Free Republic

The U.S. informed Arab governments Friday that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body "does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity," a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal. But the Palestinian's rejected the American offer following a meeting late Wednesdy of Arab representativs and said it is planning to press for a vote on its resolution Friday, according officials familar with the issue. The decision to reject the American offer raised the prospects that the Obama adminstration may cast...

It was always going to be a struggle for the U.S. to dissuade its Arab allies from going ahead with a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements. But last week's "people power" rebellion in Tunisia has made Washington's effort to lobby against the plan more difficult. Tunisia has given the autocratic leaders of countries such as Egypt and Jordan more reason to fear their own people. For those regimes, symbolically challenging unconditional U.S. support for Israel is a low-cost gesture that will play well on restive streets. Going ahead with the resolution, which was discussed on Wednesday at the...

Sarah Palin... COOPER: Has she been unfairly painted here? COOPER: Dana, I want to play for you.. what she said about the whole blood libel thing... COOPER: I mean, she -- she seems unwilling to -- to apologize or back off about -- of anything... DANA LOESCH... We have a Tea Party organizer that received a death threat because of all -- you want to talk about rhetoric -- because of all of the things that are being said about conservatives and being said about Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin.... BELCHER: Dana, I just can't -- I can't let her...

Palestinian representatives at the UN have prepared a draft resolution that will seek to declare that Israeli settlements are "illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of peace." The issue of the legality of Israel's settlements policy has long been a central issue on the agenda of the international community. It is claimed that settlements are a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians (1949). But both the text of that convention, and the post-World War II circumstances under which it was drafted, clearly indicate that it was never intended to refer to...

American policy regarding the Arab/Israel conflict has not changed since the Armistice Agreement in 1949. American policy sought to to achieve a holy balance in the Israeli-Arab conflict. ”This policy had its origins in the tripartite U.S.-British-French declaration in 1950, against arms sales to either side. The Soviets exploited this policy to sell arms to the Arabs, and the French looked after their own interests when they supplied weapons to Israel, but the Americans preserved an outward appearance of egalitarianism.” So reported Haaretz in 2007 based on then recently released documents. “Washington's support for the existence, independence and territorial integrity...

"The right of the Jewish people to their homeland is with G-d", declared Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas Governor and FOX News Channel TV host, as he delivered an impassioned address at the 28th annual Bet El dinner, held Sunday evening, December 5th at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Manhattan. ... "Mike Huckabee is the best friend that Israel has today and I say that without hyperbole. He is the only candidate who did not espouse a two state solution as a means of achieving peace in the region. ..."

(Reuters) - The United States on Tuesday abandoned its effort to persuade Israel to freeze construction of Jewish settlements, officials said, dealing a blow to efforts to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

No doubt PM Netanyahu would have rather spent the last 18 months in hell than to have spent it participating in the peace process under brutal pressure by the Obama administration. Come to think of it, it must have been hell. Keep in mind that Netanyahu was voted into office on a platform which denied the two-state solution. The Obama administration succeeded in forcing a dramatic change in that policy. Or did it? On June 14/09 Netanyahu delivered a speech at Bar Ilan University in which he appeared to accept a two state solution with these words, “In my vision...

The Settlement movement warned Tuesday of a harsh reaction and painful "price tag" style retaliation if authorities proceed in the plan to seal a synagogue which was illegally built in the West Bank settlement of Ma'ale Shomron. The settlers are enraged that while legal action is taken against their prayer house, no action is being taken again an illegally built mosque in the Burin, an adjacent Palestinian village. Elements in the far Right warned that should the synagogue be sealed, they will stage protests, burn tires, set Palestinian farmland on fire and block roads. Knesset Member Michael Ben Ari (National...

Americans for Peace now releases app which provides a "comprehensive settlements database, integrated with high-tech mapping technologies." Americans for Peace Now has released a new interactive mapping application for Apple iPhone and iPad devices which will provide a real-time view of events on the ground in the West Bank, according to a press release by the organization. The free application called "Facts on the Ground: The APN Map Project" is available through iTunes or the internet. The application "provides detail and context for the debate on Israeli settlements in the West Bank," APN said in the press release. Any user...

