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[1]On Tuesday the Palestinians tried to get the UN Security Council to adopt a draft resolution to shrink Israel down to indefensible borders.They failed to get the nine votes from the 15-member council that they needed. Even if they had, the U.S. had promised to veto the resolution. But the Palestinians would have succeeded in painting Israel as a country almost friendless, hanging by the thread of U.S. support.The draft resolution demanded that Israel and the Palestinians wrap up all their disputes and reach an agreement within one year; that a Palestinian state be set up along Israel’s 1967...

By Joel Leyden Israel News AgencyNew York, New York — December 30 … Lethal, Islamic terror attacks and the potential for a new Middle East war were avoided this evening as the UN Security Council defeated a Palestinian resolution calling for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories by late 2017. The UN resolution called for negotiations to be based on territorial lines that existed before Israel captured the West Bank, east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip in the Six Day War. It also demanded that a peace agreement be reached within 12 months. If a bid for Palestinian statehood was...

The European Union’s (EU) foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said Tuesday's vote at the United Nations (UN) Security Council on Palestinian statehood underlined the need for Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to urgently resume peace negotiations. The Security Council failed to adopt an Arab-backed resolution that would have paved the way to a Palestinian state, setting a 12-month deadline for Israel to reach a final peace deal with the PA and calling for a full Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria by the end of 2017. The vote "underlines once again the urgency of resuming meaningful negotiations between the...

The UN Security Council on Tuesday rejected a resolution on Palestinian statehood, with the Palestinians failing to get the minimum nine “yes” votes required for adoption by the 15-member council: Eight voted for the resolution and two voted against, with five abstentions. France, China and Russia were among the countries that supported the text setting a 12-month deadline for negotiations on a final peace deal with Israel and an imposed full Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem by the end of 2017. Argentina, Chad, Chile, Jordan and Luxembourg also voted for the resolution. Australia and the United...

The draft resolution by the Palestinians calling for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem within three years and revised to include language declaring East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state was presented to the UN Security Council late Monday. The draft resolution affirms the urgent need to achieve “a just, lasting and comprehensive peaceful solution” to the decades-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict within 12 months and sets a December 31, 2017 deadline for Israel’s occupation to end. Many of the changes to the draft are semantic, such as the addition of the word “just,” to...

PA's unilateral resolution calling on Israel to "end the occupation" fails to receive the nine required votes to pass. Only eight countries voted in favor of the resolution, two voted against, and there were five abstentions. The resolution needed nine votes in favor to have passed. Australia and the United States voted against.

Abbas ignored Kerry’s hints of sanctions and told him Jordan will present a resolution to the UN to force Israel to "Auschwitz borders.” Abbas, the one who is short in size and common sense, with Kerry, the one who is tall in size but short on common sense. Mahmoud Abbas is ignoring hints of American sanctions and a possible defeat in the U.N. Security Council which is set to consider a resolution from Jordan on Monday, ordering Israel to sign a peace treaty with the Palestinian Authority in one year. The resolution calls on Israel to surrender within three years...

Mahmoud Abbas: Failing the Palestinians and PeacePosted By Joseph Puder On December 29, 2014 @ 12:35 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments Mahmoud Abbas, (aka Abu Mazen) has been a failure as the Palestinian “Rais.” He failed to lead the Palestinian Authority (PA) toward peace with Israel, and he mismanaged the alleged goal to achieve statehood for the Palestinians. Instead of facing the tough issues and making compromises required in negotiating peace and statehood with the Israelis, Abbas chose an alliance with the Gaza controlled terrorist group Hamas. Following Abbas’ pact with Hamas last April, Israel broke off peace negotiations with the...

Will the UN Security Council Impose a Palestinian State?Posted By Joseph Puder On November 3, 2014 @ 12:25 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 6 Comments January, 2015 does not bode well for Israel at the United Nations (UN). The UN Security Council (UNSC) will officially induct five newly elected non-permanent member-states replacing outgoing Rwanda, S. Korea, Australia, Argentina and Luxembourg, representing all the global regions. Unfortunately for Israel, the incoming states, particularly Venezuela and Malaysia, are hostile to the Jewish state. The other three, Angola, New Zealand, and Spain are pondering their position on recognizing Palestine as a full member-state...

New Iraqi defense minister Khaled al-Obeidi has delivered his first official speech, insisting that the Kurdistan Region must hand back terrorists that have been living in the KRI. Al-Obeidi is a Sunni, was approved as the new Iraqi defense minister along with Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban, a Shia, who was appointed interior minister. “The Kurdistan Region should hand back criminals who have been charged with terrorist acts to the federal government, so they can face justice,” said Al-Obeidi. “The Kurdistan Region security forces and Iraqi police should arrest all those criminals, as they are threats to the security and stability of...

