Israel Says Peace Will Not Come Through UN; The Next Stop for Palestinians Could Be Global Court

Israel's U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor says the only way to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians is through agreements between the parties, not through the United Nations. Speaking Thursday before a General Assembly vote that would grant the Palestinians nonmember state observer status at the U.N., Prosor said the U.N. can't break the 4,000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and land of Israel. He accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of ignoring history. - The Associated Press, November 29, 2012

US urges Palestinians, Israel to resume peace talks

Reuters 
November 30, 2012

Hamas's leader in exile Khaled Meshaal said on Monday Israel must take the first step if it wants a truce in the conflict in Gaza.

UNITED NATIONS - The United States called on the Palestinians and Israelis on Thursday to resume peace talks after the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution that implicitly recognised a Palestinian state.

"The United States calls upon both the parties to resume direct talks, without preconditions, on all the issues that divide them and we pledge that the United States will be there to support the parties vigorously in such efforts," US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said.  

"The United States will continue to urge all parties to avoid any further provocative actions in the region, in New York or elsewhere," she said after voting against the resolution.

Analysis: The next stop for Palestinians could be global courts

Reuters
November 30, 2012

The U.N. General Assembly's overwhelming vote to recognize Palestine as a non-member state offers little prospect for greater clout in world politics but it could make a difference in the international courts.

The formal recognition of statehood, even without full U.N. membership, could be enough for the Palestinians to achieve membership at the Hague-based International Criminal Court (ICC), where member states have the power to refer for investigation alleged war crimes or crimes against humanity.

With its upgraded status at the U.N., the Palestinians may now seek to apply to the ICC for membership and authority to file war-crimes charges against the Israeli government and its officials.

That threat of so-called "lawfare" has already prevented some Israeli civilian and military leaders from traveling abroad out of fear they'd be arrested as war criminals.

"Israelis are afraid of being hauled to The Hague," said Robert Malley, the Middle East program director for the International Crisis Group.

The Palestinians have long planned to use non-membership statehood at the U.N., once obtained, as a way to enter the ICC. One Palestinian negotiator, in talking to the International Crisis Group, called the strategy a "legal or diplomatic intifada" against Israel.

When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the United Nations in September he specifically accused Israel of committing war crimes.Israeli officials have said the country's armed forces strictly adhere to international law and argue the true aim of Palestinians' accusations is to isolate Israel.

Last spring, the ICC's former chief prosecutor turned down a 2009 Palestinian request for prosecution of Israel's actions in the 2008-2009 Gaza war with Hamas, specifically noting that Palestine was only a U.N. observer entity.

In September, the new ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, said a General Assembly vote could make the difference.

"What we have also done is to leave the door open and to say that if this -- if Palestine is able to pass over that (statehood) hurdle, of course, under the General Assembly, then we will revisit what the ICC can do," Bensouda said during a talk in New York.

The Hague-based ICC is the one international venue where individuals can be criminally charged. All 117 countries that ratified the Rome Statute, which created the court, are bound to turn over suspects.

The United States and Israel have not joined the Rome Statute, but that would not prevent the Palestinians from pursing cases under the treaty. ICC arrest warrants and rulings carry geopolitical weight even when they can't be enforced. An indictment of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi last year helped mobilize international support for the rebels who opposed him.

Of course, if the Palestinians enter the legal battlefield, they, too, risk being accused and prosecuted in the venues where they'd try to target Israelis.

There is no guarantee for either side that the ICC prosecutor would follow through on charges. The ICC has procedural obstacles that could head off any prosecution there.

Some commentators argue that, like lawyers in any legal fight, both the Palestinians and Israelis have exaggerated the stakes in what's more of a political and public-relations drama.

"The concern that something dramatic would change is overblown," said Rosa Brooks, a professor of international law at Georgetown University who has also served in policy roles at the State and Defense departments.

And it's important to remember that the ICC is a political organization as much as a legal one -- cases are initiated by member governments and the U.N. Security Council -- so geopolitical considerations can trump a strictly legal case.

Israel says U.N. vote won't hasten Palestinian state

Reuters
November 30, 2012

A U.N. General Assembly vote on Thursday recognizing a Palestinian state will do nothing to make it a reality, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

Israel had fiercely opposed the Palestinian bid to become a "non-member state" at the United Nations, but had been unable to prevent wide international support for the initiative, notably among its European allies.

"This is a meaningless resolution that won't change anything on the ground. No Palestinian state will arise without an arrangement ensuring the security of Israeli citizens," Netanyahu said in a statement issued by his office shortly before the U.N. vote was to be held.

Netanyahu accused the Palestinians of violating agreements with Israel by going to the U.N. unilaterally.

"Israel will act accordingly," Netanyahu said. "The way to peace between Jerusalem and Ramallah is through direct negotiations without preconditions, not unilateral decisions at the U.N."

Peace talks collapsed in 2010 in a dispute over Jewish settlement building on territory Palestinians seek for a state.

The Israeli leader used unusually strong language to denounce a speech to the General Assembly by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas - who had singled out an Israeli offensive in Gaza last week in which at least 170 Palestinians were killed. Six Israelis died in rocket fire from Gaza.

Abbas's comments were "hostile and poisonous", and full of "false propaganda", a statement released by Netanyahu's office said. "These are not the words of a man who wants peace."

Israel had mounted an intensive campaign, supported by the United States, to dissuade European governments from backing the Palestinian move in the 193-nation U.N. General Assembly, long sympathetic to the Palestinians.

The vote took place on a date burned into collective memory - the Assembly voted on November 29, 1947 for Resolution 181 to partition British-ruled Palestine into two states, one Arab, one Jewish. Arab rulers rejected it and, after bitter fighting, Israel alone was recognized as a state six months later.

"No matter how many hands are raised against us," Netanyahu said during a visit to a museum in Jerusalem ahead of the U.N. vote, "there is no power on earth that will cause me to compromise on Israel's security."

Israel, which has occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967, says a Palestinian state must be the product of direct negotiations and a peace deal that imposes security measures and charts borders that pose no danger to Israelis.

PUNITIVE MEASURES?

Netanyahu, while hinting Israel may seek to retaliate, made no specific mention of punitive measures, in a shift in tone after eight days of fighting around the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu is running for re-election in a January 22 national ballot and has been accused by critics of harming Israel's international standing through his Palestinian policies.

Israeli officials said Israel will wait and see what the Palestinians do after the vote, which will allow them access to the International Criminal Court where they could seek action against Israel for alleged war crimes.

The Palestinians have signaled they are no hurry to join the ICC, and pledged in their draft resolution to relaunch the peace process immediately after the vote. Recognition by the General Assembly falls short of the legal weight of a similar move by the U.N. Security Council. A U.S. veto on that body ensures that Palestinians have little immediate prospect there.

Just two weeks ago, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the U.N. Assembly's approval of the Palestinian resolution would "elicit an extreme response from us".

Another member of Netanyahu's right-wing cabinet, Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, said three years ago that Israeli counter-measures could include annexing some of the 120 settlements in the West Bank.

