JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER. 1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)
LUKE 21:28-29
28 And when these things begin to come to pass,(ALL THE PROPHECY SIGNS FROM THE BIBLE) then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption (RAPTURE) draweth nigh.
29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree,(ISRAEL) and all the trees;(ALL INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES)
30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.(ISRAEL LITERALLY BECAME AND INDEPENDENT COUNTRY JUST BEFORE SUMMER IN MAY 14,1948.)
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth (ATOMIC BOMB) before them;(RUSSIAN-ARAB-MUSLIM ARMIES AGAINST ISRAEL) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(ATOMIC BOMB AFFECT)
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven;(FROM ATOMIC BOMBS) and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE
UN vote actually ‘a victory for Israel,’ paves way for embassy move, ex-Labor MK says-Einat Wilf says Resolution 2334 ‘clarifies the absolute legality of pre-1967 Israel, including west Jerusalem,’ can provide basis for Trump to relocate embassy-By Raphael Ahren December 26, 2016, 5:33 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
While Israeli politicians from across the political spectrum condemned the anti-settlements resolution passed Friday at the United Nations Security Council, a former Labor Party MK on Sunday called it a “victory for Israel.”In a counterintuitive interpretation of the resolution, Einat Wilf, who served as Knesset member between 2010 and 2013, argued that the controversial text actually enshrines in international law Israel’s right to West Jerusalem and thus makes it easier for the US to move its embassy there.“UN Security Council Resolution 2334 is an important, if unintended, victory for Israel and Zionism. In it the UN Security Council provides the most resounding international and legal support yet for Israel within the 1949 ceasefire lines, including west Jerusalem,” she said in a statement Sunday.Wilf, a native Jerusalemite, pointed to two sections of the resolution that she said were key to legitimizing Israel’s claims to West Jerusalem. For one, the text determines that Israeli settlement in territory captured in 1967, including East Jerusalem, “has no legal validity.” The resolution further calls on all states to “distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”Most Israeli politicians and pundits view those two sentences as the resolution’s most troubling, as they appear to invite boycotts of goods and people from the settlements.But Wilf, who holds a PhD in political science from the University of Cambridge, chose to focus on the other side of the coin.By drawing a clear distinction between Israel proper and the settlements, and declaring the settlements illegal, the Security Council “is essentially clarifying the absolute legality of the territory of Israel within the 1949 ceasefire lines, including west Jerusalem,” she noted. “This resolution could provide a Trump administration the international legal support for their policy of moving the US Embassy to west Jerusalem.”The international community currently does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem. Israel conquered the eastern part of the city in the 1967 Six Day War, and subsequently annexed it and declared “united Jerusalem” its capital, leading all countries to move their embassies from Jerusalem to the Tel Aviv area.The status of Jerusalem, the international community argues, needs to be determined by a final-status agreement between the parties.US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to implement a 1995 American law that stipulates the relocation the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Critics, chiefly among the Palestinians, have sharply condemned the planned move, arguing that it would predetermine the outcome of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Israeli ambassador: We’ll give Trump proof Obama drove UN vote-Dermer calls White House aide Rhodes a ‘master of fiction’; PM defends strident campaign, says he ‘will not turn the other cheek’-By Times of Israel staff December 26, 2016, 6:08 pm
Israel’s ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that the country will present President-elect Donald Trump with “evidence” that the Obama administration orchestrated an anti-settlement resolution at the United Nations Security Council on Friday.Ron Dermer told CNN that Israel is angry with the US over the resolution because it is “the only country where we have any expectation to actually stand with us at the United Nations.”The US abstained from the vote, which passed 14-0.“It’s an old story that the United Nations gangs up against Israel. What is new is that the United States did not stand up and oppose that gang-up. And what is outrageous is that the United States was actually behind that gang-up,” Dermer said.Confirming claims made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman a day earlier, Dermer said Israel has proof the White House drove the resolution, and will “present this evidence to the new administration through the appropriate channels.”“If they want to share it with the American people, they are welcome to do it,” he said, sidestepping a question on why Israel would not release the information itself.Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Netanyahu’s spokesman David Keyes said Arab sources, among others, had informed Jerusalem of President Barack Obama’s alleged involvement in advancing the resolution.“We have ironclad information, frankly, that the Obama administration really helped push this resolution and helped craft it, from sources internationally and sources in the Arab world,” Keyes told the US media outlet.The White House has adamantly denied “cooking up” the resolution, rejecting accusations by Netanyahu to that effect.“We did not draft this resolution; we did not introduce this resolution. We made this decision when it came up for a vote,” Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said on Friday. But because of its opposition to settlement activity and concern for what it could mean for the region, the US “could not in good conscience veto,” he added.Dermer, in a subsequent interview with MSNBC Monday, called Rhodes a “master of fiction” — a harsh barb that seemed to evoke Rhodes’ past literary aspirations.Netanyahu held a 40-minute meeting with US Ambassador Dan Shapiro on Sunday evening, having summoned the envoy to explain why the US abstained in the vote on Resolution 2334. He had earlier summoned the envoys of the 12 nations with representatives in Israel that voted for the resolution for a dressing-down at the Foreign Ministry.Netanyahu on Monday defended the rebukes and the punitive measures he has taken against countries who proposed the resolution, saying that “Israel is a country with national pride and we will not turn the other cheek.“There is continued importance for this sort of response, even if there are more attempts to damage us in the coming month,” he said, referring to the remaining three and a half weeks of Obama’s term.But Netanyahu is now actively reaching out to the incoming Trump administration, which takes office on January 20, and to friends in Congress, in the hope of “deterring” what he sees as further potential Obama administration-led diplomatic action against Israel, a report by Channel 2 said Sunday. His aim is reportedly for the Trump team to make plain that his administration will “economically hurt” those countries that voted against Israel in the UN and that do so in the future.Netanyahu’s fear is that Secretary of State John Kerry will set out principles or parameters for a Palestinian state in a speech that he has said he will deliver in the next few days on his Middle East vision. The prime minister fears that, in its final days, the Obama administration will seek to have a resolution enshrining those parameters adopted by the UN Security Council, the report said.
