U.S.-Israel A Potential Diplomatic Train Wreck
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A best-selling author and former political consultant to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes the U.S. and Israel are headed for a diplomatic train wreck over the alleged “peace process” with the Palestinians.
The Associated Press has reported that, under pressure from the United States, Israel is reducing its security presence in four West Bank towns. Israeli and Palestinian defense officials say Israel is granting U.S.-trained Palestinian security forces greater autonomy in the four towns. The ability of Palestinian security forces to maintain law and order is key to Mideast peacemaking because Israel needs to be convinced that a future Palestinian state will not threaten its security.
Joel Rosenberg is the author of Inside the Revolution: How the Followers of Jihad, Jefferson, and Jesus are Battling to Dominate the Middle East and Transform the World. He thinks the Israelis have already made too many concessions.
“I see a diplomatic train wreck coming between the United States and Israel over this so-called ‘peace process’ and Washington’s insistence on essentially forcing Israel to make territorial concessions,” he notes.
Most Israelis do not trust Barack Obama, according to Rosenberg.
“Only 34 percent of Israelis see President Obama as a friend, as an ally; whereas more than 85 percent saw President Bush as a friend and ally,” Rosenberg points out. “There are deep concerns in Israel about where President Obama is taking the U.S.-Israel relationship.”
Huge Underground Chamber Found In Israel
A 2,000-year-old underground chamber has been discovered in Israel’s Jordan Valley.
The largest human-made cave in Israel, the 1-acre (0.4-hectare) space is thought to have begun as a quarry. In subsequent centuries it may have served as a monastery, hideout for persecuted Christians, or Roman army base, experts say.
Archaeologists working in the valley found the cave this past March when they came across a hole in a rock face.
As they were about to enter, two fearful-looking Bedouins appeared and warned the team that hyenas and wolves inhabited the cave.
But science prevailed, said team leader Adam Zertal, and once underground, “our eyes opened to see something unimaginable.”
The archaeologists peered into a huge hall lined with 22 thick pillars—giving the “impression of a palace,” added Zertal, of the University of Haifa in Israel.
“We didn’t have much light—it was complete darkness,” he said. But “even with the torches, we saw how glorious it looks.”
Etched into those columns were 31 Christian crosses, Roman letters, a Zodiac sign, and what looks like the Roman army’s pennant—all of which surprised the researchers.
“It surely was not just a quarry,” Zertal said.
Around the first century B.C. and the first century A.D., when the chamber’s creation likely began, the Roman-appointed King Herod the Great, who ruled the region from 37 to 4 B.C., had returned from Rome with plans to develop the Jordan Valley.
Israel Peace Talks In Paris Called Off
A meeting between Israel’s prime minister and a senior US envoy has been canceled amid growing differences over settlement building in the West Bank.
Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot said the US put off the meeting in response to Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal to heed US demands to halt settlement activity.
But Mr Netanyahu’s aides say it was the prime minister who cancelled Thursday’s meeting with George Mitchell in Paris.
They said “more professional work” was needed, without adding further details.
Instead, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak is now scheduled to travel to Washington on Monday to meet Mr Mitchell.
Mr Netanyahu has arrived in Paris from Rome, on his first trip to Europe since he took office.
Can 3rd Temple Be Built Without Destroying Dome Of The Rock?
A new Jewish interfaith initiative launched last week argues building the Third Jewish Temple in Jerusalem would not necessitate the destruction of the Dome of the Rock.
“God’s Holy Mountain Vision” project hopes to defuse religious strife by showing that Jews’ end-of-days vision could harmoniously accommodate Islam’s present architectural hegemony on the Temple Mount.
“This vision of religious shrines in peaceful proximity can transform the Temple Mount from a place of contention to its original sacred role as a place of worship shared by Jews, Muslims and Christians,” said Yoav Frankel, director of the initiative.
The Interfaith Encounter Association at the Mishkenot Sha’ananim’s Konrad Adenauer Conference Center in Jerusalem is sponsoring the program, which includes interfaith study and other educational projects.
According to Islamic tradition, the Dome of the Rock, built in 691, marks the spot where Muhammed ascended to Heaven.
But according to Jewish tradition, Mount Moriah, now under the Dome of the Rock, is where the Temple’s Holy of Holies was situated.
Until now Jewish tradition has assumed that destruction of the Dome of the Rock was a precondition for the building of the third and last Temple.
However, in an article that appeared in 2007 in Tehumin, an influential journal of Jewish law, Frankel, a young scholar, presented a different option.
His main argument is that Jewish doctrine regarding the rebuilding of the Temple emphasizes the role of a prophet.
Russia Aims To Host Mideast Peace Meeting
The Russian president said in Cairo on Tuesday that Moscow aimed to hold a Middle East peace conference before the end of 2009, a move backed by Egypt and which Russia said also had Israel’s approval.
Russia, which has proposed such a conference in the past, is a member of the Quartet of Middle East negotiators, along with the European Union, the United States and the United Nations.
