Maybe it’s just wishful thinking….but I see signs.
And here they are in no particular order:
Speaking to Reuters on Thursday, Bush made clear he considers the settlements a serious issue to be raised the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert during his visit.
“I will talk about Israeli settlement expansion, about how that is, that can be, you know, an impediment to success,” Bush said. “The unauthorized outposts for example need to be dismantled, like the Israelis said they would do.”
“I hope and assess that in the coming period and thereafter, during the U.S. president’s visit to Israel and afterwards, real steps will be taken to remove those outposts,”
And Olmert acts:
The Israeli government plans an imminent crackdown on unauthorized West Bank settler outposts.
Vice Premier Haim Ramon said Friday that troops and police could be deployed as early as next week for a mass-removal of outposts erected in the West Bank without state approval. He indicated that the operation
could be timed to coincide with President Bush’s visit to Israel and the Palestinian Authority on January 9-11.“I hope and assess that in the coming period and thereafter, during the U.S. president’s visit to Israel and afterwards, real steps will be taken to remove those outposts,” Ramon told Israel Radio.
Peres blasted over left-wing event
Shimon Peres drew right-wing fire for planning to attend an event organized by the Geneva Initiative, an independent Israeli-Palestinian peace movement.
The Yesha settler council on Friday urged the Israeli president to scrap his planned participation next week in a symposium sponsored by the Geneva Initiative, which drafted an “alternative” peace plan at the height of Palestinian violence in 2003.
“President Peres has put the presidential institution to the service of the far-left,” Yesha chairman Danny Dayan told Israel Radio.
Peres’s office had no immediate comment.
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/106233.html
Olmert, Abdullah meet in Aqaba
Ehud Olmert met with Jordan’s King Abdullah in an unannounced visit.
Thursday’s meeting in the Jordanian coastal town of Aqaba was arranged to coordinate the Israeli and Jordanian positions on regional issues ahead of U.S. President George Bush’s visit to the region next week, according to Israel Radio. It was not announced in advance for security reasons.
During the meeting the Israeli prime minister told Abdullah that Israel will not build any new settlements nor appropriate any more land claimed by the Palestinians. Olmert repeated his desire to move toward a final peace settlement.
Abdullah urged Israel and the Palestinians to honor their commitments to the current peace process.
According to a statement from the Royal Palace, Abdullah told Israel “to halt unilateral activities that may obstruct progress” toward peace.
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/106233.html
Change in Iran policy
The shadow that Bhutto’s assassination is casting on regional security is of varied hues. That is how it is already being felt in Tehran. In one swift sweep, almost overnight, Pakistan replaces Iran on the Bush administration’s radar screen. Israel may not like what is happening, but Vice President Dick Cheney and company won’t have even a fighting chance of reviving the Iran bogey in the remaining term of the administration.
The Bush administration cannot overlook that the crisis brewing in Pakistan and Afghanistan may turn out to be manifold more serious than all of Tehran’s nuclear program and its support of Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Iraqi Shi’ite militia in Iraq combined together, let alone the political challenge posed by Iran’s rising regional influence.
For the first time since it expounded the “axis of evil” theory, exactly six years ago – grouping Iraq, Iran and North Korea – the Bush administration is compelled to view Iran with a sense of proportion. The hardline policies aimed at destabilizing the Iranian regime look downright irresponsible in the changed circumstances. A military option is out of the question. A regime change in Tehran? Ridiculous.
But the “Iran question” as such may not fade away from the Middle East, though rhetoric – US and Iranian – has appreciably diminished in recent weeks. Part of the problem is that a bitterly contested parliamentary election looms ahead in March in Iran. Nonetheless, Iran-US relations are poised for a change of course. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s offer to meet her Iranian counterpart Manuchehr Mottaki “any place and any time and anywhere” testifies to that. There is guarded optimism in Tehran about the upcoming fourth round of US-Iran meetings regarding cooperation over Iraq’s stabilization.
Rice said a week ago, “We don’t have permanent enemies … what we have is a policy that is open to ending confrontation or conflict with any country that is willing to meet us on those terms.”
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JA05Df02.html
France to help Jordan develop nuclear energy program
French President Nicolas Sarkozy, King Abdullah II discuss Mideast peace process, political crisis in Lebanon; agree on development of Jordan’s nuclear energy program for peaceful use
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3490482,00.html
Study: Gaza pullout hurt Israel’s image
Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip did not garner the expected international sympathy, a new study found.
According to the study by two political and communications researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel’s unilateral 2005 removal of troops and settlers from Gaza and four West Bank communities had the effect of presenting Israel in a more negative light in the Western media.
The researchers reached their conclusion after trolling through thousands of American and British press reports and government statements.
