Watchman Newsletter

R.I.P. to the Middle East ‘Peace Process’

Big Peace (Link) - Rob Miller (November 15, 2011)

The so-called Middle East peace process between the Israelis and the “Palestinians” is essentially dead, and it will be quite some time before there’s an attempt to revive it.

Israeli statesman Abba Eban’s famous quote about the “Palestinians” never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity has come true once more, although in fairness they had a large assist this time from President Obama.

Mahmoud Abbas has once again refused to enter direct negotiations with Israel, telling new US envoy David Hale that the Palestinians would not return to the negotiating table with Israel unless the Israeli government met the preconditions of freezing all construction in what the “Palestinians” consider settlements, including East Jerusalem and accepting the pre-1967 cease fire lines as the basis for future borders in any two state solution.

In other words, Abbas is willing to sit down with the Israelis only if there’s nothing much left to negotiate. This is roughly the equivalent of agreeing to go to Las Vegas and place a bet on the roulette wheel only if your winnings are guaranteed in advance.

Israeli-Arab Crisis Approaching

Stratfor Global Intelligence (Link) - George Friedman (August 22, 2011)

In September, the U.N. General Assembly will vote on whether to recognize Palestine as an independent and sovereign state with full rights in the United Nations. In many ways, this would appear to be a reasonable and logical step. Whatever the Palestinians once were, they are clearly a nation in the simplest and most important sense — namely, they think of themselves as a nation. Nations are created by historical circumstances, and those circumstances have given rise to a Palestinian nation. Under the principle of the United Nations and the theory of the right to national self-determination, which is the moral foundation of the modern theory of nationalism, a nation has a right to a state, and that state has a place in the family of nations. In this sense, the U.N. vote will be unexceptional.

However, when the United Nations votes on Palestinian statehood, it will intersect with other realities and other historical processes. First, it is one thing to declare a Palestinian state; it is quite another thing to create one. The Palestinians are deeply divided between two views of what the Palestinian nation ought to be, a division not easily overcome. Second, this vote will come at a time when two of Israel’s neighbors are coping with their own internal issues. Syria is in chaos, with an extended and significant resistance against the regime having emerged. Meanwhile, Egypt is struggling with internal tension over the fall of President Hosni Mubarak and the future of the military junta that replaced him. Add to this the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and the potential rise of Iranian power, and the potential recognition of a Palestinian state — while perfectly logical in an abstract sense — becomes an event that can force a regional crisis in the midst of ongoing regional crises. It thus is a vote that could have significant consequences.

PA TV: Western Wall area to be turned into Arab housing neighborhood

Palwatch.org (Link) - Itamar Marcus & Nan Jacques Zilberdik (August 17, 2011)

Official Palestinian Authority TV broadcast a documentary which stated that the PA plans to build an Arab residential area in place of the Western Wall Plaza in Jerusalem, “when they [Israelis] disappear from the picture, like a forgotten chapter in the pages of our city’s history.”

The Western Wall, a remnant of the Temple Mount, is Judaism’s holiest and most important prayer site.

The PA TV documentary further rejected the Jewish connection to Jerusalem, referring to Jewish history as “their false history,” while the Jews’ praying at the Western Wall was called “sin and filth.”

Palestinians set date for UN statehood bid

YNet News (Link) - AFP (August 13, 2011)

The Palestinians will present their bid for membership of the United Nations on September 20, Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki told AFP on Saturday.

“Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will personally present the request to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon... at the opening of the sixty-sixth session,” on September 20, Malki said.

Abbas “will insist on this historic initiative and Ban Ki-moon will present the request to the Security Council,” the foreign minister added.

Malki noted that the Palestinian Authority chose September because Lebanon, which will hold the presidency of the Security Council, would be in a strong position to push the bid forward.

“Lebanon will hold the presidency of the Security Council in September and this will help us because the president of the council has special prerogatives, which is crucial,” he said.

‘Palestinians set date for statehood showdown at UN’

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - Gil Shefler (August 13, 2011)

The Palestinians set September 20th as the date for the much-anticipated vote over Palestinian statehood at the United Nations, according to AFP.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki informed UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will ask the international community to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state on the first day of the annual opening gathering at UN headquarters in New York.