His tactics on Thursday were a mess, and he now seems to be deepening the damage-Netanyahu goes to war with the world-Op-ed: Resolution 2334 was the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back,’ the PM says, the act of anti-Israel bias that will prompt a fundamental shift in the way the international community treats Israel. But his anticipated agent of change is more than three weeks away, and an awful lot can happen in the interim-By David Horovitz December 26, 2016, 3:45 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Benjamin Netanyahu is waging diplomatic war against the world, and notably against Israel’s only vital ally, the United States. We’ve never seen anything like it. It won’t win Israel any new friends.Israel has a solitary vote in the United Nations General Assembly, and no vote at all at the United Nations Security Council. Israel was annihilated in the Security Council vote on Friday that demanded an end to all settlement activity and that designated all the land that Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, which includes the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, as “occupied Palestinian territory.” The prime minister’s hope is that he can stave off further, and still more devastating, potential diplomatic defeat at the hands of the outgoing Obama administration via a mixture of pleas, threats and boycotts. On the horizon, he sees the incoming administration of Donald J. Trump. For Netanyahu, it cannot arrive soon enough.Netanyahu’s repeated public assertion is that US President Barack Obama hatched the entire scheme to humiliate and abandon Israel at the Security Council. Why would a president who had just authorized the biggest military aid package to Israel in history do any such thing? Because, the prime minister has implied, Obama is fundamentally hostile to the Jewish state. Netanyahu hasn’t (yet) said this explicitly. He has, however, drawn a parallel between Friday’s decision by Obama to abstain, and thus facilitate the passage of UNSC Resolution 2334, and similar action by president Jimmy Carter at the Security Council in 1980, and noted that Carter was “deeply hostile to Israel.”We will almost certainly find out one day, probably quite soon, whether, as Netanyahu has charged, Obama planned this “ambush” all along. Tellingly, in remarks to the Saban Forum earlier this month, Secretary of State John Kerry left open the door to a US abstention: “There are any number of countries talking about bringing resolutions to the United Nations,” Kerry noted. “If it’s biased and unfair, and a resolution calculated to delegitimize Israel, we’ll oppose it. Obviously, we will. We always have. But it’s getting more complicated now…”The administration insists, by contrast, in the words of deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, “We did not draft this resolution; we did not introduce this resolution. We made this decision when it came up for a vote.”There can be little doubt, however, that a number of very recent moves by Netanyahu made that abstention — that decision by Obama, for the first time in his presidency, to allow an anti-Israel resolution to pass at the Security Council — more likely.Obama’s UN envoy, Samantha Power, cited in her post-vote address the prime minister’s recent delighted public claim that his government is “more committed to settlements than any in Israel’s history.” More specifically, she referenced the current legislative moves in Israel to retroactively legalize dozens of West Bank settlement outposts — legislation that Israel’s own attorney general warns is in breach of international law, and that Netanyahu had himself previously opposed.On the Thursday before the fateful Friday, furthermore, Netanyahu took the extraordinary step of reaching out to not-yet-president Trump, pleading for his intervention to thwart the resolution. If Obama was still, by any chance, wavering, news that the president-elect he ridiculed and fought so bitterly on behalf of candidate Clinton was moving prematurely into his territory could only have helped make up his mind.Whose Jerusalem? Some of Netanyahu’s outrage is well-founded. The entire international community rejects the settlement enterprise and always has — no surprises there. But much of that international community ought at least to demonstrate to the Jewish state some solidarity when it comes to Jerusalem. Netanyahu is understandably aggrieved that those 12 Security Council countries with whom Israel has diplomatic relations voted in favor of a resolution that determines all parts of Jerusalem captured by Israel in the 1967 war to be “occupied Palestinian territory,” and that the US allowed it through.In the summer of 1980, when the “deeply hostile” Carter was in office and Israel had just annexed the Old City and East Jerusalem, the US abstained and thus enabled the passage of Resolution 478, which also related to “Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since June 1967, including Jerusalem.” But at least secretary of state Muskie stressed, in addressing the Security Council, that “the question of Jerusalem must be addressed in the context of negotiations for a comprehensive, just and lasting Middle East peace…” and that this resolution “fails to serve the goals of all faiths that look upon Jerusalem as holy.” He admonished the council to the effect that “we must share a common vision of that ancient city’s future — an undivided Jerusalem, with free access to the Holy Places for people of all faiths.”There was, by contrast, no explicit reference to the need to determine Jerusalem’s future in negotiations, nor even to the city’s resonance for all faiths, in Samantha Power’s extensive presentation on Friday. In 2009, when Obama went to Cairo, he was rightly criticized for failing to stress, in his outreach speech to the Muslim world, the Jewish nation’s historical rootedness to Israel, the holy land, the ancient capital. Nothing seems to have been learned in the interim.-Failed tactics-Outrage aside, however, the failed pre-vote diplomatic maneuvering by Netanyahu gives credence to those of his critics who argue that he has entered panic mode. For all the serenity and confidence he exudes in his public appearances, and for all that he is appeasing parts of his right-wing constituency — a critical imperative for retaining power — his tactics on Thursday were a mess, and he now seems to be deepening the damage.While you might justify calling in the next president to thwart the current president if you’ve thought the high-risk gambit all the way through, you’re going to look worse than foolish if you fail to do your homework and wind up losing.And that’s exactly what happened. Trump answered Netanyahu’s call, reached out to Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, and the resolution was withdrawn. A Pyrrhic victory. Within hours, Senegal, Venezuela, Malaysia and New Zealand had stepped in to advance the very same resolution, and there was nothing that even the president-elect could do about that. So Trump wasted his pre-presidential capital, Sissi was humiliated, and Israel lost the vote.The big loss yesterday for Israel in the United Nations will make it much harder to negotiate peace.Too bad, but we will get it done anyway!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2016-Netanyahu, and those advising him, might be sensibly dismayed by Trump’s dispassionate response to the setback. Initially, at least, there was no fervent defense of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, no pledge to reverse the pernicious decree, just a mild, rather ho-hum tweet on Saturday, that the “big loss yesterday for Israel in the United Nations will make it much harder to negotiate peace. Too bad, but we will get it done anyway!”More urgently, though, the prime minister should be considering whether a similar inadequately calculated process is now playing out again. Those who seek to harm Israel will themselves be harmed, he has been warning. This is “the swan song of the old world, that is anti-Israel,” he declared on Saturday night. Soon Trump will be president, and the Israel-bashers will have hell to pay.But there are two major flaws in that argument. Trump is not yet president. And not everybody who voted for that UNSC resolution loathes Israel.Yet Netanyahu has taken them all on. With a lack of courtesy he would rightly castigate if the tables were turned, he summoned the ambassadors of the 12 yes-voting countries with which Israel has diplomatic relations for a dressing-down on Christmas Day. Imagine the outrage were a host country to call in the Israeli envoy on, say, Rosh Hashanah.He ordered his ministers to minimize their dealings with these 12 countries. He canceled, or chose not to schedule, a meeting — depending on whose account you believe — with Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May at the World Economic Forum in Davos next month. Theresa May, who last week enthused about “remarkable” Israel at a Conservative Friends of Israel lunch, in a speech overflowing with admiration and empathy for the Jewish state. Likewise, he chose not to arrange a meeting with Xi Jinping, the president of China, a country with which Netanyahu has striven for years to bolster relations. He summoned home his ambassadors from Senegal and New Zealand. He cancelled a visit to Israel this week by the prime minister of Ukraine, who just so happens to be Jewish.