“We found that one of the main reasons for this phenomenon is that Israel continues to be viewed by the world as a conquering state,” said Tamir Sheafer, one of the study’s authors. “We also found that the demands from Israel to territorial concessions in the territories not only were not lessened following the disengagement but actually became stronger.”
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/106215.html
Rabbi wants Olmert hanged
A right-wing Israeli rabbi drew censure after calling for Ehud Olmert and other government leaders to be executed.
Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe, a Chabad rabbi in Israel, was shown on television Wednesday addressing a demonstration against the Olmert government’s peace moves with the Palestinian Authority.
“The terrible traitor, Ehud Olmert, who gives these Nazis weapons, who gives money, who frees their murderous terrorists, this man, like Ariel Sharon, collaborates with the Nazis,” Wolpe said in his speech.
He added that the prime minister, Vice Premier Haim Ramon, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Ehud Barak would be “hanged from the gallows” were Israel run properly.
snip
Ramon in a statement said Wolpe’s behavior recalled the incitement that led to the 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Yoel Hasson, a lawmaker with Olmert’s Kadima party, said he would ask Israel’s attorney general to take legal steps against Wolpe, who leads a messianic faction.
Hamas holding back
If they so desire, Palestinian groups are now capable of bombarding Ashkelon regularly, and with an ample number of rockets. They have enough Katyushas and enhanced Qassams, the rockets can be stored for relatively long periods, and the ruins of the former settlements in northern Gaza provide a launching ground from which the rockets can reach northern Ashkelon.
The only reason this has not yet happened is that Hamas does not want a major clash with Israel. Most rockets hitting Ashkelon are launched by Islamic Jihad, albeit with Hamas’ consent. If Hamas decides to attack, it will not make do with a lone Katyusha.
Hamas is still mulling a short-term cease-fire with Israel. It seems that progress has recently occurred in the parties’ indirect negotiations, and until such an agreement is reached (or definitively not reached), both Hamas and the Israel Defense Forces will keep the fighting on a relatively low flame.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/941713.html
Meanwhile Israel National News reports:
that billboards all over Jerusalem will be plastered with a new poster on the eve of the Bush visit to Israel.
Pictured is a gigantic Bible, towering over the walls of the Old City.
The caption says: “Bush, read your Bible. God gave Israel to the Jews.”
He did, of course. But observers have noted that Israeli governments live more in fear of the White House than in the fear of the Lord.
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2293
Israeli ministers to ‘Condi’ – Go fly a kite
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice can think again if she believes that Israel is going to stop building homes in Jerusalem, the Arab-coveted capital of the Jewish people.
This was the thrust of messages delivered at the weekend by Israeli Housing Minister Ze’ev Boim and Vice-Prime Minister Haim Ramon after Rice criticized Israel Friday during a press conference in Brussels.
Speaking after meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, the American expressed her displeasure at Israel’s recent issuing of a tender to build a little over 300 new housing units in Jerusalem’s Har Homa neighborhood near Bethlehem.
snip
Rice unsurprisingly earned “Palestinian” support for her position when the PA’s so-called foreign minister slammed Ramon.“These statements place obstacles before any serious attempts by Palestinian negotiators on Jerusalem,” Riad Malki said. “They aim to create confusion and change the course of negotiations before they begin. They try to pressure Palestinians and the international parties to think of Israeli needs before they begin.”
Failing support:
Ynetnews reports that an annual survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) reveals that 70 percent of American Jews prefer Clinton as their next president, while 75% of Republicans want Rudy Giuliani.
The survey identified domestic economic issues and not America’s war on terror as a major influencing factor for that country’s Jews.
snip
By contrast, the spirit of Zionism that once infused great numbers of American Jews is today relatively non-existent. What happens to Israel is of increasingly little concern to them.
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2282
PM tells Jordan King that Israel won’t build new settlements
Israel will not build any new settlements in the West Bank and will avoid further land appropriations there, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Jordanian King Abdullah II during a meeting Thursday in Amman.
Earlier this week, Olmert told ministers in his cabinet of his intention to become more involved in the supervision of building in the West Bank.
Iran’s supreme chief says would okay future relations with U.S.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Thursday that he would approve the restoration of relations between his country and its archenemy the United States if those relations were to serve the interests of the Islamic country.
snip
“I would be the first one to support these relations,” state radio quoted Khamenei as saying at a student group meeting in the central Iranian province of Yazd.
Khamenei, who has final say in all state matters, said he would give the approval if he deemed the relations, severed after the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the U.S. Embassy takeover by militants in Tehran, would be beneficial.
“We never said the severed relations were forever,” added Khamenei. “But for the time being, it [restoring ties] is harmful and we should not pursue it.”
