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United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Friday that the Obama administration's decision to ramp up pressure on Israel over construction of Jewish homes in East Jerusalem was bringing results. In an interview with BBC television, Clinton was asked whether escalating the tone with Israel had paid off. She said: "I think we're going to see the resumption of the negotiation track and that means that it is paying off because that's our goal." Advertisement Over the past two weeks Israel has sought to cool American ire over plans for 1,600 new homes in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish...

Obama himself claims that he has launched a political war against Israel in the interest of promoting peace. But this claim, too, does not stand up to scrutiny. On Friday, Obama ordered Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to present Netanyahu with a four-part ultimatum. First, Israel must cancel the approval of the housing units in Ramat Shlomo. Second, Israel must prohibit all construction for Jews in Jerusalem neighborhoods built since 1967. Third, Israel must make a gesture to the Palestinians to show them we want peace. The US suggests releasing hundreds of Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons. Fourth, Israel must...

President Obama needs every vote he can get in the House of Representatives for health care this week. So it would not do to have some of his liberal friends on the Hill think there is a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations right now. Asked by FOX News’ Bret Baer directly if the recent diplomatic storm was a crisis, the President said no. He spoke of the decision by a mid-level Interior Ministry official in Jerusalem to allow housing units to be built in the Jewish section of the city. “Not helpful,” the President described the routine issuance of a building...

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has refused to buckle to US pressure to scrap a Jewish building project in East Jerusalem in a crucial telephone conversation with America's top diplomat. Mr Netanyahu ceded little ground to Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, as he finally responded to a series of conditions she set out to end a 10-day standoff between Israel and its superpower patron. The Israeli leader gambled that the Obama administration had lost its appetite for a prolonged diplomatic row by accepting just one of Mrs Clinton's demands in full as he agreed to make a...

The focus on settlements or the “occupation” has now taken a back seat to the focus on Jerusalem itself. It is understood by all that so goes Jerusalem, so goes the peace process. Daniel Pipes in his well known 2001 article, The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem, asks The city being of such evidently minor religious importance (to Islam), why does it now loom so large for Muslims, to the point that a Muslim Zionism seems to be in the making across the Muslim world? Why do Palestinian demonstrators take to the streets shouting “We will sacrifice our blood and souls...

No, you can't, Obama. If your temper tantrum over some houses means that you intend to give the terrorists part of Jerusalem, think again. There is nothing to negotiate with savages who riot when a synagogue is reopened. No sooner did the Obama Administration denounce Israel for its building activities in Jerusalem when hordes of violent Palestinian thugs took to the streets of holy Jerusalem. As always, the Arabs show the world how sacred Jerusalem is to them by filling it with violence. They rioted to demand that Jews be prohibited from opening a synagogue that had been destroyed by...

At best, Barack Obama committed the latest big mistake in his conduct of foreign policy last week. At worst, the president carried out a deliberate operation intended to weaken the U.S.-Israel relationship and turn the public against the Jewish State. An announcement was made by a ministry of the Israeli government during Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel that building permits were to be issued for a neighborhood in Jerusalem. The area concerned was expressly excluded from the moratorium on building that Prime Minster Netanyahu had offered to encourage the Palestinians to come to peace talks. The area is...

WASHINGTON — The United States has diverted a shipment of bunker-busters designated for Israel. Officials said the U.S. military was ordered to divert a shipment of smart bunker-buster bombs from Israel to a military base in Diego Garcia. They said the shipment of 387 smart munitions had been slated to join pre-positioned U.S. military equipment in Israel Air Force bases. "This was a political decision," an official said. In 2008, the United States approved an Israeli request for bunker-busters capable of destroying underground facilities, including Iranian nuclear weapons sites. Officials said delivery of the weapons was held up by the...

"Israel is one of our closest allies and we and the Israeli people have a special bond that's not going to go away," said President Barack Obama to Fox News Wednesday, March 17, after denying any crisis in the relationship. debkafile's Washington sources note that denial makes a lot of sense for the president because it lets him off the hook for dealing with it. However, in Jerusalem, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu called his inner cabinet into its second session on the crisis that same night. The seven ministers were asked to review the situation after President Obama and secretary...

"Enemy: "a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent." -- Dictionary.com Despite Vice President Joe Biden's recent pledge of unswerving fidelity to Israel during his recent visit there, the rhetoric and pressure directed by the Obama administration against the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East more accurately resembles the behavior of an enemy. Increasingly under this administration -- but also present in Republican administrations -- America's policy toward Israel is full of "harmful designs" and "antagonistic activities." The intentions may not be deliberate, but the...

