Friday, November 30, 2012

Hamas Reminder: Our Goal Is Israel's Destruction




The reality of this situation is available to anyone with a discerning eye and ear - let there be no mistake about it - the ultimate goal is the complete destruction of Israel and the annihilation of its people:






Hamas’ Thursday statement indicated that its approach to the “problem” of Israel has not changed. “The Palestinian people will not recognize the resolution and will not legitimate the Zionist occupation of the history land of Palestine,” it declared.

The “land of Palestine” extends “from the sea to the river, from the north to south of the land,” it added. The land “will not be divided with anyone,” the group insisted.

The Hamas terrorist group rules over Gaza, which is home to an estimated 40% of the population the Palestinian Authority claims as "Palestinian." Its goal for that population, it said, remains to “return” them to their “home” inside Israel. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has similarly claimed commitment to the goal of "return."

As usual, Hamas declared, “The only way to free all of Palestine and return the stolen lands is through battle.”

... the terrorist group insisted that it has won “huge victories” that “overwhelmingly” prove war is the answer. It claimed “the expulsion of the occupier from the Gaza strip in 2005, the victory in the war of salvation [Operation Cast Lead] in 2009, the deal of obligation to the free men [Shalit prisoner swap] in 2011 and the victory in Sijil [Pillar of Defense] in 2012” as proof.






“With this resolution, the General Assembly has handed the Palestinian leadership a pyrrhic public relations victory, which in all likelihood will make it even more difficult to move the process forward,” asserted the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). “The result of the vote is no surprise — the General Assembly has always given a rubber stamp to Palestinian declarations and grandstanding. Adding insult to injury, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in his remarks reiterated some of his more outrageous charges against Israel.  Included were lies and distortions accusing Israel of aggression in the recent conflict with Gaza, of ethnic cleansing, apartheid, colonialism and racism.  His were not the words of a statesman seeking peace.”

“In the long term this resolution will have potentially disastrous consequences for future Palestinian aspirations.  It brings the Palestinian people no closer to statehood, nor does it bring Israel closer to peace and security.  And it demonstrates to the majority of Israelis who support a negotiated peace agreement that the Palestinian Authority has no interest in negotiations, reconciliation, or peace,” the ADL added.

AIPAC stated. “Abbas has reinforced the message he sent in a May 2011 New York Times op-ed that he intends to widen the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by pursuing claims against Israel before international bodies that can neither bring peace nor well-being to his people.

“…Today’s vote in the United Nations does nothing to lead to a genuine and lasting peace in the Middle East, between the Israeli and the Palestinian peoples. Instead, it undermines this much-desired goal by contradicting its own UN resolutions, those that mandate resolving this conflict through direct negotiations between the parties,” added the WJC. “The designation of a Palestinian non-member observer state creates an illusion that will ultimately deeply disappoint the Palestinian people by raising unrealistic expectations.”





Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s Office responded on Thursday to the speech given by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to the UN General Assembly, as well as to the UN’s passing of the resolution to give “Palestine” the status of a non-member observer state.

"The world watched a defamatory and venomous speech that was full of mendacious propaganda against the IDF and the citizens of Israel. Someone who wants peace does not talk in such a manner," said the statement about Abbas’s speech.
In response to the passing of the proposal, the Prime Minister’s Office said, "This is a meaningless decision that will not change anything on the ground. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made it clear that there will be no establishment of a Palestinian state without a settlement that ensures the security of Israel's citizens.

“He will not allow a base for Iranian terrorism to be established in Judea and Samaria, in addition to those that have [already] been established in Gaza and Lebanon,” said the statement. “The way to peace between Jerusalem and Ramallah is in direct negotiations, without preconditions, and not in one-sided UN decisions. By going to the UN, the Palestinians have violated the agreements with Israel and Israel will act accordingly."








The recent fighting in Gaza was a rousing success for Israel, according to Evans. He said, in addition to retaliation for the incessant rocket strikes, Israel accomplished a larger goal.

“What has happened just recently with the Gaza short war was in preparation for the Iran attack,” he said. “In order for Israel to prepare themselves for the attack, they needed to shut down Iran’s infrastructure in Gaza. They did.”

About three months ago, Dr. Evans said he had word from very high levels in the Israeli government that an attack on Iran’s nuclear program would most likely take place between Sept. 15 and Oct. 15 of this year. So why didn’t those strikes take place?

