The real story of the Israeli election scheduled for Jan. 22 is the meteoric rise of the right-wing HaBayit HaYehudi (Jewish Home) Party and its new leader, Naftali Bennett. Likely to head the second- or third-largest party in the next Knesset, Bennett advocates immediate annexation of 60 percent of the West Bank.
Gone from Israel’s next government will be any semblance of a moderate voice favoring a two-state solution. Instead, the ruling coalition will feature leaders such as Moshe Feiglin, a firebrand who wants to rebuild a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount, denigrates Muslims and democracy and suggests paying Palestinian families to emigrate.
Also awaiting Obama’s new team will be a clear message from the Palestinian leaders who still believe in two states: President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. [do they, really?] Without immediate, meaningful diplomatic action to bring about two states, they will say, talking about a two-state solution while Israel settles the land where Palestinians look to build their state is no longer a viable option.
The Obama team’s understanding of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and what needs to be done to solve it, has to catch up with these new realities.
Sadly, many in the nation’s capital remain convinced that Israel is simply building on land that “everyone knows” it will ultimately keep. In their view, the present settlement-building frenzy should not be a problem for Palestinians.
Construction and planning are taking place in areas far outside the “consensus” blocs that President Bill Clinton envisioned remaining with Israel in 2000. From construction in Shiloh and Beit El, to accrediting a national university in the outlying settlement of Ariel, to planning to develop the E-1 area east of Jerusalem, the government of Israel is unrelentingly establishing that it has no interest in the creation of a viable Palestinian state.
No, [Obama] cannot impose a settlement...Obama must go to the region early in his second term and, backed by the entire international community, lay out the parameters for resolving the conflict, a credible timeline and a process for mediated discussions that assures both sides their concerns will be heard. He and the world need to exert meaningful pressure on both sides to decide whether they will accept the well-known terms of a viable two-state solution.
Israelis will have to decide between leaders such as Feiglin and Bennett, who say no to compromise and peace, and those who — like all six of Israel’s living internal security chiefs — are willing to lead the way to a two-state solution. Palestinians will have to decide between leaders such as Abbas and Fayyad, who believe in nonviolence and diplomacy, and Hamas, which refuses to recognize Israel’s existence.
A pro-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender group issued a statement today urging President Barack Obama not to nominate Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense.
"GetEQUAL strongly opposes the potential nomination of Chuck Hagel to become the next Secretary of Defense. Hagel has, time and time again, taken every opportunity to lambast and denigrate lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Americans, and the Cabinet is no place for this kind of disrespect," writes the chair GetEQUAL's board Tanya Domi.
...it is becoming hard to deny that Hagel’s anti-Israel rhetoric and views and antipathy toward defense spending and sanctions on Iran are positives with this president, not demerits. A leading Democrat with a pro-Israel organization told me, “If the rumors are true and despite Hagel’s offensive record — from his extreme anti-choice actions, being pro-high capacity magazines and against universal background checks and his slurs again minority groups like gays and Jews to his views on Iran and terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas — President Obama wants to embrace Hagel, it is going to be very awkward for Democrats in the Senate. ” He seemed baffled by the choice: “Given the fact that his staff has said it will be ‘a tough confirmation,’ the GOP is lining up against [it], and there are highly capable alternatives, the choice would be virtually inexplicable, unless the President either deep down shares Hagel’s views or doesn’t care about anyone in his party but himself.”...
... conservative critics and a number of pro-Israel activists seem anxious to have the fight. In their eyes, the Hagel nomination does not make political sense for the president (as evidenced by lukewarm endorsements and silence from Senate Dems), is no longer justified as a bipartisan move (in fact it will inflame partisan passions) and cannot be defended as selection of the most qualified candidate. Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, would have preferred to head off a fight. But now he told me his group and others will embrace the challenge: “There will be no more important battle for the pro-Israel community, in the past few decades, then the one to oppose the nomination of Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense. As the Washington Post editorialized, Hagel’s policy positions are wrong in these very dangerous times and is ‘not the right choice’. Abe Foxman of the ADL has said that past comments by Hagel ‘border on anti-Semitism.’” Brooks continued that it is the Democrats who will be in the hot seat:
Yuval Diskin, Former Israeli Security Chief, Calls Netanyahu a Poor Leader
By JODI RUDOREN
Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu placed his own interests over Israel's on issues including Iran and the Palestinian conflict, charged Yuval Diskin, the former head of the domestic security service.
Fatah Celebration in Gaza Signals Easing of Rift With Hamas
By JODI RUDOREN
A show of unity between rival Palestinian factions posed a diplomatic quandary for the United States, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization.
