KING JESUS IS COMING FOR US ANY TIME NOW. THE RAPTURE. BE PREPARED TO GO.
US deal will trade off ‘Jewish’ Israel for 1967 lines — report
Palestinian sources tell Saudi daily that negotiators will need to make tough decisions in coming weeks
December 29, 2013, 9:18 pm
1-The Times of Israel
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 told the Saudi daily
Al-Watan on Sunday.
According
to the sources, the mutual recognition 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.“The coming weeks will be difficult for the
Palestinian and Israeli sides, since they will need to make tough
decisions,” a source told Al-Watan. “On the one hand, Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will need to live with a text speaking of
the 1967 borders, and the Palestinians, for their part, will need to
live with a text speaking of Israel’s Jewishness.”Kerry is to visit the region later this week
and is expected to present the sides with a framework plan meant to keep
peace talks alive.Talks have hit a roadblock in recent months, with the sides failing to come to terms over Israel’s
demand to leave IDF forces in the Jordan Valley, and Palestinian
demands to release Israeli citizens jailed for terrorist acts before the
signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. According to one unconfirmed Israeli report, Kerry has offered to release the American spy-for-Israel Jonathan Pollard to coax Israel into freeing the jailed Israeli terrorists.No Israeli Arabs are to be included in the third phase of prisoner release scheduled to take place Monday.PA President
Mahmoud Abbas and Arab foreign ministers have reportedly sent letters to
US President Barack Obama and Secretary Kerry rejecting Israel’s demand
to recognize it as a Jewish state and refusing any Israeli military
presence on the future Palestinian state.“These
letters were sent so that the American administration avoids any
reference to the issues rejected by Arabs and Palestinians among the
ideas Kerry is going to present,” a source told Al-Watan.Meanwhile,
Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk on Sunday warned Abbas against signing
a framework agreement, which he dubbed “a second Oslo Accord.”“If an
agreement is reached, Netanyahu will sign it and take it to the
Knesset,” the deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau wrote on his
Facebook wall. “But where will the person signing on the Palestinian
side take the agreement? The issues raised concern among all
Palestinians: borders, refugees, Jerusalem, the right of return and, of
course, security.”
The
Palestinian parliament which must ratify any agreement, Abu Marzouk
noted, has not convened in years. Hamas has repeatedly rejected peace
talks. “I pray that
the disaster of Oslo won’t repeat itself,” he concluded. “Because this
time the price will be recognition of the Jewishness of the state, God
forbid.”
Israel likely to be blamed for failed peace talks’
European Union envoy says further settlement construction may seriously harm negotiations
December 29, 2013, 1:21 pm
22
The European Union’s envoy to
Israel warned that if peace talks with the Palestinians fail due to
construction in West Bank settlements, Israel is likely to get the blame
for it.In
a weekend interview with the Hebrew-language Walla News website, Lars
Faaborg-Andersen laid out potential consequences of the government’s
expected announcement this week of further settlement construction.Faaborg-Andersen said he had made it clear to
Israeli officials that such an announcement could seriously damage the
US-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,
and in such a case Israel could expect to take the rap. The envoy added
that a similar sentiment had been relayed by the ambassadors of the
major European powers.
Last Wednesday, Israeli media reported that
Netanyahu was planning to announce the government’s approval for
construction of 1,400 new homes in Jewish communities in East Jerusalem
(600) and the West Bank (800). Channel 10 said the prime minister was
going ahead with the announcement despite the station’s assessment that
the last such announcement, which coincided with the second phase of
Palestinian prisoner releases, almost caused the collapse of peace
talks. It said the US and EU had both urged him not to go ahead with the
plan, to no avail.Despite a recent uptick in violence, with
attacks on Israeli targets near Gaza and in the West Bank and the
attempted bombing of an Israeli bs in Bat Yam last week, the cabinet
decided last Wednesday it would proceed as planned with the release of
the 26 Palestinian prisoners convicted of terrorism.In November, Netanyahu halted much larger plans for new settlement
construction advocated by Housing and Construction Minister Uri Ariel
(Jewish Home), saying the move to push forward tens of thousands of new
units over the Green Line was a “meaningless step” that would create
pointless tension with the international community.The release of Palestinian prisoners was
intended as a confidence-building measure to boost peace talks with the
Palestinian Authority which restarted in July after a break of several
years. Israel agreed to release 104 prisoners, all convicted before the
1993 Oslo Accords, in four phases over the course of the nine-month
negotiation process.