“Israel was forced to call new elections,” Evans said. “You can’t go to war against Iran without a government, and Israel’s government was coming apart. A lot of this was because of the U.S.  The U.S. was meeting with the opposition parties, trying to take the government down.”

Evans believes Netanyahu will win re-election in January despite the best efforts of the Obama administration to defeat him. If Netanyahu prevails, Evans expects an attack on Iran by the end of the spring.

Another issue Evans said is being wrongly reported is Thursday’s vote in the United Nations on whether to grant observer status to the Palestinians – which most see as a key step to statehood. Evans sees this as something far less noble.

“Lawsuits. This entire move is to try to legitimize their ability to sue Israel for war crimes,” Evans said. “They’ve already tried it in the past, and it didn’t stick. With this new recognition status, it would give them the ability to file thousands of lawsuits against Israelis, including foreign ministers. That’s more fundamentally what it’s about than anything else. It’s not good.”





The article below is quite interesting for prophecy watchers - looking ahead a few years - as one wonders what such a 'secret site' could be used for:





Leave it to legendary Walter Pincus from the Washington Post to flesh out a Request for Proposal construction project planned for Israel called Site 911.

The oddly named project willcost up to $100 million, take more than two years to complete, and can only be built by workers from specific countries with proper security clearances. Palestinians need not apply.

When complete the well-guarded compound will have five levels buried underground and six additional outbuildings on the above grounds, within the perimeter. At about 127,000 square feet, the first three floors will house classrooms, an auditorium, and a laboratory — all wedged behind shock resistant doors — with radiation protection and massive security.
Only one gate will allow workers entrance and exit during the project and that will be guarded by only Israelis.

Along with this request is another called 911 Phase 2.

Also in the $100 million range, Pincus finds the “complex facility with site development challenges” requiring services that include “electrical, communication, mechanical/ HVAC [heating, ventilation, air conditioning] and plumbing” requirements telling; and along with the fact that the contractor must posses a U.S. or Israeli Secret Security Clearance, he believes this phase to be a secure command center.

Pulitzer Prize winning, Yale grad, born in 1932 whose worked intelligence and media in D.C. since 1955 closes his piece with these shadowy words."The purpose of Site 911 is [un] clear."







Also see:

















Thursday, November 29, 2012

Un Recognizes "Palestine" - Now What?

First we take a look at the vote:






As expected, the United Nations passed a resolution on Thursday evening recognizing Palestine as a non-member observer state.
138 countries voted in favor of the resolution, nine countries voted against it, and 41 countries abstained.

Shortly before the vote, Palestinian Authority (PA) Head Mahmoud Abbas addressed the United Nations Thursday, in his bid to gain recognition for the PA as a non-member observer state. This status has only been accorded to the Vatican until now.
As usual, Abbas did not condemn the rocket fire by Gaza terrorists on southern Israel.

"Palestine comes today to the General Assembly because it believes in peace and because its people, as proven in past days, are in desperate need of it,” he said, insisting that recognizing “Palestine” as a non-member observer state is “the last chance to save the two-state solution."

"We have heard and you too have heard specifically over the past months the incessant flood of Israeli threats in response to our peaceful, political and diplomatic endeavor for Palestine to acquire non-member observer state in the United Nations,” said Abbas. “And, you have surely witnessed how some of these threats have been carried out in a barbaric and horrific manner just days ago in the Gaza Strip.




That doesn't sound too 'peaceful' to me. Especially coming from someone who ostensibly calls for peace. 

We've already seen how "Palestine" will now call on the ICC to place various Israeli officials in front of the court - an action that would create a vast array of (inappropriate) problems and difficulties for Israel. Additionally, the 'Palestinian'  hope from this new ICC threat will be that any action taken by Israel in self-defense, such as the recent Gaza conflict - would be reason for a kangaroo court to ensue and place Israel's leaders in a precarious position. 

Even worse, and this too is entirely predictable - the indefensible 'pre-1967' borders will be called for, and indeed that is the case as well:



"We will accept no less than the independence of the state of Palestine, with east Jerusalem as its capital, on all the Palestinian territory occupied in 1967, to live in peace and security alongside the state of Israel, and a solution for the refugee issue on the basis of resolution 194, as per the operative part of the Arab Peace Initiative,” he stressed.










But diplomats and observers believe it will mark a dramatic turning point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict-cum-peace process of the past 20 years.

