Justice Minister Tzipi Livni announced on Thursday that the planned upcoming fourth release of terrorists has been cancelled, ostensibly because the Palestinian Authority broke the terms of the peace talk and unilaterally tried to join 15 UN connected international conventions.

In further response, Israel has cancelled all high level communications between Israeli ministers and the PA, and all communications will now be handled an IDF representative.

In addition, Israel has frozen various ongoing cellular communications projects with the PA.

Livni said that if the PA backs down from their unilateral moves, Israel would sit back down with them for further peace talks.

But the PA isn’t interested in talking more, and instead has come up with a list of new, and rather ridiculous preconditions for continuing talks, including: releasing 1200 terrorists, releasing terror chief Marwan Barghouti, a building freeze in eastern Jerusalem, Israel recognizing East Jerusalem as the PA capital, Israel acknowledging the 1967 armistice line with Jordan as the border with the PA, granting Israeli citizenship to 15000 Palestinian Authority citizens, barring the IDF from Area A, giving the PA more authority in Area C, and stopping the weapons blockade on Gaza, and a few more – and that’s just as a precondition to talk.

For more on the demands, please read this article.

Later in the evening, the Gazans launched 3 rockets towards Sderot. They landed in open fields, and no damage or injuries were reported.

Bayit Yehudi Minister Naftali Bennett had his own response to the PA’s threat to join more UN groups, and that is that Abbas is financing terror, and Bennett plans to put Abbas and the PA in the international legal and diplomatic cross-hairs.

The Palestinian Authority is accusing Israel of “blackmail” and instead says it is heading back to the United Nations to appeal for recognition as a sovereign nation if U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry can’t force Israel to release 30 terrorists.

The group comprises the final of four tranches to have been released last Friday from Israeli jails. Included were at least 20 Israeli Arab citizens, a controversial list opposed by nearly all of the ministers in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s coalition government, especially in view of the fact that all of the major concessions since the talks began — as before — seem to have been made by Israel only.

Incensed PA officials rejected the alternate proposal advanced instead of the release last Friday by Israel’s government. Israel allegedly offered to released hundreds more terrorist prisoners if the PA continue final status negotiations beyond the April 29 deadline – but this time take the talks more seriously.

The response of Israel’s “peace partners” was not encouraging.

“Israel is practicing a policy of blackmail and linking its agreement to releasing the fourth tranche of prisoners with the Palestinians accepting an extension of the negotiations,” a PA official told news agencies in Ramallah.

“If Kerry doesn’t provide a clear answer on the release of the 30 prisoners [we] will initiate steps for acceptance to United Nations organizations,” Mustafa Barghouti, an independent PA parliament member, told news agencies Monday night.

The move would be a clear violation of all agreements the PA has made with Israel and the United States.

Since July 2013, Israel has freed 78 PA Arab terrorists and made numerous other concessions that endanger the security of its citizens in “good will gestures” to encourage the PA to remain at the negotiating table.

But the four-stage release of terrorists incarcerated in Israeli jails was conditioned upon the active participation in direct talks by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas — and the Arab leader has not made good on his end of the deal.

It’s an old pattern, this “let’s talk some more about it but I can’t sit down with you until you give me what I want” — a game as beloved, familiar and ingrained in the Middle East as that being played out with Washington by the Iranians in Tehran.

Youngsters and tourists quickly learn the drill in the storefront alleyways of Jerusalem’s Old City market. And it’s profitable and even fun, until it turns deadly.

Survival makes it essential to learn to tell when the game is deadly, and when you can’t, it is equally important to have enough sense to trust your friends to tell you when it is.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has informed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that he is considering another trip to the region to try and patch up the talks.

This past Friday Israel proposed a new deal to extend the talks with the Palestinian Authority past the April 29 deadline in lieu of freeing a final group of 30 PA terrorist prisoners.

There are rumors the proposal includes the release of hundreds of more PA prisoners incarcerated in Israeli jails, but no reports have been confirmed.

PA officials did not reveal the details of the proposal to international news agencies Sunday but said PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is reviewing a draft of the plan.