“They are spitting at us,” he was reported on Sunday to have been telling colleagues. “We will respond with power.” But we are one, small Israel, and it is our interest to widen support for our cause among the nations, to engage, to dialogue, to explain. We rightly condemn boycotts. Now Netanyahu is instituting them.For all his fury at the perfidy of the international community, his sense of grievance and injustice, the question he must be asked is whether this is going to work. The Obama administration still has more than three weeks left in office. Kerry has said he will soon make a speech setting out his Middle East vision. On January 15, France is convening a summit on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Netanyahu now reportedly fears that the scheming US administration, in coordination with the other Middle East Quartet members — Russia, the EU and the reviled UN — will utilize that gathering to draw up a second UN Security Council resolution to enshrine the parameters of a Palestinian state.To again quote Kerry at the Saban Forum, “we have always stood against any imposition of a, quote, ‘final status solution.'” But in the current frenetic atmosphere, Netanyahu — rightly or wrongly — sees danger. Casting around for leverage, on Saturday night he warned that Israel’s friends in Congress would draw up legislation to punish states and organizations, such as the UN, that seek to harm Israel. “We won’t let anybody hurt the State of Israel,” he vowed.But the inconvenient truth is that while 14 nations supported Resolution 2334, and the US chose not to oppose it, those 14 are not all enemies of Israel, far from it, and the United States certainly isn’t. The Czech Republic and Panama might, just might, have voted no, or abstained, but basically the entire world rejects the legality of the settlement enterprise. And much of that world, as Netanyahu has in the recent past enthusiastically highlighted, either broadly supports Israel or is moving in that direction.For all the threats, the diplomatic dressing-downs, the ambassadorial recalls, the canceled visits, and the imminence of president Trump, there is no reason to believe that the Security Council would vote any differently from the way it voted on Friday if Netanyahu’s fears are realized and the Quartet formulates a resolution on Palestinian statehood. Except, of course, that the US, far from vetoing, would vote yes. Which would suggest that Netanyahu should be trying desperately to engage with the Obama administration, not to alienate it still further.The root of the Netanyahu-Obama conflict-But that brings us to the root of Netanyahu’s unprecedented diplomatic war against the world: It is really the culmination of an eight-year fight with the Obama administration.Obama never distinguished between more consensual and more isolated settlements. Maneuvering to salvage outposts, neither did Netanyahu-The president came into office regarding himself as a friend of Israel, but also — in contrast to the outgoing Bush administration — having no particular empathy for the notion of an Israel expanded beyond its pre-1967 lines. As he told this writer in an interview when he visited as a candidate in July 2008, “Israel may seek ’67-plus’ and justify it in terms of the buffer that they need for security purposes. They’ve got to consider whether getting that buffer is worth the antagonism of the other party.”Obama always opposed the settlement enterprise, and generally did not distinguish between construction in Jerusalem and to the west of the security barrier, on the one hand, and building deeper inside the West Bank, in territory Israel would have to relinquish if it is to disentangle itself from the Palestinians, on the other.By maneuvering in recent weeks to try to salvage the Amona outpost built on private Palestinian land, by coming around to support legislation that would retroactively legalize dozens of other such outposts, and by declaring his government “more committed to settlements than any in Israel’s history,” Netanyahu, for his part, underlined that he too draws no distinction between more consensual construction over the pre-1967 lines and building in the most contentious areas of Judea and Samaria. He tried to stave off the Amona moment of truth for just another few weeks, until a more amenable president was installed in the White House, but the High Court would no longer indulge him. For the sake of the isolated outposts, he risked the wrath of the international community.On Saturday night, Netanyahu claimed that Resolution 2334 was the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” the act of diplomatic warfare that would prompt a “fundamental change” in the way the UN, and by extension, the international community treats Israel. Well, maybe. It must certainly be a comforting thought for him. Except that his intended agent of change, as he discovered to his horror on Friday, has not yet arrived.It took just six days of war in 1967 to change the parameters of everything we now delight in, recoil at, grapple with and argue over. On the diplomatic battlefield, he and Obama still have three and a half weeks.
Top Obama aide ‘not surprised, but disappointed’ by Netanyahu’s reaction to UN vote-Ben Rhodes denies UN Security Council vote was an ‘ambush,’ as US had warned Israel on settlements; says Kerry will lay out ‘comprehensive vision’ for two-state solution-By Raoul Wootliff December 26, 2016, 10:33 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
A senior adviser for US President Barack Obama said Tuesday he was “disappointed” in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremely harsh response to the UN Security Council vote on settlements, but added that there’s isn’t much the Israeli leader does that surprises him anymore.President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told Israel’s Channel 2 news it was unfair to suggest the US decision to abstain from an anti-settlements resolution at the United Nations Security Council on Friday was proof of any anti-Israeli sentiment emanating from the White House.“I think the true face of this president’s support for Israel can be seen in his entire record,” Rhodes said. “This president has overseen unprecedented military and security cooperation, life-saving support to Iron Dome and a $38 billion memorandum of understanding that he completed before he left office because he wanted to have that commitment to Israel’s security as part of his legacy.”Netanyahu, who has publicly accused Obama of “ambushing” Israel at the UN with the “shameful” resolution has fumed at the White House for withholding its veto and allowing it to pass, and has also accused Obama of proposing and pushing the measure “behind Israel’s back.”On Sunday, in an extremely rare move, Netanyhau summoned US Ambassador Dan Shapiro and personally met with him for “clarifications” on the decision to abstain.Asked if he was surprised at Netanyahu’s harsh reaction, including the summoning of the ambassador, Rhodes smiled and said, “I don’t think much surprises me anymore.”-“I wouldn’t say surprised, (but) disappointed,” he added, saying that not only does he think it ignores Obama’s commitment to Israel, but that Netanyahu should not have been shocked by the move, given the administration’s public position on settlements.“By definition it’s not an ambush when President Obama and Secretary Kerry have been saying in hundreds of conversations and in public comments that Israeli settlement activity was pushing into the West Bank in a way that was making the two-state solution unachievable over time,” Rhodes said. The US had made it clear that “if that activity continued, we could see further international steps against further Israeli settlement activity,” he said.In a interview with MSNBC on Monday, Israeli Ambassador to the US Rob Dermer, called Rhodes a “master of fiction” — a harsh barb that seemed to evoke Rhodes’ past literary aspirations — after Rhodes denied the US was behind the UN resolution.Rhodes, who on Friday said Netanyahu could have avoided such an outcome had he not allowed for and boasted about increased settlement expansion on his watch, told Channel 2 that a government-backed initiative to authorize West Bank outposts had also contributed to the decision.Rhodes said the administration could not stand by, “When we see laws that aim to legalize outposts; when we see rhetoric that suggests that this is the most pro settlement Israeli government in history.”The proposed Regulation Bill stipulates that settlement construction in the West Bank that was carried out in good faith, without the knowledge that the land was privately owned, would be recognized by the government, provided the settlers show some kind of state support in establishing themselves at the site — which in some cases could be as minimal as having access to public infrastructures.While the final vote on the law had previously been postponed until after President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House on January 20, The Times of Israel reported on Saturday that the bill was put “back on the table” following the Security Council vote.But Netanyahu has also told his Likud lawmakers not to speak openly about annexing parts of the West Bank or building more settlements so long as Obama is still in office, reportedly for fear of yet more unilateral actions before January 20.Netanyahu reportedly thinks that Secretary of State John Kerry will set out principles or parameters for a Palestinian state in a speech that he has said he will deliver in the next few days on his Middle East vision. The prime minister is said to fear that, in its final days, the Obama administration will seek to have a resolution enshrining those parameters adopted by the UN Security Council.Rhodes, who did not rule out further initiatives or give specific details, said that Kerry would lay out a “comprehensive vision for how we see the conflict being resolved, where we see things in 2016, as we unfortunately conclude our term in office without there being significant progress toward peace.”