“Abbas will personally present the request to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon... at the opening of the sixty-sixth session,” he was quoted as saying by the French news wire. “[Abbas] will insist on this historic initiative and Ban Ki-moon will present the request to the Security Council.”

The announcement cast aside speculation that the Palestinians might quietly step back from their bid for statehood in response to mounting international pressure against it.

Israel ‘ready to negotiate borders with Palestinians’

The Telegraph UK (Link) - Adrian Blomfield (August 1, 2011)

The offer, which emerged tonight appeared to represent a major climb-down by Mr Netanyahu, who has consistently refused to discuss specific borders of a future state.

A government official in Jerusalem told The Daily Telegraph the offer was dependent on the Palestinians dropping their campaign for statehood at the United Nations next month and accepting Israel as a Jewish state.

The offer appears to cross Palestinian red lines, and it seemed likely to be rejected — although the onus is now likely to be placed on the Palestinians to present a counter offer.

Mr Netanyahu reacted angrily when the 1967 proposal was made by Barack Obama in May but was now said to be offering to trade Israeli territory on its side of the line for West Bank land where its main settlements were located.

As U.S. Steps Back, Europe Takes Bigger Role in Mideast Peace Push

The New York Times (Link) - Mark Landler (July 20, 2011)

It is a truism of Middle East peacemaking that the United States is the pivotal player — the most credible broker between the Israelis and the Palestinians. But with talks at a standstill, the Obama administration now finds itself on the sidelines, and Europe is emerging as the key diplomatic actor.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, have crisscrossed the Continent in recent weeks, trying to woo leaders who are weighing whether to support a Palestinian bid for statehood at the United Nations in September. Neither man has visited Washington since the spring.

That may suit the administration just fine. The White House, several officials said, has deliberately kept a low profile since President Obama’s speech on the Middle East in May, in which he tried unsuccessfully to break the stalemate by proposing a starting point for negotiating the contours of a Palestinian state.

Europe’s rising role stems not only from American fatigue with a seemingly intractable problem, but also from the peculiar dynamics of the Palestinian campaign at the United Nations. With more than 100 countries, most in the developing world, expected to support Palestinian recognition — and the United States almost certain to oppose it — Britain, France and Germany are viewed as influential swing votes.

Our World: Israel’s only two options

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - Caroline Glick (July 18, 2011)

Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas is in Europe this week seeking to convince the Spanish and Norwegian governments to support the Palestinian bid to sidestep negotiations with Israel and have the UN General Assembly recognize Palestinian sovereignty over Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem in addition to Gaza.

The Palestinians know that without US support, their initiative will fail to gain Security Council support and therefore have no legal weight. But they believe that if they push hard enough, Israel’s control over these areas will eventually unravel and they will gain control over them without ever accepting Israel’s right to exist.

Fatah’s UN gambit, along with its unity deal with Hamas, makes clear that the time has come for Israel to finally face the facts: There are only two realistic options for dealing with Judea and Samaria.

Either the Palestinians will take control of Judea and Samaria, or Israel will annex them.

If the Palestinians take control, they will establish a terror state in the areas, which – like their terror state in Gaza – will use its territory as a starting point for continued war against Israel.

6 in 10 Palestinians reject 2-state solution, survey finds

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - Gil Hoffman (July 15, 2011)

Only one in three Palestinians (34 percent) accepts two states for two peoples as the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to an intensive, face-to-face survey in Arabic of 1,010 Palestinian adults in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip completed this week by American pollster Stanley Greenberg.

The poll, which has a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points, was conducted in partnership with the Beit Sahour-based Palestinian Center for Public Opinion and sponsored by the Israel Project, an international nonprofit organization that provides journalists and leaders with information about the Middle East.

The Israel Project is trying to reach out to the Arab world to promote “people-to-people peace.” The poll appears to indicate that the organization has a difficult task ahead.

