T. Belman. This needs clarification from a known source on the Trump team. As I have said before, the litmus test is permission to build. That is currently being held up. Building is way more important than the US moving its embassy. So much for Kushner and Friedman and Greenblatt. It may well be that the world community can force a solution on us which is akin to the Kerry parameters. Trump has yet to do anything that would assure us that we will get more land than the former administration was willing to give us.
Avigdor Lieberman says Israel should clearly state it has no intention of imposing Israeli law on West Bank.
The U.S. administration told Israel that annexing the West Bank would lead to an immediate crisis between the two countries, Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told lawmakers on Monday.
“We received a direct message… imposing Israeli sovereignty [on the West Bank] would mean an immediate crisis with the new administration,” Lieberman told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “The coalition should clearly state that there is no intention to impose [Israeli] sovereignty.”
The defense chief referred to recent calls by lawmakers, including by Miki Zohar (Likud), a member of the governing coalition, to annex the West Bank. “The two-state solution is dead,” Zohar, told news channel i24 on Sunday, while insisting that the one-state alternative would be democratic even though Palestinians would not automatically be allowed to vote in elections.
“I’m getting calls from all of the world wanting to know if this is the position of the coalition,” said Lieberman. “As far of my opinion is concerned, we need to separate from the Palestinians and not to integrate them. The decision to annex Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) would mean the integration of 2.7 million Palestinians in Israel.”
Lieberman said he was not worried about the international community’s reaction to Israel annexing the West Bank. “According to Israeli law,” he said, the Palestinians would “have to receive at least residency status. That means that from the first day, 20 billion shekels just from the National Insurance Institute in unemployment benefits, maternity allowances and other payments. I’m not even talking about the budgets of the Interior Ministry, the Housing Ministry and other offices that will also go there.”
Speaking about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, Lieberman shifted the blame to Hamas. “We can’t have Hamas investing hundreds of millions of dollars in building tunnels and rockets and that we would pay from the taxpayers’ money for electricity and water for the Gaza Strip,” he said.
Lieberman also spoke of an incident in the West Bank, where Palestinians were filmed throwing rocks at Border Police officers. On Friday, one Palestinian was arrested after Palestinians threw stones at a Border Police vehicle in t town of Nabi Saleh.
The police force did not act as expected of them, Lieberman said. “You don’t know if they are charging at you with a stone, with a firebomb or a hand grenade.” He said the force should have followed procedure for arresting suspects, and the he would expect the force to “fire into the air and later to the legs.”
“The fact that the masked men were unharmed is wrong,” Lieberman said, noting that army Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eiskenkot agrees with his assessment.
@ Hugo Schmidt-Fischer:
Yes, but we (as in Bibi) do need to assert our rights to our land.
Who in his right mind in Israel can think that ANYONE of these mediocre politicians we have could have ANY intention of annexing anything?
This is the moot point of the century. Can’t believe this.
* facepalm *
Senate Foreign Relations Committee is scheduled to vote on sending the nomination of David Friedman as U.S. Ambassador to Israel on Thursday, March 9.
Late last week, Sen. Menendez, D, NJ, indicated he would vote yes on the Committee vote.
9 hours ago, The Forward (left) posted this from
The Dems cling to the Two-State-Solution. This goes to extreme “unfitness” charges.
Be patient. POTUS has been obstructed from BEFORE the Inauguration on Senate confirmation hearings and votes, by Schumer.
Friedman is the first nominee for Ambassador to even get a hearing!
Apologies so many American Jews are forcing this insanity on everyone, including Israel.
I wonder if it was VP Pence who spoke to Lieberman. It was VP Pence who hosted King & Queen of Jordan for official breakfast at the VP Residence.
Plus, now North Korea is #1 foreign policy crisis this week.
The same North Korea who is supplying Iran with scientists, technicians, plans …for their nuclear and ballistic missile program.
Same North Korea smuggling precision rockets to Gaza from the Sinai.
Fake news?
@ Abolish_public_education:
Oh so sorry did I hit a nerve.
@ honeybee:
This is chit-chat.
