You may view the 5 minute update this week via audio:
In this week’s 5 minute update, we focused on:
1) The current status of the Israel / PLO peace process
Israel released the 3rd round of Palestinian terrorists who killed Israelis that Israel pledged to release as a “goodwill gesture” in July to restart direct peace talks. A total of 104 terrorists are scheduled to be released by the end of April. They were driven to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ headquarters for an official welcome ceremony attended by hundreds of relatives singing, dancing and waving Palestinian flags. “It is a happy day for all of us and for our heroic prisoners who have come out today to live as free people,” said Abbas, surrounded by the prisoners and making a victory sign. Abbas told the crowd that he would not sign a peace agreement with Israel without the release of all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, who currently number almost 5000. The United States saw the prisoner release as a “positive step forward” in ongoing peace negotiations, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said.
Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu rebuked the Palestinian Authority ‘s celebrations over Israel’s release of convicted terrorists. “The essential difference between us and our neighbors can be seen in a single picture,” Netanyahu said. “While we are willing to take extremely painful steps with the goal of reaching an agreement that will put an end to the conflict, they, along with their most senior leaders, are celebrating.” The PA’s celebration sends a terrible message, he continued. “Murderers are not heroes. This is not how you educate people to peace. This is not how you make peace,” he warned. “Peace can exist only when the education to incitement and to destruction of Israel is stopped,” he declared. “Peace will come only when our interests are protected, regarding defense at settlements,” he continued. “Peace will only happen if we can defend ourselves, by ourselves, against any threat.”
US Secretary of State, John Kerry, arrived in Israel on New Year’s Day to further peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The US State Department said: “In these meetings, he will discuss the ongoing final status negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians, among other issues.” State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Kerry will discuss with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas a proposed framework to serve as a guideline for addressing all core issues in the decades-long dispute. The core issues include the borders between Israel and a future Palestine, security arrangements, the fate of Palestinian refugees and conflicting claims to the holy city of Jerusalem.
In response to Kerry’s visit, Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said: “An accord is feasibly only if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish national home, give up their dream of restoring all the refugees and their other demands on Israeli territory, and above all only if Israeli can defend itself by its own means against any threat,” he said. Any accord, he promised, will be brought to national referendum for ratification. In a joint press conference with John Kerry, Netanyahu said that doubts about the Palestinians’s commitment to peace are mounting in Israel. “There is growing doubt in Israel that the Palestinians are committed to peace.” The Palestinians “need to be prepared to truly end the conflict.” Netanyahu criticized Abbas’s actions, saying the Palestinian president embraced terrorists as heroes when he welcomed Palestinian prisoners’ release from Israeli detention. “To glorify the murderers of innocent women and men as heroes is an outrage,” Netanyahu said. “How can he say he stands against terrorism when he embraces the perpetrators of terrorism and glorifies them as heroes?” Netanyahu continued, “I’m wondering what a young Palestinian would think when he sees the leader of the Palestinian people embrace people who axed innocent men and women, axed their heads or blew them up or riddled them with bullets. What’s a young Palestinian supposed to think about the future?”
Addressing the peace process, Kerry said: “This is not mission impossible.” Kerry insisted the peace process is still on track and said he plans to work intensely with both sides over the next couple of days to narrow differences on a framework that will outline a final peace accord. Kerry said he knows there is a lot of skepticism about whether the two parties can achieve peace, but he said “the time is soon arriving when leaders are going to have to make difficult decisions. We’re close to that point, or at it,” Kerry said. “In the weeks and months ahead, both sides are going to need to make tough choices to ensure that peace is not just a possibility but is a reality. It is hard work, but with a determined effort, I’m convinced that we can get there,” Kerry said.