Respondents were asked about US President Barack Obama’s statement that “there should be two states: Palestine as the homeland for the Palestinian people and Israel as the homeland for the Jewish people.”

Just 34% said they accepted that concept, while 61% rejected it.

Sixty-six percent said the Palestinians’ real goal should be to start with a two-state solution but then move to it all being one Palestinian state.

Israel and Palestinian sources to Haaretz: U.S. peace efforts have failed

Haaretz (Link) - Barak Ravid (July 12, 2011)

The intensive U.S. efforts to create an agreed outline for renewed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians have failed, Israeli and Palestinian sources have told Haaretz. The sources said the Palestinian leadership is more determined than ever to pursue the recognition of an independent Palestinian state at the United Nations in September.

An Israeli source who was close to talks held by the U.S. administration with both Israeli and Palestinian officials told Haaretz the Americans was unable to find a formula that both parties could accept and take to the negotiating table. He said the Americans were working on a formula that would combine President Barack Obama’s speech at the State Department on May 19 and his speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on May 22. Such a formula would offer the Palestinians the 1967 border with territorial exchanges while promising Israeli recognition of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people.

Both parties raised numerous objections to Washington’s proposal, leading the administration to conclude that neither was ready to resume talks. The Americans therefore decided to settle for a generic Quartet statement containing only a single bit of real news - announcing the dispatch of a team of senior diplomats to hold another round of talks in Jerusalem and Ramallah and report back to Obama personally.

Israel served as ‘main course’ at EU dinner, official says

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - Herb Keinon (June 22, 2011)

Quartet envoys are expected to meet in Brussels at the end of the week amid increasing concern in Jerusalem that the EU hopes to avert a Palestinian statehood bid at the UN in September by, as one senior Israeli official said on Wednesday, “giving something” significant to the Palestinians.

According to the official, the concern was that the EU is pushing for the adoption of US President Barack Obama’s formula of restarting negotiations using the pre-1967 lines with mutually agreed land swaps as a baseline, but without pressing the Palestinians to elaborate on security arrangements of any future accord with Israel.

The official also said the Palestinians wouldn’t be pressed to acknowledge Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people as a baseline for negotiations.

Many in Europe feel that something significant must be given to the Palestinians to get them to back down from their bid to get the UN General Assembly to recognize Palestinian statehood, the official said.

Obama urges Europe not to support Palestine’s U.N. statehood bid

International Business Times (Link) (May 26, 2011)

The US is worried that a unilateral support would isolate Israel, as British Prime Minister David Cameron is vague about the Palestine’s statehood bid.

President Barack Obama launched a campaign to convince the European leaders not to bid for a separate Palestinian state. But the only response he got from Cameron was noncommittal.

After a meeting on Wednesday with Obama, Cameron said the time was not yet right for to decide on the Palestinian bid for the United Nations’ recognition.

Palestinian Authority is expected to make the appeal at the U.N. General Assembly in September.

Israeli rebuke of Obama exposes divide on Mideast

Reuters (Link) - Jeffrey Heller & Matt Spetalnick (May 20, 2011)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bluntly told President Barack Obama on Friday his vision of how to achieve Middle East peace was unrealistic, exposing a deep divide that could doom any U.S. bid to revive peace talks.

In an unusually sharp rebuke to Israel’s closest ally, Netanyahu insisted Israel would never pull back to its 1967 borders -- which would mean big concessions of occupied land -- that Obama had said should be the basis for negotiations on creating a Palestinian state.

“Peace based on illusions will crash eventually on the rocks of Middle East reality,” an unsmiling Netanyahu said as Obama listened intently beside him in the Oval Office after they met for talks.

Netanyahu insisted that Israel was willing to make compromises for peace, but made clear he had major differences with Washington over how to advance the long-stalled peace process.

Netanyahu’s resistance raises the question of how hard Obama will push for concessions he is unlikely to get, and whether the vision the U.S. leader laid out on Thursday to resolve the decades-old conflict will ever get off the ground.

