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1. Obama Punished Israel by Diverting Anti-Iran Bunker Bombs
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States this week will include a demand that U.S. President Barack Obama release previously-promised bunker-busting bombs, the Times of London reported Sunday.
The bombs could be used in an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which are buried deep underground. The Iranian Fars news agency has quoted Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that the Bushehr nuclear facility will be online by the summer.
The United States has diverted 387 bombs to an island in the Indian Ocean following the latest diplomatic clash between Israel and the United States over the proposed Ramat Shlomo hosing project in Jerusalem, according to several news sources.
President Obama's "punishment" for Israel’s continuing to plan building projects indicates he intends to go full-speed ahead with his and his advisors’ strategy that solving the decades-old Arab-Israeli struggle is the key to stability in the entire Middle East. So far, the only concessions he demands are from Israel.
According to the thinking of the American government, a new Arab state within Israel’s current borders would spark the Arab world’s recognition of Israel as well as a united American-Arab front against a nuclear Iran and Taliban-Al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.
A different theory for the diversion of the bombs is that President Obama is holding on to the option that the United States, and not Israel, would attack Iran if it obtains nuclear capability. Scotland’s Sunday Herald last week quoted Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London as saying, “They [the United States] are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran. U.S. bombers are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours.”
2. Netanyahu Draws the Line: We Build in Jerusalem as in Tel Aviv
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Israel will make it clear to the Obama administration that “there is no difference between building in Jerusalem and building in Tel Aviv," Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said at in his opening remarks to the weekly Cabinet meeting Sunday morning. “Our policy on Jerusalem is the same as in the past 42 years.'”
His remarks are in sharp contrast to the Obama administration’s stand that does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem that was restored to the Jewish State in the 1967 Six-Day War. Congress has stated in legislation that it recognizes a “united Jerusalem."
However, the Prime Minister also said that he wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, ”In the coming talks, every side can bring up issues in which there are disagreements,” meaning the “core issues” of the status of Jerusalem and the Arab world’s demand that Israel allow the immigration of millions of Arabs claiming that Israel is home by ancestry.
The Prime Minister said his letter also stated, “The solution of the basic problems are between us and the Palestinian Authority and can be solved only though direct peace negotiations.”
Israel previously has refused to discuss the core issues until agreement is reached on other issues, such as continued incitement by the PA and the ongoing terrorist attacks. Agreeing that each side can bring up any subject it wants apparently is one of the concessions from Israel that Secretary Clinton has demanded. However, the Prime Minister’s statement serves as a warning to the Obama administration that Israel will not accept a dictated agreement.
Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to Washington, told American media on Saturday that an American effort to force an agreement on the PA and Israel would be like "forcing somebody to fall in love.”
3. PM Netanyahu to Meet Obama in Washington?
by Hana Levi Julian
According to the U.S.-based Fox News TV network, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is slated to meet Wednesday with U.S. President Barack Obama at the White House, but the Prime Minister’s office has not confirmed the claim, and American officials denied it.
Netanyahu's spokesman Mark Regev said his office was still in the process of building the schedule for the week, but he refused to comment on whether a meeting between the Prime Minister and the President was on the agenda.
“The Prime Minister will be meeting with the top Congressional leaders from both parties in both houses,” Regev told Israel National News on Sunday morning. “He will also be meeting with senior administration officials,” he said, but refused to divulge further details. Regev also declined to comment on whether Netanyahu would be meeting with Vice President Joe Biden.
Obama administration officials said that no meeting between the two leaders has been scheduled.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is leaving for the United States Sunday night after meeting with U.S. Middle East special envoy George Mitchell and is slated to address the annual AIPAC policy convention Monday in Washington D.C.
Delegates to the convention are expected to be extremely vocal in their support of Israel in the face of a crisis between the White House and Jerusalem that began during Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the region. President Obama had planned to be in Indonesia, far from any possibility of having to meet with Israeli officials during the AIPAC convention, but was forced to scrap the idea due to difficulties passing his stumbling health reform legislation.
Netanyahu and Obama: Damage Control?
