Shalom and Erekat meet in Jordan, Europeans sponsor, US not informed
Interior Minister Sylvan Shalom and 'Palestinian' chief
negotiator bottle washer Saeb Erekat had a get-acquainted meeting in Amman on Thursday. Jordan knew of and sponsored the meeting alongside the European Union. In a reflection of just how important Obama and Kerry are to the 'process,'
the United States was not even told.
A private individual who holds no official position in the Israeli
government acted as a middleman in preparing for last Thursday’s meeting
between Interior Minister Silvan Shalom and chief Palestinian
negotiator Saeb Erekat, Haaretz has learned.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian
President Mahmoud Abbas were aware of the talks about holding the
meeting and approved it. Senior officials in the Jordanian government
and the European Union were also involved. The United States, however,
was kept in the dark and Israel did not update the Americans before or
after the meeting took place.
...
At a certain stage European Union envoy Fernando
Gentilini tried to coordinate between the sides and even suggested the
meeting be held in Brussels, however Erekat asked that it be held in
Amman, Jordan, which brought the Jordanian government into the secret.
Erekat did not present preconditions for the meeting, beyond that it be
held at a neutral venue.
The two-hour meeting was mainly intended for the two
to get acquainted. Both Erekat and Shalom presented initial suggestions
on how to restart the peace process, but did not enter into a detailed
discussion. They agreed to report back to Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and to meet
again in the near future.
The Amman meeting began in the presence of Jordanian
Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, and later Erekat and Shalom continued in
private.
I don't really expect this to go anywhere. The 'Palestinians' are hoping the United Nations will do their dirty work by passing a resolution in September mandating a 'Palestinian state.' But the big story here is the non-existent American influence. #ThanksObama.
Labels: Abu Mazen, Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, European Union, Jordan, Middle East peace process, Saeb Erekat, Sylvan Shalom
Ministers blast Netanyahu over Operation Protective Edge goals
At Thursday's cabinet meeting, ministers Gideon Saar and Sylvan Shalom blasted Prime Minister Netanyahu for
not making Hamas' overthrow the goal of Operation Protective Edge.
According to a source that participated in the meeting, Interior
Minister Sa’ar told Netanyahu that, from the outset, the goal of the
operation should have been to topple Hamas’ reign in Gaza.
“I
wasn’t one of those (ministers) to go out in public, in front of the
media, and say we need to topple the Hamas regime, but today I am saying
it here that that should have been the operation’s objective,” the
source quoted Sa’ar as saying.
The source who attended the meeting
also said Sa’ar quoted extracts of the Winograd Commission report,
which investigated the failures of the Second Lebanon War, focusing on
criticism leveled by the commission on the leaders' foot-dragging and
the decisions that were made on a diplomatic level.
“I recommend you read the Winograd report,” Sa’ar told Netanyahu and Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, according to the source.
When
asked to respond to the source’s claims, Sa’ar told Haaretz, “I am
legally obliged to avoid responding to things that were said in the
cabinet meeting even if those quotes are incorrect.”
The source
also said that Energy and Water Resources Minister Silvan Shalom
criticized the conduct of the operation, too, stating that in his
opinion toppling Hamas should have been the goal of the operation.
However, he emphasized in his closing comments that he supports the
prime minister.
Netanyahu, for his part, turned to the ministers
and said he expects them not to criticize him publically while the
country is at war. The prime minister emphasized that there is no
problem with voicing criticism, so long as it is done around the table
at cabinet meetings.
I don't hear any public criticism of Netanyahu here, except from the anonymous minister who spilled the beans of what was said in the cabinet meeting to Barak Ravid.
But the criticism is in place. Leaving Hamas to fight another day - as appears likely - was the wrong thing to do.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Gaza, Gidon Saar, Hamas, IDF, Operation Protective Edge, Sylvan Shalom, Winograd Commission
How we got here
For those who have forgotten, here's a video from 2004 that highlights the debate over Israel's expulsion of Gaza's Jews and abandonment of the territory. Who was right and who was wrong?
Let's go to the videotape (with English subtitles).
Speaking of history, for what it's worth, one of my children told me last night that he had a conversation with Mrs. Carl while I was in the US in which he said "I remember Abba telling me all about Obama eight years ago. Every single thing he said would happen has come true." I invite you to go back to my archives from 2006 and 2007 and see how many more things I predicted correctly.
Unfortunately. this blog did not exist until January 2006, and my predictions with respect to the Gaza expulsion were wiped out when Charles Johnson purged all comments on his blog from those who did not agree with his new political views.
