In The News:

U.S. 'Will Force' Israel-PA Deal

The United States intends to try and force a peace agreement on Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), IDF Radioreported Monday.
The radio station says the US has informed Israel and the Palestinian Authority that if negotiations between them do not advance, Washington will propose its own solution, that will include a US position on every point that is in contention. In effect, according to the report, this will be an attempt to force the sides to agree on a solution formulated by the US.
MK Zehava Galon (Meretz) was quoted as saying Monday that senior US officials told her the US offer would be presented in January of 2014. PA sources also cited January as the month in which the US intends to propose, or impose, its plan.


The US moves comes after three months of talks between the sides which have reportedly made very little headway.


The US plan reportedly is similar to the Clinton outline, offered by President Bill Clinton in late 2000, which is based on an Israeli retreat to 1949 Armistice lines, and some swaps of territory.

The Obama Administration is reportedly determined to achieve “a diplomatic breakthrough” by mid-2014, and believes that Israel under Binyamin Netanyahu and the PA under Mahmoud Abbas are capable of reaching agreement.

Report: Israeli Peace Negotiators Livini And Molcho In Conflict Over Jerusalem

During recent peace talk discussions, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who heads the Israeli negotiations team and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's representative, Yitzhak Molcho, came to loggerheads on issues relating to the size of the area designated for the free movement of Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem, Israel Radio reported on Tuesday.

According to the report, Molcho asked to restrict the boundaries as much as possible, bordering on east Jerusalem, while Livni showed a more flexible stance.

Israel's opening position on the borders is the actual path of the separation barrier rather than the pre-1967 lines as demanded by the Palestinians, Israel Radio reported.

The report came as US Secretary of State John Kerry was due to arrive on Tuesday to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories, and to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Iranian-American Pastor Held In Iran Moved To More Dangerous Prison

[Lets please remember to pray for this man...and all of our brothers and sisters who are experiencing persecution]

The Iranian-American pastor being held in Iran  has now been transferred to a more dangerous prison where he faces life-threatening conditions, according to his family and attorneys.

When a member of Saeed Abedini’s family went to visit him at Evin Prison, a facility in Tehran where he has been kept for over a year, he was told that the pastor had been moved about an hour and a half away to Rajai Shahr Prison in the town of Karaj.

The family member then travelled to Rajai Shahr Prison and was told that the pastor is being kept there, but is not permitted to have any visitors, according to the American Center for Law and Justice, the pastor’s U.S.-based attorneys.

According to inside sources, this new prison in Karaj is an even more dangerous facility, where violent prisoners, typically imprisoned for murder and rape, are held.

Abedini, 33, an American citizen who lives in Boise, Idaho, with his wife and two children, has been sentenced to eight years imprisonment, following his arrest on a bus. His supporters say he has been beaten and tortured in the prison, and that he was only in Iran to try to start a secular orphanage.

The pastor’s mysterious transfer brings new concerns to his family and attorneys, who have been closely monitoring his medical and psychological condition.

Island Of Debris The SIze Of Texas From 2011 Japanese Tsunami Is Headed Straight For The U.S.

A floating island of debris the size of Texas has slowly but been crossing the vast Pacific to California shores since a devastating tsunami inundated Japan in 2011 says a new study.

Five million tons of trash, the wreckage of homes, boats, and other remnants of shattered lives in eastern Japan were swallowed by the ocean that day in March and over one million tons of that continue to head our way.

While the first documented debris from the tragedy has already been found in California, scientists fear these new findings mean there could be a lot more to come and it might arrive all at once.

The NOAA released their updated findings last week, which show the huge island floating northeast of the Hawaiian Islands.

Scientists at the agency can’t say for sure when the debris field, which outside the dense island is scattered from Alaska to the Philippines, will reach the U.S.

On Iran, 'Nothing Will Prevent Netanyahu From Doing What He Believes Is Right'

As a former minister for nuclear affairs, ex-head of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee and still a member of that most powerful of Knesset panels, Hanegbi is privy to the best Israeli intelligence assessments of Iran’s progress and strategies, and knows, too, what there is to be known about Israel’s capacity to counter the Islamic Republic’s goals.

And as a Likud MK turned Kadima MK, now returned to the Likud, he’s also well versed in Justice Minister Tzipi Livni’s approach to peacemaking with the Palestinians, and thoroughly familiar with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategies and tactics as well.

In fact, since he’s the Likud MK arguably closer to Netanyahu than any other, speaking to Hanegbi is about the closest you can get to hearing what Netanyahu might say himself if he could afford to be a little more candid publicly.

To that end, The Times of Israel spoke for well over an hour with Hanegbi in his Knesset office last week, and learned a great deal about high-powered Israeli thinking on Iran and the Palestinians.

Specifically, Hanegbi made crystal clear that Netanyahu sees stopping Iran as the key, defining mission of his prime ministership. He elaborated on the agonizing dilemmas over whether and when to resort to military force. He voiced acute concerns about the credibility of the US’s much-mentioned military option. And he had no reservations whatsoever about Israel’s capacity — and its willingness if it felt the moment of truth had come — to delay Iran’s drive for the bomb… and delay it over and over again, if necessary.

The American Iron Curtain