EXCLUSIVE

Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has issued a series of new demands during the latest round of negotiations with the Palestinian leadership.

In a leaked memo, Netanyahu has demanded that the Palestinians must recognize Israel as a legitimate independent State within secure borders, and that both parties agree to a cessation of hostilities.

“Unless the Palestinians finally recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and our right to live within secure borders, then we will not be agree to give them their Palestinian State”, Netanyahu explains. “Not now, not ever!”

Advisers close to the Prime Minister noted that this demand has already been accepted by the Palestinians.

Yasser Arafat did this in the exchange of letters between himself, Israel’s Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Norwegian Foreign Minister Johan Jorgen Holst on 9th September 1993.

Furthermore, due to lingering doubts, this recognition of Israel was endorsed by the Palestinian National Council in Gaza,  on 24th April, 1996.

And again in the Wye Memorandum.

And, sure enough, US President Bill Clinton himself attended the PNC central committee meeting in Gaza on 14th December 1998, where the PNC voted in formal recognition (again) of the State of Israel.

Clinton stated: I thank you for your rejection—fully, finally and forever—of the passages in the Palestinian Charter calling for the destruction of Israel. For they were the ideological underpinnings of a struggle renounced at Oslo. By revoking them once and for all, you have sent, I say again, a powerful message not to the government, but to the people of Israel. You will touch people on the street there. You will reach their hearts there.

It is unclear why Netanyahu is again demanding that the Palestinians recognize Israel, when they have done so, repeatedly, and “fully, finally and forever”.

Each time Israel has demanded formal Palestinian recognition, the Palestinians have used this to extract further concrete, strategic concessions from Israel.

Land, arms, sovereignty, money.

According to the leaked memo, this time Netanyahu has added important details to the previous Palestinian statements recognizing the State of Israel.

“This time, I want them to say that they recognize Israel as a JEWISH State.”

Netanyah claims this will change the “narrative” of the Palestinian history, and will be a statement recognizing The State of Israel’s legitimacy “fully, finally and forever”.

“I also want them to recognise me, Benjamin Netanyahu, the democratically elected leader of Israel’s Jewish State as the sole legitimate representative of the Jewish State,” Netanyahu continues.

“But perhaps most importantly, there will never, ever be peace in our region, until the Palestinians formally recognize Israel as the Start-Up Nation.

“Without technology, Israeli technology, the Palestinians will be forever aspiring to third world economic conditions. I want them to say it, clearly, unambiguously, for all the world to hear, and for their own people to hear, fully, finally and forever: “Israel is the Start-Up Nation”.

The memo assures the Palestinian negotiating team that once they issue a formal statement, using the critical words “Start Up Nation”, Israel will recognize the State of Palestine, including “returning” the whole of Judea & Samaria, Gaza, Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and the Coastal Plane to “Legitimate Militarized Palestinian Sovereignty”.

“It will be a quid pro quo” – says Netanyahu.

Visit Tzedek-Tzedek.

This report is a gift from God. While our dubious representatives at the negotiations with the PLO are running around like chickens sand the heads warning about the terrible things that would happen to us if we’re dropped from the EU list of good Jews you can trade with – it’s looking like the entire EU itself is up for a major reupholstering, and maybe, just maybe, some of the folks making the loudest threats will see the inside of a barred cell.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it appears the European Union, the one with the charter on what’s legal and decent, is one of the most corrupt organizations on the planet.

There, I said it.

How corrupt id the European Union? Cecilia Malmstrom, the European commissioner for home affairs, says it’s losing at least 120 billion euros a year to corruption.

The EU Anti-Corruption Report warns that “Corruption seriously harms the economy and society as a whole. Many countries around the world suffer from deep-rooted corruption that hampers economic development, undermines democracy, and damages social justice and the rule of law. The Member States of the EU are not immune to this reality.”

Malmstrom said the commission’s estimate that corruption costs Europe €120 billion, or roughly $162 billion, annually was almost certainly too conservative. The figure is equivalent to about 1 percent of the €11.7 trillion gross domestic product of the 28-nation European Union.

Are you not surprised? Me neither. The intro to the report continues: “Corruption varies in nature and extent from one country to another, but it affects all Member States. It impinges on good governance, sound management of public money, and competitive markets. In extreme cases, it undermines the trust of citizens in democratic institutions and processes.”

