The Politics of the Palestinian Right of Return

Alexander Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky
Forbes
February 24, 2014

http://www.meforum.org/3762/palestinian-right-of-return

US-backed negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are entering a critical period. With reports suggesting Israeli acceptance of the 1967 lines and land swaps, what about Palestinian concessions? Two issues are paramount: the 'right of return' and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas recently stated, "Let me put it simply: the right of return is a personal decision. What does this mean? That neither the PA, nor the state, nor the PLO, nor Abu-Mazen [Abbas], nor any Palestinian or Arab leader has the right to deprive someone from his right to return."

This arch in the Aida Refugee Camp in Bethlehem features a giant key, symbolizing keys kept as mementos by many of the Palestinians who left their homes in 1948. (Image source: Reham Alhelsi/Flickr)

Jamil Mizer, a member of the political bureau of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) underscored the issue saying, "there is talk about the liquidation of the Palestinian refugee cause, the return of hundreds of thousands to the lands occupied in 1948, and the dismantling of the right of return of over six million Palestinian refugees in the camps, in exile and in the diaspora, who are waiting for their moment to return to the homes and lands from which they were expelled".

COP: Military downsized to 1940 levels

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel plans to shrink the United States Army to its smallest force since before the World War II buildup and eliminate an entire class of Air Force attack jets in a new spending proposal that officials describe as the first Pentagon budget to aggressively push the military off the war footing adopted after the terror attacks of 2001.

The proposal, described by several Pentagon officials on the condition of anonymity in advance of its release on Monday, takes into account the fiscal reality of government austerity and the political reality of a president who pledged to end two costly and exhausting land wars. A result, the officials argue, will be a military capable of defeating any adversary, but too small for protracted foreign occupations.

Egyptian Government Unexpectedly Resigns

FP

In a televised address Monday, Egypt's interim Prime Minister Hazem el-Beblawi announced the resignation of his cabinet. Beblawi gave no reason for the government's departure, however the move could pave the way for army chief Field Marshal Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to declare his bid for presidency. To run for president, Sisi would need to first leave his post as defense minister. According to an Egyptian official, the cabinet resigned so that Sisi would not appear to be acting alone. The announcement came amid a number of strikes over the past few days including by public transport and textile workers, doctors, and garbage collectors. Beblawi acknowledged the sharp increase in strikes, but claimed no government could address all the demands of its people in such a short amount of time. He said the government "made every effort to get Egypt out of the narrow tunnel in terms of security, economic pressures, and political confusion." Interim President Adly Mansour has asked Beblawi to run the government's affairs until a successor is named, according to the state-run newspaper al-Ahram.

Saudi Arabia’s New Missile Force

INSS Insight No. 520, February 24, 2014

Yiftah Shapir , Yoel Guzansky

A recent article in Newsweek reported that “according to a well-placed intelligence source,” in 2007 Saudi Arabia began to purchase CSS-5 (DF-21) ground-to-ground missiles from China. While similar reports appeared in the past, the recently published information is distinguished by its confirmation by an official – albeit anonymous – source, and by the revelation that the Americans knew about the Saudi-Chinese deal and were involved in it. The report raises many questions about the Saudis’ motivations, the implications of the deal, and the timing of the exposure.

A recent article in Newsweek reported that “according to a well-placed intelligence source,” in 2007 Saudi Arabia began to purchase CSS-5 (DF-21) ground-to-ground missiles from China. While similar reports appeared in the past, the recently published information is distinguished by its confirmation by an official – albeit anonymous – source, and by the revelation that the Americans knew about the Saudi-Chinese deal and were involved in it. The report raises many questions about the Saudis’ motivations, the implications of the deal, and the timing of the exposure.

The Whitewashing of Hate

PMW responds to the recent report
on Palestinian and Israeli schoolbooks

http://www.palwatch.org/main.aspx?fi=155&doc_id=8598

by Itamar Marcus

It is hard to imagine a more flawed analysis of Palestinian Authority schoolbooks than the recent report of the Council of Religious Institutions of the Holy Land, led by Sami Adwan, Bethlehem University and Daniel Bar-Tal, Tel Aviv University.

The report's inaccuracies start with its methodology of systematically citing all quotes from Israeli and Palestinian schoolbooks under the same headings - forcing the appearance of symmetry even when none exists. Another major flaw is giving as much weight to the fringe, ultra - Orthodox school system in Israel as it does to mainstream state schools. This artificially inflates the number of problematic examples on the Israeli side to support the report's misleading attempt to demonstrate equivalence.

