Originally posted by breakingnews.sy on August 20, 2012
The Israeli military has stationed an Iron Dome missile-defense battery west of Eilat.
The move came days after two Grad rockets were reportedly fired from the Sinai Peninsula at the Red Sea resort city.
The remains of a Grad rocket were found north of Eilat on Friday evening.
The deployment of the battery was part of a national plan to test the Iron Dome system.
“Let us, on this International Day, reaffirm our commitment to translating solidarity into positive action. The international community must help steer the situation towards a historic peace agreement.” That is UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s message for the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, 29 November 2011.
Mr. Ban called on the Israeli and Palestinian leadership to show courage and determination to seek an agreement for a two-State solution that can open up a brighter future for Palestinian and Israeli children.
There have been many Middle East peace proposals and many negotiations including an Arab state, with or without a significant Jewish population, a Jewish state, with or without a significant Arab population, a single bi-national state, with or without some degree of cantonization, two states, one bi-national and one Arab, with or without some form of federation, and two states, one Jewish and one Arab, with or without some form of federation.
During the 19th Century some Jews banded together to form a political ideology called Zionism, based on the idea of a “Jewish homeland.” In the USA the Zionist movement developed a powerful political lobby to promote its aims, while its military groups pursued a violent terrorist campaign in Palestine against the Arabs and Britain to force acceptance of its demands.
On 29 November 1947 the United Nations adopted a partition resolution dividing the land of Palestine into two independent states- one Arab and one Jewish, while Jerusalem was put under international protection. This was accepted by most of the Jewish settlers, who comprised 13% of the population and rejected by the majority Arab population, the original inhabitants who demanded self–determination. The British said the decision would be a failure and refused to apply it. When British forces withdrew in May 1948, and Israel declared independence fighting broke out between Arabs and Jews.
One of the first plans for settling the Arab-Israel war of 1948 was made by the UN emissary, Count Folke Bernadotte. Count Folke Bernadotte was a Swedish noble and diplomat, nephew of the Swedish king, fluent in six languages; he was an outstanding humanitarian and very well respected for his integrity. He gained international recognition through his work as head of the Swedish Red Cross during World War Two, organizing exchanges of disabled prisoners. Bernadotte also used his position to negotiate with Heinrich Himmler, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party, and save the lives of about 30,000 Jews, Allied prisoners of war and other people from the concentration camps, just before the end of the war.
On 20th May, 1948, the United Nations Security Council appointed Bernadotte as mediator in the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine. After meeting Arab and Jewish leaders he succeeded in obtaining a 30-day truce that began on 11th June. In then developed his first plan for peace.
First Proposal
Bernadotte’s first plan called for the Jewish State to relinquish the Negev and Jerusalem to Transjordan and to receive the western Galilee. Bernadotte advocated a total demilitarization of Jerusalem and blamed the Jewish forces for “aggressive” behavior in the city.
The Arab world rejected the Bernadotte plan on the grounds that, as Syrian officer Muhammad Nimr al-Khatib said, “Most of these mediators are spies for the Jews anyway.” The Israeli government, hating the idea of giving up Jerusalem and bent on military victory, quickly followed suit. Fighting resumed on July 8 and the Israeli army gained strength and succeeded in pushing back the Arabs until a second UN cease-fire was declared on July 18, this time with no time limit and a threat of economic sanctions against any country that broke it.
After the unsuccessful first proposal, Bernadotte continued with a more complex proposal that abandoned the idea of a Union and proposed two independent states. Having witnessed the expulsion of the Palestinians from their home, he called for the unqualified return of all Palestinian refugees expelled as a result of the conflict. He declared:
“The right of innocent people, uprooted from their homes by the present terror and ravages of war, to return to their homes, should be affirmed and made effective, with assurance of adequate compensation for the property of those who may choose not to return…. [N]o settlement can be just and complete if recognition is not accorded to the right of the Arab refugee to return to the home from which he has been dislodged. It will be an offence against the principles of elemental justice if these innocent victims of the conflict were denied the right of return to their homes while Jewish immigrants flow into Palestine…”
Second Proposal
This proposal was completed on September 16, 1948 and it contained what he described as “seven basic premises” regarding the situation in Palestine:
On 17 September 1948, the day after he submitted his progress report to the UN, a four-man team of the Jewish nationalist Zionist group Lehi (commonly known as the Stern Gang or Stern Group) ambushed Bernadotte’s motorcade in Jerusalem’s Katamon neighborhood.
The four hit men were, in fact, Stern Gang members consisting of three gunmen and a driver. The three gunmen were Yitzhak Ben-Moshe, “Gingi” Zinger, and Yehoshua Cohen. Cohen was the shooter who murdered Bernadotte. The fourth member of the hit team, the jeep driver, was Meshulam Makover.
