To gauge from media leaks and the pace of US Secretary of State John Kerry’s visits to the region, the much-derided US-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians seem nevertheless to be advancing steadily.
That, at least, is the view of many of Israel’s right-leaning parliamentarians, both supporters and detractors of the talks, who are slowly but steadily beginning to believe the talks may bear fruit and are looking for ways to influence their outcome. The result has been a growing interest in legislation as a way to shore up — and even outright declare — what the lawmakers believe should be the outcome of talks. That includes legislating Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank.On Tuesday this week, in the wake of a series of leaks about US proposals to enhance security measures in the Jordan Valley in order to allow Israel to withdraw from the area, MK Moti Yogev (Jewish Home) proposed a bill to apply Israeli civil law, and in effect annex, the strategically significant border region.Formally titled “The Bill to Apply Israeli Law to the Jordan Valley 5774-2013,” the measure would place the region under Israeli law rather than its current legal status as a captured territory administered by the IDF. The bill is nearly identical to the 1981 Golan Heights Bill, which applied Israeli civil law and effectively annexed the Syrian border region to Israel. While the international community refused to recognize Israel’s unilateral annexation of the Golan, under Israeli law it is treated as sovereign Israeli territory.
MK Motti Yogev of the Jewish Home party (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)
MK Motti Yogev of the Jewish Home party (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)
The Jordan Valley bill quickly won the support this week of some of the Knesset’s most influential figures, including Coalition Chairman Yariv Levin (Likud), Law Committee Chairman David Rotem (Yisrael Beytenu), former Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud), Jewish Home faction chair Ayelet Shaked, former Shas chairman Eli Yishai, and at least 13 other lawmakers.To be sure, even proponents of the bill acknowledge it stands little chance of passing into law. Since it impinges on issues being discussed in peace talks, and could thus limit the maneuvering room of Israeli negotiators, it will face decisive opposition from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Justice Minister and chief negotiator Tzipi Livni and other top officials and power brokers.But the bill is only the latest in a series of bills that seek to extend Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank. The bills are all piecemeal measures, either extending all Israeli civil law over a small part of the West Bank, or a small measure of Israeli law over the entire territory.
Orit Strock (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)
Orit Strock (photo credit: Miriam Alster/Flash90)
Earlier this year, MK Orit Strock (Jewish Home) proposed a bill that would extend the Women’s Labor Law, which grants Israeli women certain labor protections such as maternity leave, to the West Bank. Strock noted that women who take maternity leave in West Bank settlements can be fired for doing so because the territory does not fall under Israeli civil laws that prevent such abuses.Indeed, Strock’s bill would have granted these protections to Palestinian women employed by Israelis in the West Bank, as well. It was a measure to protect women, she argued, and the bill’s supporters were not limited to the right.But the bill was ultimately felled by Netanyahu, who on September 1 announced a cabinet decision that a solution would be found to the inequality of labor rights in the West Bank. The prime minister made a point of not publicly opposing the legislative route, but nevertheless ordered the IDF Central Command, as the legal administrator of the territory, to issue a military order applying the provisions of the Women’s Labor Law to the West Bank — thus extending the law’s protections to settlers and their Palestinian employees without taking a step that could have been interpreted as an expansion of Israeli claims to sovereignty over the area.The government decision also promised to extend all other Israeli laws related to labor protections to the West Bank by January 1, 2014, a deadline “that will clearly not be met,” Strock told The Times of Israel on Friday.While government attorneys are unlikely to successfully apply all the relevant laws through military directives by the deadline set in the September 1 cabinet decision, the measures are expected to pass eventually – not as legislation, but as military directives.Though the protections themselves are being extended to the West Bank, Strock and others are dissatisfied. Chief among this group is Economy Minister Naftali Bennett, who is simultaneously the minister responsible for the implementation of labor laws and the political system’s chief advocate for the expansion of Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank.There are already plans underway for new bills that would seek to apply other civil laws to the West Bank, including one that would extend the Public Libraries Law empowering local governments to create public libraries, the Disabled Rights Law and other measures.Together with MK Levin, who co-chairs with Strock the Caucus for the Land of Israel, “we intend to propose more bills dealing directly with applying Israeli sovereignty [to the West Bank],” she said Friday.Some of them are explicit. The explanatory preface to this week’s Jordan Valley bill notes bluntly: “The future of the Jordan Valley begins in the Israeli consciousness. Israel must decide to apply its sovereignty to this broad region, which has a relatively small Palestinian population, and to say openly: ‘The Jordan Valley will remain under Israeli sovereignty forever.’”But others are more circumspect.The bills dealing with labor rights and other civil matters “are about individual rights, not national or diplomatic questions,” Strock insisted.Indeed, she noted, some Israeli laws were extended to the West Bank years ago. The West Bank’s Israeli population “pays taxes by force of legislation [as opposed to a military directive]. We are drafted into the IDF by legislation, not a military directive. We must obey traffic laws by legislation. So there is nothing new here.”In the end, Strock said, the new bills are about recognizing the reality on the ground. “All we’re trying to say is that [the West Bank’s Jews] have lived here for 45 years. Our young people who are getting drafted this year — not only were they born in Judea and Samaria, so were their parents.”

