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African Union Welcomes Phase Two of South Sudan Peace ProcessADDIS ABABA — March 7, 2014 … The Chairperson of the Commission of the African Union (AU), Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, welcomed the conclusion of Phase II of the South Sudan Peace Process. The South Sudan Peace Process has consisted of two weeks of substantive consultations on a Declaration of Principle and a Framework for Political Dialogue towards National Reconciliation and Healing. She commended the IGAD Special Envoys, including its Chair, Ambassador Seyoum Mesfin, for their relentless efforts towards the resumption of the political negotiations and the progress they have achieved thus...

Bloomberg columnist Jeffrey Goldberg minced few words in discussing the interview that President Barack Obama gave him on the eve of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's latest visit to Washington. Speaking with Charlie Rose, Goldberg equated Obama's threat to stop supporting Israel in international forums to the talk of a mafia don. Obama told Goldberg, that if Israel doesn't cut a deal with the Palestinians soon, "our ability to manage the international fallout is going to be limited." He added, "And that has consequences." That statement, Goldberg noted, was a "veiled threat" and "almost up there with, 'Nice little Jewish state...

JACKSON, MI – The human race is divided between people who see amazing coincidences, and people who see no coincidences. Both types should hear about the last days of Jackson attorney Bruce Clark. Clark, 79, who lived at Clark Lake, was an Eagle Scout as a boy and a respected member of his profession as an adult. But this is not the story of Clark’s life. It’s the story of what happened before he died two weeks ago. Struck by cancer, pneumonia and a heart attack, Clark said something unusual one day from his bed at Allegiance hospital. “He told...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday reaffirmed America’s friendship with Israel and its commitment to the Jewish state’s security. Kerry, who spoke at the AIPAC conference in Washington, said that his peace efforts were “not about him” but were about the “dreams of Israelis” and the “dignity of Palestinians.” “People ask me why am I so committed to these negotiations and why am I convinced that peace is possible,” he said, adding, that it was wrong to ask him why he visits the region so much. “This isn’t about me,” said Kerry, adding that his peace efforts were...

Ahead of meeting with Netanyahu, president says unprecedented ‘aggressive settlement construction’ detrimental to peace process Israel can expect to face international isolation and possible sanctions from countries and companies across the world if Benjamin Netanyahu fails to endorse a framework agreement with the Palestinians, US President Barack Obama cautioned on Sunday ahead of a meeting with the Israeli prime minister. In an interview with Bloomberg, Obama stressed that time was running out for Israel to achieve a peace deal, and added that he believed Netanyahu had the capacity to rally Israel’s citizens behind an agreement. But if Netanyahu “does not...

One day ahead of his meeting Monday with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, U.S. President Barack Obama is urging the Israeli leader to make peace with the Palestinian Authority (PA). Speaking to Bloomberg’s Jeffrey Goldberg in an interview published Sunday, Obama warned that time was running out to negotiate a peace agreement. Obama further claimed that PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas “is sincere about his willingness to recognize Israel and its right to exist.” “We are coming to a point, though, over the next couple of months where the parties are going to have to make some decisions about how they move...

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...

A year after his shock resignation, Pope Emeritus Benedict has no regrets and believes history will vindicate his tumultuous and much-criticised papacy, the man closest to him told Reuters in a rare interview. "Pope Benedict is at peace with himself and I think he is even at peace with the Lord," said Archbishop Georg Ganswein ,who is in contact with the current and former pope daily. Ganswein, who has been at Benedict's side since before his election in 2005, said the former pope had no regrets about leaving office and held no resentment against his critics who the Vatican says...

U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday expressed his appreciation towards his Secretary of State’s peace efforts in the Middle East. Speaking at an interfaith breakfast in Washington, D.C., Obama said, “I want to take this opportunity to thank Secretary Kerry for his extraordinary passion and principled diplomacy that he’s brought to the cause of peace in the Middle East. Thank you, John.” “As we support Israelis and Palestinians as they engage in direct talks, we’ve made clear that lasting peace will require freedom of worship and access to holy sites for all faiths,” he added. The expression of support for...

