Yair Lapid, Israel’s Finance Minister and head of Israel’s second largest political party, has unraveled U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s efforts to reincarnate the “peace process” before Kerry even packed his bags for another trip to Israel at the end of the week.

He told the Yediot Acharonot newspaper Sunday what everyone except Kerry and the European Union’s Catherine Ashton know – it is unrealistic even to think about a final stage peace agreement for the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as an independent country.

It is questionable if even Kerry’s boss, President Barack Obama, actually thinks an agreement is in the cards.

Maybe, just maybe, Obama has learned what Ronald Regan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush never seemed to grasp – the Palestinian Authority will make peace with Israel only when it is sure that the Jewish state’s future is doomed.

That is why PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas refuses to budge on the Arab world’s dream to import several million Arabs to Israel, based on their claim that Israel is their home because their parents, grandparents, great-great parents and their dogs lived here.

The Oslo Accords, Clinton’s time bomb that fulfilled his promise to create a new Middle East, although not exactly the way he envisioned, provided for interim borders for a Palestinian Authority state, with final borders to be negotiated.

Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in one of her many less enlightened moments, agreed that maybe it was best to simply skip over that little clause and go for broke.

And the “peace process’ since then indeed went broke.

Correctly perceiving that there was no need to concede anything except uncertainty, Abbas re-defined the word “negotiations” to mean “you give and I take,” with the only undecided issue being the date that Israel will supposedly sign its own death certificate.

The term “interim agreement” is no where in his lexicon. It is buried deep, deep under the “peace process,” and here comes Lapid, the last hope for the center-left to keep those pesky national religious Jews from getting too uppity, to the rescue of the right wing nationalists.

He also displayed remarkable honesty and lack of tact at the same by stating that Abbas “is still not psychologically ready for an agreement with Israel, either partial or full.”

That is the kind of statement that sounds like it is right out of the mouth of Avigdor Lieberman, who was foreign minister before he was indicted six months ago for breach of public trust.

It did not take long for Abbas, through an aide,  to react to Lapid’s statements, which reflect either amazing naïveté for a former journalist or just plain stupidity.

“We have heard this idea before and rejected it simply because we know the intention of Israel is to continue building on Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank,” stated Nimr Hamad, one of Abbas’ sages in Ramallah. Just in case Lapid does not understand, Hamad added that final borders are “the most important thing for us.”

With the United Nations General Assembly already having adopted a resolution recognizing the borders of a Palestinian Authority state exactly as Abbas wants them, talk of an interim agreement can only convince Abbas that Lapid is a nationalist is in disguise.

Lapid is part of an overwhelming majority of Israeli Jews who are not willing to hand over such areas as the Old City on Jerusalem to Abbas.

Abbas could save himself from virtually isolation by the Obama administration if he accepts the idea of interim borders, but to do so would be political suicide, if not a sign of a real-life death wish.

He has dug himself into a hole by promising and promising and promising the PA “street” that he will get everything he wants, lock, stock and barrel.

The joker in the cards is Lapid’s statement Sunday that President Obama could set a three-year time limit for defining final borders while carrying out Bush’s written promise to Israel that such as areas as Gush Etzion and Maaleh Adumim would remain part of Israel.

He also wants to put aside the issues of Jerusalem and the Arab demand for importing millions of foreign Arabs into Israel. Abbas has rejected that idea time and time again.

A surprising 80 percent of Israelis support the idea of Israeli sovereignty over all or part of Judea and Samaria, according to a new poll released by the respected Geocartography research institute.

The survey was commissioned by the University of Ariel, located in central Samaria, in advance of its annual Conference for Law and Mass Media.

The idea of Israeli sovereignty began to win popularity last year when a government-commissioned report by three legal experts, headed by retired Supreme Court Justice Edmund Levy, concluded that Israelis have the right under international law to live anywhere they want in Judea and Samaria.

The “Levy Committee” also debunked the popular concept, adopted by the United States and almost all of the international community, that Israel “occupies” Judea and Samaria.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu quickly shelved the report for “further study,” obviously not wanting to upset the Obama administration’s continuation of the long-buried “peace process” that it still promotes to an audience of none.

The most surprising results in the Geocartography poll related to the views of those who have left-wing views. More than a majority, in fact 60 percent, stated that Israel has to take sovereignty over at least part of Judea and Samaria.

