Israelis talk often and loudly about their desires for peace. But its never been clear precisely what peace concept it is they desire. In particular, Israeli notions of peace have never gone so far as to grant the Palestinians the same national rights that Israelis claim for themselves. Well, according to a new poll by Israeli National News (disclaimer: its a right-wing rag, sample size “more than 6,400?), a majority of Israelis are clear about what kind of “peace” they desire.

53.2% of surveyed Israelis say the “solution” to the conflict was the ethnic cleansing...

"We urge the Israeli side to take concrete measures to restore Palestine-Israel mutual trust and create favorable conditions for the early resumption of talks between them," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Thursday.

The remarks by China's Foreign Ministry were also echoed by the Swiss government which called on Israel to stop construction of Jewish settlements in occupied Palestinian territories.

The Quds information center has disclosed Thursday that the Israeli occupation authorities have prepared the blueprints for seven settlement projects in the occupied city of Jerusalem as part of its efforts to judaize the Palestinian city.

In a statement it issued and published by the Quds Press, the center pointed out that the new suburb that the IOA announced it would construct in Israeli settlement of Gilo was indeed a prelude for seven bigger settlement projects the IAO wants to build in the occupied Palestinian city.

The center also quoted sources inside the IOA as saying that the rightist government of premier Binyamin Netanyahu would carryout the projects after the diplomatic “misunderstanding” with the US administration regarding those settlements is absorbed.

A 16-year-old Israeli who stabbed Palestinian Jamil Abdullah, 42, in occupied Jerusalem on Thursday may have also carried out a series of attacks against Arabs and Palestinians, the Israeli police said Friday during a remand hearing at the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court.

The Jerusalem Police believe that Thursday's stabbing incident was “nationalistically motivated.” The police told the court that the culprit had attacked Arabs and Palestinians near the Tomb of Simeon the Just in east Jerusalem, near the settlement of Carmel and near the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar.

Abdullah, 42, the father of five from the village of Shoafat in the Jerusalem area, was evacuated to the Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital with abdomen wounds.

Studies show that many Americans incorrectly believe the Palestinians are the illegal settlers on their own land. See more, including criticism of self-censorship in mainstream media, in a new article at USMediaAndIsrael.com: http://usmediaandisrael.com/?p=353

Yaakov (Jack) Teitel (pictured in Israeli custody) is not the first and probably not the last Israeli terrorist to target Palestinians or Israeli supporters of peace.

Furthermore, many of these Jewish terrorists came from the ranks of the West Bank settlers.

Read on for a partial list of Israeli groups and individuals who took violent action to sabotage peace.

Following the arrest and indictment of Yaakov (Jack) Teitel who reportedly admitted to a series of murderous terrorist attacks against Israelis and Palestinians over the past twelve years, the settlers and their supporters cried foul. Teitel is an exception, they said, a single case, a “lone wolf,” a lunatic.

An Israeli prison,The Nakab, located between Egypt and Israel has booked one cat in solitary confinement as punishment for its services and assistance to prisoners who are serving sentences in solitary confinement.

According to the Israeli officers,the cat was aiding prisoners by moving light objects (i.e. letters,bread etc) between the cells of prisoners.
It turns out that the cat had been providing its services to prisoners for several months until it was exposed recently and so the prison administration decided to place the cat in solitary confinement - the same way they do to the prisoners.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas this week countered Israeli and American claims that a Middle East peace deal could be reached before the end of his term.

In an interview with Egyptian television on Wednesday, Abbas denied that either side has been pleading with him persistently to remain in office against his declared plan not to run for presidency in the Palestinian Authority’s next election.

“If [Israeli and U.S.] intentions are sincere, then I am still here and have been here for years. They could have reached a deal with me already,” said Abbas. “If Israel is prepared to advance peace on the basis of prior agreements and in accordance with the outline laid out in the road map, then it can do so with any Palestinian leader that succeeds me.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu is a manifestly fascist-minded demagogue who thinks that everything Jewish must override everything non-Jewish, regardless of all considerations.

