments in the peace process and the results of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel has refused to release the fourth group of Palestinian prisoners unless the Palestinian Authority agrees to extend the negotiations for another year unconditionally.
Kerry had cancelled his scheduled meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday in Ramallah to meet instead with the Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat and the head of the Palestinian intelligence service General Majed Faraj in Jerusalem; however, the meeting results were not disclosed to the public.
Diplomatic sources claimed that Kerry cancelled his meeting with Abbas in Ramallah because his first meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exceeded its scheduled time, running nearly five hours.

US offers to release Israeli spy for extended peace talks
MEMO | March 26, 2014
Israel’s army radio reported on Wednesday that the US administration has offered to release the American who spied for Israel, Jonathan Pollard, in exchange for the 26 Palestinian prisoners initially scheduled for release in March, but only if Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agrees to extend the negotiations with Israel.
The offer was proposed during Abbas’s recent visit to Washington. Western sources had earlier reported that officials in the US administration did not rule out releasing Pollard to encourage Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to release a fourth group of Palestinian prisoners and to push the stalled peace talks forward.
The Palestinian and Israeli sides have not yet reacted to the news.
US Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to arrive in the Jordanian capital Amman on Wednesday to meet with Abbas.
The US arrested Pollard, a former analyst in the CIA and US Navy, for supplying Israel with thousands of secret documents revealing US involvement in spying on the Arab world, and sentenced him to life in prison in 1987.
Israel was scheduled to release a fourth group of Palestinian prisoners consisting of 26 Israeli Arab prisoners at the end of March as part of last summer’s deal to re-launch peace talks with the Palestinians under US auspices.
According to the deal, Israel had agreed to release a total of 104 prisoners in four groups. Three groups were released last year; however, Israel now refuses to release the last group, claiming that, “the Palestinian Authority has nothing to do with them because they are Israeli citizens.”

Media Theories on Missing Flight MH370 Fail Analysis
Though One Plausible Scenario, Consistent with Known Facts, Might Explain Mystery
By Doug E. Steil | Aletho News | March 17, 2014
Even though, the recent disappearance of Malaysian Flight MH370 continues to be a mystery, numerous scenarios that have been circulating in the past week can essentially be discounted, in particular technical failure.
The on-board hijacker scenario that media came up with over the weekend is highly implausible for at least five reasons because a putative hijacker would have to have (a) swiftly incapacitated the pilots without forewarning, so as to prevent the triggering of a hijack alert, (b) at exactly the correct and narrow time window, of approximately two minutes, after the co-pilot’s last voice sign-off but before entering Vietnamese air space, (c) known precisely how to fly and (d) disable the communications systems, and (e) surviving heights above the aircraft’s suggested operating limit as well as rapid descents of 40,000 feet per minute, equivalent a vertical speed of 444 knots per hour.
It has already been shown and asserted years ago, in the context of the government “Home Run” program, that an airplane can be commandeered from afar, intended back then to “counteract hijacking” situations. Last year at a hacker conference in Amsterdam, it was demonstrated, as a proof of concept, that an outside intruder could also manipulate the cockpit data visible to the pilot and take control of multiple functions and insert a flight path, essentially flying the simulated aircraft by remote control. This is something that has recently been acknowledged, as a possibility, but the media prefer not to dwell on this aspect, for obvious reasons. By contrast, staging a tacit vilification campaign by simply blaming one of the experienced pilots for the aircraft’s elusive behavior, due to some previously unexpected suicidal bent or spur of the moment inclination (which entails committing mass murder), though highly unlikely, is easier to suggest because it cannot be technically dis-proven and diverts attention away from a more plausible scenario, namely that of a “false flag” operation that was aborted.
Repeatedly we have been bombarded by the high-pitched and vociferous demands by Israeli politicians pertaining to the ongoing high-level negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear program, directed at European and US political leaders, to take on an uncompromising stance and keep up the pressure. The main points the Zionist propagandists make on this topic are:
* Iran must not be allowed to enrich uranium and has to dismantle its reactors;
* Uranium enriched to 20% is just a few steps away from making a nuclear bomb;
* Iran has an aggressive weapons program, and its missiles threaten Israel;
* Iran is a major sponsor of international terrorism in Gaza, Syria, and elsewhere;
* Iran is a threat to the Arab world in the Gulf, as well as other Muslim countries;
* The new leader’s “charm offensive” is dishonest and deceptive; don’t be fooled!