“We paid special attention to Middle East issues. We highly appreciate efforts by the Egyptian president to create an atmosphere of trust and cooperation in the region,” Dmitry Medvedev said after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
“(The) Moscow Middle East conference, which we plan to hold before the end of the year, will also contribute to achieving this goal,” he said at a joint news conference in Cairo.
Mubarak, speaking after the two sides signed cooperation agreements, said Egypt backed the conference in Moscow.
Israeli spokesman Yigal Palmor said Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman recently told Russia that Israel “would, in principle, agree to attend, provided, of course, that anti-peace elements such as Hamas and Hezbollah are not invited”.
Facts About Jerusalem’s Holiest Site
An inter-faith project launched in Jerusalem hopes to find a new way to share one of the city’s holiest, and most fought over, sites.
Following are some facts about the complex, known as the Temple Mount by Jews and al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary) by Muslims, in the heart of Jerusalem’s Old City:
* It is home to the gilded 7th-century Dome of the Rock, a fixture of the Jerusalem skyline, and built over the spot where Jews and Christians believe Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac to God before an angel stayed his hand.
The 8th-century al-Aqsa mosque also stands on the stone esplanade. Judaism’s Western Wall, a Jewish prayer site believed to be a perimeter wall of the second biblical Temple, is below.
* In Muslim tradition, Mohammad ascended into heaven from the rock at the center of what is now the Dome of the Rock.
* The Temple Mount is the most sacred site in Judaism. Jews believe biblical King Solomon built the first temple there 3,000 years ago. A second temple was razed by the Romans in AD 70.
* Muslims see al-Haram al-Sharif as the third holiest site after Mecca and Medina in modern Saudi Arabia.
* Christians believe Jesus taught at the temple during the Roman period and drove out money-changers.
Netanyahu Calls for Conditional Palestinian State
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu endorsed an independent Palestinian state beside Israel for the first time on Sunday, dramatically reversing himself in the face of U.S. pressure but attaching conditions the Palestinians swiftly rejected.
A week after President Barack Obama’s address to the Muslim world, Netanyahu said the Palestinian state would have to be unarmed and recognize Israel as the Jewish state — a condition amounting to Palestinian refugees giving up the goal of returning to Israel.
Netanyahu, in an address seen as his reponse to Obama, refused to heed the U.S. call for an immediate freeze of construction on lands Palestinians claim for their future state. He also said the holy city of Jerusalem must remain under Israeli sovereignty.
Senior Palestinian officials Saeb Erekat said the plan “closed the door” to negotiations.
Still, it was a dramatic transformation for a man raised on a fiercely nationalistic ideology and who has spent a two-decade political career criticizing peace efforts.
“I call on you, our Palestinian neighbors, and to the leadership of the Palestinian Authority: Let us begin peace negotiations immediately, without preconditions,” he said, calling on the wider Arab world to work with him.
Clinton Reverses - Israel On Its Own With Iran
In a reversal of her stated position as a presidential candidate, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton revealed last week that an Iranian attack on Israel would no longer be considered as an attack on America. Speaking during an interview on ABC TV she said that the Iranians could expect “retaliation” but America was not committing itself to come to Israel’s defense.
Interviewer and White House Correspondent George Stephanopoulos reminded Clinton of her previous position by playing a 2008 video recording in which she states: “I would make it clear to the Iranians that an attack on Israel would incur massive retaliation from the United States.”
Barak Urges Netanyahu To Accept Palestinian State
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the principle of a Palestinian state.
“The current government was formed with the commitment to respect the deals reached by preceding governments,” Barak told public radio, ahead of a speech by Netanyahu on Sunday to lay down his peace policies.
These include “the roadmap which clearly states that the conflict must be resolved on the principle of two states for two peoples,” said the head of centre-left Labour party, the most moderate member of Netanyahu’s otherwise right-leaning cabinet.
“If such a solution fails, there will be only one political entity from the Jordan Valley to the Mediterranean — the state of Israel.
“Under such a scenario, if the Palestinians have the right to vote, it will no longer be a Jewish state, but a bi-national state. And if they don’t have the right to vote, it will be an apartheid regime,” said the former premier.
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The hawkish Netanyahu, who is due to present his government’s peace policy on Sunday, has yet to publicly embrace the creation of a Palestinian state, the cornerstone of international peace efforts.
The Israeli press has been filled with speculation in recent days that Netanyahu may finally do so in his speech.
US President Barack Obama’s administration has been pressing Israel to commit to the two-state principle and to halt all settlement activity in the occupied West Bank
Former Obama Pastor, ‘Them Jews’ Won’t Let Obama Talk To Me
In a racially charged interview, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright said that President Obama hasn’t spoken to him since they parted ways last year, because “them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me.”
He suggested White House advisers were keeping the two separate.
