ABBAS ANGRY AT KERRY – THREATENS TO END TALKS
by Elad Benari (Arutz Sheva News)

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas became very angry during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry last week and threatened to end the negotiations with Israel, NRG/Maariv reported on Wednesday, citing the PA-based Al-Quds newspaper.

According to the report, Abbas fumed when, during a meeting with Kerry in Paris, the top U.S. diplomat presented a new offer which, according to senior PA officials, adopted the Israeli positions for a peace agreement.

These officials told Al-Quds that Kerry presented Abbas with a paper which states that the PA would be required to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, accept a Palestinian state that does not include the Jordan Valley and agree to annex ten Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria as part of the Palestinian state.

While all these requirements were enough to anger Abbas, the PA Chairman reportedly became furious when he found out that the Americans also demand that he accept that the capital of the new Palestinian state will be the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina, and not all of eastern Jerusalem as he has demanded for years.

At this point, the officials told Al-Quds, Abbas described Kerry’s proposals as “madness” and proceeded to threaten to “turn the table” and stop being “flexible” in the talks. Abbas also reportedly fumed when he discovered that, contrary to his recent suggestion of NATO forces, Kerry does not intend to have a third party be responsible for security in the new Palestinian state, thus hinting that Israeli troops would be left in “Palestine”.

The newspaper also reported that in order to appease Abbas and get him to continue the negotiations, the Americans invited him to a meeting at the White House with President Barack Obama. The Al-Quds report has not been verified by other sources.

Abbas met with Kerry twice in Paris last week in what a U.S. official later described as “constructive” talks.

A PA official, however, said last Friday that ideas proposed by Kerry in Paris could not be accepted “as the basis for a framework accord… as they do not take into account the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people.”

Abbas himself told journalists after the meeting that Kerry’s attempts to forge an agreement on a framework for peace talks with Israel had so far failed but that the efforts are “extremely serious.”

Few details have been made public of Kerry’s proposed framework, though Thomas Friedman of the New York Times published some alleged details of the plan, which, he said, will call for a phased Israeli withdrawal from Judea and Samaria based on the 1949 lines, with “unprecedented” security arrangements in the strategic Jordan Valley.

The Israeli withdrawal will not include certain settlement blocs, but Israel will compensate the Arab side for this with Israeli territory.

Last week, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro declared that the PA will be obligated to recognize Israel as a Jewish state under the framework agreement, a long-standing demand by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.

The PA has already formally refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, stating that “the Arab states will never recognize a Jewish state.”

Nevertheless, a senior PLO official was quoted as saying last week that despite Abbas’s earlier refusal to recognize Israel, he was now prepared to do so.

KERRY WARNS RUSSIA AS TROOPS HEAD FOR BORDER
by Maayana Miskin (Arutz Sheva News)

Russia’s Defense Ministry announced Thursday morning that warplanes will be put on alert on the Ukrainian border, Channel 10 reported.

The announcement followed orders Wednesday for 150,000 Russian troops to go on high alert. Troops are planning to hold war games near Ukraine, in what has widely been seen as a warning gesture from Russia over the ouster of Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovich, a Russian ally.

Also Wednesday, militants seized control of a central government building in the Crimea Peninsula, which is under Ukrainian sovereignty, and hoisted a Russian flag.

In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia, with the stated goal of protecting two districts that had proclaimed independence, and that were home to many ethnic Russians and Russian citizens. In recent days, Russian leaders have expressed concern for the safety of Russian citizens in Ukraine.

Acting Ukraine President Olexander Turchinov warned Moscow against crossing the lines set in previous agreements between the two countries. Any move across the border or “unusual troop movement” will be considered a military invasion, he warned.

United States Secretary of State John Kerry has joined Ukrainian protest leaders in warning Russia against intervention.

“Any kind of military intervention that would violate the sovereign territorial integrity of Ukraine would be a huge – a grave mistake,” Kerry declared Thursday.

Tumult in Kiev led to the pro-Russian Yanukovich being toppled and replaced last weekend. Earlier this week Russia recalled its ambassador.