Of the three Stern Gang leaders who dispatched the killers, Israel Eldad, Natan Yalin-Mor and Yitzhak Shamir, only Yalon-Mor was brought to trial along with one gang member, Mattiyahu Shmulovitz. They were not charged with Bernadotte’s murder but with membership in a terrorist organization. Following their conviction Yalon-Mor and Shmulovitz were pardoned under a general amnesty ordered by Ben-Gurion after serving only two weeks in jail.
Based upon events in Israel following Bernadotte’s assassination it is apparent that being a member of the Stern Gang was not blight on one’s good name but a career-enhancing credential. For example, Natan Yalin-Mor was elected to a seat in the First Knesset, the Israeli parliament. The shooter, Yehoshua Cohen, became Ben-Gurion’s personal bodyguard. In 1983, Yitzhak Shamir succeeded Menachem Begin as Prime Minister.
From 1948 through to the present day, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians is ongoing. After all these years, the only unanswerable question is the one that was asked by Bertrand Russell in his message to the International Conference of Parliamentarians held in February 1970:
The tragedy of the people of Palestine is that their country was ‘given’ by a foreign power to another people for the creation of a new state. The result was that many hundreds of thousands of innocent people were made permanently homeless. With every new conflict their numbers increased.
How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?
It is abundantly clear that the refugees have every right to the homeland from which they were driven, and the denial of this right is at the heart of the continuing conflict.
Sources:
https://www.1948.org.uk/right-of-return/
https://www.timeanddate.com/holidays/un/solidarity-day-palestinian-people
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_a_Palestinian_state
https://www.zionism-israel.com/dic/Bernadotte_Plan.htm
https://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/COLDbernadotte.htm
https://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/49384
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/folke.html
https://suspiciousdeaths.blogspot.com/2010/06/count-folke-bernadotte.html
In 2001 Netenyahu was talking to a family in the West Bank settlement of Ofra.
While he thought the cameras weren’t running he let his true colours really shine through and boasted about derailing the Oslo peace process, described American foreign policy as easily manipulated and said the only way to deal with the Palestinians was “beat them up, not once but repeatedly, beat them up so it hurts so badly, until it’s unbearable“
Noted Israeli military historian Martin Karfeld stated that Israel could find itself one day forced to exterminate the European continent using all kinds of weapons including its nuclear arsenal if it felt its demise neared, stressing that Israel also considers Europe a hostile target. 
This came in a press interview broadcast by the seventh Hebrew radio and was translated on Wednesday into Arabic by the press information analysis and study center.
“We have hundreds of nuclear warheads and missiles that can reach different targets in the heart of the European continent, including beyond the borders of Rome, the Italian capital,” Karfeld said, adding that most of the European capitals would become preferred targets for the Israeli air force.
The Israeli historian reiterated Israel’s ability to destroy the whole world whenever it felt its existence would be doomed to extinction.
As for the Palestinians, the historian said that Israel at the present time pursues a specific strategy based on mass deportation of the Palestinian people and has intentions to expel all Palestinians without exception, but it is awaiting the right moment to take this step.
“Two years ago, there was only seven to eight percent of the Israelis believing in this solution towards the Palestinians and just two months ago this percentage rose amongst the Israelis to 33 percent, but today, according to a survey conducted by Gallup institute, this figure surged to 55 percent,” he noted.
The historian highlighted that Israel must take advantage of any incident that would give it a golden opportunity to expel the Palestinians as what happened in Deir Yassin massacre in 1948.
Replying to a question whether Israel does not have fears of being classified as a criminal state if it expelled Palestinians, he said, “Israel is a state that does not care about what others say about it and you must remember the saying of former defense minister Moshe Dayan when he said that ‘Israel must always act as a wild dog even if it would be seen as dangerous in the eyes of others, rather than be harmed.’”
Republican White House hopeful Newt Gingrich has stirred controversy by calling the Palestinians an “invented” people who could have chosen to live elsewhere. 
The former House of Representatives speaker, who is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential race, made the remarks in an interview with the US Jewish Channel broadcaster released on Friday.
Asked whether he considers himself a Zionist, he answered: “I believe that the Jewish people have the right to a state … Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire” until the early 20th century,
“I think that we’ve had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs, and who were historically part of the Arab community.
“And they had a chance to go many places, and for a variety of political reasons we have sustained this war against Israel now since the 1940s, and it’s tragic.”
Most historians mark the start of Palestinian Arab nationalist sentiment in 1834, when Arab residents of the Palestinian region revolted against Ottoman rule.
Israel, founded amid the 1948 Arab-Israel war, took shape along the lines of a 1947 UN plan for ethnic partition of the then-British ruled territory of Palestine which Arabs rejected.