If the meeting between Netanyahu and Obama takes place, the two leaders will attempt to repair the damage to the bond between their two countries that occurred during a visit 10 days ago by Vice President Biden. An ill-timed announcement of a Jerusalem zoning decision gave the vice president an opening to lead American officials in a scathing cascade of public condemnations of Israel’s housing policies in Jerusalem.
Biden publicly condemned the decision by the Interior Ministry – twice -- to go forward with the fourth of seven steps in a project to build 1,600 apartments in a neighborhood located in a northwestern section of the capital rejoined to it in 1967. Netanyahu apologized for the awkward timing of the approvals but noted that it was a routine municipal subject, one that he had not been personally aware of.
Interior Minister Eli Yishai also apologized, saying that Netanyahu had not been notified and that the issue had been an internal matter.
But as soon as Biden left the country, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton followed up with a 45-minute phone call to the Prime Minister, castigating him over the matter and delivering an ultimatum over a list of new demands she insisted Israel fulfill in order to “prove its commitment” to the peace process. White House adviser David Axelrod also added his voice to the chorus, inflaming matters further by telling reporters that the ill-timed announcement was an “insult” and an “affront” to Biden, the Obama Administration and to U.S. efforts to get the PA-Israel talks moving.
The rebukes, all carefully reported in the media, were delivered while the Palestinian Authority government simultaneously conducted a ceremony to publicly honor a brutal murderer who led the worst terrorist attack against Israel in the nation’s history. Dalal Mughrabi, for whom a public square was named in Ramallah on the last day of Biden’s visit, led a terror cells in slaughtering 37 civilians and wounding 71 others, including many children.
At the same time, Muslim worshipers and other Arabs were rioting throughout Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount. Hamas terrorists fired deadly Kassam rockets at Israeli civilians in southern Negev communities, and other PA Arabs continued their daily rock attacks on Israeli drivers traveling along roads throughout Judea and Samaria.
American officials have yet to respond to the anti-Israel incitement under the official auspices of the PA government and the Fatah faction, both led by Mahmoud Abbas, whom the U.S. has labeled a “moderate” and “peace partner” for Israel. The American Roadmap peace plan specifically calls for the PA to stop all anti-Israel incitement and violence.
The Obama administration has also not criticized the daily rock attacks by PA Arabs on Israeli drivers, often potentially deadly, as they travel along the various roads in Judea, Samaria and around Jerusalem. Nor has the White House condemned the recently-renewed Kassam rocket attacks emanating from Gaza -- including last week’s fatal attack, when a 30-year-old Thai worker was killed after a terrorist missile struck the greenhouse in which he was working in the community of Netiv Ha’Asara.
4. Mitchell Heads for Israel with More Pressure Tactics
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell is scheduled to arrive in Israel and meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday, the eve of the Prime Minister’s departure for the United States.
Mitchell packed his luggage with unprecedented stands by the European Union and U.S. President Barack Obama against a Jewish presence in parts of Jerusalem that were restored to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967.
The Quartet – comprised of the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union – has called on Israel to freeze all building for Jews in areas that the Palestinian Authority wants as part of a new Arab state. Both the Quartet and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have “condemned” Israel for continuing with a housing project in the totally Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo.
During the Bush administration, the Quartet avoided the issue of housing for Jews in areas of reunited Jerusalem but now has pointed out that the international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty in the area, which is home to 300,000 Jews.
Mitchell welcomed the “strong and clear statement” from the Quartet meeting in Moscow and received additional support with a phone call by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to Prime Minister Netanyahu two days ago.
Elliott Abrams, who was deputy national security adviser to former President George W. Bush, noted while Clinton used the word “condemn” to censure Israel for its recent zoning faux pas, “the Quartet only used that word for murders and terrorism.”
Mitchell is continuing to ride the track of “mediated talks” between the PA and Israel, a move that takes diplomacy backwards by 20 years, from before President Sadat's historic visit to Jerusalem, Dan Kurtzer, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the Washington Post. His comment is significant in that Kurtzer was one of President Obama’s advisors in his campaign and is against a Jewish presence in most of Judea and Samaria.
