Free Republic

The Middle East is usually full of deception, duplicity, and backstabbing in its political both intra-country and inter-country. There is often a huge gap between actions and words. At times, it appears that nobody says what they mean and nobody means what they say. So, it comes as little surprise that the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations should go through an intermediary, the United States, and that there is deceit galore, at levels beyond anything I can remember. The Palestinian Authority in their dealings with the United States perpetrates the first deceit, and then there is the deceit in the approach and manipulation...

Between President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, and Head Negotiators Yasser Abed Rabbo and Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian spokespeople have threatened every conceivable position regarding the moribund talks with Israel over the past couple of weeks. These threats include but are not limited to, unilaterally declaring an independent Palestinian State along the border of the Green Line, taking the entire negotiations to the United Nations for a final dispensation, dissolving the Palestinian Authority and throwing the whole of the West Bank back on Israel to maintain, and cutting all relations and cooperation with Israel declaring the Roadmap and Oslo...

The package Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has accepted for US-sponsored talks with the Palestinians contains more substantial concessions than merely a freeze on settlement construction and goes far beyond the one-year deal put before the security cabinet Saturday night, Nov. 13, debkafile reports from Jerusalem and Washington. The deal unveiled in Jerusalem early Sunday is only stage one of a larger secret package to which only Netanyahu and his close adviser Yithzak Molho are privy - not even Defense Minister Ehud Barak or the Chief of Staff, Lt. Gen. Gaby Ashkenazi.

Over the past year and a half, Hezballah has been restocking their inventory of rockets storing many in the Bekaa Valley. Hezballah has also been in violation of the United Nations resolution that ended the conflict between them and Israel back in 2006 by rebuilding military positions and bunkers and storing rockets and other war supplies south of the Litany River. Further acts in violation of the so-called rules of law have been manifest by Hezballah having placed their weapon caches within hospitals, schools, mosques, and residential homes. Through all of this, Europe, the United States, the United Nations, Russia,...

Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel has offered to renew the moratorium on building settlements in the West Bank in order for peace talks with the Palestinians to continue. Palestinians have said that that they will not continue with the talks if the moratorium was lifted. Netanyahu has acceded to their wishes, asking in return that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state. The Palestinians have categorically replied that they are unwilling to do so, which means that the peace talks are dead and that they have killed them. Anyone who doesn't recognize that Israel is a Jewish state and...

Ever since Israel’s miraculous victories in the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973), the world has pressured Israel to return the land gained in defense against her neighbors’ belligerence. Egypt was the first country to break with the “Three No’s” (no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel) position defined by the Muslim world during the Khartoum Conference. This led to the return of the entire Sinai Peninsula, an area of land significantly larger than all of Israel, to Egypt in exchange for what has become a chilly peace. A member of...

KABUL, Afghanistan – Taliban officials have engaged in periodic, discreet contacts with Afghan and U.S. officials for months but are unwilling to move to formal peace negotiations until the U.S. agrees to a timetable for the withdrawal of all foreign troops, according to a Pakistani intelligence official and members of a newly formed Afghan peace council. The White House said Wednesday that President Barack Obama supports attempts by the Afghan government to open peace talks with Taliban leaders, but still wants the insurgents to renounce violence and their support of al-Qaida. However, press secretary Robert Gibbs said the United States...

In Israel, politics is the national pastime. Israelis follow politics the same way certain New Yorkers absorb every statistic, past and present, about the Yankees. Last week, which was sandwiched between the Jewish new year and the holiest day of the year, Yom Kippur, Israelis were still following the news - just not the latest round of Middle East peace talks. News outlets gave what felt like obligatory coverage, but the talks typically ranked as the second or third item. This is a pronounced shift from past go-rounds, in which the primarily left-of-center news industry breathlessly provided wall-to-wall coverage. This...

Mr. Prime Minister; Many Jews both from Israel and in the Diaspora have reacted with horror and revulsion to the latest Time Magazine Cover Story, “Why Jews Don’t Care About Peace.” Time’s base use of the Shylock blood libel is beyond false, it is disgusting. But perhaps there is a lesson beyond the obvious hatred against Jews in general, Israel specially, and you, Mr. Prime Minister, can take from this journalistic episode. Time has unwittingly pulled back the veil and shown exactly how the world media will, for the most part, depict the breakup of the current peace talks should...

I would like to say I’m shocked but the only surprise is it took this long for President Obama to call for the continuation of the building freeze on Jewish areas in Judea and Samaria while making no comment on Arab and Muslim building of illegal structures throughout the same area and especially in and around Jerusalem. President Obama has still not made mention of the illegal buildings erected by Arabs, Muslims, and Druze illegal building within the Green Line in uncontested Israel, especially in the Negev where the problem has become endemic lately. The one positive consequence of this...

