Blue and White party (Israel) - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

11 European ambassadors warn Israel against West Bank annexation

Times of Israel staff — Fri, 01 May 2020 11:50:44 +0000

Envoys from UK, France, Germany, other states say move would violate international law, harm regional stability, Israel’s international standing.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu points at a map of the Jordan Valley as he gives a statement, promising to extend Israeli sovereignty to the Jordan Valley and the northern Dead Sea area, in Ramat Gan on September 10, 2019. (Menahem Kahana/AFP)

Eleven European ambassadors to Israel on Thursday warned Jerusalem of severe consequences if it moves ahead with plans to annex parts of the West Bank as part of a government coalition deal.

The envoys from the UK, Germany, France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, and the EU issued a formal objection to the Foreign Ministry against the move, Channel 13 reported.

The ambassadors made the protest during a video conference with the Foreign Ministry’s Europe deputy, Anna Azari.

“We are very concerned about the clause in the coalition agreement that paves the way for annexing parts of the West Bank. The annexation of any part of the West Bank constitutes a clear violation of international law,” the ambassadors said. “Such unilateral steps will harm efforts to renew the peace process and will have grave consequences for regional stability and for Israel’s standing in the international arena.”

The envoys also demanded a freeze on government plans to allow construction in the Givat Hamatos neighborhood in East Jerusalem.

Also on Thursday, the Arab League said that the planned annexation constituted a “new war crime” against the Palestinians during a virtual conference chaired in Cairo.

“The implementation of plans to annex any part of the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, including the Jordan Valley… and the lands on which Israeli settlements are standing represents a new war crime… against the Palestinian people,” Arab foreign ministers said in a joint statement.

The Arab League also urged the United States to “withdraw its support in enabling the plans of the occupying Israeli government.”

In this February 18, 2020 photo, a view of the West Bank settlement of Ma’ale Efraim on the hills of the Jordan Valley (AP/Ariel Schalit)

On Monday, the United States said it was ready to recognize Israel’s annexation of key parts of the West Bank, but said the offer was contingent on an offer of statehood to the Palestinians.

“As we have made consistently clear, we are prepared to recognize Israeli actions to extend Israeli sovereignty and the application of Israeli law to areas of the West Bank that the vision foresees as being part of the State of Israel,” a US State Department spokesperson said when asked if the US would allow Israel’s new government to move forward with the process.

“The annexation would be in the context of an offer to the Palestinians to achieve statehood based upon specific terms, conditions, territorial dimensions, and generous economic support. This is an unprecedented and highly beneficial opportunity for the Palestinians,” the State Department spokesperson said.

The Palestinians have refused to negotiate with the Trump administration, considering it biased. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas threatened last week to cancel all agreements with Israel and the US if Israel moved forward with annexation plans.

US President Donald Trump in January unveiled a peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Rejected by the Palestinians and condemned by much of the international community, the plan gives Israel the green-light to annex Jewish settlements and other strategic territories in the West Bank.

An Israeli coalition government agreement reached last week includes a framework for implementing the annexations outlined in the plan, starting in July.

Blue and White leader Benny Gantz (left) and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sign their unity government agreement on April 20, 2020. (GPO)

Under the US proposal, the Palestinians would be granted a sovereign but demilitarized state in the remaining parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, along with promises of major investment.

The Palestinian state’s capital would be on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which would remain fully under Israeli sovereignty.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that he was “confident” Trump would let him fulfill his election promise to apply Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank “a couple of months from now.”

According to the wording of the “emergency government” deal between Netanyahu’s Likud party and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White faction, starting July 1, 2020, Netanyahu “will be able to bring the agreement reached with the US on the application of sovereignty [in the West Bank] for the approval of the cabinet and or the Knesset.”

In addition, “the law will be passed as quickly as possible… and will not be disrupted or delayed by the chairmen of either the House or the Foreign Affairs and Defense committees.”

The Netanyahu-Gantz deal stipulates that any Israeli action would need US backing, and must take into account Israel’s peace treaties with neighboring Jordan and Egypt, the only two Arab states that have formal peace treaties and diplomatic relations with Israel.

Netanyahu’s right-wing base is eager to move forward with annexation while the friendly Trump administration is in office.

Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War. The Palestinians seek those territories as part of a future independent state. The annexation of West Bank settlements would infuriate the Palestinians and Israel’s Arab neighbors.

Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/11-european-ambassadors-warn-israel-against-west-bank-annexation/

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The coming giant internal Israeli war over a nuclear Iran – A 2010 rematch

Yonah Jeremy Bob — Mon, 13 Apr 2020 07:45:44 +0000

Sources break down Israeli defense officials’ disagreements.

A member of Iranian Border Guards wears a protective face mask, following an outbreak of the new coronavirus, inside the Shalamcha Border Crossing, after Iraq shut a border crossing to travelers between Iraq and Iran, Iraq March 8, 2020 – (photo credit: REUTERS/ESSAM AL-SUDANI)

A massive internal storm may be coming that the coronavirus may delay, but cannot stop.

If it does, it will pit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mossad Director Yossi Cohen and others against Blue and White leaders Benny Gantz and Gabi Ashkenazi, as well as IDF Chief of Staff Lt.- Gen. Aviv Kochavi, over how to deal with Iran.

According to numerous interviews by The Jerusalem Post with current and former Mossad, CIA and other national security officials in the US and Israel, a point may get closer where the Islamic Republic of Iran will escalate its levels of uranium enrichment dangerously close to levels where it could weaponize within a short period.