However, these ongoing messages have tended to fall on deaf ears. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu is widely seen as both semi-comical and fanatical, the proverbial boy who cried “wolf” too often and discredited himself. What better method, then, to reinforce these anti-Iranian propaganda points more compellingly and convince the leaders of the western world to fall in line with the Israeli agenda, than to stage another spectacular “false flag” event, amplified in its effects by a scripted media follow-up campaign?
In light of the evidence surrounding the Malaysian Flight MH370, it now appears that exactly such an event almost occurred a week ago, but was apparently aborted at the last moment. Using the now ingrained imagery of jets flying into the World Trade towers more than a dozen years ago as an example, an attack on the Petronas twin towers in Kuala Lumpur would provide the requisite symbolic significance. Occurring in the middle of the night, when most people wouldn’t be able to witness it live, such an attack wouldn’t have required a dual attack, featuring two aircraft, or even for at least one the towers to ultimately collapse through timed explosions of thermite, in order to have been effective in achieving the primary goal. It would have been sufficient for the Malaysian airliner to have been guided to hit the spire near the top of one of the towers and temporarily create a huge fireball of kerosene, lighting up the sky and captured on a few closed circuit cameras, and played back endlessly afterwards.
The key ingredient this time would have been some uranium-235 (enriched to 20%) on board, ideally stolen from assassinated nuclear scientists working in the Iranian nuclear research program (so as to be authentic), then placed in the luggage of two young Iranians (surely also “shy with women”) traveling together on one-way tickets along a circuitous route to Europe, using stolen passports to board the flight. In the aftermath of the attack the media would quickly have elevated them to the status of probable hijackers, who had somehow managed to commandeer the plane. By virtue of their having used stolen passports, it would be evident that they had made contact to the underworld of international criminals and terrorists, who must have somehow prepared them to carry out a mission to deliver a “dirty bomb”.
Even with the Petronas Towers remaining intact after an aircraft attack, the radioactivity from the enriched uranium would have been highly disruptive to the economy of Malaysia. The world would have seen how damaging and crippling a few kilograms of enriched uranium could be if it came into the “wrong hands”, and therefore Iran, which the media will have convinced the public was undoubtedly responsible — and was purportedly also responsible for the bombing of PanAm 103 — must not be allowed to maintain a nuclear program. If two experienced and outgoing pilots in good standing can be vilified and denigrated in just a few days, just image how easily these two Iranian kids and their alleged handlers behind the scenes would have been transformed into mass murderers. The supporting narrative would have been far different from what was announced this week.
The point where the masterminds of this “false flag” operation had to decide whether to proceed with, or abort, the attack was as the remote controlled Flight MH370 approached the island of Penang in the Strait of Malacca. For whatever reason the operators decided to call off the operation. Perhaps not all the technical aspects of such an endeavor were confirmed to be in place for the complex operation to withstand scrutiny.
Aborting a planned mission like this, assuming the radioactive material on board, necessitated getting rid of the aircraft, during the middle of a weekend night with no moon, in a very remote location, deep underneath the southern Indian Ocean, where it may not be found for years and subsequent recovery would ultimately be extremely difficult. Once the westbound jet had safely circumvented Indonesian air space near the northwestern tip of Sumatra it could fly south and needed only evade airport ground radar at the atolls of Diego Garcia and the Cocos Islands by flying at a lower altitude above the length of the underwater East Indian Ridge, in some areas of which the depth exceeds 6,000 meters, where the nearest inhabited island is Île Amsterdam.
Since this particular “false flag” operation was apparently abandoned, will the perpetrators be brazen enough to attempt a different one in the near future?
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Where the Money Isn’t Going
By JAMES G. ABOUREZK | June 29, 2009
Wherever I heard that hackneyed phrase, “If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging,” it applies more today than anytime I can remember. What I don’t understand is, when our government has spent billions on bank bailouts (not a good idea) on bailing out the stupidity of the automobile executives (a better idea because it saves jobs for working people), why are members of Congress and the drug and insurance lobbies feeding this fairy tale that we cannot afford single payer health care.
Virtually every industrialized country in the world has a health care system that is paid for by tax revenues, making sure that it is available to everyone. Even Syria, which is not a rich country, sends medical students to medical school, then requires them, upon graduation, to serve in a village clinic at a very low salary. Medical care is provided for every Syrian citizen, although there is a private medical system for those who want to pay.
Neither, we are told, can we afford a national passenger rail system that would do a great deal to decrease pollution, cut down on the use of oil, and that would move people to every part of our country, just like it’s done in Europe and in Japan.