First, we need to identify what the Palestinian demands will consist. The extension of the building freeze is probably the most obvious. Many of the other demands are a rehash of long standing demands including Right of Return, total control of Jerusalem’s Old City, return to the Green Line (pre 1967 borders), release of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, free passage between the West Bank and Gaza, end of the blockade of Gaza, removal of all IDF troops, checkpoints, travel restrictions, and other prohibitions imposed to prevent terror attacks. The truth is that even should Israel concede and meet...

Yitzchak and Talia Emes, 47 and 45 years old, along with 24-year-old Avishai Shindler, married just a year, and 37-year-old Kochava Even Haim were recently murdered while returning to their homes after a day in Jerusalem by Hamas terrorists in a drive by shooting. Over three-dozen bullets had been fired at their vehicle, including a number from point blank range to assure that the attack had killed and not merely wounded its targets. The response in Israel was one of shock and abhorrence while in the Palestinian areas of the West Bank and Gaza there was much celebratory dancing and...

Rumors in the news speak of Prime Minister Netanyahu trying to find an unhappy medium whereby we have a freeze on building but do not really have a freeze in building beyond the Green Line. The claim is his government is looking for a magic combination that will allow enough building to keep the coalition together while restricting the building sufficiently to keep Mahmoud Abbas happy and sitting at the negotiating table. Despite the obvious problem that any building will cause Abbas to throw a fit which will require some unwise concession to placate him free of any return of...

JERUSALEM - While Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly blessed the Palestinian Authority's return to direct negotiations, a combination of deadlines, timetables and financial factors could turn the renewed peace process into a political curse for the Israeli prime minister. Netanyahu spent this past weekend with members of his inner cabinet crunching the political and financial numbers associated with what the Israeli leader has himself termed "making the painful choices for peace." Both Yediot Aharonot and Yisrael Hayom reported that Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, the most dovish member of the inner cabinet, suggested that Netanyahu announce Israel will continue to build...

In 1994, Israel asserted, and the PLO accepted, that construction would continue on existing Jewish settlements. For the next 15 years, negotiations were never stopped by that building. In January 2009, the Palestinian Authority (PA) stopped negotiations because Hamas attacked Israel from the Gaza Strip and Israel defended itself. Of course, Hamas is also the PA's enemy and the PA would be delighted if Israel destroyed that group. But for public relations' purposes, the PA had to pretend inter-Palestinian solidarity. Then came President Barack Obama who demanded a stop to all construction on settlements in 2009. Israel finally complied but...

Speaking at Herzliya Conference, Netanyahu praises Palestinian efforts to improve economy and build institutions, appeals to them to accept resumption of efforts toward peace accord. Photo by: GPO Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Wednesday he had reason to believe that long-stalled peace talks with the Palestinians could resume in a matter of weeks. Netanyahu did not give details, but an Israeli official indicated Israel would take a step to make it possible for the Palestinians to agree to talks. He did not give details and spoke on condition of anonymity because no offer has been made. Palestinians have been insisting...

The Middle East peace talks are at a deadlock. Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians to move ahead with the plan established by the so-called Quartet – the US., U.N., EU and Russia -- have faltered and come to a complete standstill. Continuing with this inertia will have a long-term negative effect on the future of the region both from a political point of view as well as from a business perspective. With the exception of a few risk-takers, what company or business executive would be willing to invest in the Middle East once the region plunges onto the abyss...

Truthfully, the real reason there is no peace between Israel and the Palestinians is the Palestinians don't want peace. No other country in the world has made concessions the way Israel has. Since 1977, they given up areas of land three times the size of the State of Israel. The Oslo process began in 1993. Sixteen years have passed since then, and they are no closer to a permanent settlement. The Palestinians don't want peace, after all its bad for buisness. It is the hatred of Israel that allows the PA to keep power. It deflects public anger from their...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu declared that he wanted to immediately resume negotiations with the Palestinians Monday and rejected the charge that he wasn't interested in reaching an agreement. "We need to move toward peace with a sense of urgency and a sense of purpose," Netanyahu told the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly during a trip to Washington. "My goal is not negotiations for the sake of negotiations; My goal is to achieve a permanent peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians, and soon. I cannot be more emphatic on this point." Critics of Netanyahu, particularly in the Arab...

Palestinians on Sunday accused US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton of undermining progress toward Mideast peace talks after she praised Israel for offering to curb some Jewish settlement construction