On Wednesday, for the first time in a year, Deputy Speaker of the Knesset, Moshe Feiglin was allowed to go up to the Temple Mount and pray, after having been forbidden to go up to the holy site by Prime Minister Netanyahu a year ago.

The visit was done under heavy police guard.

The Waqf and Arabs on the Jewish holy site did not cause any disruptions or violence, for a change.

Moshe Feiglin said, “I see my ascension to the Temple Mount as the first step towards returning full Israeli sovereignty to the Temple Mount. The Israeli police proved that when they receive the correct orders they are able to properly fulfill them.”

Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein helped mediate with the police to make Feiglin’s visit possible.

This coming Tuesday, the Knesset will be discussing the issue of Israeli sovereignty on the Temple Mount.

Feiglin hopes that the Knesset will send a clear message that Jews should be allowed to go up the Temple from any gate.

Jews are currently banned from praying on the Temple Mount, when they are allowed to even go up.

The police also routinely harass and arrest religious Jews who go up to the Temple Mount.

The Obama administration’s next step in satisfying the Palestinian Authority is to demand that Israel clamp a building freeze on Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria that it assumes eventually will be destroyed and whose families will be expelled, Army Radio reported Wednesday.

The radio network quoted unnamed American negotiators as saying that a partial building freeze will be necessary to coax PA  chairman Mahmoud Abbas  into continuing  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s peace talk strategy, which has been a thin camouflage for forcing Israel to accept most of Abbas’ conditions for the creation of the Palestinian Authority as a country.

So far, Kerry has not demanded or suggested that Abbas make any moves to stop incitement, control terror, recognize Israel as a Jewish state, accept the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria, or forfeit all demands that Israel accept foreign Arabs immigrants.

The report came hours before  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with Abbas in Paris.

The office of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has not responded to the report, and if reporters ask the U.S. State Dept. about it at today’s daily press session, they will undoubtedly receive the same answer to every other rumor – “no comment” but stated in approximately 200 words of a song and dance.

Netanyahu cannot be expected to reject anything, given his lengthy record of capitulating on almost every issue in years of off-and-on discussions with the Palestinian Authority and Obama administration officials.

The only red line that Netanyahu has held is the demand that Abbas call Israel a Jewish state, a questionable condition that makes Israel appear anywhere from proud to silly, depending on one’s view.

The stakes get higher each time a concession is made. Agreeing to freeze construction for Jews in outlying Jewish communities would be a de facto surrender of all Jews living there. On paper, the Prime Minister could argue that if Kerry’s efforts fail, Israel would renew construction.

But history shows that every concession by Israel becomes another fact on the ground that allows negotiations to drag on until another concession is demanded,

If Netanyahu were to agree, the coalition government could crumble, leaving Netanyahu with the option of calling elections or risking a break-up of the Likud-Beiteinu party and chancing the success of forming a new government with Labor and the Haredi Shas and United Torah Judaism parties.

If the report in Army radio is a trial balloon and Netanyahu doesn’t buy it, it is going to burst. Once these kinds of ideas are floated, they become a firm condition for Abbas, who so far has been able to depend on Kerry to most of his negotiating with Israel.

The entire “peace talk” marathon is getting messier and messier for Israel. It agreed to start the “nine-month” process last July by freeing 104 terrorists, in four batches.

Ever since that first show of weakness, Netanyahu’s positions have fallen like dominoes because he  is negotiating from weakness and with one hand tied behind his back.

Kerry knows it and is squeezing him for political blood.

Many years ago, the late humorist songwriter Chaim Cheffer wrote a seemingly innocuous ditty called “How Did the Flea Rise Up,” about this industrious flea who may have been born in a mouse’s fur, but he knew he was meant for larger animals, and so he kept rising up the ranks, to a doggie, then to a donkey (he hated that one because donkeys have to work), moved up to a horse and then, finally, made it to the government.

It was sung by the satirical group Mo’adon Hateatron (Theater Club), became a hit, and everybody in Israel, but everybody, knew it was about Shimon Peres, the indefatigable climber. According to Cheffer himself, who devoted part of his video last will to this song, Peres himself knew it too, which is why he and the gifted lyricist were not very close.

It’s all I could think about this morning.

Shimon Peres’s term is coming to an end (not a minute too soon, if you ask me, but few do) this July. This was supposed to conclude a career that began with him carrying Ben Gurion’s attaché case and making coffee, and ended with repeated failed bids to win the Prime Minister’s seat all to himself (he did share it with Likud’s Yitzhak Shamir), then some more back stabbing and more dirty tricks, and then the presidential palace, which he successfully incorporated into the promotional machine that bears his name (the Peres Center for Peace—for wire transfers include SWIFT# WFBIUS6S)…

It was all supposed to be over for the country’s favorite flea, and then I saw the reports about the new maneuver in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, to change the way Israel receives its presidents. According to Army Radio, the new plan is to let the voters pick directly, through a popular vote, their symbolic figure who has no real function other than whatever hits his fancy.

OK, there’s one constitutional function for the Israeli president: after an election, he or she meet with all the new Knesset factions, and collect from them recommendations as to whom should be tapped to build the next coalition. The law determines that it must be the MK with the best chance to form a government, the president’s role is largely a formality. As is the fact that he signs the laws and treaties passed by the Knesset. Even pardons must be approved by the Minister of Justice, who has the power to veto a presidential pardon, if it’s been deemed unethical.

