Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, July 03, 2018

The secret battle for Jerusalem between Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey

There is a new battle for which Muslim country would be considered responsible for Islamic life in Jerusalem.

From Al Monitor:

Saudi Arabia is currently investing a great deal of behind-the-scenes effort into taking away from Jordan its guardianship of the holy sites of Jerusalem, a senior official in the Palestinian Authority (PA) told Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. The pressure seems linked to the Saudis' friendly relations with the United States, and with President Donald Trump's desire to win Arab support for his Middle East peace plan, which Jordan has not backed.

This revelation aligns with a June 22 report from Israeli newspaper Haaretz that the Jordanian monarchy is worried about Saudi Arabia's intent to deprive Jordan of its guardianship. Several peace agreements signed with Israel, such as the Jordan-Israel peace treaty of 1994, guaranteed Jordan's guardianship. [No, they didn't - EoZ].

“Saudi Arabia is now setting the stage for its guardianship of these sites," the senior PA official said, "and it is working on strengthening its relations with the Palestinian community in Jerusalem. It's also trying to lead religious figures and public opinion leaders from Jerusalem to visit Saudi Arabia and meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss the idea and try to garner Jerusalemite support for it."

In January, the Arabi21 website quoted a Jordanian source as saying Jordanian authorities were discussing behind closed doors the Saudi steps regarding Jerusalem and were worried about their guardianship.

Raed Daana, one of the most important religious authorities in Jerusalem and former director of preaching and guidance at Al-Aqsa Mosque Directorate, told Al-Monitor that Saudi efforts to take over the sites' administration are “serious and real.” He pointed out that such efforts emerged following Trump's visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2017.

On Dec. 19, the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper revealed that there were behind-the-scenes differences between the Jordanian and Saudi delegations during the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union, which took place Dec. 17 in Morocco. Saudi Arabia rejected Jordan's assertion of its guardianship of Jerusalem’s holy sites, the paper said.
Although decision-makers in Saudi Arabia did not publicly announce their desire to manage the holy sites in Jerusalem, several Saudi media circles have called for such a scenario. Abdul Hamid al-Hakim, a Saudi media figure close to the Saudi ruling family, called during the BBC’s "Talking Point" program May 16 for the holy sites in Jerusalem to be under Saudi administration.

But at the same time, Turkey is making a play for Islamic Jerusalem as well:

Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinian Authority have all separately warned Israel over the past year about growing Turkish activity in East Jerusalem, which they say is part of an attempt by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to “claim ownership over the Jerusalem issue.”

Senior officials in Amman and Ramallah told Israel that Turkey was extending its influence in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Israeli defense officials told Haaretz they are aware of the situation and that the issue is now receiving more attention.

Turkey’s attempts to gain influence in East Jerusalem have been monitored by Israel’s security services for more than a year. Israeli sources pointed to a number of ways in which Turkey is increasing its presence in the city.

These include donations to Islamic organizations in Arab neighborhoods; organized tours arranged by Islamist groups in Turkey, some closely affiliated with Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), which have brought thousands of Turkish citizens to Jerusalem over the past year; and the prominent presence of Turkish activists in demonstrations around the Temple Mount (known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif).

JCPA has also written about increased Turkish influence in Arab sections of Jerusalem.

It isn't religion. It is politics, as each country is jockeying to appear to be the leader of the Islamic world.

Tellingly, none of these countries even consider allowing the Palestinian Authority to control any part of Jerusalem.

(h/t Yoel)

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HRW director falsely claims Israel refuses triennial human rights review

Human Rights Watch executive director Sarah Leah Whitson tweeted this, claiming that Israel never allows universal human rights reviews and is a "rogue state."

Only one problem: Israel did participate in the triennial universal periodic review. It boycotted the entire UNHRC session in June, not just the UPR, but it did cooperate with the review itself, as Al Jazeera reported in January:

In her opening remarks, Aviva Raz Shechter, Israeli ambassador to the UN in Geneva, laid out bluntly how Israel was going to receive the recommendations of fellow members.

"The continuous discrimination against Israel in the HRC and the unparalleled number of one-sided biased and political resolutions adopted regularly by the automatic majority of its members testify not only to the unfair treatment of Israel but also to the deficiencies of the council itself and its agenda," she said.

Shechter said Israel would submit to the review process despite what she called the HRC's bias, and demanded its overhaul.

Shechter, the Israeli ambassador, said it was deplorable that UN representatives would use the UPR session as what she called a platform to politicise the human rights discourse.