Obama’s Speech Sends Chills Through Netanyahu Government

Fox News (Link) - Leland Vittert (May 19, 2011)

When reached via cell phone immediately after President Obama’s speech urging a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman Mark Regev sounded as though he had been slapped in the face.

Netanyahu swiftly rejected Obama’s call for Israel to pull back to the borders that existed before the 1967 Six-Day War. Roughly translated from Hebrew, a statement from the Prime Minister’s office said that they appreciated Obama’s commitment to peace, but called the pullback to the 1967 borders “indefensible,” and said that the Palestinians were less than an honest partner in the peace process.

While the idea of using the 1967 borders as a starting point to negotiate land swaps for a final peace deal is not new, hearing an American president use those words sent chills through the Netanyahu government, which is loathe to even think the words “’67 borders.”

Every Israeli television channel carried the speech live and commentators did not have to wait for a formal reaction to the speech to comment that Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition government would feel both blindsided and abandoned by a U.S. administration that has never been viewed as a friend.

Israel Invaded

FrontPage Magazine (Link) - Robert Spencer (May 16, 2011)

Israel was invaded Sunday.

This time, however, the invaders weren’t armed forces. Nonetheless, they did not come in peace, and their attempt to enter Israel was no less an act of war than the invasions of 1967 and 1973, and the rockets that jihadists regularly shoot into Israel from Gaza.

Thousands of Palestinian Arabs tried to enter the country from Lebanon, Syria, Gaza and Judea and Samaria. Their declared intention – announced weeks ago on Facebook – was to return to the lands from which they had been expelled in 1948. The Facebook page made clear the sinister intentions of Sunday’s action: it was entitled “Third Palestinian Intifada,” and after it posted numerous calls for violence against Israel, Facebook took it down – after it had gained 350,000 members.

“The leaders of these violent demonstrations,” explained Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, “their struggle is not over the 1967 borders but over the very existence of Israel, which they describe as a catastrophe that must be resolved. It is important that we look with open eyes at the reality and be aware of whom we are dealing with and what we are dealing with.”

Egypt calls on US to recognize Palestinian state

YNet News (Link) - AFP (May 1, 2011)

Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil al-Arabi on Sunday called on the United States to recognize a Palestinian state, as rival Palestinian factions prepare to sign a reconciliation accord in Cairo.

Arabi urged visiting US Congressman Steve Chabot to “press Congress and the American administration to recognize a Palestinian state.”

Recognition “would correspond with previous statements by the American administration supporting peace based on two states,” the official MENA news agency quoted him as saying.

Abbas’ Fatah Party Reaches Unity Government Deal with Hamas

Bridges For Peace (Link) - BFP Israel Mosaic Radio - Joshua Spurlock (April 27, 2011)

In a move that could send shockwaves through Israel, Palestinian Authority [PA] head Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah party and the terrorist Hamas group have agreed to form an interim national unity government, according to The Jerusalem Post. The agreement, which still must be signed, includes plans to hold new elections in a year and poses a serious threat to obliterate any chance of a renewed peace process between Israel and the PA. Among other concerns, Hamas has refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and one senior official has already dismissed joining peace talks.

In a response to the expected unity agreement, posted on the Prime Minister’s Office Web site, Benjamin Netanyahu said, “The Palestinian Authority needs to choose between peace with Israel and peace with Hamas. Peace with both is impossible because Hamas aspires to destroy the State of Israel and says so openly. It fires missiles at our cities; it fires anti-tank rockets at our children.”

Revisiting the Jordan option

YNet News (Link) - Asaf Romirowsky (April 23, 2011)

Amid the unrest now sweeping the Middle East, Israeli government and security officials are quietly discussing an unusual strategy that would pass the Palestinians’ political future off to Jordan. With the odds of a negotiated two-state solution at an all-time low, former Defense Minister Moshe Arens, Knesset Member Arieh Eldad, and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin resurrected the “Jordan is Palestine” model for regional peace.

Israeli officials fear that a Palestinian Intifada could break out on both sides of the Jordan River, and they seek to make it as much a Jordanian problem as an Israeli one.

