US President Donald Trump bucked America’s longstanding commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict Wednesday, standing alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a press conference in the White House.
“I’m looking at two states and one state, and I like the one that both parties like,” he said, showing receptiveness to Netanyahu’s call for a regional initiative that relied on Israel’s improving relationships with Arab countries.
“The United States will encourage a peace, and really a great peace deal,” said Trump, and added that the matter was “important to me personally.”
While Netanyahu did not explicitly renounce his own commitment to a two-state solution, arguing that his position “hasn’t changed” since his seminal 2009 speech on the matter, he also avoided explicitly mentioning Palestinian statehood.
During the press conference, which was rife with mutual praise, Trump also vowed to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, calling the 2015 deal between the Iranian regime and world powers one of the “worst” he’d ever seen.
“My administration has already imposed new sanctions on Iran, and I will do more to prevent Iran from ever developing — I mean ever — a nuclear weapon” he said, after greeting “my friend” Netanyahu and lauding the “unbreakable bond with our cherished ally.”
Israel and the US, he said, enjoyed a partnership based on shared values and a commitment to advancing “the cause of human dignity.”
“American and Israel are two countries that cherish the value of all human life,” he said, noting that that was one of the reasons why he rejected the “very very unfair” treatment of Israel at the UN, as well as efforts to boycott the Jewish state.
“I want the Israeli people to know that the United States stands with Israel in the struggle against terrorism,” Trump said.
The much anticipated meeting between President Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu did not provide significant insight into the new administration's policies vis-a-vis Israel and the middle east. While Trump expressed optimism in a "great peace deal", he urged his Israeli colleague to "hold back on the settlements a little bit", and while reiterating his support for a move of the US embassy to Jerusalem, he was non-committal: "we'll see what happens."
Asked whether he preferred a one-state or a two-state solution, Trump said, “I’m happy with the one they like the best,” referring to Israelis and the Palestinians. Israel had two prerequisites for any peace settlement, Netanyahu said. “First, the Palestinians must recognize the Jewish state, they must stop calling for Israel’s destruction… Second, Israel must retain security control over all of the area west of the Jordan River.”
Unless those conditions are met, Palestine will become “another failed state, another Islamist dictatorship that will not work for peace, but work to destroy us,” Netanyahu said.
Tump said “I want the Israeli people to know that the US stands with Israel in the struggle against terrorism" and added “Israel has no better ally than the US,” Netanyahu said, “and the US has no better ally than Israel.” The Israeli PM praised Trump’s commitment to resist “slander and boycotts” of his country in international bodies. The Prime Minister said that both Israel and the US are under attack “by one malevolent force – radical Islamic terrorism."
Asked what compromises the two sides might have to make, Trump said the Israelis “will have to show some flexibility” and signal they want to make a deal, while “Palestinians have to give up some of the hate they’ve been taught from a very young age.”
"On Thursday, Mr. Guterres nominated a former Palestinian Authority prime minister, Salam Fayyad, to be the United Nations' envoy in Libya. He asked for Security Council approval. On Friday, America's new permanent representative at the UN, Ambassador Nikki Haley, unceremoniously declined to approve...
Naming 'Palestine' as Mr. Fayyad's state of origin is crucial. Never before had a person from a country that is not a full United Nations member been named to such high post. American law forbids, moreover, funding any international organization that recognizes 'Palestine' as its full member...
American officials, as well as their Israeli counterparts, sensed that Mr. Guterres' move was yet another step in the Palestinian Authority's strategy of gaining world recognition through creeping UN acceptance...
Naming 'Palestine' as Mr. Fayyad's state of origin is crucial. Never before had a person from a country that is not a full United Nations member been named to such high post. American law forbids, moreover, funding any international organization that recognizes 'Palestine' as its full member...
American officials, as well as their Israeli counterparts, sensed that Mr. Guterres' move was yet another step in the Palestinian Authority's strategy of gaining world recognition through creeping UN acceptance...
Yet the UN nomination was not about Mr. Fayyad, but about the claim to statehood that his nomination represents.
NATO and its allies are waging an immoral and illegal war against Syria. Despite mainstream media denials, the fact remains that their proxies on the ground are criminal gangs with an extremist ideology, committing atrocities on a daily basis.
The crimes against Syria by the hand of western governments and their agents, however, are totally ignored by institutions that support the West in its plan to effect regime change. The agenda stretches from Washington DC, to the US-led ‘Coalition’ governments, right through to the United Nations.
Instead, the West has constructed a narrative of Russian and Syrian ‘war crimes’ which, although refutable at every level, is maintained and promoted by Western politicians, diplomats, UN officials, the corporate media, and social media trolls. The fake narrative is achieved through a comprehensive set of strategies:
The following is a catalogue of fabricated or misleading stories disseminated by western media in Syria:
Europe's great show was supposed to be titled The End of History in Europe. But the playbill has been revised. The actors are not who we were promised. The script has undergone last-minute changes. And what is now unfolding onstage is radically different than what the hoity-toity audience had expected.
After the European Central Bank navigated the crisis of last decade, and shoved Greece upon against the wall, everyone was supposed to calm down and get on with the show. The free movement of goods and people, overseen by the enlightened political integrators in Brussels, would shortly achieve the promises of Marxism, weakening the state and dissolving the private cultural forms that lead to danger; namely, national and religious difference.
But something unexpected is happening. Instead of staging a production called The End of History in Europe, the show coming onstage is The European Spring of 2017. And haughty elites throughout the West ought to be shaken to their very core.
In a few weeks, the Dutch will hold elections. Polls show that gadfly nationalist Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom are set to gain the most seats on March 15. Wilders has vowed to "de-Islamize" the Netherlands. (He may be blocked from assuming power, though, since most other parties in the politically fragmented Dutch scene have vowed not to go into a coalition with Wilders' party.)
Theresa May has promised that the U.K. will trigger Article 50 and kick off formal Brexit negotiations by the end of March. Indications increasingly are that it will be a "hard Brexit." How hard, exactly, is difficult to know.
Then there's the big one: France. Marine Le Pen began the year promising that France would wake up. Many are predicting that her party, the Front Nationale, will be beaten in the runoffs once again, as the center-right and center-left unite to defeat her.
Don't be so sure.
This week, the futures market Paddy Power gave Le Pen stronger odds of winning the election (9/4) that it ever gave Donald Trump of becoming president of the United States. Her strongest opponent, Francois Fillon, is now mired in a nest-feathering scandal. If Le Pen is elected, she promises to begin removing France from the EU immediately, which would put the whole union in jeopardy. More and more, the point of the union seemed to be to get France to buy into peaceful German domination of the continent. And if France leaves, Germany would have to weigh its options. Wind down these political arrangements and get the Deutschmark back, or do what it has never been willing to do before: Offer smaller states in the European Union a German backstop for their debts and a vision of equalizing living standards across the EU.
And remember what's looming after a hot summer: Germany's federal elections in September, with parties like the Alternative for Germany promising to sap some strength from Angela Merkel's grip on German politics.
A poll last week showed that majorities in many European countries support something like a "Muslim ban" for themselves, one more sweeping than even President Trump tried (and for now, failed) to create for the United States. In most European countries polled, less than 25 percent of respondents disagreed with the statement that "all further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped." Psychologically, people seem to be detaching from the era that we have been living in, and accepting the new era to come.
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