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Ireland, Spain and a number of other EU member states are considering 21 May as the date on which they will jointly recognize the State of Palestine, RTÉ News understands. Two sources have said that 21 May is being looked at. A third source said contacts between Dublin and Madrid, as well as between Slovenia and Malta, have been intensifying with a view to the countries jointly recognizing Palestinian statehood. […] Currently, eight EU member states recognize the State of Palestine, the most recent being Sweden in 2014. Ireland has been in ongoing discussions with “like-minded” states for a number...

Rep. Lee Zeldin hearkened back to 2016 to remind the nation that the Obama administration was “furious” with retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn for calling on world leaders to block an “anti-Israel” effort. The New York Republican tweeted Thursday morning about Flynn, who served as Trump’s national security adviser in early 2017, and his efforts to block the United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, which focused on Israeli settlements in “Palestinian territories occupied since 1967.” “Keep in mind Obama admin was furious Gen Michael Flynn was making calls to world leaders helping to block UN Sec Council Res 2334 in...

Eight European Union member states on Tuesday warned that US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Deal of the Century” would fail unless it is based on the internationally agreed parameters for a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Arab conflict. The statement by France, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany and Italy followed a UN Security Council meeting on the Middle East in which US Ambassador Nikki Haley discussed the peace plan being prepared by the Trump administration. “We, the European Union members of the Council, would like to reiterate once more and emphasize the EU’s strong continued commitment to...

Russia’s unexpected announcement recognizing Israel’s eternal capital of Jerusalem, a dramatic decision that places Vladimir Putin against Donald Trump in a totally new big-power rivalry – the race to Jerusalem. Many American and Israeli Jews have waited with mounting impatience for Trump to keep his campaign promise to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Against an atmosphere of US equivocation, Putin suddenly announced, without preamble or restricting conditions, the recognition of Israel’s capital, to take effect immediately.

Hamas is reportedly planning to endorse a state of Palestine along the 1967 borders — a move that would be a monumental shift from the group’s long-held policy of reclaiming all of historic Palestine — though it won’t recognize Israel’s legitimacy. […] Talk of “the 1967 borders” generally refers to the pre-1967 lines between Israel and the territory it captured in that year’s Six-Day War from Jordan (in Jerusalem and the West Bank), Egypt (Gaza and the Sinai) and Syria (the Golan Heights). The amendments to the charter were reportedly worked out during a meeting in Doha, Qatar, which was...

French MP Meir Habib called his country’s hosting a Paris “peace conference” next month to which neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority were invited to be a “disgrace.” “This conference is a disgrace. It isn’t a peace conference. It’s an international disgrace. President Obama failed a thousand percent in everything he did in the Middle East. He left 400,000 people to die in Syria, and all of their murderers will go free. Now a few days before the end of his term, he wants to go to this conference to force Israel back to the ’67 borders, the ‘Auschwitz borders,’”...

Hundreds of Israeli artists and intellectuals are urging world Jewry to challenge Israeli policy toward Palestinians. […] The 470 signatories include authors David Grossman and Amos Oz, Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and 20 former Israeli ambassadors. The organization “Save Israel, Stop Occupation” seeks to end Israel’s control of territories it won in the 1967 Mideast war and to establish a Palestinian state. …

China supports the creation of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, Chinese President Xi Jinping said on Thursday during an Arab League convention in Cairo. The Palestinian issue "should not be marginalized," Xi said, according to Xinhua, China's official news agency. "We are in favor of putting in place a new mechanism to promote peace as to the Middle East question, and support efforts made by the Arab League and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation toward this end," said the leader of the world's most populous country and its second-largest economy. Xi declared that that Beijing "firmly supports the...

Buried in a New York Times article today about friction between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu is a phrase that the newspaper has never used before: Famously, many of those conversations have been deeply uncomfortable. The two leaders have often clashed on IsraelÂ’s determination to build new settlements, which Mr. Obama viewed as a way to sabotage peace talks. Mr. Netanyahu was accused of lecturing Mr. Obama in front of the cameras in the Oval Office during an angry conversation in May 2011, after Mr. Obama suggested that the 1967 borders with Palestine should be the starting point for...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed US Secretary of State John Kerry’s upcoming talks in Rome on Sunday, during opening remarks for his weekly Cabinet meeting. “Tomorrow I will leave for Rome to meet with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and US Secretary of State John Kerry,” he said. “I will tell them that Israel, to a large degree, stands as a solitary island against the waves of Islamic extremism that are washing over the entire Middle East.” “Until now, we have successfully withstood and repelled these attacks and now we also stand against the possibility of a diplomatic assault, i.e....

