Israel HaYom: Netanyahu reports reaching written agreement with Obama administration

 

US recognizes settlement blocs, Netanyahu says

Netanyahu: Obama administration has ratified George Bush's 2004 letter to Ariel Sharon guaranteeing settlement blocs will remain part of Israel in any future peace deal • Document was drafted prior to the Quartet meeting in early July.

Shlomo Cesana and Israel Hayom Staff  http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=562   8/2/2011

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday that he had reached a written agreement with the Obama administration according to which Israel would not be required to return to the 1967 borders in any future peace deal with the Palestinians. In addition, any future peace talks would take into account established "realities on the ground" - a term generally used in reference to Israel's large settlement blocs of Ariel, Maale Adumim and Gush Etzion.

Netanyahu's statements would mean an effective American ratification of a letter sent in 2004 by former U.S. President George W. Bush to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon which guaranteed that the settlement blocs would remain a part of Israel in any future peace agreement with the Palestinians. The current administration, under President Barack Obama, has not publicly endorsed Bush's letter to Sharon. In 2009, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there was no acknowledgment of any such agreement in the official negotiating record between Israel and the Bush administration. "There is no memorialization 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 U.S. government," Clinton said.

The current U.S. administration has recently made it clear to Israel that Obama's position is in line with the second speech he delivered at the AIPAC conference in May 2011 -- in which he clarified that the U.S. believes negotiations should be based on 1967 borders with mutually agreed land swaps and not the borders that existed on June 4, 1967 -- and not his first speech, to which Netanyahu reacted angrily.

The Prime Minister's Office now views the agreement with the Obama Administration as an achievement.

The document was prepared prior to the Quartet meeting in early July, during which the Americans and Europeans tried to relaunch negotiations ahead of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of statehood at the United Nations in September. The Quartet had been hoping to issue a statement saying that negotiations would be based on the 1967 borders framework articulated in Obama's speech, together with recognition of Israel as a Jewish state -- implying that the Palestinians would forego the right of return for refugees. However, the Palestinians rejected the draft and no statement was issued.

Prime Minister's Office spokesman Gidi Shmerling clarified on Monday night that the understanding with the U.S. does not include an Israeli agreement to return to the 1967 borders. Rather, the U.S. has acknowledged that any future talks would take into consideration the changes on the ground as well as Israel's security concerns.

Meanwhile, a report Monday night on Israel's Channel 2 TV news said that Netanyahu had in fact agreed to renew negotiations with the Palestinians based on the framework of 1967 borders with land swaps. The report has been picked up by international media outlets.

“In order to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and facilitate the restarting of direct talks, Israel has been willing to accept a package that includes a formula on borders,” an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, was quoting as saying.

These borders could be “difficult for Israel to accept,” the official added.

France: Recognition of Israel as the Jewish state required

France's peace bombshell

Last Updated:3:35 AM, July 30, 2011

Posted:11:18 PM, July 29, 2011   NY Post editorial

It didn't get a lot of notice, but the gov ernment of French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a statement last week that could have a profound effect on the prospects for Middle East negotiations.

Sarkozy's foreign minister, Alain Juppe, publicly stated: "There will be no solution to the conflict in the Middle East without recognition of two nation-states for two people," including "the nation-state of Israel for the Jewish people."

That's been a significant Israeli condition for years -- that the Palestinians must recognize Israel's existence as aJewishstate, thereby ending their claims on the entirety of Israel.

Just as significantly, that's something the Palestinians adamantly refuse to do.

Juppe's statement makes France the first European nation to state publicly that any agreement must recognize Israel's Jewish character.

That position has been opposed by Britain, Spain, Belgium and Ireland, among others -- as well as by the EU's foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton.

And there is discord within the so-called Quartet -- the US, the EU, the UN and Russia -- over this condition.

Yet as Evelyn Gordon writes on Commentary's blog, Sarkozy has "finally grasped that no agreement is possible without satisfying Israel's minimum requirements" -- which means demanding a concession from the Palestinians.

Clearly, the continued failure to recognize Israel's Jewish character -- the basis of its creation -- is an open invitation to the dismantlement of Israel and its incorporation into an Arab state of Palestine.