He is also a first-class liar who believes that lying to the world, including Jews, is the first line of defense against growing opposition to genocidal Israeli criminality.

Israeli warplanes pounded the tunnels area in Rafah, in southern Gaza Strip, and a position for the Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, at dawn Thursday wounding three citizens, local sources reported.

They told the PIC reporter that Israeli F-16s fired two missiles at the tunnels area on the Palestinian-Egyptian borders and injured three civilians.

The sources noted that few minutes later the warplanes blasted a position for the Qassam Brigades west of Khan Younis, also in southern Gaza

“The strikes are in response to continued recent rocket firing into Israel from the Gaza Strip. In the past month some 15 rockets have been fired into Israel,” the IDF Spokesman’s Office said.

Late last week, the IDF as well Palestinian medical workers reported that Israeli soldiers had shot and killed a Palestinian and wounded at least one other in a confrontation near a Gaza Strip border crossing.

An IDF spokeswoman said the troops opened fire at Palestinians suspected of placing explosives near a security fence. One died of injuries, a second was taken to hospital and three others were seized.

Israel is “the most threatened country in the world,” and the rocket attacks its civilian population has suffered are “attacks not experienced by any other state since Britain in World War II,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday.

Netanyahu was giving the closing remarks at the Israel Annual Conference on Aviation and Astronautics. Much of the discussion at the conference centered on missile defense.

“We are faced with enemies who do not conceal their intentions, and who arm themselves accordingly,” the Israeli prime minister said. “They first attack us physically, and then attack our right to self-defense.”

The Palestinians will not unilaterally declare an independent state, but rather seek a UN Security Council resolution endorsing a two-state solution along the pre-1967 lines, Palestinian Authority negotiator Saeb Erekat told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.

Israeli officials said Erekat was backtracking on earlier statements calling for a unilateral declaration of independence, even as he said that Israel was "twisting his words."

The Palestinians want the Security Council to set the borders of their future state and those of Israel along the pre-1967 lines, Erekat said. "What we are seeking is to preserve the two-state solution," he said. "One state is not an option."

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Tuesday published a report listing Palestinian communities that are especially vulnerable to the settler strategy known as the "price tag."

The document includes 83 villages, hamlets and neighborhoods that appear to be particularly vulnerable to retaliatory attacks by settlers in response to Israeli occupation army operations to dismantle illegal structures built by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank. In the past, such attacks have included rock-throwing and setting fire to Palestinian property.

Although Israel has been insisting for quite a while that there is no crisis of relations with the United States, Israeli officials were surprised Tuesday by the harsh American, British, regional and International responses to the approval of building 900 new housing units in the occupied Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.

A source in Benjamin Netanyahu's office clarified Tuesday evening that such approvals "are not handled by the Israeli prime minister."

Defying the United States, Israel approved on Tuesday the building of 900 homes for Jews on West Bank land it occupied in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed to its Jerusalem municipality.

The Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said President Barack Obama's envoy, George Mitchell, had asked an aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a meeting in London on Monday, to block the proposed construction at the settlement of Gilo.

But a government planning commission approved the addition of 900 housing units at Gilo, where 40,000 Israelis already live.

Israel rejects the international description of Gilo as a settlement and says it is a neighbourhood of Jerusalem, the city it claims as its capital.

An influential Jewish community leader and Democratic State Assemblyman from New York is currently heading a mission of about 50 Americans through the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem to promote home purchases in the area and to protest U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East policy.

"Our goal is to send a clear message to Washington and President Obama that Jews will continue to live in Judea and Samaria and the ultimate commitment American Jews can make is to actually come and buy property in these areas as this will ensure these communities" security and growth," said Dov Hikind, 59, who has been representing Brooklyn's 48th district since 1983.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declined a US request to freeze a project to build dozens of housing units in an east Jerusalem settlement, Israeli army radio reported on Tuesday.

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell had recently asked the hawkish premier to halt the project in Gilo, saying it risks raising tensions with Palestinians amid floundering efforts by Washington to restart peace negotiations, it said.