"It is a cynical and hypocritical attitude meant to distort the reality," she said, adding however that Israel would continue to cooperate with the HRC and take "seriously" the recommendations made at Tuesday's session.

There is no rule that says a country has to attend the meeting where the report is being released. HRW is falsely pretending that boycotting the meeting shows that Israel is a "rogue state" that refuses "any" review - this is obviously a lie.

Israel is boycotting the entire week's sessions, not just the meeting that released its hugely biased review, because of its clear and obvious bias. The January session buttressed the point of how the UNHRC is anti-Israel not only in its specifically anti-Israel Agenda item 7 but altogether.

The only other country I could find that HRW has ever referred to in an unqualified fashion as a "rogue state" was Burma in 2008.

Which shows that HRW is fully on board with the anti-Israel bias of the UNHRC.

(h/t NGO Monitor)

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Fatah hosts pathetic rally in Ramallah against peace deal

Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah group spent the past few days trying to get people to show up at a rally planned for Monday to protest the as-yet unrevealed "deal of the century."

You can tell from the demonstrators that they are all Fatah members, not the "Palestinian street." There are no home-made signs, no signs of grassroots protest, and plenty of attempts by Abbas' party to associate him with Yasir Arafat.

Even the official Fatah site said that there were only hundreds attending. It wasn't worth mentioning in non-Fatah media.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad can get thousands to show up at rallies whenever they want. Fatah can't fill up a city block in its own home territory.

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07/02 Links Pt2: Israel passes law defunding PA over its payments to terrorists; Vox Co-Founder Calls Ben Shapiro ‘The Jew Who Helps Other Jews Onto the Train’; CAA humiliates Gilad Atzmon in court

From Ian:

Israel passes law cutting funding to PA over its payments to terrorists

The Knesset voted into law on Monday a bill to slash funds to the Palestinian Authority by the amount Ramallah pays out to convicted terrorists and the families of Palestinians killed while carrying out attacks.

The bipartisan law passed by 87 to 15.

The law’s backers said the legislation would send a message to Palestinians that terror does not pay.

“The PA turned itself into a factory that employs murderers [of] Jews mostly but also Muslims, Christians, Druze, Circassians, and others, including tourists,” said co-sponsor MK Avi Dichter (Likud), who leads the Knesset’s influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.

He said the law is meant to send a “moral and principled message” that Israel will not assist in sending money to terrorists, as well as cause the PA to rethink its policy of “encouraging terror.”

Yesh Atid MK Elazar Stern, who also cosponsored the law, said similar legislation in the US, known as the Tayor Force Act, had prompted the Israeli bill.

Interview: Taylor Force’s father hopes ‘pay-for-slay’ law will help Palestinians in need

In the two years since his son was killed in a terrorist stabbing spree in the coastal Israeli city of Jaffa, Stuart Force has become a regular traveler from his home town in South Carolina to Washington, DC, where he lobbied US lawmakers to adopt a law limiting aid to Palestinians, until they end stipends for terror convicts and families of slain attackers.

On Monday, three months after the US congress passed the Taylor Force Act into law, Stuart Force traveled for the first time to Israel to see the Knesset pass a similar law to slash funds to the Palestinian Authority by the amount Ramallah pays out to convicted terrorists, a policy nicknamed “pay-for slay.”

Speaking to The Times of Israel ahead of the Monday evening vote, Force said he had made the journey in order to pay back the support he had been shown since the death of his son Taylor.

“The Israeli people have been so supportive of the Taylor Force Act, and it feels right for me to be here and support them,” he said. “It’s going to be very emotional for me to be there during the vote, I’m sure, but I’m glad to be witnessing it. It’s important to our family that I’m here.”
Vanderbilt graduate student Taylor Force was killed Tuesday March 9, 2016, in a terror attack in Jaffa. (Facebook)

An MBA student at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and a West Point graduate, the 29-year-old Taylor Force was visiting Israel in March 2016 when he was stabbed to death by 22-year-old Palestinian Bashar Massalha. Force’s death elicited a passionate response from US lawmakers, who, in response, took up the hot-button issue of PA funding to Palestinian terrorists.

We just voted and passed the Israeli version of the Taylor Force Bill which cuts funding that the Palestinians use to pay terrorists for their crimes. Before the vote I met Taylor’s father and thanked him for his strength and for everything he has done to honor his son’s memory. pic.twitter.com/y7YvoH2stx
— יאיר לפיד Yair Lapid (@yairlapid) July 2, 2018

‘Black Forest,’ a chilling post-terror attack manhunt, gets English premiere

Kay Wilson was certain she was going to die.

