Showing posts with label Mitchell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mitchell. Show all posts

Friday, August 13, 2010

Mitchell and Clinton Nudging Netanyahu With a Stick

Here's the situation. We have Israel surrounded by Muslim states that are out to destroy it. I say that because after 62 years of existence, there have been many wars against it from these neighbors. Hamas terrorists in Gaza rule the area and their charter says to destroy Israel. They are still shooting rockets at Israel. Despite this, USA is pressing Israel to give up land again to create a Palestine on its doorstep.

First it was Mitchell meeting with Netanyahu followed up with THE phone call from Hillary Clinton. Abbas has said that he would finally talk to Netanyahu provided:

provided that they were based on a statement from March 19th by the Quartet of mediators: USA, European Union, Russia and the UN. Out of this quartet, I do not see one group that is pro-Israel in any way. The USA used to be, but the new direction it has taken is more likely to be against us.

The Quartet wants Israel to halt settlement building in Judea/Samaria and come to a full peace agreement with the Palestinians within 24 months. They also want Palestine to be created with borders before the 1967 Middle East war. I just read that Russia is supplying Iran with uranium to start up their program, and Iran is a country who has called for Isael's destruction. I can see how Russia will vote concerning anything about Israel.

Obama wants the talks to go back two years where they had broken off when Israel conducted Operation Cast Lead when rockets were being fired from Gaza by Hamas terrorists for 6 long years. Incidently, rockets are still being shot from there. From January to July of this year, 120 rockets have been fired at Israel.

Clinton conferred before the telephone conversation with the foreign ministers of Jordan and Egypt. They are former countries that have fought against Israel but right now are at peace. I have a feeling that they will go along with Syria and Iran's feeling about having Israel in their midst. It is Syria and Iran who are backing so much of the terror coming from Gaza.

Abbas has no power over Gaza. They are completely in the hands of the Hamas terrorists.
Netanyahu wants the talks to start immediately without any such "precondition". I go along with him. Talks are to talk about things. You don't settle something before the talks. That's what the talks are for. There are a lot of things to talk about, here. The people with the most at stake are the Palestinians who think they want a state so badly. Yet they're playing the "I won't talk to you until I get my own way " game. Hillary endorses this stand, evidently as she is nudging for it.

All of Mitchell's mediations have made little progress that can be seen. I don't know what he thinks he can do when Hamas, not under Abbas's authority, refuses permanent accommodations with our Jewish state. In fact, their charter says they will destroy Israel. I haven't heard of him trying to change their minds on this as a prerequisite for peace, which in my opinion, should have been done a long time ago.

If I were Netanyahu, and thank Ha Shem that I'm not, I would say, when Hamas changes their charter to accept Israel and welcomes Israel and breaks bread with salt with them, then I'd consider talking to Abbas or whoever it would be by then. Otherwise I wouldn't bother wasting my breath talking to them or stressing about it. They're being pig-headed (pardon the expression) , and one can't reason or discuss a thing when they are at this level of reasoning.

Update: 8/15/10 Hamas refuses to talk. Read reference below. Just as I figured. It'll take miracle to get Hamas to consider peaceful conditions.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Barak and Communities in Judea and Samaria

by Nadene Goldfoot
The USA has called for a freeze on any building planned for Israel, but Israel's government has its own decisions to make and decided to allow 50 new homes in Judea-Samaria to be built. There are plans for 1,450 houses, but nothing was said about those.

A few hours after this decision, Defense Minister Ehud Barak flew to the USA to talk to George Mitchell, something I'd hate to do. Israel's need is to relocate settlers from Migron to Adam, which lies north of Jerusalem. Adam is where the 1,450 homes are needed.

Obama is pressuring Israel to stop all building so that the "Palestinians" would join in peace talks needed to create a Palestinian state. Here we have Israel, already a state, experiencing a population growth with the need to build some homes for people who were removed from the neighborhood they had just recently built, deeming that other neighbood "illegal". They have to go somewhere.

I might add that most of Israel consists of apartment buildings. Individual homes are a rarity. I lived in a high apartment building in Safed, and was lucky enough to be invited to a couple of exceptional homes for a visit. One was dug out of some earthquake ruins and was beautiful. Another was more like an American home with a backyard belonging to a writer friend of ours. So the opportunity to actually have a home is very special.

There are 500,000 Israelis living in Judea and Samaria and East Jerusalem. There are over 1,000,000 Arabs living in the state of Israel. Arabs do not want any Israelis living in their so called future state. Obama looks like he's accepting this unfairness. Palestinians are insisting that Judea and Samaria Jewish neighborhoods are illegal. In my previous blog, I refute that. Obviously Israel also is refuting it by allowing building to take place. As I note, the Palestinians have not recognized Israel to this date, something a new neighbor should do to be neighborly.

