You may view the 5 minute update this week via audio:
In this week’s 5 minute update, we focused on:
1) The efforts by France to sponsor an international peace conference to support the two-state solution regarding the Israel / Palestinian peace process
France has submitted a document to the 15 Security Council members indicating that it intends to convene an international peace conference in April to advance Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts to support a two-state solution. It would include representatives from the Middle East Quartet — the US, Russian EU and UN — and several Arab states. The goal of the international peace conference is that the Palestinians and Israel would engage in direct negotiations in July.
The Palestinians welcomed the French proposal. Hossam Zomlot, an advisor to PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas, said: “We definitely welcome the French initiative, we see it as a major possibility for challenging the status quo.” Zomlot, however, said the Palestinians insisted on their call for a United Nations resolution against Israeli “settlement building” ahead of any renewed peace process. “Nothing will convince us that we should not go to the United Nations Security Council over settlements,” declared Zomlot.
Recently, the Palestinian Authority has been trying to advance a resolution in the UN Security Council that will condemn the settlements in the West Bank and declare them illegal under international law and an obstacle to peace. Senior Palestinian and Israeli officials say that the PA has been in contact with France, Spain and Egypt, all members of the Security Council, to get them to draw up such a resolution and support it.
Several weeks ago Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Maliki visited France, where he met with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and discussed submitting such a resolution. In addition, Maliki visited Egypt and discussed the move with Egyptian Foreign Minister Samech Shoukry. Egypt recently became a member of the Security Council. While in Egypt, Maliki also met with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir and updated him on his discussions with Fabius in France. Maliki asked Jubeir to pressure France to advance the resolution in the Security Council. At the same time, PLO Executive Committee secretary Saeb Erakat met with Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby to begin discussing a draft resolution that would get Arab support. In addition, Maliki was in Spain to discuss the resolution with his Spanish counterpart.
Senior Israeli diplomats who recently visited France said that the message they got from senior French Foreign Ministry officials was that no decision has been made on submitting a Security Council resolution – neither on the settlements nor on principles for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Senior Israeli officials also noted that they fear that US President Barack Obama may not veto a resolution on the Israeli-Palestinian issue in the Security Council during his final year in office particularly given the increasing U.S. criticism of Israeli settlement policy.
However, Palestinian Authority (PA) Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki explicitly rejected the possibility of renewed direct negotiations with Israel – ever. Malki pledged to never again engage with Israel in direct negotiations towards a final settlement. He said: “We will never go back and sit again in direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.”
France is placing the burden of reaching a settlement on Israel. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that his country would recognize a Palestinian state if its efforts in coming weeks to try to break the deadlock between Israelis and Palestinians fail. “France will engage in the coming weeks in the preparation of an international conference bringing together the parties and their main partners, American, European, Arab, notably to preserve and make happen the solution of two states,” Fabius said.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said France’s ambassador to Israel met a ministry official to discuss the details of the planned conference. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rejected France’s diplomatic plan calling for an international conference on Middle East peace with recognition of a Palestinian state if talks fail. Netanyahu called it “mystifying” and counterproductive, arguing that it gives the Palestinians no incentive to compromise. The plan says: ” ‘We shall hold an international conference but, if it doesn’t succeed, we are deciding in advance what the consequence will be – we shall recognize a Palestinian state. This of course ensures in advance that a conference will fail, because if the Palestinians know that their demands will be accepted… they don’t need to do anything,” he said. Netanyahu reiterated Israeli policy that peace will only come as a result of direct bilateral talks between the sides.
The United States has not taken a public position on the French plan. Nonetheless, US Secretary of State John Kerry has warned that Israel is headed towards a “one-state solution” and that the Palestinian Authority (PA) could collapse. Kerry warned that he believes that Israel is headed toward becoming a “unitary state that is an impossible entity to manage” and warned that such a reality would lead to Israel becoming like a “big fortress” and strengthen groups like Hezbollah. Kerry said: “The alternative is you sit there and things just get worse. There will be more Hezbollah. There will be more rockets. And they’ll all be pointed in one direction. And there will be more people on the border. And what happens then? You’re going to be one big fortress? I mean, that’s not a way to live. It seems to me it is far more intelligent and far more strategic – which is an important word here -to have a theory of how you are going to preserve the Jewish state and be a democracy and a beacon to the world that everybody envisioned when Israel was created.”
Asked if he could imagine an end to the State of Israel, Kerry replied, “No, I don’t believe that’s going to happen. It’s just, What is it going to be like, is the question. Will it be a democracy? Will it be a Jewish state? Or will it be a unitary state with two systems, or some draconian treatment of Palestinians, because to let them vote would be to dilute the Jewish state? I don’t know. I have no answer to that. But the problem is, neither do they. Neither do the people who are supposed to be providing answers to this. It is not an answer to simply continue to build in the West Bank and to destroy the homes of the other folks you’re trying to make peace with and pretend that that’s a solution.”
Kerry said that the distrust between the sides has never been more profound and that PA chairman Mahmoud Abbas “feels great despair – more than I have ever heard him.” Kerry said that the “two-state solution” must not become a “slogan,” warning that “current trends are leading to a one-state reality. We have to be honest about what a one-state solution looks like,” Kerry said, adding, “The one-state solution is no solution at all for a Jewish, democratic Israel living in peace.” At the same time, Kerry said that violence must stop in order to achieve peace and said that “Israel has the right and the obligation to defend itself. The Palestinian leadership should stop the incitement and condemn terror attacks,” he added.