The extraordinary story of how Wilson survived a brutal 2010 attack in which her friend was murdered is the subject of the Israeli television documentary “Black Forest.”

The Times of Israel and Beit Avi Chai will host the English premiere of “Black Forest” along with IsraelB on Monday, July 9 at 7:00 p.m.

Following the screening, Wilson will share her experiences in a live interview with journalist Matthew Kalman. Also present will be the filmmakers, police detectives involved in the post-attack investigation, and family members of other victims.

‘I believed him’

“Bound, gagged and barefoot, with machetes at our throats, we were pushed through the trees to the site of our execution,” Wilson recalls in a blog post for The Times of Israel. “I whimpered, ‘Please don’t kill us.’ One of the terrorists looked me in the eye, put his hand on his heart and declared, ‘I am good, I not kill.’”

“I believed him,” she says.

But she was wrong.

It was December 2010. Wilson and her friend Kristine Luken were walking through a picturesque forest southwest of Jerusalem, a popular site for hikes and picnics, when they were attacked by two men from a West Bank village near Hebron.
Kay Wilson, survivor of a 2010 stabbing terror attack outside Jerusalem. (Courtesy)

Within minutes Luken lay dead, hacked to pieces in a killing frenzy. Wilson should have died, too.

Scores of irrelevant BDS groups try to get EU to stop funding Israeli R&D

From Israel Hayom:

Anti-Israel activists in Europe have renewed their efforts to exclude ‎Israel from the European Union's next research and development ‎initiative, Israeli officials said. ‎

Israel is part of the current R&D initiative, Horizon 2020.

The next ‎program, dubbed FP9, ‎will run from 2021 to 2027 and lays the foundation for Horizon Europe, an ambitious €100 ‎billion ($117 billion) research and innovation program meant to ‎succeed Horizon 2020, the eighth framework program.‎

Israel, a world-renowned innovation hub, has been the top ‎dependent on these funds among non-EU member states.

But ‎earlier this month, hundreds of European Parliament members received a letter signed by ‎‎154 groups, organizations and unions from 16 ‎countries, urging the EU "to uphold its legal responsibilities and ‎exclude Israeli military companies from EU framework programs."

The letter is titled "No EU Money to the Israeli Arms Industry."

"The EU has been funding security-industrial research ‎for many years," it claims.

"European taxpayers’ money is being ‎channeled to military companies, among them many Israeli ‎corporations, under the disguise of research and a promise that the ‎technologies and techniques developed will be used solely for ‎civilian purposes.‎

‎"One of the ways in which arms and military companies have ‎gained access to EU funding is through the current EU Program for ‎Research and Innovation, Horizon 2020. This includes many Israeli ‎military companies. Although the EU claims that research funds ‎have gone only to projects with civilian applications, many of the ‎projects approved are of dual-use nature serving military interests ‎as well. Many others serve policies that curb or violate refugees' ‎rights and militarize our societies.‎

"The EU’s cooperation with Israeli military companies is proof that ‎dual-use projects are inherently serving military purposes as well. ‎Isaac Ben-Israel, chairman of the Israel Space Agency, put it ‎bluntly, saying, 'Because we are a small country, if you build a ‎small-satellite production line, say at IAI, it will be used for military ‎and for commercial purposes.'

By January 2017, Israel had invested some €1.37 billion ($1.6 billion) to be ‎included in the program. ‎

The weird thing is that the agreement between Israel and the EU for this program, which has been in place since 2000, does not exclude research that can be used for military purposes.

Nothing in the Agreement shall prevent a Party from taking any measures:....

(b) which relate to the production of, or trade in, arms, munitions or war materials or to research, development or production indispensable for defence purposes, provided that such measures do not impair the conditions of competition in respect of products not intended for specifically military purposes;

(c) which it considers essential to its own security in the event of serious internal disturbances affecting the maintenance of law and order, in time of war or serious international tension constituting threat of war or in order to carry out obligations it has accepted for the purpose of maintaining peace and international security.

As usual, the BDSers are lying.

And the EU seems quite happy with Israel's participation in the program. The 20th anniversary of the program was celebrated in January.

The Jerusalem Theatre was the venue for an extraordinary conference on January 10 when hundreds of Israeli researchers and officials gathered to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Israel's association to the EU Framework Programme. Leading the EU's delegation to the event was Robert-Jan Smits, Director-General of the European Commission`s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation. The event was organized jointly by the EU Delegation to the State of Israel and ISERD - The Europe - Israel R&D Directorate and was financially supported by DG Research and Innovation.

