Israel Reminds Trump It Has No Peace Partner - Israel Today

Israel Reminds Trump It Has No Peace Partner

Monday, March 13, 2017 |  Israel Today Staff

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Peace Process

Days after US President Donald Trump phoned Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and urged him to finally make peace with Israel, a top Israeli government official said Abbas is not a genuine partner for peace.

“Israel is just telling the truth about Abu Mazen’s [Mahmoud Abbas] extreme positions, which negate the existence of [Israel] as a Jewish state,” National Infrastructure Minister Yuval Steinitz (Likud) told Israel Radio.

Abbas is expected to visit the White House at Trump’s invitation in the coming months.

Before that happens, Abbas is hoping to forge some kind of unity amongst the fractious organizations - both political and military - that make up the Palestinian Authority.

At an urgent meeting called in Ramallah on Sunday, Abbas stressed that “national” unity was needed in order effectively negotiate with the new American president.

The fact that Abbas does not have effective control of the territories supposedly under his rule has been a major sticking point for Israel when it comes to making land concessions.

For instance, the Palestinian Authority was supposed to govern the Gaza Strip following Israel’s withdrawal, but the coastal enclave was quickly and easily seized by Hamas.

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EU Applauds Anti-Semitic Libel, Then Gets Rocked by UK Vote - Israel Today

EU Applauds Anti-Semitic Libel, Then Gets Rocked by UK Vote

Friday, June 24, 2016 |  Israel Today Staff

Want more news from Israel?“Moderate” Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday used his opportunity to address to the European Union Parliament in Brussels to screech out wildly unsubstantiated conspiracy theories regarding Israel.

In allegations echoing a popular medieval anti-Semitic libel, Abbas charged, “Only a week ago, a number of rabbis in Israel announced, and made a clear announcement, demanding that their government poison the water to kill the Palestinians. Isn’t that clear incitement to commit mass killings against the Palestinian people?”

Abbas and his regime based their claim off a Turkish state news agency report that a “Rabbi Shlomo Mlma, chairman of the Council of Rabbis in the West Bank settlements”, had called on Jewish settlers to poison Palestinian water supplies.

But investigations by Reuters and other news agencies were unable to find any such edict, or, indeed, a rabbi named Shlomo Mlma or an organization called the Council of Rabbis.

In other words, the entire affair was fabricated.

But that didn’t stop the European lawmakers from giving Abbas a standing ovation following his libelous speech.

Perhaps it was no coincidence that this happened on the very same day, in fact just hours before the British public rocked the EU by voting to pull their nation out of the politico-economic union, a move that could have devastating economic consequences for the continent.

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Skeptical of Peace Process, Israelis Support Annexation - ISRAEL TODAY

Skeptical of Peace Process, Israelis Support Annexation

Sunday, February 07, 2016 |  Israel Today Staff

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Peace Process

Most Israelis want genuine and productive peace talks, but skepticism over the diplomatic process with the current Palestinian leadership has resulted in growing support for simply annexing Judea and Samaria, the so-called “West Bank.”

That according to the results of Israel’s monthly “Peace Index” survey published last Tuesday.

Asked if they are in favor of a renewal of peace talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, nearly 62 percent of all Israelis answered in the affirmative.

At the same time, nearly 68 percent believed such talks would fail to reach a solution in the short term, and only 29 percent felt peace process in its current incarnation would ever be successful.

The poll further revealed that a 45.3 percent plurality of Israelis now support annexing Judea and Samaria, thus ending the “dream” of a Palestinian state, while 44.8 percent oppose such a move.

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Drop the 'Jewish State' Demand - USA Secretary of State John Kerry

Kerry: Drop the 'Jewish State' Demand

Friday, March 14, 2014 |  Israel Today Staff  

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US Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday said it was wrong for Israel to insist upon being recognized by the Palestinians as a “Jewish state” as a condition for peace.

“I think it’s a mistake for some people to be, you know, raising it again and again as the critical decider of their attitude towards the possibility of a state and peace, and we’ve obviously made that clear,” Kerry told the congressional House Committee on Foreign Affairs.