The final 30 Arab prisoners were to be released from Israeli jails last week as part of a four-step process launched at the outset of the talks on condition the PA actively participated in the negotiations in good faith.

But Israel has seen little reciprocal movement from PA leaders. As a result, the government last week blocked the final tranche, especially since the tranche included 20 Israeli Arab citizens contested by a block of ministers from the start.

PA officials this weekend told the A-Sharq Al-Awsat newspaper they expect the United States to pressure Israel into releasing the terrorists. “The leadership does not want to enter immediate conflict and appear responsible for the breakdown of the negotiation process,” the source said.

Netanyahu has warned U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that his coalition may disintegrate if the prisoners are freed.

Israel will not release the final round of terrorists on Saturday, Palestinian Authority official Jibril Rahoub is claiming, according to an AFP report.

Israel has not reacted to his statement, whether it is true or not, or if Israel is simply delaying the release.

The Israeli government is facing a lot of internal pressure to not release this fourth round of terrorists, which includes Israeli Arabs and some very horrible mass murderers.

The Palestinian Authority says that without the release of these terrorists, they will refuse to extend the U.S. brokered peace talks with Israel.

Israel pledged to the U.S. to release a total of 104 terrorists who murdered women, children, innocent civilians, IDF soldiers, US and Canadian citizens, and even fellow Arabs, in exchange for the Palestinian Authority sitting down to talk. Israel has release 78 terrorists so far.

Unfortunately, Jibril Rajoub’s choice of words may indicate the release is only postponed, and not cancelled.

Government ministers are deeply divided over whether to free a final fourth tranche of 26 Arab terrorists, a group which includes about 20 Israeli Arab citizens.

The move, scheduled for tomorrow as the last of a total of more than 100 Palestinian Authority terrorists, has created a serious coalition crisis for Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

Economy Minister Naftali Bennett said in an interview on Voice of Israel government radio this morning that a majority of ministers are overwhelmingly opposed to the release of Israeli Arab prisoners.

Bennett also maintained that the entire issue of the release “must be renegotiated.”

Intended originally as a “good will gesture” to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, each tranche was to be conditional upon his active participation in direct final status talks with Israel.

But that has not happened, and as the deadline for conclusion of the talks approaches, Abbas is again waffling about his commitment to negotiations, saying he instead intends to return to his starting position of no compromises at all.

The “peace talks” between Israel and the Palestinians are foundering—as usual.  When this last round started, Israel was extorted to release approximately 100 certified Palestinian murderers for the privilege of having the Palestinians meet with Tzipi Livni.  The clock is running out on the talks with nothing concrete—other than John Kerry’s frequent flier miles—to show for it.

In order to continue the “peace process” charade, the Palestinians have again been coaxed to make a ridiculous demand, which has now been thrown at Israel.  The Palestinian Authority wants the release of two major terror leaders:  Marwan Barghouti and Ahmed Sadaat.  The request was made directly to President Obama.  As of the time of this writing, we don’t know the President’s views on the subject or whether he has passed along the request to Israel.

Marwan Barghouti was one of the people responsible for the horrific suicide bombing that twelve years ago changed my life, and that of my then seven-year old son, forever. In an effort to ensure that Barghouti remains in jail, I wrote and sent the following letter:

Hon. Barack H. Obama President of the United States of America White House Washington, D.C.

20 March ’14                                               Sent by FAX

Mr. President:

I am writing for your immediate consideration.  It has been reported in the press and confirmed to me by a Knesset member that President Abbas requested your assistance in securing the release of Marwan Barghouti as a condition for continued peace talks with Israel.  I sincerely request that you please not assist in any way in the release of this unrepentant mass-murderer.  Tomorrow will mark 12 years since our oldest son, then seven years old, and I were wounded in a suicide bombing in downtown Jerusalem.  Yehonathon had the head of a screw pass fully through his right brain, while I had two screws pass through my left arm.  The picture below was taken within minutes of the attack:

Alan Joseph Bauer stands over his son Yehonathon, minutes after they were injured in suicide bombing attack in Jerusalem on March 21, 2002.