But the ultimate failing of the report is that it intentionally masks the hate and violence promotion that are central to the Palestinian Authority educational system. This hatred, together with the hate and terror glorification expressed by the daily actions and messages of the PA leaders and through their controlled institutions, is rapidly condemning the next generations to continued conflict.

What did the Adwan-Bar Tal report hide from the world?

Who Is to Blame for "Islamophobia" in the UK?

Mudar Zahran

If you look at the London Tube Bombing of 7/7; the Madrid Train Bombing; two attacks on the World Trade Center; the murders of Lee Rigby, Theo Van Gogh, Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, Ilan Halimi, and countless other attack and threats, how can we honestly expect people not to be "Islamophobic"? It would appear we have no one to blame but ourselves.
If we Muslims are actually opposed to these Islamist hate preachers, why are we failing to take a unanimous public stance against them, to disown and isolate them from our community?
After the murder of British soldier Lee Rigby by Islamic extremists in London last May, The Guardian reported a surge in the number of anti-Muslim offenses.
Also, last May, a poll by the British research firm, YouGov, showed that nearly two-thirds of Britons believe there will be a "clash of civilizations" between British Muslims and white Britons, and 34% believe that Muslims pose a serious threat to democracy.
As a Muslim living in the UK, I wonder, who is to blame for the increase in anti-Muslim feelings in the U.K.? Or is the problem "Islamophobia"?

Judge Rules Against Muslim Activist Groups in Favor of NYPD

PATRICK DUNLEAVY

On Thursday February 20th Federal Justice William J. Martini of the United States District Court in New Jersey dismissed a lawsuit brought by several Islamic activist organizations, including the Muslim Students Association and the Muslim Foundation, against the New York City Police Department.  The plaintiffs accused the NYPD of violating their civil rights through a program which including surveillance and intelligence gathering of the Muslim community in New Jersey.
The groups along with several individuals stated that the actions had

"caused a series of spiritual, stigmatic, and pecuniary losses."

to them both as individuals and collectively.  They also stated that because of the actions of the NYPD they could no longer pray in public or speak in public regarding religion or politics.  They accused the NYPD of singling them out solely on the basis of their religion.  The judge found otherwise.
The NYPD surveillance and intelligence gathering program was one of the department's counter terrorism programs.  It began in early 2002, after the attacks of 9-11 by Islamic terrorists, and with the appointment of David Cohen, former Deputy Director of the CIA, as the Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence for NYPD.

A Socialism Spill on Aisle 9

 Sultan Knish

The working class in the United States has no better champion than Barack Obama. Like most champions of the working class, he has never actually worked at a real job and instead divided his time between academia, non-profits and politics which explains his current work ethic in which he tries to get a speech in between every two vacations..

The progressive law professors, who are currently the only thing standing between the working class and the abyss, at least according to other progressive professors, not only haven’t worked for a living, but don't know what working for a living entails and don't even understand the concept. Other things that they don't understand include personal responsibility, consequences, elementary arithmetic and human free will.

That last one never fails to throw them for a loop. No sooner do they pass some comprehensive plan intended to ameliorate a terrible problem then they discover that the working people have made a hash out of it. But they never despair because they are certain that there is no progressive solution that cannot be fixed by an even more comprehensive progressive solution.

Pressure our enemies, not our friends

Doug Lamborn

Syria is devastated by civil war. Egypt is immersed in violent turmoil by Islamist insurgents. Iran continues to work on advanced centrifuges at an alarming pace, and al-Qaida and affiliated groups continue to threaten traditional Arab regimes and Western interests throughout the area.

With the region aflame and so many crises demanding attention, the U.S. has made a baffling decision to focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and make it the crux of its Middle East policy.

U.S. Secretary of State Kerry has made nearly a dozen visits to the region in the last year in an unceasing effort to broker an agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. He is expected to announce a framework for a peace deal in the coming weeks.

While everyone wishes for peace, many of us in Congress are troubled that the Obama administration is unduly pressuring Israel into making far-reaching concessions in peace talks with the Palestinians, concessions that may be detrimental to Israel's long-term security.

I believe that direct negotiation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, without pressure from a third party, is the only path to a true peace. History has repeatedly shown that outside pressure, however well-intended, is a recipe for failure.

Gantz: Iran handing out torches to pyromaniacs

srael Defense Forces chief of staff says Iran involved in all fronts against Israel • Gantz on Gaza Strip: Hamas, other organizations building up power • Third Palestinian intifada unlikely, lDF official says.

Lilach Shoval, Daniel Siryoti and Dan Lavie

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz tours the Golan Heights on Sunday | Photo credit: IDF Spokesperson's Unit

“A storm is brewing underneath the seeming quiet, night and day and on every front," Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz told reporters during a tour of the Golan Heights on Sunday.

