Palestine Brings On the Third Intifada Against Israel

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                   

Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas Prime Minister from March 29, 2006 to June 2, 2014, declared on Monday, June 23rd that the 3rd Intifada against Israel has now begun.  Sounds like a declaration of war to me.

1. This is the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, beginning in 1987.  Ismail is  actually saying that they will just continue fighting against Israel and have no intentions of being peaceful neighbors.  Israel hasn't "occupied" Gaza since they pulled out in 2005.  Judea and Samaria the original Jewish names for what Jordan renamed as "The West Bank" in their act to eliminate our history in the area, is also populated by Jews.  They have a right to be there as it all had been zoned off between Palestinian and Israel sites.  

Kerry neglected to say that when Gaza stopped shelling Israel, then recognition would be possible of a Palestine.  

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 This 51 year old father of 12 children  has been replaced in the new formation of Palestine by Rami Hamdallah. He is Palestine's new Prime Minister and a Fatah member, selected by Abbas.   He's been actively encouraging Palestinians to kidnap IDF soldiers.  Then he is sitting back and declaring that Israel's frantic searching is only increasing their willingness to resist.  To resist what?  Peace, evidently.  They're certainly not helping to search.  In fact, they are throwing stones at searchers and trying to prevent it from happening.
                                                                           

It actually started with the USA and the EU recognizing their state of Palestine and the unification of Fatah and Hamas as its people. The only clause given by the USA was that Obama would be watching their activities.   Evidently as soon as they were recognized, Hamas infiltrated into Judea and Samaria.  By doing this, they were set up to cause havoc against Israel which they have done.  While rockets have been raining on southern Israel from Gaza Hamas terrorists, others in Fatah-held Judea-Samaria kidnapped  only a few days later, 3 teen-aged boys on their way home from Yeshiva, a religious school.

To mess with Israel's children is a huge crime.  Israel knows all about kidnapping, having gone through this before with Gilad Shalit, a young  IDF soldier held over 5 years by terrorists.  Israel had to act quickly and hoped that Glad Shaar, 19, Eyal Yifrach, 16, and Naftali Frankel, 16 were still alive.  Their school was in Gush Etzion, south of Bethlehem.  They were hitchhiking home.  Within minutes of the kidnapping, one boy was able to send a text message that they had been kidnapped.  They evidently accepted a ride with terrorists unknowingly.

IDF and police went through towns and open areas in Judea and Samaria in what they called "Operation Brother's Keeper. They have searched around Hebron.   They found many Hamas members that were not there before the recognition of Palestine.
                                                                   

The Palestinians are enjoying the theater and are using it to their advantage.  They are actually celebrating the kidnapping.   They're handing out sweets.  Even Fatah students at Bir Zeit University near Ramallah handed out sweets in the act of celebrating.  Palestinian Arabs also celebrated wildly when they heard about the Twin Towers of 9/11.

  On the other hand, the PA Prime Minister Hahmoud Abbas sees this as a problem to his formation of Palestine and has been extolling the wrongness of the act to Netanyahu and the Israelis.  Netanyahu praised him for his remarks made in Saudi Arabia for saying that "There can be no alliance with the kidnappers of children."   Yet Abbas is the one who encourages such acts by his Fatah celebrations and TV programs.  He aids and abets such activity a lot, so really is to blame.  He does nothing to bring peace between the two peoples. By uniting with Hamas, he has signed onto their destructive and deplorable charter calling for the destruction of Israel.  Netanyahu asked him to abrogate the recent unity pact between  Fatah and Hamas. Dollars to donuts, he won't.  He's being very 2-faced, if you ask me.
                                                                         

Khaled Mashaal, Hamas political bureau chairman since 1996, seems to be in the dark about this kidnapping.  He probably wasn't the organizer and has been left out of the loop, because he said, "If it turns out that the kidnapping really happened, I welcome it."  Netanyahu commented that "Mashaal once again made it clear that Hamas remains committed to its war against Israel and its war against every Israeli citizen, and coincidentally, against every Jew around the world."  They did not discriminate the fact that one of the boys kidnapped has USA citizenship.

Resource: http://www.tlvfaces.com/hamas-chief-haniyeh-third-intifada-begun/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ismail_Haniyeh
http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Hamas-leader-Ismail-Haniyeh-encourages-abduction-of-Israeli-soldiers-348596
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/15/this-is-how-some-palestinians-are-celebrating-a-kidnapping/
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.600275
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rami_Hamdallah

Why Salaam Fayyad of PA, Prime Minister and Economist, Calls It Quits, Maybe?

