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 the Israel / Palestinian peace process
Prior to speaking before the UN General Assembly at the end of September, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas said that his speech was part of an effort at the UN to create a new political reality. Since the collapse of US-led peace talks with Israel in April, the PA has been pursuing a new diplomatic path to establish a “Palestinian state” via the United Nations and through joining international organizations – in breach of previous agreements with Israel. Abbas met with US Secretary of State John Kerry to lay out details of his initiative. “If he rejects it, the PA leadership has other options. We will go to international agencies and the Security Council,” PA spokesman Abu Rudeina warned. Abbas said that “Settlements must stop. Israel must be forced to accept international legitimacy and law,” he said. “If it does not, there will be another political reality to deal with. The next few weeks will see developments that will affect the peace process in the future.”
At his speech at the UN General Assembly, Abbas said the following: “In this year, proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly as the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian people, Israel has chosen to make it a year of a new war of genocide perpetrated against the Palestinian people. In this year, in which this Assembly, on behalf of the countries and peoples of the world, conveyed the world’s yearning and determination to realize a just peace that achieves freedom and independence for the Palestinian people in their State of Palestine alongside Israel in order to rectify the historic injustice inflicted on the Palestinian people in Al-Nakba of 1948, the occupying power has chosen to defy the entire world by launching its war on Gaza, by which its jets and tanks brutally assassinated lives and devastated the homes, schools and dreams of thousands of Palestinian children, women and men and in reality destroying the remaining hopes for peace. I affirm in front of you that the Palestinian people hold steadfast to their legitimate right to defend themselves against the Israeli war machine and to their legitimate right to resist this colonial, racist Israeli occupation.
And now, where do we go from here?
It is impossible, and I repeat – it is impossible – to return to the cycle of negotiations that failed to deal with the substance of the matter and the fundamental question. There is neither credibility nor seriousness in negotiations in which Israel predetermines the results via its settlement activities and the occupation’s brutality. There is no meaning or value in negotiations for which the agreed objective is not ending the Israeli occupation and achieving the independence of the State of Palestine with East Jerusalem as its capital on the entire Palestinian Territory occupied in the 1967 war. And, there is no value in negotiations which are not linked to a firm timetable for the implementation of this goal.
During the past two weeks, Palestine and the Arab Group undertook intensive contacts with the various regional groups in the United Nations to prepare for the introduction of a draft resolution to be adopted by the United Nations Security Council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to push forward the efforts to achieve peace.
This endeavor reaffirms our commitment to achieve a just peace through a negotiated solution and our adoption of a diplomatic and political effort through United Nations bodies. This endeavor is inspired by and based fully on the spirit and provisions of the many resolutions you have approved in the General Assembly and those adopted by the Security Council, which have set the foundations for a lasting solution and a just peace.
This endeavor aspires to correct the deficiency of the previous efforts to achieve peace by affirming the goal of ending the Israeli occupation and achieving the two-State solution, of the State of Palestine, with east Jerusalem as its capital, over the entire territory occupied in 1967, alongside the State of Israel and reaching a just and agreed upon solution to the plight of the Palestine refugees on the basis of resolution 194, with a specific time frame for the implementation of these objectives as stipulated in the Arab Peace Initiative. This will be linked to the immediate resumption of negotiations between Palestine and Israel to demarcate the borders, reach a detailed and comprehensive agreement and draft a peace treaty between them.”
The United States said that PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s speech at the UN was “counterproductive” toward reaching peace with Israel, US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said, calling it “provocative” and saying the US rejects its contents.
Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon hit back at Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas after Abbas gave an incitement-laced speech at the UN General Assembly blaming Israel for “war crimes” and “genocide” during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza.
“Through his speech at the UN, Mahmoud Abbas proves for the umpteenth time: this is not a leader who wants peace and the advancement of his people’s lives, but a person who distributes lies, incitement, and hate speech against Israel,” Ya’alon stated. “Mahmoud Abbas is not a man of peace, and is not really interested in an agreement with Israel, which means recognition of the Jewish national homeland. Time after time, Mahmoud Abbas goes on to deceive the international community, to throw at Israel false and racist accusations out of the hope that threats, pressure, and lies will scare us and make us acquiesce [to his demands],” Ya’alon continued.
