Free Republic

The criminal-in-chief has been all over the news these past couple of days, rehashing an old, foolish, thoroughly discredited recommendation. But of course, that’s nothing new for him. In this case, it concerns the Middle East. Wire reports quote Joe Biden (D), who spends most of his time in Rehoboth Beach instead of Washington as saying, “There’s no going back to the status quo as it stood on October 6… When this crisis is over, there has to be a vision of what comes next, and in our view, it has to be a two-state solution.” As with virtually all...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the death of a Hamas commander is "just the beginning" of attacks against the militant group, as the conflict between the two groups continues to escalate.Netanyahu said, "We'll hit them like they've never dreamed possible," Reuters reported.Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 56 people - including 14 children and several Hamas members - in Gaza since the violence began, the Palestinian Ministry of Health told Ragip Soylu, the Turkey correspondent for the Middle East Eye.At least 6 Israelis have been killed by Hamas rocket fire, Reuters reported.

In September of 1978, following two weeks of secret negotiations at Camp David, Israel’s Menachem Begin and Egypt’s Anwar Sadat signed a preliminary peace treaty. These Camp David Accords proved to be the high water mark of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, his only foreign policy achievement. They couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. This unexpected peace between Israel and Egypt burnished the Democratic Party’s peacenik credentials after Lyndon Johnson’s long mismanagement of the Vietnam conflict. President Carter wore this as a badge of honor, and made the most of it for the remainder of his presidency. The Camp David...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will visit Ireland next weekend accompanied by a high-level delegation, it has been announced. The stopover will come on President Abbas’s journey to the annual United Nations General Assembly in New York. President Abbas will pay a courtesy call on President Higgins before holding a formal meeting and working dinner with the Tánaiste Simon Coveney at Farmleigh. Among the topics expected to be discussed are the humanitarian and security situation in Gaza and the West Bank, the funding crisis for UNRWA, and the future of the Middle East Peace Process.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday urged the member states of the European Union to “swiftly” recognize the state of Palestine, arguing such a move would preserve the Palestinians’ hope for peace. “We truly consider the European Union as a true partner and friend, and therefore we call its member states to swiftly recognize the state of Palestine and we confirm that there is no contradiction between recognition and the resumption of negotiations,” Abbas said in an address in Brussels. The Palestinian leader argued that such a move “would encourage the Palestinian people to keep hoping for peace, and...

Sweden is to appoint a special envoy to the Israel-Palestine peace process, Foreign Minister Margot Wallström announced during the presentation of her foreign policy vision in parliament. Wallström presented the ruling center-left Social Democrat-Green coalition government’s foreign policy declaration for the year in the Riksdag on Wednesday morning, continuing an annual tradition. […] Sweden’s relationship with Israel has been increasingly frosty in the past few years. In 2014 it recognized Palestine as a state, and Israeli officials have routinely refused to meet Wallström after she called for investigations into “extrajudicial” killings of Palestinian assailants by Israeli forces. […] Without mentioning...

Sweden’s presidency of the UN Security Council will focus on conflict prevention and the inclusion of women in peace processes, Foreign Minister Margot Wallström has revealed. Writing in Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, Wallström highlighted three areas Sweden will tackle during its presidency of the Security Council through January 2017. It is the first month of a two-year term as part of the body, after being elected in June last year as a non-permanent member for the 2017-18 period. […] Mali, Syria, Somalia, the DRC, Cyprus, Colombia and the peace process in the Middle East will all be discussed during the...

On December 28, 2016, the outgoing Secretary of State of the outgoing Obama administration held a press conference. He spoke to the cameras for almost an hour and a half, hoping to wear down his opposition on one of the great political miscalculations of modern times. The prior week, the Obama administration’s representative at the United Nations – Ambassador Samantha Power – engineered the passage of a remarkably anti-Israel resolution at the UN. The resolution condemns Israel for building housing units on its own land, and grants legal status (to the extent that the United Nations has such power, which...

Egypt’s foreign minister paid a rare visit to Israel on Sunday, saying that his country remains a “steadfast and unwavering” supporter of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians but warning that conditions for achieving that are deteriorating. Sameh Shoukry’s trip was the first official visit to Israel since 2007 and reflected the strong but low-profile ties that have developed between the two countries in recent years. The Egyptian Foreign Ministry said Shoukry’s visit was aimed at reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. …

Peace plans are busting out all over.  First we hear that prominent “pro-Israel” American Jews are putting forward a plan for the next administration to consider.  Then we hear that 214 retired IDF Generals have put forward their plan. Both Plans essentially backed Obama’s parameters requiring: The ’67 lines to be the border subject to negotiated swaps;The division of Jerusalem; andA just settlement of the refugee claims. Meanwhile, Tony Blair and others in the international community were working behind the scenes to arrange for the Zionist Union, led by Yitzhak Herzog, to join the present government coalition in Israel.  At...