Meanwhile, PLO Secretary-General Yasser Abed Rabbo said that the Palestinians wouldn’t pay attention to a “worthless” framework agreement presented by the US. He said that the Palestinians have already spent the past few months negotiating with Israel, and there’s no need to start new talks about the implementation of a new framework agreement. Abed Rabbo said that Kerry was now asking the Palestinians to agree to negotiations with Israel over a new accord, which, he claimed, gives the Israelis control over the Jordan Valley and restricts Palestinian sovereignty over Palestinian territories. Abed Rabbo said that the only way to achieve a breakthrough is by drawing full borders between a Palestinian state and Israel, on the basis of the pre-1967 lines – including east Jerusalem. He also called for a timetable for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines. The PLO official dismissed the idea of a land swap that would place Israeli Arabs in the Triangle area under the jurisdiction of a Palestinian state in return for annexing settlements to Israel. “The settlers are the ones who should get out of the Palestinian territories because they are violating international law,” he said. “No Palestinian state will be created without Jerusalem and the Jordan Valley.”
Palestinian sources revealed that Kerry would present the Israelis and Palestinians with a “blueprint” for a declaration of principles. The sources said that the “blueprint” calls for an extension of the peace talks beyond the nine-month deadline set by Kerry and that expires in April 2014. The sources told the Palestinian daily Al-Quds that the “most dangerous” part of the “blueprint” is Israel’s demand that the Palestinians recognize it as a Jewish state. According to reports, US Secretary of State John Kerry will offer Israeli and Palestinian negotiators a political trade-off: Israeli recognition of the 1967 lines as a basis for the future Palestinian state, in return for Palestinian recognition of Israel as the state of the Jewish people, Palestinian sources said. “The coming weeks will be difficult for the Palestinian and Israeli sides since they will need to make tough decisions regarding these issues,” a Palestinian source told a Saudi Arabian newspaper. The goal of the United States is for mutual recognition between Israel and the Palestinians which will constitute the core of a framework agreement to be signed by the end of January and negotiated in greater detail during the following months,
According to DEBKA, the details of Kerry’s proposed framework agreement consists of the 9 key points:
1. Israel hands over 92.8 pc of West Bank to Palestinians. 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. 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 the United States. 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 land, 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. 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. US Secretary Kerry advised the Israeli Prime Minister bluntly that he need not promise to force settlers to leave their homes – as the Ariel 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 Kerry submitted the US Framework ideas to the Israeli and Palestinian leaders in December, he 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.
In Kerry’s visit to Israel, he told reporters that the sides would have to make some difficult choices over the next few weeks. “We know what the issues are and the parameters,” he added. “The time is soon arriving when leaders will have to make tough decisions. In the weeks ahead both sides will have to make tough choices.” During his meetings with Netanyahu and Abbas, Kerry said, he planned “to work with both sides to narrow differences on a framework that will set guidelines for negotiations.” The framework agreement would cover all of the core issues, he said, including borders, security, Jerusalem, refugee, mutual recognition, an end to the conflict and to legal claims. The secretary of state emphasized that the framework agreement would be drafted in coordination with the ideas and positions both sides have raised in the 20 rounds of talks held over the last five months. “The framework will address all core issues. My role is not to impose U.S. ideas but to facilitate the ideas of both parties,” Kerry said. “We are 5 months into the peace talks. It’s a long process but it is not mission impossible.” The secretary of state said that “the framework will provide agreed guidelines for final status negotiations. It will take compromise from both sides,” he added “but an agreed framework will be a significant breakthrough. It will create the fixed defined parameters by which the parties will then know where they are going and what the end result could be,” Kerry said. “An agreed framework will clarify and bridge the gaps between the parties so they can move forward towards a final peace treaty.”
A senior US State Department official said that Kerry did not expect a breakthrough during his visit but is pushing for the sides to agree on a framework of core principles, such as security, the future of Jerusalem and fate of refugees, as soon as possible. “The framework is a basis upon which one could negotiate a final peace treaty because the outlines or the guidelines for what the final deal would look like would be agreed up, and then you would work intensively to fill out the details,” the official said. The official said the framework would act as a guideline for reaching a full peace treaty between the Israelis and Palestinians in April, in which Israel would exist peacefully alongside a new Palestinian state. “We want to have a detailed consultation with them about these ideas that have been generated as a result of the negotiations between the parties themselves, and see whether they can serve as gap bridges which could lead to this agreement on the framework for permanent status negotiations,” the official added. “It is a two-stage process in our minds, agreement on a framework for negotiations and then a permanent status agreement or a peace treaty” by April, the official said.