You know what this means, right? It means that every decision, every effort, every suggestion coming out of the EU is suspected of having a hidden agenda, and a nefarious one at that.

Do you want these people helping us strike a peace deal with our neighbors?

Most Businesses believe EU corruption is widespread and that the only way to succeed in business is through political connections and almost half of the companies doing business in Europe say corruption is a problem for them.

“In a time of appalling economic and financial crisis, recovering for the legal economy the money deviated by defrauders is of utmost importance; those funds are very much needed to foster growth and jobs,” said Spain’s Juan Fernando López Aguilar, who chairs the European Parliament’s Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee.

Someone should tell Aguilar that almost all firms in Greece, Spain and Italy believe corruption is widespread.

Construction companies, which often tender for government contracts, are the most affected. Almost eight in ten of those questioned had complaints about corruption. The NY Times reported that a 2013 study for European Union anti-fraud authorities described a case in which an unnamed government entity invited companies to bid on a contract to build two buildings. The winning bid was €600,000, even though other companies had offered to do the work for €400,000.

Somebody pocketed that €200,000.

So, I say, don’t buy stuff from these people, you just don’t know where it’s been. Boycott the European Union because they’re gonnifs.

The key findings at European level are:

• The majority (76%) of Europeans think that corruption is widespread in their own country.
• Countries where respondents are most likely to think so are: Greece (99%), Italy (97%), Lithuania, Spain and the Czech Republic (all 95%), Croatia (94%), Romania (93%), Slovenia (91%), Portugal and Slovakia (both 90%). The Nordic countries are the only Member States where the majority think corruption is rare – Denmark (75%), Finland (64%) and Sweden (54%).
• More than half of Europeans (56%) think the level of corruption in their country has increased over the past three years (a surge compared to a previous study in 2011, when 47% perceived corruption to have risen over the same period of time).
• Spain (77%), Slovenia, the Czech Republic (both 76%), Italy (74%) and Portugal (72%) are amongst countries where respondents are most likely to think corruption has increased.
• 23% of Europeans think that their government’s efforts are effective in tackling corruption; 26% that there are enough successful prosecutions in their country to deter people from corrupt practices.
• 81% of Europeans think that too-close links between business and politics in their country lead to corruption; 69% that favouritism and corruption hinder business competition; 67% that corruption is part of the business culture in their country; and more than half (56%) that the only way to succeed in business in their country is through political connections.
• Around one in twelve Europeans (8%) say they have experienced or witnessed a case of corruption in the past 12 months. Yet only 12% of those who have encountered corruption say that they reported it.
• Respondents are most likely to say they have experienced or witnessed corruption in Lithuania (25 %), Slovakia (21 %) and Poland (16 %) and least likely to do so in Finland and Denmark (3 % in each), Malta and the UK (4 % in each).

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s Sunday visit started out fine, with a visit to Yad Vashem (with yarmulke), but then was spoiled by a major disagreement between the Dutch and Israeli premiers over a new security scanner that was to be installed with great fanfare on the Gaza border.

Rutte expected to inaugurate the scanner at the Kerem Shalom crossing, on the border with the Gaza Strip, but that’s probably not going to happen.

“Installation of the Dutch scanner, which would have been used to verify the contents of containers from Gaza destined for export, was postponed after the Netherlands made unexpected demands,” an Israeli official told AFP.

“Technically, there is no problem about the scanner at the Kerem Shalom crossing, through which goods originating in Gaza pass,” the official said, explaining: “The Dutch suddenly imposed political conditions, notably on the percentage of merchandise destined for the West Bank or abroad. These are political issues that need to be resolved at the highest level, which will delay the start-up of the scanner.”

In a lengthy, face to face conversation, Prime Minister Netanyahu told his Dutch counterpart that, as much as he would like there to be normal relations between the PA and Gaza, with goods traveling in both directions, the Arabs “sometimes use this to negative ends.”

Netanyahu gave the example of how the Hamas used too tons of cement which Israel permitted through its border with Gaza, to dig a terror tunnel into Israel, for the purpose of kidnapping Israeli civilians, to be used later in exchange with terrorist killers held in Israeli jails.