Israel was the first non-European country to be associated to the EU Framework Programme back in 1996. Its participation in the EU Framework Programme has been a success story and represents an added value both for Israel and for the EU. Over the past 20 years of partnership, overall Israeli investment amounted to €1.375 billion, while the return to Israeli entities in the form of grants reached €1.7 billion. Over 3,000 projects submitted by Israeli entities were approved involving 4,435 participants. Of these, 2,450 were academic researchers, 1,270 were industrial researchers, and 715 researchers from other sectors.

Israel’s excellence in the programme has been especially notable in the European Research Council grants for outstanding researchers doing ground-breaking research, grants in the ICT, water, health sectors and many others.

In his remarks, Robert-Jan Smits said that, "The EU and Israel research and innovation cooperation represents 20 years of success, partnership and friendship. What has been achieved during these years is impressive. The Israeli and EU scientists have built sustainable partnerships and worked together on many challenges ranging from child tumours, smart irrigation to robotics and science education, advancing in this way the frontiers of knowledge and contributing to the well-being of our citizens".

The list of the 154 organizations that signed this letter include some groups that sound like they have one or two members, and a lot of communist groups, including:

Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions Finland
BDS France
Jewish Voice for Peace (Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost) Germany
BDS Berlin
BDS-Gruppe Bonn
Red Card Israeli Racism campaign
Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods (J-BIG)

And my favorite:

Irish Football Fans Against Israeli Apartheid

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This recent story on Tablet, which laments that Israel is losing on the important social-media battle-front, got me thinking about why a “movement” like BDS - which has accomplished so little with regard to actual boycotts, divestment and sanctions - seems to continue to capture headlines. How does a project that has found it virtually impossible to win any genuinely significant victories still manage to get its self-characterization of “unstoppable momentum” into the news?

A credulous media (including US and European papers ready to print BDS press releases verbatim) might provide some explanation for this phenomenon. And we shouldn’t underestimate the power of the BDSers’ relentless inconsiderateness which allows them to barge into anyone else’s space they like to gain attention (those other peoples’ needs be damned).

But there is one aspect of the competition between Israel’s defenders and detractors that needs to be highlighted, one area where Israel’s foes have traditionally outclassed its friends: the use of the new media (including blogs, social media and other Web 2.0 communication tools) to get their message out.

This disparity hit home a few years back when dueling stories regarding BDS success and failure (the latter written by me) appeared in the online Israeli news daily Ynet. This piece (written in an emotional frenzy by an Israeli supporter) managed to generate over 1000 Facebook recommendations and was Tweeted close to 250 times. My rejoinder, in contrast, barely broke the hundred mark on Facebook and never got past low double digits on Twitter.

Assuming every connection generates another round of re-forwarding and re-Tweeting, it’s safe to say the ten-to-one disparity between the two stories meant the original tale of BDS success found a home in thousands of more places than the corrective. And thus, another BDS-preferred storyline got to travel around the world at the speed of light while the truth was still trying to find its socks.

Given how every BDS debate attracts at least one argument about how people truly interested in boycotting Israeli will have to give up their computers, their cell phones and the Internet as a whole (since much of that technology is based on Israeli inventions), I’ve often wondered why we marvelously inventive Jews haven’t managed to use all this technology half as well as our opponents.

Part of this might be an age issue. While there are plenty of young people involved with pro-Israel activism, my sense is that average age skews a bit higher on this side of the divide vs. the other. If this is the case, you’ve got a pro-Israel community comfortable with some aspects of online communication (such as blogging and e-mail blasts) but not others (such as social networks, Twitter and other technologies that are in the process of replacing mail as the prime communication vehicle for young people).

I can sympathize since I am part of that older cohort, someone who is happy to spend more than an hour writing a blog entry who is not ready to spend 10 minutes recommending and relinking stories (mine and others’) in order to elevate them in Google search rankings.

Fortunately, there has been some movement in the right direction over the last several years. Grassroots activists and organizations have always been nimble and fierce warriors on social media platforms, and that skill set seems to be moving up the food chain of Jewish activist organization and even the Israeli government. For example, the IDF’s Twitter feed has actually managed to influence some news cycles – at the expense of our enemies - a key component of today’s InfoWar tactics that, until recently, was the monopoly of Israel’s foes.

At the same time, attempts by BDSers to exploit the openness of new online platforms demonstrates one additional advantage Israel’s foes have over its friends. For just as our opponents steadfastly demand we open every conceivable forum to them or face accusations of “muzzling” and censorship, they will never reciprocate by opening their online spaces up to potential critics (in the form of maintaining open or unrestricted comments sections or any other option that would give critics the same freedom they demand for themselves).