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-26
25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)
26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear,(TORNADOES,HURRICANES,STORMS) and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth:(DESTRUCTION) for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.(FROM QUAKES,NUKES ETC)

Ice storm aftermath: warm weather brings more outages

28,000 Ontario customers without power, 12,000 in N.B.

CBC News Posted: Dec 28, 2013 6:36 AM ET Last Updated: Dec 28, 2013 8:50 AM ET
Tens of thousands still in the dark in Ontario

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About 40,000 customers in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick remain in the dark one week after a major ice storm blanketed Central and Atlantic Canada, and warming temperatures have caused new power outages in Toronto.
Toronto Hydro CEO Anthony Haines said early Saturday that melting ice falling from trees and other structures has lead to fresh damage. At about 1 a.m. ET the number of customers without power had dropped below 20,000 for the first time, but by 8 a.m. it was back up to around 23,000."Over the morning hours we’ve been moving backwards, but I’m sure our crews will attend to those and we’ll start moving in the right direction again over the next couple of hours," he told CBC News Network.Roughly 28,000 customers in Ontario are still waiting for the lights and heat to be restored, seven days after the power went out. Haines couldn't provide a guess for when the power would be restored to everybody. He said computer simulations have shown three days, but that there are variables at work like the new outages and the arrival of more crews.“I’m hopeful certainly by the early part of next week the vast majority of customers will be back," he said.Haines, who noted that the average Toronto Hydro customer is equivalent to 2½ people, said his heart goes out to those without power but that crews are working as fast as they can.“I understand the difficulties that not having electricity brings, but what we can do is work around the clock and we can bring extra resources in from far and wide, which is what we’ve done, and we will not stop until the power is on for everybody," he said. "What we can do is what we can do, I suppose.”
Haines stressed the enormous scope of the damage:
  • Forty per cent of the city's power lines, which would cross Canada twice, have been affected by the storm.
  • Thirty-thousand pieces of equipment have been installed back into the grid and about 47,000 metres of cable have gone back up into the air.
  • The City of Toronto says about 20 per cent of the city's tree canopy has been damaged and it could take seven weeks to clean up all the fallen limbs, Haines said. 

12,000 without power in N.B.