Nadene Goldfoot
The Palestinian Prime Minister, Salaam Fayyad, a moderate according to the West, has resigned.  Most likely he wasn't being listened to by the more powerful henchmen of Hamas, who maintain their actions of terrorism and strong -arming Gaza.   Jonathan Tobin, writing in commentary, feels this is a "pivotal moment in the history of the conflict".  That's because Fayyad has been the Western hope for a technocratic Palestinian state.  We're left with a weaker Abbas now, who has also threatened to resign and Hamas.  The idea of a 2 state solution isn't looking so good for many reasons.

The Oslo Accords of September 13, 1993 never promised a Palestinian state.  Agreements have never been reached.  Everyone saw the Judea-Samaria and Gaza as one unit or one state-to-be.  However, the heads of these two places never could come to any agreements that lasted more than a few weeks.  One issue for Netanyahu and Rabin has been not to be set back to the 67 borders.  A month before Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, he had said, " "Israel will not return to the lines of 4 June 1967″ and then stated that "the security border for defending the State of Israel will be in the Jordan Valley, in the widest sense of that concept."

Dr. Fayyad was born in Deir al-Ghusun in the northern part of Judea-Samaria.  He has a PhD in economics from the U. of Texas in Austin.  He taught economics at Yarmouk U. in Jordan before joining the International Monetary Fund in 1987 where he was a rep for the PA from 1996 to 2001.  Then he was the regional manager of the Arab Bank in Judea-Samaria and Gaza until he became Yasser Arafat's finance minister.  I wonder if he knows how much money Arafat kept for himself?

He resigned as finance minister to run as founder and leader of the new Third War party in 2006.  Again on March 17, 2007, he became finance minister with the Fatah-Hamas coalition government.  By June 14, 2007, Hamas took over the Gaza Strip and he was appointed Prime Minister of the new "Independent" government which was supported by Fatah, Israel and the West.  He won his seat along with Hanan Ashrawi.    When he was offered the position of Prime Minister, he had a few conditions that he wanted.  One was that Hamas would recognize Israel, which they wouldn't do.  One of his comments which must been seen as an antidote to Hamas terrorism was,  "its the responsibility of men of religion to...present religion as a way of tolerance,...not as a cover for bloodshed.  "  Yet it has to be religion that is the cause of the Arabs not accepting Israel, causing much bloodshed on both sides.  

Fayyad was credited for the US Congress' deposit of $200 million to the PA in 2009.  Even with all that money, Fatah hasn't been able to pay their utility bills to Israel.  They have been suffering economically.  In October 2011 the USA withdrew funding to UNESCO after the Palestinian Authority (PA) was accepted into the United Nations as a full member.  The USA's contribution to this organization is 22% of their needs. The PAof Judea-Samaria  ran up a debt of  $165 million dollars to Israel's electric corporation.  Israel collects money for the Palestinians, so finally froze their money and used it to pay off their bill.

"For 30 years, Israel permitted thousands of Palestinians to enter the country each day to work in construction, agriculture and other blue-collar jobs. Until the mid-1990s, up to 150,000 people—about a fifth of the Palestinian labor force—entered Israel each day. After Palestinians unleashed a wave of suicide bombings, the idea of separation from the Palestinians took root in Israel. Israel found itself starved for labor, and gradually replaced most of the Palestinians with migrants from Thailand, Romania and elsewhere."  What they did was to bite the hand that employed them.

Gaza has bombed southern Israel with missiles, mortars and rockets since 2001.  This is not the way to induce friendships.  In Judea-Samaria and Gaza, not many are working at anything except how to destroy Israel.  Their unemployment is above 50%.  No wonder Fayyad quit.  They are depending on handouts which they are getting from Iran, Qatar and others as well as the UN.  However, a country cannot be run this way.  Fayyad knows this and is disembarking from  a sinking ship.

Resource: http://www.blog.standforisrael.org/articles/fayyads-exit-signals-oslos-bankruptcy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salam_Fayyad
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/31/unesco-backs-palestinian-membership
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-08/16/c_131787926.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Palestinian_territories

Israel's Elections by Tamar Boussi

Meandering through Israel’s upcoming election; by Tamar Boussi from Jerusalem

In the United States, we just finished a very long and somewhat angry election cycle and people have begun to put their differences aside and continue life normally. One of the great positives of democracies is their ability to change governments without violence and usually without bitterness. Yet different democratic countries have very different systems and all work fairly well.

