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Israeli officials reacted with bitter scorn to a Christmas message from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in which he called Jesus a Palestinian and suggested Israel was to blame for the exodus of Christians from the Holy Land. “He should have read the Gospel before uttering such offensive nonsense, but we will forgive him because he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told The Times of Israel on Monday. Abbas’s statement is an “outrageous rewriting of Christian history,” according to Palmor. Earlier on Monday, Abbas published a lengthy Christmas greeting, calling Jesus “a Palestinian messenger who...

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered his housing minister to reconsider construction plans for more than 20,000 homes in the West Bank. He said the plans, announced by Housing Minister Uri Ariel earlier on Tuesday, would create unnecessary friction with the international community. The US had earlier said it was "deeply concerned" over the Israeli plans. The Palestinians had said they would appeal to the UN, warning that Israel's move would kill off peace talks. In a statement, Mr Netanyahu said he had asked Housing Minister Uri Ariel "to reconsider" plans for potential construction of new homes for Jewish settlers...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has blamed the Palestinians for the apparent stalemate in their peace talks, accusing them of creating "artificial crises" and incitement. He spoke after talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is attempting to revive the peace process. The direct negotiations launched in July have shown little sign of progress and are due to end next April. Mr Kerry will later meet Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. The secretary of state has denied media speculation that he may propose a new interim peace deal. Kerry confident Mr Netanyahu said Israel stood by the terms...

In August 2013, Israel agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners, which was the PA's precondition for renewing peace talks. The following is the PA celebrating the release of 21 of them, all of whom were convicted murderers. [Abbas is shown embracing murderer Issa Abd Rabbo and all 21 murderers] PA TV announcer: "Here they are embracing President Mahmoud Abbas after long years behind the bars of the occupation, in which they were transferred between different prisons and cells simply because they are Palestinians who fought the occupation... They are the ones who were, and are still standing firm against the...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - WashingtonÂ’s Will Is Done: Bloody Terrorists FreedPosted By P. David Hornik On October 31, 2013 @ 12:49 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 11 Comments Just after midnight on Wednesday, Israel Hayom reports, 26 Palestinian security prisoners were set free by Israel. Twenty-one were sent to the West Bank, five to Gaza.All of these prisoners were convicted either of murder or attempted murder. They constitute the second of four groups of 26 prisoners who are being released periodically during the current Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. For Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, freeing them was an iron-clad...

Peace is not possible so long as there is even one terrorist prisoner still in an Israeli prison, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared on Tuesday night. According to Kol Yisrael radio, Abbas made the comments in a welcoming ceremony for 21 Palestinian Authority Arab terrorists who had been released from Israeli jails as a gesture to Abbas. Abbas added, the report said, that the PA would continue its efforts to ensure that all terrorists serving time in Israeli jails are freed. "All 104 prisoners [that Israel has agreed to release] will be released, but the real joy will only...

Reports of the death of the peace process with Israel have been greatly exaggerated, Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday. In an interview with German television network Deutsche Welle, Abbas said that peace negotiations with Israel have not reached a deadlock, as reported by the Maariv newspaper recently. Abbas would not give details about the negotiations, but said that each side had discussed proposals offered by the other. "The fact is that we're still at the beginning. We still have time to negotiate the issues," Abbas told the German network. .....

Hours after he called on Israel to “end the occupation of the West Bank”, U.S. President Barack Obama met Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday. During the meeting, reported the Associated Press, Obama said that no one is under the illusion that peace between Israelis and Arabs will be easy, but claimed PA Arabs realize that negotiations are the best and only way to achieve a two-state solution. Obama also praised Abbas for consistently rejecting violence and being open to negotiations, according to the report. Abbas said he remained fully committed to the peace process and thanked the...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has sent his condolences to the Hazan family of Bat Yam, whose son Tomer Hazan, 20, an IDF soldier, was kidnapped and murdered by a terrorist on Friday. The slaying was part of the “ceaseless” terror war that Israel faces, he said. Israel will continue to fight terrorists with all the means at its disposal, he wrote. Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon blamed the Palestinian Authority for the slaying. “This cruel murder is the result of the ongoing incitement by the Palestinian leadership,” he accused. “Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] lends support to these horrific acts when,...

The closer the Palestinian Authority gets to become a country, the more it spits in the face of those who feed it. Abbas says Obama should stay out of Syria; PA media blame Obama for the civil war and 9/11.