“Them Jews aren’t going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter, that he’ll talk to me in five years when he’s a lame duck, or in eight years when he’s out of office,” Wright said, according to Virginia’s Daily Press. “They will not let him … talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is.”
Obama left Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago last year following the very public controversy over his inflammatory sermons.
Wright sporadically has granted media interviews and made public appearances since. In the Daily Press article, he also claimed that the president did not send a delegation to the recent world racism conference in Geneva for fear of offending Jews.
Isreal Being Pressured To Accept 2 State Solution
A day after US President Barack Obama called on Israel and the Palestinians to “redouble efforts” towards a two-state solution, officials in Jerusalem assessed that Israel will eventually have no other option but to accept the establishment of a Palestinian state, Israel Radio reported on Saturday.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will have to adopt a two-state solution because Washington will not give up on this issue, the officials reportedly said.
Israeli officials told the radio station that if Netanyahu agrees to adopt the road map peace plan, he will prevent Obama’s administration from pressuring Israel into accepting the establishment of a Palestinian state in different circumstances.
The Jerusalem Post could not independently confirm the report.
Senior diplomats involved in preparing US envoy George Mitchell’s upcoming visit to Israel reportedly said that Netanyahu will insist on continued settlement construction to accommodate natural growth.
New ways to incorporate the Jewish state’s needs into the new US foreign policy will also be examined, the officials said.
Mitchell will land in Israel on Tuesday. He is expected to meet with President Shimon Peres and with Netanyahu, as well as with Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman
Late on Friday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that she was unaware of any agreement between her country’s previous administration and Israel concerning the expansion of settlements in the West Bank.
“I do not recall any agreement between Israel and George Bush’s… previous government, according to which Israel will be authorized to extend the construction of settlements in the West Bank,” Clinton said at a news conference with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu at the State Department.
“There is no memory of any informal and oral agreements. If they did occur, which of course people say they did, they did not become part of the official position of the United States government.
Obama Postpones U.S. Embassy Move To Jerusalem
United States President Barack Obama on Friday postponed moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by an additional six months, Israel Radio reported.
A senior White House official said that U.S. policy regarding the status of Jerusalem remains unchanged, and that it is a final-status issue to be resolved within the framework of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
The U.S. Congress approved the transfer of the embassy 14 years ago.
Last month, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that all of Jerusalem would always remain under Israeli sovereignty. Netanyahu said he had made the same declaration during his visit to Washington last month when he met with Obama.
“The new U.S. administration informs us with intolerably ease that we have to give up Jerusalem,” the premier said during a May ceremony marking Jerusalem Day.
“With all due respect, the U.S. president sees the American interest and does not know that Jerusalem is not a territorial issue, but a much deeper one - ‘the hope of two thousand years/the land of Zion and Jerusalem,’” he said, quoting Israel’s national anthem.
A Rapid and Harsh Turn Against Israel
The much-anticipated meeting between Barack Obama and Binyamin Netanyahu on May 18 went off smoothly, if a bit tensely, as predicted. Everyone was on best behavior and the event excited so little attention that the New York Times reported it on page 12.
As expected, however, the gloves came off immediately thereafter, with a series of tough American demands, especially U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s insistence on May 27 that the Netanyahu government end residential building for Israelis in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem. This prompted a defiant response. The Israeli governing coalition chairman pointed out the mistake of prior “American dictates,” a minister compared Obama to pharaoh, and the government press office director cheekily mock-admired “the residents of Iroquois territory for assuming that they have a right to determine where Jews should live in Jerusalem.”
If the specifics of who-lives-where have little strategic import, the Obama administration’s rapid and harsh turn against Israel has potentially great significance. Not only did the administration end George W. Bush’s focus on changes on the Palestinian side but it even disregarded oral understandings Bush had reached with Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert.
Obama Gets Tough With Israel, Readies For Cairo
President Barack Obama has gotten tough with Israel and chosen Cairo — where President Hosni Mubarak rules with a firm hand — for his much-awaited overture to the Islamic world in what appears to be a clear break from decades of U.S. policy.
Many issues cloud American relations with the Muslim world, but none rankles like U.S. ties to Israel and massive support for the Jewish state in the heart of the Arab Middle East.
While the majority of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims live in Asia, the growing militancy among the followers of the Prophet Muhammad took root largely in the Middle East. The dramatic strike against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, was the work of Arabs under the direction of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who was born in Saudi Arabia.
Bin Laden cited anger at U.S. support for Israel as the guiding philosophy of the terrorist organization that drew American forces into wars in Afghanistan, where he was believed to be hiding, and Iraq, which was flooded by al-Qaida fighters after the U.S. invasion in 2003.
Those wars and U.S. policy toward Israel have produced a growing belief in the Muslim world that the United States is at war with Islam.
Given those realities, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs played down expectations of a quick turnaround in U.S.-Muslim relations after Obama’s Thursday speech.
“This is about resetting our relationship with the Muslim world. … We don’t expect everything to change after one speech,” he said.
