Half of Israelis Back Immediate Strike on Iran
Just over half of Israelis back an immediate attack on the nuclear facilities of arch-foe Iran but the rest want to wait and see the results of US diplomacy, according to a poll released on Sunday.
Fifty-one percent support an immediate Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, while 49 percent believe the Jewish state should await the outcome of efforts by the US administration to engage with the Islamic republic, said the survey published by Tel Aviv University.
But 74 percent of those questioned said they believe that new US President Barack Obama’s efforts will not stop the Islamic republic from acquiring atomic weapons.
Israel, widely considered to be the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear armed state, considers Iran its arch-foe after repeated statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be “wiped off the map.”
Israel and Washington accuse Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme, a charge Tehran has repeatedly denied.
via Half of Israelis back immediate strike on Iran.
Jordanian King Says US Pushing 57 State Peace Plan
The United States is promoting a peace plan for the Middle East involving a “57-state solution” in which the entire Muslim world would recognize Israel, Monday’s Times of London quoted Jordan’s King Abdullah as saying.
“We are offering a third of the world to meet them with open arms,” the king said. “The future is not the Jordan River or the Golan Heights or the Sinai, the future is Morocco in the Atlantic and Indonesia in the Pacific. That is the prize.” But he warned: “If we delay our peace negotiations, then there is going to be another conflict between Arabs or Muslims and Israel in the next 12-18 months.” The newspaper said the king had hatched the plan with President Barack Obama in Washington in April. Details are likely to be thrashed out in a series of diplomatic moves this month, including Obama’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington next week. “What we are talking about is not Israelis and Palestinians sitting at the table, but Israelis sitting with Palestinians, Israelis sitting with Syrians, Israelis sitting with Lebanese,” said the king. While Palestinians seek a state in their long-running conflict with Israel, Syria wants the return of the Golan Heights, seized by Israel in a
via Jordanian king says US pushing new peace plan.
Iran Deploys Missile Batteries Fearing Israel, US Attack
May 12, 2009 by admin
Filed under Stories Of Interest
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps has deployed mobile ground-to-air and ground-to-sea missile batteries in the Strait of Hormuz and other areas in the Persian Gulf, an Iranian source was quoted by Al Watan as saying on Tuesday.
The source told the Saudi-based newspaper that the move was made after Iran received reports that the US and Israel were preparing to attack the Islamic republic’s nuclear facilities.
Will Israel Be Forced To Face The World Alone?
As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu prepares for his visit to the United States next week, warnings abound that the Obama Administration’s policies will leave Israel to face Iran and Hamas alone.
The warnings are summed up in recent articles by the West’s two main pro-Israel female commentators: Melanie Phillips and Caroline Glick. Writing in the Spectator (United Kingdom) last week, Philips warns that “Obama is attempting to throw Israel under the Islamist bus.” She cites the report that Obama’s National Security Adviser told a European foreign minister that Obama will be ‘forceful’ with Israel, and plans to impose, with the EU and moderate Arab states, “a satisfactory endgame solution” upon Israel.
“This is all not only evil,” Phillips says, “but exceptionally stupid… The Arab states are beside themselves with anxiety about Iran. They want it to be attacked and its nuclear programme stopped. They are desperately fearful that the Obama administration might have decided that it can live with a nuclear Iran… A Palestine state will be Iran, in the sense that it will be run by Hamas as a proxy for the Islamic Republic. The idea that a Palestine state will not compromise Israel’s security is ludicrous.”
American Jewry: Spineless
After expressing incredulity at the American demands for further Israeli concessions in the light of the utter failure of the Disengagement, Phillips writes that U.S. Jews are reacting “with a total absence of spine… Almost eighty per cent of American Jews voted for Obama despite the clear and present danger he posed to Israel. They did so because their liberal self-image was and is more important to them than the Jewish state whose existence and security cannot be allowed to jeopardise their standing with America’s elite.”
Netanyahu must therefore take Israel’s message to “the ordinary American people,” she concludes: “They do value and support Israel. They do understand that if Israel is thrown under that bus, the west is next. And it is they to whom Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu must now appeal, over the heads of the politicians and the media and certainly America’s Jews and everyone else. He must tell the American people the terrible truth, that America is now run by a man who is intent on sacrificing Israel for a reckless and amoral political strategy which will put America and the rest of the free world at risk.”