JORDAN DEMANDS END TO PEACE WITH ISRAEL OVER THE TEMPLE MOUNT

Jordan’s opposition Islamists called on the government to freeze a 1994 peace treaty with Israel as the Knesset was Tuesday to debate Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, according to AFP.

“We urge the government to meet the demands of people who have repeatedly called for freezing and eventually cancelling the peace treaty,” the Islamic Action Front said on its website.

The demands come on the eve of a unique debate in the Knesset Tuesday, which is due to discuss for the first time since the Six-Day War in 1967 the right to freedom of religion the Temple Mount.

The Mount is Judaism’s holiest site, but Jews have been prevented from praying there and often from visiting there due to religious and political pressure from the Muslim Waqf.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is allegedly opposed to the bill for religious freedom, which is spearheaded by MK Moshe Feiglin (Likud). But the Islamic Action Front , the political arm of Jordan’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and main opposition party, said the planned debate “proves that Jordanian policies in dealing with the enemy (Israel) have failed.”

Under the peace treaty, Jordan controls Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. The Temple Mount falls under this category, despite being Judaism’s holiest site and the site of the two Temples, and the Muslim world has been adamant about keeping it in their hands.

“The custodianship is a Jordanian national interest and a sacred religious duty,” the Action Front claimed. Jordanian officials were not immediately available for comment.

The Action Front statement came as Israeli police were stormed Tuesday morning by Palestinian Arab rioters. Two police officers were injured.

Arabs continuously accuse Israel of “Judaizing” the Temple Mount, sometimes resorting to illogical accusations, such as saying that Israel is using chemicals to erode the foundations of the mosque in order to cause it to collapse.

Some Palestinian Authority (PA) officials have claimed that Israel was trying to build a new Holy Temple on the Temple Mount, replacing the Al-Aqsa Mosque. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas himself has made claims to this effect.

The reality is that it is Jews, not Arabs, who are discriminated against when they want to visit the Temple Mount.

Israeli police, in an attempt to appease the Muslim Waqf which was left in charge of the compound after the 1967 Six Day War, ban Jews from praying or performing any other form of worship. Police sometimes close the Mount to Jews altogether in response to Muslim riots – for days or weeks at a time – despite evidence that such violence is usually planned in advance for the specific purpose of forcing Jews out.

The Waqf, meanwhile, works to remove any Jewish presence on the Mount and consistently destroys Jewish antiquities on the compound in a direct violation of a ruling by the Supreme Court.

Most recently, the Waqf issued a pamphlet that makes argues, among other things, that King Solomon was a Muslim and that there is no Jewish connection to either the Temple Mount or the Western Wall (Kotel).

PALESTINIANS GIVE JOHN KERRY A NEW LIST OF EXCUSES FOR KILLING A PEACE PLAN

According to Bob Dylan, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” But despite all the huff and bluster from Palestinian “president” Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority cronies confirming that they don’t want peace with Israel, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has ignored them.

Indeed, undeterred by the Arabs’ foot-dragging, obstinacy and outright hostility, Kerry has obsessively shoved the latest peace negotiations down the throats of both Israel and the Palestinians.

Now, just before Mr. Kerry could unveil his shiny new “framework” for an Israeli-Palestinian peace, the Palestinians have made it perfectly clear—even clearer, if that’s possible—that they have no interest in Mr. Kerry’s plan or, for that matter, in peace.

Abbas recently issued a set of red lines for peace that negate every stipulation the U.S. and Israel have requested in a peace deal, thus killing it before Kerry could even issue his precious framework document. These include:

?Total Israeli withdrawal from all territories captured by Israel in 1967 (and that Israel do so within 3-4 years)
?The Palestinians will not be required to recognize the Jewish state
?East Jerusalem (presumably including the Western Wall and the Jewish quarter) will be designated as the capital of a Palestinian state
?The release of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel irrespective of their crimes
?Resolution of the refugee issue following the U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194 (which in 1949 the Arab states rejected, which Israel couldn’t accept because it wasn’t yet a state, and which in any case, like all GA resolutions, has no binding effect)
It is this last point—the so-called “right of return”—upon which the Palestinians have been unyielding for decades. They want a Palestinian state and they want millions of their people to be able to “return” to Israel, which would swamp Israel demographically and put an immediate end to the Jewish state. In other words, what’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is mine.