Secretary Clinton has claimed that the discussions will start with "substantive matters on the core issues that divide the Israelis and the Palestinians,” but Kurtzer criticized the Obama administration for not setting out any starting points for the mediated talks.
Former peace negotiator Aaron David Miller also was negative on the Obama administration, criticizing it for reacting to events instead of setting forth a consistent policy.
Abrams was even more negative, telling the Post that Clinton’s statements harsh statements against Prime Minister Netanyahu have “made life harder and has made negotiations harder for the Israelis and the Palestinians."
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who represents the right-wing branch of Netanyahu’s coalition government, ruled out any unilateral “territorial concessions" to the PA. He told Der Spiegel that the Arab-Israeli conflict is a "battle of cultures that cannot be resolved by territorial concessions.”
"Jerusalem is not negotiable," he said.
5. London Papers: Tony Blair has Middle East Financial Interests
by Rachel Sylvetsky
The London Daily Telegraph and the London Daily Mail have published findings on former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Middle East financial interests as disclosed by the official UK government committee which vets former ministers’ business interests.
The Daily Mail described Blair as waging an “extraordinary two-year battle to keep secret a lucrative deal with a multinational oil giant which has extensive interests in Iraq”, referring to the just revealed fact that Mr. Blair serves as advisor to a South Korean firm, UI Energy, since August 2008, and has made at least £20million since leaving Downing Street in June 2007.
In addition, the daily claimed, the former head of state who is now the Middle East Quartet’s envoy to Israel “went to great efforts to keep hidden a separate £1million deal advising the ruling royal family in Iraq's neighbor Kuwait”, since June 2008, reportedly with the task of producing a report on the oil state's future over the next 30 years.
None of this was known to the public, when, in a November 2009 interview, shortly after the announcement by PM Netanyahu of a ten month settlement freeze, Tony Blair said: “The Office of the Quartet Representative will continue to work hard for the recent [Palestinian] growth on the West Bank to be sustained and expanded, for the changes in [Palestinian] access and movement to be deepened; and for a different strategy on Gaza...”
Blair had convinced the committee to keep details of both his business deals from the public for almost two years, claiming they were market sensitive. The committee's chairman, former Tory Cabinet minister Lord Lang, reviewed the papers recently and ordered the information made public on Thursday.
Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker said: 'These revelations show that our former Prime Minister is for sale - he is driven by making as much money as possible.
Last night Tory MP Douglas Carswell said of Mr Blair's links to UI Energy Corporation: 'This doesn't just look bad, it stinks.
'It seems that the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has been in the pay of a very big foreign oil corporation and we have been kept in the dark about it.
'This is revolving door politics at its worst. It's not as if Mr Blair has even stepped back from politics, because he is still politically active in the Middle East.”
Blair, speaking to Reuters today after a meeting in Moscow of the Quartet of Middle East mediators from the United States, the European Union, Russia and the United Nations, made no reference to the committee’s disclosures.
He said, referring to the Arab-Israeli conflict: “I hope very much that in the next few days we will have a package that gives people the sense that yes, despite all the difficulties of the past few days, it is worth having proximity talks and then those leading to direct negotiations.” He added that both sides had to build confidence if the process was to be credible, singling out the Israeli announcement of the construction of 1,600 housing units in Jerusalem as an example of what could thwart the start of talks that ultimately aim to create an Arab state in Israel's heartland.
"I think there is a continuing discussion about settlement construction and so on and obviously it's very important that neither party does anything that disrupts the possibility of getting the talks going," Blair said.
"The only thing that will give people confidence that meaningful negotiation can take place, is if things aren't done that disrupt this process, which is why the announcement on settlements was unhelpful."
Blair’s spokesman refused to comment on the media’s disclosure of Blair’s financial deals with Kuwait and firms with oil interests in Arab countries.
6. Four Kassam Rockets From Hamas/Gaza; No One Hurt
by Hillel Fendel
Hamas terrorists in Gaza continued their rocket onslaught against Israel over the Sabbath, firing four more Kassams at two different locations. No one was hurt – as opposed to on Thursday, when a foreign worker from Thailand, Mani Singmonfon, was killed in a Kassam rocket attack.
