An Israeli civilian, after being attacked by Arab stone throwers on Tuesday near the Peduel-Eli traffic circle, decided to take action.

The man chased down and captured one of the stone thrower. The terrorist was then turned over to Israeli security forces.

On occasion, reading how the news that’s dearest to our own heart is reported by a source that is diametrically opposed to our position can be an eye opening experience. So, here’s Gulf News reported our own shocking story about the fact there are no housing starts in Jerusalem, and that the Netanyahu government—that right wing, pro-settlement government so many of us voted for—has been keeping a near-perfect housing freeze, at least for Jews. Arabs are a different story.

So, I’m not changing a word, this is strictly a copy and paste job:

Israel Freezes New Colony Projects

Housing minister says move may be temporary to placate US Secretary of State

Occupied Jerusalem: Israel has frozen nearly all housing starts in colonies in the West Bank and Occupied East Jerusalem, Housing Minister Uri Ariel said on Tuesday, in an apparent bid to help US efforts to revive peace talks with the Palestinians.

The step, confirmed several weeks ago by the Israel’s anti-colony Peace Now movement, has had no impact on construction already under way in colonies – projects that have raised Palestinian concern and drawn international condemnation.

Colony construction on Palestinian land was the main reason for the breakdown of US-sponsored negotiations in 2010 and has been cited as a stumbling block to Secretary of State John Kerry’s latest bid to restart talks.

“I’ll give you the facts: in Jerusalem, since the beginning of the year, there have been no tenders except for one and the same goes for Judea and Samaria,” Ariel, using the Biblical names for the Israeli-occupied West Bank, told Army Radio. Ariel, a member of the pro-colonist Jewish Home party, said he believed the step was temporary and that he was working to end it.

All right, you fellow colonists, now you know what’s down. It appears there’s more of an understanding between Prime Minister Netanyahu’s office and Gulf News, than there is between Netanyahu and Minister Uri Ariel.

With SodaStream, we could have saved 500 million bottles on Game Day alone. If you love the bubbles set them free.”

PepsiCo is negotiating with Israeli-based SodaStream to buy out the firm for $2 billion, according to the Israeli Calcalist business newspaper. SodaStream’s shares in Germany shot up nearly 20 percent after the report.

SodaStream, listed on NASDAQ, manufactures machines that make carbonated drinks from tap water and also produces flavors, carbon dioxide refills and re-usable bottles.

Officials at the two companies refused to comment on the report or were not available.

SodaStream has become a big hit in the United States, where the company “stole the show” with its commercials during the Super Bowl this year, drawing bitter complaints from carbonated beverage companies, which applied pressure to CBS for SodaStream to tone down its message  that buying carbonated beverages in plastic bottles is bad for the environment. Pepsi and Coke also did not like the idea of SodaStream making fun of their companies, and the original version of the commercial was canned but can be seen below

A buyout by PepsiCo, or possibly by Coca Cola if SodaStream wants to try for a larger purchase, could place the company’s facility in Maaleh Adumim, east of Jerusalem, in jeopardy.

Soda Stream is a favorite target of the Boycott Israel movement because of the plant’s location beyond the old borders of Israel. The rub, as Lori Lowenthal Marcus explained in an article Tuesday night, is that SodaStream’s American-born CEO Daniel Birnbaum promotes hiring and treating Palestinian Authority Arabs just like Jews.

Both Arab and Jews share the company dining hall in Maaleh Adumim, and there are facilities for both Muslim ands Jews to pray.

The Maaleh Adumim factory employs approximately 900 Arabs from Judea and Samaria. “Everyone works together – Palestinians, Russians, Jews,” a Palestinian employee named Rasim at the Maaleh Adumim site previously has been quoted as saying. “Everything is OK. I always work with Jews. Everyone works together, so of course we’re friends.”

The report of a possible buyout sent the shekel-dollar rate down approximately half a percentage point, to below 3.65 shekels to the dollar, because of the possible injection of $2 billion worth of shekels.

Palestinian Authority organizers in Ramallah and Gaza published on Monday plans for massive protests at the Temporary Armistice borders that existed from 1948 until the Six-Day War in 1967, on the same day that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has declared a deadline for an agreement by PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Israel to resume direct talks.

The protests and the deadline are on Friday, June 7, which also is the anniversary of the return of the Temple Mount to Jewish hands after 2,000 years.

It might have been a brainstorm by someone in the State Dept. to choose the date as being symbolic for enemies to make up and live in peace with each other forever.

If so, it illustrates to the Nth degree how little American policymakers understand the Israeli-Arab struggle, let alone the entire Middle East.

If the timing was a coincidence, it shows how totally inept they are.

Organizers of the protests plan simultaneous demonstrations in Jordan and other Arab countries.

In Israel, Arabs have been told to arrive in large numbers towards the old borders of Israel that existed as the Temporary Armistice Lines until the Six-Day War in 1967.

Protests are planned at the Kalandia checkpoint at northern Jerusalem, at the Damascus Gate in the Old City, Rachel’s Tomb, which is several hundred yards from the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Jerusalem and which borders Bethlehem, in northern Gaza near the security fence, and at the Jordanian border.

Previous mass marches have been a total failure, but this time the stakes are high. If Abbas actually does back down and agree to speak with Israel without pre-conditions, his life literally could be in danger. If he does not, he risks the total wrath of the United States, but at this point, he might not care.