Scandalous' anti-settlements resolution is 'swan song of the old world that is anti-Israel'-Netanyahu says Obama ‘ambushed’ Israel at UN, likens him to ‘deeply hostile’ Carter-PM claims president breached ‘specific commitment’ with Security Council abstention; ‘our friends’ in Trump team promising fight to cancel resolution; cuts funds to 5 UN groups-By Times of Israel staff December 24, 2016, 8:53 pm
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday accused President Barack Obama of breaching a specific commitment to Israel by allowing through Friday’s UN Security Council anti-settlements resolution, and compared the outgoing president’s behavior to that of predecessor Jimmy Carter, “a president who was hostile to Israel.”Vowing not to be forced by international pressure into withdrawing from disputed territory, he said the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump had indicated that it would join an all-out war against what he called a “shameful” and “scandalous” decision.He described the 14-0 vote in the Security Council, with the US abstaining, as “the swan song of the old world that is anti-Israel.” Now, he said, “we are entering a new era. And as President-elect Trump said, it’s going to happen a lot faster than people think.”In this new era, it will a lot more costly for those who seek to harm Israel, he warned.Practically speaking, Netanyahu also announced that Israel was re-evaluating all of its dealings with the United Nations, and that he had already instructed officials to cut off “30 million shekels ($7.8 million) of funding for five UN bodies that are particularly hostile to Israel.” More such action will follow, he promised.He noted that he had recalled Israel’s ambassadors from New Zealand and Senegal, two of the four countries that sponsored the resolution that have diplomatic relations with Israel. Israeli aid to Senegal has also been halted, he said.Netanyahu compared the resolution to the UN’s equation of Zionism with racism, and said that just as that decision was eventually overturned, so too would this one be. “It took time,” he said, “but it was cancelled.”Speaking at a Hanukkah event for wounded soldiers and victims of terrorism (Hebrew clip below), Netanyahu said the UNSC decision was “biased and shameful, but we’ll get over it.” Israel, he stressed, “rejects it utterly.”He said it was surreal in that it determined that the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and the Western Wall were occupied territory. “There is nothing more ridiculous than to call the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter occupied territory,” he said.Furthermore, he said, the resolution represented an effort to impose the terms of a permanent Israeli-Palestinian accord. “It won’t work,” he said. The last person to attempt to do this, he said, was Carter — “a president deeply hostile to Israel,” and who recently said that Hamas is not a terrorist organization.” Carter’s efforts at the UN didn’t work either, he said Carter, he noted, allowed through a similar UNSC decision, in 1980. All subsequent presidents stood by the commitment not to try to impose conditions at the UNSC, Netanyahu said — until Friday.The US abstention came in “a complete contradiction” to a “specific commitment by President Obama in 2011,” he said. It was “a shameful anti-Israel ambush” by the administration, he said.“The whole Middle East is going up in flames,” he said, “and the Obama administration and the Security Council” target Israel, the region’s only democracy. “How shameful.”He said Israel “is not alone” in opposing the decision and the skewed stance against Israel. “Our friends” in the incoming administration, and numerous Republic and Democratic legislators, he said, have told him they will fight the decision with all their power. “We’ll change this decision,” he said they promised him. “We won’t let anybody hurt the State of Israel.”US legislators intend to pass a law to punish states or organizations, including the UN, that seek to hurt Israel. The US alone, he noted, provides a quarter of the UN’s funding.He said Israel was “on a journey” to improve its relations with the nations of the world. “It could be that this scandalous decision yesterday will accelerate this process. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Yesterday’s decision is a recruitment call to all our many friends in the US and around the world — friends who have had enough of the UN’s hostile treatment of Israel and who intend to push fundamental change at the UN.”Therefore, he said, invoking the spirit of the Hanukkah festival which began on Saturday, “the light will oust the darkness.”
Kiev summons Israeli envoy to protest cancellation of its PM’s visit-Netanyahu disinvited Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Groysman after his government voted for anti-settlement UN resolution-By Raphael Ahren December 26, 2016, 5:52 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
The Foreign Ministry in Kiev on Monday summoned Israel’s ambassador for a dressing-down to protest Jerusalem’s decision to cancel a visit to Israel this week by Ukraine’s prime minister.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday disinvited Volodymyr Groysman as a consequence of Kiev voting in a favor of an anti-settlements resolution at the United Nations Security Council.“We’re confirming that our ambassador Eli Belotsercovsky was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Kiev for a meeting following Israel’s decision regarding the visit of Ukraine’s prime minister,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon said.Groysman, who became Ukraine’s first Jewish prime minister earlier this year, was scheduled to arrive in Israel on Tuesday for a two-day visit that would have included meetings with Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin and other top officials.Ukraine on Monday defended its decision to vote in favor of Resolution 2234, hinting at its own conflict with Russia as a driving force behind the decision.Without explicitly mentioning Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and a civil war in the country’s east with Russian-backed separatists, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said it “experienced itself the tragic consequences brought by” the violation of international law, effectively drawing a parallel between Israeli building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Russian policies.“That’s why our position was formed on the basis of our consistent line to ensure the respect for the international law by all its subjects,” the statement read.The Security Council resolution, which was passed by a 14-0 vote on Friday, with only the United States abstaining, calls on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” while also expressing its “grave concern that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution.”Since the measure was passed, Israel has taken a number of retaliatory steps against the countries that supported its passage, including an official dressing-down of the Security Council members’ ambassadors to Israel on Sunday.In its statement defending Ukraine’s vote in favor of the measure in light of the Israeli backlash, the Foreign Ministry in Kiev described the resolution as “balanced,” and said its “yes” vote should not affect ties.“We are confident that active and emotional internal debates in Israel will not impact traditionally friendly Ukrainian-Israeli relationship, based on mutual respect and joint interests,” the statement read.Following the removal from office of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 as a result of protests against his government and its policies, unmarked Russian troops invaded and occupied the Crimean Peninsula, which was was annexed to Russia after a hasty and internationally unrecognized referendum in March 2014.Beginning in 2014, Russia has also sent troops and sponsored paramilitaries to occupy parts of eastern Ukraine and has backed the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
Ukraine hints conflict with Russia led it to back UN measure-Kiev says anti-settlement Security Council motion, which led to Netanyahu canceling visit by Ukraine’s PM, won’t harm countries’ good ties-By Times of Israel staff December 26, 2016, 3:21 pm
Ukraine on Monday defended its decision to vote in favor of an United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements last week, apparently pointing to its own conflict with Russia as a driving force behind its decision.Without explicitly mentioning the Russian annexation of Crimea and a civil war in the country’s east with Moscow-backed separatists, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said it “experienced itself the tragic consequences brought by” the violation of international law, effectively drawing a parallel between Israeli building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Russian policies.“That’s why our position was formed on the basis of our consistent line to ensure the respect for the international law by all its subjects,” the statement read.UNSC Resolution 2334, which was passed by a 14-0 vote on Friday, with only the United States abstaining, calls on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” while also expressing its “grave concern that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution.”Since the measure was passed, Israel has taken a number of retaliatory steps against the countries that supported its passage, including an official dressing down of the Security Council members’ ambassadors to Israel on Sunday.On Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also Israel’s foreign minister, canceled the planned visit this week of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to Israel due to Ukraine’s vote in favor of the resolution.In its statement defending Ukraine’s vote in favor of the measure in light of the Israeli backlash, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry described the resolution as “balanced,” and said its “yes” vote should not affect ties.“We are confident that active and emotional internal debates in Israel will not impact traditionally friendly Ukrainian-Israeli relationship, based on mutual respect and joint interests,” the statement read.Following the removal from office of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 as a result of protests against his government and its policies, unmarked Russian troops invaded and occupied the Crimean Peninsula, which was was annexed to Russia after a hasty and internationally unrecognized referendum in March 2014.Beginning in 2014, Russia has also sent troops and sponsored paramilitaries to occupy parts of eastern Ukraine and has backed the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.