Thus Web 2.0 savvy combines with general BDSholiness provides the forces of boycott, divestment and sanctions a bit of an edge. But given that we’ve been winning so many other battles over the boycotters, there’s no reason to believe we won’t figure out a way to win this one as well.

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07/02 Links Pt1: Australia ends direct aid to PA over payments to terrorists; Code Pink-BDS activist denied entry to Israel; Poll: Israelis have little hope for Trump peace plan

From Ian:

Australia ends direct aid to PA over payments to terrorists

Australia has ended direct aid to the Palestinian Authority over fears its donations will be used to pay Palestinians convicted of terrorism and their families.

Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said Monday that funding to a World Bank trust fund was cut after she wrote to the Palestinian Authority in late May seeking assurance that Australian funding was not being misspent.

In a statement, Bishop expressed concern that providing further aid would allow the PA to use the funds for activities that “Australia would never support.”

Israel has long accused the PA and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas, of encouraging terror attacks against Israelis by rewarding perpetrators and their families with monthly stipends. It has even withheld millions in tax revenues over the Palestinians’ unwillingness to change its policy. Israeli lawmakers are also advancing a law to slash funds to the PA by the same amount it uses to pay terrorists.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah, June 27, 2018. (Alaa Badarneh/Pool Photo via AP)

“Any assistance provided by the Palestine Liberation Organization to those convicted of politically motivated violence is an affront to Australian values, and undermines the prospect of meaningful peace between Israel and the Palestinians,” Bishop said in a statement.

“I wrote to the Palestinian Authority on May 29, to seek clear assurance that Australian funding is not being used to assist Palestinians convicted of politically motivated violence,” she wrote.

Prominent Jewish BDS activist denied entry to Israel

Israeli officials barred a Jewish pro-Palestinian activist from entering the country late Sunday and began proceedings to deport her over her support for a boycott of the country.

Ariel Gold said that she had arranged her visit ahead of time with Israeli authorities, in line with a demand by Jerusalem after her last visit to the country, but was being deported anyway after landing at Ben-Gurion International Airport.

Gold is the national co-director of US left-wing activist group Code Pink and an advocate of the Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to isolate Israel internationally.

“I am in the Tel Aviv airport getting deported. I got a visa in advance to enter the country buy they are refusing to honor it and are deporting me now,” she wrote on Facebook early Monday.

Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan, who petitioned Interior Minister Aryeh Deri to have her visa canceled, said she had been denied entry because of her support for the BDS movement.

“Whoever acts for a boycott of Israel and comes here to cause damage, will not enter the country,” he wrote on Twitter. (h/t Yenta Press)

Palestinians claim Israel projecting "Talmudic images" on Damascus Gate

The Jerusalem Festival of Light is taking place now, where one of the features is projecting of different images on city walls.

The Felesteen newspaper is claiming that Israel is projecting "Talmudic images" on Damascus Gate and elsewhere.

The occupation uses any Talmudic occasion to provoke all Muslims in the world by practicing its racism in the occupied city of Jerusalem by attacking the walls of Jerusalem and the Old City and practicing violations inside the Al Aqsa Mosque.

During the so-called "Festival of lights" , a few days ago, the Israeli authorities used projectors to the walls of Jerusalem in the area of Bab al-Amoud [Damascus Gate], and showed Talmudic images and drawings on the entire wall with a remarkable presence of settlers and the occupation municipality and the intensive deployment of the Israeli police.

President of the Supreme Islamic Commission and the preacher of Al-Aqsa Mosque d. Akrama Sabri told "Felesteen": "These Judaizing activities in the area of Bab al-Amud provoke all the Muslims of the world through the use of the walls of Jerusalem as a display of the symbols of the Talmud..."

Sabri called on UNESCO to intervene to curb these events of Judaization.

The head of the Al-Ammar Committee in the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Bassam Al-Hallaq, told "Palestine": "Judaizing the perimeter of the Al-Aqsa Mosque is a plan that has been followed for years and will ultimately lead to the changing of the entire area in the Talmudic way.

I'm trying to find these Talmudic images on Damascus Gate, but here is all I found so far from this year and previous years:

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Foreign Policy had an article last week by a Palestinian that was the opposite of the clueless Atlantic article I fisked by Obama foreign policy dinosaurs Philip Gordon and Prem Kumar.