Israel on Tuesday, January 27th began its official election cycle. This date is two weeks from election day and the first day that paid television advertising is allowed. The system in Israel is different from ours and since so many people have asked me, over the past years, "how does the Israeli system work" this seemed an appropriate time to talk about it. Imagine two weeks of political ads, vs the nearly 2 years of campaigning we have just finished.

Israel’s Knesset(Parliament) is unicameral and holds elections every 4 years. Voters choose their political party and vote in internal party elections to choose who will lead the party and a list of candidates, to hold Knesset seats, below the party leader. Voters pick a political party and pay a tax to the party to support it. The party decides who will be on the list and in what order, this becomes important when the general election occurs. The first name on the list will be the Prime Minister if that party gets the most votes and the names below the party leader are ordered according to the party’s judgement as to their importance to the party. For instance, if a party gets enough votes to earn 30 seats, the first 30 names become members of Knesset.

The President of Israel, currently Shimon Peres, then asks the leader of the party, who seems most likely to be able to form a government, to do so within 45 days. This is usually the party receiving the most votes, but not necessarily. Forming a government requires negotiating with other parties to form a coalition. . The cabinet ministers are members of coalition parties as well as the majority party, which sometimes creates volatility in the government. Imagine if President Obama had to insert Republicans, Green Party representatives, Independents and so on into his cabinet. While in the American system the cabinet is the pick of the President and they all work together, that is not always possible if some of your most important cabinet members are from other parties. Currently Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni are from Kadima but the Minister of Defense is from Labor and different cabinet members could have competed for the Prime Minister’s job in the past election and plans to do so in future elections. In the current Knesset there are 12 different parties represented (27 parties competed in the last election) and in the current election 38 parties are vying for seats.

A party must have 2% of the total votes to earn a seat. For most of the political parties this very low threshold is too high due to the number of parties involved. In the current election,the parties that will make up the next government will most likely be, the current ruling party Kadima, Likud (the current front runner), Israel Our Home, Labor, and Shas (a Sephardic religious party). Around half of the voting Arab citizens vote for left wing Jewish lists instead of any of the 5-7 Arab parties that put up a list. Also many Arabs boycott elections, which makes it difficult for them to get many seats, totaling the Arab parties together they usually pass the threshold and hold between 3 and 7 seats.

Polls show the top issues for voters are, first security, second the economy, third education. Although the elections for Knesset are set every four years very few governments have lasted a full term. In the last 10 years, four governments have formed, with three falling before their term is finished, the one that lasted was Ariel Sharon’s government from 2002 to 2006. In the last 60 years there has been only one government that received enough mandates to form a government without coalescing with other parties and it lasted only one year.
This can be a confusing system, but generally the parties have very clear differences and Israelis tend to be very loyal to a particular party. Since Israel has been at war for 60 years, every voter has concerns about security, after that the parties represent different strengths. Although the Likud has always been strong on defense, the leader of Likud, Benjamin Natanyahu is considered strongest on the economy, concerns about social issues such as poverty and education are strengths of Labor, although the religious parties are also strong on those issues as well as on the issue of maintaining Israel as a Jewish state. Israel Our Home is strong with new immigrants Jewish identity and defense. Meandering through 38 political parties is not a likely activity for most voters who will lean toward parties they have voted for in the past.

Whichever party receives the most votes will lead the government but will, of necessity, have to form a coalition with several other parties. These coalitions can create broader consensus, but often create differences that make decision making difficult.

This is Israeli elections 101, if you would like to know more feel free to contact me tboussi@yahoo.com

Barak Returns From the Sidelines

Nadene Goldfoot

Kibbutz born on Abe Lincoln's birthday in 1942, Ehud Barak joined his family as a first son of Ester and Israel. He received a master's degree in engineering-economic systems from Stanford U. in California after majoring in math and physics. Ehud joined the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), or Israeli army in 1959 and became the Chief of the General Staff with the rank of Rav Aluf, which is the highest one can go. He earned the Medal of Distinguished Service and has four other awards for courage and operational excellence. He and Major Nechemya Cohen are the most decorated soldiers in Israeli history. He's also an expert in krav maga, the official martial art of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Besides being the 10th Prime Minister of Israel, he has just been appointed the country's defense minister besides being Israel's chief of the Labour Party. This comes at a time when Israel needs guidance in security since Hamas has taken over the Gaza Strip.

In 2006 Barak was a speaker at many American colleges talking about the Middle East. He said that Iraq was deteriorating to civil war and the US presence was more a part of the problem and not the solutions. With all his experience, we hope that he will know just what to do to protect Israel at this time.

upgraded 3/27/19