A new poll has found that youth in Israel are increasingly right-wing in their political opinions, and are overwhelmingly Zionist and loyal to their country. The survey, conducted by the New Wave Research institute for Israel Hayom and published in part on Wednesday, asked 11th and 12th graders to define their political position. A full 59% defined themselves as right-wing, while another 23% said they were centrist, and only 13% identified as leftist. Another 5% said they have no position. A whopping 82% said there is no chance of reaching a deal of some sort with the Palestinian Arabs, indicating...

The security guards of the Defense Ministry's Transfer Authority and the Civil Administration's David division stopped a truck traveling from Hevron to Gaza at the Turkarmiya checkpoint Monday, after it noted it was shipping soybean oil. [...] The shipment was sent to a lab for testing, where it became clear the "soybean oil" was TDI - turbocharged direct injection - material, the fuel primarily used for rockets and diesel engines. ...

When senior Palestinian security officials want to mock their Israeli colleagues, they remind them that just in Qalandiya - an area controlled by Israel - there are at least 400 M-16 rifles. That figure does not incluide other weapons - guns, explosives and grenades - that are in the hands of militant groups there. Some of these groups are affiliated with Fatah's Tanzim, some are affiliated with other organizations, and others belong to criminal organizations - all operating in this no man's land, where no law applies. These militants have no problem with appearing on camera, on Channel 2 for...

The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Federica Mogherini, will arrive for a visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority on Wednesday, and in advance of that visit, the NGO Monitor group has published an analysis of a key EU policy paper, showing the EU’s flawed assessment and understanding of Israeli society. The EU’s External Action Service 2014 Israel ENP Progress report, published in March and addressing the EU-Israel relationship as part of the “European Neighborhood Policy,” uncritically relies on the claims of political NGOs and all but ignores violence against Israelis, the organization noted. “It is astonishing to...

Sunday, May 17, 2015 Liberating Our Jerusalem Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog When Jordan's Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city-- the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and...

Palestinians are Islamic and Islam is the religion of peace. Don't forget it, unless you are a hateful Islamophobe and look forward to being murdered.[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1N1zhUm84w] Video linkA You Tube copy of a heart-warming Palestinian instructional video on how to achieve blessed Islamic peace with Jewish oppressors is embedded a few paragraphs below. The video has "gone viral" in the Palestinian social media. The 1 minute and 13 second-video, as seen below, shows the “teacher” calmly walking up to a “victim,” stabbing him, and walking away. One of the tactics appears to imitate the Islamic State method of beheading. The guide to killing Jews teaches that...

Obama was heard to remark during a recent presidential golf game, "Israel is a terrorist war criminal. It won't even yield to my reasonable demands for a two state solution with my beloved Palestinians, whose children and other innocent civilians it relishes murdering. However, Iraq, Syria, ISIL, etc. are humanitarians and will recognize that I am like them, as I lead them to peace through the Light of My true wisdom and greatness." His best plan yet! Obama functions at His very best with no intelligence. Intelligence would imperil His domestic and foreign priorities and perhaps even His brilliant world view. I don’t think the problem is Obama’s inattentiveness. It’s not the...

John Kerry has spent months rushing from one conflict to the next, but has little show for it. His failures are symptomatic of an America that lacks a foreign policy identity—and of a country that seems uncomfortable with its role as a superpower. […] The helplessness of the world’s most important foreign minister shows just how little influence the US still has in the Middle East. And with each failure, Washington’s influence in the rest of the world erodes as well. A civil war is raging in eastern Ukraine, an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program is still a...

EU countries have defended Israel’s use of force in Gaza, but blamed it for harming peace prospects in the longer term. Foreign ministers in a joint statement on Tuesday (22 July) said they are “appalled by the human cost” of some parts of “the Israeli military operation”, which has killed hundreds of Palestinian civilians. But they “recognized Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself”, while blaming Hamas, the militant group which rules Gaza, for “indiscriminate firing of rockets into Israel”, in what they described as “criminal and unjustifiable acts”. They also gave credence to Israeli claims that Hamas is urging civilians...

onday night Secretary of State John Kerry issued an almost apology for warning that if Israel did not make peace it would become an apartheid state. In the statement he issued (below) he never says he is sorry, simply that he has always loved Israel, the criticism he received for his statement was political, and if he could say it again he would change the words he used. For more than thirty years in the United States Senate, I didn’t just speak words in support of Israel, I walked the walk when it came time to vote and when it...