In response to Kerry’s comments, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said: “The only workable solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “is not a unitary state, but a demilitarized Palestinian state that recognizes the Jewish state.” He added that “the root cause of the conflict with the Palestinians is their refusal to recognize the Jewish state,” and that while “settlements and territory are an issue to be resolved… they are not the core of the conflict.”
Netanyahu said that recent events disproved the claim that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was at the heart of regional turmoil, “that was never true, but now it’s demonstrably false.” He cited a recent statement by PA head Mahmoud Abbas, according to which Israel has been occupying Arab land for 67 years. He asked if Abbas meant by this that Tel Aviv, too, was occupied Arab land. Netanyahu said: “President Abbas refuses to address his people and say – ‘it’s over. No more claims after a peace deal,'” the prime minister said. “The Palestinians have not been willing to cross the emotional and conceptual bridge of a state next to Israel, not one instead of Israel. Not just Hamas, but also the PA. They refuse to accept a Jewish state for the Jewish people.”
Meanwhile, US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Dan Shapiro, US Ambassador to Israel were in Israel to discuss the peace process. While in Israel, Samantha Power spent time with Israeli UN envoy Danny Danon for a countrywide tour of Israel to understand Israel’s complex security situation. Following a helicopter tour of the country, Power and Danon were briefed by senior IDF officers on the security challenges facing Israel. In doing so, the Ambassadors – joined by US Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro – then headed south for an in-depth briefing by Israeli security officials on the border with Gaza, following which they met with representatives of the border communities to hear about their daily lives under the threat of rocket fire and terrorist attacks from the Gaza Strip.
At their meeting, Rivlin also emphasized that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict cannot be imposed by outside powers. He called for direct negotiations between Israel and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas. Rivlin said: “The conflict between us – the tragedy between us – can only be solved through direct negotiations,” said Rivlin. “No solution can be imposed on either side and we must negotiate to come to an understanding.”
In any event, the idea of an international conference has not been generating much enthusiasm in the international community. For example, in a meeting with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated that she would turn down the pressure on Israel to push for a diplomatic process with the Palestinian Authority (PA) saying, “Now is not the time for a significant step forward [in the two-state solution].”
In 2008, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered to agree to the creation of an independent PA state including all of Gaza, nearly all of Judea/Samaria, and parts of Israel – a total area equal to 99.5% of the size of Judea and Samaria. In addition, a tunnel would connect Judea/Samaria to Gaza, and the PA state would have its capital in eastern Jerusalem. Not only that: Olmert also agreed to the return of 5,000 Arab refugees from the 1948 War of Independence over five years.
Abbas said that in September of 2008, former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert presented him with a map that delineated the borders of the proposed PA state. Abbas was asked: “In the map that Olmert presented you, Israel would annex 6.3 percent [of Judea/Samaria] and compensate the Palestinians with 5.8 percent [taken from pre-1967 Israel]. What did you propose in return?”Abbas replied, “I did not agree … I rejected it out of hand.” Olmert has said that Abbas said at the time, “I am not in a marketplace or a bazaar. I came to demarcate the borders of Palestine – the June 4, 1967 borders – without detracting a single inch, and without detracting a single stone from Jerusalem, or from the holy Christian and Muslim places. This is why the Palestinian negotiators did not sign.”
US Secretary of State, John Kerry’s special envoy Frank Lowenstein said that Kerry would persist with the Israelis and the Palestinians until the end of his time in office proclaiming, “The window for a two-state solution is closing, though none of us who’ve worked on it will regret that we tried to save it.”
As a result, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is worried that the Obama administration will use its final weeks in office to back UN Security Council decisions and other measures detrimental to Israel. Netanyahu’s concern about possible Obama administration decisions was focused on the period between November 2016, when a new president is chosen, and January 2017, when that president takes office. Given the history of difficult relations between the two countries’ leaderships, this period would constitute a brief window when the Obama administration could advance its agenda without political concerns in the US. In order to try to ensure that the Obama administration does not do this, Israel is trying to take steps which will improve the Palestinian economy.
An agreement to divide Jerusalem and establish a PLO state is a tribulation event.
The link to these articles are as follows:
1) France Presents Middle East Peace Initiative to Israel
2) France aims for peace parley in April, direct talks in July
3) PA welcomes French peace initiative
4) France threatens to recognize ‘Palestine’ if peace efforts fail
5) French ultimatum to Israel: Accept PA demands or else
6) PA: No more negotiations with Israel, ever
7) Rivlin to US Ambassador: ‘No solution can be imposed’
8) Netanyahu rejects ‘mystifying’ French ‘peace plan’
9) Merkel admits: Now isn’t the time for ‘two-state solution’
10) Kerry warns: Israel could become a ‘unitary state’
11) Kerry: ‘One-state solution’ isn’t the answer
12) Netanyahu: Does Abbas want Tel Aviv?
13) Abbas admits: ‘I rejected Israeli offer of PA state’
14) Palestinians Seek UN Security Council Resolution Declaring West Bank Settlements Illegal
15) Netanyahu said worried Obama may go against Israel as term expires
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