Khaled Abu Toameh: Ramallah vs. the "Peace Process"
While Palestinian activists were busy threatening the owners of the clothing store, their representatives, Saeb Erekat and Mohamed Shtayyeh, were sitting with Israeli minister Tzipi Livni in Washington and talking about ways of achieving peace and coexistence between the two sides.Jeffrey Goldberg: Seven Reasons Kerry's Mideast Talks Are Delusional
What Kerry and the U.S. Administration need to understand is that Abbas has failed to prepare his people for the possibility of peace with Israel. Abbas may be conducting peace talks with Israel, but at the same time he is also backing campaigns that promote boycotts and hatred of Israel. It is important to talk peace. But it is even more important to educate people about peace -- something that neither Yasser Arafat nor his successor, Abbas, have done for the past two decades.
Well OK, then: In about nine months, the Arab-Israeli conflict will be over, and we can all move on to something else.The five flaws of Kerry's Mideast peace process
Here's what John Kerry, the U.S. secretary of state, said yesterday at a news conference in Washington, in the presence of the lead Palestinian and Israeli peace negotiators: "The parties have agreed here today that all of the final status issues, all of the core issues, and all other issues are all on the table for negotiation. And they are on the table with one simple goal: a view to ending the conflict, ending the claims. Our objective will be to achieve a final status agreement over the course of the next nine months."
Just to be clear, this is what will need to happen by next April, in time for the White House signing ceremony:
With so many inherent defects in the current peace talks, why would the U.S. push its most reliable Mideast ally (and the only Middle East democracy) into such perilous waters or inevitable blame? One explanation is the increasingly fashionable idea (promoted by Arab governments) that settlements are blocking a peace deal that would produce Mideast stability.WATCH: Netanyahu's response to Arab MK who said Arabs were here first
But inconvenient facts completely contradict this idea: Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt, Bahrain, and Yemen (etc.) would remain the same conflict-torn mess as they are now after any Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seen in the video immediately raising his hand to be allowed a response from the Knesset podium.Anne Bayefsky: Obama Using the UN to Bully Israel
"I did not plan to speak but I heard what MK Zahalka had to say. You said 'We were here before you and we'll be here after you're gone.' The first part is not true and the second part will never take place," the prime minister said, slamming his hand on the podium and leaving.
Netanyahu's comments were met with applause from much of the Knesset, even though Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein asked MKs to refrain from clapping.
The UN made me do it. That’s how Obama officials are explaining Secretary Kerry’s intense efforts to move Israel onto the front burner, and shove over the bloody turmoil immediately affecting millions of Israel’s neighbors and the imminent catastrophe of an Iranian nuclear weapon.Jewish Human Rights Group Knocks ‘Irony’ of Abbas’s Jew-Free Palestinian State
Speaking to reporters on July 30, 2013, senior officials said the administration was seeking “to avoid a train wreck” at the United Nations. “Throughout the course of this year Palestinians have been making clear that if they couldn’t see progress on the peace front, their intention would be to seek other elevations of their status…at the UN.” “A new dynamic vis-à-vis the United Nations,” was driving the immediacy for renewed talks.
Officials from Jewish human rights group the Simon Wiesenthal Center hit back at comments made by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that any future Palestinian state would be bereft of Israelis.Photojournalist Stages News for Profit and Ideology
“Abbas’ vision of peace in the Holy Land is duplicitous and repugnant and only serves to undermine Secretary of State Kerry’s peace initiative,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Wiesenthal Center and Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the Center’s associate dean.
“The bitter irony is that Abbas has made a career out of rejecting Israel as a Jewish State, yet has the audacity to claim for himself that the future Palestinian state will be cleansed of Jews,” they continued.
Fadi Arouri is one of Ramallah’s biggest opponents of normalizing Israeli-Palestinian ties. He’s also a photographer who isn’t interested in separating his professional journalism and political activism.PA minister urges Palestinians to revolt against Hamas
And that raises questions about his association with the Reuters wire service and China’s Xinhua News Agency. HonestReporting has learned Reuters fired Arouri, apparently over his extra-curricular activities, but the wire service continues to use his work on a free lance basis.
A Palestinian Authority cabinet minister in Ramallah on Wednesday issued a fatwa (Islamic religious decree) obliging Palestinians to revolt against Hamas and end its control over the Gaza Strip.Iran gives Gazans aid, but bypasses Hamas
The fatwa, issued by PA Minister for Wakf Affairs Mahmoud Habbash, is yet another sign of mounting tensions between Fatah and Hamas in the wake of the crisis in Egypt.
