Free Republic

Assyrian community speaks Aramaic, provides a warm welcome to Israelis ADABASHI, Turkey, Feb. 27 (JTA) — I never intended to visit Adabashi. I was heading toward the border crossing between Turkey and Iraq, hoping to get to northern Iraq before the widely anticipated war began. But the Turkish border authorities would not hear of any journalists running around in that Kurdish-dominated part of Iraq. Not just Israeli journalists, any journalists. As a result, I and a group of fellow journalists found ourselves traveling along the long Turkish border between Iraq and Syria — until we spotted a church tower off...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has agreed to freeze construction in a Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem for two years, officials in the United States State Department said Sunday. Netanyahu's office denied that he has agreed not to build in Ramat Shlomo in northern Jerusalem until 2012. US officials said the move was part of an effort to create the right atmosphere for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israel has agreed to freeze construction, and the PA has agreed to fight incitement, they said. Israel has long complained that the PA engages in incitement and indoctrination of its populace to...

Israel has agreed to freeze construction in east Jerusalem's Ramat Shlomo for two years, the US State Department said Sunday, following the completion of the first round of indirect Middle East peace talks. State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said both Israel and the Palestinians had taken some steps to create an atmosphere conducive to successful talks, including the Israeli pledge of no construction in the neighborhood. Ramat Shlomo was at the center of a storm between Jerusalem and Washington last month when the approval of some 1,600 housing units there was revealed during US Vice President Joe Biden's visit to...