In The News: Updates From The Epicenter

With such a massive effort at the 'peace plan' - one has to wonder if the road is being paved for the antichrist and his peace plan which will mark the beginning of the Tribulation. It sure looks like it. 

Kerry Flies To West Bank To Pursue Peace Talks

 US Secretary of State John Kerry was flying to the West Bank Friday to press his effort to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table after almost five years, a US official said, despite deep differences between the two sides and Palestinian reluctance to drop demands in exchange for economic incentives.

Kerry was planning to meet Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the official said. On Friday morning, he met chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in Amman and then scheduled the short helicopter flight to Ramallah, shifting his campaign to renew the peace talks into diplomatic overdrive.

At a stormy late-night meeting Thursday, Palestinians balked at dropping a main condition for talks with the Israelis, demanding a guarantee that negotiations on borders between a Palestinian state and Israel would be based on the cease-fire line that held from 1949 until the 1967 war, when Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

The demand casts a cloud of uncertainty over months of US mediation efforts because Israel rejects preconditions.

Hoping to push Israelis and Palestinians toward talks, US President Barack Obama asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to work with Kerry “to resume negotiations with Palestinians as soon as possible,” according to a statement released by the White House late Thursday.

He said Kerry would endorse the 1967 lines as the starting point of negotiations and assured the Palestinians that Israel would free some 350 prisoners gradually in the coming months. The prisoners would include some 100 men that Israel convicted of crimes committed before interim peace accords were signed in 1993. Israel has balked at freeing these prisoners in the past because many were convicted in deadly attacks.

Israel Must Agree On Borders Of Palestinian State, Say Senior PA Leaders

After Palestinian leaders demanded further guarantees before restarting talks with Israel, US Secretary of State John Kerry discussed his ideas with the chief Palestinian negotiator in Amman on Friday.

A stormy, high-level meeting of senior Palestinian leaders called to discuss Kerry’s latest peace proposal ended with a decision early Friday to demand guarantees that Israel agree on the general border of a future Palestinian state, officials said.

Abu Yussef was referring to Israel’s de facto border that separates the Jewish state from the West Bank and east Jerusalem, territories that Israel conquered in the 1967 Mideast war, alongside the Gaza Strip.

Palestinians claim those territories for their future state, with modifications reached through agreed “land swaps” that would see major Jewish settlement blocks built in the West Bank becoming part of Israel proper, in exchange for territories elsewhere.

'Palestinians Will Resume Talks If U.S. Specifies Goal Is State Based On '67 lines

The PLO leadership decided in principle Thursday to return to peace talks with Israel on condition that the American invitation to such talks specifies that the negotiations will be for the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the pre-1967 lines, a senior Palestinian source told The Times of Israel on Thursday evening.

EU Officially Publishes Settlement Guidelines Despite Israeli Objections

The European Union, as expected, published new guidelineslimiting interaction with Israeli entities beyond the pre-1967 lines on Friday, with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton saying that this is in no way meant to "prejudge the outcome of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians."

The statement said that the guidelines "reiterate the long-held position that bilateral agreements with Israel do not cover the territory that came under Israel's administration in June 1967."

The EU , she said, is "deeply committed" to the negotiations, and fully supports US Secretary of State John Kerry's intense efforts to restart negotiations at a particularly delicate time.

Israel has said that the move at this time does serious damage to Kerry's efforts because it gives the Palestinians the impression that the Europeans back their demands that the baseline for the talks be the June 4, 1967 lines.

Egypt Set For Fattah 2 Offensive On Sinai Islamist Terror

The Egyptian army has set Friday, July 19, as D-Day for launching a major offensive, dubbed Fattah 2 (Conquest 2), against a coalition of aggressive Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood operatives, Hamas and Jihad Islami groups terrorizing Sinai. 

Israeli forces along the Egyptian and Gaza borders are on alert; so too are the 2,600 US Marines aboard two amphibious helicopter carriers anchored opposite the Red Sea shores of Southern Sinai and the Gulf of Suez since the start of the Egyptian crisis.

Hundreds of Salafist Bedouin, Muslim Brotherhood adherents and Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad fighters from the Gaza Strip have joined forces to block northern Sinai’s key road arteries. They have stopped traffic to the Egyptian-Israeli border terminal at Nitzana, to the US-led multinational national observer base at Al Gora near El Arish, and to the big cement factory built by the Egyptian military in El Arish which is the region’s main source of employment.