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- Two major Jewish groups are at odds over the prospect of penalties for the Palestinians in the wake of their enhanced U.N. status.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee in recent weeks has backed two congressional bids to at least shut down the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington in the wake of the Nov. 29 United Nations General Assembly’s overwhelming vote that granted Palestinians non-member observer state status.
Conversely, the Reform movement has emphatically urged President Obama not to retaliate against the Palestinians, JTA has learned. The Reform movement also has resolved to oppose the shuttering of the PLO office.
Israel's Ambassador Dr. Michael Oren was quoted
“We think that the Palestinians when they violate agreements, when they declare that Israel is a war criminal or when they describe Israel as a war criminal for defending itself against thousands of terrorist rockets without ever condemning those rockets, we think they should be held to task for that," he said. "We do not think they should be given a free pass.”
Reform Movement Focuses on Follow Up To UN Vote Upgrading Palestinian StatusYou can't have it both ways - punishing Israel twice, once, by not supporting punitive measures against the PA and the second time, not condemning the E1 decision.
New Policy Statement: Condemns Palestinians for Unilateral UN Action; Calls for American Leadership; Opposes Immediate Punitive Responses; Calls on Israel to Halt Plans for Expansion in West Bank E1 area
...The statement, adopted overwhelmingly after a full debate by more than 200 board members at yesterday’s meeting of the Union of Reform Judaism’s North American Board of Trustees, “Condemn[s] the Palestinian Authority for the unilateral decision to seek upgraded status at the United Nation as counterproductive to the cause of peace, and express[es] … deep concern to those countries that supported the upgraded status, and to those who abstained.”
...The URJ and the CCAR also reiterated longstanding concern about Israeli settlement building, and expressed opposition to the Israeli government’s plans to move forward with building in the critical E1 area. The resolutions note that “Settlements in E1—the area connecting Jerusalem to a city which is one of the larger Israeli settlements—would split the Ramallah region off from Bethlehem, effectively cutting the West Bank in two and making a contiguous Palestinian state virtually impossible.” It further said that “Building there makes progress toward peace far more challenging, and is difficult to reconcile with the Government of Israel’s stated commitment to a two-state solution..."
The hesitancy to name Hagel or another candidate is already diminishing Obama’s stature, erasing more of his post-election glow. While the president ponders, White House aides on an almost daily basis leaked ever-changing and sometimes conflicting estimates of Hagel’s chances, each unattributed comment pounced on as big news. The patterns of the leaks suggest that the noise being made by Hagel’s opponents and pressures by interest groups were having an effect on the president’s thinking, though they may have been simply reflecting the fluctuating predilections and panic among his staff. What was bizarre about the White House’s apparent mood swings about naming Hagel is that nothing that has happened should have come as a great surprise. There was no great reason not to anticipate the nature if not the vehemence of the attacks.
Thus keeping Palestinians away from their olive groves and destroying olive trees is routine Israeli policy. According to the United Nations, 42 percent of applications for permits in 2011 to access olive groves behind the apartheid wall were rejected. Since 1967 it is estimated that Israel has uprooted 1.2 million olive trees, including 7,500 vandalized in 2012 by settlers in the West Bank.
| Yisrael, can you help us plant 407 more olive trees by donating $25, $50, or $100 today? |
Jordan’s Islamic Endowments Minister Abdul-Salam Abadi has accused Israel of planning to partition the courtyards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, the country’s Al-Ghad newspaper reported on Wednesday. The move, claimed Abadi, is in preparation for the building of the so-called “Third Temple” on the site of the mosque in occupied Jerusalem.
Abadi told a delegation of Australian Muslim clerics about Jordan’s efforts to protect and preserve the real, Islamic identity of the Holy City. He said that he has received “clear instructions from the Hashemite leadership to safeguard the Islamic and Arabic identity of Jerusalem.”
The minister stressed the importance of supporting Palestinians in Jerusalem in the face of repeated Israeli attacks on Al-Aqsa Mosque and Islamic holy sites in the occupied city.
Mr. Adnan Husseini, Minister for Jerusalem Affairs in the Palestinian government, accused the Israeli occupation authorities of procedures of Judaization and unloading of the holy city of war crimes in particular, and it is working to impose a new reality fake in this city that was sought by the Palestinian people as the capital of an independent state next.
The former Chief Justice of Palestine Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi warned of the seriousness of the fall of the Al Aqsa Mosque because of excavations under the walls of Zionism and its surroundings at a meeting with the Secretary General of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby last Thursday at the headquarters of the university in Cairo, hard reality in the occupied city of Jerusalem and its holy sites and ways to mobilize support.