But in the past week, Israeli officials have retreated from such talk, retrenching after European countries, which had been largely supportive of Israel's November 14-21 Gaza offensive, started showing their backing for Abbas's U.N. move.

Israel is now threatening only one measure: the withholding of $200 million from the monthly transfers of duties that Israel collects on the Palestinian Authority's behalf. It says it will cover the PA's debt to the Israel Electric Corporation.

The deduction, equal to two months' worth of Palestinian tax receipts, would be painful for Abbas's cash-strapped government in Ramallah. But it would stop short of a formal suspension of transfers vital to the economy in the occupied West Bank.

Israel has previously frozen payments to the PA during times of heightened security and diplomatic tensions, provoking strong international criticism, such as when the U.N. cultural body UNESCO granted the Palestinians full membership a year ago.

UN Vote for Palestine is Far More Than Symbolic - It Could Give Palestinians Leverage in Future Border Talks; Netanyahu Rejects the 1967 Borders

Palestinians Hope to Gain Leverage from UN Bid

The Associated Press
November 28, 2012

The expected U.N. vote Thursday to recognize a state of Palestine will be far more than symbolic — it could give the Palestinians leverage in future border talks with Israel and open the way for possible war crimes charges against the Jewish state.

The Palestinians want the 193-member General Assembly to accept "Palestine," on the lands Israel occupied in 1967, as a non-member observer state. They anticipate broad support.

For Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the U.N. bid is a last-ditch attempt to stay relevant as a leader after years of failed peace talks with Israel, at a time when his Islamic militant Hamas rivals are gaining ground.

The U.S. and Israel have tried to block the quest for U.N. recognition of Palestine, saying it's an attempt to bypass Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that broke down four years ago.

The U.S. deputy secretary of state, William Burns, met with Abbas in New York on Wednesday, asking Abbas again to drop the idea and promising that President Barack Obama would re-engage as a mediator in 2013, said Abbas aide Saeb Erekat. Abbas told Burns it was too late.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said U.N. recognition of an independent Palestine won't help to reach a lasting two-state peace agreement and stressed that the "path to a two-state solution that fulfills the aspirations of the Palestinian people is through Jerusalem and Ramallah, not New York."

Israel, meanwhile, appeared to back away from threats of drastic measures if the Palestinians get U.N. approval, with officials suggesting the government would take steps only if the Palestinians use their new status to act against Israel.

The Palestinians say they need U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967, to be able to resume negotiations with Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's predecessors accepted the 1967 lines as a basis for border talks, with modifications to be negotiated, including land swaps that would enable Israel to annex some of the largest Jewish settlements. Those talks did not produce a deal, and the sides remained apart on other key issues.

Netanyahu rejects the 1967 lines as starting point while pressing ahead with settlement construction, leaving Abbas little incentive to resume negotiations. Israel goes to elections in January, and polls indicate Netanyahu has a strong chance of winning.

Israel argues that Abbas is trying to dictate the outcome of border talks by going to the U.N., though the recognition request presented to the world body calls for a quick resumption of negotiations on all core issues of the conflict, including borders.

It's not clear if negotiations could resume even if Obama, freed from the constraints of his re-election campaign, can turn his attention to the Mideast conflict.

Abbas aides have given conflicting accounts of whether Abbas, once armed with global backing for the 1967 borders, will return to negotiations without an Israeli settlement freeze. About half a million Israelis have settled on war-won land.

A construction stop is unlikely, even more so after hawks in Netanyahu's Likud Party scored major gains in primaries this week.

Israel has said it is willing to resume talks without preconditions.

Government spokesman Mark Regev affirmed the position on Wednesday. Regev said that by going to the U.N., the Palestinians violate "both the spirit and the word of signed agreements to solve issues through negotiations."

Palestinian officials countered that their historic U.N. bid is meant to salvage a peace deal they say is being sabotaged by Israeli settlement expansion. 

"It is a last-ditch effort because we believe the two-state solution is in jeopardy as a result of these actions," Hanan Ashrawi, a senior Palestinian official, told reporters in Ramallah on Wednesday.

The Palestinians expect that at least two-thirds of the 193 member states in the General Assembly will support them on Thursday, including a number of European countries, among them France, Spain, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland.

Those opposed or abstaining include the U.S., Israel, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia. Ashrawi urged the U.S. to at least abstain, saying that voting no "would be seen as being really pathetic by the rest of the world" and hurt American interests in the Middle East.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that "in the long term, this region can only find peace through negotiations to resolve the Middle East conflict," but she did not say whether her country would abstain or vote against.

"Nothing will really be gained either by unilateral Palestinian initiatives at the United Nations which aim for recognition nor by Israel's continued building of settlements," she said.

The vote comes at an important time domestically for Abbas. His Hamas rivals, who control Gaza, have gained popularity after holding their own during an Israeli offensive there earlier this month, aimed at stopping frequent Gaza rocket fire on Israel.

During the Gaza offensive, Abbas was sidelined in his compound in the West Bank, underscoring international concerns that the deadlock in peace efforts is weakening Palestinian pragmatists. Hamas, which seized Gaza from Abbas in 2007, argues that negotiations with Israel are a waste of time, but Hamas leaders have come out in support of the U.N. bid in recent days.

Other than creating leverage in negotiations, U.N. recognition would also allow the Palestinians to seek membership in U.N. agencies and international bodies, for example making them eligible for loans from the International Monetary Fund.

Perhaps most significantly, it could open the door to a new attempt to join the International Criminal Court and seek an investigation into alleged war crimes by Israel in the occupied territories.

Abbas' self-rule government, the Palestinian Authority, unilaterally recognized the court's jurisdiction in 2009 and pressed prosecutors to open an investigation into Israel's previous Gaza offensive. Prosecutors noted at the time that the court's founding treaty, the Rome Statute, is only open to states. Israel has not signed the statute and does not recognize the court's jurisdiction.

Ashrawi on Wednesday avoided explicit threats to take Israel to court, but suggested it's an option. 

"If Israel refrains from settlement activities ... there is no immediate pressing need to go," she said, adding that this could change if "Israel persists in its violations."

Israel would respond "forcefully" if the Palestinians try to pursue war crimes charges against Israel at the ICC, said an Israeli government official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss policy considerations.

If the Palestinians use their upgraded international status "as a tool to confront Israel in the international arena, there will be a response," he said.

Until then, he said, Israel will be bound by its obligations to the Palestinians under existing peace agreements, but won't necessarily go beyond them. Earlier there was talk of Israel retaliating by canceling partial peace accords dating back to the 1990s.

In the West Bank, the view of Abbas' quest for recognition was mixed. Many were bitter, saying they've heard too many promises that statehood is near and don't believe a nod from the U.N. will make a difference.

"Nothing will come of it," said Arwa Abu Helo, a 23-year-old student in Ramallah. "It's just a way of misleading the public."

Yousef Mohammed, a bank teller, said Abbas was trying to "gain the spotlight after Hamas said it won in Gaza."

Hurriyeh Abdel Karim, 65, said she was willing to give Abbas a chance. "If he succeeds, maybe our life improves," she said.