Attack from Gaza is third in 24 hours, after two rockets land near Sderot; comes on same day as visit to Strip by Europe's top diplomat, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. Attack from Gaza is third in 24 hours, after two rockets land near Sderot; comes on same day as visit to Strip by Europe's top diplomat, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. A Thai greenhouse worker was killed on Thursday afternoon when a Kassam rocket fired by Gaza terrorists hit the Netiv Ha’asara area. The man, in his 30s, was evacuated to Ashkelon’s Barzilai Hospital, where he was...

If the Obama administration continues to betray Israel, will any ally ever trust us again? We've been viewed as a fickle (if mighty) partner at least since the 1970s, when we abruptly dumped allies from Saigon to Tehran. Now the White House not only delights in insulting our closest traditional ally, Britain, but has intensified its diplomatic pogrom against Israel -- our only respectable ally in the Middle East. President George W. Bush was mocked for shooting from the hip, but this administration fires with its eyes closed. Obama's unbalanced actions shrivel confidence among allies around the globe -- partners...

Inner cabinet meets after Israel reportedly pressured to respond to Washington demands. While Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu convened his six senior ministers on Wednesday night to discuss the crisis with Washington, US President Barack Obama on Wednesday said the US-Israeli relationship is not in crisis over the approval of an east Jerusalem building plan during US vice President Joe Biden's visit to Israel,. Obama told Fox News Channel that the new housing units "weren't helpful" in carving out a peace between Israelis and Palestinians, but that Washington remains a committed ally for Israel. The expansion of Ramat Shlomo was a...

Benjamin Netanyahu made the mistake of believing the president is serious about stopping a nuclear Iran. Benjamin Netanyahu's first term as Israeli prime minister collapsed in 1999 in part because he had an unhappy relationship with President Bill Clinton. It is understandable then that Mr. Netanyahu's current government had, until last week, strived to stay close to President Barack Obama. That strategy would have been entirely sensible if Mr. Obama were simply another president in the long line since Franklin Roosevelt who vigorously asserted U.S. national interests, championed our friends (especially beleaguered ones), and kept alliances strong. But Mr. Obama...

Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, trying to follow the literal intimidation, lies and sell out of Pelosi and congress, cramming the Obamamania health plan down our throats, Obama is busy playing the evil messiah with Israel. So many types of evil….so little time. Lesson 101 for anyone with half a brain Israel has ALWAYS been our faithful ally in the Middle East and watched our back. They have started zero wars and threatened no one. The wars she has faced since her formalized inception in 1948, approved by the UN itself (now the largely Muslim, anti Semitic...

Emboldened by the Israel crisis with the US over East Jerusalem building plans, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is again insisting on 'a complete cessation of settlement activities' before renewed negotiations. Tel Aviv With Israel-US ties in crisis and tensions subsiding after the worst riots in Jerusalem in years, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dug in his heels on peace talks on Wednesday. Sharing US anger over the announcement of a 1,600 home building project in East Jerusalem during Vice President Joe Biden's visit last week, Abbas retreated to a prerequisite that he dropped just a week ago in order...

Rick Sanchez Tuesday invited on a former adviser to deceased Palestinian terrorist Yasser Arafat in order to tell viewers how Israel has become a threat to American troops. The CNNer devoted a good amount of his two-hour "Rick's List" to teeing up a number of guests and fellow so-called journalists to voice their anti-Israel sentiments.

US President Barack Obama harbors anti-Semitism and the American Jews who voted for him are not pro-Israel, Dr. Hagi Ben-Artzi, the outspoken brother-in-law of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, said on Wednesday. In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Ben-Artzi said it was no coincidence that the 78 percent of American Jews who voted for Obama was roughly the same percentage of Jews in the US who do not give their children a Jewish education.

Why, then, the outbreak of violence now? Why Hamas's "day of rage" over Jerusalem and the Palestinian Authority's call to gather on the Temple Mount to "save" the Dome of the Rock from non-existent plans to build the Third Temple? Why the sudden outrage over rebuilding a synagogue, destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948, in the Old City's Jewish Quarter, when dozens of synagogues and yeshivas have been built in the quarter without incident? The answer lies not in Jerusalem but in Washington. By placing the issue of building in Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem at the center of the...

Where Hamas and Fatah may each be accusing the other of being guilty of showing lack of unity in what is now being called the “Jerusalem Intifada”, they both fully support the violence called for against Israel and Jews in general. The difference in opinions is to how wide the violence should spread and who gets the credit. Hamas wants a general Intifada throughout the West Bank and against Israel from Gaza while Fatah, sometimes mistakenly referred to as the Palestinian Authority, wants the violence only in the Israeli controlled areas of the West Bank. The reasons given for the...