The role of Marwan Barghouti in this attack was revealed in indictments against the heads of the Fatah terror cell behind the attack.  The dispatcher was an intelligence officer in the Palestinian Authority; he has moved up three ranks during his incarceration in Israeli prison. His indictment reads in part as follows:

17. On 20 March 2002, Nasser Shawish met in Ramallah with the head of the “Tanzim” of Fatah in the region, Marwan Barghouti. Nasser Shawish passed along to Marwan Barghouti that the accused was ready to send a suicide bomber for the purpose of performing a suicide attack inside the State of Israel. Marwan Barghouti asked to know if the accused and Nasser Shawish needed anything for the purpose of carrying out the planned attack. Though he was answered in the negative, Marwan Barghouti gave Shawish the amount of 600 dollars American.

The media have attempted to portray Marwan Barghouti as some kind of Nelson Mandela.  The truth though is quite the opposite.  Barghouti has never renounced violence as a legitimate means for advancing political goals, and he has never shown any remorse for his prolific terror activities that led to a forty-count indictment against him.  Instead, he has encouraged additional “resistance” (i.e., terror) from his jail cell.  Barghouti’s release may convince the Palestinians to sit around the table for an extra couple of months, but it will not bring peace.  Barghouti’s presence outside of jail will be a driver for new Fatah terror activity, as Barghouti’s only card is terror, a point reinforced by confessions of his lieutenants from the Second Intifada.

Mr. President, we are not the only American citizens to be harmed by the actions of Marwan Barghouti.  His continued incarceration is a small consolation for American terror victims like ourselves.  We cannot re-wind the clock and make the injuries and suffering disappear; the one thing we can do is to pursue justice and to do everything in our power to prevent terrorists from striking again. As such, I ask you Mr. President to please make clear to President Abbas that the US will not support or encourage the release of such a dangerous terrorist as Marwan Barghouti.

Mr. President, as a child growing up just outside of Chicago, I used to watch the CTA trains go into the Linden Street station.  On the side was painted:  The Spirit of Chicago—I Will.  I have worked in vain for the past eight years to convince officials at DoJ and the FBI to prosecute Barghouti and other terrorists who killed and maimed over ten dozen American citizens during the Second Intifada.  Your assistance in keeping Barghouti in jail would be an enormous boost to these efforts on behalf of my family and my fellow American citizens.

With the most sincere of thanks for your time and consideration,

/Alan J. Bauer/

Alan Joseph Bauer, Ph.D.

Alanjoseph.bauer@gmail.com
49 Ussishkin Street, Jerusalem 94542 Israel

CC Heather Cartwright, DoJ
Lisa Skolnick, FBI
Hon. Daniel Shapiro, Ambassador
Hon. Ted Poe, US Congress
Hon. Mark Kirk, US Senate

According to a report on Israel Radio, the US is weighing the release of Jonathan Pollard in order to prevent Kerry’s peace talks from collapsing.

As JewishPress.com reported last week, according to statements from senior officials within the Palestinian Authority, the PA is only continuing with peace talks in order to free more terrorists from Israeli jails.

Coalition members from the Likud and Bayit Yehudi have made explicit threats that would destabilize the coalition government if the upcoming release of terrorists goes through.

Netanyahu is reportedly feeling the pressure from his ministers and coalition partners, and may not release the terrorists.

It appears that the US might be willing to:

• free Pollard to reduce internal pressures on Netanyahu,

• to convince Netanyahu to release the terrorists,

• to convince the Palestinian Authority to extend the talks,

• to prevent Kerry’s peace talks from collapsing on April 29th,

• to prevent another major foreign policy failure for Obama,

• so Kerry and Obama can get a Nobel prize,

• Chad Gadya, Chad Gadya.

Peace in the Middle East between Israel and its neighbors—including the Palestinians—is generally described as “elusive.” Why have forty years of active efforts not led to permanent peace in the region? Why 20 years after Oslo is there no great sign that peace stands ready to break out between the Palestinians and Israelis? The simple answer is that parties are negotiating on different planes that can never intersect.