The European Union is asking Jerusalem to weave the rope with which they will come to hang Israel, a senior diplomatic official said Wednesday in response to reports that the EU is interested in negotiating with Israel over its redlines in the West Bank. Haaretz on Wednesday published an internal document drawn up by EU officials in Brussels that outlined the content of a sharp message regarding Israel’s construction beyond the Green Line and its policies in the West Bank that the EU’s Ambassador to Israel Lars Faaborg-Andersen has been instructed to deliver at the “highest possible level” in the...

The Palestinians are asking the U.N. Security Council to set a deadline of November 2016 for an Israeli withdrawal from all Palestinian territory occupied since 1967 including East Jerusalem in a new push to achieve independence. […] The draft calls for intensified efforts, including through negotiations, to reach a peaceful settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “a just resolution” of the status of Jerusalem as the capital of two states and of the Palestinian refugee problem. Its key provision calls for “the full withdrawal of Israel, the occupying power, from all of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East...

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi on Monday denied reports that he had offered to establish a Palestinian state in the Sinai Peninsula, the website of Egypt’s Al-Ahram newspaper reported. […] Earlier Monday, Army Radio reported that Sisi has offered Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to cede 160 square kilometers of the Sinai Peninsula adjoining Gaza to the PA, thus creating a Palestinian state five times the present size of Gaza. In return, the PA would stop demanding that Israel return to the indefensible pre-1967 borders. […] According to the report, Abbas had rejected the offer. Later Monday, Abbas’s office wasted...

Once again Barack Obama is going to push Israel to hand over half of Jerusalem, the Wailing Wall, The Temple Mount, Old Jerusalem, and the tomb of Jesus Christ to the Hamas-Fatah terrorists. Barack Obama believes giving the terrorists more land will result in peace. It’s as if the Gaza transfer and disaster never happened. The Times of Israel reported: 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...

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...

As negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority continue amid international calls for a 23rd Arab state in the Judea and Samaria (West Bank) region—which would leave Israel with the territory it held prior to the 1967 Six-Day War—familiar calls from within Israel are being heard warning of the “indefensible borders” the Jewish State would be left with in such an eventuality. It is not a new claim. Israel’s former Foreign Minister Abba Eban famously referred to the so-called “’67 borders” as “Auschwitz borders,” provocatively expressing the fears of many Israelis that a return to the 1949 Armistice lines would...

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to resume peace talks with Israel only after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry gave him a letter guaranteeing that the basis of the negotiations will be Israel’s pre-1967 borders, two senior Palestinian officials said Saturday. The officials, both of whom are close to the Palestinian leader and privy to internal discussions, said the U.S. letter also stipulated that both sides are to refrain from taking any steps that would jeopardize the outcome of the talks. Israel is not to issue new tenders for Jewish settlements in the West Bank, while the Palestinians are not...

The European Union has published new guidelines explicitly banning any EU funding of Israeli institutions operating in territories occupied since the 1967 Mideast war, despite vigorous Israeli objections. The EU holds that Jewish settlements in territories such as the West Bank and east Jerusalem are illegal. The Palestinians want some of those territories for their hoped-for state. After EU officials announced plans this week for the new guidelines, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with several European leaders to express his opposition. …

Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu has said outsiders cannot tell him where his country begins or ends in reaction to new EU guidelines on settlements. Speaking in a 40-second-long TV clip in Hebrew on Tuesday (16 July), he noted: “I will not let anybody harm Israelis living in Judea and Samaria, the Golan and Jerusalem … We will not accept any external dictates regarding borders.”He added the EU should focus on Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program and Syria's civil war instead of the Arab-Israeli conflict. …

President Peres reportedly plans to tell Arab leaders that most Israelis favor a return to 1949-1967 borders. President Shimon Peres plans to tell Arab leaders that the overwhelming majority of Israeli citizens favor a return to the 1949-1967 borders, according to Maariv reporter Shalom Yerushalmi. Peres is planning to speak Sunday evening at a WEF economic conference in Jordan.