Rather, the PA will choose the more palatable option domestically and escalate the international legal challenges to Israel’s policies — and, rhetorically at least, to its very nature and existence — by joining the International Criminal Court and appealing for ICC investigations of Israeli officials and officers.

...former PA foreign minister and current top negotiator Nabil Shaath, who told a Hamas rally in Gaza a week ago, “When you shout that you are marching toward Jerusalem, well this is exactly what your victory is doing. It is defending Jerusalem and Palestine in its entirety by all means of resistance — by armed resistance, by political resistance, by going to the UN, by solidarity — by all forms of confrontation with the enemy occupying our land.”


Indeed, the question of whether the PA needs to actively apply to the ICC may be academic, as a statement in September by ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda suggested that the court may gain jurisdiction over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict automatically through the General Assembly’s recognition of Palestine as a state.
"What we have also done is to leave the door open, and to say that if Palestine is able to pass over that hurdle [of statehood] — of course, under the [UN] General Assembly — then we will revisit what the ICC can do,” Bensouda told a Council on Foreign Relations event in Washington.


This development is not only predictable, but highly consistent with biblical prophecy - as we watch Israel's land divided and we see the world aligning against Israel. The stage continues to be set for the inevitable conclusions. Don't forget, God is placing Israel in such a position that they will only be able to call on Him for their assistance as 'the nations' turn their backs on Israel. 

All according to plan. 











PA Statehood: 'The Day The PA Lands At The Hague'



Today we see several commentaries relating to the PA's recognition from the UN General Assembly as an 'observer, non-voting state' to take place later today, but none more chilling than the one below:




Several years ago, the Palestinian Authority tried to submit criminal cases against Israeli officials at the InternationalCriminal Court in The Hague, but the prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said "Palestine" was not yet a state, and only states could file cases.

With a vote in the UN General Assembly on an upgrade of the Palestinians status to that of a non-member statehood, the PA will try to refile the cases if dubbed a “state". So if the Palestinians land at the International Criminal Court - established in the late 1990s as a last resort to punish mass murder and torture - Amir Eshel and other Israeli generals could be prosecuted for "war crimes" and "crimes against humanity".


All of the great leaders of Hamas - Ahmed Yassin, Saleh Shehada, Abd al Aziz al Rantisi and finally Ahmed Jaabari - have been killed by Israel during extrajudicial operations. Over the past decade, Israel has carried out 234 targeted killings in which 387 Palestinians were killed. The International Criminal Court considers these killings illegal.

If the Palestinian Arabs reach The Hague, they will ask to prosecute Israel's interrogations technique. During the preparation of a targeted killing, Israel l relies on some "physical pressure" during interrogations of terrorists, but in a much more selective way than in the past.


In 1987, a commission in Israel headed by Judge Moshe Landau, who presided at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, faced the problem of these interrogations. The casus belli was the hijacking of a busload of civilians; two members of the terror commando ended up in the hands of Shin Bet, but they came out dead.
Because these techniques work and save innocent civilian lives, Hamas terrorists were the object of them. These kind of interrogations work to such an extent that even the former military leader of Hamas, Saleh Shehada (later killed by a missile), cooperated with the Israeli authorities while in jail.

If the Palestinian Arabs land in The Hague, foreign companies like Elbit, which are building Israel’s security fence, can also be targeted with sanctions. Any business with Israeli companies located over the Green Line will be boycotted all over the world also through legal means.




During the UN convention that drafted the constitution, a group of Islamic countries led by Egypt insisted on including Israel's construction in Judea, Samaria and Gaza in the list of war crimes. Furthermore, the convention refused to classify terrorism as an international crime.

The distortion of international law against Israel by the Court was also crystal clear in the inclusion, as a war crime, of: “the transfer, directly or indirectly, by the occupying power of parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies”. The inclusion of this offense, under the pressure of Arab states, and the addition of the phrase “directly or indirectly”, was intended to dismantle the Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria, Yesha.




The concept of removing all Jews from a certain region, that brings back the tragedy that befell the Jewish people in World War II, has become acceptable in the global arena and law when it is applied to the land of Israel and its Jews.

The day the Palestinian Arabs reach The Hague, Israel will be undermined in the right to defend itself from genocidal attacks, it will be portrayed as the epitome of the human rights violator and it will be boycotted in its right to live in their historical land. And ultimately, Israel's very right to exist will be at stake.

