You may view the 5 minute update this week via audio:
In this week’s 5 minute update, we focused on:
1) The current situation with Benjamin Netanyahu being able to form a new government and what Netanyahu’s election victory means for the peace process
Israel President Reuven Rivlin met with the heads of the various political parties who won Knesset seats in the March 17 Israeli elections. The political parties Likud, Jewish Home, Kulanu, Shas, United Torah Judaism and Yisrael Beytenu recommended that Likud party leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, be the next Israeli Prime Minister. These parties represent a majority of 67 Knesset seats. Most likely, these parties will be in Netanyahu’s next government coalition. If formed, these parties would be regarded as a right wing government and would be scorned upon by the United States and Europe. Political sources stated that a national unity government consisting of the Likud political party of Benjamin Netanyahu and the rival Zionist Union headed by Isaac Herzog was out of the question. Both Likud and Zionist Union representatives signaled their intent to be in opposition to each other in the next government despite Israel President Reuven Rivlin’s efforts to bring reconciliation between the two parties. Netanyahu will have until May 7 to form a government coalition.
The political parties, Zionist Union and Meretz recommended that Zionist Union party leader, Isaac Herzog, be the next prime minister. This only represents 29 Knesset seats. The Israel political party, Yesh Atid, and the Joint Arab List did not make a recommendation. A Yesh Atid Knesset representative said, “We have decided to sit in the opposition.”
How would a right wing Israeli government affect the Israel / Palestinian peace process ? A day prior to the March 17 elections during a campaign stop in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, Netanyahu promised to increase construction there, saying it was “a way of stopping Bethlehem from moving toward Jerusalem.” Furthermore, Netanyahu said that a Zionist Union-led government headed by Isaac Herzog would push for relinquishing more territory to the Palestinians, a move he said was tantamount to “burying its head in the sand.” Netanyahu went on to say the following: “I think that anyone who moves to establish a Palestinian state today, and evacuate areas, is giving radical Islam an area from which to attack the State of Israel. This is the true reality that has been created in past years. Those that ignore it are burying their heads in the sand. The left does this, buries its head in the sand, time and again. Whoever moves to establish a Palestinian state or intends to withdraw from territory is simply yielding territory for radical Islamic terrorist attacks against Israel.” Asked directly whether no Palestinian state would be created under his leadership, the prime minister answered: “Indeed.”
Netanyahu criticized peace talks with the Palestinians in 1999 under then-prime minister Ehud Barak, who endorsed the Zionist Union party in the recent elections. Barak was “willing to give everything away,” Netanyahu said. “As it happened, with God’s help, [then-PA leader Yasser] Arafat’s heart was hardened and he wanted more than was offered,” Netanyahu said, in an allusion to the biblical Pharaoh, whose refusal to set the enslaved Hebrews free brought about his own demise. Netanyahu said that after the election, Israel will face international pressure to pull back to the 1967 lines. In order to prevent this, he said: “We must establish a strong national government headed by Likud in order to fend off these pressures.” Netanyahu said that he was “the last line of defense,” and maintained that the Zionist Union understood that this was the case.
After the election results, Netanyahu clarified his position. He said that he wanted a “sustainable, peaceful two-state solution” but that the current situation does not allow for that to happen. “I haven’t changed my policy. I never retracted my speech in Bar-Ilan University six years ago calling for a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state,” he said.
US President Barack Obama did not accept Netanyahu’s clarification. Instead, Obama said that he was going to believe that Netanyahu doesn’t want a two-state solution. Obama told Netanyahu that the US was reconsidering its policies because Netanyahu had changed his position on Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu retorted that he hadn’t changed his position, still supporting a two state solution, but that the Middle East realities had changed in recent years.
Israel Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer, said that Netanyahu “didn’t say what the president and others seem to suggest he is saying,” arguing that interpretations of Netanyahu’s pre-election statements in the US did not convey the meaning or intent of his comments. “The prime minister is not against a two-state solution with a demilitarized Palestinian state. He has not retracted his vision that he laid out at Bar-Ilan in 2009,” he emphasized. Dermer argued that Netanyahu had framed his comments in light of recent changes to regional geopolitics that made a peace deal difficult or even impossible under current conditions. He listed the growing instability on Israel’s borders, particularly with the ascent of the Islamic State in parts of Syria “eighteen miles from Israel’s borders,” as well as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s nearly year-long ostensible unity government with Hamas. “What Israel believes has to happen now is that President Abbas needs to break his alliance with Hamas and come back to serious negotiations with Israel,” Dermer elaborated. The peace process, he said, collapsed not because of Israel, but because Abbas had “joined up with Hamas.”
