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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he is willing to work with President-elect Donald Trump to reach a two-state solution to the conflict with Israel. Abbas spoke Saturday at an event marking the anniversary of his Fatah party. He said "We want to emphasize our willingness to work with the newly-elected American administration... to achieve peace... based on a two-state solution." Abbas thanked the U.S. for its U.N. abstention vote last week, which allowed the Security Council to adopt a resolution declaring Israeli settlements in territory claimed by Palestinians illegal.

Perhaps sensing that he would soon have to relinquish his position as America’s worst ex-president, Jimmy Carter reminded everyone last month how he earned the title with yet another call for the U.S. to recognize a Palestinian state. Carter’s call is a departure from American diplomacy, which insists, per UN Resolution 338, that an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement can only be reached through negotiations “between the parties.” Carter’s presidency was mired in bad foreign policy decisions, and his post-presidency has been marred with excusing terrorism, attempting to revise history, and meddling in the affairs of every subsequent occupant of the White...

Hanan Ashwari has for decades been the most recognizable face of the Palestinian government in the American media. As was clear this morning, she is also the face of Palestinian rejectionism of the very basis of the existence of the State of Israel. Ashwari appeared on CNN after David Keyes, Netanyahu’s spokesman, said that the real barrier to peace is Palestinian rejection of Israel as a Jewish state. Ashwari expressed that rejection in clear terms: “we cannot a accept religion for any state.” Emphasizing her point, she twice mockingly described Israel as wanting Palestinians “to become Zionists suddenly.” View the...

It took eight years of backbiting and pretending they got along for relations between President Barack Obama’s administration and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to finally hit rock bottom. Though they’ve clashed bitterly before, mostly notably over Iran, the two governments seemed further apart than ever after a speech Wednesday by Secretary of State John Kerry and last week’s United Nations resolution. The key question for the Obama administration, newly willing to air grievances with Israel on live television, is why now? …

BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union has joined the outgoing U.S. administration in defending the two-state solution as the best way to achieve lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. A spokeswoman for the 28-nation bloc reiterated the EU's support for the two-state solution on Thursday, the day after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry tore into Israel for settlement-building.

A spokesperson for Swedish foreign minister Margot Wallström has hit back at a Jewish human rights organization ranking some of her comments among the most anti-Semitic or anti-Israel remarks of 2016. The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC), which is headquartered in Los Angeles, lists the Swedish minister's comments in eighth place in its ranking of the “ten worst global anti-Semitic/anti-Israel incidents”. […] A spokesperson for the Swedish foreign minister hit back at the center on Wednesday. “The list is clearly not serious,” wrote Erik Wirkensjö in an e-mail to public broadcaster SVT. “It mixes up anti-Semitism and criticism of the State...

John F. Kerry was late to his own party. Staffers, journalists and other officials were gathered in the ornate Benjamin Franklin salon at the State Department on Dec. 14 for early Christmas festivities. But the secretary of State was nowhere to be seen. Kerry was on the telephone to various world leaders, trying to find out about a major diplomatic meeting — from which the United States had been excluded. The gathering, which sought to broker a resolution to the devastating Syrian conflict, took place six days later in Moscow and involved the foreign ministers of Russia, Iran and Turkey.

The Palestinian Authority's Central Bureau of Statistics says the number of Jews and Arabs will be equal in "historical Palestine" - the area between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea - by the end of 2017, according to Kol Yisrael government radio. The bureau's forecast is based on an estimated three million Arabs in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, nearly two million in Gaza and 1.5 million within the 1949 Armistice Line....

On Dec. 21, amid his morning workout, an afternoon round of golf and a family dinner with friends, President Obama interrupted his Hawaii vacation to consult by phone with his top national security team in Washington. Egypt had introduced a resolution at the U.N. Security Council condemning Israeli settlements as illegal, and a vote was scheduled for the next day. The idea had been circulating at the council for months, but the abrupt timing was a surprise. Obama was open to abstaining, he said on the call, provided the measure was “balanced” in its censure of terrorism and Palestinian violence...

French MP Meir Habib called his country’s hosting a Paris “peace conference” next month to which neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority were invited to be a “disgrace.” “This conference is a disgrace. It isn’t a peace conference. It’s an international disgrace. President Obama failed a thousand percent in everything he did in the Middle East. He left 400,000 people to die in Syria, and all of their murderers will go free. Now a few days before the end of his term, he wants to go to this conference to force Israel back to the ’67 borders, the ‘Auschwitz borders,’”...