By blocking those roads, the Islamist fighters have choked off the movement of goods between Egypt and Israel and placed 1,000 MFO troops, including some American officers, under siege.  Any vehicle driving in or out of Al Gora comes under anti-tank rocket fire. Flyers have been distributed forbidding locals to take jobs with Egyptian security forces or MFO.

However, not only has the Egyptian army abstained so far from directly engaging its Islamist adversaries, it has been pulling back from one isolated observation post and position after another, retreating into clusters of fortified buildings and leaving the militants in full control.

Meanwhile, all the Egyptian army appears to be doing is sending Apache gun ships out on surveillance missions from El Arish airport which has been converted into an air base.

Because the Egyptians have so far kept to a war of passive defense against the Islamists rampant in Sinai, DEBKAfile’s military sources expect those terrorist groups to soon start moving out toward the Suez Canal and the main cities of Egypt. They also predict attempts to infiltrate Israel for launching a major attack on a civilian or military target.

Rebels Say Assad Transferred Chemical Weapons To Hezbollah

A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army claimed on Thursday that Syrian President Bashar Assad had recently transferred two shipments of chemical weapons to the Lebanese-based terrorist group Hezbollah.

Fahad al Masri told the Lebanese news website El Nashra that international security forces were aware of the shipments. His comments were not confirmed by any other sources

Al Masri said that the weapons were moved from an area near Damascus to Lebanese territory sometime in the past several weeks, and that the transfer was coordinated by Syria and Iran.

Also on Thursday, the top US military officer told a Senate panel the Obama administration is deliberating whether to use military power in Syria, where a civil war entering its third year has killed almost 93,000 people.

Also see:

Archeologists Dig Up King David's Palace

A joint excavation led by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Israel Antiquities Authorities discovered two of the largest structures ever uncovered from the Kingdom of Judea, the Israel Antiquities Authorities announced on Thursday.

Researchers Prof. Yossi Garfinkel and Saar Ganor identified one of the structures as a palace of King David, while the other as a large storage structure for the kingdom.

The excavation, which lasted seven years, gives evidence to state building and administrative organization during the time of King David.

According to Garfinkel and Ganor, "The ruins are the best example to date of the uncovered fortress city of King David," giving researchers a step up in understanding the origins of the kingdom of Judah. 

"This is indisputable proof of the existence of a central authority in Judah during the time of King David," the archaeologists said.

Until now, no palaces were clearly attributable to the early tenth century BC. According to the archeologists, the site, named 'Khirbet Qeiyafa', was probably destroyed in a battle against the Philistines in 980 BC. 

Socialist America's Future: Just Look At Detroit

The City of Detroit filed for bankruptcy yesterday afternoon. It owes as much as $20 billion and there is no conceivable way that debt will ever be paid. The city offered its debtors 10 cents on the dollar but the debtors refused.

The pressure of ever-rising wages for no additional work, leading to ever-rising pension costs, plus ever increasing benefits and ever more closely defined work rules will likely be found to be at the bottom of all this.

But its not the unions' fault. It is the fault of the elected officials - Democratic elected officials in Detroit - who didn't have the, um … guts to ever say "No" to their largest voting bloc.

It has been said that the difference between public unions and unions at commercial companies is: private union leaders know that if their demands become too high, the company will go out of business and everyone will lose their job.

Public unions, until recently, just kept demanding, and getting, more while producing nothing new in terms of services they render. Union pensions tend to be so generous that taxpayers often end up paying almost full wages to three or four workers, only one of whom is still actually working, to do exactly the same job that one person had been paid to do in an earlier age. According to some estimates, retirees outnumber active workers 2-1.

I blame the elected officials who never put the long-term financial health of their community ahead of their burning desire to be re-elected by pandering to the lowest common denominator.

There's more. Very often, when a municipal worker retires in a place like Detroit, he revs up the RV and heads to warmer climes. So, the taxpayers of Detroit have to pay for 20 or 30 years of retirement for someone living (and spending that retirement money) in Florida or Arizona.

The city's population has dropped from almost two million in the 1950s to just under 700,000 who are paying 40 percent less in taxes just since 2000.

Fewer people paying less taxes to support more people doing less work.

Hey. Wait a minute. That sounds very familiar.