WarSclerotic

Happy New Year! From the IDF…. – YouTube.

2013 was a momentous year for the IDF.

Through all of the challenges and celebrations, we remained focused on our supreme goal:

To defend the people of Israel.

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Exclusive: US “framework” calls for 80,000 Israeli West Bank evacuations to the big settlement blocs.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 31, 2013, 9:34 AM (IDT)

John Kerry after Geneva accord with Iran

The State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in Washington Tuesday, Dec. 31, that Secretary John Kerry would discuss with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas a “proposed framework” to serve as “a guideline for addressing all core issues” in the decades-long dispute.

“Some people say this would be an interim agreement. No, that’s not the case,” she said. The core issues she listed were “borders between Israel and a future Palestine, security arrangements, the fate of Palestinian refugees and conflicting claims to the holy city of Jerusalem.”
Kerry leaves for Israel and Ramallah on New Year’s Day to continue his shuttle, after Monday night, Dec. 30, Israel released from jail 26 Palestinian terrorists serving life sentences for murder.
debkafile reported earlier that the US Secretary does not expect Israeli and Palestinian leaders to approve the proposed framework – only to contribute their comments. We also reported that Abbas had indicated to the Secretary that that Palestinians were preparing to reject his proposals by demanding their referral to the various pan-Arab forums.

DEBKA Weekly No. 616 of Dec. 20 was first to divulge the nine points of the unpublished draft Kerry planned to present to Israeli and Palestinian leaders this week. Since then, certain amendments were introduced – especially in relation to Israel’s military presence in the Jordan Valley and Judea and Samaria.  The document continues to be molded by Kerry’s ongoing back-and-forth communications with the two parties.
Nevertheless, the nine points disclosed hereunder stand as the basic guidelines of the proposed US framework:

Israel hands over 92.8 pc of West Bank to Palestinians

1. Nearly all its content draws on the proposal Ehud Olmert, then Prime Minister, submitted to Abbas on Aug. 31, 2008, which he never accepted; nor was it approved by any Israeli authority.

2. Territory:  Israel will annex 6.8% of the West Bank including the four main settlement blocs of Gush Etzion with Efrata; Maale Adummim; Givat Zeev;and Ariel, as well as all of the “settlements” of East Jerusalem and Har Homa – in exchange for the equivalent of 5.5% of Israeli territory.
3. The Safe Passage:  The territorial link between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank would cut through southern Israel and remain under Israeli sovereignty and Palestinian control.

Our sources add that out of all other options, the American sponsors of the accord prefer to build an express railway line from Gaza to Hebron, without stops, which would be paid for by Washington. Abbas has already informed John Kerry that he wants the train to go all the way to Ramallah.
There will be a special road connecting Bethlehem with Ramallah that bypasses East Jerusalem. This is mostly likely the same route currently planned to go around Maaleh Adummim.
Since the safe passage will cross through Israeli, accounting for 1% of its territory, this area will be deducted from the land Israel concedes, leaving 4.54% for the land swap with the Palestinians.
4. Jerusalem:  East Jerusalem will be divided territorially along the lines of the Clinton Parameters with the exception of the “Holy Basin,” which comprises 0.04% of the West Bank.

Sovereignty over this ancient heart of Jerusalem, with its unique and historic concentration of Jewish, Christian and Muslim shrines, will pass to an international commission comprised of the US, Israel, the Palestinians, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
5. Refugees:  This issue will be addressed according to guidelines proposed by President Bill Clinton at Camp David in the year 2000 – and rejected by Yasser Arafat.
An International Foundation will be established to resettle the bulk of the Palestinian refugees in Canada and Australia, except for a small portion to be accepted in Israel in the framework of family reunification.

6. Security:  The Olmert package made no mention of security. However the Kerry draft deals extensively with this issue and Israel’s concerns. It calls for the evacuation of all 10,000 Jewish settlers from the Jordan Valley leaving behind a chain of posts along the Jordan River. Security corridors cutting through the West Bank will maintain their land and operational links with Israel.
Border crossings will be set up between Palestine and Jordan with an Israeli security presence. The security section of the draft assigns the use of West Bank and Gaza airspace by Israel and the Palestinians. There will be no Israeli military presence inside the Palestinian state.

7. Taxes: The present arrangement for Israel to collect customs levies and distribute the revenues to the Palestinians will continue. (debkafile: That is about the only clause which the Palestinians accept.) Israel will carry out security checks on goods bound for Palestinian that are unloaded at Haifa and Ashdod ports, and levy customs at rates fixed by the Palestinians to be disbursed in the Palestinian state.

8. Settlements:  Eighty percent of all Jewish settlers on the West Bank will be confined to the major settlement blocs as defined in 2. The remaining 20% amounting, according to American calculations to 80,000 people, will have to decide on their own whether they prefer to stay where they are under Palestinian rule or move to Israel.

debkafile’s sources report that Secretary Kerry advised the Israeli Prime Minister bluntly that he need not promise to force settlers to leave their homes – as the Sharon government did when he executed the unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005. Netanyahu replied that it was unacceptable for Israel to abandon the settlers to their fate. He therefore proposed that instead of forcing them to cross back into Israel, they would be absorbed in the larger settlement blocs remaining under Israeli sovereignty.

9. Timelines:  Different timetables are proposed in the US framework for implementing different sections: The Palestinian leader says he is willing to give Israel three years as a transition period for relocating settlers.
When he submitted the paper to the Israeli and Palestinian leaders earlier this month, the Secretary of State told them that he saw no point in the two negotiating teams holding meetings consumed by interminable debates on one point or another. He therefore asked both parties to henceforth send him their comments in writing.

Our World: Empowering Palestinians who reject Israel’s right to exist | JPost | Israel News.