Let’s not forget that when Resolution 194 was adopted, the refugees were real, living refugees by the standard definition. Today, those Arab refugees still alive number perhaps 35,000-50,000. Let’s not forget either that this definition has been perverted so that the Palestinians now claim a refugee is any descendant—including grandchildren and great-grandchildren without end—of the original Arabs who fled in 1949 from the land that is now Israel.

Suffice it to say, the overwhelming majority of these descendants have never set foot in Israel, so they cannot possibly “return” to it.

This week’s FLAME Hotline article, by the courageous Israeli-Arab journalist Khalid Abu Toameh, slaps us awake to the utter futility of John Kerry trying to negotiate peace with the Palestinians. Toameh reports on the latest over-the-top outrage put out by representatives of the Palestinian refugees, who now claim rights for up to eight million Palestinians to settle in Israel. They condemn Mahmoud Abbas for even suggesting that he has the authority to negotiate their future.

ISRAELI JETS ATTACK IN LEBANON
by Israel Today Staff

Missile from Lebanon hits northern Israel
Israel Attacks Arms Convoy on Syria-Lebanon Border
Lebanese encroachment on Israeli waters could lead to war

Israeli warplanes twice bombed a Hezbollah base along the Lebanon-Syria border late Monday night, according to Arab media.

The target of the strikes was believed to be a fresh shipment of ballistic missiles from Syria to its Hezbollah allies. Israel has attacked weapons convoys en route to Hezbollah several times in recent years.

Lebanese and other Arab media reported that a number of Hezbollah operatives were killed in the strikes.

The Israeli army declined to either confirm or deny the Jewish state’s involvement in the attack, but one officer told Reuters that “we have known for some time that there are efforts to move serious weaponry from Syria to Lebanon.”

Israel has carefully avoided being drawn into the ongoing Syrian civil war, in which Hezbollah is playing a very active role. But Jerusalem has repeatedly warned that it will not allow the conflict to be used as cover to provide Hezbollah with even more advanced and deadly weapons with which to threaten the Jewish state.

KING ABDULLAH: “JORDAN IS JORDAN, AND PALESTINE IS PALESTINE!”
by Elad Benari (Arutz Sheva News)

Jordan’s King Abdullah II rejected on Sunday the notion that his country was an “alternative homeland” for Palestinian Arabs, the state news agency Petra reports.

“Jordan is Jordan and Palestine is Palestine and nothing but that, not the in the past or the future,” King Abdullah was quoted as having said in a meeting with the Prime Minister, the President of the Senate and the Speaker of the Lower House.

“We know how this issue has been surfacing since 15 years, or even more, where things start in the spring by the same group, who tense the Jordanian society, and by the summer, people feel scared; a thing that makes me reassure them by a speech or a press interview, but this year, unfortunately, the talk about the so-called alternative homeland stated early,” he said.

“There are more important issues to focus on, especially with regards to political and economic reform. What we should do is to work as a team until we work out our internal issues,” added the King.

“This, God’s willing, will be the last time we talk about this subject, and I have said it more than once, but what is required now is everyone’s support in this issue,” he noted, according to Petra.

There have been many calls on Jordan to accept the so-called “Palestinian refugees”, considering that the areas liberated by Israel during the 1967 Six Day War were under Jordanian control.

The Hashemite Kingdom, however, has rejected these calls. King Abdullah’s latest remarks come amid growing concern in Jordan over U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s proposed framework agreement and what will be its effect on Jordan.

Jordan’s government is hoping to be spared by a popular uprising by having the repressed “Palestinians” removed and sent to Israel as part of a future deal.

One of King Abdullah’s closest advisors recently demanded a Jordanian presence in talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA), explaining that “Jordan should join the negotiating table immediately – since it is bound to be the one paying the price of the Israeli and American positions.”

King Abdullah and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently met in Amman, where they discussed the ongoing negotiations.

PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas also recently met with the Jordanian King and the two “exchanged views” about unifying Kerry’s initiative.

Last week, the King met with President Barack Obama and discussed the peace talks. Hours before the meeting, hundreds of Islamists rallied in Jordan against a peace deal between Israel and the PA.

