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JERUSALEM — For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his people are not traumatized by some wild delusion. No, there are facts: the rise of Iran, the fierce projection of Iran’s proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, and the rockets that have been fired by them.
Netanyahu is firm in his core self-image as the guarantor of threatened Israeli security. Israeli withdrawals from southern Lebanon and Gaza, led only, in his view, to the insecurity of life beneath a rocket threat.
The question he poses himself, contemplating the West Bank, is how to stop this happening a third time.
Hamas, the Palestinian faction viewed by many in the West as a nest of terrorists and Islamic hard-liners, is battling a curious new epithet: moderate.
Fifteen months after a punishing Israeli offensive failed to dislodge Hamas from power in the Gaza Strip, rival resistance groups and some former supporters say the organization has become too political, too secular and too soft.
US Middle East Peace Envoy George Mitchell arrived here late Thursday for talks with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in an attempt to get the two to agree to terms for so-called proximity talks.
Mr. Mitchell's trip comes despite recent indications from President Barack Obama that his administration is losing patience with the two parties in the conflict.
The de facto government in Gaza will erect a tent at the Erez crossing to receive Palestinians deported to Gaza under the new Israeli military orders, Hamas government Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Thursday.
The deportees will not be permitted to enter Gaza, but will rather be housed at the tent while international rights groups insist that they be permitted to travel to the West Bank, where their families are, the de facto prime minister explained.
Fatah's Revolutionary Council member Dimitri Diliani called the Israeli government's decision to grant permission for a protest by "extreme right wing Israeli colonial Settlers" to rally in Silwan a provocation as US officials are in the region.
Fatah's Jerusalem Affairs chief, Hatem Abdul Qader, announced that the Israeli government had given the go-ahead for the rally on Thursday. Commenting on the issue Dilani called the move "state sponsored provocation of instability to undermine the visit of Special US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell to Israel and Palestine."
U.S. envoy George Mitchell told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday Washington was committed to Israel's security and wanted a peace settlement that would give the Palestinians a state.
"That has been American policy. That is American policy. That will be American policy," Mitchell told Netanyahu, repeating President Barack Obama's pledge of strong and enduring ties to Israel on its 62nd anniversary earlier this week.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed Palestinian statehood with temporary borders, to sidestep a deadlock over settlements ahead of talks on Friday with a U.S. envoy, a newspaper said.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has rejected past Israeli suggestions for a state with provisional borders, but the Haaretz newspaper said Netanyahu was proposing a new interim deal to try and entice him back to the negotiating table.
Israel's recent easing of its blockade of Gaza is inadequate but shows restrictions could be lifted further without compromising the Jewish state's security, the top U.N. official in Gaza said on Thursday.
Israel tightened controls on the Palestinian territory three years ago after Hamas Islamists seized control there, but in recent weeks has allowed in some goods it used to ban, such as clothes and shoes, wood and aluminum.
Our leaders celebrated Independence Day by singing and giving speeches. But the morning after, they awoke to discover that not a single problem had disappeared amid the smoke of the ubiquitous barbecues.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is amenable to an interim agreement in the West Bank that would include the establishment of a Palestinian state within temporary borders.
Netanyahu considers such an interim step a possible way to unfreeze the stalled political process that was created because of the Palestinian leadership's refusal to resume talks on a final settlement. However, the prime minister insists on delaying discussion on the final status of Jerusalem to the end of the process, and refuses to agree to a freeze on Jewish construction in East Jerusalem.
The prime minister's response Thursday on Channel 2 that "there will be no freeze [in construction] in Jerusalem," is like Bill Clinton's "I did not have sex with that woman."
Benjamin Netanyahu did not insist this time that he will continue construction in Ramat Shlomo, Gilo and Har Homa - something he is leaving for Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman to do.
Based on the speeches the two gave on Independence Day, Jerusalem Day came early this year.
Israeli, PA sources optimistic US Mideast envoy's visit will end in declaration of launch of proximity talks. Sources say Israel will make number of gestures to Palestinians, including release of prisoners, removal of checkpoints, transfer of authority over West Bank territories. Palestinian source says US gave Israel 'encouraging' list of demands
Israel Beiteinu, however, threatens crisis over other demands.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s key coalition partners seemed to give a tacit nod Thursday to the possibility of a building freeze within Jerusalem itself, despite a reiteration by Netanyahu that no such freeze would be enacted.
But while that potential source of coalition friction seemed to turn in the prime minister’s favor, other challenges to coalition unity arose during the day from Israel Beiteinu.
On the face of it, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s interview with Channel 2 last night represented a fairly banal outing.
Israel wanted to avoid wars, he declared, and it sought peace. Not many headlines there.
He may not have signaled the firmest of convictions in President Obama’s capacity to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear weapons capability, but he didn’t give voice to any specific skepticism he may be feeling either.
Rabbi Louis Jacobs was well on his way to becoming chief rabbi of the United Kingdom in the 1960s, when his ascension was stopped cold because of a small, brilliant book he had published challenging the traditional view that the Torah was dictated by God from Mount Sinai. Banned from his own Orthodox synagogue, he inspired the birth of the Masorti movement in Britain, and went on to author more than 50 books, achieving worldwide fame for his scholarship, eloquence and aptitude for reconciling Orthodox practice and modern belief.
Barely a week goes by without news of some act of violence by Jewish colonists against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. By any definition, what colonists and religious activists do to Palestinians is terrorism. But it goes unpunished. Time and again, Muslim graves and mosques are desecrated, harvests torched, sheep rustled, cars stoned and damaged, homes and shops forcibly occupied. Palestinians are chased off their own land by gun fire. Just last week, colonists cut down 300 olive trees.
Israel, like a child, always sees itself blameless. This is partly thanks to its supporters, who include some key members of the well-entrenched American Jewish community, who cannot see the light of day. It is as if they are blindfolded.
Here is one prominent example (and there are many), in which the author of a full-page advertisement, costing tens of thousands of dollars, and which appeared in key US newspapers, made a fool of himself this week, even as some fellow Jews recognised.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/12650
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/12650
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/12650
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.americantaskforce.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/23/opinion/23iht-edcohen.html?ref=opinion
[7] http://www.latimes.com/news/custom/topofthetimes/world/la-fg-gaza-hamas-20100423,0,6101754.story
[8] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0422/Is-Israel-willing-to-freeze-East-Jerusalem-construction
[9] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=278720
[10] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=278714
[11] http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE63M0FX.htm
[12] http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE63M018.htm
[13] http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N22118549.htm
[14] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164751.html
[15] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164833.html
[16] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1164821.html
[17] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3879734,00.html
[18] http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=173752
[19] http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=173751
[20] http://www.forward.com/articles/127426/
[21] http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/israel-s-messianic-terrorists-1.616400
[22] http://gulfnews.com/opinions/columnists/netanyahu-should-listen-to-reason-1.615815
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