The European Union’s foreign ministers are to meet Monday to vote in support of the French peace initiative, a proclamation expected to bolster Paris’s efforts to kick start Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.
Earlier this month, representatives from 28 Arab and Western countries, the Arab League, European Union and the United Nations met in Paris to discuss ways in which the international community could help advance the Palestinian-Israel peace process.
Neither Israeli nor Palestinian representatives were invited to attend the meeting, which aimed to lay the ground for a full-fledged peace conference to be held by the end of the year.
The Palestinians have welcomed the French bid but Israel has said the initiative would go down in history as having “pushed peace further away.”
Israeli officials told the Haaretz daily that the Foreign Ministry failed to prevent the EU foreign ministers’ motion from being passed, and that it’s now focusing efforts on getting them to soften the announcement’s language.
France has reportedly pressed EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and the other 27 foreign ministers of the EU states to throw their weight behind Paris’s initiative. An Israeli Foreign Ministry official said the French managed to garner the support of their EU allies to push for an international peace conference by year’s end.
Opposition leader Isaac Herzog held secret talks with PA President Mahmoud Abbas during the 2014-2015 election cycle, and agreed to cede the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem to the Palestinians as part of a future peace deal, according to report published on Thursday.
Herzog’s negotiator, former minister Efraim Sneh, and a Palestinian Authority representative who remained unnamed reached an agreement under which Palestinian refugees would receive financial compensation, the Western Wall would remain under Israeli control, and Israel would retain a “symbolic” military presence in the Jordan Valley, alongside Palestinian and Jordanian soldiers, Channel 10 reported.
According to the report, Herzog was willing to withdraw to the 1967 lines in full, with the exception of mutual land swaps on four percent of the territory. Land swaps would be negotiated so that Israel could retain control of its largest settlement blocs.
The final-status equation for Jerusalem would have seen the east of the city become the capital of a Palestinian state, with a single municipality would be responsible for the two capitals.
The Temple Mount — the site on which the two ancient Jewish temples once stood and where the Islamic holy sites of the al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock now stand — was supposed to be under the authority of a multinational force...
While NATO is touting this move as training, the Russians are calling it the “summer of provocation,” and a move to reignite the Cold War intended to force Moscow to starve its domestic economy to ramp up its military to meet a growing external threat.
Russia is not alone in their assertion either. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told Bild am Sonntag newspaper this week that these ostensible ‘war games’ are little more than warmongering.
“What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and warmongering,” Mr Steinmeier said in an interview to be published in Germany’s Bild am Sontagnewspaper.
“Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken,” Steinmeier said ahead of the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw beginning July 8. “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation,” he emphasized.
Rather than risk inflaming the already-volatile situation further “through saber-rattling and warmongering,” there needs to be more dialogue and cooperation with Moscow, Steinmeier said.
It would be “fatal to now narrow the focus to the military, and seek a remedy solely through a policy of deterrence,” German FM said, calling to give way to diplomacy instead of military posturing.
The alliance should also consider the possibility to “renew discussions about the benefits of disarmament and arms control for security in Europe,” he said.
In spite of NATO spokesperson Oana Lungescu saying the alliance’s actions are “defensive, proportionate, and in line with our international commitments,” Russia has done absolutely nothing to provoke such a response.
Retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski recently offered pertinent insight as to why Russia continues to be so vilified by the Pentagon and American media alike:
“The Pentagon needs and wants Russia to be the next big enemy that they are arming against it, budgeting against it, that they are targeting. Certainly, we have talked for a long time about China and China plays an important role as the enemy of choice for the U.S. military. But Russia is ideal in part, because we don’t import a lot of things from Russia, in part because we don’t have the debt relationship with Russia that we do with China. So, Russia makes for a very convenient enemy for the Pentagon in terms of its mission, its budgeting, and its intelligence organization.”
“The Pentagon needs that kind of enemy,” Kwiatkowski continued. “And [U.S. Secretary of Defense] Ashton Carter, if you listen to what he says continually — even from the beginning of time he was put in office — his job is fundraising, just like the university president’s job is not education but rather fundraising. Ashton Carter’s job is also fundraising, and he fundraises through this process of identifying, pushing, and delivering up an enemy that will justify their budgets.”