Secretary of State John Kerry delcared Wednesday that Israel "can either be Jewish or democratic" but "it cannot be both." Here's a transcript: "The truth is that trends on the ground, violence, terrorism, settlement expansion and the seemingly endless occupation, they are combining to destroy hopes for peace on both sides and increasingly cementing any reversible -- an irreversible one state reality that most people do not actually want. Today, there are a similar number of Jews and Palestinians living between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean Sea. They have a choice. They can choose to live together in one...

Report: Kerry met with Palestinian officials to orchestrate UN anti-settlement resolution in December (full title) Additional proof the Obama Administration orchestrated UN resolution released by Egypt; Transcripts of meeting between Kerry, Rice and Palestinian leadership; France claims no agenda in passing additional UN Security Council Resolution United States Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to lay out a framework for the peace process during a speech on Wednesday as the Obama Administration continues its efforts for pushing its agenda, while it can, ahead of a Trump administration. Kerry will deliver his address from the State Department ahead of the...

"I wish to bring before you King David's response to the Security Council's recent resolution regarding Judea and Samaria." So said Rabbi Zalman Melamed on Monday, speaking before hundreds of students and guests at a Hanukkah candle-lighting in the presence of Israel's President Reuven Rubi Rivlin.

The Swedish government has welcomed Friday’s UN resolution calling for Israel to end illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, with Foreign Minister Margot Wallström calling the decision “very positive”. […] In a statement, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the resolution “shameful”. Sweden is scheduled to join the security council for two years starting in January 2017, and will chair the council during that month. …

UNSC resolution was the removal of all Israeli claims to the most holy Jewish sites placing them at the feet of the Palestinians The UNSC vote was not about “settlements.” It was an Arab subterfuge, a trap into which the United States, the UK, New Zealand and other naïve or cynical diplomats took an active role. It was all smoke and mirrors, a con trick holding up the settlement issue to dazzle the voters while the real intent was to disown Israel of territories to which they have genuine claim and turn them into “illegally occupied Palestinian territory.”

A "shameful" abstention by the U.S. in a United Nations Security Council vote Friday allowed passage of a resolution condemning Israeli settlement expansion in the occupied West Bank. The resolution was put forward by New Zealand, Malaysia, Venezuela and Senegal after Egypt withdrew it Thursday under pressure from Israel and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump. It was adopted with 14 votes in favor, to a round of applause, after U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power abstained. It is the first resolution the Security Council has adopted on Israel and the Palestinians in nearly eight years. Reaction from U.S. Republicans and Jewish leaders around...

The United Nations on Monday launched an appeal for $547 million (€524 million) to help 1.6 million people in the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2017, AFP reports. The response covers 1.1 million residents of Gaza, and half a million people in PA-assigned of Judea and Samaria. “Needs in Gaza remain particularly acute and humanitarian services provided by the international community remain a lifeline,” said Robert Piper, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, in a letter accompanying the launch and quoted by AFP. The appeal was down from $571 million the year before, of which about 47 percent, or $267...

The United Nations (UN) is biased against Israel and obsessed, Ban Ki-moon acknowledged. “We must never accept bias against Israel within UN bodies,” he said in a statement delivered Friday to the UN Security Council, summarizing his 10 years in office. Ban admitted that the UN has a “disproportionate volume of resolutions, reports and conferences criticizing Israel” and that “in many cases, rather than helping the Palestinian cause, this reality has hampered the ability of the UN to fulfill its role effectively.” “The Secretary General admitted the clear truth, the UN’s hypocrisy towards Israel has broken records over the past...

Two-thirds of Palestinians believe a two-state solution to their conflict with Israel is no longer possible, a poll said Tuesday. The share of those who lost faith in such a deal rose from 56 percent in September to 65 percent now, probably due to an acceleration of settlement activity, said the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey research. Most in the international community still back the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel, even though a deal appears to be increasingly complicated, in part because of the continued growth of settlements. Gaps between Israeli and Palestinian leaders remain wide, preventing...

John Kerry just couldn’t resist. Even though his public career is about to end—even though the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” is long dead—even though he has absolutely nothing to gain from it—the 73 year-old Kerry just could not resist unleashing one final blast at Israel. Kerry’s disingenuous and mean-spirited attack on Israel at the Saban Forum on Sunday served as a powerful reminder of how good it is that he is about to leave office—and how dangerous for Israel it would have been if he had remained as secretary of state. […] Kerry also rambled off into a long denunciation of...