“Despite his good intentions, Kerry so far looks like a naive and ham-handed diplomat who has been acting like a bull in the china shop of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” wrote Barak Ravid, diplomatic correspondent for Haaretz.

“It is a Lone-Ranger type of effort so far,” said Marwan Muasher, a former Jordanian foreign minister who is now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank, quoted by Reuters correspondent Arshad Mohamed, who covers the State Dept.

“The perception in the region is this is a process of buying time … that the White House is not serious about committing to what it takes to get this issue resolved,” Muasher added. “I don’t think people are questioning the motives of Kerry, everyone thinks he is serious about this – and he is serious about this – but he is just acting alone.”

That is the truth. Kerry is alone in the Middle East, a fish out of water.

When Kerry talks to Abbas, he is talking to a wall, a man who for eight years has carefully and cleverly carried out a single-minded strategy of ”all or nothing” while assuming that the world really loves the Arabs and does not simply support its agenda because it cannot stomach dealing with a Jewish state that is not downtrodden.

When Kerry talks with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, he is speaking with a man who knows that the State Dept. cannot see past its nose. Israel has dangerously played the “peace process” game with the assumption, proven correct for 65 years, that the Arabs will shoot themselves in the foot in the end.

On Friday, the best that Kerry can hope for is extending his June 7 deadline.

Maybe he will schedule the next one for November 29, the day that the United Nations recognized the re-establishment of Israel.

Here is a small sampling from the list of overnight terror attacks.

A number of Israelis were lightly injured overnight, and their cars damaged, due to stone throwing at their cars near the Beitar-60 (Hussein) junction in Gush Etzion. Stone throwing in other areas of Judea and Samaria were reported, but without injuries.

Five firebombs were thrown near Yatir and Karmei Tzur. The Karmei Tzur fire was put out by the town’s security team.

Arabs also lit a fire near Bat Ayin.

Arabs tried to block the road at Tzomet HaDoar to Gush Talmonim.

Originally published at the Gatestone Institute.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is trying to bribe the Palestinians by offering them economic projects in return for political concessions, Palestinian Authority officials claim.

The claim was made in response to Kerry’s plan for peace in the Middle East, which envisages a $4 billion investment in the Palestinian private sector.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum conference at the Dead Sea, Kerry said that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

But Kerry’s plan to boost the Palestinian economy has hardly impressed the Palestinian Authority leadership.

The Palestinians say that Kerry and President Barack Obama have convinced themselves that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be solved through economic prosperity.

But Mohamed Mustafa, chairman of the PLO’s Palestine Investment Fund, a body established in 2003 as an independent investment company to strengthen the Palestinian economy through strategic investments, said that Kerry was wrong to believe that the Palestinian Authority would make political concessions in return for money.

Mustafa said that any economic plan should be part of a political framework that would ensure a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines, including east Jerusalem, and guarantee the “right of return” for Palestinian refugees to their former homes inside Israel.

Palestinian Authority officials say that Kerry has been focusing on boosting the Palestinian economy, but that he still has not come forward with a new initiative to revive the peace talks with Israel. “There is no such thing as economic peace,” Saeb Erekat, another leading official, explained. “The political and economic factors are intertwined and go together.”

Hamas has also rejected Kerry’s economic plan to help the Palestinian economy. Hams has dubbed it a deception on the part of the U.S. Administration.

This is not the first time that the Americans or the Europeans try playing the economic card in an effort to get the Palestinians to make concessions to Israel. Billions of dollars that were given to the Palestinians over the past two decades have not had a moderating effect on any Palestinian.

The Americans and Europeans are clearly not listening to what the Palestinians are telling them: that dollars and euros will not change the hearts and minds of the people.

This does not mean, of course, that the Palestinians will refuse what they are being offered. They will take the money, but at the end of the day, they will continue to stick to their demands, including the “right of return” of Palestinian refugees and a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines.

In wake of the Palestinian reactions to Kerry’s “bribes,” it is hard to see how Palestinian Authority leader will be able to return to the negotiating table with Israel. If Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accepts Kerry’s economic plan and resumes peace talks with Israel, he will be accused of “selling out” to Israel and the U.S. in return for money.

Kerry’s talk about boosting the Palestinian economy has only complicated his mission of seeking to bring Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. It would be better if the Americans and Europeans started listening to what the Palestinians are telling them out loud and in public.

Originally published at the Gatestone Institute.

On Thursday, Arabs launched an attack on Israelis in and near Yitzhar. It began when they ignited a large fire near an IDF tent encampment in the hope the wind would help burn down the tents.

When Yitzhar residents and soldiers came over to put out the fire, the Arabs attacked them with a barrage of stones.

When the IDF failed to properly prevent the Arabs from attacking them, the residents of Yitzhar began to throw stones back at their attackers. At least one Arab terrorist was hurt by a stone.

In the meantime, the fire spread and soon reached the olive groves of another nearby Arab village, where dozens of Arab owned trees were burned down.

There is this absurd concept in the media that stone throwing can’t really hurt, it’s just their expressing their anger.

Rocks kill. Rocks…what a silly word – they are throwing boulders…at cars…with children in them. Several children have been hurt, even killed, little Yonatan Palmer, only 1  year old. Yehuda Shoham…and others. To this day, Adele Biton remains in critical condition…she’s three years old.

This is what a stone can do… it’s time to let the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) do what it can do…what it needs to do…to protect our citizens.