Free Republic

The U.S. expects the Western Wall in Jerusalem to be part of Israel, but specific boundaries are subject to final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), a senior administration official said Friday. “We cannot envision any situation under which the Western Wall would not be a part of Israel. But as the President said, the specific boundaries of sovereignty of Israel are going to be part of the final status agreement,” the official told Israeli public broadcaster Kann. The official also noted that U.S. Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to the Western Wall as part of his...

Russia on Thursday publicly recognized West Jerusalem as the capital city of Israel. The announcement was made in a statement by Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs that addressed the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In the statement, Moscow reaffirmed its "support for the two-state solution" while acknowledging that East Jerusalem should be the capital of the future Palestinian state.

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.

A law to muffle mosques’ amplified calls to prayer in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem won preliminary approval on Wednesday in a charged parliamentary session where Arab legislators denounced the measure as racist. Supporters of the bill say it is aimed at improving the quality of life of people living near mosques who have been losing sleep. The calls usually begin sounding a little before 5 A.M. through loudspeakers mounted on minarets Opponents say the legislation, sponsored by right-wing parties, impinges on the religious freedom of Israel’s Muslim minority. Arabs make up almost 20 percent of the population and have...

The world's largest scouting organization said Monday that an eastern Jerusalem troop which held a training course honoring Baha Alyan, the terrorist who murdered 3 Israelis last October on a Jerusalem bus, was not affiliated with the movement. The World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM) said it had carried out an investigation and that the troop in question was not a member. "We are able to confirm that the group concerned is not a member of the Palestinian Scout Association or recognized by WOSM," a statement to AFP said. "We are extremely disappointed that the good name of both...

The Israeli government and Jewish groups have expressed outrage at a resolution adopted by the U.N. cultural agency that put the Western Wall Plaza in quotation marks, described Jewish sites as “so-called” and even claimed that some Jewish graves were bogus. The resolution, sponsored by several Arab countries and adopted by UNESCO’s 58-nation executive board last week, condemned the Israeli government’s stewardship of east Jerusalem, home to the city’s most sensitive holy sites. The April 15 document also decried the renovation of “so-called Jewish ritual baths” and the alleged creation of “Jewish fake graves.” Sites were either referred to by...

British Prime Minister David Cameron used particularly harsh language against Israel's presence in eastern Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria which were liberated during the 1967 Six Day War. Speaking at Parliament, Cameron branded Israel’s construction of new communities in these areas as “genuinely shocking”, The Independent reported. The Prime Minister said that though he was a strong supporter of Israel, he had been taken aback by what had seen first hands on visits to Jerusalem. “I am well-known as being a strong friend of Israel but I have to say the first time I visited Jerusalem and had a proper tour...

The Obama administration on Monday hurried to express its opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s tentative talk of revoking the permanent residency status of tens of thousands of Arabs living in East Jerusalem. White House spokesman Josh Earnest said that, as far as the US government knows, Israel is not actively considering such a move. But if it were, he said, “it would obviously be of some concern to us.” The US, Earnest went on, reiterates the “importance of all sides avoiding provocative actions and rhetoric.” Netanyahu discussed the idea in vague terms at a Knesset committee meeting earlier Monday,...

Jerusalem (AFP) - Israeli police on Sunday began erecting a wall in east Jerusalem to protect a Jewish neighbourhood subject to firebomb and stone attacks launched from an adjacent Palestinian village. The wall would effectively divide Palestinian Jabel Mukaber and Jewish Armon Hanatziv, raising criticism among the government's opposition, which considered the move a de facto division of Jerusalem. As of Sunday, police had placed six slabs below Jabel Mukaber, each about 2.5 metres (yards) high and two metres long. Black lettering in Hebrew at the bottom of the slabs read "temporary mobile police barrier". The municipality said the wall...

Sunday, May 17, 2015 Liberating Our Jerusalem Posted by Daniel Greenfield @ the Sultan Knish blog When Jordan's Arab Legion seized half of Jerusalem, ethnically cleansed its Jewish population and annexed the city-- the only entity to recognize the annexation was the United Kingdom which had provided the officers and the training that made the conquest possible. Officers like Colonel Bill Newman, Major Geoffrey Lockett and Major Bob Slade, under Glubb Pasha, better known as General John Bagot Glubb, whose son later converted to Islam, invaded Jerusalem and used the Muslim forces under their command to make the partition and...

