ed note–now that all the usual suspects are in Pavlovian screech mode over Trump’s announcement concerning the Golan Heights, perhaps they should factor into all of this the fact that he plans to unveil his Peace Deal in just a few weeks and just maybe, just MAYBE, he is using this to grease the skids in preventing yet another repeat of all the previous failures taking place under Kennedy, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Clinton.
Times of Israel
Education Minister Naftali Bennett of the New Right party is sounding the alarm that Israel will be expected to make concessions with the Palestinians in exchange for Trump’s declaration on Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
‘With all the joy of American recognition of the Golan Heights, it is essential to say: The ‘Golan in exchange for Hamastan’ deal is a danger to Jewish settlements and to Israel.
‘We therefore call upon Prime Minister Netanyahu to announce as early as this evening that his agreement to the establishment of Palestine in the Bar-Ilan speech is null and void,’ Bennet said referring to a 2009 speech where Netanyahu laid out his acceptance of the two-state solution.
This was echoed by the far-right Union of Right-Wing Parties, which thanked Trump, but warned the Israeli public not to let the move blind them to the dangers of Trump’s expected peace plan.
Details of the plan have not yet been released, but URWP, a union of the Jewish Home, National Union and extremist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power), warned that it would demand Israeli concessions in the West Bank.
‘Only a government with the Union of Right-Wing Parties will stand firm,’ it said.
Head of the Golan Heights Regional Council Haim Rokah said it was ‘about time’ and called on Israel to increase funding and investment for the region ‘and double the population.’
However, lawmakers from the mostly Arab Hadash party accused Trump of timing the announcement to try and influence the election and get Netanyahu re-elected — an assertion Pompeo denied.
‘Trump is trying to save Netanyahu from his desperate situation and return him to power,’ said MK Aida Touma-Sliman.
Touma-Sliman called the recognition part of ‘the entrenchment of Israeli and American control over the Middle East and a targeted assassination of the … opposition in the Golan by thousands of Syrian citizens, who are standing firm against all attempts at Israelization and normalization’ — a reference to the Golan’s Druze population.
Hadash leader Ayman Odeh called the move a ‘cheap and cynical provocation.’
‘Decisions on the Middle East should not be unilateral, and certainly not announced over Twitter,’ he said, warning that it would further destabilize the region.
Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and extended Israeli law to the territory in 1981, a step tantamount to annexation. But the United States and the international community have long considered it Syrian territory under Israeli occupation. The plateau lies along a strategic area on the border between Israel and Syria.
Thanks Mark – indeed the awaited deal will speak for itself, and then there may be the end of the Jewish catastrophe and Palestine is reborn! Best – Fredrick
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