More than 700,000 Palestinians were forced from their lands by Zionist armed groups in 1948, in an episode Palestinians refer to as the Nakba or “catastrophe”.
‘Irrational Hostility’
Gingrich’s comments drew a swift rebuke from a spokesman for the American Task Force on Palestine, Hussein Ibish, who said: “There was no Israel and no such thing as an “Israeli people” before 1948.
“So the idea that Palestinians are ‘an invented people’ while Israelis somehow are not is historically indefensible and inaccurate.
“Such statements seem to merely reflect deep historical ignorance and an irrational hostility towards Palestinian identity and nationalism.”
Sabri Saidam, adviser to the Palestinian president, told Al Jazeera, “This is a manifestation of extreme racism and this is a reflection of where America stands sad, when Palestinians don’t get their rights…this is sad and America should respond with a firm reaction to such comments that, if let go, more of which will come our way,”
“Let me ask Newt Gingrich if he would ever entertain the thought of addressing Indian Americans by saying that they never existed, that they were the invention of a separate nation, would that be tolerated?”
“Let’s also reverse the statement; let’s put ourselves in “the shoe of Jews who are listening now. Would they ever accept such statements being made about them?”
Saidam said, “I think it’s time that America rejects such statements and closes the door to such horrendous and unacceptable statements.”
Gingrich also sharply criticised US President Barack Obama’s approach to Middle East diplomacy, saying that it was ”so out of touch with reality that it would be like taking your child to the zoo and explaining that a lion was a bunny rabbit.”
He said Obama’s effort to treat the Palestinians the same as the Israelis is actually “favouring the terrorists”.
“If I’m even-handed between a civilian democracy that obeys the rule of law and a group of terrorists that are firing missiles every day, that’s not even-handed, that’s favouring the terrorists,” he said.
He also said the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, share an “enormous desire to destroy Israel”.
The Palestinian Authority, which rules the occupied West Bank, formally recognises Israel’s right to exist.
President Mahmoud Abbas has long forsworn violence against Israel as a means to secure an independent state, pinning his hopes first on negotiations and more recently on a unilateral bid for statehood via the UN.
Gingrich, along with other Republican candidates, are seeking to attract Jewish in the US support by vowing to bolster Washington’s ties with Israel if elected.
He declared his world view was “pretty close” to that of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and vowed to take “a much more tougher-minded, and much more honest approach to the Middle East” if elected.
The incident took place in the Bint Jbeil district of southern Lebanon after Hezbollah members discovered the spying device, according to Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV, AFP reported on Friday. 
The report added that the device was planted to eavesdrop on Hezbollah’s telecommunications network.
Israel violates Lebanon’s airspace on an almost daily basis, claiming that the over-flights serve surveillance purposes.
Lebanon’s government, the Hezbollah resistance movement, and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) have repeatedly cited Israel’s air surveillance flights over Lebanon as clear violations of UN Resolution 1701 and the country’s sovereignty.
UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which brokered a ceasefire in the war of aggression Israel launched against Lebanon in 2006, calls on Tel Aviv to respect Beirut’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In 2009, Lebanon filed a complaint with the United Nations, presenting over 7,000 documents pertaining to Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace and territory.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel has cancelled government-sponsored television advertisements calling on expatriates to return, after some American Jews complained that the message denigrated their lifestyles. 
The spots, aired on Israeli channels that are often viewed by emigrants, featured dramatized scenes of Jewish assimilation in gentile settings. In one, an Israeli couple looks dismayed to hear their grandchild mention celebrating Christmas abroad.
“I don’t think I have ever seen a demonstration of Israeli contempt for American Jews as obvious as these ads,” wrote influential U.S. blogger Jeffrey Goldberg, in sentiments echoed by several American Jewish groups that lodged complaints.
The United States has the largest Jewish community outside Israel, and religious assimilation there is common. Israel looks to American Jews for support, but some in the community chafe at Israel’s rightist tilt and strains in its ties with Washington.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered that the ads, produced by Israel’s Immigration and Absorption Ministry, be yanked “immediately” upon hearing of the controversy they caused, his spokesman said on Saturday.
“The government of Israel is very attuned to the sensitivities of the American Jewish community,” the spokesman, Mark Regev, said.
Germany has approved the sale of a sixth Dolphin submarine to Israel and will pay for a third of its cost, government sources told DPA on Wednesday. 
Israel already has three German-made Dolphin submarines, which are capable of carrying missiles with nuclear warheads. Berlin paid for two of the submarines and the cost of the third was shared between the two countries. Two more are being constructed.
The government sources said Germany had allocated up to 135 million euros (180 million dollars) in next year’s budget to pay for its share of the cost for the sixth submarine, the sale of which is part of a deal finalized in 2005.