Because Obama does not accept Netanyahu’s clarification on the matter, Obama told Netanyahu, “Because you oppose a Palestinian state, that is why we’ve got to evaluate what other options are available to make sure that we don’t see a chaotic situation in the region.” Obama said that he told Netanyahu during a bitter 30-minute phone conversation after the elections that “a two-state solution is the only way for a long-term security of Israel if it wants to stay both a Jewish state and democratic,” noting that “given his (Netanyahu’s) statement prior to the election, it is going to be hard to find a path where people are seriously believing negotiations were possible.” According to Israeli television, Obama left Netanyahu with “the impression that he intends to abandon Israel at the UN.”
A senior Obama administration official said: “We are signaling that if the Israeli government’s position is no longer to pursue a Palestinian state, we’re going to have to broaden the spectrum of options we pursue going forward. The positions taken by the prime minister in the last days of the campaign have raised very significant substantive questions that go far beyond just optics,” the official said. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said: “The divergent comments of the prime minister legitimately call into question his commitment to this policy principle and his lack of commitment to what has been the foundation of our policy-making in the region,” Earnest said. Netanyahu had prompted questions about his “true view” on the two-state solution, the spokesman added. “Words matter.” But the administration made clear that its reconsideration of Israel-US ties was not only due to Netanyahu’s recent comments, which many have claimed were made for the purpose of garnering support from the far right, but rather for his actions throughout the years, which officials say prove the prime minister’s opposition to a Palestinian state.
In reaction to these things, The New York Times quoted several administration officials as saying that the US could endorse a United Nations Security Council resolution setting down terms for the formation of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 lines, with mutually agreed land swaps. Meanwhile, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki implied that although the US still prefers direct negotiations toward an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, she could not promise that the US would continue to defend Israel against unilateral actions in support of Palestinian statehood in either the International Criminal Court or the United Nations. “We are not going to get ahead of any decisions with regard to what the US would do during any vote at the United Nations Security Council,” Psaki said in a press briefing, leaving open the possibility that the US could amend its long-held policy of using its Security Council veto power to block anti-Israel resolutions.
US journalist Jeffrey Goldberg whose close connections to Obama administration officials permits him to write articles which reflect the current views of the administration said in a recent article, “President Obama is not particularly interested in spending political capital on behalf of Netanyahu in order to block a UN resolution recognizing Palestinian statehood. Thus, it is up to Netanyahu, in the coming weeks, to show he is actually committed to preserving the possibility of a two-state solution,” Goldberg wrote. Goldberg added,“if the UN Security Council recognizes Palestine as an independent state, Netanyahu will have no time at all to get his house in order before Israel becomes a true pariah of the international community.”
White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough called for the end of Israel’s “50-year occupation” saying “we will look to the next Israeli government to match words with action and to policies that demonstrates a commitment to a two-state solution,” McDonough said. “In the end, we know what a peace agreement should look like. The borders of Israel and an independent Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps. Each state needs secure and recognized borders, and there must be robust provisions that safeguard Israel’s security.”
Israel Ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer sounded hesitant when asked about American threats to withdraw its traditional veto of unilateral Palestinian moves at the United Nations. “We hope that won’t happen,” he said. “We know that the US has stood for decades against all these anti-Israel resolutions at the UN.” The passage of a UN resolution to establish a Palestinian state, he said, would “harden Palestinian positions and could prevent peace for decades to come, because no Palestinian leader will move from those positions.” This would then, he argued, limit the opportunity for a negotiated resolution to the conflict, an outcome which has been — and still is — the stated policy of the United States.
The Palestinian representative to the UN, Riyad Mansour, urged the United States to support a UN resolution that would mandate a short time-frame for the establishment of a Palestinian state, and a second resolution that would specifically condemn Israeli construction across the 1967 Green Line. “If we do not move in the direction of a two state solution now and we wait, there will never be a two-state solution,” he warned. He also said that the Palestinians would not withdraw their bid to sue Israel at the International Criminal Court over alleged war crimes.
In addition, Obama told Netanyahu that the continued settlement construction was “not a recipe for stability in the region” and cannot continue in perpetuity. Furthermore, a new European Union (EU) report says that Jerusalem is at a “boiling point” and recommends sanctions against Israel over the “polarization” of Jerusalem. The report says that Jerusalem has reached a dangerous boiling point of “polarization and violence” not seen since the end of the second intifada in 2005. The report calls for tougher European sanctions against Israel over its “continued settlement construction in the city”, which it claims is exacerbating recent conflict. The report describes the emergence of a “vicious cycle of violence … increasingly threatening the viability of the two-state solution”, which it says has been stoked by the continuation of “systematic” settlement building by Israel in “sensitive areas” of Jerusalem.
