Free Republic

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and his “cabinet” in Gaza have resigned, Hamas spokeswoman Israa al-Mudallal said, “paving the way for the new ministers of the consensus government.” Haniyeh welcomed the new cabinet as “a government of one people and one political system.” […] Hamas and Fatah swore in a “unity” government earlier Monday, despite last-minute tensions which almost prevented the Palestinian Arab reconciliation. The joint government elected Palestinian Authority (PA) official Rami Hamdallah as Prime Minister. …

President Shimon Peres and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas immediately accepted a surprise invitation by Pope Francis in Bethlehem on Sunday to join him at the Vatican to pray for peace. He issued his call on the second day of his Middle East trip, in the midst of a large public Mass he celebrated in Manger Square, the site of Jesus’s birth. “Here, at the birthplace of the Prince of Peace, I wish to invite you to join me in heartfelt prayer to God for the gift of peace. I offer my home in the Vatican as a place for this...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu distanced himself from the meeting last Thursday in London, held between Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, stating that Livni represented only herself. Livni, who was chief negotiator for Israel in the talks that failed after the PA unity deal with Hamas last month, told Netanyahu about the meeting last week two days before it took place. Sources in the prime minister’s office said Saturday night that Netanyahu made it clear to Livni that she would be representing only herself, and not the Israeli government. …

National Security Adviser Yossi Cohen has sent protest letters in the last two weeks to the White House as well as various other Western governments, in which he argues that the Palestinian Authority (PA) planned the failure of peace talks. In the letter, Cohen states that the PA deceived US Secretary of State John Kerry regarding its intentions in the talks. Haaretz published the letter on Wednesday, after having received a copy on April 22. A 65-page document submitted to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas by PA Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat on March 9 is attached to the letter. The date places the document...

President Shimon Peres revealed on Monday that three years ago he reached a peace agreement with Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Speaking to Channel 2 News in a special interview on the occasion of Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day), Peres said that his contacts with Abbas were made on behalf of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, but that at the last minute, Netanyahu changed his mind and the agreement fell through. .....

Editor's Note: This column was coauthored by Bob Morrison. "I will not allow my commitment to Israel to be questioned by anyone, particularly for partisan, political purposes, so I want to be crystal clear about what I believe and what I don't believe," Kerry said after U.S. lawmakers and pro-Israel groups criticized him, with some demanding his resignation or at least an apology…”I have been around long enough to also know the power of words to create a misimpression, even when unintentional, and if I could rewind the tape, I would have chosen a different word [than Apartheid] to describe...

And you thought John Kerry had already hit rock bottom, n'est ce pas? In anonymous briefing to top columnist, members of Kerry’s team slam Netanyahu, empathize with Abbas, warn Palestine will rise ‘whether through violence or via int’l organizations’ American officials directly involved in the failed Israeli-Palestinian peace process over the last nine months gave a leading Israeli columnist a withering assessment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the negotiations, indicated that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has completely given up on the prospect of a negotiated solution, and warned Israel that the Palestinians will achieve statehood come...

According to Robert Serry, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, the so-called reconciliation deal reached by rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas to form a “unity” government in the coming weeks may be a good development that is consistent with continued peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. He reached this conclusion based on the word of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Mr. Serry said President Abbas assured him, during a meeting he held with President Abbas in Ramallah, that the reconciliation agreement will be implemented under President Abbas’s leadership and on the basis of...

Hamas will never recognize Israel's right to exist or put its terrorist army under Palestinian Authority (PA) control according to a senior Hamas official, who on Tuesday revealed his version of the unity government deal reached last Wednesday. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared on Saturday that the new government will "obey my policy," and would "recognize Israel and reject violence and terrorism, and recognize international commitments," even as he re-declared the government would never recognize Israel as the Jewish state - a point Hamas concurred on. However Mahmoud Al-Zahar, a senior official and co-founder of Hamas, had a different recollection...

Netanyahu: Rather than soothing international public opinion, Abbas should choose between Hamas and peace with Israel.Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas released a special message on Sunday in Arabic and in English on the occasion of Israel's Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which he decried the murder of Jews in the Holocaust as "the most heinous crime against humanity in modern history. This is the first time a Palestinian president has ever made such a public declaration.