Two Katyusha rockets land in northern Galilee
No wounded or damage reported; IDF retaliates with artillery fire at Lebanese targets; two additional rockets fall short, land inside Lebanon
December 29, 2013, 7:23 am
13
Two Katyusha rockets fired from
Lebanon landed west of the northern Galilee town of Kiryat Shmona at
approximately 7 a.m. local time.No one was wounded and there was no damage reported from the attack.
Security officials said a total of four
rockets were launched from southern Lebanon, but two failed to make it
across the border, landing inside Lebanon. The report was followed on
Sunday morning by a Lebanese report of two rocket falls near Sarda, a
village some 10 kilometers from Marj Ayoun near the border with Israel.
Lebanese Army troops deployed to the area to investigate.The IDF said in
a tweet on its Hebrew-language
Twitter feed that it retaliated for the rocket attack with “massive
artillery fire of dozens of shells targeting the source of the [rocket]
fire.” Lebanese sources disagreed on the number and targets of the
shells fired by the IDF, with Lebanon’s state news agency saying that
over 20 shells hit the mountainous, rugged area around the southern
Lebanese border area of Rashaya early Sunday. There were no reports of
injuries on the Lebanese side.Meanwhile, Hezbollah’s official Al-Manar
news
outlet reported four artillery shells targets the southern Lebanese
village of Shuba. Lebanese and UN security forces went on high alert
following the exchange of fire.Residents in Kiryat Shmona reported a
smoke cloud rising from one of the landing sites on Sunday morning.“I
heard the falls from my house,” Kiryat
Shmona Mayor Nissim Malka told Army Radio Sunday morning, describing the
explosions as “loud booms.”“The army is investigating. We’re convening a
meeting of the city council,” Malka said.IDF forces were sweeping the
area to locate the fallen rockets.“This attack from Lebanese soil is an
inexcusable, unacceptable blatant breach of Israel’s sovereignty,” IDF
spokesman to the international press Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said on
Twitter Sunday.
“Launching rockets from Lebanon in to Israel
jeopardizes thousands of civilian lives in the north, a reality no
sovereign state would accept. The IDF maintains the right to self
defense and will operate accordingly against the perpetrators,” he
added.The Mevo’ot Hermon Regional Council, located
east of Kiryat Shmona along the border, initially canceled its school
bus routes and asked residents to stay home. But within half an hour
after the rockets’ fall, local officials ordered a resumption of the
school bus service.“Everything is fine. We’re resilient, and we trust
the army to protect us,” said Mevo’ot Hermon Mayor Benny Ben Muvchar.
While northern residents reported that no
sirens had sounded ahead of the explosions, other reports claimed “Color
Red” anti-rocket warning sirens had sounded in Kiryat Shmona and Safed
Sunday morning.
Unlike the southern border with Gaza, the
anti-rocket systems on the northern border are not active on a permanent
basis. The systems are activated by the IDF only when tensions rise
along the border. The rocket falls were a surprise to the security
services, Israeli media reported Sunday morning.The Katyusha is a
WWII-era, Soviet-made 122-mm rocket favored by terror groups for its
mobility.The attack follows a series of incidents in recent months along
the border.Earlier this month, Master Sgt. Shlomi Cohen, 31, was shot and killed by a Lebanese Army soldier
while driving along the border near the coastal town of Rosh Hanikra.
The shooting happened near the spot where a bomb blew up an army jeep,
injuring four soldiers, in August. Four Katyusha rockets were fired from
Lebanon into Israel in late August.AP contributed to this report. 