In February, Human Rights Watch, the world’s self-proclaimed defender of minority rights, produced a 60-page report entitled, “Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality.” The paper details how Jordan deprives its Palestinian citizens of West Bank origins their basic rights, such education and healthcare. The report received scant attention back then. But the problem of Jordanian Palestinians, amidst growing unrest in the Hashemite Kingdom, has put the issue back on the front burner.

Israeli analysts worry that if the Jordanian government is to become more representative, it is possible that the country’s 72% Palestinian population could effectively take control. Jordan, in effect, could become “Palestine.”

Obama’s plan: Palestinian state, without right of return

YNet News (Link) - Yitzhak Benhorin (April 21, 2011)

The White House has been working on a new peace initiative for the past three months, one that revolves around a few key principles: A Palestinian state without the right of return, Jerusalem as the capital of both states, and an emphasis on Israel’s security needs.

According to an article published in the New York Times Thursday, the details of the proposal are yet to be hashed out.

Officials at the Prime Minister’s Office did not rush to respond to the NY Times report. Thursday evening, sources in Jerusalem said that Israel was not surprised by the American plan currently being worked out.

“Everyone knew something is being formulated in Washington,” one official said.

At this time it’s unclear whether Prime Minister Netanyahu was aware of the initiative and gave it his blessing. Some officials estimated that the Obama plan is meant to affect the PM’s upcoming speech, which is expected to feature Israel’s new peace initiative.

Palestinian PM: Brussels meeting is ‘birth certificate’ for statehood

EU Observer (Link) - Andrew Rettman (April 14, 2011)

The Palestinian Authority has welcomed endorsement of a UN report on institution building as a “birth certificate” for statehood amid Israeli concern over a potential unilateral declaration of independence.

The Ad-hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC) on Palestine at a meeting in the EU capital on Wednesday (13 April) endorsed a UN report which says that in six key areas - rule of law, the economy, education, health, social protection and infrastructure - in the West Bank “government functions are now sufficient for a functioning government of a state.”

The AHLC is an international body comprising the EU, US, Israel, Canada, Norway, Russia, four Arab countries, the UN, the World Bank and the IMF.

The endorsement comes ahead of a UN meeting in September in which Israel fears the Palestinian side will unilaterally declare independence in territories under its control before the 1967 Arab-Israeli war due to a stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

‘US will have hard time standing alone in UN’

YNet News (Link) - Attila Somfalvi (April 13, 2011)

Israeli state officials estimated Wednesday that the US decision to postpone a European initiative to set parameters for peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians will involve a price to be paid by Benjamin Netanyahu. “The prime minister will be forced to outline his plans in a clear manner,” one state official said.

Israel has been working to prevent UN support in a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state, however efforts to block endorsement have thus far failed. State officials now believe such efforts are futile, particularly in regards to the General Assembly.

An Israeli official said: “Obama wants a Palestinian state and although the US is not interested in a unilateral declaration, it would be hard for it to stand alone in the General Assembly and vote against it.”

In fact, many state officials believe Israel has failed on the UN front. “The fact that the Americans stopped the Quartet’s plan only proves how deeply we depend on them,” one official said. “But this hold-up will not change matters in the General Assembly and this is a trend we cannot change.”

Israel’s next war

YNet News (Link) - Yoel Meltzer (April 7, 2011)

In all likelihood, the Palestinians are going to unilaterally declare statehood in Judea and Samaria within the coming year. This is not a ploy or a desperate attempt on their part but rather a clear, rational decision. By correctly gauging the stark contrast between the massive international support for their cause as opposed to the steadily increasing de-legitimization of Israel the “apartheid state,” the Palestinians have wisely decided to bypass direct negotiations since there is no point in paying for something when you can get if for free.

Thus, with country after country pledging its support, the Palestinians are going to take their case to the United Nations.

There, the Palestinians have nothing to lose for even if the Security Council rejects their bid for statehood, it will most likely be approved by the General Assembly. Although this is less significant than an endorsement by the Security Council, an approval by the General Assembly does nonetheless have some teeth. Most notably, as many commentators pointed out, there is something known as UNGA Resolution 377 that allows the General Assembly to call for sanctions or even military force against a country that fails to implement its recommendations.