Tensions are mounting now between the two different groups; Palestinians and Israelis. Palestinians are claiming that the Israelis raided the village of Asira al-Qiblya and fired guns at their windows, injuring two of them. In the news, the word "village" was used. Why is it that Palestinians are said to have villages and in many newspapers while the term "settlements" and "West Bank" is used instead of the name of villages or towns and Judea and Samaria. I believe these terms were chosen for their political usage. The Israelis said that the action began with a Palestinian arson attack on Yitzhar. While they were trying to put out the fire they were stoned by Palestinians and that an Israeli was hurt. Troops called in used rubber bullets, not real ones.

In Ramallah, Abbas said that he refuses to negotiate with Israel until they stop building. I say-I would refuse to negotiate with him until he accepts the reality of an Israel and deal with it! Abbas expects Israel to just accept their state being there and not put conditions on it as it is meaningless. I do not understand his logic at all. It's not computing other than the Arabs refuse to accept a Jewish state in their midst. And just how badly do they really need their own state? They don't plan on taking a first baby-step of accepting Israel's existence.

Being that Israel is a democracy, we have a group of Israelis called "Peace Now." They are protesting the construction activity planned for Adam. They're claiming that 2,500 homes are in the future plans and are even under construction already.

Reference: http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090629/wl_nm/us_palestinians_israel_settlements_8

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Abbas Refuses to Recognize Jewish State

Nadene Goldfoot
Push has come to shove, and the President of the Arab "Palestinians" refuses to accept that Israel is a Jewish State. To do so might negate his idea of the right of return of thousands and thousands of Arabs to swamp his "Palestine", therefore putting Israel in danger all the more. It's their idea of driving Israel into the sea and ending it once and for all.

So we come to stalemate. Marshall, Obama's representative, has said that the only solution is to have a Palestine next door to Israel, no matter what, it looks like. Just get the job done, get it on his resume, two states, side by side, and then they can fight it out again. Marshall will then be out of the way of crossfire.
To have a state next door that does not recognize the most basic fact in that it is a state created as a haven for Jewish people, at a time in the world where there is no Jewish state at all, and this would be the only one, is insane. Would anything else be recognized? Rights, Safety ? No, this is the point. This is not a workable idea.
If everyone thought that Abbas was so willing to have a reasonable situation and work with Israel, they were mistaken. He has just taken a different tactic. He's just a different personality from Arafat, but has the very same intentions. It's a sad fact of life.

Abbas said all this at a conference. At the end he was presented a map covering all of Israel with the name on it in English, Palestine. There's his intention, boldly presented.

References: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html?_r=1
Palestinian Media Watch
Mahmoud Abbas: "I do not accept the Jewish State, call it what you will"by Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook"

Monday, April 20, 2009

A Palestine? After These 6 Things come to Fruition

from Dr. Mitchell Bard
I was asked what I thought of Mitchell, the foreign Minister and Netanyahu's responses about not going for another state next to Israel called Palestine right now, and find I am in full agreement with Dr. Mitchell Bard's ideas below. I fell quite sure that Benjamin Netanyahu would be, too. I'm just surprised that our USA has never seen the light of this before. But then they were dealing with Olmert.

1) Make clear that violence will never lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state. No Israeli government will make concessions so long as its citizens are under attack. After ending the "occupation" of Gaza and being bombarded by more than 6,000 missiles Israel cannot be expected to consider territorial concessions unless Obama holds the Palestinians to their road map promise to stop terror and incitement against Israel.

2) State that the future borders of Israel and Palestine must take into account current demographic realities. President Clinton envisioned that the major settlement blocs, where tens of thousands of Israelis reside, would be incorporated into Israel. The Palestinian state could still be contiguous and incorporate 95-97 percent of the West Bank. The Palestinians could also receive additional territory elsewhere in exchange for the 3-5 percent of West Bank territory annexed to Israel.

3) Move the U.S. embassy to West Jerusalem. This is the capital of Israel and will remain so under any conceivable negotiated solution. This step does not preclude negotiations to establish the capital of the Palestinian state in part of Jerusalem, but it would erase Arab fantasies about the permanence of Israel's presence.

4) Insist that the Palestinian Authority reform textbooks. If Israelis and Palestinians are to coexist, the younger generation of Palestinians cannot continue to be taught that Israel does not exist, that Jews have no history in their homeland and that Islam requires them to fight infidels and become martyrs.

5) Support the settlement of Palestinian refugees in the Palestinian state. No Israeli leader will acknowledge a "right of return;" therefore, an international compensation fund should be created to facilitate the resettlement of refugees in the West Bank and Gaza upon the signing of a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement.