Netanyahu conceded that security considerations should not come at the expense of the civilian population in Gaza, but on occasion there’s no avoiding it.

According to Ha’aretz, the past two weeks have been marked by hectic disputes between the Netherlands and Israel over the use of the scanner the Dutch donated for use in the Gaza border crossing. Israeli security officials told the Dutch they wanted a separation between Gaza and the PA, and so the scanner must be used chiefly for goods being exported abroad, and not going to the PA.

The Dutch were making the case that the scanner was fool proof and should offer the guarantee Israel needed to accept shipments from Gaza to the PA. But the Israeli defense ministry stuck to its guns.

Prime Minister Rutte met with Israeli-Palestinian peace organizations Monday morning, and expressed his disappointment of the Israeli stubbornness.

“I don’t understand this decision,” he said. “The scanner was donated by Holland and positioned at Kerem Shalom precisely because of the Israeli security concerns.”

There was also a diplomatic spat Sunday concerning Judea and Samaria, where Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans, who is traveling with Rutte, cancelled a planned event rather than accept an Israeli military escort, a Dutch foreign ministry official said.

Timmermans had planned to visit Palestinians in Hebron.

“It was the minister himself who decided to cancel that part of the visit,” Ahmed Dadou, a spokesman for Timmermans, told AFP in The Hague.

“It’s normal to be accompanied by the Israeli military in the part occupied by settlers but it’s not usual in the Palestinian part,” he said.

“Other foreign ministers have previously visited the city unaccompanied by Israeli soldiers in the Palestinian sector and Mr. Timmermans did not want to accept this new condition in order not to set a precedent.”

Netanyahu said that he had not been aware of the planned visit.

“These are not political directives,” he said, according to a statement by his office. “I do not know how we guard foreign dignitaries on visits. We have security details that do what is necessary. Minister Timmermans is a welcome guest.”

Timmermans instead visited a Palestinian dairy in another part of Hebron.

Finally an area of life a Dutchman fully comprehends.

Watch the video starting at minute 8:56

President Obama sharply criticized as not viable a number of Israeli government postures on talks with Iran, but reasserted the military option should those talks fail.

In a wide-ranging talk with Haim Saban, the entertainment mogul who funds the annual Saban Forum in Washington, Obama took aim at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claims that increased pressure during the interim talks would extract greater concessions from Iran, and anticipated a final deal that would grant Iran some uranium enrichment capabilities.

Alluding to the view of Netanyahu and a number of lawmakers in Congress, Obama said, “what this comes up down to is the perception that if we kept churning up the pressure, new sanctions, more sanctions, more military threats etc, that eventually Iran would cave.”

Instead, Obama said, that would likely drive away allies who have helped keep up the pressure on Iran through U.S.-led sanctions.

Obama outlined U.S. red lines in a final agreement, including the dismantling of the plutonium reactor at Arak and the underground nuclear reactor at Fordow, as well as advanced centrifuges.

However, he made clear an enrichment program would remain in place that would ensure that “as a practical matter, they don’t have a breakout capacity.”

That, Obama acknowledged, contradicted Netanyahu’s objective that “we can’t accept any enrichment on Iranian soil, full stop.”

Israel’s government believes that Iran has been allowed to advance its nuclear capability to the point where even a modest enrichment capability positions it dangerously close to weapons breakout capacity.

Demanding no enrichment, Obama said, was unrealistic, likening it to his believing Congress would pass every one of his legislative initiatives.

The Iranians needed to come to a deal that would afford them some “dignity,” he said, and alluded to broad popular support for some enrichment capacity.

Obama said that he did not trust Hassan Rouhani, Iran’s newly elected president, but noted that he was elected on a platform of reaching out to the West.

Again alluding to a Netanyahu claim, he said that those who say Rouhani is not different from his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadeinjad, a Holocaust denier and anti-Israel maximalist, “understate the shift in politics” in Iran.

Obama twice said that he would reassert the military option should talks fail with Iran.

“I’ve made clear I can avail myself of including a military option, is one we can consider and prepare for,” he said.