But Netanyahu refused, saying that the project did not require government approval and that Gilo was "an integral part of Jerusalem," it said.

The Haaretz repost says:
“Right-wing spokesmen, including some elected officials, rushed to place Yaakov “Jack” Teitel in the fringe group alongside Yigal Amir, Eden Natan Zada, Eliran Golan, Asher Weisgan, Danny Tikman and a few other “political/ideological” murderers. True, they acknowledge, there are among us several lunatic rabbis who agitate to violence. Really, just a handful; even a toddler could count them. The more stringent will note that unlike the Hamas government, our government does not pay the salaries of rabbis who advocate the killing of babies.”

A number of Israeli occupation army forces from the Nachshon Battalion on Monday hung a sign at their basis proclaiming that their unit would refuse to evacuate Israelis from West Bank settlements.

The move comes nearly a month after soldiers from the Shimshon Battalion waved banners with the same message during their graduation ceremony in occupied Jerusalem. Two occupation soldiers were expelled from their brigade and given 20 days in military prison following that incident.

In the aftermath of media and White House reports of a strained relationship between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama, footages published days later showed that the meeting was far from tension. On the contrary, it even showed a very positive atmosphere between the two leaders who were meeting in the presence of key leaders of the Zionist Lobby.

Netanyahu expresses here a wish that is shared by most if not all Israelis. They all dream to open their eyes in the morning just to find out that all Goyim, Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims just left the region.

Going from Ramallah to Jerusalem by bus should only take about twenty minutes, but since Israel constructed the separation wall it usually takes up to one hour. In addition to the wall one has to negotiate Qalandia checkpoint, a hi-tech airport/border security style military facility. Everyone has to disembark from the bus, pass through the checkpoint and, assuming that everything went as planned, get back on the bus on the other side of the wall and continue on their journey to Jerusalem.

A few weeks ago, a senior Greek Orthodox clergyman in Israel attended a meeting at a government office in Jerusalem’s Givat Shaul quarter. When he returned to his car, an elderly man wearing a skullcap came and knocked on the window. When the clergyman let the window down, the passerby spat in his face.

“When there is an attack against Jews anywhere in the world, the Israeli government is incensed, so why when our religion and pride are hurt, don’t they take harsher measures?” he asks.

On Saturday 14th November 2009 hundreds of Palestinians and solidarity activists rallied in Dublin to protest against Israel’s apartheid practices in Palestine.

Speakers highlighted the brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, with particular reference to the Siege of Gaza and the Israel’s Apartheid Walls in Palestine. They spoke of their efforts, both in Ireland and in Palestine, to raise awareness among civil and political society, as well as their various efforts to help people on the ground in Palestine. Freda Hughes, the IPSC PRO, stressed the need to build a broad based social mass-movement to convey the reality of the situation in Palestine to mainstream society.

Israeli Cabinet ministers convened Sunday morning for their weekly meeting amid stalemate in Israeli-Palestinian talks and a growing disposition to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak said, “Israel is strong and deterring, and it has a strategic interest in reaching an agreement through negotiations. We must always look at the alternatives – and without an agreement, there is a change that support of the Palestinian unilateral declaration may grow, and there will be a rising demand for the establishment of a bi-national state.”

Nobody seems to know just what Barack Obama said to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when the two met recently at the White House. In fact, when it comes to Middle East policy, nobody seems to know much of anything about what goes on inside the White House. I’ve heard more than one Washington insider say that this administration is totally tight-lipped on the subject.

Speaking Thursday at the Hesder yeshiva in the West Bank settlement of Karnei Shomron , Rontzki referred to Maimonides’ discourse on the laws of war. That text quotes a passage from the Book of Jeremiah stating: “Cursed be he that doeth the work of the Lord with a slack hand, and cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood.”

In Rontzki’s words, “In times of war, whoever doesn’t fight with all his heart and soul is damned – if he keeps his sword from bloodshed, if he shows mercy toward his enemy when no mercy should be shown.”

Israeli electronic site Ynet reported on Saturday that the Palestinian Authority is currently putting the finishing touches on carrying out a revolution within the Palestinian government institutions, in order to put an end to the paralyzing division, and be rid of the legislative obstacles placed by Hamas.

Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of launching an "organized campaign" of lies and misinformation against it in the wake of the organization's support of the Goldstone report, British newspaper the Guardian reported Friday.

"I really hesitate to use words like conspiracy, but there is a feeling that there is an organized campaign, and we're seeing from different places what would appear to be coordinated attacks...from some of the language and arguments used it would seem as if there has been discussion," Iain Levine, Human Rights Watch's program director, told the Guardian.

The United States will not pressure “Israel” and the Palestinians to resume direct “peace talks” unless both sides are ready, senior U.S. officials were quoted as saying in a report published Saturday by London-based Arabic-language newspaper A-Sharq Al-Awsat.

On the afternoon of November 3, 2009, the United States House of Representatives voted in favor of House Resolution 867 (H.Res.867), an AIPAC-backed bill that urges both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to "oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the "Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict," referred to commonly as the "Goldstone Report." With this vote, the US Congress has not only enshrined its opposition to investigations into war crimes and crimes against humanity found to be committed during last winter's Israeli massacre of over 1,400 Palestinians in the closed-off Gaza Strip, but has also affirmed its outrageous and unconscionable commitment to Israel's continuous unfettered aggression and singular

Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyyeh has warned that Israel is planning another offensive on the Gaza Strip, Iran’s Press TV reported on Friday.

According to Haniyyeh, it is Israel and not Hamas that is intent on keeping the conflict going between the two sides. Hamas is “not looking for more violence,” Haniyyeh told a group of Red Cross delegates visiting the Gaza Strip earlier this week.

Haniyyeh said that should such an offensive occur, Hamas would be prepared to retaliate. “Our people will not surrender; they will fight back,” Prime Minister Haniyyeh’s office said, in a statement.

Let’s once and for all stop getting excited about America mounting pressure on Israel to freeze West Bank settlements. The entire fascination with the topic is a product of Zionist spin. It is there to divert attention from the root cause of the conflict: The robbery of Palestine and Palestinians in the name of a ‘Jewish home coming’. The call to stop Israeli construction in the West Bank is there to leave us with the false impression that the robbery of Palestine started in 1967. The facts are known to many of us, but not to all. The vast majority of Palestinians were expelled from their towns, villages, fields and orchards in 1948

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has set priorities for his ministry that apparently are at odds with those of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

While Netanyahu is trying to convince U.S. President Barack Obama that he is sincere about advancing the peace process on the principle of two states for two peoples, the Israeli foreign ministry’s written goals don’t even mention the word “Palestinians.”

Israeli Foreign Ministry director general Yossi Gal recently distributed a document detailing the ministry’s goals for 2010 to Israeli embassies around the world. The goals are significantly different than those the ministry espoused during previous foreign minister Tzipi Livni’s term, especially regarding the peace process

French President Nicolas Sarkozy will deliver a message from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Syrian leader Bashar Assad during the latter’s visit to Paris on Friday, relaying Israel’s desires to renew “peace negotiations” immediately without preconditions.

The French newspaper La Figaro on Friday quoted Assad as saying that U.S. President Barack Obama represented a weak point in the efforts to renew negotiations. “The American godfather needs to draw up a plan of action and take his own initiative, not wait for others,” said the Syrian President.

Gilad Atzmon argues (with harsh video examples) that it is the artists that are ahead of the politicos in reflecting and leading the public perception.

A US-born Jewish settler was indicted on murder and other charges in a Jerusalem court on Thursday for allegedly killing two Palestinians and carrying out a string of bomb attacks.

Jack Teitel, a 37-year-old immigrant from the United States, was arrested in October on suspicion of murdering the men in 1997 while visiting Israel as a tourist. He is also suspected of being behind a string of bomb attacks since 2006.

It did not take the Israel Lobby long to make mincemeat out of the Obama administration’s “no new settlements” position. Israeli prime minister Netanyahu is bragging about Israel’s latest victory over the US government as Israel continues to build illegal settlements on occupied Palestinian land.