As Jennifer noted yesterday in her comments on Giora Eiland’s Ynet op-ed, Palestinian unwillingness to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is the make-or-break issue of the peace process. She’s also correct that the Obama administration shows no signs of recognizing this fact. But two recent developments make this blindness particularly puzzling. First, the critical importance of recognition is not an obscure point that an honest broker could easily overlook; it has by now become glaringly

Is President Obama good for the Jews? For more and more Jewish-Americans, the answer is no. In a Pew Research Center report issued on Thursday and entitled “Growing Number of Americans Say Obama Is a Muslim” (tragic in its own right), there was another bit of bad news for Obama: the number of Jews who identify as Republican or as independents who lean Republican has increased by more than half since the year he was elected. At 33 percent it now stands at the highest level since the data have been kept. In 2008, the ratio of Democratic Jews to...

In seeking to constrain Israeli settlement activity, the U.S. is essentially trying to obtain additional Israeli concessions that were not formally required according to Israel's legal obligations under the Oslo Accords. The U.S. and Israel have already negotiated specific guidelines for settlement activity so that it will not diminish the territory of a future Palestinian entity. Given the fact that the amount of territory taken up by the built-up areas of all the settlements in the West Bank is 1.7% of the territory, the marginal increase in territory that might be affected by natural growth is infinitesimal. It might be...

Some 60 members of right-wing youth movement arrive in West Bank town of Birzeit at dawn in bid to establish Jewish community in area. Some 60 right-wing activists from the "Youth for the Land of Israel" movement arrived early Wednesday at deserted buildings near the West Bank town of Birzeit in the Ramallah area. The teens announced their intention to establish a Jewish community named "Beer Zayit" in the area in response to a Palestinian plan to build a new city called Rawabi, which the settlers said would weaken the Jewish holding in the Binyamin region. 'A settlement in practice'...

For a head of state to visit the White House and not pose for photographers is rare. For a key ally to be left to his own devices while the President withdraws to have dinner in private was, until this week, unheard of. Yet that is how Binyamin Netanyahu was treated by President Obama last Tuesday night. Senior commentators even went as far to say that the Prime Minister had received “the treatment reserved for the President of Equatorial Guinea”. To be quite frank, Netanyahu's unyielding coalition should take substantial blame for the political impasse with the White House attitude....

Benjamin Netanyahu was left to stew in a White House meeting room for over an hour after President Barack Obama abruptly walked out of tense talks to have supper with his family, it emerged on Thursday. The snub marked a fresh low in US-Israeli relations and appeared designed to show Mr Netanyahu how low his stock had fallen in Washington after he refused to back down in a row over Jewish construction in east Jerusalem. The Israeli prime minister arrived at the White House on Tuesday evening brimming with confidence that the worst of the crisis in his country's relationship...

Last night Barack Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. It was very obvious that there was no easing of tensions between the two allies. Neither leader said as much, but after the two-hour face-to-face meeting between the two leaders in the Oval Office there was no smiling hand-shake photo op, no statement. Netanuahu was lead out the same way he was lead in very quietly. The news blackout about the meeting is unusual. Such high-level meetings are generally followed by pubic handshakes, and often by joint statements. Obama met with Netanyahu for about an hour and a half,...

Israel will defy American pressure to halt the construction of controversial Jewish housing in Arab east Jerusalem, when President Obama meets Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, in the White House today. Fresh from his historic victory to reform American healthcare, the US leader is to be confronted, within hours, with a foreign policy crisis. This time Mr Obama must resolve the worst breakdown in relations in decades between America and its closest regional ally, Israel, and try to get the Arab-Israeli peace process moving again. But any hopes of a compromise were dashed yesterday when Nir Barkat, the Mayor of...

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...

Barack Obama has achieved the impossible. He has managed to bring together secular Israelis and ultra-Orthodox Jews in a heated campaign against him. His administration's determination to use an Israeli housing construction project in Northern Jerusalem as the pretext for a diplomatic crisis, has set him on a collision course not just with Israelis of all stripes but even with American Jews who are growing increasingly apprehensive of just where this President intends to lead them. Did he anticipate this? No one can know for sure. But his determination to face down Benjamin Netanyahu and force him to cancel the...