Benny Morris: The Mideast Peace Process's Biggest Myth
Benjamin Netanyahu and his relationship with assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin continue to arouse controversy in Israel. Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, recounted in January on an episode of PBS’s Frontline, “Netanyahu sat next to me when I was ambassador in Israel at the time of Rabin’s funeral. . . . I remember Netanyahu saying to me: ‘Look, look at this. He’s a hero now, but if he had not been assassinated, I would have beaten him in the elections, and then he would have gone into history as a failed politician.’” Netanyahu’s office denied that he said it.Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinians: We Want Our Own Knesset
Last November was the twentieth anniversary of the assassination of Rabin. It remains a contentious date in Israeli history. The occasion was accompanied by the publication of several works, most notably by former Newsweek Jerusalem bureau chief Dan Ephron’s Killing a King and a documentary by one of Israel’s leading filmmakers, Amos Gitai, Rabin, the Last Day. A major question raised by both was whether Middle Eastern history, including Israeli-Palestinian relations, would have developed in a radically different direction had Rabin lived. It boiled down to whether the assassination had aborted a peace process that would or could have culminated in a historic peace between the Israelis and Palestinians and, by extension, the Arab world as a whole.
Apparently Najat Abu Bakr forgot that she is a member of the Palestinian parliament and not the Israeli one. She and her colleagues have no right to criticize President Abbas or any senior official in Ramallah. Such criticism is considered an "insult" to top officials and even an act of treason.IDF rescues two soldiers from massive Kalandiya riot; 5 troops wounded
And so we have two legislators. One is forced to seek shelter within her own parliament for fear of being arrested by the Palestinian security forces. The other receives all the rights and privileges enjoyed by her fellow Arabs inside Israel -- in spite of her immensely provocative behavior.
That is the difference between a law-abiding country and the Palestinian Authority, which has been functioning for many years as a mafia.
Najat Abu Bakr and many Palestinians dream of the day they too will have a Knesset, a true parliament, where leaders are held accountable.
The IDF and the Border Police launched a dramatic rescue operation to extract two Oketz K-9 unit soldiers who accidentally strayed into the Palestinian Kalandiya neighborhood north of Jerusalem on Monday night, and found themselves in the midst of a massive riot, which later turned into a gun battle between Palestinian gunmen and security forces.
Palestinian sources said two Kalandiya residents were killed in the fire exchange. Israeli sources said they knew of one Palestinian gunmen who was shot dead, after he fired on, and struck, a Border Police officer in the knee.
A total of five Israeli security personnel were injured in the clashes; four lightly, and the fifth, the wounded Border Policeman, was listed by doctors at Hadassah University Medical Center on Jerusalem's Mount Scopus as being in moderate condition.
An army source said the incident began at around 10:50 p.m. on Monday night, when the vehicle carrying both soldiers entered Kalandiya.
"We don't yet fully understand how it got there. The soldiers became surrounded in a very big riot, with many rocks thrown at their vehicle. They continued driving, and then Molotov cocktails were thrown at them, setting the vehicle on fire," the source said.
At that stage, the soldiers escaped their vehicle and split up.
IDF Central Command dispatched large numbers of forces to Kalandiya to rescue the soldiers. One maintained cell phone contact with the army throughout the incident, and was rescued within 30 minutes as he hid in a yard. The second soldier was rescued shortly before midnight from the settlement of Kochav Yaakov.