Labels: Ariel Sharon, Ashkelon, Binyamin Netanyahu, Gaza expulsion, Gush Katif, Hamas rockets, Limor Livnat, Sylvan Shalom, Yuval Steinitz
Minister: 'Talks could blow up if Kerry presents written proposal'
You have to love
this.
In a live interview broadcast on the noon news program of Israel Radio
Reshet Bet, Infrastructure Minister Silvan Shalom (Likud) warned that if U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry submits a written proposal to the
Israelis and Palestinians that this will cause the talks to blow up.
Shalom suggested, in contrast, that if Kerry makes an oral presentation of
his ideas to the parties that the talks could continue.
And to think that this genius was once foreign minister....
Labels: John Kerry, Middle East peace process, Sylvan Shalom
He should be tried for treason
Disgraced former Prime Minister
Ehud K. Olmert has criticized Prime Minister Netanyahu for
not rolling over and playing dead quickly enough to please Massa Obama.
According to Israel Radio, Olmert told college students in New Hampshire
that the Israeli government's "rhetoric of war and confrontation" was
unwise, and that it erred in ignoring "the Iranian president's talk of
peace with Western countries."
...
"If Iran is serious, why not end this whole affair with
an agreement instead of by force?" Olmert said. "Perhaps we will reach
the conclusion that nothing else worked, but we owe it to ourselves to
check."
The former premier then addressed the ongoing diplomatic
row between Washington and Jerusalem, seeming to mock the Netanyahu
government's response to American intentions to strike an interim
agreement with Tehran.
"I heard that [US Secretary of State John]
Kerry dared to disagree with the Israeli prime minister," Olmert said.
"Poor guy. I hope he'll come out of this alright."
According to
Israel Radio, Olmert told the audience that "there was no need to
constantly look for ways to clash with the US president, to provoke him,
and to insult him."
"That's a piece of advice that I give to
anyone who wishes to be prime minister of a country that is not the
United States," he said.
But for the treacherous, traitorous Olmert it's perfectly fine to look for ways to clash with Israel's elected Prime Minister, to provoke him and to insult him.
One of Netanyahu's Likud rivals - Sylvan Shalom -
slammed Olmert.
Shalom told Israel Radio that Olmert should honor the tradition that
politicians do not criticize their leaders when abroad. Olmert has
broken that tradition at the last two annual conferences of The Jerusalem Post in New York.
I'm not sure that such a tradition exists in Israel, but let's move on.
"He did something that is not done," Shalom said. "There is a comfortable consensus on Iran in Israel."
If you're done picking the lint from between your toenails and don't want to go to sleep yet, you can find Olmert's entire hour and 28 minute harangue
here.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ehud K. Olmert, Iranian nuclear threat, Sylvan Shalom
Nothing but bluster: 'We are not a rubber stamp'
It's amazing to think that this guy was once Binyamin Netanyahu's main Likud rival for the top spot. His
weakness compares only with Netanyahu's spinelessness.
Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom, who is a member of the ruling
Likud faction, told Israel Radio on Sunday that more attacks like the
incident in the Psagot settlement that left a nine-year-old girl lightly
wounded would prompt the government to reconsider its decision to free
Palestinians who served lengthy jail sentences for violent crimes
committed against Israelis.
...
"The ministerial committee is not a rubber stamp committee, and it
has the power to rescind the release of more prisoners," Shalom told
Israel Radio.
The minister said that the current Israeli
government would not adopt the motto of late premier Yitzhak Rabin, who
advocated negotiating with the Palestinians as if there were no
terrorism and fighting terrorism as if there were no negotiations.
How many more attacks will it take, Minister Shalom, before the government 'reconsiders' (note: not cancels but 'reconsiders') its decision? Or is it perhaps the fortuity that young Noam Glick was not killed that convinces you that the 'Palestinians' actually want peace, because if they didn't the terrorist could have gotten a better shot?
Netanyahu's spinelessness is matched only by the moronic behavior of his yes-men in the cabinet.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, negotiations without preconditions, Palestinian terrorists, Sylvan Shalom, unilateral concessions
Netanyahu's Likud rebels
A group of Likud MK's has banded together to stop our
spineless Prime Minister from giving half the country away to a group of terrorists.
Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon on Sunday convened the heads of right-wing
groups inside the Likud central committee he heads to plan strategies for
blocking Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu from advancing an interim agreement
with the PA.
The meeting was intended to counter-balance pressure to move
the diplomatic process forward that Netanyahu is expected to encounter in
Monday’s meeting with US President Barack Obama and over the next several
months.
Danon stressed that the event was not an anti- Netanyahu meeting.