The 1,200 protesters affiliated with Jordan’s Muslim Brotherhood, who demonstrated against Kerry’s peace framework, also burned the Israeli flag and demanded that King Abdullah “revoke the peace treaty with the Zionists.”

Jordan’s Foreign Minister, Nasser Judeh, recently reiterated that Jordan will not be an “alternative home for anybody.”

CONGRESS TO DENY AID TO PA UNTIL INCITEMENT STOPS!
by Tova Dvorin (IsraelNationalNews)

Channel 2 reports Saturday night that the US Congress House Appropriations Committee is debating cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) unless its ongoing incitement against Israel stops or is significantly curtailed.

Under the new law, aid to the PA will be frozen until a reliable report is released proving that it has begun cutting down its incitement against the Jewish state.

US lawmakers believe that the bill is expected to pass by a large majority vote in Congress, according to the daily. Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz spoke with several US Congress members earlier this week and expressed his appreciation about the legislative initiative.

“I met this week with members of Congress and thanked them for proposing a law designed to stop the incitement against Israel in the Palestinian Authority,” Steinitz stated Saturday. “The initiative would curtail the aid that the US gives to the Palestinian Authority until it stops or at least significantly reduces the level of incitement it levies against Israel.” Steinitz added that the precondition of reliable accountability for PA incitement before aid resumes is a major step to solving the ongoing incitement problem.

Steinitz recently turned down a joint committee with the US over the PA’s incitement against Israel, citing concerns that a committee would be ineffective.

“There is no point in convening a committee that will be a cover-up for continued incitement by the Palestinian Authority,” he stated.

The Israeli government only recently released its annual “Palestinian Incitement Index”, which showed that incitement against Israel and the Jewish people is continuing on official media channels including – inter alia – by bodies that are very close to the PA Chairman and in educational and religious networks.

Such incitement ranges from the glorification of Nazism and the lionization of Adolf Hitler, to programs on official PA television featuring heavily-stereotyped Jews as villains (and encouraging violence against them), and various TV and radio shows which literally wipe the Jewish state off the map.

Israeli officials have stressed that in order to achieve peace, the PA must first stop its incitement against Israel, which includes educating young children towards hatred and terrorism.

UKRAINE – “NOT A REVOLUTION – THIS IS WAR!”
by Ludmila Yuga, Kharkiv (Arutz Sheva News)

The atmosphere on the streets is difficult. There are residents who are willing to give their lives for the future of Ukraine but there are many others who fear for the future of the country.

The world has expressed hope tonight (Sunday) that the violence in Ukraine is over, after the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych and the release of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from prison.

But the current Prime Ministers and Presidents in Ukraine will not relinquish their status easily. The feeling here is not so much a revolution – as you in Israel feel – but a real war, a war which many people fear.

Tymoshenko, who was born in Dnipropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine, has become a symbol of the struggle of the opposition in Ukraine. But she is not a “woman of the Gospel” for the Ukrainian people, despite her role in the recent protests and portraits of her at Independence Square in Kiev.

“Every drop of blood did not spill in vain. The dictatorship fell not because of politicians or diplomats, but thanks to the citizens took to the streets,” she said to the masses yesterday there, confined to a wheelchair.

Crowds are still amassing at Independence Square in the Ukrainian capital. But my assessment will focus on events near the city of Kharkiv – one of the cities where Yanukovych is said to be hiding.

It should be emphasized that the only achievement of Ukraine during these 20 years of independence was keeping the peace. Today, Ukraine is lost. People are afraid to wake up in the morning. Nobody wants to hear all the bad news about the greed of the government.

Everyone wants to know that someone will defend the common people, but there is no guarantee.

Meanwhile, almost all the weapons in Ukraine’s arsenal are in the hands of extremists, who confiscated weapons from the civilian population. Police warehouses were looted. Everything is a mess.

New elections in Ukraine are scheduled for May 25 but there is still no candidate for the position of President. What we do have is the ambitions of all kinds of oligarchs who do not truly care for the welfare of the Ukrainian people.

The coolest city in Ukraine has always been Kharkov. It is the largest industrial center in the former Soviet Union and in Ukraine. Kharkov University attracts tens of thousands of students from Africa, Central Asia and the Caucasus, India, Pakistan, Syria and Lebanon.