Trump: UN has potential but currently a club for ‘people to have a good time’-Days after blasting world body for anti-settlements vote, president-elect questions its effectiveness-By AP and Times of Israel staff December 27, 2016, 12:56 am
US President-elect Donald Trump on Monday questioned the effectiveness of the United Nations, saying that it was currently just a club for people to “have a good time.”Coming just days after Trump’s tweet on Friday lamenting “Israel’s loss” at the UN Security Council where a resolution calling for a halt to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was passed 14-0 with a US abstention, the president-elect took to Twitter again to claim the world body “has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!”On Friday, after the vote against Israeli settlements was passed, Trump warned, “As to the UN, things will be different after Jan. 20th,” referring to the day he takes office.In a striking departure from past policy of incumbent presidents waiting on the sidelines, Trump tried to scuttle the resolution, answering Israel’s call on Thursday to pressure Egypt — which drafted it — to withdraw the proposal and calling for a US veto.The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016-When on Friday, Malaysia, Senegal, Venezuela and New Zealand pushed for a vote, the Obama administration opted to abstain, saying the decision was a result of the Israeli government’s policies and recent pro-settlement remarks.Israel, for its part, reacted furiously, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials accusing the Obama administration of abandoning and “ambushing” its main Mideast ally and of colluding with the United Nations against Israel.Netanyahu went on a diplomatic blitz on Sunday, Christmas Day, summoning the ambassadors of 10 (China, Russia, France, Angola, Egypt, Japan, Ukraine and Uruguay) of the 14 states who supported the resolution for a dressing down by directors of the Foreign Ministry’s respective regional departments.In the case of Great Britain and Spain, the deputy ambassadors were summoned because their respective bosses were currently not in the country. Israel has no diplomatic ties with Venezuela and Malaysia.In addition, in an extremely rare move, Netanyahu also summoned US Ambassador Dan Shapiro and personally met with him for “clarifications” on the US decision to abstain.He also recalled the Israeli ambassadors to Senegal and New Zealand, two of the four countries that sponsored the resolution that have diplomatic relations with Israel. Israeli aid to Senegal has also been halted.He further cancelled this week’s visit to Israel of Ukraine’s prime minister, opted not to schedule a meeting with Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, and reportedly told ministers to minimize their working relations with countries that backed the resolution.Vowing not to be forced by international pressure into withdrawing from disputed territory, Netanyahu said on Saturday that Trump’s incoming administration had indicated that it would join an all-out war against what he called a “shameful” and “scandalous” decision.
28 And when these things begin to come to pass,(ALL THE PROPHECY SIGNS FROM THE BIBLE) then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption (RAPTURE) draweth nigh.
29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree,(ISRAEL) and all the trees;(ALL INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES)
30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.(ISRAEL LITERALLY BECAME AND INDEPENDENT COUNTRY JUST BEFORE SUMMER IN MAY 14,1948.)
JOEL 2:3,30
3 A fire devoureth (ATOMIC BOMB) before them;(RUSSIAN-ARAB-MUSLIM ARMIES AGAINST ISRAEL) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.
30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(ATOMIC BOMB AFFECT)
ZECHARIAH 14:12-13
12 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)
13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)
EZEKIEL 20:47
47 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.
ZEPHANIAH 1:18
18 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.
MALACHI 4:1
1 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven;(FROM ATOMIC BOMBS) and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.
And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE
UN vote actually ‘a victory for Israel,’ paves way for embassy move, ex-Labor MK says-Einat Wilf says Resolution 2334 ‘clarifies the absolute legality of pre-1967 Israel, including west Jerusalem,’ can provide basis for Trump to relocate embassy-By Raphael Ahren December 26, 2016, 5:33 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
While Israeli politicians from across the political spectrum condemned the anti-settlements resolution passed Friday at the United Nations Security Council, a former Labor Party MK on Sunday called it a “victory for Israel.”In a counterintuitive interpretation of the resolution, Einat Wilf, who served as Knesset member between 2010 and 2013, argued that the controversial text actually enshrines in international law Israel’s right to West Jerusalem and thus makes it easier for the US to move its embassy there.“UN Security Council Resolution 2334 is an important, if unintended, victory for Israel and Zionism. In it the UN Security Council provides the most resounding international and legal support yet for Israel within the 1949 ceasefire lines, including west Jerusalem,” she said in a statement Sunday.Wilf, a native Jerusalemite, pointed to two sections of the resolution that she said were key to legitimizing Israel’s claims to West Jerusalem. For one, the text determines that Israeli settlement in territory captured in 1967, including East Jerusalem, “has no legal validity.” The resolution further calls on all states to “distinguish, in their relevant dealings, between the territory of the State of Israel and the territories occupied since 1967.”Most Israeli politicians and pundits view those two sentences as the resolution’s most troubling, as they appear to invite boycotts of goods and people from the settlements.But Wilf, who holds a PhD in political science from the University of Cambridge, chose to focus on the other side of the coin.By drawing a clear distinction between Israel proper and the settlements, and declaring the settlements illegal, the Security Council “is essentially clarifying the absolute legality of the territory of Israel within the 1949 ceasefire lines, including west Jerusalem,” she noted. “This resolution could provide a Trump administration the international legal support for their policy of moving the US Embassy to west Jerusalem.”The international community currently does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem. Israel conquered the eastern part of the city in the 1967 Six Day War, and subsequently annexed it and declared “united Jerusalem” its capital, leading all countries to move their embassies from Jerusalem to the Tel Aviv area.The status of Jerusalem, the international community argues, needs to be determined by a final-status agreement between the parties.US President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to implement a 1995 American law that stipulates the relocation the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Critics, chiefly among the Palestinians, have sharply condemned the planned move, arguing that it would predetermine the outcome of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Israeli ambassador: We’ll give Trump proof Obama drove UN vote-Dermer calls White House aide Rhodes a ‘master of fiction’; PM defends strident campaign, says he ‘will not turn the other cheek’-By Times of Israel staff December 26, 2016, 6:08 pm