Palestinians Win Implicit U.N. Recognition of Sovereign State

U.N. General Assembly Votes to Grant Palestine 'Non-member State' U.N. Observer Status

November 29, 2012

Reuters - The 193-nation U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly approved a resolution today to upgrade the Palestinian Authority's observer status at the United Nations from "entity" to "non-member state," implicitly recognizing a Palestinian state. There were 138 votes in favor, nine against and 41 abstentions.

UN vote is a boost to Palestinian statehood hopes

November 29, 2012

AP - The expected admission of Palestine as a nonmember state in the United Nations is far more than a symbolic vote. For the Palestinians, the move gives them an important boost of international legitimacy in their quest for independence. For Israel and its key ally, the United States, it is a diplomatic setback with potentially grave implications.

Here is a look at how key players are affected by the vote on November 29th:

PALESTINIANS:

The vote benefits the Palestinians on many levels. Domestically, it gives embattled President Mahmoud Abbas a boost in his rivalry with the Hamas militant group. As peace efforts have flagged, Abbas has steadily lost popularity with the Palestinian public, while Hamas is riding high after battling Israel during an eight-day flare-up in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip this month.

Internationally, it puts Abbas and the Palestinian agenda back at center stage. The vote grants Abbas an overwhelming international endorsement for his key position: establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war. With Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu opposed to a pullback to the 1967 lines, this should strengthen Abbas' hand if peace talks resume.

It also opens the door to the Palestinians joining U.N. agencies, most critically the International Criminal Court, where they could use their newfound status to press for war crimes charges against Israel for military operations and construction of Jewish settlements on occupied territories. On the downside, the vote does not change the situation on the ground — a point Israelis have repeatedly stressed in an effort to blunt any appearance of defeat.

ISRAEL:

The vote amounts to a massive international show of displeasure with Israel, particularly over its continued construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. While Israel is used to lopsided U.N. resolutions against it, even key allies are expected to abandon it this time around. Germany, Italy, France and Australia are among the Israeli allies expected to abstain or vote with the Palestinians.

Moving forward, the resolution could weaken Israeli claims to keeping parts of the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the section of the holy city claimed by both sides for their capitals. After four years of deadlock in peace efforts, the world seems to be laying the blame on Israel. If opinion polls are correct and Netanyahu, backed by hard-line, pro-settler allies, cruises to victory in upcoming parliamentary elections, he could find himself facing stiff international pressure to make concessions to get peace talks back on track.

US:

The expected vote appears to reflect the world's frustration over President Barack Obama's failure to get Israel and the Palestinians to start talking. During his first term, Obama initially spoke out strongly against Israeli settlements and even coaxed Netanyahu into a partial freeze on settlement construction. But after that freeze expired, Netanyahu rejected Obama's calls to extend it and Obama dropped the matter.

The mixed messages ended up alienating both Israel and the Palestinians, leaving peace efforts in tatters. After failing to persuade the Palestinians to abandon their push at the U.N., Obama will likely face international pressure to make another diplomatic push in the region.

HAMAS:

The Islamic militant group, which rules the Gaza Strip, has been emboldened by the performance of its forces in fighting against Israel this month and its growing acceptance among the new Islamist rulers rising in the fast-changing Middle East. Since capturing Gaza from Abbas in 2007, both sides have largely resisted attempts to reconcile.

Thursday's vote is an important reminder that Abbas is still the main address for the international community, and could put pressure on Hamas to reconcile. Perhaps sensing this changing constellation, Hamas lined up behind Abbas' U.N. bid, after earlier criticizing it.

Abbas urges U.N. to issue "birth certificate" for Palestine

November 29, 2012

Reuters - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday urged the U.N. General Assembly to grant de facto recognition to a sovereign state of Palestine by upgrading the U.N. observer status of the Palestinian Authority from "entity" to "non-member state."

"Sixty-five years ago on this day, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 181, which partitioned the land of historic Palestine into two states and became the birth certificate for Israel," Abbas told the 193-nation assembly after receiving a standing ovation.

"The General Assembly is called upon today to issue a birth certificate of the reality of the State of Palestine," he said.

The assembly is expected to approve a resolution shortly that implicitly recognizes Palestinian statehood, despite threats by the United States and Israel to punish the Palestinians by withholding funds for the West Bank government.

The move would lift the Palestinian Authority's U.N. observer status from "entity" to "non-member state," like the Vatican. It is expected to pass easily in the 193-nation General Assembly. At least 15 European states plan to vote for it.

Israel, the United States and a handful of other members are set to vote against what they see as a largely symbolic and counterproductive move by the Palestinians, which takes place on the anniversary of the assembly's adoption of resolution 181 on the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is in New York, but did not address the assembly. Israeli U.N. Ambassador Ron Prosor spoke after Abbas, reiterating the Jewish state's desire for peace with Palestinians, but opposing the resolution.

"It doesn't enhance peace," Prosor said ahead of the vote on the resolution. "It pushes it backwards."

"No decision by the U.N. can break the 4,000-year-old bond between the people of Israel and the land of Israel," he said.

Granting Palestinians the title of "non-member observer state" falls short of full U.N. membership - something the Palestinians failed to achieve last year. But it would allow them access to the International Criminal Court (ICC) and other international bodies, should they choose to join them.

"The ICC issue is what the Israelis are really worried about," a U.N. official said on condition of anonymity. "They know this whole process isn't really symbolic, except for that."

ISRAEL TONES DOWN THREATS

Abbas has been leading the campaign to win support for the resolution, which follows an eight-day conflict this month between Israel and Islamists in the Gaza Strip, who are pledged to Israel's destruction and oppose a negotiated peace.

The U.S. State Department made a last-ditch effort to get Abbas to reconsider, but the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, refused to turn back.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeated to reporters in Washington on Wednesday the U.S. view that "the path to a two-state solution that fulfills the aspirations of the Palestinian people is through Jerusalem and Ramallah, not New York."

The U.S. State Department has repeatedly warned that the U.N. status change could lead to a reduction of U.S. economic support for the Palestinians. The Israelis have also warned they might take significant deductions out of monthly transfers of duties that Israel collects on the Palestinians' behalf.

Despite its fierce opposition, Israel seems concerned not to find itself diplomatically isolated. It has recently toned down threats of retaliation in the face of wide international support for the initiative, notably among its European allies.

But U.N. diplomats say Israel's reaction might not be so measured if the Palestinians seek ICC action against Israel on charges of war crimes, crimes against humanity or other crimes the court would have jurisdiction over.

The European Union, a key donor for the Palestinians, has made clear it will not curtail aid after Thursday's vote.

Flag-waving Palestinians thronged the squares of the West Bank and Gaza Strip before Thursday's vote. In a rare show of unity, Abbas's Islamist rivals, Hamas, who have ruled Gaza since a brief civil war in 2007, let backers of the president's Fatah movement hold demonstrations.

Peace talks have been stalled for two years, mainly over Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which have expanded despite being deemed illegal by most of the world. There are 4.3 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.

In the draft resolution, the Palestinians have pledged to relaunch the peace process immediately following the U.N. vote.

