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CAIRO - Egypt called on Tuesday on Palestinians and Israelis to carefully consider a peace plan announced by U.S. President Donald Trump, with a view to resuming negotiations. “Egypt calls on the two relevant parties to undertake a careful and thorough consideration of the U.S. vision to achieve peace and open channels of dialogue, under U.S. auspices, for the resumption of negotiations,” a statement said.

A year and a half into Donald Trump’s presidency, Henry Kissinger set out a theory. “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretences,” he told the Financial Times. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that he knows this, or that he is considering any great alternative. It could just be an accident.” A term has been coined to describe this notion: Ryan Evans of War on the Rocks calls them “Trumportunities.” It is the idea that,...

Riyad Dirar, the co-chair of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political wing of the Syrian Democratic Forces SDF, stressed that they are among those who are inviting but not invited to the Third Cairo Conference, because they are from the preparatory committee of it. He stressed Egypt's important role in the political solution in Syria and that it supports their position in facing "Turkish aggression" in the region. Dirar said in a statement to North-Press, that the Syrian Democratic Council is included in the preparatory committee for "Cairo 3" conference, and they are seeking to develop the road map...

Hardline conservative Chairman of Assembly of Experts Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati asserted that Kurdistan’s bid for independence from Iraq is an attempt to “disintegrate” and “create another Israel” in the region, speaking at a session of the Assembly of Experts of Leadership in Tehran, Tuesday. Jannati stressed that “today’s important issue about Kurdistan is the climate that they want to disintegrate there and create another Israel in this region.” He went on to call on the Assembly of Experts to “strongly stand up against them because this situation is the demand of the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel,” which he said...

In response to the U.S. Senate recognizing the Armenian Genocide, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has threatened to close two military bases (one American and one NATO) on its soil. This led U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper to openly question Turkey’s commitment to NATO. Two days later, The Telegraph broke a story that Hamas uses Turkey’s territory to plot attacks on Israel, which included plans to assassinate the then-mayor of Jerusalem and the chief of police, as well as a well-known advocate of Jews’ rights to pray on the Temple Mount. These two developments are part of a larger pattern...

Operation Nickel GrassExcerpt: The Arab states had trained well and Moscow had supplied equipment on a colossal scale, including 600 advanced surface-to-air missiles, 300 MiG-21 fighters, 1,200 tanks, and hundreds of thousands of tons of consumable war materiel. By Monday, the Israelis were reeling as missiles supplied by the Soviet Union took a heavy toll on aircraft and tanks. The IDF was running out of artillery shells and the Israeli Air Force warned that its capability to sustain combat would be exhausted within the week... On 12 October, Nixon decided that no more delays could be allowed, and ordered the...

The U.S. House approved a Democrat-backed resolution Friday calling for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- but did so without support from the four far-left freshmen congresswomen known as "the Squad."

Jason Greenblatt, the former US Representative for International Negotiations on Tuesday denounced the ruling by the European Court of Justice that all EU member states must label products from Judea and Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights as ones manufactured in an Israeli “settlement”. “A hypocritical/political decision! So-called ‘settlements’ are actually cities & neighborhoods; nonsense to pretend otherwise. Peace will only come-if at all-via direct negotiations. This decision harms prospects for peace & ultimately hurts Palestinians,” said Greenblatt. Israel’s foreign ministry said earlier it “strongly rejects” the EU court’s ruling, decrying a "double standard". The secretary general of the...

UK: Man who used sledgehammer to smash windows of mosques turns out to be Shia targeting Sunnis DEC 1, 2019 3:00 PM BY ROBERT SPENCER LEAVE A COMMENT How many of these attacks on mosques were presented by the political and media elites as instances of “Islamophobia”? In any case, the Sunni-Shi’ite jihad, having been fought for fourteen centuries in Muslim countries, has now come to diverse Britain. How far gone is Britain? This far gone: the non-Muslims are aware of Sunni-Shia hostility, and fear the consequences. In 2014, an 84-year-old non-Muslim, Kenneth Peters, who lived in a Shi’ite area,...