Although not pro-Israel in any sense, Dalia Hatuqa points out the reality that the Palestinians are facing in a Middle East that is sick of their complaints and infighting.

Saudi Arabia’s increasingly warm bilateral ties with Israel have not gone unnoticed by the PA, which has also noted Trump’s insistence — from the outset of his presidency — that striking an “ultimate deal” between Israel and the Palestinians would require the involvement of the broader region.

The PA watched in shock as Riyadh gave permission to Air India to fly to Tel Aviv through Saudi airspace and later as Mohammed bin Salman, in an interview with the Atlantic, acknowledged Israel’s right to its “own land.” And while the PA boycotted a White House meeting on Gaza’s humanitarian crisis in March, several Arab countries — including Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia — attended, as did Israel.

Palestinians are no longer the focal point of the regional agenda, and PA leaders have grown increasingly uneasy as some Arab leaders have shifted their attention to Iran, fixating on Tehran’s involvement in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria.

Arab leaders frequently profess support for the Palestinian cause, but Palestinians know that these proclamations are often sanctimonious. Much of the aid pledged by Arab donors for Gaza’s post-2014 war reconstruction never materialized, and the flow of government aid to the region has all but dried up. Instead, the diplomatic focus of Arab governments has veered primarily to domestic woes and stability, regional adversaries such as Iran, inter-Arab disputes, and fighting off Islamic militancy.

Notice that this is the opposite of Gordon and Kumar who claim that Arab governments are still afraid of what their people would say if they cozy up to Israel.

Without a unified government or a clear, solid succession process, the PA leadership may very well find itself having to pick one of two bad options. The PA can either participate in a rigged peace process under even less favorable terms than in the past — or forge its own path without the support of Western donor aid that the administration is dependent on to function. This would mean that the livelihoods of 145,000 civil servants in the occupied Palestinian territories would disappear.

[R]egional changes have paved the way for another opportunity for Israel to formally normalize relations with its neighbors — but this time without a peace deal.Now, regional changes have paved the way for another opportunity for Israel to formally normalize relations with its neighbors — but this time without a peace deal. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have moved from secretly courting the Israelis to overtly conveying their readiness and desire to build a relationship beyond their current clandestine links.

Today, most of Israel’s traditional enemies have either been weakened or neutralized: The Palestinian leadership has been co-opted through U.S. largesse; Jordan and Egypt’s peace deals have weathered even the thorniest of diplomatic crises; and Iraq and Syria have been carved up by the campaign to oust the Islamic State.

Hatuqa seems to favor a new, unified, and more militant Palestinian leadership that can stand up to Israel, ignoring her own points that the Arab world is no longer behind them in any way close to how things were in the past.

And the main point of the slowly emerging "deal of the century" is indeed to throw the Palestinians under the bus, as the FP headline says Saudi Arabia is doing.

The reason is simple - simpler than the wishful thinking that Hatuqa has for a strong, resistant Palestinian leadership.

Up until now, the peace process has had one major, unfixable flaw: that the desire for peace in the West was stronger than anything else, and the world was willing to do anything to get the Palestinians to say "yes." As a result, the Palestinian leadership has had zero incentive to compromise for peace, because the pressure was all on Israel.

The PLO's veto power - backed by the perceived support of their Arab brethren, the seeming unified threat of the Arab street, and the backing of the EU and President Obama of always pressuring Israel - is what doomed peace. Compromise was unthinkable. Preparing the Palestinian Arabs for peace was never done. Because, as Abbas said in 2009, all they had to do was wait - things were fine in Palestinians' day to day life.

Now, the Arab world is prepared to move on towards peace with or without the Palestinians. (Really, detente, but that is all Israel has with Egypt and Jordan anyway.) The Palestinians are losing funding, political support, and the security they had that the world was behind them. They celebrate "victories' like Argentina soccer team deciding not to go to Israel while they are watching their real support go down the drain.

They can choose to cut the best deal they can while they can - or they can choose to ignore the sea change that has happened in their neighborhood. They can pretend that BDS will kill Israel while Israel keeps getting stronger and stronger.

It is apparent what path they have chosen so far. And that is exactly why they should be thrown under the bus - because the days of the automatic Palestinian veto over any peace plan are over.

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Just some fun stuff from Iranian news agencies:

Sheikh Naim Qassem, the deputy secretary-general of Lebanon’s Hezbollah Islamic Resistance movement, ... said, “Do not forget the usurper Israel. All the calamities in the region and the world are from Israel but this regime moves and uses its mercenaries, supporters and spy services. This regime is preparing for the ‘Deal of the Century’ (an American proposal for the Palestine issue) but due to the Islamic Resistance and the nation of Palestine, who said ‘no’ to the ‘Deal of the Century,’ Israel cannot advance anything. We are certain that as long as the Islamic Resistance exists in the region, no American and Israeli project will be implemented.”