He emphatically rejected hard lines in dealing with other countries. “Wherever we see the impulses of a people to move away from conflict and violence and toward a diplomatic resolution of conflict we should be ready to engage them,” he said. “We have to not constantly assume that it’s not possible for Iran like any country to change over time.”

Obama said he had a good, open relationship with Netanyahu. “There are occasionally significant tactical differences, but there is a constancy in trying to reach the same goal,” he said of the relationship.

Addressing renewed Israeli-Palestinian talk,s Obama said mediation is currently focused on addressing Israeli security needs, and appeared to back away from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s insistence that the sides achieve a final status agreement next year.

An agreement, he said, need not address “every detail” but is one that “gets us to a moment that gets us to move forward than move backward.”

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said talks between Israelis and Palestinians entered a difficult phase over security guarantees.

Speaking in Tel Aviv before returning to the United States, Kerry said the sides remained committed to advancing toward a peace agreement and that he expected to return to the region in a week or so.

“Despite the fact that we are discussing really difficult, complicated issues, I am encouraged by the continued commitment of both leaders to the pursuit of peace,” Kerry said at a press conference at the airport. “And they both underscored their commitment to continue to work through these difficult issues in the days ahead.”

Kerry said the issue currently at hand has to do with security guarantees for Israel.

“We’ve gone through a very detailed, lengthy, in-depth analysis of the security challenges of the region, and particularly the challenges to Israel and to the creation of a viable, independent Palestinian state,” Kerry said. “Security is paramount in the minds of the prime minister and his team with respect to their ability to be able to move forward with other issues that have to be dealt with. If Israel’s security cannot be increased through this agreement, it’s very difficult to make an agreement.”

Kerry did not offer further details, but a sticking point appeared to be the fate of the Jordan Valley, the area contiguous with the border with Jordan, where Israel wants to maintain a prolonged military presence. Reports said the Israeli side rejected plans for some Palestinian control at border crossings as well as a reduced Israeli presence.

Reports also said the Palestinian side was unhappy with the American proposals, saying they rejected any continued Israeli presence in Palestinian areas. Palestinians also are unhappy with Israeli settlement growth in Judea and Samaria.

Top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that talks were “difficult and complicated.”

Erekat told AFP that Abbas and Kerry addressed security in their talks.

“We hope Israel will stick to its commitments and be forced to stop settlement building,” he told the French news agency. “Settlements are the reason for the difficulties in negotiations.”

One has to be sparing with exclamation points, but this one’s a lollapalooza.  A dilly!  A doozie.  A big honkin’ mess-a that Middle East Security Hotness.  You heard right folks:  the United States of America has a “West Bank security proposal” for Israel, and we’re sending a retired Army general to present it to Mr. Benjamin Netanyahu, himself.  !!!!!!!!!!

Why did no one think of this before?  Finally, someone has done something pragmatic and positive about the Israeli-Palestinian standoff, and just written up a proposal for the Israelis to chew on already.  The Obama administration has at last gotten things off top dead center with Iran, and it’s time to tackle those other intractable Middle East Security Problems, while the momentum is still red-hot.

The New York Times has done yeoman work in recent years pitching verbatim the information themes of the Obama administration, but interestingly, it comes off as a tad perfunctory in the story about the West Bank security proposal.  The tale seems to lack a little of that believer’s heart to it.  You might almost get the sense that there’s some editorial skepticism about the wisdom of this fresh Brainstorming for Peace initiative.

Almost.  Letting the Obama administration off the hook, as usual, for vagueness and strange diplomatic fire, NYT notes the following:

General Allen’s presentation appears to signify a more active American role, in which the United States is doing more than coaxing the Israelis and the Palestinians to negotiate and is presenting its own ideas.

What are the ideas about, exactly?  The NYT authors again:

Officials involved in the negotiations said security had been the prime focus lately, with most of the discussion revolving around the Jordan Valley. Israel has insisted that its own military continue to patrol there, rather than rely on an international force similar to those responsible for its tense borders with Lebanon and Syria. The Palestinians have said they cannot abide the presence of any Israeli soldiers in their future state.