Ya’alon implied that Abbas’s speech was particularly grave, and may have jettisoned future plans to renew peace talks. “He has no partner for a political agreement – which is essential to end the conflict – and we will therefore not compromise the security of Israeli citizens,” Ya’alon said, referencing plans to make a Palestinian state in the West Bank. “In every situation, we are responsible for our own destiny and our own security, and we will be in the future.” Ya’alon concluded by blasting Abbas for “not really coming to terms with Israel’s existence” and added that the claims “are detached from reality.”
Israel Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ remarks before the UN General Assembly “clearly illustrate that he doesn’t want to be – and cannot be – a partner to a diplomatic settlement,” Lieberman said. Abbas, Lieberman asserted, has “lost touch with reality.” The Palestinian president’s speech, Lieberman said, “really was a message of hatred and incitement. It’s clear that he has no intention to make peace with Israel and it’s not the first time,” Lieberman said. “There’s a reason that Abu Mazen entered into a joint government with Hamas. Abu Mazen complements Hamas in that he is preoccupied with diplomatic terrorism and slanderous claims against Israel,” he said. “As long as Abu Mazen is chairman of the PA, he will lead to a continuation of the conflict. Abu Mazen has once again proven that he is not a man of peace, but rather a successor to Yasser Arafat in other ways.”
Continuing his scathing criticism of the Palestinian leader, the foreign minister also questioned whether or not Abbas still had the legitimacy to speak for the Palestinian people. “It’s clear that he has no control over the Gaza Strip and he postponed his elections for more than four years – presidential and parliament elections – and I have some doubts regarding his authority,” he said.
Addressing what he termed as “the reasonable solution between us and Palestinians”, the foreign minister said “we are trying for many years to achieve a strategic breakthrough in our relations with the Palestinians, but it doesn’t depend only on Israel. We need a reliable partner from the other side and I’m sorry to say that we don’t have a reliable partner from the Palestinian side, and it’s a problem.” Lieberman asserted Israel has proven its desire and willingness to achieve “real peace, not as a lip service but in real actions” when it signed peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan, giving up territories three times the size of Israel in these accords.
“We withdrew from the Gaza Strip until the very last inch according to the ’67 line, we evacuated 21 flourishing settlements and we transferred more than 10,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip. The result is that we suffered more than 18,000 missiles and shells on Israel since the disengagement, since withdrawing from Gaza,” he added.
Mohammed Ishtayeh, an aide to Abbas, responded to Lieberman’s comments, saying: “Lieberman was trying to cover the war crimes his government committed in Gaza, but we have prepared the indictment list to take Israel to the ICC. We are going to build an international coalition against the Israeli occupation and its crimes, particularly building settlements on our land.”
In response to Abbas’ threat to unilaterally seek UN Security Council approval for statehood, Likud MK Danny Danon urged the government to annex the Jewish settlements of Judea and Samaria. “A unilateral step should be met with a unilateral step,” Danon said. “Every unilateral declaration by Abu Mazen needs to be answered by the application of sovereignty over the Jewish communities in the West Bank.”
In his speech at the UN General Assembly, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew a link between the threat Israel faces from Hamas in Gaza, to the threat the international community at large faces from the Islamic State. “Hamas, like the Islamic State, wants a caliphate,” he said. “Hamas’ immediate goal is to destroy Israel but has a wider goal the same as ISIS,” the prime minister said. “ISIS and Hamas are branches of the same poisonous tree. When it comes to their ultimate goals: Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas.” Hamas, Islamic State, Hezbollah and other militant Islam organizations “all share a fanatic ideology. They seek to create ever expanding enclaves of militant Islam. Where there is no freedom or tolerance,” Netanyahu warned. “The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith.”
Palestinian chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said that Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations “finally closed the door on progress towards a two-state solution within the 1967 borders and rejected any serious political solution” in the peace talks.
An agreement to divide Jerusalem and establish a PLO state is a tribulation event.
The link to these articles are as follows:
1) Abbas Prepares UN Bid to ‘Create a New Political Reality’
2) Full text of Palestinian Authority President Abbas’ address to the UN General Assembly in New York
3) US accuses Abbas of ‘counterproductive’ UN speech
4) Ya’alon: Abbas ‘Never Came to Terms with Israel’s Existence’
5) Lieberman calls Abbas ‘diplomatic terrorist busy with slandering Israel’
6) Lieberman: Abbas has lost touch with reality
7) ‘Defeating ISIS, but leaving Iran with nuclear bomb is winning battle, losing war’
8) PA’s Erekat says Netanyahu is same as Islamic State leader
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