It's long past time that someone in Europe injected reality into genuine Middle East peacemaking. Kudos to Sarkozy and Juppe for doing so.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/editorials/france_peace_bombshell_z58XnQjHWbaA1EMr5AaJNM#ixzz1ThnWHs00

Understanding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict over the West Bank

In the video, Israel's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Danny Ayalon explains the historical facts relating to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. 


 The video explains where the terms "West Bank", "occupied territories" and "67 Borders" originated and how they are incorrectly used and applied.



Source: http://youtu.be/XGYxLWUKwWo

Guess who presides over the U.N. Conference on Disarmament.

DEMOCRATIC PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF KOREA ASSUMES PRESIDENCY OF THE U.N. CONFERENCE ON DISARMAMENT

 

June 28, 2011

 

The United Nations in the Heart of Europe | News & Media | www.unog.ch

This is the official Web Site of the United Nations Office at Geneva. Here you will find daily UN News, UN Documents and Publications, UN Overview information, UN Conference information, Photos, and other UN information resources, such as information on Conference on Disarmament, the League of Natio

 

 

Source:  http://www.unog.ch/unog/website/news_media.nsf/(httpNewsByYear_en)/8059A08A25E9F0F1C12578BD003A08A8?OpenDocument

 

hat tip: Jeff Jacoby

 

-Please switch to reading http://facebook.com/JewishCurrentEvents  or sign up, top right on http://jcommunitynews.blogspot.com to subscribe to e-mail from the Facebook page.  This blog will be discontinued.

 

Gaza Flotilla organizers work hand-in-hand with Hamas while ignoring its antisemitic, homophobic, misogynist ideology.

AP Photo (Aug 25, 2008): "Hamas Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, center, sits with members of the U.S.-based Free Gaza group, which left Cyprus by boat on Friday, during a meeting at his house in Gaza City, Sunday, Aug. 24, 2008. Two boats carrying dozens of international activists sailed into the Gaza Strip in defiance of an Israeli blockade on Saturday." (original caption)

Gaza Flotilla organizers work hand-in-hand with Hamas while ignoring its antisemitic, homophobic, misogynist ideology. 

FROM THE HAMAS CHARTER: ""The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jews will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7)

HAMAS ON MARRIAGE EQUALITY: "Are these the laws for which the Palestinian street is waiting? For us to give rights to homosexuals and to lesbians, a minority of perverts and the mentally and morally sick?"
Dr. Mahmud al-Zahar, Hamas leader in Gaza, condemning homosexual marriage, The Times (UK), October 7, 2005

ON THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL: "Before Israel dies, it must be humiliated and degraded. Allah willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day." 
Khalid al-Mish'al, leader of Hamas, in a speech held at a rally in Damascus, Palestinian Information Center - official Hamas website - December 10, 2005

Pipes: Not Stealing Palestine, but Purchasing Israel

An essential fact: The land on which Jews lived and farmed in pre-state Israel was purchased and not stolen. To claim that the Jews stole the land is wrong and is being used to deny the right of Israel to exist. --Mark Finkelstein   jcrc@dmjfed.org

 

 