But we can’t afford either of these common sense projects, even though we are digging our financial hole deeper and deeper with other projects that we should bring to a close.
Israel. We are still shoveling money out of the door of our national treasury giving Israel all the money they need to finance their brutal occupation of the Palestinians, plus giving them one of the highest living standards in the world. The last time I checked with the Library of Congress, Israel had drained our treasury (money from American taxpayers) to well over 100 billion dollars.
And what have we received in return? Well, I am currently reading Attack on the Liberty, written by James Scott, a journalist whose father was an ensign on board the Liberty when Israel tried to destroy the U.S. Navy ship during the 1967 Middle East War. Whenever I feel like having my blood boil, I pick up the book and read another chapter describing the deliberate attack on our ship, which killed over 30 American sailors and wounded another 170. As bad as the attack was, the continuing cover up both by Israel and the U.S. government is an ongoing outrage.
Add to that, the unknown number of Israeli spies who are burrowing into our government to learn our secrets. Jonathan Pollard, for example, was paid by Israel to unload what authorities have described as “a truckload of secret documents” to Israel’s agents in this country. The latest episode of Israeli spying is notable for the speed with which the U.S. Justice Department dismissed the charges against the two pro-Israeli spies, despite the finding of guilty and a 12 year sentence to the U.S. official–Larry Franklin–who handed over the documents to the spies.
Other things we can do without include the manned space program. The shuttle program, which costs American taxpayers several billion dollars a year, would look better viewing it from the rear view mirror. Several Nobel laureate scientists, as well as this writer, have advocated an unmanned program for space exploration instead of the much costlier manned program. First of all, the manned program cannot go as far into space as an unmanned program can, and secondly, it is vastly cheaper while being more rewarding. But it’s difficult to stop the bleeding of taxpayers’ money once it starts
We have the same trouble financing our NATO involvement. Now, NATO was designed during the Cold War to protect Europe from the nasty Soviets. Now that the Soviets are no longer around, who does NATO protect? Only the arms manufacturers who benefit from weapons sales both to the U.S. and to NATO members.
I don’t think a lot of explanation is needed for reasons to get the U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, I include Afghanistan in my exit strategy, mostly for the reason that we shouldn’t need the second kick of a mule to learn to stay away from the mule. We all witnessed the Soviets who were almost destroyed by their adventure in Afghanistan, and we should have learned that American troops are a natural target in places like that country. The only logical conclusion is to get our troops out of there, leaving it to the Taliban and the warlords and the Pakistanis to deal with that quagmire.
Although the pro-Israeli Zionists do not like to hear it, but a lot of our Middle East woes derive from the brutality of the continuing occupation of Palestine by the Israelis. What is unfortunate is that the American press spends its time and its talents trying to avoid discussing what Israel is doing in the Middle East.
I saw NBC’s David Gregory interviewing Bibi Netanyahu on Meet the Press. Discussing Iran, Netanyahu said that true democracies such as Israel would never commit violence against protesters. Gregory let that one go right past him, going on to the next puffball question to Bibi, which again he knocked over the fence. If I recall, it was another bit of hypocrisy meted out by the slick talking Prime Minister.
But that’s the state of our media today. There is 40 times the coverage of Michael Jackson’s heart attack than there was of the slaughter of 1,200 Gazans during Israel’s invasion last year. At times I feel sad about the death of America’s newspapers, but after seeing how they behave, and how they fail in their job of watching the government for the rest of us, maybe it’s for the best to let them all go under. They contribute little more than crossword puzzles and sports scores (which are for the betting public anyway).
We’ve reached the place in the hole we’re digging which might make us think about stopping.
James G. Abourezk is a lawyer practicing in South Dakota. He is a former United States senator and the author of two books, Advise and Dissent, and a co-author of Through Different Eyes. This article also runs in the current issue of Washington Report For Middle East Affairs. Abourezk can be reached at georgepatton45@gmail.com
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Gaza missile seizure, Netanyahu’s latest anti-Iran joke
By Finian Cunningham | Press TV | March 11, 2014
Comedians say that the art of telling jokes relies on “timing.” Israeli’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the world’s top comic politician, seemed to be proving the point with his “timely” claims about seizing Iranian rockets aboard a cargo ship in the Red Sea.
Standing in front of 40 pointed missiles, each carefully displayed on props (you sense the stilted exhibitionism here), the Israeli leader said the seized cache “showed the true face of Iran” in its support for terrorism. Netanyahu lashed out at Western leaders who are “shaking hands with Iran” and preparing to finalize a political settlement to the long-running nuclear dispute.