12/30/2013 22:02

“Today a core goal of US Middle East policy is to secure the release of Palestinian mass murderers from Israeli prisons.”

US Secretary of State John Kerry will arrive in Israel for his 14th visit this week. And to assure that his stay will be a happy one, Saturday night the government approved the release of 26 more Palestinian mass murderers from prison. This will please Kerry because today a core goal of US Middle East policy is to secure the release of Palestinian mass murderers from Israeli prisons.

That’s right. The same America that until a few years ago led the free world in the global war against terror, now conditions its support for Israel, its chief regional ally in that war, on the Jewish state’s willingness to release unrepentant, mass murdering terrorists back into Palestinian society.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but it ought to go without saying that this policy hinders, rather than advances the cause of peace. It is impossible to rationally claim that by coercing Israel into releasing people like Juma Ibrahim Juma Adam and Mahmoud Salam Saliman Abu Karbish that the US is advancing the cause of peace.

In 1992, the two men firebombed a civilian bus, murdering Rachel Weiss, who was nine months pregnant, and three of her pre-school aged children, as well as IDF soldier David Delarosa, who tried to save them.

They were released on Monday, due to US pressure on Israel and received back home to heroes’ welcomes. Their freedom empowers Palestinians who reject Israel’s right to exist and seek its destruction through acts of genocide against its Jewish citizens.

Indeed, their release all but guarantees that the new round of terror war that Kerry threatened Israelis would break out if we aren’t forthcoming to PLO demands, will take place. In other words, by supporting the release of terrorists from prison, the US government is enabling the next round of the Palestinian terror war against Israel.

Beyond that, both the Palestinian demand for the terrorist releases, and the US support for those releases make a mockery of the whole concept of the two-state solution. A society that insists on the release from prison of its worst, most prolific murderers is not a society with any interest in making peace with the society targeted and victimized by their crimes.

And US support for this Palestinian demand puts paid to Kerry and President Barack Obama’s claims that they seek a peaceful resolution of the Palestinian conflict with Israel.

The Palestinians’ support for terrorists doesn’t merely demonstrate their ill-intentions. It shows that the whole peace process that has become the centerpiece of US Middle East policy is based on a fiction.

When Israel agreed to accept the PLO as its partner in peacemaking two decades ago, that agreement was predicated on the terror group’s pledge to abjure further terrorism and to cooperate with Israel in fighting and defeating terrorists within Palestinian society. Without that pledge Israel would never have agreed to recognize the PLO . And that pledge, as we were reminded yet again on Monday, was a complete lie.

Then there is the international legal aspect to the Palestinian demand for Israel to free terrorists, and to the US support for this demand. Binding UN Security Council resolution 1373 requires all states to “Deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist acts, or provide safe havens.”

So by sheltering terrorists the Palestinian Authority stands in breach of binding international law. And by supporting the PA ’s sheltering of those terrorists, by coercing Israel into releasing them, the US has placed itself in a deeply problematic position in relation to international law. It has also forced Israel into a deeply problematic position by bowing to the US demand to release them.

The Israeli public, rightly, views the release of Palestinian mass murderers as insane, dangerous and immoral. In a bid to placate public opinion, every time his government agrees to free terrorists from prison, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announces that he is approving another stage in a seemingly endless process of permitting Israeli Jews to build homes in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria. At this point, few in Israel are won over by Netanyahu’s largely hollow, transparently opportunistic gesture.

But whereas few Israelis are convinced Netanyahu is sincere, internationally his action has the egregious effect of reinforcing the deeply hostile and widely held perception that there is moral equivalence between murdering Jews and permitting Jews to live near Arabs. Netanyahu’s political pandering is counterproductive.

But on Sunday the government took what may be the first productive action that Israel has taken toward the Palestinians since the onset of the phony peace process 20 years ago.

On Sunday, the Ministerial Committee for Legislation approved a bill sponsored by Likud MK Miri Regev to apply Israeli law over the Jordan Valley.

The Jordan Valley protects Israel from invasion and other acts of aggression from the east. And since 1967, there has been a consensus among Israelis that the area must remain under Israel’s sovereign control in perpetuity. This position remains inarguable today in light of the PLO ’s refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

Were Israel to transfer control over the Jordan Valley to the PLO , it would enable the Palestinians to collaborate with outside actors in the planning and execution of major acts of aggression against Israel. Safeguarding against such an eventuality by asserting Israel’s international legal right to sovereignty over the area is an eminently reasonable, and indeed required means of ensuring Israel’s long-term survivability.

On the face of it, it is the champions of Palestinian statehood, led by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, who should be most in favor of applying Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley. Only by doing so does the two-state solution Livni has staked her career on have a chance of producing peace.

But of course, Livni and her colleagues on the far Left don’t see things this way. She and her comrades responded with apoplectic fits of rage at the cabinet committee’s vote, saying that Israel would be to blame for destroying the peace process.

Livni and her friends, of course, had not a word of criticism for Abbas and his followers for their unlawful championing of terrorist mass murderers.

She gave no indication that she views their continued support for Israel’s destruction as an obstacle to peace. Her wrath and that of her colleagues is reserved for Israeli elected officials who seek to safeguard Israel’s survival.

The media assures us that Netanyahu will bury the bill in governmental bureaucracy and proceed on course with further negotiations with the PLO , and further terrorist releases, in order to keep Kerry and Obama happy.

We must encourage the government to surprise the media.

Twenty years ago Israel crossed the Rubicon from strategic rationality into irrationality when we embraced the PLO and the chimerical twostate solution. This week’s cabinet decision was the first step in crossing back to the other side.

And we must work with our elected representatives to ensure that it is not an isolated event.