6) Condition relations with Arab allies on their support for American peace efforts. President Obama should not continue to lavish aid and arms on states that vote against us more than 90 percent of the time at the UN and undermine our policies. These Arab states should be expected to end the boycott of Israel and take steps toward normalization.These policies may appear unbalanced but they will force Israel to make tough compromises as well. If violence ceases, Israel will have less justification for holding territory. Settlements outside the blocs recognized by the U.S. would probably have to be dismantled and the border of Israel and Palestine would approach the 1949 armistice line. Israel's capital would be recognized, but the predominantly Arab parts of Jerusalem would likely be ceded to the Palestinian state. Thousands of Palestinians would probably be admitted to Israel on a humanitarian basis.

Obama cannot allow fear of Arab disapproval to drive his policy. History has shown that our Arab allies need us much more than we need them. That is why, contrary to conventual State Department wisdom, relations with the Arab states have improved as the U.S.-Israel alliance solidified.The Palestinians will not agree to end the conflict with Israel if they believe terror can force Israel to capitulate, if they think the United States or others will force Israel to dismantle all the West Bank settlements and give up Jerusalem, or if they believe Israel can be forced to recognize a "right of return" for the Palestinian refugees. By taking the suggested steps, President Obama can stimulate both Palestinians and Israelis to negotiate from more realistic positions.

The Palestinians may still choose their historic path of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, but they will do so knowing that they are unlikely to find a more sympathetic American leader in the future.

Resource: Dr. Mitchell Bard

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Dumb and Dumber: Mitchell's Same Old Peace Plan

Palestine and Israel
by Nadene Goldfoot
The United States and Europe assume that the Palestinians want peace. Could they possibly be wrong?
The Palestinians were offered their own state in 1948 when Israel was created. They rejected the idea and immediately attacked Israel with five Arab states. Surely they were carrying out the dictive to kill Jews and certainly not to reside next to them. After 60 years of attacking Israel, things have not changed. Their charter has not changed. Their behavior has not changed, except to get worse. They have elected Hamas, under the pressure of the United States to hold elections. Hamas has nothing in its charter to have a state or to live peacefully next to Israel. That tells us a lot about what its people desire.

Fatah is assumed to behave better, only they seem to differ from Hamas only in that they are more secretive in their resistance to Israel. Fatah boasts that their terror cells in Gaza also fired upon Israel just as Hamas fired missiles against Israel. Fatah has terror cells called Aksa Martyrs. They claim that during Operation Cast Lead, their terrorists fired 137 rockets and mortar shells at Israel. This means that Israel was fired on by both groups. Abbas claims that his people did so because they are living under Hamas rule, but from 2000 to June 2007, when Hamas kicked Fatah out of Gaza, most of the weapons smugglings operations in Gaza were done by Fatah, who did the most firing at Israel. Most suicide bombers from Judea and Samaria were members of Fatah. It isn't the moderate group that they claim to be, unless they call this action moderate.

There are those that lay the blame on Israel constantly saying if only this or that was done, they would be nice people. They blame Israel for not being supportive of Arafat and now Abbas! They were the leaders trying to do Israel in and were always attacking, and we should have been more supportive? Perhaps Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice think that America should have been more supportive of Hitler, then. Shouldn't we now support people who want to kill us? What kind of convoluted thinking is this?

1. They continue: If only Israel had kicked out the Jews of Gaza earlier. Israel removed all the Jews in Gaza and handed the ruins of their villages and farms to Fatah in September 2005.
2. If only Israel had removed its roadblocks and expelled Jews from their homes in Judea and Samaria;
3. If only Israel had prevented all Jewish construction beyond the 1949 armistice lines; Since 2000 Israel has stopped Jewish building in Judea and Samaria.
4. Only Israel is asked or told to give, give, give up land to the Palestinians. The Palestinians are not told to do anything in regards to Israel, like be good neighbors. There are no expectations for them.

Then Arafat and now Abbas would have been more popular and would stop their terrorist forces.
These people receive a salary from the PA which is funded by the US and Israel. So Israel is forced to fund the very people who want to see their total destruction by the forces that be.

Mitchell has been selected again by the Democrats. Again, he'll go for a plan first created by Tom Friedman, then copied by Saudi Arabia, who was praised by Obama by being so brave, the PLO's peace plan. Mitchell told Arafat that the conditions were that he had to make 100% effort to prevent terror. That was funny because it was he who called the shots of terror. Clinton's administration used the old nod-nod-wink-wink attitude of Palestinian terrorism since 1994. They allowed things to happen. Mitchell said that Israel and the Palestinians were equally to blame for the terror of the Palestinians against Israel. I guess that's like blaming a girl for being raped. (If only she had dressed like a boy). Well, today she might not have been safe at that. This meant that Arafat wasn't responsible for anything in Clinton's eyes. He could say that their attacks didn't come from him, that he was doing his 100% good old try at resisting.

I must say that Hillary Clinton has been much more supportive of Israel, and also feels that they have a right to respond when attacked. That is 100% improvement from her husband's attitude. I hope she has some knowledge that she could share with Mitchell and help him to become more understanding or caring about Israel's future.