In May of 1940, the Germans established their occupational administration for the Netherlands in The Hague.
Many Jews committed suicide. Approximately 80% of the 10,000 Jews of The Hague were then deported. Most were murdered.
Seventy years later, now from the sleek Court's building at the outskirts of The Hague, the Israeli Jew is legally and humanitarianly sentenced to death









With Israel facing a stinging diplomatic defeat Thursday at the UN, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that regardless of how many vote against Israel, "no force in the world will get me to compromise on Israel's security."
He also said no force in the world can sever the thousands-year-old tie between the Jewish people and the land of Israel.

Relating to the expected overwhelming support of the world to upgrade the Palestinian status at the UN to that of a non-member state, Netanyahu said that the decision will "Not change anything on the ground. It will not further the establishment of a Palestinian state, but will make it more distant."

"Israel's hand is always extended in peace, but a Palestinian state will not be established without recognition of the state of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, without an end-of-conflict declaration, and without true security arrangements that will protect Israel and its citizens."

Netanyahu, who said that none of the conditions he reiterated are even mentioned in the Palestinian's UN resolution, said that peace is only achieved through negotiations, and not by unilateral declarations "which do not take into consideration Israel security needs."
"I remember the international community's applause that the government of Israel received when it decided to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza," he said. "We got applause and then rocket fire. We left Gaza, and Iran entered, exactly like what happened in Lebanon."


Netanyahu said he would not enable another Iranian base to be established, this time in Judea and Samaria, a kilometer away from Jerusalem.
"It does not matter how many will vote against us, there is no force in the world that will cause me to compromise on Israeli security and there is no force in the world able to sever the thousands year connection between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel," he said.






The Palestinian Authority may win recognition from the UN General Assembly as an observer, non-voting state later Thursday, but the move will boomerang on the Authority, Israeli officials said. Speaking on Israel Radio Thursday, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said that the move would simply force Israel to demand more from the PA.

“If the Palestinian Authority wishes to be regarded like a state, it must act as one,” he said. “That includes fulfilling all agreements. We will demandinternational guarantees from now on for any commitment the PA makes in any negotiations,” Ayalon said, considering the poor record the PA has had fulfilling previous agreements.


Government Secretary General Tzvi Hauser told Israel Radio that the PA move will make a final settlement harder to achieve. “This moves breaks the rules of the gameand will allow Israel to react in any way it deems necessary in order to protect its interests." Hauser stressed that any deal between Israel and PA needed to be made by direct negotiations, and that involving international bodies in the attempts to arrive at a settlement would not produce anything.


Regardless of what happens here, and subsequent actions by the UN or mythical "Palestine", we have to remember it's all part of God's plan and this plan is being fulfilled before our very eyes. 





Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Creation Of A "PA State" Within The UN: Summary

Joel Rosenberg, as usual presents an excellent summary of the latest move to create a formal Palestinian State and gives interesting perspective. Below are a few of his more interesting and thought-provoking points:






The introduction:


On Thursday, the Palestinian leadership will ask the United Nations General Assembly to vote on a resolution that will give them enhanced international legal status, not quite a full sovereign state, but very close. The resolution is expected to pass decisively. France, Russia, China and most nations of the world have indicated they will vote “yes” on the resolution. That’s right, the world is poised to say yes to a sovereign Palestinian state despite the fact that Palestinians in Gaza just committed more than 3,000 war crimes last week (each rocket was fired from behind innocent Arab civilians, and fired at innocent Jewish civilians, making each rocket fired a double war crime); despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank doesn’t have any control over the situation in Gaza; despite the fact that the PA has admantly refused to sit down and engage in face to face peace talks with the Israelis for years; and despite the fact that the PA is nearly bankrupt and unable to pay its workers). [Note: On November 29, 1947, the U.N. voted for the famous "Partition Plan."]

The Oslo Accords — which were signed back in the ’90s by Israel and the Palestinians — forbade unilateral moves by either side. Thus, the Palestinian leadership is now trying to break the one major diplomatic agreement it has ever signed with Israel. That doesn’t bode well for future peace talks.


Key Points:



International pressure on Israel to cut a deal, divide the Land, and create a Palestinian state is overwhelming, relentless, and intensifying.
Currently, the Palestinian leadership refuses to negotiate directly with Israel. Rather, they hope to unilaterally declare a state by getting the vast majority of countries at the U.N. to vote for the creation of state at the General Assembly session in New York.