The submarines are seen as a strategic asset for Israel in any future confrontation with Iran…Israel is believed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, a claim it neither confirms nor denies.
Former director of the Mossad spy agency Meir Dagan has warned that an Israeli military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would lead to a regional war. 
Dagan said in a television interview on Tuesday that Iran, and the Hezbollah and Hamas resistance movements will respond with massive rocket attacks on Israel if the Tel Aviv regime attacks Iranian atomic sites, Haaretz reported.
He noted that Syria would also join Iran in that scenario.
Dagan added that such a war would take a heavy toll in terms of lost lives and would paralyze life in Israel.
Earlier in May, Dagan publicly argued against an airstrike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.
He described the possibility of a future Israeli airstrike on Iran as “the stupidest thing he has ever heard.”
The former Mossad chief said that any military strike was likely to prompt a regional war and missile attacks from several fronts on Israel, adding that any attack on Iran would have no advantage for Tel Aviv.
Israeli officials roundly criticized Dagan for calling a possible attack on Iran “a stupid idea,” saying such remarks undermine Israel’s ability of prowess.
“Any ability to disperse the ambiguousness surrounding the issue of Iran hurts Israel’s standing against Iran,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said during an interview with Israel Radio on July 5.
He added that the military option against Iran must remain on the table.
Israel’s Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz also said an indictment against Dagan should be considered, adding that he should not have made the comments whether they were correct or not.
“If someone came out of a cabinet meeting and discussed Israel’s capabilities or lack thereof, he would be indicted for compromising national security…His statements harm the people who stood behind him. Perhaps it would have been better to just keep his mouth shut,” Hershkowitz said.
The United States and Israel have repeatedly threatened Tehran with the “option” of a military strike, based on the allegation that Iran’s nuclear work may consist of a covert military agenda.
Iran has refuted the allegations, saying that as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it has the right to develop and acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.
While Israel refuses to allow inspections of its nuclear facilities or to join the NPT based on its policy of nuclear ambiguity, Iran has been subjected to snap IAEA inspections due to its policy of nuclear transparency.
Israel recently test fired a new long-range missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads. The test was carried out at the Palmahim air base in central Israel.
This three-stage Jericho-3 missile, which is capable of delivering a 750-kilo warhead to a distance, is estimated to have a range of up to 10,000 kilometers. Paradoxically, Israel’s new nuke-capable missile, which can target many parts of the globe, is not considered a threat in the eyes of the West.
Source: https://flipthepyramid.com/index.php/entry/iran-strike-to-paralyze-life-in-israel
AN IRANIAN nuclear facility has been hit by a huge explosion, the second such blast in a month, prompting speculation that Tehran’s military and atomic sites are under attack. 
Satellite imagery seen by The Times confirmed that a blast that rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran.
The images clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli intelligence officials told The Times that there was “no doubt” that the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was “no accident”.
The explosion at Iran’s third-largest city came as satellite images emerged of the damage caused by one at a military base outside Tehran two weeks ago that killed about 30 members of the Revolutionary Guard, including General Hassan Moghaddam, the head of the Iranian missile defence program.
Iran claimed that the Tehran explosion occurred during testing on a new weapons system designed to strike at Israel. But several Israeli officials have confirmed that the blast was intentional and part of an effort to target Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
On Monday, Isfahan residents reported a blast that shook tower blocks in the city at about 2.40pm and seeing a cloud of smoke rising over the nuclear facility on the edge of the city.
“This caused damage to the facilities in Isfahan, particularly to the elements we believe were involved in storage of raw materials,” said one military intelligence source.
He would not confirm or deny Israel’s involvement in the blast, instead saying that there were “many different parties looking to sabotage, stop or coerce Iran into stopping its nuclear weapons program”.
Iran went into frantic denial yesterday as news of the explosion at Isfahan emerged. Alireza Zaker-Isfahani, the city’s governor, claimed that the blast had been caused by a military exercise in the area but state-owned agencies in Tehran soon removed this story and issued a government denial that any explosion had taken place at all.
On Monday, Dan Meridor. the Israeli Intelligence Minister, said: “There are countries who impose economic sanctions and there are countries who act in other ways in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.”
Major-General Giora Eiland, Israel’s former director of national security, told Israel’s army radio that the Isfahan blast was no accident. “There aren’t many coincidences, and when there are so many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps it’s the hand of God,” he said.
A former Israeli intelligence official cited at least two other explosions that have “successfully neutralised” Iranian bases associated with the Shahab-3, the medium-range missile that could be adapted to carry a nuclear warhead. “This is something everyone in the West wanted to see happen,” he added.
Iran has repeatedly denied the existence of a nuclear weapons program, and strongly condemned the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report last month that accused Iran of trying to build a nuclear weapon.
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