The reconstruction work to restore the Dome of the Chain adjacent to the Dome of the Rock after three years of continuous work by the engineers and technicians in the Al-Aqsa Mosque has been completed.
Chairman of the Board of Awqaf, Sheikh Abdel Azim Salhab said "Dome of the Chain is the oldest vessel [?] in the Al Aqsa Mosque, the Umayyad prerogative [?] had not been altered..."
Islamic Waqf officials and a number of personalities and staff of Endowments and the University of Jerusalem opened today the center of the Holy unfinished thought of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali in the door of mercy Al-Aqsa Mosque and Al-Quds University.
Zionist occupation intensifies excavations at Al-Aqsa Mosque
The Al Aqsa Foundation confirmed that the Israeli occupation has intensified in recent days the pace of excavations around Al-Aqsa Mosque from the western and southern sides, especially in the regions through the Mughrabi Gate and the Umayyad palaces in order to judaize the Islamic heritage and erect huge Jewish buildings.
Overheated rhetoric on Israeli settlements
...such unilateral action [a flurry of announcements of new construction] by Israel, like the unilateral Palestinian initiative to seek statehood recognition in November from the U.N. General Assembly, serves to complicate the negotiations that are the only realistic route to a Middle East peace. But the reaction is also counterproductive because it reinforces two mistaken but widely held notions: that the settlements are the principal obstacle to a deal and that further construction will make a Palestinian state impossible.
...Mr. Netanyahu’s government, like several before it, has limited building almost entirely to areas that both sides expect Israel to annex through territorial swaps in an eventual settlement...Mr. Netanyahu’s [E1] zoning approval is hardly the “almost fatal blow” to a two-state solution that U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon described.
The exaggerated rhetoric is offensive at a time when the Security Council is refusing to take action to stop the slaughter of tens of thousands of civilians — including many Palestinians — by the Syrian regime. But it is also harmful, because it puts pressure on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to make a “freeze” on the construction a condition for beginning peace talks...
...If Security Council members are really interested in progress toward Palestinian statehood, they will press Mr. Abbas to stop using settlements as an excuse for intransigence — and cool their own overheated rhetoric.
Wow, this is unbelievable. The Washington Post editorial page states that the reaction to Israel's plans to build more settlements is overheated, that a two-state solution is alive and well, that settlements outside Jerusalem don't block Palestinian access to a possible capital.
The Palestinian burden once more
We in Lebanon understand the moral obligation that hinders the closing of borders in the face of Syrian refugees and we have nothing against Syrians who oppose a regime that occupied and killed our people. We have never turned down Palestinians who sought asylum in Lebanon unless they constitute a direct threat to its sovereignty like what happened before when they assumed that Lebanon could be an alternative homeland together with the Syrian turned the country into a battlefield and a venue for settling scores and operating intelligence agencies.
...Syrian refugees [however] can go back home as soon as the conflict is resolved especially of the new regime offers to compensate them for their losses and also because life in Lebanon is too expensive for them. But this is not the case with Palestinians. Syrians still have the chance to get rid of their burden, but Palestinians do not, especially that the Palestinian cause has not become as pressing as it had once been in the midst of the current development.
...Lebanon is the only country that is unable to take a firm stance on the matter citing humanitarian considerations. The Lebanese government, which contains parties that support the Assad regime, is not expected to make such a daring decision as limiting the number of refugees flocking from Syria, particularly Palestinians because once they create their own security islands inside refugee camps, authorities are never capable of tracking them down. The number of Palestinian refugees will, therefore, increase and we will find ourselves dealing with a new reality, new settlers, and a new burden that will summon up the memory of the Palestinian nightmare of the 1970s.
...the Lebanese people take precedent and that they should be given priority in benefiting from the country’s already-diminishing resources…
Dozens of settlers raided the northern West Bank village Qusra overnight Monday, uprooting more than 190 olive trees, an official told Ma'an.
Several residents of the village, near Nablus, were assaulted, and homes and a tractor were also damaged in the raid, settlement monitoring official Ghassan Daghlas said.
Palestinian security guards chased the settlers, and detained four of them for a short period of time. The Israeli forces quickly intervened, entered the village, and released the settlers, Daghlas said.