With strong support from the developing world that makes up the majority of U.N. members, it is virtually assured of securing more than the requisite simple majority. Palestinian officials hope for more than 130 yes votes.

Abbas has focused on securing as many votes as possible from Europe, and his efforts appear to have paid off.

Austria, Denmark, Norway, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland all pledged to support the resolution. Britain said it was prepared to vote yes, but only if the Palestinians fulfilled certain conditions.

The fiercely pro-Israel Czech Republic was planning to vote against the move, dashing European hopes of avoiding any no votes that would create a three-way split on the continent into supporters, abstainers and opponents.

It was unclear whether some of the many undecided Europeans would join the Czechs. Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Estonia and Lithuania plan to abstain.

Palestinians are Certain to Win U.N. Recognition as a State

Palestinians certain to win recognition as a state

The Associated Press
November 29, 2012

The Palestinians are certain to win U.N. recognition as a state Thursday but success could exact a high price: Israel and the United States warn it could delay hopes of achieving an independent Palestinian state through peace talks with Israel.

The United States, Israel's closest ally, mounted an aggressive campaign to head off the General Assembly vote. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defiantly declared Thursday that the Palestinians would have to back down from long-held positions if they ever hope to gain independence.

Ahead of Thursday's vote, thousands of Palestinians from rival factions celebrated in the streets of the West Bank. Although the initiative will not immediately bring about independence, the Palestinians view it as a historic step in their quest for global recognition.

In a last-ditch move Wednesday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns made a personal appeal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas promising that President Barack Obama would re-engage as a mediator in 2013 if Abbas abandoned the effort to seek statehood. The Palestinian leader refused, said Abbas aide Saeb Erekat.

With most of the 193 General Assembly member states sympathetic to the Palestinians, the vote is certain to succeed. Several key countries, including France, have recently announced they would support the move to elevate the Palestinians from the status of U.N. observer to nonmember observer state. However, a country's vote in favor of the status change does not automatically imply its individual recognition of a Palestine state, something that must be done bilaterally.

The Palestinians say they need U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, the lands Israel captured in 1967, to be able to resume negotiations with Israel. They say global recognition of the 1967 lines as the borders of Palestine is meant to salvage a peace deal, not sabotage it, as Israel claims.

The non-member observer state status could also open the way for possible war crimes charges against the Jewish state at the International Criminal Court.

Netanyahu warned the Palestinians Thursday that they would not win their hoped-for state until they recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland, declare an end to their conflict with the Jewish state and agree to security arrangements that protect Israel.

"The resolution in the U.N. today won't change anything on the ground," Netanyahu declared. "It won't advance the establishment of a Palestinian state, but rather, put it further off."

While Israel argues that Abbas is trying to dictate the outcome of border talks by going to the U.N., the recognition request presented to the world body in fact calls for a quick resumption of negotiations on all core issues of the conflict, including borders.

Netanyahu's predecessors accepted the 1967 lines as a basis for border talks. Netanyahu has rejected the idea, while pressing ahead with Jewish settlement building on war-won land, giving Abbas little incentive to negotiate.

For Abbas, the U.N. bid is crucial if he wants to maintain his leadership and relevance, especially following the recent conflict between his Hamas rivals in Gaza and Israel. The conflict saw the Islamic militant group claim victory and raise its standing in the Arab world, while Abbas' Fatah movement was sidelined and marginalized.

In a departure from previous opposition, the Hamas militant group, which rules the Gaza Strip, said it wouldn't interfere with the U.N. bid, and its supporters joined some of the celebrations Thursday.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, some in a crowd of several thousand raised green Hamas flags, while in the city of Ramallah, senior figures of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, two militant groups normally opposed to Abbas, addressed the crowd.

"It's the right step in the right direction," Nasser al-Shaer, a former deputy prime minister from Hamas, said of the U.N. bid.

The Palestinians chose the "International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People" for the vote. Before it takes place, there will be a morning of speeches by supporters focusing on the rights of the Palestinians. Abbas is scheduled to speak at that meeting, and again in the afternoon when he will present the case for Palestinian statehood in the General Assembly.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Wednesday that the U.N. vote will not fulfill the goal of independent Palestinian and Israeli states living side by side in peace, which the U.S. strongly supports because that requires direct negotiations.

"We need an environment conducive to that," she told reporters in Washington. "And we've urged both parties to refrain from actions that might in any way make a return to meaningful negotiations that focus on getting to a resolution more difficult."

The U.S. Congress has threatened financial sanctions if the Palestinians improve their status at the United Nations.

Ahead of the vote, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch filed an amendment to a defense bill Wednesday that would eliminate funding for the United Nations if the General Assembly changes Palestine's status.

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said that by going to the U.N., the Palestinians violate "both the spirit and the word of signed agreements to solve issues through negotiations," which broke down four years ago.

But Israeli officials appeared to back away from threats of drastic measures if the Palestinians get U.N. approval, with officials suggesting the government would take steps only if the Palestinians use their new status to act against Israel.

Regev, meanwhile, affirmed that Israel is willing to resume talks without preconditions.

U.N. diplomats said they will be listening closely to Abbas' speech to the General Assembly on Thursday afternoon before the vote to see if he makes an offer of fresh negotiations with no strings, which could lead to new talks. The Palestinians have been demanding a freeze on Israeli settlements as a precondition.

As a sign of the importance Israel attaches to the vote, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman flew to New York and was scheduled to meet Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon before the vote.

Unlike the Security Council, there are no vetoes in the General Assembly and the resolution to raise the Palestinian status from an observer to a nonmember observer state only requires a majority vote for approval. To date, 132 countries — over two-thirds of the U.N. member states — have recognized the state of Palestine.

The Palestinians have been courting Western nations, especially the Europeans, seen as critical to enhancing their international standing. A number have announced they will vote "yes" including France, Italy, Spain, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland. Those opposed or abstaining include the U.S., Israel, Germany, Canada, the Netherlands and Australia.

The Palestinians turned to the General Assembly after the United States announced it would veto their bid last fall for full U.N. membership until there is a peace deal with Israel.

Following last year's move by the Palestinians to join the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO, the U.S. withheld funds from the organization, which amount to 22 percent of its budget. The U.S. also withheld money from the Palestinians.

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Palestine's Bid for Statehood Status Would Find Majority Support in the United Nations

Of all the obstacles blocking the way to peace between the Palestinians and Israelis, the status of Jerusalem is arguably the most intractable. For Israelis, all of the city, including East Jerusalem and its West Bank suburbs captured in 1967, is their "eternal and indivisible" capital, the home the Jews dreamed of through 2,000 years of exile, and the site of their revered Western Wall. For Palestinians, there can be no peace until Israel cedes them control over East Jerusalem, a symbol of their national struggle and home to Islam's third holiest site, al-Aqsa mosque and the glittering Dome of the Rock.

In the absence of a deal, or even meaningful negotiations, Israel has been busy developing the holy city, building impressive, stone-clad neighbourhoods across the annexed land in defiance of constant international criticism. Israeli officials are also pushing to expand the nearby settlements of Gilo and Har Homa, thereby building a broad, concrete crescent just north of the hilltop town of Bethlehem.

