Posted on 07/26/2014 7:19:39 PM PDT by markomalley
Sure enough, Barak Ravid, a well-regarded reporter for the left-wing Israeli Haaretz newspaper presents a chilling tale of John Kerry’s complete incompetence in the Gaza ceasefire negotiations, Kerry’s latest cease-fire plan: What was he thinking?
The draft Kerry passed to Israel on Friday shocked the cabinet ministers not only because it was the opposite of what Kerry told them less than 24 hours earlier, but mostly because it might as well have been penned by Khaled Meshal [the political head of Hamas who lives in Qatar]. It was everything Hamas could have hoped for.
The document recognized Hamas’ position in the Gaza Strip, promised the organization billions in donation funds and demanded no dismantling of rockets, tunnels or other heavy weaponry at Hamas’ disposal. The document placed Israel and Hamas on the same level, as if the first is not a primary U.S. ally and as if the second isn’t a terror group which overtook part of the Palestinian Authority in a military coup and fired thousands of rockets at Israel.
It gets worse, as I suspected Kerry is seeking to make Hamas a post-war power, Ravid reports:
On Saturday, the State Department distributed photos of Kerry’s meeting with Qatar and Turkey’s foreign ministers in Paris. [See video above] The three appear jovial and happy-go-lucky. Other photographs show Kerry carousing romantically with the Turkish foreign minister in the pastoral grounds of the U.S. ambassador’s home in Paris, as if the Turkish official’s prime minister didn’t just say a few days ago that Israel is 10 times worse than Hitler.
The secretary of state’s draft empowered the most radical and problematic elements in the region – Qatar, Turkey, and Hamas – and was a slap on the face to the rapidly forming camp of Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, who have many shared interests. What Kerry’s draft spells for the internal Palestinian political arena is even direr: It crowns Hamas and issues Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with a death warrant.
This is consistent with reporting from The Times of Israel’s Avi Issacharoff, another well-regarded reporter, ‘Kerry told Hamas many of its demands would be met under ceasefire deal’:
US Secretary of State John Kerry informed Hamas via Qatar last week that under his proposal for a ceasefire with Israel, based on the original Egyptian initiative, the US would guarantee the fulfillment of many of Hamas’s demands for an end to the war, Palestinian sources told The Times of Israel on Saturday…
The guarantees promised to Hamas by Kerry under a ceasefire, as relayed to The Times of Israel by the Palestinian sources, pertain to the following issues: an easing of restrictions on the passage of goods from Israel to Gaza; an easing of restrictions on the passage of traders and businessmen from Gaza to Israel; expansion of the permitted Gaza fishing zone to 12 miles off the coast; the opening of the Rafah crossing with Egypt, to be manned by Palestinian Authority officials; and a promise to ensure the transfer of salaries to Gaza’s government employees.
Kerry made no promises on the issue of the Hamas demand for the release of prisoners, other than a pledge to discuss the matter. There was also no mention of the establishment of a seaport in Gaza, as demanded by Hamas.
There is something dangerously incompetent about Kerry. He is seeking to bolster Hamas, while bringing the lunatic Turkish leadership — which hates Israel with a passion — into the fold.
Ravid at Haaretz notes that Kerry seems delusional (emphasis added):
Kerry isn’t anti-Israeli; on the contrary, he’s a true friend to Israel. But his conduct in recent days over the Gaza cease-fire raises serious doubts over his judgment and perception of regional events. It’s as if he isn’t the foreign minister of the world’s most powerful nation, but an alien, who just disembarked his spaceship in the Mideast.
Seems like a fair, maybe too kind, assessment.
Are the Israelis and Palestinian Authority leaking to reporters? Sure. But it makes complete sense in light of Kerry’s public actions and pronouncements.
Meanwhile, Hamas is seeking North Korean help to rearm quickly, according to The Telegraph, Hamas and North Korea in secret arms deal:
Hamas militants are attempting to negotiate a new arms deal with North Korea for missiles and communications equipment that will allow them to maintain their offensive against Israel, according to Western security sources.
Security officials say the deal between Hamas and North Korea is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and is being handled by a Lebanese-based trading company with close ties to the militant Palestinian organisation based in east Beirut.