Israel’s ambassador to the United States said Tuesday that the country will present President-elect Donald Trump with “evidence” that the Obama administration orchestrated an anti-settlement resolution at the United Nations Security Council on Friday.Ron Dermer told CNN that Israel is angry with the US over the resolution because it is “the only country where we have any expectation to actually stand with us at the United Nations.”The US abstained from the vote, which passed 14-0.“It’s an old story that the United Nations gangs up against Israel. What is new is that the United States did not stand up and oppose that gang-up. And what is outrageous is that the United States was actually behind that gang-up,” Dermer said.Confirming claims made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s spokesman a day earlier, Dermer said Israel has proof the White House drove the resolution, and will “present this evidence to the new administration through the appropriate channels.”“If they want to share it with the American people, they are welcome to do it,” he said, sidestepping a question on why Israel would not release the information itself.Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Netanyahu’s spokesman David Keyes said Arab sources, among others, had informed Jerusalem of President Barack Obama’s alleged involvement in advancing the resolution.“We have ironclad information, frankly, that the Obama administration really helped push this resolution and helped craft it, from sources internationally and sources in the Arab world,” Keyes told the US media outlet.The White House has adamantly denied “cooking up” the resolution, rejecting accusations by Netanyahu to that effect.“We did not draft this resolution; we did not introduce this resolution. We made this decision when it came up for a vote,” Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, said on Friday. But because of its opposition to settlement activity and concern for what it could mean for the region, the US “could not in good conscience veto,” he added.Dermer, in a subsequent interview with MSNBC Monday, called Rhodes a “master of fiction” — a harsh barb that seemed to evoke Rhodes’ past literary aspirations.Netanyahu held a 40-minute meeting with US Ambassador Dan Shapiro on Sunday evening, having summoned the envoy to explain why the US abstained in the vote on Resolution 2334. He had earlier summoned the envoys of the 12 nations with representatives in Israel that voted for the resolution for a dressing-down at the Foreign Ministry.Netanyahu on Monday defended the rebukes and the punitive measures he has taken against countries who proposed the resolution, saying that “Israel is a country with national pride and we will not turn the other cheek.“There is continued importance for this sort of response, even if there are more attempts to damage us in the coming month,” he said, referring to the remaining three and a half weeks of Obama’s term.But Netanyahu is now actively reaching out to the incoming Trump administration, which takes office on January 20, and to friends in Congress, in the hope of “deterring” what he sees as further potential Obama administration-led diplomatic action against Israel, a report by Channel 2 said Sunday. His aim is reportedly for the Trump team to make plain that his administration will “economically hurt” those countries that voted against Israel in the UN and that do so in the future.Netanyahu’s fear is that Secretary of State John Kerry will set out principles or parameters for a Palestinian state in a speech that he has said he will deliver in the next few days on his Middle East vision. The prime minister fears that, in its final days, the Obama administration will seek to have a resolution enshrining those parameters adopted by the UN Security Council, the report said.
His tactics on Thursday were a mess, and he now seems to be deepening the damage-Netanyahu goes to war with the world-Op-ed: Resolution 2334 was the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back,’ the PM says, the act of anti-Israel bias that will prompt a fundamental shift in the way the international community treats Israel. But his anticipated agent of change is more than three weeks away, and an awful lot can happen in the interim-By David Horovitz December 26, 2016, 3:45 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
Benjamin Netanyahu is waging diplomatic war against the world, and notably against Israel’s only vital ally, the United States. We’ve never seen anything like it. It won’t win Israel any new friends.Israel has a solitary vote in the United Nations General Assembly, and no vote at all at the United Nations Security Council. Israel was annihilated in the Security Council vote on Friday that demanded an end to all settlement activity and that designated all the land that Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 war, which includes the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, as “occupied Palestinian territory.” The prime minister’s hope is that he can stave off further, and still more devastating, potential diplomatic defeat at the hands of the outgoing Obama administration via a mixture of pleas, threats and boycotts. On the horizon, he sees the incoming administration of Donald J. Trump. For Netanyahu, it cannot arrive soon enough.Netanyahu’s repeated public assertion is that US President Barack Obama hatched the entire scheme to humiliate and abandon Israel at the Security Council. Why would a president who had just authorized the biggest military aid package to Israel in history do any such thing? Because, the prime minister has implied, Obama is fundamentally hostile to the Jewish state. Netanyahu hasn’t (yet) said this explicitly. He has, however, drawn a parallel between Friday’s decision by Obama to abstain, and thus facilitate the passage of UNSC Resolution 2334, and similar action by president Jimmy Carter at the Security Council in 1980, and noted that Carter was “deeply hostile to Israel.”We will almost certainly find out one day, probably quite soon, whether, as Netanyahu has charged, Obama planned this “ambush” all along. Tellingly, in remarks to the Saban Forum earlier this month, Secretary of State John Kerry left open the door to a US abstention: “There are any number of countries talking about bringing resolutions to the United Nations,” Kerry noted. “If it’s biased and unfair, and a resolution calculated to delegitimize Israel, we’ll oppose it. Obviously, we will. We always have. But it’s getting more complicated now…”The administration insists, by contrast, in the words of deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, “We did not draft this resolution; we did not introduce this resolution. We made this decision when it came up for a vote.”There can be little doubt, however, that a number of very recent moves by Netanyahu made that abstention — that decision by Obama, for the first time in his presidency, to allow an anti-Israel resolution to pass at the Security Council — more likely.Obama’s UN envoy, Samantha Power, cited in her post-vote address the prime minister’s recent delighted public claim that his government is “more committed to settlements than any in Israel’s history.” More specifically, she referenced the current legislative moves in Israel to retroactively legalize dozens of West Bank settlement outposts — legislation that Israel’s own attorney general warns is in breach of international law, and that Netanyahu had himself previously opposed.On the Thursday before the fateful Friday, furthermore, Netanyahu took the extraordinary step of reaching out to not-yet-president Trump, pleading for his intervention to thwart the resolution. If Obama was still, by any chance, wavering, news that the president-elect he ridiculed and fought so bitterly on behalf of candidate Clinton was moving prematurely into his territory could only have helped make up his mind.Whose Jerusalem? Some of Netanyahu’s outrage is well-founded. The entire international community rejects the settlement enterprise and always has — no surprises there. But much of that international community ought at least to demonstrate to the Jewish state some solidarity when it comes to Jerusalem. Netanyahu is understandably aggrieved that those 12 Security Council countries with whom Israel has diplomatic relations voted in favor of a resolution that determines all parts of Jerusalem captured by Israel in the 1967 war to be “occupied Palestinian territory,” and that the US allowed it through.In the summer of 1980, when the “deeply hostile” Carter was in office and Israel had just annexed the Old City and East Jerusalem, the US abstained and thus enabled the passage of Resolution 478, which also related to “Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since June 1967, including Jerusalem.” But at least secretary of state Muskie stressed, in addressing the Security Council, that “the question of Jerusalem must be addressed in the context of negotiations for a comprehensive, just and lasting Middle East peace…” and that this resolution “fails to serve the goals of all faiths that look upon Jerusalem as holy.” He admonished the council to the effect that “we must share a common vision of that ancient city’s future — an undivided Jerusalem, with free access to the Holy Places for people of all faiths.”There was, by contrast, no explicit reference to the need to determine Jerusalem’s future in negotiations, nor even to the city’s resonance for all faiths, in Samantha Power’s extensive presentation on Friday. In 2009, when Obama went to Cairo, he was rightly criticized for failing to stress, in his outreach speech to the Muslim world, the Jewish nation’s historical rootedness to Israel, the holy land, the ancient capital. Nothing seems to have been learned in the interim.