"There is no front where Iran is not involved, handing out torches to pyromaniacs, with munitions and rockets. These are tense times. Quiet, but tense."

Commenting on the nuclear negotiations that world powers are conducting with Iran, Gantz said "a nuclear Iran is dangerous for the world, the region and Israel -- in that order. I hope that international pressure on Iran will continue in a way that keeps Iran from renewing its military nuclear program."

Gantz said the ongoing transfer of weapons from Syria to Lebanon was "not a good thing" and was a "sensitive topic," adding that things "could happen" from time to time, a possible reference to Israeli military action to prevent such transfers.

Michigan: High School students don hijabs…to explore literature

creeping 

Maybe more than any other, high school can be a time when what you choose to wear has a huge impact on your sense of identity.

As students take their first steps into adulthood, they walk a fine line between fitting in with their peers and developing a unique sense of self.

Earlier this fall, a group of AP language students at Brighton High School were asked to read a memoir by Iranian author Azar Nafisi. The book detailed the experiences of women during that country’s religious revolution, including dealing with new standards of modesty in the way they dressed.

Were you aware? Obama’s Green Energy: Electricity Prices Increased 33%, Electricity Production Fell

Daniel Greenfield

Add Green to anything and you know that prices will go up and production and quality will fall. That’s the great achievement of environmentalism and while the Green Mafia haven’t done as much damage to the US as to the UK, Barack Obama has done his part to make life worse for Americans by making it greener and leaving them with less green.

Steinitz after meeting US’s top Iran negotiator: Israel reserves right to act independently

HERB KEINON

02/24/2014

Netanyahu: Iran believes it can "realize its plan to be a nuclear threshold state."

Netanyahu arrives at weekly cabinet meeting Photo: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST

Israel reserves the right to assess the Iranian situation and make the necessary decisions independently, Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz said Sunday after emerging from some five hours of talks with Wendy Sherman, Washington's top Iran negotiator.

"Israel reiterated and made clear its position that an agreement with Iran must include dismantling its ability to progress toward a nuclear weapon," Steinitz said, using code for Israel's long-standing position that the world needed to insist that Iran dismantle all it's uranium enrichment capabilities. This position clashes with that of the world powers currently negotiating with Iran, which is now seemingly willing to allow Iran some enrichment capability.

Financing the Flames: How Tax-Exempt and Public Money Fuel a Culture of Confrontation and Terror in Israel

Edwin Black (Author)

http://www.amazon.com/Financing-Flames-Tax-Exempt-Culture-Confrontation/dp/0914153315

 

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=7439

Terrorism pays, literally

Ruthie Blum

Thursday evening, Channel 2's Ilana Dayan conducted a fawning interview with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry about the chances for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. This was followed by a panel discussion, led by Dayan, with radical leftist commentator Amnon Abramovich and chief Israeli negotiator, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni.

Naturally, everyone discussed the question of whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would "do an about-face" on his life-long beliefs, for the sake of peace.

Kerry was evasive, saying that this was up to the parties in the negotiations.

Abramovich was openly disdainful and pessimistic. Livni kept repeating that she was working closely with Netanyahu to make sure that certain clauses would be included in Kerry's "framework" proposal.

Sa'ar: The Jordan Valley is Israeli

Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar, Coalition Chairman MK Yariv Levin (Likud) and Habayit Hayehudi MK Orit Struck take part in Jordan Valley demonstration, calling on Israel to retain area in any peace deal • Levin: Israel has inalienable right to build here.

Efrat Forsher and Israel Hayom Staff

Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar is opposed to any Israeli withdrawal from the Jordan Valley | Photo credit: Jordan Valley Community Center

About 2,000 people, including Interior Minister Gideon Sa'ar (Likud), Coalition Chairman MK Yariv Levin (Likud) and Habayit Hayehudi MK Orit Struck, took part in a march in the Jordan Valley on Friday, calling on Israel to hold onto the area in any peace agreement with the Palestinians.

The eight-kilometer march in the northern part of the Jordan Valley ended at Brosh Habika, where Sraya Ofer was killed by terrorists last October.

"We are here with a simple and clear message -- the Jordan Valley is Israeli," Sa'ar said. "It is impossible to think that the border will not be in the valley. The alternative, that the border will be next to Kfar Saba and Netanya, is completely inconceivable."