If the “civilized world” helps bring the Palestinian plan to fruition then a very likely result of such actions will be the outbreak of war. Thus, in a world turned upside down it will be the UN, a body formed to help foster peace throughout the world, which will be directly responsible for bringing the next great Arab-Israeli war to the Middle East.

Israel holds secret talks with Russia in bid to thwart recognition of Palestinian state

Haaretz (Link) - Barak Ravid (April 1, 2011)

Isaac Molho, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s senior adviser and top negotiator on the Palestinian channel, made a secret trip to Moscow on Wednesday and met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. The purpose of the visit was to dissuade Russia from supporting the European Union’s intention to present in two weeks’ time a plan for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders.

Molho was accompanied on the trip by the Foreign Ministry’s legal advisor, Daniel Taub, and spent over an hour with Lavrov. Taub and Molho also met with the Russian envoy to the Middle East, Sergei Yakovlev, and other senior Russian officials. A senior Israeli official told Haaretz that Taub and Molho used the visit “to present new Israeli ideas for re-launching the peace process with the Palestinians.”

The visit comes just two weeks before the foreign ministers of the Quartet − the United States, Russia, the European Union and the UN − are to meet. France, Germany and the United Kingdom are pushing for announcing a new international peace initiative. The principles of the initiative known so far include setting up two states on the basis of the 1967 borders with territorial swaps; a fair, realistic and agreed-upon solution to the predicament of the Palestinian refugees; Jerusalem as a capital for both states and security arrangements that would protect Israel but not infringe on Palestinian sovereignty.

Israel threatens unilateral steps if UN recognizes Palestinian state

Haaretz (Link) - Barak Ravid (March 29, 2011)

Israel informed the 15 members of the United Nations Security Council last week, as well as several other prominent European Union countries, that if the Palestinian Authority persists in its efforts to gain recognition in September as a state within the 1967 borders, Israel would respond with a series of unilateral steps of its own.

Senior Foreign Ministry officials said the ministry’s director general, Rafael Barak, sent a classified cable last week to more than 30 Israeli embassies, directing them to lodge a diplomatic protest at the highest possible level in response to the Palestinian efforts to gain international recognition for statehood at the UN General Assembly session in September.

The Israeli diplomatic corps conveyed the message that support for international recognition, particularly by most of the members of the European Union, encouraged the Palestinians to forgo negotiations with Israel and to move more quickly toward recognition at the UN of Palestinian statehood. Israeli diplomats stressed that such a move violates the Oslo Accords and will not lead to a Palestinian state even if the General Assembly grants recognition, but could lead to violence on the ground.

European countries want UN, not U.S., to advance Mideast peace talks

Haaretz (Link) - AP (March 26, 2011)

Britain, France and Germany want the United Nations and the European Union to propose the outlines of a final settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state, UN diplomats said.

The three European countries, all members of the UN Security Council, are pressing for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the European Union to propose a settlement text at a meeting in mid-April of the Quartet of Mideast mediators, the diplomats said, speaking on condition of anonymity because talks are taking place in private.

The quartet includes the UN, EU, U.S. and Russia. The aim is to get a basis for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks to resume.

Putting the job in the hands of the EU and the UN would sideline the United States, Israel’s closest ally which has tried unsuccessfully for months to get face-to-face negotiations going, as well as Russia, an ally of the Palestinians.

UN intervention into Libya an ominous precedent for Israel

Center For Security Policy (Link) - Frank Gaffney, Jr. (March 21, 2011)

There are many reasons to be worried about the bridge-leap the Obama Administration has just undertaken in its war with Muammar Gaddafi. How it will all end is just one of them.

Particularly concerning is the prospect that what we might call the Gaddafi Precedent will be used in the not-to-distant future to justify and threaten the use of U.S. military forces against an American ally: Israel.

Here’s how such a seemingly impossible scenario might eventuate:

PM visits Itamar: ‘They shoot, we build’

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - Herb Keinon (March 13, 2011)

Netanyahu goes to homes of Fogel parents to give condolences; promises those responsible for terror attack will be found.