According to Dennis Ross, Obama’s former top Middle East adviser, said that the White House pressure toward Israel had other motives as well. Ross said: “There’s an effort to apply leverage to the Israelis to get the prime minister to move on some things when he has a new government formed,” citing a US wish to see Israel release frozen Palestinian tax funds and take other goodwill gestures.
One senior administration official said that another outcome of the friction between Obama and Netanyahu could be a change in how the relationship between Israel and America is managed. Discourse between the two countries, for instance, would no longer be held between the heads of state directly. Instead, Secretary of State John Kerry and defense officials would act as go-betweens for President Barack Obama and Netanyahu. “The president is a pretty pragmatic person and if he felt it would be useful, he will certainly engage,” said the official. “But he’s not going to waste his time.”
In his interview, Obama went on to say his administration will keep cooperating with Israel on military and intelligence regardless of policy disagreements between the two countries.
Although the Obama administration claims that the US reassessment of policy toward Israel at the United Nations was prompted by Netanyahu’s pre-election claim to rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state, according to Israeli officials, this is not the actual facts. The United States has actually been considering a reevaluation of ties with Israel, including its automatic support for the Jewish state at the United Nations Security Council, for at least four months.
Israeli television reports that US President Barack Obama will not support an independent Palestinian diplomatic initiative for recognition of a state at the United Nations but instead may try to advance a joint American-European initiative for a two-state solution. European governments incensed by Netanyahu’s campaign comments against Palestinian statehood, could decide to push for a joint American-European UN resolution on Palestinian statehood. The American-European initiative, which is to be presented to the UN Security Council, will provide the “contours” of any future agreement, according to the report, which cited sources in the Obama administration. The plan will not include a timetable but will join Resolutions 242 and 338 as blueprints for a peace deal that the international community favors. The US is also reportedly considering revealing the understandings that Secretary of State John Kerry reached in his talks with Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These will serve as guidelines for future negotiations. Israel is opposed to these ideas.
US President Barack Obama, once famously said, “I will always have Israel’s back.” By considering supporting a Palestinian state at the UN Security Council, is Obama now in the process of betraying Israel ?
US Senator John McCain accused President Barack Obama of putting personal grievances with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in front of pressing geopolitical concerns in the Middle East. McCain said that the president should “get over” his “temper tantrum” following Netanyahu’s election victory. Responding to signals from the Obama administration that the US could stop using its United Nations Security Council veto power to prevent unilateral resolutions in support of Palestinian statehood, McCain, chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, warned Obama against such a move.
He said that if the US acquiesced to a UN resolution calling for a Palestinian state, and if it were approved at the UN, “the United States Congress would have to examine our funding for the United Nations.” The United States is the single biggest funder of the international body, but current legislation permits defunding of any UN body that recognizes Palestinian statehood. “It would be a violation because of the president’s anger over a statement by the prime minister of Israel,” McCain explained. “It would contradict American policy for the last at least 10 presidents of the United States.”
Jewish Home Chairman Naftali Bennett whose religious Zionist nationalistic party will most likely be members of Netanyahu’s new government said that he would never sit in a government that gives Israeli land to Arabs. Bennett was asked, “Would you resign from the government if, even by mistake, there is the thought of returning territories?” Bennett said: “Yes, I will overthrow a government that considers providing [the Arabs] even a centimeter of land.
An agreement to divide Jerusalem and establish a PLO state is a tribulation event.
The link to these articles are as follows:
1) Majority of MKs recommend Netanyahu for PM
2) Netanyahu to form next Israeli government
3) Netanyahu: No Palestinian state on my watch
4) US officials: Washington could back UN resolution on Palestine
5) Obama: We believe Netanyahu doesn’t want a Palestinian state
6) TV report: Obama left PM ‘with impression US will abandon Israel at UN’
7) Jeffrey Goldberg: PM has ‘weeks’ to prove he supports two-state solution
8) Top White House official calls for end to ’50-year occupation’
9) Envoy to Washington defends Netanyahu’s 2-state comments
10) EU Planning Sanctions on Israel for ‘Polarizing Jerusalem’
11) Report: Obama May Reveal Understandings Reached with Israel, PA
12) Netanyahu row casts doubt on Obama pledge to ‘have Israel’s back’
13) McCain: Congress could defund UN if US backs Palestine bid
14) Bennett: I Will Overthrow Gov’t That Gives Even an Inch of Land
From a Biblical prophetic perspective, the reason why the God of Israel would allow these events to happen is because it will result in the end of the exile of the house of Jacob and the reunification of the 12 tribes of Israel (Ephraim and Judah).
We will to be “watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem” and we will not rest until the God of Israel makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth (Isaiah 62).
Shalom in Yeshua the Messiah,
Eddie Chumney
Hebraic Heritage Ministries Int’l