The most intense international pressure for a Palestinian state is coming from Western Europe, which has grown increasingly anti-Israel and increasingly anti-Semitic.

However, the Bible strongly warns the nations not to divide the Land of Israel and states that all nations who do so will face God’s judgment. The Lord said to the Hebrew Prophet Joel, “I will gather all the nations and bring them down to the valley of Jehoshaphat. Then I will enter into judgment with them there on behalf of My people and My inheritance, Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations; and they have divided up My land.” (Joel 3:2)

Bible prophecy suggests the Land will be divided again in the last days. The Hebrew prophet wrote in Daniel 9:26-27 that in the last days “the prince who is to come” (the Antichrist) “will make a firm covenant” (a peace treaty) “with the many” (neighbors of Israel) for seven years, but will then break that treaty after  three and a half years. This strongly — though not definitively — suggests a state will be created or reaffirmed through this treaty.

So we should expect European pressure to continue to build and eventually a European leader will take the lead and get a deal done — to many, it will look like a wonderful peace deal, at first, but the Bible makes clear it will turn disastrous for Israel, and the Palestinians, and the world.

Indeed, Christians must clearly and firmly warn the nations not to divide the Land in disobedience to the Word of God because it will lead to divine and terrible judgment.

Let us continue to pray for the Prince of Peace — Jesus the Messiah — to draw more and more people in the epicenter to Himself. This is the only true and lasting hope for peace.



The ultimate goal, of course, is to continue to diminish the size of Israel so it will be easier to invade and destroy. As many of us have seen, there have also been proposals to quite literally divide the land of Israel, by having a 'land corridor' connecting the West Bank with Gaza. Additionally, we will continue to see either a political force or a military force to take the Golan Heights from Israel, especially given its importance militarily. 


All of this - every bit of it - is ultimately intended to wipe out Israel and completely destroy the nation. This doesn't require speculation as Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, Fatah, etc., all publicly declare this goal, while the western nations ignore this obvious fact. 

But, as with everything else we see around us these days, it's all part of God's overall plan and we have to take comfort in that fact. 



Iran Moves Closer To Nuclear Weapons: Simulations Of Large Nukes - Pressing On With Uranium Enrichment




Iranian Scientists Running Simulations Of Large Nuclear Weapon



Iranian scientists have run computer simulations for a nuclear weapon that would produce more than triple the explosive force of the World War II bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, according to a diagram obtained by The Associated Press.The diagram was leaked by officials from a country critical of Iran’s atomic program to bolster their arguments that Iran’s nuclear program must be halted before it produces a weapon. The officials provided the diagram only on condition that they and their country not be named.
The senior diplomat said the diagram was part of a series of Iranian computer-generated models provided to the IAEA by the intelligences services of member nations for use in its investigations of suspicions that Iran is trying to produce a nuclear weapon.

Iran will continue enriching uranium "with intensity", with the number of enrichment centrifuges it has operating to increase substantially in the current year, the country's nuclear energy chief was quoted as saying on Wednesday.

The comments by Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization, signaled continued defiance by Iran in the face of international demands that Tehran halt enrichment to the higher 20 percent fissile purity level, close down its Fordow enrichment plant, and ship out its stockpile of the material.
"Despite the sanctions, most likely this year we will have a substantial growth in centrifuge machines and we will continue (uranium) enrichment with intensity," Abbasi-Davani was quoted as saying on Wednesday by the website of Iranian state television (IRIB).

UN nuclear watchdog chief Yukiya Amano said earlier this month that Iran is enriching uranium at a constant pace and international sanctions aimed at making Tehran suspend the activity are having no visible impact.


Now it all makes sense. I was wondering why the fuss over Arafat's death and the new investigations into the causality:

The Palestinian Authority indicated it would take Israel to the International Criminal Court if it uncovers evidence Israel assassinated former PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, something that could become possible if the PA obtains an upgrade to its statehood status in the UN this week.

Speaking to reporters at a new conference in Ramallah on Tuesday, PA investigator Tawfiq Tirawi said Palestinians were gathering evidence about Arafat's death in order "to submit [it] to the International Criminal Court," Palestinian news agency Ma'an reported.