Senior Fatah member Mohammad Dahlan said Tuesday that the Palestinian Authority may seek a Security Council resolution to recognize the borders of the Palestinian state.

Dahlan added that all options were open at this time, including the possibility of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian independence.
An American veto in the Security Council would prove that the White House is uninterested in the two-state solution, he said, pledging to “continue to fight Netanyahu’s plans, politically and diplomatically.”

Citing the Goldstone Report, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay told the Security Council Wednesday that Israel was responsible for the killing of more than 1,000 civilians in Gaza and attacks on schools and mosques and UN facilities.

“The report lays out in detail the nature and scope of violations of international human rights and humanitarian law perpetrated on the civilian population of the Occupied Palestinian Territory, where in Gaza earlier this year Israeli forces killed well over one thousand civilians and attacked homes, schools, mosques, food and water installations, and UN facilities.”

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is considering dissolving the PA and declaring the failure of the peace process with Israel, PA officials in Ramallah said over the weekend.

Abbas was now waiting to see if the US and other parties would exert enough pressure on Israel to stop settlement construction and recognize the two-state solution before he makes any decision, the officials said.

In his televised speech on Thursday, in which he announced that he has “no desire” to run in the upcoming presidential election, Abbas said that he would also consider taking “other measures” in the future, but did not elaborate.

A President threatening to quit, his potential successor languishing in an Israeli jail and a peace process heading nowhere: rarely have prospects for the Palestinian people looked so bleak.

There seems to be a perfect conformity between Gabi Ashkenazi and his last name. The Israeli chief of staff is considered one of the main Israeli war criminals responsible for the virtual genocide against the Gaza Strip during the past winter. On his murderous hands, he carries tons of innocent blood, including that of more than 340 children, killed in Israel’s pornographic bombing of civilian neighborhood.

Last week, Ashkenazi was quoted as saying that Israel was likely to wage another quasi holocaust on Gaza, adding that the Israeli occupation army would enter the innermost corners and streets of the coastal territory.

President Barack Obama held unusually low-profile talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday that failed to provide any sign of progress toward reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

A White House statement after the one-hour, 40-minute session framed the meeting in only general terms, saying the two leaders discussed “how to move forward on Middle East peace” and also spoke about Iran and security issues.

The parley was accompanied by an unusual news blackout, as the standard photo op and press availability were not held. In addition, A spokesman for Netanyahu declined to comment on the talks and a briefing the Israeli prime minister intended to hold on Tuesday for reporters who accompanied him to Washington was canceled.

The primary motivation for the resolution appears to have been to block any consideration of its recommendation that those guilty of war crimes be held accountable.

When you read a news story saying that “the United Nations called on Israel to stop demolishing Palestinian homes and put an end to the policy of forced evictions in East Jerusalem, warning that there are 60,000 Palestinians threatened of becoming homeless,” you cannot but wonder about the role of the international organization today and about the goal for which it was created on the eve of the victory of the forces of freedom against Nazism and Fascism and whether it is the same organization authorized by history and the world’s peoples to guarantee the right to ‘self determination’?
Is it the same organization charged with “putting an end to colonialism”?

The Goldstone report, which accuses Israel of committing war crimes against civilians in Gaza, was not folded yet till a book for one of the Israeli rabbis was issued permitting the killing of children, women, the elderly and the innocent of non-Jews in the necessities of war.

The book also accuses all nations of non-Jews of shedding the blood of Israelis and thus dealing with them on the basis of this opinion, which allows the killing of their children, women and their elders.

Shapira, head of the Od Yosef Chai Yeshiva, also said in “The King’s Torah” that it is permissible to kill children if they pose a threat.

Concerns are growing in Israel’s government over the possibility of a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence within the 1967 borders, a move which could potentially be recognized by the United Nations Security Council.

Reports indicated that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has reached a secret understanding with the Obama administration over US recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Such recognition would likely transform any Israeli presence across the Green Line, even in occupied Jerusalem, into an illegal incursion to which the Palestinians would be entitled to engage in measures of self-defense.