Let’s analyze the ostensible goals of the parties to the current round of talks. The Israelis want peace and one can see why: lower regional threats, less military spending, greater regional cooperation, increased tourism revenue, export of Israeli technology, increased trade with Europe and more. What do the Palestinians get in the peace deal? They get less than half of the land they believe they deserve. They can look forward to a million or more Arab “refugees” showing up, expecting housing, food, work, and schools. They will be saddled with building an economy without natural resources or a strong technical ethos, while international donations will dry up (especially from Muslim countries, for the sin of recognizing a Jewish state). In short, the Israelis have much to gain from peace, while the Palestinian leaders who are running their side of the talks have much to lose.

Additionally, Israelis negotiate like Americans and Europeans: they try to cut a deal, but if it does not work, then they fall back to the present conditions. The Palestinians work in a different way: either they get what they want, or they pull out the terror card. Lawyers who reviewed signed confessions of Marwan Barghouti’s lieutenants found a singular pattern: if negotiations in the Arafat period were going well, then Tanzim and the like were told to lay low. If the Israelis were intransigent—on borders, refugees, or the like—then the order was given to attack. Negotiations cannot proceed when one side is willing to take a much greater liberty than the other side is willing to entertain. Picture if one football team had to respect the out-of-bound lines, while the other did not. The Israelis might walk away from talks, but they would not order the murder of Palestinian citizens, leftist propaganda aside. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are more than comfortable using attacks on Israeli citizens as a means to get what they want at the negotiating table—and this is a point that Americans and Europeans diplomats have never understood. They are convinced that everyone thinks like they do: peace is always good, and the rules of negotiations exclude violence between sides.

The reason for this failed understanding is cultural. Let’s look back at the Nazis, some of the greatest murderers ever. One notes that no German soldier was ever commanded to either kill or injure himself in order to gas, shoot, blow up, torch or otherwise kill a Jew. The Nazis were sadists and invented horrific ways to kill Jewish men, women and children; still, they would not have considered personal bodily harm or worse as being required to kill a Jew. The Palestinians, on the other hand, not only are active practitioners of suicide bombings, but polls still show that their citizenry supports such activities. We of a Western mind-frame find it impossible to consider such an act—whom do we hate so much that we would be willing to undertake such horrific activity? Are there any children or aged citizens of any country that we would hope to obliterate with flying shrapnel so as to somehow exact revenge on somebody else who has some tenuous relationship to the ones blown up? I have asked these questions to student groups visiting from the US; no one can answer in the affirmative.
This week marked another gratuitous prisoner release by Israel in the ersatz peace process.

These releases have generally been categorized as “confidence building measures.” Is there anyone who could define or identify any confidence built by releasing 26 murderers? The Palestinians partied with the released convicts and demanded the release of all Palestinian prisoners; Israelis felt anguish at the release and saw protests and complaints against the release of more murderers. What confidence was built by this act? None. The prisoner release is a bribe to the Palestinian leaders to continue with the worthless process of peace-making, so that they can show their base that they are getting something from the talks. The terrorists are free, the Palestinians only want more, and the Israeli leadership is put in the uncomfortable position of explaining why murderers walk free, with nothing to show for it. The Palestinians get their terrorists back, but the act has no tangible effect on the direction, good will or pace of the negotiations.

The current peace talks will enjoy the same fate as their predecessors; and ditto for any future talks. The talks will break down because even the most left-wing Israeli politician is not yet ready to commit national suicide to accommodate the minimal Palestinian demands on dividing Jerusalem, accepting indefensible borders, and welcoming anything more than some token refugees. The Palestinians will blame the Israelis, as will most of the international community. Israel will point the finger at an intransigent Palestinian Authority, and we’ll wait for the whole process to start again sometime in the future.

I would argue that the above analysis is pragmatic and not in the least pessimistic. The Palestinians have too much to lose by making peace and also play by rules not understood or appreciated by the likes of John Kerry or Catherine Ashton. The simple fact is that the Palestinian Authority today enjoys large contributions from international donors and avoids all responsibility for building a functional society designed to absorb four generations of self-made Palestinian “refugees” living in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and the like. Israel looks forward to a rosier future, one that would include peace; the Palestinian cannot see getting a better deal than they have in the present. And for that, negotiations will—again—go nowhere, however much John Kerry and his Israeli partners try to tell us otherwise.