Results from the tests were not expected until March or April of 2013.
The Palestinians appear certain to earn approval in the 193-member UN General Assembly for a status upgrade to "observer state" - similar to the Vatican's rank - from observer "entity." The move would implicitly recognize Palestinian statehood.

The change would likely allow the Palestinians to access bodies like the International Criminal Court in the Hague, which prosecutes people for genocide, war crimes and other major human rights violations, where it could complain about Israel.





Twin car bombs ripped through a Damascus suburb on Wednesday, killing at least 34 people and leaving dozens critically wounded, according to state media and hospital officials.
The state news agency, SANA, said two cars packed with explosives detonated early in the morning in the eastern Jaramana suburb, a district that is mostly loyal to President Bashar Assad. The area is populated mostly by Christians and Druse, a minority sect.
A series of blasts have struck regime targets in Damascus and elsewhere since last December, raising fears of a rising Islamic militant element among the forces seeking to topple Assad.



Twin car bombs carried out by the Western-backed so-called “rebels” have killed dozens of civilians in a Christian-Druze neighborhood in Damascus, highlighting the sectarian extremism, not “democratic” aspirations, as well as the level of depravity, driving opponents of the Syrian government. Immediately after the explosions, and as casualty figures began trickling in, Associated Press (AP) attempted to spin and downplay the act of terrorism, claiming in its report, “Twin car bombs kill 20 in Syria, hospitals say,” that:

“Syrian hospital officials say twin car bombs have killed at least 20 people in a Damascus suburb that is mostly loyal to President Bashar Assad.”
Excusing egregious acts of terrorism aimed at Syria’s civilian population by claiming those targeted were “mostly loyal to President Bashar Assad” has been a favorite tactic of AP, BBC, CNN, Fox News, and others. In reality, the vast majority of Syrians, from Christians to Druze, from Shia’a Muslims to moderate Sunnis, are targets of the sectarian extremist, Saudi-Wahhabi indoctrinated terrorists the US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia have been funding, arming, importing from across the region, and arraying against the people of Syria since at least 2007.


The terrorists in Syria have recently received a boost by the West, arranging for them a political front in Doha, Qatar to act as the reasonable “face” for their armed terrorism, portraying the premeditated destabilization by foreign terrorists as an indigenous struggle for “freedom and democracy.” Already, even that front has suffered setbacks, as its newly US-Qatari appointed leader, Moaz al-Khatib, has been revealedas not only involved with Western oil corporations, but also has declared on Al Jazeera his intentions of establishing an “Islamic state.”

Clearly, blowing up a neighborhood full of Christians and Druze would fall in line with just such a plan, driving yet more of Syria’s diverse population beyond its borders to live as permanent refugees – not with alleged plans of “freeing” the country, or gracing a multicultural society that has lived together for centuries with “democracy.”

Western-backed terrorism has already targeted Christians across Syria, as reported in the LA Times’ “Church fears ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Christians in Homs, Syria,” as well as in USA Today’s distorted, but still telling, “Christians in Syria live in uneasy alliance with Assad, Alawites.” With the recent bombing of a Christian-Druze neighborhood in Damascus to add to the list, it is clear a concerted campaign of genocide is aimed at Syria’s many minorities by Western-backed sectarian extremists – on record, purposefully arrayed against Syria for this very purpose.






Less than a week after reaching a ceasefire agreement with Israel, Hamas’s Gaza prime minister on Tuesday outlined the movement’s next goal in its struggle: the West Bank.
After eight days of intense fighting in Israel, the strip’s Islamist rulers emerged in the Palestinian narrative as victorious against Israel, managing to sideline Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on the Arab street and reignite talks of unification between the factions.
Hamas has historically been only a marginal force in the West Bank, but with its newfound popularity, Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said his group was looking to expand its reach into the Palestinian heartland in its bid to lay claim to the land.“The West Bank will be central in deciding the struggle with the occupation,” Ismail Haniyeh declared during a ceremony honoring the victims of Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza.
“[The West Bank] is central for its historic and geographic value, as well as its proximity to the enemy’s occupied cities.”


Haniyeh defined the present days as an intermediate stage between two historic phases; the first including ‘preparation and development’ and the second characterized by ‘mobilization and liberation of our land and our Jerusalem’








Also see:


The assembly is expected to vote Thursday on a resolution raising their status at the United Nations from an observer to a nonmember observer state, a move they believe is an important step toward a two-state solution with Israel.