John Kerry has a new strategy for achieving Mideast peace: mobilize the international community to gang up on Israel.
That was the essence of the secretary of state's disturbing remarks in Paris on March 13. Kerry declared that the Obama administration is "looking for a way forward" to bring about creation of a Palestinian state. He said that Palestinian statehood is "absolutely essential."
Not just "an idea worth exploring"; not just "something to be considered." Rather, "absolutely essential." Kerry and President Obama have made up their minds and will not consider any alternatives. They have decided that establishing an independent Palestinian state is the only solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It's just a question of how to make it happen.
The administration's attempts to pressure Israel into creating a Palestinian state obviously have not been successful so far. So Kerry is looking for new ways to harangue the Israelis. Standing next to a group of European foreign ministers at the Paris press conference, Kerry said: "There's not any one country or one person who can resolve this. This is going to require the global community, it will require international support."
Significantly, Kerry's quest for an international alliance to pressure Israel comes on the heels of France's recent announcement that it will try to convene an international conference to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The French said that if the conference failed to produce a Palestinian state, they will go ahead and unilaterally recognize such a state. That's the French idea of "negotiations."
The French approach, which Secretary Kerry now seems to be moving towards, is reminiscent of similar proposals that were made back in 1985. Alarmed, then-Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin flew to Washington to try to head off the convening what was being called an "international umbrella" for Mideast negotiations.
"Whenever anyone mentions umbrella, it reminds me of Chamberlain and Munich," Rabin declared. For Rabin to invoke the memory of Chamberlain selling out to Hitler at Munich--and for Rabin to use those words at a press conference in Washington--vividly illustrates how dangerous he considered the 'international' proposal to be.
It's not hard to understand why Rabin in 1985 opposed such a proposal, and it's not hard to see why Israel's leaders today oppose it, too. If Kerry succeeds in his strategy, such an international conference or umbrella would consist of a dozen or more Arab and European countries ganging up on Israel and demanding that the Israelis make unilateral concessions to the Palestinians. Knowing the Obama administration's pro-Palestinian slant, one must assume that the U.S. would side with the Arabs and Europeans.
I am the last person in the world to minimize the reality of Palestinian terrorism. But there's no way anybody can say the current attacks are worse than the weekly bus bombings of the 1990s. Israel's strong military response put an end to the suicide bombings--which shows that if Israel does not fight with one hand tied behind its back, it can beat the terrorists.
And the status quo may not be the ideal solution, but show me a better one that's feasible. Withdrawing to indefensible borders? Setting up an armed or soon-to-be-armed Palestinian state just a few miles from Jerusalem and Tel Aviv? In 1976, people were saying "the status quo cannot continue." They were saying it 1986 and 1996 and 2006, too. Yet here we are, nearly 50 years after the 1967 war--and it has continued, because the alternatives have been worse.
There’s a donkey coming your way this Palm Sunday that has nothing to do with the ones that symbolize a certain political party. Palm Sunday’s donkey, like the One who rides it, has come back every year since bringing Christ into Jerusalem; the presage of a coming victory that continues to the end of time.
Though you won’t hear about it from the caught-up-in-election-mode mainstream media or from self-serving politicians up for re-election, Monday begins Holy Week.
Holy Week 2016 comes at a time when world-wide Christians face a kind of persecution no politician or religious leader seem willing to stop; at a time when elections both here and abroad see socialism—the killer of human souls—making a comeback.
The only reference you will hear being made about the miracle of Easter Sunday will come on the day after when the Easter Egg Roll on the White House lawn will star bunnies-for-a-day Barack and Michelle Obama.
Donkeys always bray loudest when it is election time.
Politicians promise you everything while out on the campaign trail, but between elections, abandon all rights for Freedom of Religion, just as they’ve already abandoned babies in the womb and one-man-one-woman matrimony.
Politicians of the day have taken everything there is to take away from you: your liberty, your freedom and individual rights. While they entertain each other at lavish State dinners, they leave you tossing and turning at night, worrying about what kind of future your children and grandchildren will face.
Your soul, and the peace of mind that comes from using it to worship the Almighty, is all that will keep you going through turbulent times in which radical Islam flagrantly slaughters Christians and Marxist sympathizers continue to facilitate it.
Don’t let wicked politicians nor their fellow travelers steal your soul. Take cover in prayer under the protection of a million angel wings.
Don’t wait for the next White House Prayer Breakfast to come ‘round, or for some well-meaning pastor to call for a ‘Prayer Day’. Pray on your knees every day, and in fact get down on them every time you remember to pray.
Your belief in the Almighty is the only thing you can count on to get you through these turbulent times. That belief is everything, and borrowing from a certain credit card advert, you should never leave home without it.
True kings like the King of Kings do not steal the God-given rights of their subjects nor invest in all things hedonistic.
Humble, gentle and good, they ride into our lives on a donkey leaving travel by chauffeur-driven limousines and private jets for hypocritical socialist Judases.
With the surrogates of the next president at each other’s throat, no one other than God Almighty knows the outcome of November 8, but we can count on one fact that remains changeless down through the ages: “Christ has risen!”
Russia backs self-ruling Kurdish buffer state at Turkey’s back door
Just four days after drawing down the bulk of Russian forces in Syria, President Vladimir Putin was quietly redrawing the Syrian map on federal lines, and planting Russian influence in its first semiautonomous region. DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that the Russian leader's hand was behind the establishment of the Syrian Kurdish federal region on March 17, at a meeting of Kurdish Democratic Union Party leaders in the Syrian town of Rmeilan.
The new self-ruling entity covers three Kurdish-controlled enclaves:: Jazira, Hassakeh and Qamishli and the two cities of Kobani and Afrin, They include areas captured in battle from the Islamic State.
One of the DUP leaders, Nawaf Khalil, noted the presence at the ceremony of representatives of the three enclaves, some parts of which are still controlled either by the Syrian army, Syrian rebel groups or ISIS.
The Syrian Kurds are expected next to fight, with Russian backing, to connect the three enclaves into a contiguous self-ruled territory 500-kilometer long, adjacent to the Turkish border.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has warned repeatedly that Ankara would not tolerate the establishment of Kurdish self-rule in Syria and would send his army across the border to prevent it. Our sources report that Putin has assured Kurdish leaders that the Russian air force would be there to defend the new region if Turkey invaded.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has warned repeatedly that Ankara would not tolerate the establishment of Kurdish self-rule in Syria and would send his army across the border to prevent it. Our sources report that Putin has assured Kurdish leaders that the Russian air force would be there to defend the new region if Turkey invaded.
The new Kurdish federal region turns out to be the first no-fly zone over northern Syria, which the US, Turkey and Saudi Arabia long advocated, but which has finally comes into being under the Russian aegis.
President Bashar Assad, Moscow’s ally, strongly opposes the Kurdish move, as the first step in the country’s breakup into ethnic or religious federal entities. But Assad is helpless to fight back or bomb the Kurdish enclaves when Moscow stands behind them and some Russian warplanes remain in Syria for any contingencies.
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