Once again, on Saturday, US Secretary of State John Kerry tried to extort Israeli concessions to the PLO by threatening us with a Western economic boycott. Kerry is obsessed with Israel's economic success. Last May he told us that we're too rich to surrender our land. Now he's saying we'll be poor if we don't do so. The anti-Semitic undertones of Kerry's constant chatter about Jews having too much money are obvious. But beyond their inherent bigotry, Kerry's statements serve to legitimize the radical Left's economic war against the Jewish state. Administration supporters and fundraisers from Code Pink and other...

The closed-door negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority over the future contours of a Palestinian state, and how much land and settlements Israel will retain, have reportedly come down to a matter of a few percentage points, with both sides agreeing in principle that the majority of Jewish West Bank settlements would be transferred to Israeli sovereignty in a final status deal. Citing anonymous Israeli, Palestinian and American sources close to the negotiations, Walla News reported on Thursday that Israel is seeking to annex about 10 percent of the West Bank’s land area in a final deal. Meanwhile, the...

Israel is set to give its wary assent to US Secretary of State John Kerry’s framework peace proposal as the basis for continuing talks with the Palestinian Authority through to the end of 2014, Channel 2 news reported on Saturday night. The TV report said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman are all inclining to accept the US framework terms, some of which were detailed by Martin Indyk, the State Department’s lead envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, in a conference call with American Jewish leaders on Thursday. The framework document would have to...

Israeli Finance Minister Yair Lapid delivered a scary speech on Wednesday. At the Institute of National Security Studies conference, Lapid warned that if we don't accept US Secretary of State John Kerry's framework for negotiations, the Europeans are going to take away our money. Lapid claimed that Israel's economic future is dependent on surrendering Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the PLO. If we don't, he said, the EU will abrogate its economic association agreement with us. And such a move on Europe's part will cause serious harm to our economy. >>SNIP<< Kerry is waiting for Netanyahu to agree to his...

TEL AVIV — It is pretty clear now that Secretary of State John Kerry will either be Israel’s diplomatic salvation or the most dangerous diplomatic fanatic Israel has ever encountered. But there isn’t much room anymore for anything in between. This is one of those rare pay-per-view foreign policy moments. Pull up a chair. You don’t see this every day. In essence what Kerry is daring to test is a question everyone has wanted to avoid: Is the situation between Israelis and Palestinians at five minutes to midnight or five minutes after midnight, or even 1 a.m. (beyond diplomacy)?

Two white doves that were released by children standing alongside Pope Francis as a peace gesture have been attacked by other birds.

The recent fall of Fallujah, Iraq, to an Al-Qaeda-linked group provides an unwelcome reminder of the American resources and lives devoted in 2004 to 2007 to control the city – all that effort expended and nothing to show for it. Similarly, outlays of hundreds of billions of dollars to modernize Afghanistan did not prevent the release of 72 prisoners who have attacked Americans. These two examples point to a larger conclusion: maladies run so deep in the Middle East (minus remarkable Israel) that outside powers cannot remedy them. Here's a fast summary: Water is running out. A dam going up...

Mr. Abbas, Israel wants to sign a peace treaty based on the principle of "two states for two peoples." You have refused to accept this formula. Israel has proven that it will withdraw to new borders, remove Israelis from your state, and give up its claims to Biblical lands. It's time for you to reciprocate. Recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, stop the incitement against Israel, and let's bring an end to the conflict once and for all.

[VIDEO AT LINK] After his remark, the President suggested we imagine all the people living for today. It’s funny, people joke about hippie Democrats, and then they go and give you something like this on a silver platter. With a platitude like give peace a chance, one cannot help but think of the recent revelations from Robert Gates’ explosive new memoir. Now that we know how unseriously Obama dealt with Iraq and Afghanistan, hearing him state his philosophy on Iran’s nukes as something so trite and so contrary to everything we know about the Iranian regime takes on a meaning...

What do you expect from your relationship to Jesus Christ? I have come to discover that many do not expect all that much. In effect they hope that faith can kind of help them “muddle through” life and offer them a few consolations that, perhaps things will be better some day, and in heaven. Others see the moral life described in the scriptures more as a duty than a description of the person being transformed by Jesus Christ. And because they see it as a list of duties,  rather than the result of grace, they tend to resent it, consider...