In order to further encouragement a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are to visit Israel in February as an expression of solidarity and encouragement for Israel and the Palestinians during the ongoing US-brokered peace process. Cameron will arrive in the middle of February on his first official visit since taking office in 2010. Merkel will land a week later, accompanied by German government ministers, for a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his cabinet.
The Israel Defense Ministry has rejected the expected US Framework proposal for the Jordan Valley. Israel has told US officials that the Jordan Valley security arrangement is unacceptable for Israel’s security needs. In an effort to prevent Israel from agreeing to give the Palestinians the Jordan Valley, senior members of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party showed their opposition to Israel giving up the Jordan Valley with a tour to the area. “The place in which we stand highlights the dilemma of where the eastern border of Israel will run,” declared Interior Minister Gideon Sa’ar at the start of the tour. “Will it be the Jordan River, or, God forbid, next to Netanya or Kfar Saba?” If Israel did not stand firm on the issue of the Jordan Valley, he added, it would be left without “strategic depth”. Sa’ar also touched on the security provisions proposed by the US for Israel and the Palestinians as part of efforts to drive forward the peace process, saying that no organization but the Israeli army could guard the border. “Where there is no settlement, there will be no Israeli army. Where there is no Israeli army, there will be terrorism. Our stance is clear: The Jordan Valley is Israeli and will remain Israeli. When we placed our trust in others we saw that this was an illusion. It’s wrong to differentiate between security and settlement.” Sa’ar was accompanied on the tour by other members of Netanyahu’s Likud party as well as member of the nationalistic party, Jewish Home.
The leader of the Jewish Home political party, Naftali Bennett, said that Jewish Home will not remain in Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government if it officially adopts peace proposals presented by US Secretary of State John Kerry which would include Israel giving up the Jordan Valley. Bennett insisted on receiving as much information as possible about America’s framework proposal immediately after Kerry meets with Netanyahu. “Bennett is up to speed on the current developments of the peace process and has done his homework,” a source close to him said. “He will not present the red lines of Jewish Home publicly but those who need to know know.” One of Bennett’s main goals has been to coordinate strategy regarding the opposition of a peace agreement with the Palestinians with members of Netanyahu’s Likud political party. Jewish Home political party, MK Orit Struck, received commitments from most of the Likud faction to help prevent diplomatic proposals from being advanced. Bennett and Struck intend to make sure that Netanyahu will not be able to replace Jewish Home in the coalition with Labor due to opposition from Likud ministers and MKs who would join in partnership with Jewish Home.
The future of the Jordan Valley has always been a major issue in peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. In 2007, the Israeli army’s Planning Directorate drew up Israel’s security overview ahead of a possible peace treaty with the Palestinians. This overview specified the need for an ongoing Israeli army presence in the Jordan Valley for a lengthy but undefined period. On the basis of that overview, Israel defense minister Ehud Barak drew up a document, which became known as the “Eight Points,” which he had translated into English and which he detailed to George Bush when the president visited in January 2008. Barak stressed to Bush the imperative for Israeli troops to remain in the Jordan Valley for the long term — a generation, according to some Israeli sources — to ensure no influx of terrorists, weaponry, and other unwanted imports. In taking this position, Barak was merely reiterating the stance that had prevailed since the Yitzhak Rabin era in the early 1990s. And it holds today: A senior Israeli official told this reporter, this week, that if there is no Israeli presence in the Jordan Valley, “there will be rivers of blood.”