As it pertains to my original comment, individuals associated with public education — students, teachers, administrators, etc — are leeching.
Yep.
@ Abolish_public_education:
Yes abolish public education put those bratty kids back in the mills, coal mines and cotton fields where they belong.
The problem is not the significant cost, potentially, to the taxpayers of absorbing a few million Arabs.
The problem is the far, FAR greater cost, ACTUALLY, to the taxpayers for the tax leeches (Arabs/Jews alike) that Israel has already absorbed.
Israelis should be discussing how to separate from (or DEPORT) all of its current tax leeches.
Furthermore, ALL of the government welfare bureaucracies listed above, which Lieberman identified (and the many dozens more that he didn’t), need to be ABOLISHED.
“As I have said before, the litmus test is permission to build. That is currently being held up.”
I agree. As long as the US continues to deny permission to Israeli Jews to build homes for themselves, it is interfering with Israeli sovereignty. If Trump continues in this policy, I think Israel is right in doubting his sincerity in policies toward the Jewish homeland.
The US President and government are under severe attack, at the moment, from internal and external enemies. If Israel helps out our government in this time of crisis, by exercising restraint in moves toward annexation, this ought to be used as a bargaining chip later on.
Permission to build homes, on the other hand, though a big issue in places like the EU and UN, does not seem to me to be very important to US domestic politics. If Pres. Trump has indeed described annexation as a current “red line”, he is implicitly saying that “permission to build” is not. I believe, therefore, based on all the above, that this is a good time for Israeli Jews to build on public land in the Jewish heartland; while at the same time, talk of annexation should be put off to another day.
Trump asked Netanyahu to share the land bequeathed to Israel, with Arabs.
Measure for measure, immediately as Trump made these demands on Israel, US courts blocked Trump’s immigration order.
The courts are wrong and will be vitiated. But the universe has sent a loud message to Trump crisp and clearly:
• You force my people to give up on their land and share it with their enemies. Now watch, against all rational odds, your hands are bound; you are forced to accept immigrants from Arab countries.
• You asked Bibi to betray his heritage. You are now under the ludicrous suspicion to have betrayed your own country with Putin.
• You have restricted construction in Judea and Samaria, even though this contravenes Israel’s legal rights. Your chief legal cabinet member is unfairly weakened; the attorney general cannot protect you.
That Trump had been able to pull off an electoral landslide, with the most critical required states voting for him out of all the states, is nothing short of a miracle. However, as miraculous as Trump’s victory has been, the same inexplicable forces that allowed him to rise are now holding him back.
Trump was granted victory, even as he faced insurmountable odds that included a corrupt opposition, an administration with no-scruples to meddle and interfere, a hostile media and vicious enemies within his own party. Thankfully, Trump won at this junction in history. He is about to rectify the evils of our present civilization:
Politicians are detached of the economic values that drive the wealth of nations. Public debt has skyrocketed; central banks are printing money at a rate that in the 1930s has bankrupted nations; non-transparent institutions as the EU or supranational trading blocs not answerable to voters have drifted away from serving their national client state members, they cater to powerful special interest groups instead; the UN is a liars den; Universities are spinning out hateful ideologies; schools that do not teach; a society that is crazed by superstitious beliefs in climate phantasies. And though the media does not face the threat of Siberia, they are spewing out vitriolic Stalin-era propaganda, voluntarily.
Trump seems to get it and he is genuine about it. Through his actions in the first weeks of his presidency, he has proven himself.
Except with Israel. The Embassy was not relocated, he pressured Bibi to cease construction, he seeks to appropriate area C to Arabs, and from the last remnant smoldering ember left, he wants to carve out an additional hostile state for the Arabs.
Trump must reconsider. For once, he should disregard the well-meant hapless advice of Ivanka and Jared. Trump should desist from recruiting Tony Blair to continue badgering Israel into more territorial concessions.
Trump should unconditionally support a Jewish state in Israel for the Jewish people. He must urgently set free Jewish construction and confirm Jewish sovereignty throughout the land of Israel… and providence will resume to shine kindly upon Trump.