Even among those who consider themselves thoroughly left wing, 42 percent agreed that international law must recognize Israeli sovereignty in part of the areas that the Palestinian Authority demands for itself, if it ever becomes an independent country

Overall, more than one-third of Israelis support Israeli sovereignty over all of Judea and Samaria, and 25 percent think that it should apply to part of the area.

Most support for sovereignty undoubtedly is for Maaleh Adumim, a city of more than 40,000 located only 10 minutes away from Jerusalem, and the Gush Etzion communities, the largest of which is Efrat, heavily populated by Americans.

The nationalist Women in Green movement applauded the data that emerged from the poll.

“These figures might be surprising for a part of the Israeli public, but this comes as no surprise to us,” said Women in Green leaders  Yehudit Katsover and Nadia Matar.

“ In recent years we have been traveling throughout Israel  and wherever the question of sovereignty is raised, the idea is received favorably, with extensive support,” they added.

Asked by the Jewish Press if proposing sovereignty makes any sense in the wake of the American insistence to continue with its peace process plan, they said, “The Americans know that ‘two states for two peoples’ is, thank God, not a reality.”

Matar and Katsover also argued that with the failure of the peace process, there is no other alternative on the table, making Israeli sovereignty more of a viable option.

They dismissed many problems with sovereignty leaving Israel with a large Arab minority that could wreck the country’s Jewish identity.

The Women in Green leaders explained that there are several solutions to the problem but “first of all, let’s implement sovereignty and then we will deal with the arguments.”

Four different  proposals on coping with the demographics have been proposed, they said.

One idea is to offer all Arabs citizenship on the condition that they pledge loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state.

Another idea to the opposite extreme is to pay Palestinian Authority Arabs to leave Israel.

A third proposed solution is to grant them the status of residents without citizenship.

The fourth idea is to recognize that Palestine is Jordan, where the Arabs in Judea and Samaria could move.

European Union and American officials would be aghast at any of the suggestions, but after 22 years of failed diplomatic attempts to build up a Palestinian Authority that can self-govern and guarantee security for Israel as a neighbor, the peace process in retrospect seems even more far-fetched than Israeli sovereignty.

The Israeli beer industry includes a wide range of brew masters from native Israelis to North American immigrants whose microbreweries can be found across the country from the Golan, Western Galilee and Jezreel Valley, to Ein Hod and Emek Hefer in the north and in the Negev.

In the hills of Judea, Gush Etzion also has its very own brewery known as the Lone Tree Brewery. Established four years ago by David Shire, originally from Glasgow, Scotland and his wife, Miriam from Tunisia, along with an American couple, Yochanan and Susan Levin, the brewery offers a wide array of flavors to the Israeli market.

Most likely the only Scottish brew master in Israel and maybe even in the Middle East, Shire has been living in Israel for the past 30 years.  A biologist, who was studying for a PhD when he first made aliyah while working at Hadassah, Shire made a career switch to landscape gardening and eventually discovered the brewery business as well.

“Back in the UK, you feel as though you must have a certain professional status, but once in Israel, I found that this was largely not the case – it’s acceptable to work in all sorts of jobs. I would rather work in gardening and making beer than in a lab with mice,” Shire told Tazpit News Agency.

Growing up in Scotland, Shire was very familiar with beer and believed that there was a void to fill in the Israeli market. Along with his American counterparts, the Levins, who are also his neighbors in the Neve Daniel community, Shire and his wife discussed one night the possibility of opening a boutique brewery. “We didn’t necessarily drink a lot of beer growing up, but we knew what good beer is supposed to taste like,” said Shire whose mother still lives in Glasgow.

“With that in mind, we wanted to make the best beer possible,” Shire explained, pointing to a periodic table of beer styles tacked on the brewery wall.

The initiative didn’t begin with sweeping expectations. “We started out small, making our own styles of beer based on traditional recipes. The next step was to see if the beer would sell.”

In addition to creating seven unique flavors of beer which include London Pale Ale, Belgian Piraat Ale, California Steam Ale, and Extra Oatmeal Stout, an Irish flavor, Shire and his partners also had to come up with a unique label for their beer. “We wanted a name that would reflect that the beer was crafted in the hills of Judea, and therefore we chose Lone Tree, a symbol of this region.”