The Moslem terrorists have fired at least ten rockets at Israel this week.
Two of today's rockets were launched at the Ashkelon district, north of Gaza, and another landed in Shaar HaNegev, northeast of Gaza. A fourth rocket was fired at Shaar HaNegev on Saturday night.
On Friday, a Kassam rocket was fired at a kibbutz in the Shaar HaNegev region, and the Israel Air Force responded by bombing terrorist smuggling tunnels and other targets in Gaza. Hamas reported that 12 of their number were injured in the attack.
7. Gush Etzion Residents Protest 'Obama Intifada'
by Hillel Fendel
Close to 200 people converged on the Gush Etzion intersection on Saturday night to protest what they called the “Obama Intifada.” The ongoing Arab violence, which has seen a sharp increase in rock-throwings and even live-fire attacks on Israeli vehicles over the past week, continued Sunday morning with riots near Tekoa and an attempted stabbing east of Shechem.
The Gush Etzion demonstrators held signs reading, "Crush the Obama intifada! No more rock-throwing! Stop the building freeze against the Jews."
Among the public figures who arrived and spoke at the Saturday night protest were Rabbis Dov Lior, Gideon Perl, Yosef Tzvi Rimon, and Yaron Durani; Rabbi Avi Weiss from New York, columnist Dr. Amiel Ungar, Atty. Elyakim Haetzni, Efrat Mayor Oded Revivi, and Kiryat Arba Mayor Malachi Levinger.
In addition, a woman from Tekoa who was wounded by Arab rock-throwing last week – one of several local residents to be similarly attacked - was also present. She was released from the hospital on Friday after undergoing an operation on her arm.
All the speakers delivered a similar message: “We will not remain quiet as stones are hurled at Jews… Prime Minister Netanyahu, stand firm! Do not cave in to Barack Hussein Obama! The people of Israel are strong and will remain strong even if the US imposes sanctions against Israel.”
A woman from N’vei Daniel spoke about her experience of a few days ago: “Some Arabs threw rocks at my car as I was on my way back from work in Tekoa… One Arab threw a rock at my windshield and smashed it; I started to drive away, but then I decided I was not running away, so I stopped and parked my car across the middle of the road to block it [until the army arrived]. I started to yell at them in Hebrew, and I called at the one who threw the rock to come down towards me and not be a coward and run away; of course, he did not come…” She then said that she feels anger towards the government for not providing her with minimal security in her own country, and towards the Jews who support Obama and particularly those in the United States such as David Axelrod, Thomas Friedman and Rahm Emanuel, “who have forgotten what it is to be Jewish. Perhaps it would be better for us if Obama would take a few non-Jewish advisors…”
Kiryat Arba/Hevron Chief Rabbi Lior said, “We demand that the government do something effective against the barbarians that are again threatening our movement on the roads and our quiet lives. They’re ambushing Jews all over the country. We have no doubt that they are raising their heads because of signs of weakness on behalf of the leadership of the Nation of Israel… Maimonides explained in his Epistle to the Jews of Yemen who were forced to convert to Islam that the character of Arabs is that when you look out for their good, in return, they always give you war. When we tell the Arab, ‘Come, I want to help you and see to your needs,’ he doesn’t look at us like gentlemen. He sees weakness and then the wolf shows what he can do.”
Following the speeches, the crowd started marching south towards the Arab town of El-Aroub to “prove our independence and our determination to continue walking freely everywhere.” Participants stated afterwards that it was clear that this protest was just a start, and that “if the rock-throwings continue or escalate, so will our responses.”
This morning, several dozen Arabs rioted in eastern Gush Etzion, near Tekoa, throwing rocks at Israeli security forces. The latter faced them with riot-control means. Shortly before noon, at a checkpoint east of Shechem (Nablus), two Arabs disguised as farmers assaulted IDF troops with pitchforks and broken bottles, but alert soldiers shot and killed them.