Throughout all of these escalations, the popular narrative spun by the “democratic” media was a simple one: it was Russia that was provoking NATO, not NATO’s aggressive military actions on the border with Russia that were the cause of soaring geopolitical tension. Ignored in the fictional plot line was also Russia’s clear reaction to NATO provocations that it would “respond totally asymmetrically” an outcome that could in its worst oucome lead to millions of European deaths. Still, no matter the risk of escalation, one which just two weeks ago led to assessment that the “Risk Of Nuclear Dirty Bomb Surges On Poor US-Russia Relations“, NATO had to maintain its provocative attitude .
All NATO had to do was assure that all alliance members would follow the lead, and nobody would stray from the party line.
And then everything imploded when none other than the Foreign Minister of NATO member Germany, Frank-Walter Steinmeier,criticized NATO for having a bellicose policy towards Russia, describing it as “warmongering”, the German daily Bild reported. And just like that, the entire ficitional narrative of “innocent” NATO merely reacting to evil Russian provcations has gone up in flames.
As AFP adds, Steinmeier merely highlighted all those things which rational persons have known about for a long time, namely the deployment of NATO troops near borders with Russia in the military alliance’s Baltic and east European member states. However, since it comes from a NATO member, suddenly one can’t accuse Russian propaganda. In fact, NATO has absolutely no planned response to just this contingency.
In its latest ridiculous escalation, blamed on Russia no less, NATO announced on Monday that it would deploy four battalions to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland to counter a more assertive Russia, ahead of a landmark summit in Warsaw next month. Well, as Steinmeier made it very clear, NATO’s deployment to provoke Russia was precisely that. As a result a Russian “assymmetric” response is assured, and this time it may even spill over into the combat arena, something which would bring infinite delight to Washington’s military-industrial complex neocon puppets.
How do we know Steinmeier hit it nail on the head? The neocon Council of Foreign Relations trotted out its “fellow” who promptly took to character assassinations and demanding Steinmeier’s resignation, instead of asking if perhaps a NATO-member country accusing NATO of being a warmongering provocateur, is not the real reason why Europe is back deep in the cold war, with an escalating nuclear arms race to go alongside it, courtesy of the US military industrial complex whose profits are entirely dependent on war, conflict and the death of civilians around the globe.
Renowned gold and financial expert Jim Sinclair says recent dire predictions from Wall Street icons are more than a warning. They are telegraphing their trading positions. Sinclair explains, “They are preparing for what they believe. They talk their own positions. So, it’s more than a warning. They are telling you exactly what they have done. They are not out to save the man in the street. They are out to make money in a huge short position, probably in over-the-counter derivatives. . . . They’re not looking for a market tic down. They are looking for a market with a character of backing up to an open to an elevator with no elevator there. . . . We’ve got no volume, fake prices, and we’ve got the biggest money in the world short the market. We’ve also got a Fed with no tools, and now we have a Fed whose primary indicator is starting to have a heart attack. . . . When this thing comes down, it’s going to be a free fall.”
One of the big potential triggers that could bring the markets crashing down is more than $10 trillion in European government bonds with negative interest rates. Holter begins by saying, “Negative rates mean that debt is trading to a premium to cash. So, what it is saying is debt is better than cash. That’s impossible. Whether it’s a trigger or not, I don’t know. I do know it’s highly explosive.” Sinclair adds, “Let’s start thinking about this as the biggest bubble that has ever existed. It makes the South Sea Bubble look like a joke.”
Another big trigger is Germany’s deeply troubled Deutsche Bank. Holter contends, “I think they are getting thrown under the bus.” Sinclair adds, “They’re out of the club.” Holter goes on to say, “Exactly. Deutsche Bank is turning state’s evidence and ratting out the other institutions that have been rigging (gold and silver) markets.” Sinclair says, “Don’t forget, this is a crime. You are not talking about something as simple as fiddling with the markets. You are talking about a criminal act, and that carries with it outrageous potentials.”
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