A clash broke out Tuesday between residents of the Jewish village of Esh Kodesh in the Binyamin region, Arabs from a nearby Palestinian Authority town, and Border Police officers. The conflict began as Arabs arrived in the area to farm nearby land for the first time. The land has been farmed by Jews from Esh Kodesh for several years, but Arabs recently laid claim to it. The military decided to support the Arab claim, and on Monday informed Esh Kodesh residents that the Arabs would be farming the land for three days beginning Tuesday.Residents refused to accept the decree, and went out into the fields to stop the new arrivals with their bodies. A fight broke out between a Jewish man and an Arab man and Border Police intervened, arresting the Jewish man. Police then sprayed the Esh Kodesh residents at the scene with tear gas, forcing them to disperse. Residents accused police of having fired tear gas at the group even though the group included young children and babies.
..."Today, for the first time in a decade, the Binyamin region commander has allowed Palestinians to come to the edge of [Esh Kodesh]… to watch and gather information under the guise of plowing," a community spokesman said. "The community of Esh Kodesh views this as a serious blow to the security of the town and its residents," he continued. "It pains us that the Netanyahu administration is acting in a manner harmful to settlers' security, with timing that raises suspicion of pre-elections motives."The IDF did not coordinate with the local Jewish community, he continued, and kept its plans secret until the last minute, giving the community no time to file an appeal. A spokesman for the Binyamin Residents' Council said, "This isn't the first case in the region where they take over land. This is preparation for a third Intifada, and the defense establishment should prepare accordingly, and not defend takeovers that will later cost us dearly."
The Prime Minister's Bible Circle renews the tradition that was established by Israel's first Prime Minister, David Ben-Gurion, and was continued by Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said:
"In this week's Torah portion [Exodus 1:1-6:1], it says 'Now there arose a new king over Egypt…'; like then, like today. In Egypt, the regime has been replaced, in Syria the regime is being shaken and this could also happen in the Palestinian Authority areas in Judea and Samaria. Everyone knows that Hamas could take over the Palestinian Authority. It could happen after an agreement, it could happen before an agreement, like it happened in Gaza. Therefore, as opposed to the voices that I have heard recently urging me to run forward, make concessions, [and] withdraw, I think that the diplomatic process must be managed responsibly and sagaciously and not in undue haste. Otherwise a third base for Iranian terrorism will arise here, in the heart of the country. Peace can be achieved only when security is assured.
JERICHO, January 1, 2013 (WAFA) – An estimated 1.3 million people crossed Allenby bridge with Jordan in both directions during 2012, a police report said Tuesday.
It said the number of people leaving the West Bank was 30,000 more than those entering it from the Jordanian side.
At the start of 2012, the Israeli advocacy group Peace Now, which seeks a two-state solution, warned that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was building Jewish settlements on the West Bank at a pace that, if allowed to continue, would carve up the land to a point that would doom the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. Twelve months later, that pace has nearly quintupled. In one week of December alone, Netanyahu’s government pushed forward plans for 11,000 homes beyond the Green Line that marked Israel’s 1967 border — nearly as many settler homes as were approved in the previous 10 years combined. The explosion in activity has made 2012 the Year of the Settlement, inspiring a new level of war-themed rhetoric from settlement opponents.
On arriving in the country your family settled in Ein Siniya (in the West Bank ). Have you ever visited there?
"I visited twice. Once in 1937, my uncle and aunt came from Tel Aviv and we all went together. My father said: "That is where I was born a second time." There was excitement. We toured the village. My second visit was after the Six-Day War. We went with the extended family, including my uncle Yehuda Sharett [the composer], and we saw the place where they had once lived. And no, I would not go there again, except with a visa and passport.
"Ein Siniya is situated between Ramallah and Nablus.
My grandfather, Yaakov Shertok, came to Palestine with the Biluim [pioneers of the First Aliyah]. He was with them at Charles Netter's Mikveh Israel [agricultural school], and after Netter's death went up to Jerusalem with several of his friends and founded a group that dealt in manufacturing decorative objects from olive wood. They sent these abroad, but it did not succeed. He became destitute. He was sick with asthma and lonely, so returned to Russia.
"In Odessa he married my grandmother. They moved to Kherson and proceeded to have five children. In 1906, after the pogroms, they came to Palestine and settled in Ein Siniya. Three families came: two brothers and a sister. They wanted to go into business. They wanted to live in nature. It turned out the village could be leased for two years. The go-between was Eliezer Ben Yehuda. There was an olive press there and they thought they would make a living from that. Nurith Kenaan-Kedar's grandfather was a talented businessman. Aunt Guta termed the Ein Siniya period 'the golden age of our family.'"
..."I consider myself fortunate," she adds, "to have lived through the time when the state was coming into being, in which I played only a thoroughly passive role; that I was a witness to all of that."
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