Peres: Israel Supports Two-State Solution, Iran Engagement
Israel is on board with key elements of President Obama’s agenda in the Middle East, Israeli President Shimon Peres told reporters Tuesday after meeting with Obama at the White House.
He said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would support a two-state solution to achieve peace between the Israelis and Palestinians and that if Obama wants to engage Iran, the Israelis are willing to back him.
“Mr. Netanyahu said he will cooperate (with) the commitments of the previous (Israeli) government. The previous government accepted the roadmap (to Middle East peace). In the roadmap, you’ll find the attitude to the two-state solution,” Peres said.
He said Netanyahu is ready to “start to negotiate right away” and does not want to “govern the Palestinian people.”
The Tuesday sit-down was meant to lay the groundwork for a meeting later this month with Netanyahu which the U.S. president hopes will lead to a resumption of the Middle East peace process.
The White House released a statement Tuesday noting that Peres and Obama discussed issues “including the pursuit of a comprehensive peace in the Middle East and Iran’s nuclear program” and saying Obama looks forward to the meeting with Netanyahu.
Peres, more moderate than Netanyahu, had been downplaying the new Israeli leader’s previous refusal to endorse the “two-state solution” that has been the foundation of U.S. policy since early in the Bush administration.
The push for a two-state solution was also at the heart of a political flap Tuesday over the tone the administration was taking with its top ally in the Middle East.
Netanyahu Considering Land-For-Iran
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly contemplating making a deal with the Obama administration in an effort to encourage a more forceful American response to the Iranian regime.
According to The Jerusalem Post Thursday, Netanyahu may agree to some form of implementation of the so-called Arab peace plan in exchange for an American pledge to more robustly oppose Tehran’s nuclear program.
This Arab plan calls for Israel to withdraw from all land it has controlled since the Six Day War – including Judea, Samaria, the Dead Sea/Jordan Valley and the Golan Heights – and the granting of blanket rights for all “Palestinian” “refugees” to “return home.”
In exchange for this abandonment of historical and biblical Jewish lands and the opening of the doors to an Arab deluge – acts which will mean national suicide – the Arab states say seductively, they will establish full, normal relations with what will be left of Israel.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has signaled Washington and Europe of the new Israeli government’s intention to revise the repeatedly-failed land-for-peace approach to the Israeli-”Palestinian” conflict.
Netanyahu is expected to face enormous pressure to change this stance when he visits Washington on May 18.
It is already in play: President Barack Obama and his state department have repeatedly if diplomatically rejected any Israeli questioning of the viability of the “two-state-solution.”
Pundits expect that Netanyahu will be accorded a frosty reception at the White House and that Obama’s gloves will come off. Administration officials answering journalists’ questions in this way, “assured” them that the president was looking forward to hosting the Israeli.
In part because of the widespread media speculation, Netanyahu’s policy review team is understood to be brainstorming ways to avoid any form of clash that could harden Obama’s heart towards Israel.
via Jerusalem Post: Bibi considering land-for-Iran.
Jordan: Israel Faces War If It Does Not Agree To Arab Terms
Israel faces all-out war within 18 months if it does not come to terms with the Arab world and allow the establishment of a new Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, according to Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
The Hashemite monarch also declared on America’s Meet the Press television program Sunday that threats from Iran and Al Qaeda will fade away once Jerusalem is divided.
His position basically echoed the Palestinian Authority (PA) stand that its demands are a condition for peace and are not a matter for negotiation, despite diplomatic and media language about Israel and the PA each making concessions.
The king responded to virtually every question concerning the Middle East by pointing to Jerusalem. “In Arab and Muslim minds, the most emotional aspect is the Palestinian cause and that of Jerusalem. And from there leads all the other problems,” he argued.
When program host David Gregory asked if it’s not a “fantasy’ to think that the problem of Al Qaeda will disappear so easily, the Jordanian monarch answered, ”What — what is Al Qaeda’s platform is — is the plight of the Palestinians in Jerusalem under occupation.”