He said the activists made a point of focusing their criticism on the head of
Israel’s negotiating team with the Palestinians, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni,
repeatedly citing her speech to the J Street conference in
Washington.
“We won’t sit silently while Livni cooks an unacceptable
deal,” Danon said. “We can’t let there be industrial quiet.”
The
activists decided to focus their pressure on the Likud’s top four ministers:
Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon, Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Home Front
Defense Minister Gilad Erdan and Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom. The
activists, who are close to the ministers, will push them to make public
comments opposing an interim agreement with the Palestinians.
...
Some of the same central committee members were among
the signatories of a full-page ad in Hebrew papers on Sunday that praised two
ministers, four deputy ministers and four more MKs for statements they have made
against giving up land. The ministers were Erdan and Transportation Minister
Israel Katz.
Another full-page ad in the same papers called upon Sa’ar,
Erdan, Ya’alon and Shalom to stop further releases of Palestinian
terrorists.
The ad, which was taken out by families of terror victims,
called upon the public to sign an online petition that has already been endorsed
by more than 31,000 people.
Another campaign against concessions to the
Palestinians will begin soon by the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea,
Samaria and the Gaza Strip. The campaign will feature hawkish quotes by
Netanyahu from his 1995 book, A Place Under the Sun.
There needs to be lots of pressure like this on Netanyahu.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Binyamin Netanyahu, Gidon Saar, Gilad Erdan, Middle East peace process, Moshe Yaalon, Sylvan Shalom, Yisrael Katz
By the way, what shape is the table going to be?
For those too young to remember, I discussed the shape of the table in the Paris peace talks that were supposed to end the Vietnam war
here. When it comes to Israel and the 'Palestinians,' the
shape of the table may be the only thing about which there has thus far been no argument.
This time "all of the issues that are at the core of a permanent
accord will be negotiated simultaneously", Silvan Shalom, a member of
Prime Minister Binyamin Netayahu's cabinet and rightist Likud party,
told Army Radio.
The Palestinians, with international backing,
want their future state to have borders approximating the boundaries of
the West Bank, adjacent East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip before Israel
captured them in the 1967 Middle East war.
Yasser Abed Rabbo, a
top official in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's umbrella Palestine
Liberation Organization, said the US letter of invitation to the
Washington talks had not specified which disputes were to be discussed.
But Abed Rabbo told Voice of Palestine radio the talks "will begin, in principle, on the issues of borders and security".
...
"Had the matter of borders and territory been given over, what
incentive would they (Palestinians) have had to make concessions on the
matter of refugees or Jerusalem?" Shalom asked.
Israel deems all
of Jerusalem its capital - a status rejected internationally - and wants
to keep West Bank settlement blocs under any peace accord. It quit Gaza
in 2005 and that enclave is now ruled by Hamas Islamists hostile to the
Jewish state and opposed to Abbas's peace strategy.
Palestinian
refugees from the 1948 war of Independence, along with millions of their
descendants, claim the right to return to their original homes in what
is now Israel. The Israelis rule that out as demographic suicide, saying
the refugees should resettle in a future Palestine or elsewhere.
As if those weren't enough problems, it seems that Kerry really is going to make radical Leftist
Martin Indyk the US representative to the talks.
US Secretary of State John Kerry announced Monday that former US
ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk will be Washington's Middle East peace
envoy.
The appointment comes as Israeli-Palestinian peace talks
are to resume Monday evening for the first time in three years,
following an intense effort by Kerry to bring both parties together.
Last week,
Israel strongly protested Kerry's plan to appoint Indyk. That protest was ignored. Kerry expects the co-chairman of the radical Leftist New Israel Fund, whose grantees provided 92% of the lies in the Goldstone Report, to suddenly play the roll of an honest broker.
What could go wrong?
Labels: Abu Mazen, Binyamin Netanyahu, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, John Kerry, Judea and Samaria, Martin Indyk, Middle East peace process, Palestinian state, Sylvan Shalom
Anyone want to bet on how long this coalition lasts?
The new government will be sworn in on Sunday, and already the
problems have started from within the Likud.
Netanyahu is expected to face bitter opposition within his party from
those who feel slighted by the positions they are expected to receive
in the new government. Most current ministers are not expected to be
promoted to more prestigious positions, while young MKs who did well in
the party primary are unlikely to be made ministers at all.
While
Transportation Minister Israel Katz and Culture and Sport Minister Limor
Livnat will keep their jobs and Moshe Ya'alon will be defense minister,
others, like Gilad Erdan and Silvan Shalom, expressed dissatisfaction
with the portfolios they were offered.
