Thursday, January 2, 2014

Netanyahu Offers a Dose of Truth about Palestine to John Kerry

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered a rather negative assessment of peace prospects with the Palestinians on Thursday in a press conference in Jerusalem with US Secretary of State John Kerry, who is beginning his tenth visit to the region in an attempt to broker a deal between Israel and Palestine. Netanyahu said, "There is growing doubt in Israel that the Palestinians are committed to peace," speaking with unusual bluntness as Kerry stood beside him. The Israeli prime minister accused Palestinian officials of orchestrating a campaign of "rampant" incitement against Israel, and he directly reprimanded Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for giving a hero's homecoming welcome to a group of Palestinian prisoners convicted of murdering Israelis. The prisoners were released from Israeli jails on Tuesday as part of a prisoner release program reluctantly agreed to by Israel as a preliminary gesture in the latest effort to restart peace talks. Netanyahu said, "To glorify the murderers of innocent women and men as heroes is an outrage." Speaking after Prime Minister Netanyahu, Kerry said that Israeli and Palestinian leaders "are nearing the point, or are already at it, where they will have to make tough decisions," and he pledged to work with both sides more intensely to try to narrow the differences through a framework agreement that would address core issues, including the borders of a future Palestinian state, security, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem, Kerry said : "It would create the fixed, defined parameters by which the parties would then know where they are going and what the end result can be,....This will take time and it will take compromise from both sides, but an agreed framework would be a significant breakthrough." Kerry is in fact proposing that Israel and Palestine agree to an outline containing a series of compromises on the major issues, with the details to be filled in later. This is asking a lot from two opponents whose negotiating history has been difficult and who do not trust each other, thus making it seem to each side to be extremely risky to make substantial concessions without having concluded a complete agreement. For example, what could Israel and Palestine agree to in outline format concerning one major point in the conflict - the creation of a Palestinian state - while Palestine says it cannot agree to recognizing Israel's right to exist as a nation, and Israel says it cannot agree to the Palestinian demand that its state borders be based on the borders pre-dating the 1967 Six-Day War, in which Israel captured and occupied Gaza, East Jerusalem and the West Bank. "The Jordan Valley must be under Israel sovereignty forever," Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Zeev Elkin said on Thursday, referring to the border area with Jordan, from which Palestinians want a full Israeli withdrawal. "The 1967 borders are Auschwitz borders," Elkin was quoted as saying by the Ha'aretz newspaper, suggesting that Elkin thinks a return to the narrower boundaries that existed before the 1967 conflict would lead to the destruction of Israel. ~~~~~ And, dear readers, this is just one of the key issues that Israel and Palestine must somehow agree on. Other major issues include the Israeli settler question, with Israel rejecting Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' call for all Israeli settlers and soldiers within the lands captured in 1967 to be withdrawn. Another critically important issue involves the future of Jerusalem. Israel says it will never agree to dividing the holy city of Jerusalem by ceding East Jerusalem to Palestine. Palestine insists that East Jerusalem must be its future capital. Anyone who wants to see Israel survive sees the logic of its position. And, as Netanyahu has said, if Palestine will recognize Israel's right to exist, then all other issues become negotiable. But so far, the Obama administration has asked Israel to make all the preliminary gestures without demanding similar gestures of Palestine. This may well be yet another example of President Obama's tendency to favor the opponents of Israel, but it could also be an indirect admission that Obama and Hillary Clinton-John Kerry have no idea how to broker the Israel-Palestine deal, just as they failed to negotiate their own deals with Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and North Korea. I stand with Israel on these issues. There is no reason to abandon America's most loyal ally to a 'death by a thousand cuts' at the hands of Palestine and its terrorist allies, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Moslem Brotherhood.

9 comments:

  1. Why does Obama, Clinton(s) and Kerry all think that the act of compromise lies with Israel and not the want-a-be state of Palestine.

    To withdrawal back to a line in the sand that was erased some 46 years ago is ludicrous. The time difference between WWI & WWII was less and the dividing up certainly did not go back to Pre-WWI.

    The Prisoner release agreement was insane and should have never been agreed to. But in Israel "Hope Springs Eternal".

    Now our "experienced" Secretary of State thinks Prime Minister Netanyahu and all of Israel will agree to a BLANK OUTLINE AGREEMENT with John Kerry and Obama in their lying M.O. to fill in the blanks. And John Kerry has yet to break the ice on the Jordan Valley issue.