Some 35 percent of Palestinian economic activity is centered on a line that stretches from Bethlehem through East Jerusalem and on to Ramallah, the West Bank's administrative centre, north of Jerusalem. Critics say the southern settlements will snap this link.

"It is like putting a ribbon around a finger and pulling tighter and tighter until all the blood is cut off," said Ashraf Khatib, a Palestinian activist from East Jerusalem.

"But it is not just in the south. The Israelis are creating facts on the ground across the eastern city," he added.

A proud exponent of that policy is Aryeh King, the founder of the Israeli Land Fund whose stated mission is to "reclaim the land of Israel for the people of Israel".

"We are locating property in all of East Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, every piece of land is important. All the plots put together can change the reality," said King."The reality we don't want to see happen is one that we think would lead to catastrophe - the division of the city."

Jews, from Biblical kings such as David and Solomon to present day Israelis, see Jerusalem as the home of their religion and as a national capital fit for their people. Most Israelis dismiss accusations their presence in East Jerusalem is illegal and bridle at the term "settlement" to describe what they refer to as Jewish neighbourhoods.[Source]

Israel Sees UN Majority for Palestine Status Upgrade

Reuters
August 5, 2012

The Palestinians' bid to upgrade their status at the United Nations would find majority support there but would not bring them closer to statehood and peace with Israel, Israel's U.N. envoy said on Sunday.

Citing stalled peacemaking and Israeli settlement-building on occupied West Bank land where they seek sovereign independence, the Palestinians said on Saturday they would renew a bid to win U.N. recognition as a state.

Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, accused the Palestinians of trying to recapture international attention that has shifted to crises in Iran, Egypt and Syria.

"There is an attempt (by the Palestinians) to make unilateral moves in order to internationalize the conflict," Prosor told Israel Radio in a telephone interview.

"But beyond what are perhaps the feelings of frustration, it is important to remember that the path to peace really is through the negotiating table with Israel."

The Palestinians want to found a state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, which Israel captured in the 1967 war. Though Israel quit Gaza in 2005, it claims East Jerusalem as its capital - a move not recognized abroad - and says it would keep swathes of West Bank settlements under any peace deal. The United Nations deems the settlements illegal.

Full U.N. membership for Palestine would require approval by the Security Council, where Israel's ally, the United States, would likely wield its veto given its demand the Palestinians set up their state in agreement with the Jewish state.

So the Palestinians, in what they describe as an interim move, plan to ask the U.N. General Assembly next month to accord them non-member observer status, which would allow them to join a number of U.N. agencies and the International Criminal Court.

The Palestinians are currently a U.N. observer "entity" with no voting rights. A similar statehood upgrade drive last year proved short-lived amid financial sanctions and diplomatic counter-lobbying by Israel and the United States.

Prosor said the Palestinians have a "guaranteed majority" in the 193-member General Assembly - enough to bestow non-member observer status, which the envoy predicted would be used "to hurt us (Israel)" in various international forums.

Israel has accused Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of going to the United Nations to evade negotiations that would entail both territorial compromise and that he reassert control over Gaza, which he lost in a 2007 civil war to Hamas Islamists hostile to the Jewish state.

"In essence, Abu Mazen (Abbas) today has zero control in Gaza," Prosor said in separate remarks to Israel's Army Radio, adding that the Palestinians' U.N. campaign "will change nothing on the ground".

Palestinians have made a freeze on Israeli settlement in the West Bank and East Jerusalem a condition for returning to peace talks. Israel cites biblical and historical ties to the areas and says the settlement issue should be decided in negotiations.

Related:

• The Importance of Jerusalem and the Third Temple Being Built for Anti-christ
• Five Steps of the Plan to Produce Antichrist
• Obama Favors Arab Sovereignty Over the Temple Mount
• After the Third World War, the New Temple Will Be Rebuilt for Antichrist, Not Jesus Christ
• Fervent Masonic Desire to Rebuild Solomon's Temple
• Zionism vs. Peace in the Middle East
• The Age to Come: 'The Kingdom Age' vs. 'The Eternal Age'
• In the Age to Come, We Shall Have Eternal Life
• The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
• The Battle Over the Temple Mount
• Fatah-Hamas Pact and the Third Intifada
• The Fourth and Final Kingdom
• A Fourth and Final Global Empire Will Arise Out of Chaos, Just as the Third Reich Arose from Chaos for Hitler
• Barren National Israel Has Been Replaced By Fruitful Spiritual Israel

Palestinians Sticking to January 26, 2012, Deadline in Talks with Israel

Palestinians Insist on Israel Talks Deadline

The Associated Press
January 13, 2012

Palestinian negotiators are sticking to an end of January deadline in talks with Israel despite U.S. calls for flexibility, a Palestinian official said Friday.

The Palestinians say they want to hold Israel to a schedule that might pressure it to come forward with proposals, but the tight time frame could prevent the nascent talks from getting off the ground.

Palestinian and Israeli negotiators met last week for the first time in more than a year, kicking off low-level contacts aimed at reviving formal peace negotiations.

Disagreements have already emerged, including the deadline for progress in the initial discussions.

Nabil Abu Rdeneh, an aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Friday that Palestinians will consider halting the talks if no progress is reached by Jan. 26.

"The 26th of January is still a crossroads," he said.

That date was set in October by the Quartet of Mideast negotiators — the U.S., U.N., E.U. and Russia — calling for proposals from each side on the issues of territory and security within three months.

But Israeli officials say the three-month period began only with the first meeting of the negotiators Jan. 3 in Amman, Jordan.

The Palestinians say they won't continue talks unless Israel stops building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in the 1967 war from Jordan and territory the Palestinians envision as part of their future state.

Israel maintains that the issue of settlements will be solved once there are agreed-upon borders and has repeatedly called on the Palestinians to resume talks in order to reach an agreement

Both sides agree that minor land swaps will be necessary for a deal to be made.

In a bid to soften the Palestinian stance over the date, the State Department said Thursday it did not want the deadline to be final.

"Although this Jan. 26 date has been out there, we do not want to see it be a rigid sort of straitjacket which chills the atmosphere," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

Abbas said Thursday that Israel had so far not made any new proposals at the meetings. Israel, meanwhile, has said the Palestinian proposals were a "recycling" of long-standing positions that Israel opposes.

The talks are set to resume Saturday in Jordan.

Israel's Unsustainable Politics of Exclusion in Jerusalem

Politics and Religion: Israel's Unsustainable Politics of Exclusion in Jerusalem

By Nicola Nasser, Global Research
December 31, 2011

While the history of the world is moving decisively toward a culture of inclusion, diversity and pluralism, Israeli politics seems to challenge history by moving in the opposite direction of exclusion and unilateral self - righteous monopoly of geography, demography, history, archeology and culture, especially in Jerusalem, where Israelis are desperately trying to establish a “Jewish” capital for Israel and “the Jewish people” worldwide, excluding centuries old presence of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Christian deep-rooted existence and heritage, thus sowing the seeds of imminent conflict and foreseeable war by strangling a city that has historically been of diversified and pluralistic character and a flashpoint for human misery whenever exclusion becomes the rule of the day.