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=941424&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1
Jerusalem seeks Bush okay for IDF free hand in West Bank
Israel is seeking to reach an understanding with the U.S. administration that would safeguard Israel’s security interests in a future final-status agreement with the Palestinians and during current negotiations, government sources have said.
The sources also said Israel is seeking President George W. Bush’s support for its security demands so that such understandings can serve as a basis for the work of the American special security envoy General James Jones, who has been tasked with formulating the security arrangements for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=941180&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1
Olmert sees ‘hand of God’ in ‘peace’ process
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Monday he believes he can almost see “the hand of God” in the coming together of purportedly Israel-friendly countries which are working to create a Palestinian state on the historical homeland of the Jewish people.
In an exclusive interview timed to coincide with the start of 2008, Olmert told The Jerusalem Post he believed the current constellation of key international personalities who were “favorably disposed” to Israel created “comfortable conditions” for negotiations that may not exist again in the future.
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2286
Here’s to the ’67 borders, the new middle of the road
There was a time, not long past, that the mere mention of the 1967 borders was seen by many in the Jewish community as an expression of disloyalty, of sacrilege, of foolhardy risk, almost of profanity.
Gradually, remarkably, there are signs that the route of the middle of the road has shifted. That we’ve come a long, long way. At this point, for many on the Israeli side and, in fact, on the Palestinian side as well, the middle of the road passes very, very close to the Green Line, the post-1948 war, pre-1967 war boundary between the West Bank and Israel.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in an interview to be published in the Friday Jerusalem Post, states that “the world that is friendly to Israel… that really supports Israel, when it speaks of the future, it speaks of Israel in terms of the ’67 borders. It speaks of the division of Jerusalem.”
The Arab League has thrown its weight behind the 2002 Saudi-inspired peace initiative, which offers Israel full normalization of relations and comprehensive peace treaties with Arab countries in exchange for withdrawal from the territory captured in 1967, an independent Palestine with its capital in East Jerusalem, and a “just solution” of the Palestinian refugee issue.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/940221.html
And finally I completely agree with this….the Message has been sent:
Sunday, December 16, 2007
The messageIt is a mistake to quibble about the NIE on Iran. The approach of some of the viler neocons is to question the factual basis for the NIE, and even hint that the anti-Semitism of the intelligence agencies is behind it. Podhoretz even has the chutzpah to question the Iran NIE based on the unreliability of the Iraq NIE, an approach which begs readers to wonder why the Iraq NIE was so unreliable, a line of thought that leads right back to the Jewish neocons who forced the intelligence analysts to make it up. The 16 American intelligence agencies don’t know that Iran has no nuclear weapons program, any more than they knew two years ago that Iran had a nuclear weapons program. The fact remains that you can’t start a war against a sovereign country which poses no obvious threat to you based on some iffy intelligence guessing about the possibility of vague future threats, particularly if the guessing is based on a packet of lies from supremely unreliable Israeli intelligence sources. It is against international law to do so, and highly imprudent, as Americans are finding out.
The NIE on Iran is entirely political, and constitutes a statement by the Old American Establishment that it is not going to be tricked or cajoled into fighting another War for the Jews unless there is a compelling argument that such a war is in the real national interests of the United States. There is no conceivable scenario in the foreseeable future that a war against Iran could possibly be in the American national interest. As I’ve been saying all along, it is not going to happen, and the Old American Establishment, angered by the Zionist meddling to ruin the Annapolis conference, threw down the gauntlet to the Jewish Billionaires and their employees. Decades of Jewish wealth accumulation still can’t match centuries of Old American Establishment wealth accumulation, and the Old American Establishment still controls the American military (non-Jewish as American Jews wisely don’t choose to die for the gentiles), the American intelligence agencies (non-Jewish due to a history of anti-Semitism, coupled with very real – and growing more real – concerns about dual loyalties), and most of the American bureaucracy in the State and Treasury Departments. The Old American Establishment is making itself clear, and indicating that it is fully engaged on the issue. No more Wars for the Jews! Despite some rhetorical flourishes, the Bush Administration has heard the news loud and clear (as has much of the Israeli leadership).
There are indications that the wisest of the Jewish Billionaires are heeding the message, at least from a tactical point of view. The problem for American Zionism is to arrange to leave open its chances for future covert scheming. Failure to acknowledge that a message has been delivered is just going to enrage the Old American Establishment, leading to further embellishment of the real background of the Iraq war, and discussions of the entire dual loyalty problem, something which is just starting in the media, and constitutes a threat of what is to come if the Jewish Billionaires continue to press the issue of tricking the United States into attacking Iran.
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2007/12/message.html