Orthodox Christianity and Islam are based on the same fundamental values, President Vladimir Putin said in an address to a religious conference in Kyrgyzstan. The conference, titled "Orthodoxy and Islam — Religions of Peace," aimed to promote interethnic and interreligious dialogue between Russia and Kyrgyzstan. "Islam and Orthodox Christianity, just like other world religions, are based on fundamental humanistic values that are of enduring importance — on mercy and love for one’s near, justice and respect for human beings," the state-run TASS news agency quoted Putin as saying Thursday. The address, which was read out to the conference by Russian...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — France’s defense minister criticized the U.S. on Saturday over what she described as “unanswered” attacks in recent months threatening the Persian Gulf, warning that the decades-long American deterrence in the oil-rich region appeared to be losing its power. Florence Parly separately said France “deplored” both U.S. President Donald Trump’s unilateral withdrawal of America from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that led to the re-imposition of crushing sanctions, as well as Tehran recently breaking the deal’s enrichment, stockpile and centrifuge limits. While saying France would continue to talk to Iran, her speech before...

By: Hassan.Mahmoudi Protests flare up across Iran on Friday with chants of "Death to the dictator," "No to Gaza, no to Lebanon; I sacrifice my life for Iran.", after the government imposed gas price hike. At least 200 people dead, more than 3000 injured and more than 1000 arrested in 132 cities since security forces started cracking down on demonstrators. Protesters blocked roads, burned buildings, banks, government institutions and clashed with police across the country Iran shut down internet access across the nation to cover up its positional crackdown on protesters Videos from the protests have shown people gravely wounded...

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Israel is in the midst of yet another rocket attack from Gaza. The most recent barrage is in response to Israel’s elimination of a terrorist leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who, coincidentally, was responsible for coordinating the previous rocket attacks on Israeli civilians. As of Thursday, over 450 rockets have been indiscriminately fired from Gaza into densely-populated Israeli cities. The map of affected cities is rather startling. While 90% of the rockets have been intercepted by the amazing Iron Dome, a tenth of the missiles have reached the Israeli people and caused significant distress and damage. So far, 84...

Israeli tanks attacked three Islamic Jihad military posts in the Gaza Strip Tuesday afternoon. An IDF spokesperson stated: "A short while ago, IDF tanks targeted three PIJ military posts in the Gaza Strip." The Israeli Air Force has also bombed numerous Islamic Jihad targets in Gaza in response to the firing of dozens of rockets by the terrorist organization. "IDF fighter jets and aircraft recently struck a number of PIJ terror targets in the Gaza Strip. Among the sites struck were a training compound and underground weapons manufacturing and storage sites," the IDF announced Tuesday in a statement. "The IDF...

I returned to the U.S. from Lebanon less than one month before the October protests began in Beirut and started spreading throughout its cities and towns, shaking the foundations of a regime that spent 30 years mired in corruption and backing Hezb’allah. During my field trip to my ancestral land, mandated by the American Mideast Coalition for Democracy (AMCD), I met with students, politicians, journalists, former military, religious leaders and civil society activists. I also met with ordinary people in different places. The three major issues of discontent among all people I met were: Frustration with the economic and financial situation,...

Iran has discovered a new oil field in the country’s south with over 50 billion barrels of crude, its president said Sunday, a find that could boost the country’s proven reserves by a third as it struggles to sell energy abroad over U.S. sanctions. The announcement by Hassan Rouhani comes as Iran faces crushing American sanctions after the U.S. pulled out of its nuclear deal with world powers last year. Rouhani made the announcement in a speech in the desert city of Yazd. He said the field was located in Iran’s southern Khuzestan province, home to its crucial oil industry....

The Fatah movement headed by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas emphasizes its continued adherence to the "national struggle" as a means to counter all the "colonialist" plans which they believe seek to undermine the existence of the "Palestinian people" and their cause. Such "colonialist" plans range from the Balfour Declaration to US President Donald Trump's peace plan. On the occasion of the approaching 102nd anniversary of the statement by former British Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour in support of the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people, the Fatah movement called the Balfour Declaration a "historic crime" against humanity...

In Iraq, demonstrators are being shot dead in the streets. In Lebanon, protesters have paralysed the country and seem set to bring down the government of Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri. In recent weeks the Egyptian security forces crushed attempts to protest against the police state of President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi... A rough approximation is that 60% of the region's population is under the age of 30. A young population can be a great asset to a country. But only if the economy, the educational system and the institutions of the state are functioning well enough to accommodate their needs, and...

... There will never be peace between the Arabs and Israel. Why not? Because, as noted, the Arabs don't want peace with Israel; they don't want Israel, and will look for any excuse to avoid any kind of peace agreement. As Netanyahu once observed regarding the prospects for peace in the area: "If the Arabs put down their weapons today there would be no more violence; if the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel." Or, as Golda Meir before him observed: "Peace will come when Arabs will love their children more than they hate...