In addition, several dozen Israeli citizens are studying medicine at the University of Kharkov.

“We came to Ukraine, which we thought was a peaceful country, but we are forced to deal again with war,” they tell me. “We do not want this.”

What will happen tomorrow, we’ll know tomorrow. However, we understand that peace will not be forthcoming.

ABBAS’S INTRANSIGENCE AND INSOLENCE
By David M. Weinberg

No failure of the peace process will ever be pinned on the recalcitrant and defiant Palestinian Authority.

The world judges Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his government by truly meek standards. How else can you explain the rot with which the Palestinians get away with, while supposedly engaged in a peace process with Israel? Abbas’s minions can savage US Secretary of State John Kerry, cast ugly aspersions on his motivations, organize demonstrations againvst him, brutally mock his proposals, intransigently reject any moves toward Israel, threaten renewed warfare against Israel, cozy up to Iranian officials in preparation for such future battle, and glorify terrorism against Israel – yet the Obama administration and European leaders remain mum.

The State Department doesn’t get offended when Yasser Abed Rabbo, the PLO’s secretary-general and one of the closest advisers to Abbas, accuses Kerry of seeking to “appease Israel.” No apologies were demanded by the State Department when Jamal Muhaissen, a senior Fatah official, called for Kerry to be indicted in the International Criminal Court (for supposedly spelling out to Abbas, in private of course, the implications of diplomatic failure).

The State Department doesn’t loudly denounce as unacceptable the protests in Ramallah and Bethlehem where Palestinians cry “Oh Kerry, you coward, you have no room in Palestine,” and carry placards accusing Kerry of working toward “liquidating” the Palestinian cause and of trying to extort the Palestinians.

Nor does it seem to bother Kerry’s State Department when senior representatives of Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction, such as Jibril Rajoub and Tawfik Tirawi, both former commanders of Palestinian security forces in the West Bank and close allies of Abbas, issue a string of increasingly strident statements in support of “armed resistance” against Israel. Or when they fly to Iran to seek the support of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani.

In fact, the State Department has had nothing to say at all about a series of recent stories that detail a Palestinian political culture that remains violent, anti-democratic and wedded to historical lies.

The stories and statements ignored by Washington include Mahmoud Abbas’s venal assertion that Jesus was a Palestinian persecuted by the Zionists.

They include chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat’s accusation that Prime Minister Netanyahu wants Abbas assassinated, and Erekat’s outrageous claim to be an indigenous descendant of the biblical Canaanites. (Erekat excreted that “Joshua Bin Nun burned my hometown Jericho.”) They include Abbas’s classic double-talk: swearing commitment to peace when speaking to Israeli students, while glorifying the murder of Israeli students by Palestinian terrorists, when speaking in Arabic to his home base.

More American silence has resounded in response to a well-documented new report detailing the hate that is routinely broadcast on Palestinian television, published in Palestinian newspapers, and taught in PA schools – demonizing Jews and inculcating the notion that the evil Jews and Zionists have no rights to any part of the country.

Next is complete American disregard of new reports that detail gross human rights abuses in the PA – including arbitrary detentions, torture and cruel punishment, restriction of freedom of the press and denial of religious and minority rights.

Utter disregard has been the reaction of the international community to the PA’s large cash payouts to terrorists released from Israeli jails as part of John Kerry’s peace process. The terrorists are getting PA grants of up to $50,000 each and monthly stipends ranging from $1,000 to $4,000; sums that are about four times the average monthly salary in the PA.

The PA makes large monthly payments to Palestinians and Israeli Arabs still in jail, as long as they were imprisoned for terrorism against Israel. This included prisoners serving multiple life sentences for murder. Their families receive the stipends. Arabs from Jerusalem and Israeli Arabs imprisoned for terror offenses get additional supplements, in honor of their “exceptional heroism.”

In short, the more heinous the act of terrorism and the longer the prison sentence, the higher the salary. And note: The PA is an equal opportunity terrorist employer. Its salaries for terrorists are granted to members of Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad alike.

It is estimated that at least 6 percent of the Palestinian budget is diverted to directly paying terrorist salaries. All this money comes from donor countries such as the US, UK, Norway, and Denmark.