It's funny how you never hear J-Street say that Hezbollah or Iran are obstacles to peace.

Then again, J-Street agrees with Iran and its proxy terror group Hezbollah that the US proposal for peace is so hideous that all forces must be mustered to fight it.

Yes, to J-Street, Naim Qassem is an ally and the Israeli government is the enemy.

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Miss Iraq in Israel really upset the Arabs

From Middle East Monitor:

She seems to have touched a nerve.

Some gems from the article:

While in Israel she vocalised a personal declaration to seek peace, omitting, however, Israel’s routine sabotage of past peace initiatives.

Really? Like which ones? The ones where Israel doesn't get to exist anymore as a Jewish state?

“Reasoning, mutual compromise and unity” – the central pillars of the “new method” the Baghdad-born model stresses – ignores Israel’s lack of compromise and self-serving rhetoric that has criminalised Palestinians for pursuing justice.

Ah, "justice" where all Jews must go to Europe.

“Less blood more amity”, the line Idan concluded with, betrays the Palestinian struggle that rose in response to Israel’s selective violence against Palestinians sparing no one, neither old nor young.

Yes, saying "less blood, more amity" indeed betrays the Palestinian preference for "more blood, no amity."

The reinvention of Idan’s image from model to cultural ambassador ignores Palestine’s own class of peace advocates and activists, and their struggle against Israel’s apartheid state. They may rightfully view Idan as a false prophet of peace and coexistence.

Please name one of "Palestine's own class of peace advocates." I'd love to know what the author considers to be peace.

(h/t Yoel)

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07/01 Links: Will the West cede the Golan Heights to a psychopath?; A quarter of Israelis worried Trump's peace plan's price will be too high; Iranian forces open fire on protesters

From Ian:

In joint ToI op-ed, Lapid and Ya’alon urge US to back Israel’s Golan sovereignty

In a joint op-ed Sunday, Moshe Ya’alon and Yair Lapid urged the US to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and warned against the notion of ceding the strategic ridge to President Bashar Assad.

By recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the territory, the two politicians argued in an opinion piece for The Times of Israel, the US could “extract a price from Assad for his despicable behavior without putting boots on the ground in Syria.”

Lapid is the head of the centrist Yesh Atid party. Ya’alon is a former IDF chief of staff and defense minister, who is expected to seek to return to national politics in the next elections.

Moshe Ya'alon and Yair Lapid: Will the West cede the Golan Heights to a psychopath?

We live in a world full of complex diplomatic dilemmas, but for once here is a simple one: Would you take an area that is flourishing in a western democratic state, where fifty thousand people of different religions and ethnicities live in harmony, and hand it over to a violent dictatorship ruled by the worst mass murderer of our time so that he can destroy the area and murder most of the residents?

If your answer is “no” then you support recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.

In 1981 Israel applied its law to the Golan Heights. The Syrians insisted it be returned to them. Most countries, including the United States, have avoided taking a clear position. We believe it’s time to get off the fence.

The Golan Heights is a unique story in the Israeli-Arab conflict. It’s a mountainous region of around 1,155 square miles (around the size of a medium-sized ranch in Texas), in the north of Israel. It’s worth noting, of course, that it is entirely unrelated to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. Not a single Palestinian lives in the Golan Heights.

Historically, the Golan is known as the biblical land of Bashan from the book of Deuteronomy. Just recently a major renovation of a 4th century Jewish synagogue was completed and in archaeological excavations a coin from 67 CE was discovered with an inscription which read, “For the redemption of Jerusalem the Holy.” It is an area with a long and deep Jewish connection.

The Syrians, on the other hand, ruled over the Golan Heights for only 21 years; between the years 1946 and 1967. During those years they turned the Golan into a military base, rained rocket fire on the Israeli communities which are under the Golan Heights and tried to divert Israel’s critical water sources to dry the country out.

In 1967, during the Six Day War, the Golan Heights was liberated by Israel. In the 51 years since then Israel developed the Golan Heights and turned it into an impressive center of nature reserves and tourism, with high-tech agriculture, award winning wines, a flourishing food-tech industry and in-demand boutique hotels. The Druze population of the Golan Heights, who make up about half the population, were granted all the same rights as any other citizen in Israel, as would be done in any genuine democracy.