The lone tree is a 700 year-old oak tree that stands in Gush Etzion near the Alon Shvut community. The tree became a symbolic landmark to Jewish residents forced to leave behind their communities when Gush Etzion fell to the Jordanian Legion in May 1948. Among the heavy losses, the Jordanians destroyed Kibbutz Kfar Etzion, established in 1935 while also killing its 127 Jewish defenders the day before Israel’s Declaration of Independence. During the 19 years that Gush Etzion was under Jordanian control until Israel’s victory in the 1967 war, the children of Gush Etzion would go to certain observation points in Jerusalem to glimpse the oak tree from afar, dreaming of their return home.

Today, the Lone Tree Brewery, which is located a few minutes away from the famous oak tree, sells its brews across Gush Etzion and Jerusalem, producing a few hundred bottles each month with plans to expand. The brewery also makes specialty beers for Jewish holidays including a popular date and pomegranate beer for Rosh Hashana.

“There is something magical about making beer here in Israel,” adds Shire, pouring a glass of Extra Oatmeal Stout. “When tourists come to visit us, they get to experience phenomenal views of the Judean hills and the coast, soak in the area’s history, all while drinking a quality hand-crafted beer. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

The Lone Tree Brewery is located in the Gush Etzion forest in the Abu-Cleb Recreational Park, a 15-minute drive from Jerusalem.

Private Yitzchak Mizrachi is the only soldier who fell in the battle for Gush Etzion in the War of Independence whose relative have not been located.

During one of the bitterest battles fought by the Haganah prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, 241 Israeli soldiers and civilians were killed in the final battle for Gush Etzion, which finally succumbed to the attacks of Jordanian Legionnaires and local Arabs on the fourth of, May 13, 1948.

The Legionnaires took 320 men and women into captivity, where they were to languish for many months. The next day, on the fifth of Iyar, David Ben Gurion proclaimed Israel’s independence. Gush Etzion was resettled after the Six-Day War in 1967, and many of those who returned to the Gush were children who were evacuated before the falling of Gush Etzion.

There is detailed archival documentation on all those who heroically gave their lives during these acrimonious clashes, except for one, Private Yitzchak Mizrachi.

All that is known is that he served in squad 9 of platoon 6, under the command of the renowned composer Tzvi Ben Yosef.

Until this day, no relative has been tracked down in Israel. This has led those who are involved in the search for information about Private Mizrachi to believe that his family resides abroad.

A note found at the Haganah Museum archives states the exact date of his death and where he died. but someone erased the initial place of death because he thought the information was incorrect. His name was also crossed out and corrected to “Manosy”.

One of the museum managers, Yaron Rosenthal, calls on anyone who knows about him or his family to contact him “so that we will be able to bestow upon him and his relatives the proper honors he deserves as someone who gave his life for us all.”

Rabbi Menachem Froman, a leading and controversial national religious rabbi from the eastern Gush Etzion community of Tekoa, died Monday at the age of 68 after a two-year battle against colon cancer.

Approximately 200 students and followers of the rabbi sang and prayed at his house Sunday night, when Rabbi Froman usually delivered a weekly class on the mystical Zohar.

Rabbi Froman was a paratrooper in the IDF and participated in the restoration of the Western Wall to Israel in the Six-Day War in 1967.

Rabbi Froman was known to be very favorable towards co-existence with Arabs despite his fierce defense of the settlement movement, of which he was a co-founder.

He used to meet with Yasser Arafat and Ahmed Yassin of Hamas, meetings which drew harsh criticism and enthusiastic praise from difference sectors of Israeli society.

He stood by his belief that religious leaders from both the Arab and Jewish communities must be involved in effort to make peace. Rabbi Froman believed that one of the reasons the Oslo Accords failed was leaving religious leaders out of the peace process.

His discussions with Arab leaders included efforts to ease Israeli sanctions on Hamas-controlled Gaza in return for a definitive pledge to stop all rocket and missile attacks on Israel.

He also reached a private agreement, which was not endorsed by the Israeli government, to win the relapse of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, who was freed last November in return for more than 1,000 Palestinian Authority terrorists and security prisoners.

“The root of the problem is Israeli and American arrogance,” he once stated. “If Israeli governments had grasped these opportunities, not only would a great deal of bloodshed been spared and there would be a cease-fire between our two peoples, but there would have been no attack on the World Trade enter, and no American invasion of Iraq.”