Israeli politics is not moving against history only, but is challenging world politics as well. Although the first Knesset of the newly born “state of Israel” voted on December 13, 1949 to move the seat of government from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and despite Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem on June 27, 1967, which the UN Security Council declared “null and void,” both unilateral declarations have never been accepted and recognized by the international community, not even by the U.S., Israel’s strategic guardian.

More recently, while millions of Christians were celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem, on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem, and the birth of Christianity in Jerusalem, the scene of Jesus’ resurrection following his death by crucifixion, which is the cornerstone of Christian faith, the Knesset was, on Christmas day, scheduled to consider a draft law that would declare Jerusalem “the capital of the Jewish people” and the capital of Israel at the same time.

The fact that the ruling elite in Tel Aviv has made a prior recognition of Israel as a “Jewish” state a precondition for making peace implicitly and consequently applies to Christians as well, otherwise how could any observer interpret the still simmering crisis with the Vatican over the holy places in Jerusalem. The “Fundamental Agreement” signed by both sides on December 30, 1993, as well as an agreement on the recognition of the civil effects of ecclesiastical legal personality, signed on November 10, 1997, have yet to be ratified by Israel's Knesset. Some in the Israeli media has been recently accusing the Vatican of seeking to hold control of “Jewish holy sites” in Jerusalem .

The Vatican in the past supported making Jerusalem a corpus separatum, an international city in accordance with the UN Resolution 181 of 1947; Israel’s non-compliance delayed Vatican’s formal recognition of Israel until 1993.

More recently, the Vatican renewed calls for an internal agreement to protect the holy places in Jerusalem. Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, head of the Vatican ’s Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, and Vatican ’s former foreign minister, declared

“There will not be peace if the question of the holy sites is not adequately resolved. The part of Jerusalem within the walls – with the holy sites of the three religions – is humanity’s heritage. The sacred and unique character of the area must be safeguarded and it can only be done with a special, internationally-guaranteed statute.”

The only perceived threat to the holy places against which the Vatican is seeking protection comes from the Israeli politics of exclusion. Rabbi David Rosen, member of the Israeli delegation to the negotiations with the Vatican told the Israeli daily Haaretz on January 17, 2010 that Israel “has not been faithful to the pacts of 1993.”

The precondition of recognizing Israel as a “Jewish state” is rejected by the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Israel’s partner in peace accords, and its self-ruled Palestinian Authority, the 22-member League of Arab States and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC); in a statement he issued on December 26, 2011, the Secretary-General of the 57-member states of the OIC, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, condemned the Israeli draft law that declares Jerusalem “the capital of Israel and the Jewish people” as “a direct assault on the Palestinian people and their inalienable and clear rights” and “a flagrant violation of international law and international legitimacy resolutions,” which affirm that Jerusalem is part of the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967. PLO representatives considered the Israeli draft law a “declaration of war” and a recipe for igniting a religious conflict. The Islamic – Christian Commission in Support of Jerusalem , in a statement, said if the Israeli draft law is passed it would make Jerusalem “for Judaism and Jews only, which means there would be no freedom of worship in the land of worship.”

Israeli attorney and founder of Terrestrial Jerusalem, a Jerusalem-based NGO, Daniel Seidemann, wrote on November 30, 2011:

“Cumulatively, Israeli policies in East Jerusalem today threaten to transform the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from a bitter national conflict that can be resolved by means of territorial compromise, into the potential for a bloody, unsolvable religious war. This threat derives from Israel 's dogged pursuit of the settlers' vision of an exclusionary Jewish Jerusalem.”

“… Today, Israel must choose between two visions of Jerusalem . On the one hand, it can continue pursuing an exclusive, largely fictitious rule over an already divided, bi-national city -- exposing Israel to virtually universal censure and imperiling the two-state solution. On the other hand, it can pursue policies that can make Israeli Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, a thriving national capital, recognized by all, existing side-by-side with but politically divided from the Palestinian capital in Jerusalem , al Quds. To those who cherish Israel and understand what is truly at stake, the choice is clear,” Seidemann concluded.

What is much more important than excluding “a conflict that can be resolved by means of territorial compromise,” is that the Israeli politics of exclusion in Jerusalem, which could be summarized by Judaization of the holy city, is a roadmap to de-Arabizing, de-Islamizing, de-Christianizing, de-historizing and de-humanizing Jerusalem, the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, and this could not be anything but a roadmap to hell.

Absolutely this is unsustainable Israeli politics.

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. * nassernicola@ymail.com

Palestine Seeks EU Backing for UN Membership; Israel Displaces Record Number of Palestinians; Israeli Airstrike Kills 4 in Gaza, Including Child; Jewish Extremists Desecrate Old Jerusalem Mosque

Abbas Seeks EU Backing for U.N. Membership

The Daily Star
December 15, 2011

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas urged the European Union Wednesday to support the Palestinian bid for full U.N. membership, as the bloc’s top diplomat called for the resumption of direct talks with Israel.

“Yesterday we raised the flag of Palestine in front of UNESCO and I thanked the president [Herman Van Rompuy] for their support for this endeavor,” Abbas said after meeting the EU president. “I hope the day will come when we will raise the flag of Palestine at the U.N. and with the support of the European Union.”

The EU is split on the issue, however. At a vote concerning raising the flag at the U.N.’s education, science and culture agency, 11 EU nations voted in favor – Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovenia and Spain.

Eleven others abstained – Britain, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovakia – and five voted against. They were the Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Meanwhile, the EU’s chief diplomat Catherine Ashton said after a meeting with Abbas that the bloc’s “overarching objective” was “the creation of an independent, democratic, contiguous and viable Palestinian state, living side by side with Israel in peace and security.”

Israel to Release Millions in Withheld Palestinian Tax Money

The Daily Star
December 1, 2011

Israel announced Wednesday it was releasing millions of dollars in tax revenues it owes the Palestinians, lifting a month-old freeze that had threatened to undermine the pro-Western Palestinian Authority.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had come under international pressure to hand over the funds, about $100 million a month that includes import duties Israel collects on behalf of the West Bank-based authority.

The money is vital for paying civil servants employed by the Palestinian government in the occupied West Bank, where it exercises limited self-rule under interim peace deals with Israel.

In a punitive measure, Israel began withholding the funds on Nov. 1, a day after the Palestinians won membership in the U.N. cultural agency UNESCO as part of their unilateral, and slow-moving, drive for U.N. statehood recognition.

Israel has called on the Palestinians to abandon that bid and return to peace talks that collapsed in September 2010 over Israeli settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem which they say will deny them a viable state.

An Israeli government official said tax payments for October and November would be handed over to the Palestinian Authority, but Netanyahu made clear that he reserved the option to halt them again.

“Netanyahu approved the resumption of tax revenue transfers, at this stage, to the Palestinian Authority,” said a statement issued by the prime minister’s office after his inner Cabinet gave its backing.

The statement cited what it described as a suspension of “unilateral moves” by the Palestinian Authority, a reference to any further bids for status upgrades in U.N. bodies.