Iran swiftly denounced the Israeli allegations as orchestrated, indicating that the capture of munitions on a Panamanian-registered vessel was a set-up.
Even some of the Israeli media have grown weary of such “propaganda stunts,” as the newspaper Haaretz described Netanyahu’s melodramatic display of Iran’s alleged clandestine cargo in the port of Eilat at the weekend. Netanyahu’s corny sensationalist manner, standing in front of the green-colored rockets, was reminiscent of his previous presentation to the United Nations using a cartoon bomb in which he claimed then that Iran was “only months away from building a nuclear weapon.”
Netanyahu’s record of failure over the past 20 years in predicting “imminent” Iranian nuclear arms capability makes him a laughing stock. Some people watching the latest televised stunt of displaying “captured” Iranian rockets may have wished that one of the devices could have accidentally fired off during the Israeli premier’s speech.
The buffoonish Netanyahu cannot be taken seriously on anything he says. Nevertheless it is worthwhile defusing the latest Israeli propaganda hoax to reveal the mindset of those in Tel Aviv and their backers in Washington and the Western mainstream media who shamefully never fail to lend credibility to such reprehensible smear jobs. “Israeli forces seize rockets ‘destined for Gaza’ in raid on Iranian ship in Red Sea,” read a headline in the British Guardian.
It is amazing how much credence is afforded to baseless Israeli and Western government claims against Iran. In recent years, the Western public has been fed with tall tales of Iranian plots to assassinate diplomats in Washington, and involvement in bombings or attempted bombings in Argentina, Thailand, India, Georgia, Bulgaria and Kenya. Tellingly, none of these stories – always initially reported with ubiquitous fanfare in the Western media – are ever followed up or substantiated.
Yet the same absurd story line, with dramatic plot variations, is peddled over and over again. This systematic regurgitation shows that the Western media is nothing but an instrument of state propaganda.
Of course, Zionist lobby groups, sympathetic Zionist media owners, reporters, pundits are a big part of the charade. So too is the political agenda of Washington and its European allies who slavishly indulge Israel for geopolitical reasons, and who are only too glad to undermine Iran with regard to their support for Israel and the despotic Arab oil sheikhdoms, as well as in their covert war against Tehran’s ally, Syria.
The latest stunt may be also a pretext for the Western governments to procrastinate on the P5+1 settlement – and to subject Iran to further torturous illegal sanctions.
Let’s look at some of the claims in the latest smear job against Iran, which has seen US defense secretary Chuck Hagel also weighing in to accuse Iran of “destabilizing the region”.
The Israelis claim that Syrian-made M-302 rockets, with a firing range of 160km, were first flown by air cargo to Iran. Then Iran moved the ordnance to the port of Bandar Abbas, where it was loaded on to a ship, the KLOS-C. As mentioned, the ship is reportedly registered in Panama with an owner in the Marshall Islands. So what connection Iran has to the vessel is right away tenuous.
Next, the ship is said to have sailed north to the port of Umm Qasr in Iraq, where it was loaded with bags of cement conveniently bearing Iranian trademarks. The KLOS-C made its way out of the Persian Gulf and into the Red Sea, where Israeli Special Forces raided the ship last week off the coast of Sudan.
The Israelis claim – and Western media gave full vent to the claims – that the rockets were to be shipped over land from Sudan via Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and delivered to Hamas in Gaza. Hamas, as well as Tehran, denies any involvement. It was even speculated in some Western media that the shipment of rockets could also have been intended by Iran for al-Qaeda groups based in Sinai.
This circuitous route, involving weeks of transport time over one of the most intensely surveyed sea-lanes in the world, does not bear serious scrutiny. The risk of such a smuggling plot being uncovered is so high as to make it implausible. Put another way, the chances of it being part of a stage-managed set-up are all the more plausible.
The destination aspect of the alleged plot does not hold water either. Egypt, under the military junta led by General Abdel al Sisi, has stepped up its collusion with Israel to seal off the Sinai Peninsula and all land crossings into Gaza. The notion of trucks carrying dozens of medium-sized surface-to-surface missiles driving into Gaza, undetected, is inconceivable to the point of ridicule.
So too is the Israeli-inspired sub-plot that Iran may have been trying to send the weapons to al-Qaeda in Sinai. This group is waging a Western-backed covert terrorist campaign against Syria and against Shia Muslims in particular. The idea that Shia Iran or its ally Syria would supply Syrian-made rockets to such enemies illustrates how moronic the thesis for this Israeli propaganda stunt is.