Not Stealing Palestine, but Purchasing Israel  The real history of Israel’s founding, and why it matters   By Daniel Pipes    June 21, 2011   Zionists stole Palestinian land: That’s the mantra both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas teach their children and propagate in their media. This claim has vast importance, as Palestinian Media Watch explains: “Presenting the creation of the [Israeli] state as an act of theft and its continued existence as a historical injustice serves as the basis for the PA’s non-recognition of Israel’s right to exist.” The accusation of theft also undermines Israel’s position internationally. But is this accusation true? No, it is not. Ironically, the building of Israel represents almost the most peaceable in-migration and state creation in history. Understanding why requires seeing Zionism in context. Simply put, conquest is the historical norm. Governments everywhere have been established through invasion and nearly all states came into being at someone else’s expense. No one is permanently in charge; everyone’s roots trace back to somewhere else. Germanic tribes, Central Asian hordes, Russian tsars, and Spanish and Portuguese conquistadors remade the map. Modern Greeks have only a tenuous connection to the Greeks of antiquity. Who can count the number of times Belgium was overrun? The United States came into existence after the defeat of Native Americans. Kings marauded in Africa, Aryans invaded India. In Japan, Yamato-speakers eliminated all but tiny groups such as the Ainu. The Middle East, due to its centrality and geography, has experienced more than its share of invasions, including the Greek, Roman, Arabian, Crusader, Seljuk, Timurid, Mongolian, and modern European. Within the region, dynastic froth caused the same territory — Egypt for example — to be conquered and re-conquered. The land that now makes up Israel was no exception. In Jerusalem Besieged: From Ancient Canaan to Modern Israel, Eric H. Cline writes of Jerusalem: “No other city has been more bitterly fought over throughout its history.” He backs up that claim, counting “at least 118 separate conflicts in and for Jerusalem during the past four millennia.” He calculates Jerusalem to have been destroyed completely at least twice, besieged 23 times, captured 44 times, and attacked 52 times. The PA fantasizes that today’s Palestinians are descended from a tribe of ancient Canaan, theJebusites; in fact, they are overwhelmingly the offspring of invaders and immigrants seeking economic opportunities. Against this tableau of unceasing conquest, violence, and overthrow, Zionist efforts to build a presence in the Holy Land until 1948 stand out as astonishingly mild, mercantile rather than military. Two great empires, the Ottomans and the British, ruled Eretz Yisrael. In contrast, Zionists lacked military power. They could not possibly achieve statehood through conquest. Instead, they purchased land. Acquiring property dunam by dunam, farm by farm, house by house, lay at the heart of the Zionist enterprise until 1948. The Jewish National Fund, founded in 1901 to buy land in Palestine “to assist in the foundation of a new community of free Jews engaged in active and peaceable industry,” was the key institution — and not the Haganah, the clandestine defense organization founded in 1920. Zionists also focused on the rehabilitation of what was barren and considered unusable. They not only made the desert bloom, but drained swamps, cleared water channels, reclaimed wasteland, forested bare hills, cleared rocks, and removed salt from the soil. Jewish reclamation and sanitation work precipitously reduced the number of disease-related deaths. Only when the British Mandate of Palestine gave up power in 1948, followed immediately by an all-out attempt by Arab states to crush and expel the Zionists, did the latter take up the sword in self-defense and go on to win land through military conquest. Even then, as the historian Efraim Karsh demonstrates in Palestine Betrayed, most Arabs fled their lands; exceedingly few were forced off. This history contradicts the Palestinian account that “Zionist gangs stole Palestine and expelled its people” which led to a catastrophe “unprecedented in history” (according to a PA twelfth-grade textbook) or that Zionists “plundered the Palestinian land and national interests, and established their state upon the ruins of the Palestinian Arab people” (writes a columnist in the PA’s daily). International organizations, newspaper editorials, and faculty petitions reiterate this falsehood worldwide. Israelis should hold their heads high and point out that the building of their country was based on the least violent and most civilized movement of any people in history. Gangs did not steal Palestine. Merchants purchased Israel. — Daniel Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. © 2011 by Daniel Pipes. All rights reserved  Source:   http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/270064/not-stealing-palestine-purchasing-israel-daniel-pipes#

International Red Cross demands Hamas prove Shalit is alive

To continue receiving information from the Jewish News Blog,  please subscribe to the Jewish Current Events page on Facebook. 

To do this:  you can enter your e-mail address in the box provided, top right column onhttp://jewishcommunitynews.blogspot.com   Or accesshttp://facebook.com/jewishcurrentevents.    The jcommunitynews.blogspot.com site will be discontinued.

Inter

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/red-cross-demands-hamas-prove-shalit-is-alive-1.369233

GENEVA, June 23 (Reuters) - The International Red Cross on Thursday urged Hamas
 to provide proof abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit is still alive.

The independent aid agency, in an unusual public appeal, said that Shalit's family had 
a right under international humanitarian law to be in contact with their 24-year-old son, 
who has been held incommunicado since captured by Palestinian militants in a 
cross-border raid on June 25, 2006. [Friday is the 5th anniversary of Shalit's kidnapping.]


"Because there has been no sign of life from Mr. Shalit for almost two years, 
the ICRC is now demanding that Hamas prove that he is alive," the International
 Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.