TEL AVIV — In a shameful display of rogue diplomacy, 72 countries – minus Israel – are set to attend a Middle East “peace” conference in Paris on Sunday widely expected to set the parameters for a future Palestinian state.
Continuing to push for a two-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict is “messianic behavior,” at a time when what is needed is “opening our thoughts” to new diplomatic approaches, Education Minister Naftali Bennett said on Monday.
At the behest of the Palestinian Authority, Egypt on Thursday introduced a UN Security Council resolution demanding that Israel halt all settlement activity, meaning Jewish construction in eastern Jerusalem and the West Bank.
JERUSALEM — Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday said that the U.S. would not rule out taking steps at the UN for a framework for a Palestinian state and condemned Israel’s settlement enterprise as sabotaging the two-state solution.
TEL AVIV – A majority of Democrats believe Israel is a burden on the United States and has too much influence on American politics, according to a poll released by the Brookings Institution on Friday. Fifty-seven percent of respondents said they believed President-elect
TEL AVIV – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas expressed hope that Donald Trump would support the quest for an independent Palestinian state, despite his declaration that Palestinians “know nothing about” the president-elect.
Israel faces a unique window of danger from Nov. 9 to Jan. 20: What might President Obama do in his final days in office to slam the Jewish state?
The U.S. and international community are up in arms because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the inconvenient truth that uprooting Jewish communities from the West Bank to make way for a Palestinian state is tantamount to “ethnic cleansing.”
Settlements in the West Bank are not preventing peace with the Palestinians, Israel’s prime minister said on Friday.
TEL AVIV – A majority of Palestinians – 54% – believe that Israel is bent on extending its borders to include all the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea as well as planning a campaign of ethnic cleansing to expel them, a new poll found.
TEL AVIV – Palestinians are a “thorn in the throat of Zionism” who have given Israel “a taste of grief,” according to a new pop song broadcast on official Palestinian Authority television.
JERUSALEM – A children’s TV host on the Palestinian Authority’s official channel replaced Israel’s existence with “Palestine” in a special Ramadan quiz show.
Egypt opened its border with Gaza for the second time in a month on Wednesday, giving Palestinians a four-day respite from a closure stemming from friction between Cairo and the enclave’s Islamist rulers.
The Jerusalem Post reports: Former US President Bill Clinton came to his wife’s defense on Friday when the focus of a campaign event for the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton shifted to Israel, Politico reported. Amidst a speech discussing his wife’s
France will host a meeting of ministers from 20 countries on May 30 to try and relaunch the Israel-Palestinian peace process, Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault announced on Thursday.
The Times of Israel reports: The European Union (EU) on Thursday blasted Israel’s land appropriation this week of 580 acres near the West Bank city of Jericho, saying it raises questions about Jerusalem’s commitment to the two-state solution. The United
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault on Wednesday launched efforts to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by this summer, while ruling out “automatic” recognition of Palestinian statehood. Paris will not “automatically” recognise a Palestinian state if a French initiative to host
TEL AVIV – Nearly two-thirds of Americans favor Israel over the Palestinians, according to a Gallup poll published on Monday. The poll also found that more Americans are for a Palestinian state than against, and religious Republicans over 50 are
The Times of Israel reports: Jerusalem on Saturday downplayed its initial rejection of a new French initiative to kick-start peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, saying the disapproval stemmed from France’s ultimatum that it would recognize a Palestinian state
TEL AVIV – The outrage sparked by the European Union’s decision to label Israeli goods made in eastern Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank is being voiced in myriad ways. Following the Paris attacks, some condemned Europe for
Republican presidential candidate former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee stated that “the two-state solution is no solution at all” and criticized President Obama for creating “some kind of moral equivalency between what the Palestinian thugs are doing in stabbing Israelis, and
The newest intifada brings the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis back to where it started one hundred years ago: Arabs stabbing Jews.
A Spanish music festival canceled a scheduled concert on August 22 by American reggae star Matisyahu after he refused to write or videotape a message supporting a Palestinian state.
Israeli defense minister Moshe ‘Bogey’ Ya’alon told a conference Tuesday that there will be no Palestinian state in his lifetime, given the refusal of Palestinian leaders to make a deal. The best-case scenario, he said, would be to manage the conflict in its present form–not to force drastic concessions towards “impossible goals that could cause instability.”
President Barack Obama told Israel’s Channel 2 TV network in an interview that aired Thursday that Netanyahu’s statements on Palestinian statehood indicate Israel has no commitment to a two-state solution, according to The Hill.
On Tuesday, former Obama advisor David Axelrod informed an Israeli television channel that President Obama considers himself “the closet thing to a Jew that has ever sat in this office.” Obama’s deep and abiding connection to Jewish identity is obviously rooted in his ethnic background, connected to Jews via (?); his ideological ties to Jews, such as (?); and a profound connection with the state of Israel as evidenced by (?).
A recent misquote of Pope Francis’ words to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas shows that the devil—or the angel—is often in the details. In this case, a subtle difference between the indicative and the subjunctive tenses changed the Pope’s words from an invitation to be an angel of peace into high praise—as if the Palestinian leader already were that angel.
From Politico: After Pope Francis moved to recognize a Palestinian state, some gung-ho defenders of Israel suggested the pontiff should stick to preaching and stay out of politics. “It’s interesting how the Vatican has gotten so political when ultimately the
A “global education” workshop for high school students given by a Boston University group and reportedly compliant with the Common Core standards encourages Jewish students to empathize with Hamas and teaches that the United States’ use of military drones is terrorism.
New York Times columnist David Brooks, who has a son serving in the Israeli military, argued that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not say that he would never accept a Palestinian state on Friday’s “PBS NewsHour.” “The stuff on the Palestinian
The interview in which Netanyahu expressed the much-misinterpreted remark took place with the conservative Israeli publication NRG. It also took place in Hebrew, a language virtually none of the members of the Western press read or speak; most simply took the Ha’aretz report and ran with it. Here is what Netanyahu actually said.
The Obama administration is using Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remark on the campaign trail about the impossibility of a Palestinian state as an excuse to increase diplomatic pressure on Israel for deep concessions at the UN. Though Netanyahu has made efforts to smooth over the dispute, the White House is refusing to forgive him, suggesting that it is pursuing a plan for retribution, regardless. The result will be to deny Israel strategic depth as it faces new threats.
While speaking at Turkey’s Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony in Ankara, and addressing members of his country’s Jewish community on Wednesday, Turkish Parliament Speaker Cemil Çiçek took the opportunity to use the memorializing moment to attack Israel for the war against Hamas in Gaza this past summer.
The Obama administration might indeed allow a UN Security Council resolution on a Palestinian state to pass, provided some wording could be found that would accommodate the terms of Resolutions 242 and 338, which encourage a negotiated peace.
Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Ambassador Samantha Power are being credited for their efforts in lobbying members of the UN Security Council to vote against a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. Yet if they had been on top of their game, the vote never would have been held.