Trevor Loudon wrote an article that each and every one of us should read and take note of: Intifada USA? American Radicals Build Ties to “Palestinian” Revolutionaries. I agree completely with Trevor when he says that 2015 could usher in chaos, unrest and violence as we have not seen in our lifetime. The Communists are now joining hands in America with the Radical Islamists, forming an American Intifada – an uprising, resistance, revolt. They are using racism as the building blocks and their hate for America as the glue to forward massive havoc and violence in our streets. The riots...

Israeli report says developments violate agreements; guards say the chief security officer is establishing ‘a militia’ The US Consulate in Jerusalem is training a force of 35 Palestinians from East Jerusalem to serve as armed guards, particularly for consular trips to the West Bank’s Area A, which is off-limits to Israelis, it was reported on Wednesday. The arrangement violates a 2011 agreement between Israel and the consulate, the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth stated, whereby only IDF combat veterans would be authorized to carry arms as consulate guards. “The consulate was authorized to keep roughly 100 handguns for security staff, on...

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authorized planning to advance 1,060 new housing units in neighborhoods in Jerusalem beyond the 1967 lines, officials in the Prime Minister's Office said Monday. According to the officials, 660 of these units will be constructed in the northern neighborhood of Ramot Shlomo, and another 400 in Har Homa.

Now Kerry can concenrate on makes problems elsewhere. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s announcement of big building plans for Jews in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria give President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry their golden opportunity to dump their self-defeating peace process before it makes their foreign policy look almost as pitiful as it is. “We are not going to make peace for the Israelis and the Palestinians, Obama and Kerry have said over and over again.” The truth is they have been lying through their teeth. They have turned almost every trick in the book to pressure...

A Border Patrol officer serving in eastern Jerusalem has for the first time revealed the police helplessness in dealing with the "silent intifada" that has been gripping the capital in recent months, as Arab rock, firebomb and even gunfire attacks rise sharply. Speaking on Channel 2's "Shesh Im" TV program Thursday, a day after a Hamas terrorist wounded nine with his car including a three-month-old baby who was killed in the attack, the officer admitted the Border Patrol warriors are forced to "stand like dolls" against the Arab terror. "We feel like our hands are tied," the combat officer revealed,...

Plans for new settlements in East Jerusalem pose a threat to peace and Israel’s relations with the European Union, the 28-member bloc said on Friday, joining the United States in its criticism of the decision. The strong language from the European Union, the biggest aid donor to the Palestinians, who seek statehood in territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war, echoes criticism from Germany, France and Washington. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the decision to build 2,610 homes in Givat Hamatos would be the first new settlement in the East Jerusalem area for 15 years. “This represents a...

Why would President Obama, a champion for the rights of underprivileged blacks and Muslims, try to prevent the construction of new housing for underprivileged blacks and Muslims? Because the blacks are Jewish, the Muslims are in Israel, and the housing is in Jerusalem. In any other part of the world, such housing would be regarded as progressive government intervention to aid the downtrodden. But such housing in Israel is being denounced by President Obama’s spokespeople as “poisonous” and “anti-peace.” The controversy involves a neighborhood in southeastern Jerusalem called Givat Hamatos. It was settled back in the 1990s by Jewish immigrants...

The Jerusalem municipality says it is pressing forward with a plan to build a controversial new housing development in east Jerusalem. In a statement Wednesday, the municipality said Deputy Mayor Kobi Kahlon has signed an order approving the construction of some 2,500 homes in Givat Hamatos. …

A family accidentally drove into the Arab neighborhood of Wadi Joz in Jerusalem on Thursday night, and nearly paid for the wrong turn in Israel’s capital city with their lives. After entering the neighborhood, the family car was beset upon by a hail of potentially lethal rocks and massive bricks that broke the windshield, in what the mother of the family Etti Cohen described to Yedioth Aharonoth as “nearly a lynch mob.” Fortunately the family managed to escape with only minor physical wounds. “I feel like we got out of there by a miracle,” Cohen recalled tearfully. “I woke up...

In a scene that has become emblematic of Friday prayers on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, masked men hurled firebombs and stones at police in the Mughrabi Gate, which leads to the historic site. As worshipers descended from the Temple Mount, a mob threw rocks at police forces, who were monitoring the traditional prayer sessions. Three rioters were arrested for disrupting the peace and taken into custody. Not far away, three east Jerusalem residents, including a minor, were arrested in the Arab neighborhood of Silwan after they threw rocks at Jewish homes in the area. They were taken into custody and held...