By the time Bush got in, he didn't go along with Mitchell's plan or Mitchell. After all, he was a Republican and had to get some different players on his team. The scene had shifted to finding Israeli children's body parts on the walls of bombed pizzerias and bar mitzva parties that had to be scraped off in order to bury them. Bush didn't cry "moral equivalence" at this point. Even he could see that Israel was enduring a lot of attacking and was unlike the Palestinians. However, his plan copied the Clinton Plan, formed the Tenet Plan, the Road Map Plan and then the Annapolis Plan, so there wasn't that much difference.

Like the others, Obama sets his table with Palestine's creation as the centerpiece. Everyone is bound and determined to create this 2nd state made up of murderous hearts ready to kill Israelis. How lucky we are! They feel that the only other solution is to absorb Palestinians into Israel, which is an even worse idea.
I say that some of the other 22 Arab states should absorb them, such as Saudi Arabia. They are so helpful and so in need of people. They have a large body of land and very little constituents.

Wouldn't they like these Palestinians living next to them?

Israel has been attacked over and over again by 5 nations at one time, and Israel has won despite the odds. Israel has gone along with having a Palestinian state only to be attacked. The Palestinian people have done nothing to show that they would be good neighbors. They have done just the opposite. It's like having an open mental institution next door with no one controlling the inmates who are killers.

Now the heads of state, Marshall as representative, expect Israel to give again as if we haven't already done so and it never gains us any peace. After doing the same thing over and over and over and over, one would think that this behavior is not getting us anywhere. Repeating an action that gets you nowhere is crazy. I'm not for giving land for peace anymore. How about doing what the USA has done. If you attack us, we take your land. For every bomb shot into Israel, we take 25 KM of land. At that rate, we might take back all of Gaza.

Many Arab states attacked Israel including all the Palestinians. They lost the attack. The land is legitimately part of Israel. Israel does not have to give up land but has done so in the name of peace. Peace has not come. Israel being attacked and not responding is now a thing of the past. Israelis have had enough!
Mitchell made the statement at Tel Aviv U. last month that "the US and Israel must cling to the delusion that Palestinian statehood will bring about a new utopia, for the alternative is unacceptable and should be unthinkable." This indeed is a delusion that should be dropped for sanity's purposes. We must not delude ourselves, but look at the picture sanely. Here is a people who do not want their own state and who probably could not manage it at all given the free reign to do so. They are killers and not lovers of anything, including their own children. They think dying is terrific.

Mitchell is making the same old pitch with nothing new. He's not as creative or fair as Obama makes out to be. When Obama steps up to the plate, G-d help him to be understanding and fair with Israel. Haven't we gone through enough with such dreamers?

Update: 1/30/09 Former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces and now member of the Likud party, Moshe Yaalon said: "From the dawn of Zionism until this day, the source of all terrorist attacks has been the refusal of the Arab world to recognize Israel's existence. Until this changes, we will remain the target of violent terrorist activity. The '67 borders are not a solution to rocket attacks, suicide bombs or more conventional forms of warfare. The two-state solution has failed and to my mind is now irrelevant. Even before the [war with] Hamas, a two-state solution was a mistaken fantasy—now it's even more irrelevant."

Resource: The Jerusalem Post, Jan 23, 2009 by Caroline Glick "History's Tragic Farce".

Monday, January 26, 2009

Jimmy Carter Trashed Israel Again

Nadene Goldfoot
In plugging his new book about the Middle East and Peace, ex president Jimmy Carter continually knocked Israel on the Today Show this morning. He started by calling the Gaza fight a debacle, then continued to say that Israel had never restored provisions to Hamas. He refused to recognize that Hamas is a terrorist group, and kept saying that they always kept their word with him. He said that you can trust Hamas. Then he blatedly said that Hamas never fired a shot until after 11/4/when Israel finally fought back. Such lies just made my stomach turn.

Carter continued saying that if they don't adopt his provisions, things will go bad. It seems that he still thinks he is calling all the shots and has done the most good for the area. He likes Mitchell, as he is tougher than anyone else in dealing with Israel and the Arab countries.

Interestingly, he mentioned Obama calling up all the surrounding Arab countries and forgot Abbas's name but when prompted, recognized the unnamed was a Fatah leader, but according to his memory, Israel was not called. At least he never mentioned it. That may be true.

So from what I understood of this interview, Hamas is a trustworthy group, not terrorists, who never fired a shot at Israel. It was only Israel who attacked and went into Gaza for no reason. Thank you Mr. Carter, for your anti-Israel views. It makes understanding your previous books so much easier. You're just against Israel no matter what.

Reference: January 26, 2009 Today Show 8:45 am. Interview Jimmy Carter
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/28815679/ video of Carter's interview