An ancient road crosses the length of the Land of Israel , running from South to North. It starts at Be’er Sheva in the northern Negev, climbs up to the Hebron Hills and continues north, via Halhul and Bethlehem, to Jerusalem. The road continues to Ramallah, Nablus and Jenin, and reaches its end in the vicinity of Afula. The “Cross Israel Highway” of those days served Second Temple era pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem from Be’er Sheva and Hebron and is also known as “The Patriarchs’ Route,” named after the forefathers of the nation who traveled it.

Silent witnesses stand by the sides of the segment that passes through Gush Etzion, reminders of the bustling life in this area, over 2000 years ago.

Among these are two ritual baths, mikvahs, which were used by pilgrims on their way to the Temple, that were filled with water as in ancient times, following the heavy rains recently. Another example is the Roman milestone that lies to the side of the path, the kind of stone the Romans used to deploy along the roads in order to mark the distance from the destination.

“The Patriarchs’ Route” in Gush Etzion also passes through an area known as Netzer, located between the Elazar and Alon Shvut communities. The Netzer area is built on terraces that assemble a spectacularly beautiful, green mosaic; green grapes twining alongside old olive trees in plots of varying shapes and sizes, and in the pre-Spring season the Νetzer space looks like a Claude Monet masterpiece: the green background is spotted with the pink and white of the almond trees at the peak of their bloom. But this pastoral bubble bursts the moment we ‘zoom-in’ on the photo, then we discover a real battle for this land and the future of the country, with the innocent plants often standing in as soldiers on the frontline.

Takeover wars

The Oslo Accords divided the Judea, Samaria and Gaza Strip areas into three types of area: Area  ‘A,’ where the major Palestinian cities are located, under full Palestinian Authority civilian and security control; Area ‘B,’ under P.A. civilian control and Israeli security control; and Area ‘C,’ under full Israeli civilian and security control.

A strategic change occurred in the P.A.’s attitude towards this division in 2010: Salam Fayyad’s government decided to ignore it and focus its efforts on Area ‘C.’ The logic behind this move is clear – Areas ‘A’ and ‘B’  are already “in their pockets,” and Area ‘C’  territories are known to be of significant value. Not only do they present 60% of Judea and Samaria, they also serve as buffers between the Palestinian population concentrations. Palestinian presence in ‘C’ Territories could advance an Arab territorial continuity and drive a wedge between the Jewish community blocs.

Fayyad began making statements in the spirit of the new plan, saying that he “does not know how to read the letter ‘C,’” and that all of Judea and Samaria belong to the Palestinian State. Fayyad declared that “the greatest challenge against the occupation and the settlements is to increase the investment and agriculture on the land of area ‘C.’”

The P.A. Prime Minister does not just talk the talk: the Palestinians began diverting economic support to agricultural endeavors in area ‘C’ Territories, and their representatives pressured foreign countries and organizations, who were initially reluctant to support projects in the ‘C’ Territories, into aligning themselves with the new policy. The story of the new strategy from the Salam Fayyad “school of thought” was investigated by Makor Rishon’s Legal Magazine, B’Tze’dek and explained at great length in the past in by Gil Bringer in Makor Rishon (in an article from 13/3/2012).

The ongoing battle for the lands of Netzer, Gush Etzion, is the entire story in miniature. The choice of the location is no less than perfect for the realization of Fayyad’s vision: the land is in ‘C’ Territories, in the very center of Gush Etzion, in the buffer zone between the Elazar and Alon Shvut communities. An Arab takeover of the land will “suffocate” the nearby Jewish communities and prevent them from future growth and expansion. More importantly, it will disrupt the Jewish territorial continuity in Gush Etzion – which is known as “the heart of the consensus,” regarding the land which Israel will retain in any future agreement. The foreign funding for the Arabs’ efforts in Netzer is known, and is even recorded by a sign placed in one of the plots, depicting the “redemption” of 123 acres, courtesy of Holland.

Minutes after the Shabbat began, IDF forces captured four Arabs near the entrance to Kibbutz Migdal Oz in Gush Etzion.

The four were all armed with knives, and during the initial interrogation admitted that they were planning to stab a soldier.

Migdal Oz has been the site of repeated terror attacks emanating from nearby Beit Fajr.

On Friday afternoon, Arabs blocked the entrance to the town of Elazar in Gush Etzion.

On Friday evening, a terrorist was caught infiltrating into the nearby town of Efrat.

H/T Natan Epstein