-Failed tactics-Outrage aside, however, the failed pre-vote diplomatic maneuvering by Netanyahu gives credence to those of his critics who argue that he has entered panic mode. For all the serenity and confidence he exudes in his public appearances, and for all that he is appeasing parts of his right-wing constituency — a critical imperative for retaining power — his tactics on Thursday were a mess, and he now seems to be deepening the damage.While you might justify calling in the next president to thwart the current president if you’ve thought the high-risk gambit all the way through, you’re going to look worse than foolish if you fail to do your homework and wind up losing.And that’s exactly what happened. Trump answered Netanyahu’s call, reached out to Egypt’s President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, and the resolution was withdrawn. A Pyrrhic victory. Within hours, Senegal, Venezuela, Malaysia and New Zealand had stepped in to advance the very same resolution, and there was nothing that even the president-elect could do about that. So Trump wasted his pre-presidential capital, Sissi was humiliated, and Israel lost the vote.The big loss yesterday for Israel in the United Nations will make it much harder to negotiate peace.Too bad, but we will get it done anyway!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 24, 2016-Netanyahu, and those advising him, might be sensibly dismayed by Trump’s dispassionate response to the setback. Initially, at least, there was no fervent defense of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, no pledge to reverse the pernicious decree, just a mild, rather ho-hum tweet on Saturday, that the “big loss yesterday for Israel in the United Nations will make it much harder to negotiate peace. Too bad, but we will get it done anyway!”More urgently, though, the prime minister should be considering whether a similar inadequately calculated process is now playing out again. Those who seek to harm Israel will themselves be harmed, he has been warning. This is “the swan song of the old world, that is anti-Israel,” he declared on Saturday night. Soon Trump will be president, and the Israel-bashers will have hell to pay.But there are two major flaws in that argument. Trump is not yet president. And not everybody who voted for that UNSC resolution loathes Israel.Yet Netanyahu has taken them all on. With a lack of courtesy he would rightly castigate if the tables were turned, he summoned the ambassadors of the 12 yes-voting countries with which Israel has diplomatic relations for a dressing-down on Christmas Day. Imagine the outrage were a host country to call in the Israeli envoy on, say, Rosh Hashanah.He ordered his ministers to minimize their dealings with these 12 countries. He canceled, or chose not to schedule, a meeting — depending on whose account you believe — with Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May at the World Economic Forum in Davos next month. Theresa May, who last week enthused about “remarkable” Israel at a Conservative Friends of Israel lunch, in a speech overflowing with admiration and empathy for the Jewish state. Likewise, he chose not to arrange a meeting with Xi Jinping, the president of China, a country with which Netanyahu has striven for years to bolster relations. He summoned home his ambassadors from Senegal and New Zealand. He cancelled a visit to Israel this week by the prime minister of Ukraine, who just so happens to be Jewish.“They are spitting at us,” he was reported on Sunday to have been telling colleagues. “We will respond with power.” But we are one, small Israel, and it is our interest to widen support for our cause among the nations, to engage, to dialogue, to explain. We rightly condemn boycotts. Now Netanyahu is instituting them.For all his fury at the perfidy of the international community, his sense of grievance and injustice, the question he must be asked is whether this is going to work. The Obama administration still has more than three weeks left in office. Kerry has said he will soon make a speech setting out his Middle East vision. On January 15, France is convening a summit on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Netanyahu now reportedly fears that the scheming US administration, in coordination with the other Middle East Quartet members — Russia, the EU and the reviled UN — will utilize that gathering to draw up a second UN Security Council resolution to enshrine the parameters of a Palestinian state.To again quote Kerry at the Saban Forum, “we have always stood against any imposition of a, quote, ‘final status solution.'” But in the current frenetic atmosphere, Netanyahu — rightly or wrongly — sees danger. Casting around for leverage, on Saturday night he warned that Israel’s friends in Congress would draw up legislation to punish states and organizations, such as the UN, that seek to harm Israel. “We won’t let anybody hurt the State of Israel,” he vowed.But the inconvenient truth is that while 14 nations supported Resolution 2334, and the US chose not to oppose it, those 14 are not all enemies of Israel, far from it, and the United States certainly isn’t. The Czech Republic and Panama might, just might, have voted no, or abstained, but basically the entire world rejects the legality of the settlement enterprise. And much of that world, as Netanyahu has in the recent past enthusiastically highlighted, either broadly supports Israel or is moving in that direction.For all the threats, the diplomatic dressing-downs, the ambassadorial recalls, the canceled visits, and the imminence of president Trump, there is no reason to believe that the Security Council would vote any differently from the way it voted on Friday if Netanyahu’s fears are realized and the Quartet formulates a resolution on Palestinian statehood. Except, of course, that the US, far from vetoing, would vote yes. Which would suggest that Netanyahu should be trying desperately to engage with the Obama administration, not to alienate it still further.The root of the Netanyahu-Obama conflict-But that brings us to the root of Netanyahu’s unprecedented diplomatic war against the world: It is really the culmination of an eight-year fight with the Obama administration.Obama never distinguished between more consensual and more isolated settlements. Maneuvering to salvage outposts, neither did Netanyahu-The president came into office regarding himself as a friend of Israel, but also — in contrast to the outgoing Bush administration — having no particular empathy for the notion of an Israel expanded beyond its pre-1967 lines. As he told this writer in an interview when he visited as a candidate in July 2008, “Israel may seek ’67-plus’ and justify it in terms of the buffer that they need for security purposes. They’ve got to consider whether getting that buffer is worth the antagonism of the other party.”Obama always opposed the settlement enterprise, and generally did not distinguish between construction in Jerusalem and to the west of the security barrier, on the one hand, and building deeper inside the West Bank, in territory Israel would have to relinquish if it is to disentangle itself from the Palestinians, on the other.By maneuvering in recent weeks to try to salvage the Amona outpost built on private Palestinian land, by coming around to support legislation that would retroactively legalize dozens of other such outposts, and by declaring his government “more committed to settlements than any in Israel’s history,” Netanyahu, for his part, underlined that he too draws no distinction between more consensual construction over the pre-1967 lines and building in the most contentious areas of Judea and Samaria. He tried to stave off the Amona moment of truth for just another few weeks, until a more amenable president was installed in the White House, but the High Court would no longer indulge him. For the sake of the isolated outposts, he risked the wrath of the international community.On Saturday night, Netanyahu claimed that Resolution 2334 was the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” the act of diplomatic warfare that would prompt a “fundamental change” in the way the UN, and by extension, the international community treats Israel. Well, maybe. It must certainly be a comforting thought for him. Except that his intended agent of change, as he discovered to his horror on Friday, has not yet arrived.It took just six days of war in 1967 to change the parameters of everything we now delight in, recoil at, grapple with and argue over. On the diplomatic battlefield, he and Obama still have three and a half weeks.