    Besides everything one can think of that may be on the table for discussion there is that Big Grey Elephant standing in the corner of the room wherever the talks are held (if they ever are) ... the Elephant has a name, it's called JERUSALEM. And the possibilities of dividing The Holy City is the same today, yesterday, and tomorrow ...
    N E V E R H A P P E N.

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  2. I'm not sure Kerry can handle PM Netanyahu straight forward truth.

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  3. I believe that the definitive deal has been already made in the Middle East, and it's most likely between Israel and an Arab nation that hands are tied to do anything in direct conflict to other Islamic nations.

    Nations must do what is in the best interests of its citizens - not in best interest of citizens of various neighboring nations who share a similar religion. Just as PM Netanyahu does daily to protect the citizens of Israel.

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  4. To not step forward and help Israel is to be complicate in their demise. To not be on the side of Israel is to be either cowardly of to be on the side of the various terrorist organization waiting patiently to strike at the heart of Israel.

    For a President of the United States to be so obviously clear in his acceptance of the instruments of hate and murderous weekly acts around the world since 9/11 and in all honestly years before that's is embarrassing to me.

    Michelle Obama made the statement a few days before her husband took office that she was never proud to be an America before. Well for one I have never been more ashamed of my president, of any president

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  5. If the conflict were about "settlements" if would be wonderful. The conflict, however, is about Israel's RIGHT to be, to exist as the sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people on ANY parcel of land of the Jewish people's ancestral homeland.



    In other words, the Arabs have objected, categorically, to Israel's historic/natural, ethical and legal right to exist as the national home of the Jewish people, and has attempted, long before "settlements" to bring about Israel's demise, through full scale wars, war-of-attrition-through-terror, economic boycotts, legal intifada, etc.



    Sadly, it appears that neither the poster nor the Obama/Kerry team either can or even willing to understand this reality

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  6. Palestine - the name of a territory, never a nationality or a state of course - also known as Eretz Israel (Land of Israel), was legally partitioned in 1921/22 during which the Arabs were handed over 77% of the territory. Located between the Jordan River and the Arabian desert, the Arabs of Palestine renamed their part Jordan. The rest, legally, only 23% of the whole, was assigned to be the national home of the Jewish people. Located between the Jordan River and the Med. Sea, the Jews renamed their part of their ancestral homeland Israel. Now, the Arabs want a chunk of the 23% of Palestine/Eretz Israel that legally was assigned to the Jews. Would you be willing to just hand over your homeland to people who have been calling and acting to ensure that your nation is wiped off the face of earth and the country is "cleansed' of your people? Well, the "moderate" Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) continues to have these goals as the thrust of its Charter...!!

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  7. The following, since 1920, have been peace offers, proposals, gestures and opportunities made by both Israel and the international community. Yet, all have been rejected by the Arabs:


    1920, San Remo conference decisions, rejected
    1922, League of Nations decisions, rejected
    1937, Peel Commission proposal, rejected
    1947, UN General Assembly proposal, rejected
    1948, Israel's stretched out arm for peace, rejected
    1967, Israel's stretched out arm for peace, rejected
    1978, Begin/Saadat peace proposal, rejected
    1995, Rain's Contour-for-Peace offer, rejected
    2000, Barak/Clinton peace offer, rejected
    2005, Sharon gesture, rejected
    2008, Olmert/Bush peace offer, rejected
    2009 to 2013, Netanyahu peace talks, rejected


    The ONLY common denominators to ALL of the above rejects by the Arabs is the requirement that they would also, in addition to peace, accept the RIGHT of a sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people to be, to exist on a portion of the Jewish people's ancestral homeland. Sadly, they couldn't accept this RIGHT, hence the perpetuation of conflict.


    People of good will should direct their demands to the Arabs: Accept Israel's RIGHT to be, to exist as the sovereign nation-state of the Jewish people, Now!

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  8. Mr. Kerry wants this as a crowning achievement and possibly a stepping stone toward the presidency again. He (Kerry) is cast from the same mold as Obama is ... "Promise Everything-Deliver Nothing-Blame Someone Else"

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  9. Kerry is going to try to convince Israel that their neighbors, who
    keep showering them with missiles, really don't mean them harm. That they shouldn't build houses for their people & that they should put their tiny country in jeopardy in order to make the Palestinians , who deny Israel's existence, feel good about themselves.

    Sounds like another disastrous attempt from the Obama/Kerry Foreign Relations Agenda!

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