This will draw Netanyahu, Cohen and their camp closer to a desire to preemptively strike Iran, while Gantz, Ashkenazi, Kochavi and their camp are more likely to define the “point of no return” – after which Tehran cannot be stopped from going nuclear – as a good bit later.

This debate would echo the all-out fight between Netanyahu and Gantz and Ashkenazi in 2010 and afterwards.

During that period, the Blue and White MKs followed each other as IDF chiefs and, especially Ashkenazi, helped block an Israeli preemptive strike, along with then-Mossad chiefs Meir Dagan and Tamir Pardo.

Pardo has since confirmed that he even discussed the issue with then-attorney-general Yehuda Weinstein. He explained that he believed a Netanyahu order to move pieces in place for a near-immediate attack on Iran without full security cabinet approval was illegal and said Weinstein confirmed his position.

There are multiple narratives, with one involving confusing moves by Netanyahu and then-defense minister Ehud Barak to merely scare the world into thinking they would attack.

But the majority public narrative is that the defense establishment’s opposition blocked Netanyahu and Barak from launching an attack.

Most expert estimates already have Tehran’s time to break out for a nuclear bomb – if it chooses to do so, which all agree it has not yet – down from 12 months to between three and a half to six months.

In early March, the usually relatively Iran-friendly International Atomic Energy Agency reported that the ayatollahs already had enough low-level (between 3.67-5%) enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon – should Iran make the decision to enrich to higher levels.

Multiple intelligence sources have indicated to the Post a belief that the Islamic Republic may jump to 20% enrichment, a step it took before the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Some sources even speculated that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei may greenlight a small amount of enrichment at the 60% level (uranium becomes weaponized at the 90% level) – an idea the country already played with months ago, but has not yet carried out.

But sources have indicated that top intelligence officials in favor of an earlier military option to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb are not looking at just one specific factor.

Rather, they are looking at the full picture of Tehran’s actions, which will indicate whether it has made the decision to go to the threshold.

According to intelligence officials who view the point of no return as an earlier point in time, they look at nuclear enrichment as a more decisive factor for interpreting Iran’s intentions than the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon.

Put differently, they believe Israel would need to act militarily once Iran has enough nuclear material for a weapon, and that it could not wait for the point at which it is confirmed that Iran can properly fire the weapon.

The rationale of these intelligence officials is that enriching uranium and working on weapons delivery issues, though separate skills to master, do not need to happen in a chronological fashion.

Instead, intelligence officials have noted to the Post that the Islamic Republic could be working through problems with delivering a nuclear warhead on its Shahab 3 missile or other missiles in parallel to its uranium enrichment.

Further, these officials said once Iran gets to within a certain proximity to enough weaponized material for a nuclear bomb, the uncertainties – which might drag out the process by some period of weeks or might be solved immediately – are too fluid.

THERE IS a lesson from the North Korea case.

With North Korea, at some point, the world was surprised by how slow it moved forward with developing nuclear weapons. However, later it shocked the world by being months ahead of what was expected. Exporting this lesson to Iran, it means the point of no return cannot wait for the clock to run out entirely.

Those intelligence officials in this camp are also keeping a careful eye on relations between the IAEA and the ayatollahs. Relations have gotten shakier since the March report, which used harsher language than usual against the regime.

In contrast, in January, Kochavi publicly laid out that he did not view Iran as a real nuclear threat until deep into 2021.

The Post has asked the IDF if Kochavi might move his calendar up by nine months since he also predicted in January that Tehran would not have enough low-enriched uranium for a bomb before December. Yet, the regime crossed that threshold already in March.

The IDF did not respond and has not issued a revised timeline.

This suggests that the IDF will not change its calendar as long as Iran is not enriching uranium to higher levels.

However, even more significantly, Kochavi explicitly treated the issues of uranium enrichment and nuclear weapons delivery as separate and chronological. He said weapons delivery pushed the nuclear threat off until deep into 2021.

It appears that this was the position of Ashkenazi and Gantz back in the 2010 era when they held Kochavi’s job.

At that point – and leading up to the 2015 nuclear deal – Iran went far beyond where it is today with nuclear enrichment, yet they were still dead set against Netanyahu and Barak’s discussion/order to attack.

Before the 2015 nuclear deal, Iran had enough low-enriched uranium for around 10 nuclear bombs and had substantial amounts of uranium enriched to the 20% level – which it has not done yet this time.

So even if Khamenei brings Iran far beyond its current uranium stock of low-enriched uranium for one weapon, and if he orders uranium enrichment at the 20% level, a rematch could mean Netanyahu’s Blue and White partners trying to hold him back from an attack.

Kochavi in the present, and Gantz, Ashkenazi, Dagan, and Pardo from the past and present, in part represent an IDF mentality of needing to juggle short-term threats, like Hezbollah and Hamas, with long-term threats. They also represent an intelligence perspective beyond the IDF that even a surgical strike solely on Iran’s nuclear facilities could likely lead to a broader war with Iran and its proxies.

In contrast, Netanyahu and Cohen now, and Barak in the past, represented a mentality that the risks of Iran developing a nuclear weapon are so great (that it might use a weapon or that it could use the weapon to act more aggressively in the region) that it trumps other risks and warrants acting sooner.

This future internal war, a rematch of the 2010 era, could decide the fate of the country.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/The-coming-giant-internal-Israeli-war-over-a-nuclear-Iran-A-2010-rematch-624452

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The post The coming giant internal Israeli war over a nuclear Iran – A 2010 rematch first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.