About 12,000 customers in New Brunswick are in a similar situation. In Quebec, officials tweeted late Friday night that they were "almost there" with only about 400 customers left who needed power restored.
CANADA/
About 23,000 customers were still without power in Toronto on Saturday morning. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)
Amid the rising anger and frustration of those still in the dark, utility companies are pleading for patience, saying crews are working around the clock and nothing else can be done to speed up the process.That's little consolation for people who have been in the dark for a week, including Carmen Andronesu, who is one of more than 1,000 residents who live in a condo complex in Toronto's north end."No matter how much you try calling here and there, it’s like you cannot find help from anywhere," she said.In the rural southern New Brunswick community of Titusville, people without power have been heading to the generator-powered general store to buy kerosene, propane, candles and water. Owner Mark Carline said the storm and outage has caused him to reflect."I think we were all reminded and humbled by the fact that at any given time we could be set back to this state, where we’re scrambling [to get] the basic necessities."With files from The Canadian Press

EARTHQUAKES

ISAIAH 42:15
15  I will make waste mountains and hills, and dry up all their herbs; and I will make the rivers islands, and I will dry up the pools.

MATTHEW 24:7-8
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.

MARK 13:8
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom:(ETHNIC GROUP AGAINST ETHNIC GROUP) and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.

LUKE 21:11
11 And great earthquakes shall be in divers places,(DIFFERNT PLACES AT THE SAME TIME) and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.

1 Day, Magnitude 2.5+ Worldwide

20 earthquakes - DownloadUpdated: 2013-12-28 08:57:08 UTC-05:00Showing event times using Local System Time (UTC-05:00)20 earthquakes in map area
  1. 2.5 61km SW of Cantwell, Alaska 2013-12-28 07:44:55 UTC-05:00 75.8 km
  2. 5.0 181km E of Farallon de Pajaros, Northern Mariana Islands 2013-12-28 05:23:37  9.7 km
  3. 4.8 185km E of Farallon de Pajaros, Northern Mariana Islands 2013-12-28   10.0 km
  4. 4.9 9km E of Irapa, Venezuela 2013-12-28 04:17:17 UTC-05:00 93.8 km
  5. 4.6 196km ESE of Lambasa, Fiji 2013-12-28 04:03:17 UTC-05:00 547.1 km
  6. 4.7 84km N of Gizo, Solomon Islands 2013-12-28 02:35:12 UTC-05:00 57.6 km
  7. 4.4 80km SW of San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua 2013-12-28 02:25:09 UTC-05:00 43.7 km
  8. 5.3 Pacific-Antarctic Ridge 2013-12-28 01:43:37 UTC-05:00 9.8 km
  9. 4.4 26km SSW of Puerto San Jose, Guatemala 2013-12-27 23:26:45 UTC-05:00 60.7 km
  10. 2.5 50km SW of Redoubt Volcano, Alaska 2013-12-27 23:03:38 UTC-05:00 100.0 km
  11. 3.1 50km SSE of Punta Cana, Dominican Republic 2013-12-27 22:59:31 UTC-05:00 89.0 km
  12. 5.1 83km NNE of Lae, Papua New Guinea 2013-12-27 19:23:35 UTC-05:00 99.5 km
  13. 2.6 72km N of Tierras Nuevas Poniente, Puerto Rico 2013-12-27 18:47:35 UTC-05:00 17.0 km
  14. 4.6 270km NE of Tamrida, Yemen 2013-12-27 14:10:44 UTC-05:00 9.2 km
  15. 4.8 78km WNW of La Ligua, Chile 2013-12-27 13:52:10 UTC-05:00 1.6 km
  16. 2.8 51km S of Lone Pine, California 2013-12-27 12:55:36 UTC-05:00 0.0 km
  17. 2.9 54km N of Charlotte Amalie, U.S. Virgin Islands 2013-12-27 12:54:25 UTC-05:00 52.0 km
  18. 5.4 31km NW of Frontera, Spain 2013-12-27 12:46:06 UTC-05:00 22.8 km
  19. 3.5 48km N of Charlotte Amalie, U.S. Virgin Islands 2013-12-27 12:44:47 UTC-05:00 59.0 km
  20. 2.5 2km SSW of Mammoth Lakes, California 2013-12-27 12:22:24 UTC-05:00 7.6 km