I’ve scratched my head again and again wondering why. Shouldn’t abjuring terror, refraining from glorifying terror, and stopping to pay for terror, be a central international demand of the Palestinians in the current peace talks? Despite all this, Secretary Kerry and his State Department seem religiously wedded to the cheery fiction that a Palestinian state would be a stabilizing force for peace. All evidence to the contrary mysteriously escapes them.

They are tremendously exorcised about the urgency of establishing a Palestinian state, but much less worried about the character of that state and what it portends for that state’s relationship with Israel down the road.

Then there is Abbas’s diplomatic intransigence. By all accounts, he is not prepared to make any significant concessions on the key issues of recognition, refugees, security, settlements and Jerusalem. Abbas says he will “never” recognize Israel as the national state of the Jewish People, “never” forgo the so-called right of return to Israel of Palestinian refugees, “never” accept Israeli security control of Jordan Valley and other key air and ground security assets, “never” allow Jews to live in Judea, and “never” accept Israeli sovereignty in any part of Old Jerusalem. In short, “never” will there be a peace agreement.

Yet I haven’t heard John Kerry publicly strong-arming Abbas, as he has notoriously done with Binyamin Netanyahu.

I haven’t heard Kerry warn Abbas of PA diplomatic isolation or economic collapse if progress isn’t made.

So why on earth is Kerry publicly pressuring Netanyahu but not Abbas? As we painfully know only too well, every Israeli official who speaks out of line with regard to the terrific Kerry process is pummeled by the Obama administration. Any Israeli statement that questions the wisdom or direction of the diplomatic process led by Secretary Kerry becomes an international scandal, and Washington responds to the wayward official with fury.

Just ask Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon or Economy Minister Naftali Bennett. For doubting Kerry’s effort, the Obama administration has gone after them like a hotly provoked bull in a bullfight. Their criticisms of Kerry have been called offensive and unacceptable by Washington, and apologies have been loudly demanded.

Yet Abbas and his insolent, defiant Palestinian Authority apparently are international angels. The toughest criticism Abbas ever has faced from the US is “disappointment and concern” over anti-Israel rhetoric. This gentle comment came on Wednesday in a background briefing, noticed by few, of the State Department deputy spokesman.

“Personal attacks are unhelpful,” murmured the tender spokesman almost apologetically. Kerry himself has said nothing critical of Abbas.

And so you know for sure: No matter what happens, no matter how recalcitrant and contemptuous Abbas is, no matter how militant and hard-line the PA proves – no failure of the peace process will ever be pinned on the Palestinians!

ABBAS READY FOR ISRAEL AS A JEWISH STATE
by David Lev (Arutz Sheva News)

A senior PLO official was quoted as saying that Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas was prepared to recognize Israel – this time, for real. A story in Maariv Thursday quoted Nabil Amaro as saying on PA television that Abbas would agree to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, as part of the negotiations being conducted by US Secretary of State John Kerry.

Israel has insisted that the PA recognize Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people, and so far Abbas has refused to do so. According to Abbas, the PA has already recognized Israel’s right to exist and has promised to respect whatever borders are negotiated. By recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, he claims, the rights of Israeli Arabs will be damaged, and the PA would no longer be able to demand that Israel accept hundreds of thousands of Arabs, as the PA is demanding.

The PA has long demanded that Israel repatriate millions of descendants of Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 for various reasons, which would flood Israel with Arabs and essentially destroy it as a Jewish state.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said that recognizing Israel as a Jewish state was a key factor in resolving the Middle East conflict. In order to ensure “peace between us and our neighbors, the Palestinians, you must recognize the right of the Jewish people to live in their own State, in their own national and historical homeland. What this means is that they must recognize this arrangement as a permanent one, and to lift Palestinian national demands – for a Right of Return or for the formation of any other state,” Netanyahu said at a recent cabinet meeting.

In his comments, Amaro said that “there is a willingness on the part of Abbas and his negotiating team to accept Israel’s demand to be recognized as a Jewish state. He added that the PA was open to “creative ideas” from the US and Europe on resolving the conflict, and that he expected the Kerry-sponsored talks to continue past April, when they were originally scheduled to end.