Hamas officials are believed to have already made an initial cash down payment to secure the deal, and are now hoping that North Korea will soon begin shipping extra supplies of weapons to Gaza.“Hamas is looking for ways to replenish its stocks of missiles because of the large numbers it has fired at Israel in recent weeks,” explained a security official. “North Korea is an obvious place to seek supplies because Pyongyang already has close ties with a number of militant Islamist groups in the Middle East.”
By not only saving, but empowering Hamas, Kerry’s delusion is dangerous.
It wasn’t a mutual extension. I’ve been listening to missiles coming in since mid-afternoon local time.
Except they’re bound to use intermediaries. No way they’d be bold (stupid) enough to ship them direct from Nork to Gaza. They’ll use their Lebanese and Turkish connections to try to establish some tenuous “deniability” as to the source of the weapons. But we’ll all know what’s up and so will the Israelis.
Israel is probably watching the shipments out of NK
Make that: alerts of missiles coming in. I’m US based, using the Red Alert app, which really brings home the level of the attacks.
Maybe out of the existing Hezi stock, with NK replacing them.
‘We need third, forth and fifth parties”
All of which would have had their candidates defeated, and we’d still have a huge RAT in the oval. What we need is people who will vote for the major candidate who most closely represents their interests regardless of whether that candidate meets their standard of ideological purity.
The ideological battle will have to be fought in the primaries, not by running a bunch of candidates in the general election who have no hope of winning and whose presence in the race will guarantee victory for the enemy.
Let’s face it, the left is focused on winning, the right would rather watch the boat go down than take a jog to avoid the iceberg.
That would have been the end result, more dead Jews.
Yeah but I wonder, let’s pretend the ones who did not vote because basically Romney was the lesser of two evils, would Obama have won anyway? I am convinced that with the mass amount of voter fraud going on in this country(Which is another reason why the left wants amnesty for those illegals so badly, they wouldnt have to rely on voter fraud anymore) Obama would have won no matter what..that and a media who would protect him even if he killed a puppy on live TV
The ideological battle will have to be fought in the primaries, not by running a bunch of candidates in the general election who have no hope of winning and whose presence in the race will guarantee victory for the enemy.
Let’s face it, the left is focused on winning, the right would rather watch the boat go down than take a jog to avoid the iceberg.
Isn't doing the same thing over and over again the definition of something?
I know it's too much to ask for, for the Jews in America to tell Kerry to shut his mouse, but I hope Israel tells him he's not welcome again in Israel. We should be supporting the above coalition instead of mambypambying around with Hamas. And Kerry is about as useless now as he was when he was hiding in his barracks refusing to fight.
This is what happens when we let Berkley style idiots run the country.
John Vichy Kerry should be prosecuted for treason.
Too bad that we don’t have a govt. capable of doing so, he is our bleepin’ Secretary of State.
He is a best butt buddy for Hamas, Hezbollah, and their Muslim state sponsors.
Hamas needs to be exterminated, not turned into a fictitious “peace partner” with vast new resources funneled to them.
What an insane world we live in....
The USA is an ignorant country that refuses to make a distinction between good and evil and ignores the shades of gray because it offends the sensibilities. Politics has become a religion, even among many who call themselves Christians and the dichotomy between Christian and politics is tearing folks souls apart as they flail for a solution that doesn't exist. God's Word will be done and it entails things getting much worse before He comes back to set things right.
Maybe there’s an even simpler explanation than the two most obvious ones—Kerry’s incompetent, or Kerry dislikes Israel (although those two have merit).
Maybe what’s driving Kerry is the dream of running for President again, and he wants to be the guy who brought something that could be called peace in Gaza to the region, if only for a little while, regardless of the consequence. It would make a better campaign bite than Hillary’s “I traveled a million miles as Secretary of State.”
..................
Not everything, there's always more to ask for. That Kerry lies, it was the opposite of what Kerry told them less than 24 hours earlier, is no surprise.
Related threads
Kerry's saving that for the next big 'compromise'...
Maybe instead of giving Hamas the money to buy weapons, the United States could just supply them. That might be cheaper than making them deal through a weapons broker.
The odd part of all this is a large majority of Jews in this country would still vote for this bunch in any national election.
Kerry excels at giving the enemy what it wants.
He did that with North Viet Nam and he’s doing it now.
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