Outgoing Education Minister
Gideon Sa'ar is the leading candidate for Interior Minister, but Erdan
is also a possibility, and MK Yariv Levin was asked to be the next
coalition chairman, but has yet to accept the position. Former coalition
chairman Ze'ev Elkin is likely to be Deputy Foreign Minister, at the
insistence of former foreign minister Avigdor Liberman, who will return
to his previous position if he is exonerated in his corruption trial.
Likud
activists have asked to call a central committee meeting, expressing
anger at the "disproportionate" amount of positions the Yisrael Beytenu
section of Likud Beytenu received – five portfolios (Foreign,
Agriculture, Tourism, Immigration and Absorption and Public Security)
and a committee chairmanship for 11 MKs.
On Friday, the last day
before Netanyahu's deadline to form a government, Yesh Atid and the
Bayit Yehudi signed coalition agreements.
There are plenty of other potential bones of contention, some of which are listed
here and
here. I give it a year at most.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, Danny Danon, Gidon Saar, Gilad Erdan, Likud party, Limor Livnat, Naftali Bennett, Sylvan Shalom, Yair Lapid, Zeev Elkin
Meridor, Shalom deny tensions with US over Iran
Both Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor and Deputy Prime Minister Sylvan Shalom attempted to
downplay reports of a rift between Israel and the United States over Iran.
Intelligence Agencies Minister Dan Meridor said he does not sense any rupture in Israel's ties with the United States and stressed that it is very important to maintain Washington's support, as well as that of the American public, in an interview with Israel Radio on Monday.
...
In his interview, Meridor denounced the public speculation regarding a possible preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities as unnecessary and perhaps even beneficial to the Iranians.
He said further that the international effort against Iran was taking its toll on the Iranians, who may now fear enriching uranium to a higher, bomb-grade level because of the knowledge they will encounter very strong resistance if they cross the line towards acquiring a nuclear bomb.
He concluded by saying that the international community needed to increase the pressure on Iran by strengthening the sanctions against it.
Meanwhile, Vice Premier Silvan Shalom on Monday rejected a report that senior US officials had intimated to Iran that they would not stand by Israel if it were to strike the Islamic Republic.
"The sole disagreement between Israel and the US is in regard to timing," Shalom said in an interview with Army Radio. "The US is obligated to the existential and security interests of Israel. We are much closer than people think."
Let's just say I believe that the descriptions in the media are closer to the truth than what Meridor and Shalom are describing.
Labels: Dan Meridor, Iranian nuclear threat, Sylvan Shalom
Why not a freeze extension?
I want to point out a couple of things from
this article about the debate among the Likud ministers over the 'settlement freeze.'
"What is at stake," argued Shalom at the start of the cabinet meeting, "is not a three-month building freeze, but in fact the beginning of negotiations over the borders of a Palestinian state."
It's worse than that. It's negotiations over the borders of a 'Palestinian state' in isolation from anything else. It's taking the one area in which all Israel can do is give - and receive nothing in return - and making it the sole focus. (Yes, it says
here "and other core issues," but don't believe that - nothing else will be discussed in those three months) And it takes upon itself the impossible task of deciding borders within three months, because if they're not decided within three months, you can bet there will be American pressure for another extension.
Shalom also criticized Netanyahu, noting, "It is a strategic error to condition an American veto [in the United Nations Security Council] and diplomatic support from Washington upon the continuation of a building freeze."
"It is something that should go without saying, based on the special relationship between our countries," he added.
Yes, it should. But what's worse is that many of the texts I have seen of the proposal promise that veto and diplomatic support for only one year. What happens when the year is up? Obama screws us by not vetoing a Security Council resolution for a 'Palestinian state'?
"If we freeze [construction] for three months, the pressure on us to decide our permanent borders will be unbearable," Shalom told Israel Radio after the meeting. "Unfortunately, if that happens, it will be a huge mistake."
Yes, it will be, especially in isolation from all other factors.
Despite the apparent widespread opposition to the deal, Shas chairman Eli Yishai told the cabinet that under certain circumstances, his party would not reject an extension of the settlement moratorium.
"If arrived a letter from the president of the United States stating that there could be immediate construction in Jerusalem, and that after 90 days there could be unlimited construction anywhere, we would think about abstaining," he said.
I've seen two other versions of Shas' demand. One just says
unlimited building in Jerusalem. The other says that when the 90 days are up, Israel can build in the 'settlement blocs.' That last sentence is even more outrageous than the freeze extension itself.
And in any event, do we really want to trust a letter from Obama who could then
deny its existence or binding effect like he did with the Bush letter?
Labels: Bush letter, Eli Yishai, settlement freeze, Sylvan Shalom