Already under pressure from the new military-led government in Egypt, the militant group Hamas took another public-relations blow Tuesday when Iran began distributing food aid to Gazans, but delivered the charity through Hamas' rival, Islamic Jihad."Radicalizing" the Muslim Brotherhood
Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, has seen its ties with Iran fray over the last two years, particularly after Hamas refused to back Syrian President Bashar Assad in that country’s civil war. Though Assad had long given exiled Hamas leaders refuge, Hamas political chief Khalid Meshaal left Syria last year after not supporting Assad’s crackdown against predominantly Sunni rebels.
The poor Brotherhood. It seems, according to The Times, that people it cannot control are pushing it into violence it does not want. Pardon me, but how do you "radicalize" an organization the credo of which is, "Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; Jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations"? The Brotherhood was born in violence and knows the value not only of violence, but also of martyrdom. Since its ouster, its leaders have been threatening and inciting violence, hoping to provoke the secular government into killing.Security experts: Missile used by Syrian rebels poses limited threat to Israel
The rebels identified the weapon as the SA-8, a short-range, 1970s-era surface-to-air system.Report: Syria Moved Missiles Before Israeli Airstrike
A monitor at the launch site shows a missile shooting upward and striking an unidentified aircraft, to shouts of “Allahu akbar” by cheering rebels.
Israeli security experts who viewed the video told The Jerusalem Post that the system could pose a limited threat to Israeli air traffic in the North if radical rebels choose to try and target Israel, but that the Israel Air Force could deal with the threat with relative ease.
American intelligence analysts have concluded that a recent alleged Israeli airstrike on a warehouse in Syria did not succeed in destroying all of the Russian-made anti-ship cruise missiles that were its target, the New York Times reported Wednesday.Assad Instagram ‘despicable PR stunt’
American officials who spoke to the newspaper on the matter predicted that further Israeli strikes are likely since some of the missiles hadn’t been destroyed.
Syria’s embattled president already has a Facebook page, Twitter account and a YouTube channel. Now Bashar Assad is turning to the popular photo-sharing service Instagram in the latest attempt at improving his image as his country burns, posting pictures of himself and his glamorous wife surrounded by idolizing crowds.Days before Rouhani to be sworn in, US House sends message to Iran with harsh new sanctions
The Senate is expected to support the legislation— the toughest sanctions package to date, targeting what remains of Iran's oil sector— once Congress reconvenes from its month-long summer recess, sources told The Jerusalem Post.Tanzania cries foul over masquerading Iranian oil ships
The bill aims to bring Iranian oil exports essentially down to zero within a year from full passage. Iran has already experienced a 60 percent decrease in oil exports since 2011 due to sanctions.
Officials from the East African country’s Zanzibar Maritime Authority have requested that port authorities take stern measures against Iranian ships that use Tanzanian identification codes and reaffirmed that they removed the registration of dozens of Iranian tankers, the website reported.Extremist haredi Neturei Karta member offered to spy for Iran
Authority director Abdi Maalim stressed that his country had canceled the registration of 36 Iranian tankers in order to not fall foul of international sanctions aimed at throttling Iran’s oil exports due to its nuclear program.
In January 2011, he traveled to Germany and two days after arriving in Berlin entered the Iranian Embassy wearing traditional Jewish garb, introduced himself to the clerk manning the front desk as an Israeli and asked to speak with an embassy official.Britain Willing to Restore Ties with Iran
At the clerk's request, he handed him his Israeli passport and was allowed into the embassy. He then met with three individuals whose identities are unknown, explained to them that he was a Neturei Karta member and what the sect's principles are, and offered to collect intelligence in Israel on Iran's behalf.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague signalled on Wednesday that Britain was open to improved relations with Iran on a “step-by-step” basis, following talks with his counterpart in Tehran, reported the Daily Telegraph.Never mind the Czech gold the Nazis stole...
The breakthrough phone call between Hague and Ali Akbar Salehi, Iran's outgoing foreign minister, came after overtures from Tehran following last month's general election.
The documents reveal a shocking story: just six months before Britain went to war with Nazi Germany, the Bank of England willingly handed over £5.6 million worth of gold to Hitler – and it belonged to another country.
The official history of the bank, written in 1950 but posted online for the first time on Tuesday, reveals how we betrayed Czechoslovakia – not just with the infamous Munich agreement of September 1938, which allowed the Nazis to annex the Sudetenland, but also in London, where Montagu Norman, the eccentric but ruthless governor of the Bank of England agreed to surrender gold owned by the National Bank of Czechoslovakia.