“If the Palestinian Authority takes unilateral steps again, the transfer of funds will be reconsidered,” it said.

Commenting on the decision to transfer the funds, Saleh Rafat, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s executive committee, said: “This is first of all Palestinian money ... Israel should have retracted this decision weeks ago.”

Last week, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said the Palestinian Authority was “fast approaching the point of being completely incapacitated” and would not be able to pay about 150,000 workers this month if Israel did not release the money.

Israel Displaces Record Number of Palestinians

The Daily Star
December 14, 2011

Israel has stepped up its demolitions of Palestinian property in occupied land this year, razing double the number of homes and water wells from 2010, human rights groups said Tuesday.

The statement endorsed by 20 organizations including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch further said Jewish settler violence against Palestinians had risen in 2011 and that Israel had sped up its expansion of settler enclaves.

They urged members of the Middle East peacemaking “Quartet” – the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia – to put pressure on Israel to “reverse its settlement policies and freeze all demolitions that violate international law.”

Quartet representatives were expected in the region again Wednesday for yet another effort to revive peace talks frozen since last year over settlement construction.

The statement, citing U.N. figures, said Israel had destroyed more than 500 Palestinian homes, wells and other structures in 2011, displacing more than 1,000 people, the greatest number in a single year since 2005.

Settler assaults on Palestinians, including deliberate damage to some privately owned 10,000 olive trees, have also risen to their worst level since 2005, with a 50 percent increase over 2010, and more than a 160 percent increase over 2009, the U.N. figures show.

The statement said that settler “perpetrators act with virtual impunity,” with more than 90 percent of complaints filed with police shut without indictment between 2005 and 2010.

Israel has approved plans to build 4,000 more settlement homes in the past year for East Jerusalem, the greatest number since 2006, the statement added, quoting figures supplied by the Israeli watchdog group Peace Now.

Guy Inbar, a spokesman for the Israel’s Defense Ministry unit coordinating policy for the West Bank, called the report “one-sided and biased.”

In a written statement, Inbar said Israel would continue to “professionally and transparently” enforce laws regarding illegal construction by both Israelis and Palestinians.

Israeli Airstrike Kills 4 in Gaza, Including Child

The Daily Star
December 10, 2011

Violence has flared up between Israel and Gaza, with the Israeli air force killing four Palestinians and militants firing rockets deep across the border.

The fighting erupted Thursday when an airstrike on a car killed two militants, one of them from Gaza’s governing Islamist group Hamas, whom Israel accused of planning to send gunmen to attack it through the neighboring Sinai region of Egypt.

Palestinian militants responded to Thursday’s airstrike with a barrage of rockets, some of which landed near Beersheba, a city 35 km from Gaza. No one was hurt.

Another Israeli airstrike followed before dawn Friday, hitting a Hamas training camp in Gaza City. The blast flattened a nearby home, killing its owner and his 12-year-old son. The man’s wife and five other children were also wounded hospital officials said.

In a statement voicing regret for the civilian casualties, the military said Palestinian rockets stored next to the camp had stoked the explosion. Hamas accused Israel of a “massacre.”

Palestinian militants stepped up rocket attacks as night fell. Three groups said they had fired over a dozen projectiles across the border. Israel police said at least 10 of them landed in Israeli territory, causing no casualties.

Witnesses in Gaza reported heavy activity of Israeli drones over head.

Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in Gaza told reporters the group was “pursuing intensive contacts with several Arab and international parties, and we stress the necessity of this aggression being stopped immediately.”

Hamas spurns peacemaking with the Jewish state but has in the past proposed truces as it sought to consolidate control over Gaza and negotiate power-sharing with the rival, U.S.-backed Fatah faction of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Instability has spread in Sinai as Cairo struggles to restore order after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February.

Armed infiltrators killed eight Israelis on the border with Sinai in August. Israeli troops repelling the gunmen killed five Egyptian police, triggering outrage in Cairo that spilled over into the mobbing of Israel’s embassy a month later.

Israel apologized for the Egyptian deaths and Egypt’s interim military rulers vowed to mount security sweeps of Sinai.

Hamas’ standing has grown with the political rise of the kindred Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, formerly a suppressed though popular opposition group. Israel worries about the prospects for its landmark 1979 peace accord with Egypt, which secured the demilitarization of the Sinai.

“The state of Israel is in a bind,” defense analyst Alex Fishman wrote in the biggest-selling Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth. “It can’t operate in Sinai in order to defend its sovereignty for fear of its relations with Egypt ... and because it can’t beat the donkey, it beats the saddle – and Gaza suffers the blows.”

Some of the Palestinian rockets fired Thursday and Friday were claimed by a Fatah-linked militia that lost one of its leaders, Essam al-Batsh, in Israel’s airstrike.

Israel said he had also been involved in a 2007 suicide bombing that killed three people in Eilat, a Red Sea port abutting Egypt. The Eilat area went on security alert this week, with the military citing fear of infiltration from Sinai.

Hamas had no comment on the rockets. It has kept out of some of the recent fighting in Gaza, much of which has been between Israel and Islamic Jihad, a different Palestinian armed faction.

The chief of Israel’s military, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, told parliament last month a new Israeli offensive in Gaza could be “drawing close” because of the rocket threat.

That stirred speculation that Israel, which launched a devastating war on Hamas in 2008-2009, might mobilize for a similar assault ahead of the possible installation of a new Islamist-led government in Egypt.

Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security adviser, warned that could backfire by providing an electoral boost to the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt’s ultra-conservative Salafists.

“An operation in Gaza is liable to play into their hands, with a kind of acceleration of political processes that you don’t want,” he told Israel Radio.

Jewish ‘Price Tagger’ Extremists Desecrate Old Jerusalem Mosque

The Daily Star
December 15, 2011

Jewish extremists Wednesday tried to torch an old mosque in Occupied Jerusalem, as Israel reopened a ramp leading to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, whose closure sparked Muslim anger.

The overnight attack on the disused mosque in downtown West Jerusalem saw unknown attackers try and set the building alight and daub its exterior walls with racist anti-Arab slogans written in Hebrew.

It was the latest in a slew of so-called “price tag” incidents – revenge attacks by Jewish extremists which generally target Palestinians and Arabs, although they have also been directed at the army and leftwing Israelis.

The attack targeted the Nebi Akasha Mosque, which dates back to the 13th century and had not been used as a place of worship since Israel’s creation in 1948. The city council currently uses the building as a storage facility.

“During the night, there was an attempt to set fire to a disused mosque in the city centre,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, saying an investigation had been opened into the attack which took place just off Jaffa Street, west Jerusalem’s main shopping artery.

The attack was swiftly condemned by the Al-Aqsa Foundation, an offshoot of Israel’s Islamic Movement, which said it held Israel “fully responsible for this terrible crime” and for not acting against the perpetrators.

Arab Israeli MP Mohammad Barake also lashed out at his fellow parliamentarians for fanning the flames of racial hatred with a spate of draft legislation targeting Israel’s Arab minority.

“Responsibility for the mosque burning does not only lie with the gang of fascists who carried it out, but also with some of the scumbags among the MPs and ministers,” he said in a statement.