It's hard not to admire Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas's brazenness. Two weeks ago, Abbas signed on to fifteen international agreements that among other things require the PA to respect human rights and punish war criminals. And this week, he signed a unity deal with two genocidal terror groups all of whose leaders are war criminals. Every leader of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two parties who signed the deal with the PLO are war criminals. Under the Geneva Conventions, which Abbas signed onto just a couple of weeks ago, he is required to put them on trial, for their...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signaled on Saturday that he remains committed to troubled U.S.-backed peace talks, saying that any unity government agreed with the militant group Hamas would recognize Israel. Abbas’s comments appeared aimed at soothing U.S. concerns about the unity deal he reached on Wednesday with Hamas, an Islamist faction sworn to Israel’s destruction and designated by the West as a terrorist organization. […] Hamas’s opposition to Israel does not necessarily contradict Abbas’s position, as both sides have agreed that the unity government will not include Hamas members but be comprised of technocrats. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...

In advance of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent visit to the United States, President Obama gave an interview in which he viciously attacked Israel, suggesting that Israel was the cause of the peace process failure, that the United States could no longer protect Israel if the peace process failed and that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a man of peace. This past week, Abbas came to visit Obama at the White House. In advance of his trip, Obama made no statements expressing displeasure with the Palestinian Authority’s intransigence and its continued demonization of Israel. Just before the meeting...

On his trip to Washington this week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas rejected US Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework document for continued peace talks with Israel, and issued “three no’s” on core issues, leaving the negotiations heading for an explosive collapse, an Israeli TV report said Friday. Abbas “went to the White House and said ‘no’ to Obama,” Channel 2 news reported, quoting unnamed American and Israeli sources. Specifically, the report said, Abbas rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that he recognize Israel as a Jewish state. He also refused to abandon the Palestinian demand for a “right of...

Israel considers herself a "Jewish State" and is the only reasonably free and democratic nation in the Middle East. There are many "Islamic States," none of which approach the only Jewish State in freedom and democracy -- for all, not only for Jews.Here's a summary of the meanings of "The Jewish Question(s):" The Jewish question was the name given to a wide-ranging debate in European society pertaining to the appropriate status and treatment of Jews in society. The debate involved the civil, legal and national status of Jews as a minority within society, particularly in Europe. The debate started within societies, politicians and writers in western and central...

Arab foreign ministers on Sunday rejected Israel’s demands that the Palestinians recognize it as a Jewish state, saying such a move would undermine the rights of Palestinian refugees. In a resolution released at the headquarters of the Arab League in Cairo, the foreign ministers called the issue of Palestinian refugees an integral part of a comprehensive and just peace. It blamed Israel for the floundering of peace negotiations. The Arab statement offers strong backing to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who said publicly last week he will never recognize Israel as a Jewish state despite facing strong international pressure. Abbas did...

The U.S. focus on Ukraine has shifted attention away from this week’s remarkable set of exchanges, direct and indirect, between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that speaks additional volumes about Obama’s take on prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace. That Obama has an unbalanced perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is hardly a new insight. That, from the start, he has pressured Netanyahu to make painful concessions while asking little of Palestinian leaders on the hot-button issues of anti-Israeli hatred and incitement also is well known. But, the timing, manner, tone and content of this week’s Obama-Netanyahu exchanges...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Obama Claims Terrorist Dictator is Israel’s Best Chance for PeacePosted By Daniel Greenfield On March 3, 2014 @ 12:37 pm In The Point | 11 Comments This comes from the Jeffrey Goldberg interview with Obama which hits all the same old notes.If Israel doesn’t make a deal with Abbas, it will be more isolated than ever and Obama won’t be able to “protect” it. Settlement growth is out of control, Obama claims, when it’s barely a blip on the radar.Obama criticizes Israel, but not the Palestinian Authority. Instead he praises Abbas. Obama made...

In an extraordinary—and I don’t use the word in a complimentary way—interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg, President Obama follows his secretary of state in warning Israel and its leader that a failure to “make peace” now with the Palestinians will have terrible consequences. Israel is “more isolated internationally,” and will become more so; there will be more Palestinians and Israeli Arabs as time goes on, not fewer, so Israel had better move now; and not to move now is to create the conditions for a “permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank….there comes a point when you cannot manage...

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas left a two-day meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Paris last week fuming over Kerry’s proposals for a framework accord between Israel and the Palestinians, according to a Palestinian report. The top American diplomat reportedly offered for Abbas to form a Palestinian capital in the neighborhood of Beit Hanina, not all of East Jerusalem, as the Palestinians have demanded. Kerry also suggested that Israel keep 10 settlement blocs as part of any territorial exchange, according to Al Quds, the most widely read Palestinian daily, on Wednesday. The Jordan Valley would not be...