In what is being described as yet another example of Palestinian Authority (PA) denial of the Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the very legitimacy of the State of Israel, the Presidential Guard of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has claimed the Western Wall as an Arab and Islamic site. Last week, a picture of the Western Wall was posted onto the PA Presidential Guard's official Facebook page with a PA flag superimposed on it, along with the words "The Al Buraq Wall - Public Relations and Information - The Presidential Guard - Palestinian youth know their rights." The Western Wall...

US Secretary of State John Kerry has fallen on his sword in attempting to seek a renewal of negotiations designed to culminate in the creation of a new Arab State between Jordan and Israel for the first time ever in recorded history. He has apparently learned nothing from the failed attempts of his predecessors - James Baker, Lawrence Eagleburger, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Each was confident in his or her ability to persuade and cajole Israel and the PLO to do a deal - but all failed for one simple reason - both...

They regard the prisoner release as something Israel was supposed to have done anyway, many years ago. Many will continue to see it as as part of an Israeli-American scheme to extract concessions, and will continue to attack Abbas for "succumbing" to US pressure. The argument that the release of Palestinian prisoners boosts the standing of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and "moderate" Palestinians and facilitates the resumption of peace talks with Israel is not necessarily true. Many Palestinians do not see Israel's decision to release more than 100 Palestinians who were imprisoned before the signing of the Oslo Accords...

Full title: "True believers: Bibi, Barry, Kerry, and the inevitable destruction resulting from fanaticism wound with fantasy" Standing next to US Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday morning, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni gushed that through his indefatigable efforts to bring Israeli and Palestinian officials to Washington, Kerry proved that "nothing can stop true believers." As usual, the cognitively-challenged Livni told us something she hadn't intended to say. The term "true believer" was coined by Eric Hoffer in his classic work The True Believer from 1951, which Livni has obviously not read. Hoffer's epic study of the psychological roots of...

United States President Barack Obama spoke to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday, several days after peace talks between the sides officially restarted. The White House said Obama made separate calls to both men in an effort to keep up the momentum. The PA-based WAFA news agency reported that Obama urged Abbas to make use of the current momentum to reach a deal with Israel and stressed his support of the efforts that led to launching the peace process. An Abbas aide told WAFA he hoped a deal could be reached in six to...

Palestinian Authority (PA) head Mahmoud Abbas presented a racist and hateful vision of a future Palestinian state when he spoke to reporters in Cairo Monday. “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli—civilian or soldier—on our lands,” he told a group of reporters, most of them Egyptians, on Monday. … Even now, Jews are not permitted to live inside the PA-controlled territory, and the sale of land to Jews is punishable by death. …

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas laid out his vision on Monday for the final status of Israeli-Palestinian relations ahead of peace talks that have resumed in Washington for the first time in nearly three years. Abbas said that no Israeli settlers or border forces could remain in a future Palestinian state and that Palestinians deem illegal all Jewish settlement building within the land occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

Tony Blair was in Jerusalem ­yesterday to urge Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu: “Give peace a chance.” The ex-Labour Prime Minister, now a go-between in new Middle East peace talks, told Israel’s leader to get a move on with ­concessions to the Palestinians. Mr Netanyahu agreed to free at least 100 Palestinians who have been held in Israeli jails for more than 20 years. In return it is expected that the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will relax his demand that a future Palestinian state must be based on the border from before the 1967 Six-Day War. Hopes of lasting peace in...

I think we are all in a bit of shock over Bibi’s plan to release 104 Arab terrorists. While Bibi is surprised at the push-back he’s getting. After all, this isn’t the first time that Israel has released terrorists, nor the first time that Israel has released terrorists in a lop-sided deal. So while Bibi expected lip-service attacks, he wasn’t expecting this all-out full-frontal revolt, including from his most closest associates. But this is the first time that Israel has released terrorists in exchange for nothing. Literally nothing. Not Gilad Shalit, not dead soldier’s bodies, not even a signature. Simply...

Israeli and Palestinian leaders will resume face-to-face peace talks on Monday in Washington, the State Department said Sunday. The restart of the long-stalled talks is being attributed to Secretary of State John Kerry's six months of frenetic shuttle diplomacy. Agency spokeswoman Jen Psaki said both sides had accepted invitations from Kerry to come to Washington "to formally resume direct final status negotiations" that are scheduled to begin Monday evening and continue Tuesday. Psaki said in a statement that Kerry on Sunday called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and that the leaders agreed the talks would...