Because the role is strictly ceremonial, the Jewish equivalent of the Queen of England, the president has been selected, rather than elected, by the Knesset. Occasionally this process has included a floor fight, but no one, until this morning, has seriously considered picking the president through a popular vote. It’s just not worth it.

Enter the only other equally indefatigable politician in Israel’s history: Benjamin Netanyahu. As of today, in addition to all the other challenges he’s facing at home and abroad, Bibi is now thinking of changing the constitution regarding picking a president.

In Israel, you see, what we do to change the constitution is Bibi says “I want this change in the constitution” and we vote on it and it passes.

Very dynamic country, Israel.

Anyway, government sources have confirmed to Walla that it’s really the case, and that Bibi wants direct elections for president, which means that legislation covering this couldn’t possibly be ready in time for the vote this July, so Shimon will get to rule another year.

Two mortar shells exploded in open areas in the central Golan Heights Tuesday afternoon, shortly after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and his entourage left the area following a visit.

No one was injured, and no damage was reported.

It is not known if Syrian soldiers or rebels were the source of the mortar fire and if they intentionally aimed at Israel after learning of the visit by the Prime Minister.

Sniper fire and mortar shell attacks have been frequent events in the Golan Heights during the past year of conflict in the Syrian civil war.

The Golan Heights “divides the good from the bad,” meaning Iran, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday during a visit to the region along with Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz.

“On the day when talks between the major powers and Iran are being opened in Vienna, it is important that the world sees the pictures from this place, which divides the good that is in the world from the bad,” the Prime Minister said.

“The good part is that Israel is saving the lives of those who have been wounded in the daily slaughter that is being perpetrated in Syria,” he continued. “This is the true face of Israel. The bad part is that Iran is arming those who are carrying out the slaughter. This is the true face of Iran.

“All of the children who have been injured, to say nothing of those who have been killed, were injured as a result of Iran’s arming, financing and training the Assad regime in the massacres that it is perpetrating. From here, I would like to tell the world, today, as the talks between the major powers and Iran are being resumed, that Iran has changed neither its aggressive policy nor its brutal character. Iran is continuing to support the Assad regime which is slaughtering its own people.”

Anyone who wants to boycott Israel is an anti-Semite, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Monday night in comments to the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem.

“In the past anti-Semites boycotted Jewish businesses, and today they call for the boycott of the Jewish state, and by the way, only the Jewish state,” Netanyahu said. “I think that it is important that the boycotters be exposed for what they are, they are classical anti-Semites in modern garb.”

His hard-hitting statements came  in the wake of recent disinvestment of Israeli firms and an outright warning by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that Israel faces boycotts if it does not come to terms with most of the Arab world’s demands. The Obama administration supports nearly all of the Arab conditions for the establishment of the Palestinian Authority as a new Arab country on land where hundreds of thousands of Jews would be expelled from their homes.

The time has come to “delegitimize the delegitimizers,” the Prime Minister asserted.

The Boycott Israel movement has hit some snags lately, with entertainers such as Neil Young refusing to cancel a scheduled gig, actress Scarlett Johansson sticking to her guns as a paid ambassador for the SodaStream company that has a factory at a location in Judea and Samaria, and more than 200 universities disavowing the academic boycott approved by the American Studies Association.

Netanyahu said in his remarks that Israel’s successful high-tech industry is one of the country’s most effective weapons to fight the Boycott Israel movement.

Previous efforts to boycott all Israeli products failed after the supporters realized they would have to do without patented and generic drugs produced by Israel’s Teva Pharmaceuticals and without computers that use chips produced by Intel’s giant facility in Israel.

The son of Benjamin Netanyahu simply is only “studying” with his non-Jewish Norwegian girlfriend and is not dating her, sources in the Prime Minister’s office told the Shas Haredi party.

Earlier this year, a picture of Yair and Sandra Leikanger, 25, who both study at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, showed them together, and he recently visited her in Norway.

Prime Minister Netanyahu now denies the earlier report that he told the Norwegian Prime Minister in Davos last week about the relationship, which was headlined in Norway’s newspapers.

Aryeh Deri, head of the Shas party, told an Israeli radio station after the initial report, “I know friends of mine who invest tens of millions and more, hundreds of millions to fight assimilation in the world. If God forbid it’s true, woe to us…. It is no longer a personal matter — it is a symbol of the Jewish people.”

Whether Prime Minister Netanyahu has carried out damage control or the couple really has nothing going on between putting theirs together to study, the shock waves are enough to convince Yair to find another study partner, or, if h really s dating Sandra, to start her on the road to an Orthodox version.

JTA contributed to this report.

The furor over remarks by  Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon about  U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry show that the Palestinian Authority-Israeli “quality that they all share, so stupendously in an exhibitionist way, is to explain why it’s the U.S.’s fault,”

U.S.-Israel relations expert Alon Pinkas told NBC World News.

The Yediot Acharonot journalist who wrote the original report leaking Ya’alon’s remarks that Kerry among other things, has a “There is something refreshing and far more important in those remarks than courtesy and niceties — straight and direct talk with the citizens of Israel,” Simon Schaffer wrote, adding that Kerry “has nearly completely adopted the Palestinians’ position.”

“It is no secret that Netanyahu thinks the very same things, except that Ya’alon, as opposed to Netanyahu, is unwilling to be party to the sham surrounding the talks with the American secretary of state.”