Kerry’s remarks would seem to be an about face from Washington’s position on the matter just over a month ago.

In late January, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who is close to the White House, wrote that Kerry’s Middle East peace proposal would call on the Palestinians to “recognize Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people” as one of the core concessions necessary for a final status peace agreement.

The discrepancy suggests that the Obama Administration could be succumbing to Palestinian pressure and altering its proposal to lean more toward the Arab agenda.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly stated that he will never recognize Israel as the Jewish state, and threatened to quit the peace talks over that and other US-backed Israeli conditions. On Sunday, Arab League head Nabil Elaraby told Al-Arabiya that he fully backs Abbas’ position, and is calling for all Arab countries to take a “firm stand” against Israel’s demand to be recognized as the Jewish state.

For Israel, the condition is a critical one because official recognition of a Jewish state by the Palestinian Authority would mean that the Arabs finally accept Israel’s right to exist in the region as the national homeland of the Jewish people, thereby precluding (presumably) any future attempts to destroy it.

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'We Don't Need Permission to Pray at Western Wall'

Thursday, February 20, 2014 |  Israel Today Staff  

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Israel's deputy foreign minister, Danny Danon, insisted earlier this week that Jews require permission from no one to pray at Jerusalem's Western Wall, the retaining wall of the Temple Mount that for centuries has been Judaism's holiest site.

At a meeting with Israeli students in Ramallah on Sunday, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas insisted the Palestinians must win control of the eastern half of Jerusalem in order to make peace, but promised to still allow Jews to enter the Old City and pray at the Western Wall.

"We do not need the permission of anyone to pray at the Kotel, certainly not from the Palestinian leadership," an incredulous Danon said later in response. "Jews have prayed, Jews pray, and Jews will pray at the Kotel forever."

In the meeting, which was set up by left-wing Israeli peace movements, Abbas also claimed he had no desire to flood Israel with millions of so-called "Palestinian refugees," even though he continues to make a Palestinian "right of return" a red-line issue in current US-brokered peace talks.

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ISRAEL TODAY: Palestinian in Damascus: 'I Want Israeli Citizenship'

Palestinian in Damascus: 'I Want Israeli Citizenship'
Monday, January 20, 2014 | Israel Today Staff



Refugee camp resident in Damascus living under 'suffocating siege' says Mahmoud Abbas and the Arab world to blame for starvation.

Two thousand Palestinians have been killed in Syria's ongoing civil war, a drop in the bucket compared to the 120,000 estimated overall deaths. But many of those Palestinian casualties are the result of starvation, and many are children.

Syrian government forces defending the capital of Damascus have taken to imposing a "suffocating siege" on outlying neighborhoods that are under rebel control.



In many cases, the residents of those neighborhoods are wholly unable to obtain basic food and medical supplies. The situation has become so bad that Muslim clerics have ruled that it is permissible for locals to eat cats, dogs, donkeys and other animal carcasses to survive.

One of the neighborhoods suffering under the siege is the Palestinian "refugee camp" of Yarmuk, which before the war was home to some 400,000 people.

Yarmuk has now been under siege for months, and at least 50 local residents, including children, have died of starvation.

A video that made its way out of Yarmuk and was posted to YouTube (see below) shows how difficult the situation has become. One of the residents even tells the camera that he wants to become an Israeli citizen, because Israel actually cares for its own.

The man explains that if even one Israeli child was found in Yarmuk, a solution to the neighborhood's problems would have been found long ago. He goes on to accuse Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and the rest of the Arab Muslim nations of having abandoned the Palestinians living in Syria.

Watch here: Video from Damascus, Syria

Earlier this month, Abbas addressed the situation in Yarmuk during a meeting in Ramallah. However, he refused to mention the Syrian regime, let alone condemn the policy of "suffocating siege" that it imposes on rebel-held neighborhoods. Instead, Abbas placed the blame on the rebels themselves for having taken up positions in neighborhoods like Yarmuk, and on foreign powers for funding the rebels.

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