The Israeli seizure, by the way, was given the ever-so contrived title of “Full Exposure.” The give-away to this being a stunt is the timing. It came just as Netanyahu was in Washington trying to tell the world that the failure of Mid-East “peace talks” was all the fault of the Palestinians – not anything to do with the genocidal policies of Israel. In other words, it serves as a handy foil to shield Israel from international opprobrium. As Netanyahu was speaking in the White House, Israeli warplanes killed two Palestinians in air strikes on Gaza.
The second timed factor is that Iran is scheduled to complete the P5+1 negotiations for a final settlement over the nuclear dispute. EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, was in Tehran at the weekend when Netanyahu fired off rhetorical salvos about “Western hypocrisy in the face of Iranian support for international terrorism.” Israel is livid at the prospect of any nuclear deal being reached. And no doubt there are political forces in Washington and Europe that would relish an accord being sabotaged.
Netanyahu went on to warn about Iranian “armed nuclear suitcases” being sent to every port in the world.
Who needs imaginary nuclear-armed suitcases when we already have a nuclear-armed nutcase – Netanyahu and his apartheid regime?
Comic Netanyahu may have a dubious skill at timing, but his tedious jokes have by now become just stupidly bad. The latest one about “Full Exposure” of Iranian rockets has backfired.

By making impossible demands, Netanyahu seeks to paint the Palestinians as intransigent and deflect international pressure
By Samira Shackle | MEMO | March 11, 2014
“Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people, where the civil rights of all citizens, Jews and non-Jews alike, are guaranteed,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a speech in Washington earlier this month. “The land of Israel is the place where the identity of the Jewish people was forged…We never forget that, but it’s time the Palestinians stopped denying history.”
He went on to make his demand in no uncertain terms: “Just as Israel is prepared to recognize a Palestinian state, the Palestinians must be prepared to recognize a Jewish state.”
It throws a new stumbling block into a peace process that was already struggling to overcome the long-term sticking points of security, borders, the status of Jerusalem, and the plight of refugees. Many observers have suggested that Netanyahu, by making a demand he knows to be impossible, is attempting to paint the Palestinians as intransigent and deflect growing international pressure to reach a peace agreement.
Recognising the right of Israel to exist is not the same as recognizing Israel’s right to be a Jewish state. Netanyahu’s demand is untenable for Palestinian leaders because of the political implications. Accepting Israel’s definition of itself as a Jewish state would be to indirectly forgo the right of return for at least five million Palestinian refugees. (In his speech, Netanyahu advised Abbas to tell “Palestinians to abandon their fantasy of flooding Israel with refugees”).
It would also tacitly accept that Israeli Arabs have less right to citizenship or less stake in the state. And, indeed, it would be to accept Israel’s argument that biblical history gives them the right to the land. This strikes at the very heart of the conflict: Palestinians maintain that the events of the Bible do not override the thousands of years that they inhabited the land. Palestinian leaders have compromised a lot, but it is unlikely that they will concede that their version of history is incorrect. “This is like telling the Palestinians they did not exist all these hundreds and thousands of years, that this historically has been a Jewish land,” said Hanan Ashrawi, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
Not everyone in the Israeli political establishment agrees with this piece of political manoeuvring by Netanyahu. Israeli president Shimon Peres has queried the wisdom of the stipulation, while Yair Lapid, Finance Minister and leader of the second-largest coalition party, has also challenged it.
Writing in Haaretz, the newspaper’s former editor, David Landau points out that many Jews in Israel and elsewhere do not agree with Netanyahu’s “imperious” version of Zionism, nor the decision to try to force Palestinians to agree with it. “Regarding the present Israeli-Palestinian impasse, many Israelis and Palestinians believe that Netanyahu’s broaching of the ‘Jewish state’ issue was intended deliberately to slow the negotiations or thwart an agreement,” he writes.
This recent push is not the first time that Netanyahu has made the demand that Palestine recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He made similar statements in Washington in 2011. Then, as now, US officials largely supported him.
Historically, though, this has not been a major issue in peace negotiations. The requirement was – in the words of UN resolution 242 – for Palestine to recognize “Israel’s right to live in peace within secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force”, which the PLO did in 1993. The idea that the Palestinian leadership should formally recognize Israel as a Jewish state was raised at the Annapolis Conference in 2007, and even George W Bush – a staunch defender of Israel – did not adopt it, referring to Israel in his speech as “a homeland for the Jewish people”.