IDF sends reinforcements to Golan as Assad offensive picks up

The Israeli military sent additional tanks and artillery cannons to the Syrian border on Sunday in light of a renewed offensive by dictator Bashar Assad and the Russian military against the remaining rebel holdouts in the country’s southwest, the army said.

The reinforcements were sent to the Israel Defense Forces’ 210th Bashan Division, which guards the Golan Heights, the army said.

“This was [done] as part of IDF preparations and preparedness in light of developments in the Syrian Golan Heights near the border,” the IDF said in a statement.

The military vowed a “determined response” to any strike — deliberate or accidental — that hits Israeli territory from Syria.

“The IDF sees great importance in maintaining the armistice agreement between Israel and Syria from 1974,” the army said.

“The IDF will continue to uphold its principle of non-involvement in what is happening in Syria, alongside a policy of delivering a determined response to violations of the sovereignty of the State of Israel and threats to its citizens,” the IDF said.

From JTA, March 8, 1956:

Secretary of State [John Foster] Dulles yesterday corrected the Congressional Record to withdraw a remark he made to the effect that the Prophet Mohammed had been assassinated by a Jew, thereby explaining Saudi Arabian discrimination against Jews. The Secretary also withdrew remarks to the effect that a settlement between Israelis and Arabs was made more difficult by the “bargaining proclivities of both sides.

On February 24, under questioning about American accession to Saudi Arabian refusal to admit American Jewish troops to an American air base in Saudi Arabia, Secretary Dulles told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Saudi Arabians have felt for a long time–it goes back centuries–a very particular animosity toward the Jews, because they credited the assassination of Mohammed to a Jew.” When his advisers, at his elbow, told him that he was wrong about this, Mr. Dulles told the Senate committee that he had been told that he was wrong and that “I will ask leave to correct the record in that respect later on if it proves I made a mistake.” The correction yesterday deleted part of his testimony, which now reads that the Saudi Arabians feel a “very particular animosity toward the Jews, since the time of Mohammed.”

Dulles was a prominent layman of the Presbyterian Church and active in The National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA before becoming a diplomat. It seems obvious that when he accused Jews of killing Mohammed, he was really thinking about Jews killing the founder of his own religion.

Even though his aides told him during testimony that he was mistaken about Jews killing Mohammed, it took him ten days to correct his statement.

This was hardly the only antisemitic statement Dulles made in his career. For example, on June 18, 1956, he responded to Cardinal Spellman’s comment that “Jewish activities are becoming excessively arrogant and demanding” by saying that this “was one of my problems, that I felt it very important to try to demonstrate that the Jews did not in an election year dictate the foreign policy of the United States.” On February 12, 1957, he “mentioned the terrific control the Jews had over the news media and the barrage which the Jews have built on Congressmen.”

Interestingly, Dulles had a sister who married a Jew from an Orthodox family who committed suicide, and the family convinced her to take back her maiden name rather than keep the Jewish name.

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Arabs finally found a perfect photo to depict fires in Israel

Arab media has been following the fires in Israel from Gaza kites and balloons far more closely than most Israeli media.

But the photo I saw this morning to illustrate the fires was exactly the type that the Arab media loves to show:

Further research shows that the same photo was used in April for Gaza fires.

Arab media loves pictures of religious Jews. They look sort of creepy especially in silhouette.

This particular photo was taken during the catastrophic 2010 fires in Israel, many of which were Arab arson.

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In Egyptian paper Dostour, Said Shuaib asks if the only reason Arabs hate Israel is "occupation."

Because, he notes, no one seems to be holding rallies against the Iranian occupation of Arab islands in the Gulf since 1971.

He goes on to say that the Syrian Iskenderun Brigade has been occupied by Turkey since 1939, before the establishment of Israel. And the Arab Ahwaz region has been occupied since 1925 again by Iran.

He wonders why the Ottoman occupation of large swaths of Arab territory never elicited any anger, but the British occupation did. Why are Muslims occupying Arab lands OK?

The author even goes on to note that the Arabs expelling Jews from their countries helped strengthen Israel.

So he analyzes why Muslims are okay with some occupations - including their own in Andalusia, Spain - and against Israel's.

And he concludes that it is all religious, based on Quranic verses. "According to this understanding, a Muslim has a divine command of annihilating the Jews everywhere and at all times," he says, saying that Muslims ignore the parts of the Quran that praise Jews.

But it isn't as if he's pro-Israel. He says of course he wants to ethnically cleanse Israel of all Jews who arrived after 1917.

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