Twelve EU countries have warned investors not to do business with Israeli settler entities, amid a security crisis in Israel and Palestine. The group includes: Austria; Belgium; Croatia; Denmark; Finland; Greece; Ireland; Luxembourg; Malta; Portugal; Slovakia; and Slovenia. Portugal published its statement on Wednesday (2 July) and the others came out on Thursday. France, Italy, and Spain put out similar communiques earlier this week. Germany and the UK already did it months ago. Poland is expected to publish a warning shortly. The Irish foreign ministry said the action “has been coordinated at EU level”. …

European Union nations on Thursday agreed on a sweeping policy to fight tax evasion after tiny Luxembourg dropped its reservations to new rules which render its secretive banking culture more transparent. Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel confirmed at Thursday’s summit of EU leaders “the willingness of the government to take that road,” a key step to scrap the banking secrecy for foreigners. […] The legislation proposes an EU-wide automatic exchange of data on bank deposits to allow governments to identify and pursue tax evaders with foreign accounts on home soil. Van Rompuy said it would “close down loopholes, promote automatic...

The UN has invited Iran to the Peace Conference on Syria in Geneva on January 22 . It was confirmed last night by the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki -moon, who stressed the potential positive role of Tehran in the future transition in Syria. The decision, however, has been challenged by the anti-Assad opposition that threatens a boycott of the conference, as well as by the United States : they have set support for points set out in Geneva in 2012 as a condition for participation. If Iran were to accept more than 40 countries will be present at the...

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Sunday that he had invited Iran to attend this week's Syria peace conference in Switzerland, also known as Geneva II. "I have decided to issue some additional invitations to the one-day gathering in Montreux. They are: Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Greece, the Holy See, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Republic of Korea, and Iran," Ban told reporters here at a press conference. "I believe the expanded international presence on that day will be an important and useful show of solidarity in advance of the hard work that the Syrian government and opposition delegations will begin...

Welfare spending in Britain has increased faster than almost any other country in Europe since 2000, new figures show. The cost of unemployment benefits, housing support and pensions as share of the economy has increased by more than a quarter over the past thirteen years – growing at a faster rate than in most of the developed world. Spending has gone up from 18.6 per cent of GDP to 23.7 per cent of GDP – an increase of 27 per cent, according to figures from the OECD, the club of most developed nations. By contrast, the average increase in welfare...

Belgium, Denmark, Germany and Luxembourg are the only EU countries where citizens approve the European Union’s leadership with a clear 50% majority, according to a recent poll by Gallup. Approval ratings in nearly all other member states have dropped dramatically since 2008, especially in the crisis-hit south. The approval of the EU leadership is lowest in Greece (19%), Cyprus (21%) and Spain (27%), according to Gallup poll released on Wednesday (8 January). Other countries with critically low approval ratings include the United Kingdom (29%), Sweden (30%) or the Czech Republic (30%). The EU is still backed by a majority of...

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has fractured a bone in her pelvis in a cross-country skiing accident in Switzerland, her spokesman says. She will have to remain lying down as much as possible in the next three weeks and several visits will be cancelled, Steffen Seibert said. She also suffered heavy bruising in the accident, in the alpine Engadine region of eastern Switzerland. Ms Merkel was not skiing fast at the time, the spokesman added. He called the injury "severe bruising linked with a partial fracture on the left, rear part of the pelvis". Immediately after the accident, during the Christmas......

AFTER 40 years of hesitation and seven hard years of reform and lobbying, Turkey is basking today in the most qualified of invitations to begin the process of joining Europe - a continent whose eastern half the Ottoman empire controlled for centuries. A European Commission report released yesterday, which paves the way for a deciding vote by the 25-member European Union at its December summit, was heavily qualified, and Turkish leaders were muted in their expressions of delight at their initial success. Presenting the decision to the European parliament last night, commission president Romano Prodi said it was a "qualified...

In an interview with EurActiv.fr, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, the former French presidential candidate and leader of a small anti-euro conservative party, calls on France to impose minimum conditions on fiscal policy at the EU level, denouncing the fiscal dumping of Luxembourg and Ireland. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan is a French MP and founder of the conservative political party “Debout la République” (Arise the Republic), known for its strong positions against the euro currency. … In an interview with EurActiv France, the MP called Luxembourg a “rogue state”, because it “allows the creation of trusts that hide the identity of their shareholders, which costs...

"We've been looking at how we can bring back confidence in the European Union," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in Warsaw late on Monday as he arrived for a meeting of ministers in the Future of Europe Group, which he launched in March. The 11-nation group is poised to submit a raft of recommendations to Herman Van Rompuy and Jose Manuel Barroso - heads, respectively, of the bloc's intergovernmental and executive branches, neither of whom are elected by the EU's 500 million people. "We have to understand that we are a community of values and we have to defend...