The terrorists shoot, and we build, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the parents of Ehud and Ruth Fogel on Sunday night during a shiva call, hours after the government’s settlement committee decided to approve the building of 400 -500 housing units in large settlement blocks.

“They say Eretz Yisrael is acquired through pain and suffering,” Netanyahu told the grieving parents, “but we didn’t think the pain and suffering would be so great. This heinous act has led all of us to say, ‘Enough.’ The security services are doing everything they can to find the murders, and we will find the criminals. They are not people, but beasts.”

Even as Netanyahu and the government devoted most of the cabinet’s discussion on Sunday to the attack and hearing briefings from Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz and the deputy head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the decision to approve a few hundred houses in the settlement blocs became the major story in the international media.

Column One: A win-win plan for Netanyahu

The Jerusalem Post (Link) - Caroline B. Glick (March 11, 2011)

The most effective way to defend Israel against Obama is to boldly assert, defend and implement a unilateral Israeli plan.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is stuck between a diplomatic rock and a political hard place. And his chosen means of extricating himself from the double bind is only making things worse for him and for Israel.

Diplomatically, Netanyahu is beset by the Palestinian political war to delegitimize Israel and the Obama administration’s escalating hostility. That hostility was most recently expressed during President Barack Obama’s meeting with American Jewish leaders on March 1. Insinuating that Israel is to blame for the absence of peace in the Middle East, Obama scolded Jewish leaders, telling them to “search your souls” over Israel’s seriousness about making peace.

Obama’s newest threat is that through the so called Middle East Quartet, (Russia, the UN, the EU and the US), the administration will move towards supporting the Palestinian plan to declare statehood. That state would include all of Judea and Samaria, Gaza and eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem. Since it would not be established in the framework of a peace treaty with Israel, and since its leaders reject Israel’s right to exist, “Palestine” would be born in a de facto state of war with Israel.

To credit this threat, Obama has empowered the Quartet to supplant the US as the mediator between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu to PA: Sit Down and Talk Already!

Israel National News (Link) - Hillel Fendel (March 7, 2011)

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu explained succinctly on Sunday why the negotiations with the PA have gone nowhere. He answered a question during the joint press conference he held with visiting Chilean President Sebastián Piñera.

The questioner asked about the lack of direct negotiations between Israel and the PA, implying that Israel could do more to get them going. Netanyahu answered as follows:

“Well, we’ve been calling for direct negotiations from day one of this government.

“On day one, we called for direct negotiations.

“On day two, I made a speech in Bar Ilan University calling for two states for two peoples.

“On day three, we removed about 400 checkpoints, earth barriers, and other things to facilitate the growth of the Palestinian economy.

“On day four, we agreed to a ten-month moratorium on new construction in the settlements, something that no government did for 18 years before that.

“On day five, we agreed to an extension of that moratorium by three months.

“Unfortunately, everything that we did, these five things, were met with no response by the Palestinian Authority. They just placed preconditions and terms, every way to avoid sitting down and discussing peace. They tried to go around the peace negotiations.

FM: Israel won’t cede Golan Heights

UPI (Link) (March 1, 2011)

Israel is willing to enter into peace negotiations with Syria but giving up the Golan Heights will not be on the table, an Israeli official said.

“There is no justification or reason for Israel to cede the Golan Heights,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman told envoys from Japan and Romania along with Quartet envoy Tony Blair, Ynetnews.com reported Tuesday.

Israel acquired the Golan Heights, located at the southern end of the border with Syria, during the 1967 War.

Lieberman accused the Syrians of desperately wanting to talk about peace but not really wanting to seek peace.

“They want a peace process in order to get Western legitimacy,” he said. “President Assad’s only goal is to maintain the rule of the Assad dynasty.”

Lieberman’s statements followed a month of more than 20 meetings with European and senior U.S. officials.

During a Monday session with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Lieberman said he’s not sure the current uprisings in Middle Eastern nations will result in the establishment of democracies. †