Yet by 2011, Netanyahu was telling Congress: “It is time for President Abbas to stand before his people and say… ‘I will accept a Jewish state.’ Those six words will change history.” This is despite the fact that the issue was not raised during Israel’s peace negotiations with Egypt and Jordan, nor indeed at all during Netanyahu’s first term in office.
Writing in Foreign Policy magazine in 2011, Hussein Ibish pointed out that it is a strange demand, even apart from the political connotations: “The idea that a state – or in this case a potential state – should participate in defining the national character of another is highly unusual, if not unique, in international relations. The Palestinian position, stated many times by President Mahmoud Abbas, is that the PLO recognizes Israel, and that Israel is free to define itself however it chooses.”
Given this context, the suggestion of Landau (and many others) that Netanyahu is cynically playing for time and attempting to shift the emphasis of discussion – and deflect growing international pressure to reach a deal – seems highly plausible.

Netanyahu: I did not commit to freeze settlement construction
MEMO | March 7, 2014
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he did not commit to freezing settlement construction during his meeting with US President Barack Obama and that he will reject any agreement with the Palestinians that does not meet Israel’s security needs.
Israel Radio quoted Netanyahu on Friday, on his way back to Israel, telling Israeli journalists that he considered extending the negotiating period between the Israelis and Palestinians in US Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework agreement unlikely to make a difference for the Israeli coalition government, as most of its members reject the idea of establishing a Palestinian state.
He added that he will reject any agreement with the Palestinians that “does not meet Israel’s needs and poses a threat to its security, even if there are attempts to impose such an agreement on Israel.”
Netanyahu refused the possibility of unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank territories if the negotiations fail, stating that he does not prefer this possibility and that “the unilateral withdrawals (from south Lebanon and the Gaza Strip) have not justified themselves nor did they provide security stability for Israel”.
Netanyahu returned to Israel today following his visit to the US which started on Sunday in which he met with Obama in the White House and gave a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on Tuesday.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced, while receiving a delegation from the Israeli left-wing party Meretz a few days ago, that he is not opposed to extending the negotiations period, but demands that settlement construction is suspended and prisoners are released.
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Syria opposition leader praises Benjamin Netanyahu
Press TV | February 22, 2014
A Syrian opposition leader has praised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for expressing support for militants wounded during the conflict in Syria.
Muhammad Badie told Israel Radio Friday that the Syrian opposition is grateful to Netanyahu for his February 18 tour to a field hospital in the (occupied) Golan Heights.
Speaking from Istanbul, the Syrian opposition leader added that Netanyahu’s public presence near the wounded militants sent an “important message.”
Badie also said that he and his friends thanked the Israeli premier for publicly voicing support for injured militants, especially after the collapse of the recent talks between the Syrian government and the opposition in Geneva, Switzerland.
Israel Channel 2 News recently aired footage of a secret Israeli field hospital in the occupied Golan Heights that has treated over 700 Syrians including militants over the past months.
Last year, the Israeli military carried out at least three airstrikes against Syria.
Damascus says Tel Aviv and its Western allies are aiding al-Qaeda-linked militant groups operating inside Syria.

Permanent deal with Iran impossible: Netanyahu
Press TV – January 27, 2014
Israel’s prime minister says a permanent nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers is impossible as Tehran has made it clear that it will not dismantle its centrifuges.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks came shortly after Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani stipulated that Tehran would not dismantle any of its existing centrifuges “under any circumstances,”.
“It is part of our national pride, and nuclear technology has become indigenous … And recently, we have managed to secure very considerable prowess with regards to the fabrication of centrifuges,” said Rouhani in an exclusive interview with CNN news network on Wednesday on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.
In a weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu said, “If Iran stands by that statement that means that a permanent agreement – which is the goal of the entire diplomatic process with Iran – cannot succeed.”
He also added that US Secretary of State John Kerry has pledged Washington will maintain the existing sanctions against Tehran.
On November 24, 2013, Iran and the six major world powers – Russia, China, the US, France, Britain and Germany – inked the nuclear accord in the Swiss city of Geneva. The two sides started implementing the agreement as of January 20.
Under the Geneva deal, the six countries undertook to provide Iran with some sanctions relief in exchange for Iran agreeing to limit certain aspects of its nuclear activities including a voluntary suspension of its 20 percent uranium enrichment program.
Nuclear-armed Israel has publicly announced its opposition to the Geneva deal.





