From Ian:
Foreign min. chief challenges Abbas: Tear down terror monument
Top Trump advisor to ‘Post’: Settlement annexation legitimate if PA continues to avoid real peace
Foreign min. chief challenges Abbas: Tear down terror monument
The Director-General of Israel's Foreign Ministry, Dore Gold, has released a video slamming the Palestinian Authority for building a monument to honor the terrorist who planted a bomb which killed 15 Israeli civilians in the center of Jerusalem.Palestinian monument honoring murderer of 15 Israelis must be torn down
The monument to Ahmad Jabarah Abu Sukkar, who masterminded the 1976 attack, was unveiled at an official PA ceremony earlier this month.
In the video, Gold - who was shopping nearby when the bomb went off, described what he saw that day.
"It was a Friday and I was doing my shopping innocently, until all of a sudden I heard this incredibly loud explosion. I turned around and I saw bodies strewn everywhere."
In the attack, a refrigerator filled with explosives was detonated in the heart of Jerusalem. 15 people were killed and over 60 people were wounded. Abu Sukkar was sentenced to life in prison plus 30 years, but was released from prison after 28 years as part of a "goodwill gesture" from Israel to the PA in 2003.
He was a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and an adviser to the PA Chairman Yasser Arafat on prisoners' affairs. He died of a heart attack in 2013.
The decision by the PA to honor the terrorist proves Abbas is not serious about wanting peace, Gold contended.
"That's the education the Palestinian Authority wants to give to its children," he said.
"The way it is now, we're not gong to be able to get very far in any kind of negotiation, because negotiation requires a culture of peace and not a culture of death.
"So I'm hoping that Abbas, who heads the Palestinian Authority - who heads the Fatah movement - will tear down that monument."
Top Trump advisor to ‘Post’: Settlement annexation legitimate if PA continues to avoid real peace
Israeli annexation of settlements in the West Bank could be viewed by a Trump administration as a legitimate way for Israel to move forward if the Palestinians continue to avoid a real and genuine peace deal, David Friedman, a senior advisor to Donald Trump, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
Speaking as the Republican Party convention entered its second day in Cleveland, Friedman, who advises Trump on matters related to Israel, said that in his view, settlements in the West Bank were not illegal and were not the real impediment to peace with the Palestinians.
“The impediment to peace is very clear in both of our minds and that is the failure of the Palestinians to renounce hatred and renounce violence,” Friedman said. “Everything else is barely important.”
Friedman, a Manhattan-based attorney and president of the American Friends of Bet El Institutions who serves as an Israel advisor to Trump alongside Jason Greenblatt, told the Post that in his view annexation of the settlements would be a legitimate way for Israel to move forward.
“If there is no agreement with the Palestinians, Israel has to move forward and maybe there is another path and a better path that is not a two-state solution and obviously under those circumstances that [annexation D.Z.] is certainly an option,” he said “I don’t know when or if that would be implemented but it’s certainly not a third rail in terms of options. It is certainly a legitimate possibility.”

