Where there has been something of a change is, first, in Israel’s apparent readiness to relinquish the idea of Israeli sovereignty in the Jordan Valley. And second, in a certain readiness for a smaller security contingent than the major deployments previously demanded. But Israel has given no indication of when it might be prepared to reduce its deployment, and no hint of a timetable for withdrawing altogether. What other points were in Barak’s Eight Point paper? Well, it dealt with the specifics of a demilitarized Palestinian state, including monitoring and enforcement — via security arrangements not only at the borders, but also inside the state-to-be (including oversight by international forces); the positioning of early-warning stations in the West Bank; details of the IDF’s permissible movements in emergency situations; operational control of air space, and more. Israel did not seek — in the Eight Point document, or in other discussions with the Americans — the right to carry out arrests inside Palestinian sovereign territory, as Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon is demanding now. It was clear to all sides at the time, this reporter was told this week, that such a demand would not be accepted. As a result, US General Jones was dispatched by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to try to bridge the gaps between Israel and the Palestinians on the issue of the Jordan Valley. Then, as now, the Palestinians said, ‘no’ to an ongoing Israeli presence.
Jones’s attempt at a compromise was that, after three to five years, the Israeli army would be replaced by a NATO-based international force, led by the US. Jones added a host of high-tech security measures — just like the security “envelope” General Allen is proposing now — aimed at somewhat calming Israeli concerns. Jones presented his ideas to Abbas, who understood that Israel had accepted them, even though the Israeli security establishment had not given its assent. Olmert, however, did subsequently support the plan and asked the Americans to present it to the security establishment. This did not happen. And the peace offer that Olmert made to Abbas in September 2008 provided for an Israeli withdrawal from the Jordan Valley after three years. That dramatic Olmert offer was never formally presented to Abbas, so it can be argued that the idea of a full Israeli withdrawal from the Jordan Valley was not officially agreed by Israel. Yet Abbas, apparently with some justification, regards Olmert’s offer as having shown Israeli readiness to leave the Jordan Valley. But Olmert is long gone, of course. Netanyahu holds to very different positions. And given that there was no official Israeli offer, Netanyahu has justification in saying Israel never agreed to leave the Jordan Valley. So, now as in the past, Israel and the Palestinians are deadlocked over security arrangements among other issues which Kerry is trying to resolve with his framework proposal.
Finally, nationalistic Jewish activists are preparing to take action based upon the outcome of the talks. The Women in Green movement is taking the initiative with its “Sovereignty” program, which would see Israel officially become a sovereign entity in Judea and Samaria or the West Bank. Activists with the group say a political journal published for the first time in October was so popular that they plan to issue another 150,000 copies – 100,000 in Hebrew, and 50,000 in English. “We need to be ready for the day of the expected unilateral UN declaration accepting a Palestinian state” they continued. “We need to declare already now that there is a realistic alternative to the mind games of the ‘two state solution.’” Currently, there are an estimated 650,000 Israeli Jews living in Judea, Samaria, the Golan, and eastern Jerusalem, they noted. However, those hundreds of thousands of Israelis all remain under military rule due to the government’s decision not to declare sovereignty. As a result, we need to prepare for declaring sovereignty in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in opposition to the “two state” solution.
An agreement to divide Jerusalem and establish a PLO state is a tribulation event.
The link to these articles are as follows:
1) Palestinians celebrate as Israel completes third stage of release prisoners
2) Netanyahu Slams PA Celebration: ‘Murderers Are Not Heroes’
3) Kerry set for New Year bid to push forward Mideast peace talks
4) Kerry’s ‘framework’ to address all core issues
5) Netanyahu: Palestinians must recognize Israel for an accord
6) PM tells Kerry PA not devoted to negotiations
7) We’ll ignore a ‘worthless’ framework deal, says PLO
8.) US deal will trade off ‘Jewish’ Israel for 1967 lines — report
9) Exclusive: US “framework” calls for 80,000 Israeli West Bank evacuations to the big settlement blocs
10) Kerry: Netanyahu and Abbas will have to make difficult choices in coming weeks
11) US official: Kerry to push for permanent peace agreement by April
12) Cameron, Merkel to visit Israel in February
13) Report: Defense Ministry Rejects US Plan for Jordan Valley
14) Rightist MKs take firm stance with trip to Jordan Valley
15) Just like his predecessors, Kerry finds trouble crossing the Jordan
16) Bennett threatens to bolt if Kerry proposals are accepted
17) Israeli Right ‘Preparing for Talks to Explode’
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