Keep in mind, if George W. Bush’s officials were being so elliptical about a U.S.-drafted West Bank security proposal, NYT would be right in there concluding indignantly that American troops were about to be drop-kicked into the Jordan Valley to embroil a duped and overextended United States in Another Vietnam Quagmire (Marine Barracks Beirut Variety).  It would be barely possible to figure out what the Bush administration had actually said, so thick would be the underbrush of quotes from policy “critics” through which the reader would have to hack.

No such quotes enliven the current NYT piece.  The Obama administration gets the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe putting U.S. prestige and bona fides on the line with an unsolicited, and apparently very specific, security proposal to an ally isn’t a bad idea.  Maybe it’s not undiplomatic and prejudicial to announce it publicly before our briefer has even presented it to Israel’s prime minister.  Maybe it’s just, what, enthusiastic.  Maybe there’s nothing to be concerned about in the fact that the preemptive announcement is so vague.  Hey, we’re just talking – probably – a about U.S. proposal for administering military security in the Jordan Valley.  What could go wrong?

NYT lets this priceless, preemptive characterization go without comment:

State Department officials described the security briefing as an “ongoing process” and not a finished product on which the United States was demanding a yes-or-no vote from the Israeli side.

Sure, because announcing it in advance will put no onus on Israel to respond in a yes-or-no-type manner.  This formulation is like an addict pleading that he’s not using, he’s just snorting some coke.

Yuram Abdullah Weiler, an American from Denver, Co. who converted to Islam in 2003, has been a frequent contributor to the Tehran Times. He still lives in Denver, offering, as his paper puts it, “a dissenting voice from the ‘Belly of the Beast.’”

His Saturday column was titled “Pulling the Nuclear Knife Out of Iran’s Back,” and like many converts, Weiler manages to channel the most self-righteous, victimized voice of the Mullahs he so admires.

He opens with a quote from Malcolm X, a quote that turns victimization into poetry: “If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn’t even begun to pull out the knife.”

I don’t know when Malcolm said this, if he did. I did find a much angrier quote, about the foot-long knife the White Man stuck in the Black Man’s back 400 years ago, and should the former jerk the knife out, should the latter feel grateful? That sounds more like Malcolm X. The quote in the Tehran Times—although I’ve seen it in recent posts online—reads too whiney for Malcolm X.

There’s too much victim’s tears in the first quote, which Weler chose as the opener for his attack on everyone: America, the West, the “Zionist entity,” anyone who won’t serve up what is Iran’s inalienable right: to trade however much it wants to, while preparing as many nukes as it wishes.

To read Weiler, which I recommend, is to realize he actually believes it’s Iran that’s been duped here. The knife in its back? Why, it’s the original sanctions placed on it. And now the only proper thing the west can do is to restore things to the way they’re supposed to be and walk away.

In Weiler’s world, which is consistent with the Ayatollahs’, only the Russians seem to get it right:

No sooner had the ink dried on the Geneva plan when Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry began to express diverging views on whether or not the agreement recognized Iran’s inalienable right to enrich uranium. “This deal means that we agree with the need to recognize Iran’s right for peaceful nuclear energy, including the right for enrichment,” Lavrov affirmed. Iran’s top nuclear negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Seyyed Abbas Araqchi, concurred that the agreement indeed recognizes Iran’s right to enrich uranium, and in fact states explicitly, “This comprehensive solution would involve a mutually defined enrichment program with practical limits and transparency measures to ensure the peaceful nature of the program.”

However, Kerry insisted, “The first step, let me be clear, does not say that Iran has a right to enrich uranium.” Siding with Lavrov and Araqchi, Article IV of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty clearly states, “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination …,” which would include the enrichment of uranium.

And the Jews? Don’t ask, it’s embarrassing how much noise they’re making, with their bizarre desire to stay alive:

Predictably, the Zionist entity’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, went into a convulsive fit over the Iran-U.S. deal, and, warning of disastrous consequences, fomented in furious tones that the agreement was “a historic mistake,” and has “not made the world a safer place.” However, even Netanyahu was forced to admit that the agreement actually did recognize Iran’s right to enrich uranium, as he himself bemoaned, “Now, for the first time, the international community has formally consented that Iran continue its enrichment of uranium.”

In other words, Weiler is not contradicting the stress-ridden warnings of the Israeli PM, he’s confirming them and is delighted in the achievement of his new home country.