“Those MPs should not pretend they are shocked when the draft laws they back become a raging fire that devours mosques,” he said.

Emek Shaveh, an Israeli NGO which fights against the manipulation of archaeological sites for political gain, said the attack had damaged an important aspect of local heritage.

“The destruction of the antiquities, in this case probably by Israelis, is part of the process of erasure of ‘the other’ – of everything that doesn’t suit the extremist and one-dimensional ideology of certain Israeli groups,” it said in a statement.

Among the words scrawled on the mosque’s walls were the names of two settlement outposts slated for demolition by the end of the month.

Overnight, there were three more price tag attacks in the northern West Bank where Palestinian cars were torched in three separate villages and Hebrew graffiti found nearby, the Israeli military and Palestinian witnesses said.

The arson attack in Jerusalem occurred just 24 hours after settlers attacked troops and an army base in the northern West Bank in an attack which has deeply angered Israel’s leadership.

Several hours earlier, settlers also broke into a closed military zone along the Jordanian border.

In the past 10 days, detectives have arrested eight people in connection with recent price tag attacks, including six minors and a soldier.

Jerusalem police Wednesday also detained six Jewish men from a religious neighborhood on suspicion of involvement in recent violence and vandalism against Arabs, a spokeswoman told AFP.

The suspects are all settlers who were barred from returning to the West Bank several years ago by military order, Luba Samri told AFP, without giving details of their age or identity.

The six men were not believed to be connected to the overnight attack on the mosque, nor to several other “price tag” attacks earlier this week.

Meanwhile, Israel reopened Wednesday a controversial wooden access ramp to the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem just 48 hours after it was closed on safety grounds in a move which had sparked Muslim anger.

Palestinian Bid for Statehood Stalled in the UN Security Council

Palestinian negotiator Erekat remarked that peace negotiations in Israel are over. It testifies to Jewish madness that he spoke at a conference in Tel Aviv. Indeed, on that same day Israel sent the PA $100 million in tax transfers. Erekat is definitely right. Everyone knows the conditions for peace for each side, and they are irreconcilable: The Palestinians cannot forfeit their ‘right of return,’ and we Israelis cannot accept it. Everything else is settled: the Israeli government has agreed to abandon the Temple Mount and outlying settlements, and the PA agreed to leave three settlement blocs to the Jews. Given the situation, a Palestinian declaration of statehood is the most logical course of action. It simply avoids the problem. The Palestinian government is fine with de facto abandonment of the right of return. The one problem the PA faces with statehood is that refugees would be able to move from Lebanon and Syria into the West Bank, breaking the fledgling state. The Palestinians would love for Israel to continue guarding their borders. A de jure Palestinian state is not bad at all for Israel, the only better alternative being to expel the Arabs from Judea and Samaria. - A word of truth from the Palestinians, Israeli Uncensored News, May 16, 2011

Palestinian UN Membership Bid: Stop or Go?

Israeli Uncensored News
November 21, 2011

Now that their bid is stalled in the UNSC, we can ponder whether it was wise. And yes, it was.

Regardless of whether he has won UNSC approval, Abbas has won the UNGA to his side. This is something that Jewish state has never accomplished even once. In effect, Abbas has achieved a moral victory.

He did not harm his relations with the White House. Obama probably hates him just as he hated Netanyahu before, but that does not change the fact that Washington has no other party to support in the PA. To underscore that fact, the White House released $200 million in aid that it had threatened to withhold if Abbas applied to the UNGA for statehood recognition.

Nor will Israel be able to withhold tax transfers for long. Nor can it abandon Fatah militarily, unless we are willing to allow Hamas to take over the West Bank.

The Israeli arguments against the Palestinian bid were proved silly. Thus, to claim that mutually agreed-upon borders are a prerequisite for Palestine’s UN application is preposterous because the Jewish state itself came into being without a border agreement with its neighbors.

Arab diplomats revolted against Abbas for forcing their hand with his UNGA application. Indeed, they as well as their US and EU counterparts felt starkly irrelevant as Abbas dumped diplomatic intrigues in favor of appealing directly to people of the world. But they, too, will be forced back to the table by the US.

Perhaps Abbas miscalculated, imagining that he could push Obama into supporting his bid. Well, the US president is far more cynical than the Fatah leader had thought. Perhaps the peace process is now more dead than ever because the UNGA proved powerless against Jewish influence in Washington. But in the end Abbas was going down, anyway. And at least he is going down as a courageous leader who used his last chance to gain independence for his people—who happen to be our enemies.

U.S. Congress Releases Some Aid for Palestinian Authority

Devex.com
November 8, 2011

U.S. lawmakers have agreed to release some $200 million worth of security assistance for the Palestinian Authority but maintained their hold on a separate aid package for infrastructure and health projects.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, has informed the U.S. State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development of her decision to unblock $50 million worth of aid for the Palestinian National Security Forces and $148 million worth of other security assistance, The Associated Press reports.

These aid packages were blocked in August ahead of the Palestinian Authority’s bid for recognition and statehood at the United Nations. Lawmakers also put on hold the release of some $192 million worth of economic assistance for infrastructure and other projects in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

A spokesperson for Ros-Lehtinen said the foreign affairs committee is maintaining its hold on the economic assistance package, the Agence France-Presse reports.

The Palestinian Authority’s bid for recognition of an independent state and for membership into U.N. organizations has prompted debate about the future of U.S. aid to the territories. The U.S. Congress and the Obama administration have opposed the Palestinian bid and are pushing for the continuation of peace talks with Israel.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority has recently been accepted as a full member by UNESCO, prompting the United States to cut off aid to the U.N. specialized agency. The United States is required by law to stop funding U.N. entities that accept the Palestinian Authority as members.

Ros-Lehtinen Caves, 'Palestinian Authority' Gets $200 Million

Israel Matzav
November 7, 2011

The Obama administration convinced House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fl) that giving 'security assistance' to the 'Palestinian Authority' is a good idea, and $200 million of aid money to the 'Palestinians' has been unfrozen.

Another $200 million in economic aid continues to be blocked.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said that she would release her block on two separate sections of security aid – one for $50 million , and the second for $150 million.

An additional $200 million in economic assistance is still being withheld by both the State and Foreign Relations Appropriations Subcommittee and the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Both the security and economic funds were frozen by Congress in August, in response to the PA’s strategy of seeking unilateral recognition of statehood during the UN General Assembly in September.

A second key house leader, State and Foreign Relations Appropriations Subcommittee Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), had used her committee to freeze only the economic aid, believing PA security forces aided in countering the influence of Hamas. Ros-Lehtinen’s move has removed the last roadblock to the security aid package.

Funding packages can be blocked by either chairwoman, and need the support of both representatives in order to be released.

In recent weeks, Ros-Lehtinen received extensive documentation from the administration explaining why releasing the security funds supported both America’s and Israel’s interests.

A committee spokesman said that Ros-Lehtinen received over 1,000 pages of documentation on this aid money from the White House. I wonder whether in their three years in the White House, they have produced 1,000 pages of documentation on Iran.

I have three words to say about this. Money is fungible.