Obama's foreign policy objectives

Richard Baehr

n his first year in office, U.S. president Barack Obama was asked about his belief in the concept of "American exceptionalism." The president's response was a sharp break from the concept as understood by his predecessor in the Oval Office, George W. Bush, and many Americans. The more generally accepted concept was summarized by writer James Kirchik as the notion "that our history as the world's oldest democracy, our immigrant founding and our devotion to liberty endow the United States with a unique, providential role in world affairs."

The concept, in other words, supports an outlook on America's role in world affairs that includes our active involvement in these matters, and argues that America has had a positive involvement in world affairs.

Holding back al-Qaeda

Jonathan Spyer
The Jerusalem Post

http://www.meforum.org/3761/israel-syria-al-qaeda

Will Israel be dragged into the Syrian conflict?
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit this week to an IDF field hospital where wounded Syrians are receiving treatment served to showcase the Israeli humanitarian effort to respond to the crisis facing Syrian civilians caught up in the ongoing conflict. Recent reports suggest that the Israeli focus on events in southern Syria goes beyond purely humanitarian concerns.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits wounded Syrians at an IDF field hospital near the Syrian border. (Image source: Israel Government Press Office)

Increasing attention is being paid by Israeli planners to the buildup of extreme Sunni Islamist forces close to the border with the Golan Heights. There are indications that Israel has already begun to implement a strategy intended to keep the jihadis from the border.
According to a report by prominent Israeli Middle East analyst Ehud Ya'ari published recently at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Israel is currently moving toward 'assuming a modest role in the Syrian civil war.'

'Iran is getting everything, while giving up almost nothing'

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu: Iran must not be allowed to become a nuclear threshold state • U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman briefs Israeli officials on Iran talks • You can't always get what you want, Sherman says.

Shlomo Cesana, News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Sunday's cabinet meeting | Photo credit: AFP

<< 1 2 >>

Nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West have raised deep concerns in Jerusalem that the talks are merely an Iranian ploy to buy time and dupe the West, and will lead to no tangible results.

At the start of Sunday's cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was worried "by the fact that Iran actually believes it will realize its plan to become a nuclear threshold state with untouched capabilities to enrich uranium and develop intercontinental ballistic missiles, which it is continuing to do uninterrupted."

"The combination of enrichment, weapons and launch capabilities means that Iran is getting everything without giving almost anything," Netanyahu said. "A permanent agreement must not perpetuate this situation."

"Iran must be rid of its produce or launch nuclear weapons. This has yet to be accomplished and without the insistence of world powers, it will not be accomplished. I hope that world powers will stand firm in the demand to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear threshold state."

Credit: Benny Pleban
U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman visited Israel over the weekend and attempted to address such concerns. In private meetings before speaking with the press on Saturday, Sherman updated Netanyahu's representative, National Security Council head Yossi Cohen, and Strategic Affairs, Intelligence and International Relations Minister Yuval Steinitz on the talks with Iran.

Sherman, the head of the U.S. delegation in the Iran nuclear negotiations, said on Saturday that she was in Israel to get input, ideas and points of view about the talks and what is critical is to ensure the security of Israel, the security of the United States and the security of the world.

Official: Fatah, PLO have lost control of Lebanon refugee camps

Maan

Published today (updated) 23/02/2014 12:29

(MaanImages/file)

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The Fatah movement and the Palestine Liberation Organization have lost control of the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, a Lebanon-based Fatah official said on Saturday.

Fatah leader in Lebanon Muneer Maqdah told Ma'an on Saturday that Lebanese authorities told the PLO to adjust the situation in order "to avoid more aggravations" which they warned could have "negative impacts" on the refugee camps and on Lebanon more broadly.

The statement comes two days after a Palestinian was identified as one of the culprits of a double suicide bombing targeting the Iranian cultural center in southern Beirut. Officials are increasingly worried that economic deprivation in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon has laid fertile ground for Wahhabi militant groups.

Link to Sultan Knish Letters from the Phantom Anti-Jewish Establishment

Sultan Knish

Alan Alda's wife signed a letter denouncing the newly elected left-wing mayor of New York for doing AIPAC's bidding. The Sandinista supporter had been accused of many things until then, but being an Israeli stooge wasn't one of them. Signing the letter, along with the spouse of that guy from MASH, were Martha Weinman Lear, the wife of the cousin of liberal producer Norman Lear,  Eve Ensler of the Vagina Monologues and diet guru Jane Hirschmann author of Overcoming Overeating who took a break from obsessing over food to sail on a Jihad cruise to Gaza.

Signing on to the attack on Bill de Blasio for being a dirty Zionist were such faded celebrities of the literary left as Erica Jong, who hasn't written a single book that anyone can name in the forty years since Fear of Flying first came out and Gloria Steinem, who peaked around that same time.