Top Obama aide ‘not surprised, but disappointed’ by Netanyahu’s reaction to UN vote-Ben Rhodes denies UN Security Council vote was an ‘ambush,’ as US had warned Israel on settlements; says Kerry will lay out ‘comprehensive vision’ for two-state solution-By Raoul Wootliff December 26, 2016, 10:33 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
A senior adviser for US President Barack Obama said Tuesday he was “disappointed” in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremely harsh response to the UN Security Council vote on settlements, but added that there’s isn’t much the Israeli leader does that surprises him anymore.President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told Israel’s Channel 2 news it was unfair to suggest the US decision to abstain from an anti-settlements resolution at the United Nations Security Council on Friday was proof of any anti-Israeli sentiment emanating from the White House.“I think the true face of this president’s support for Israel can be seen in his entire record,” Rhodes said. “This president has overseen unprecedented military and security cooperation, life-saving support to Iron Dome and a $38 billion memorandum of understanding that he completed before he left office because he wanted to have that commitment to Israel’s security as part of his legacy.”Netanyahu, who has publicly accused Obama of “ambushing” Israel at the UN with the “shameful” resolution has fumed at the White House for withholding its veto and allowing it to pass, and has also accused Obama of proposing and pushing the measure “behind Israel’s back.”On Sunday, in an extremely rare move, Netanyhau summoned US Ambassador Dan Shapiro and personally met with him for “clarifications” on the decision to abstain.Asked if he was surprised at Netanyahu’s harsh reaction, including the summoning of the ambassador, Rhodes smiled and said, “I don’t think much surprises me anymore.”-“I wouldn’t say surprised, (but) disappointed,” he added, saying that not only does he think it ignores Obama’s commitment to Israel, but that Netanyahu should not have been shocked by the move, given the administration’s public position on settlements.“By definition it’s not an ambush when President Obama and Secretary Kerry have been saying in hundreds of conversations and in public comments that Israeli settlement activity was pushing into the West Bank in a way that was making the two-state solution unachievable over time,” Rhodes said. The US had made it clear that “if that activity continued, we could see further international steps against further Israeli settlement activity,” he said.In a interview with MSNBC on Monday, Israeli Ambassador to the US Rob Dermer, called Rhodes a “master of fiction” — a harsh barb that seemed to evoke Rhodes’ past literary aspirations — after Rhodes denied the US was behind the UN resolution.Rhodes, who on Friday said Netanyahu could have avoided such an outcome had he not allowed for and boasted about increased settlement expansion on his watch, told Channel 2 that a government-backed initiative to authorize West Bank outposts had also contributed to the decision.Rhodes said the administration could not stand by, “When we see laws that aim to legalize outposts; when we see rhetoric that suggests that this is the most pro settlement Israeli government in history.”The proposed Regulation Bill stipulates that settlement construction in the West Bank that was carried out in good faith, without the knowledge that the land was privately owned, would be recognized by the government, provided the settlers show some kind of state support in establishing themselves at the site — which in some cases could be as minimal as having access to public infrastructures.While the final vote on the law had previously been postponed until after President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House on January 20, The Times of Israel reported on Saturday that the bill was put “back on the table” following the Security Council vote.But Netanyahu has also told his Likud lawmakers not to speak openly about annexing parts of the West Bank or building more settlements so long as Obama is still in office, reportedly for fear of yet more unilateral actions before January 20.Netanyahu reportedly thinks that Secretary of State John Kerry will set out principles or parameters for a Palestinian state in a speech that he has said he will deliver in the next few days on his Middle East vision. The prime minister is said to fear that, in its final days, the Obama administration will seek to have a resolution enshrining those parameters adopted by the UN Security Council.Rhodes, who did not rule out further initiatives or give specific details, said that Kerry would lay out a “comprehensive vision for how we see the conflict being resolved, where we see things in 2016, as we unfortunately conclude our term in office without there being significant progress toward peace.”
Scandalous' anti-settlements resolution is 'swan song of the old world that is anti-Israel'-Netanyahu says Obama ‘ambushed’ Israel at UN, likens him to ‘deeply hostile’ Carter-PM claims president breached ‘specific commitment’ with Security Council abstention; ‘our friends’ in Trump team promising fight to cancel resolution; cuts funds to 5 UN groups-By Times of Israel staff December 24, 2016, 8:53 pm
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday accused President Barack Obama of breaching a specific commitment to Israel by allowing through Friday’s UN Security Council anti-settlements resolution, and compared the outgoing president’s behavior to that of predecessor Jimmy Carter, “a president who was hostile to Israel.”Vowing not to be forced by international pressure into withdrawing from disputed territory, he said the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump had indicated that it would join an all-out war against what he called a “shameful” and “scandalous” decision.He described the 14-0 vote in the Security Council, with the US abstaining, as “the swan song of the old world that is anti-Israel.” Now, he said, “we are entering a new era. And as President-elect Trump said, it’s going to happen a lot faster than people think.”In this new era, it will a lot more costly for those who seek to harm Israel, he warned.Practically speaking, Netanyahu also announced that Israel was re-evaluating all of its dealings with the United Nations, and that he had already instructed officials to cut off “30 million shekels ($7.8 million) of funding for five UN bodies that are particularly hostile to Israel.” More such action will follow, he promised.He noted that he had recalled Israel’s ambassadors from New Zealand and Senegal, two of the four countries that sponsored the resolution that have diplomatic relations with Israel. Israeli aid to Senegal has also been halted, he said.Netanyahu compared the resolution to the UN’s equation of Zionism with racism, and said that just as that decision was eventually overturned, so too would this one be. “It took time,” he said, “but it was cancelled.”Speaking at a Hanukkah event for wounded soldiers and victims of terrorism (Hebrew clip below), Netanyahu said the UNSC decision was “biased and shameful, but we’ll get over it.” Israel, he stressed, “rejects it utterly.”He said it was surreal in that it determined that the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and the Western Wall were occupied territory. “There is nothing more ridiculous than to call the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter occupied territory,” he said.Furthermore, he said, the resolution represented an effort to impose the terms of a permanent Israeli-Palestinian accord. “It won’t work,” he said. The last person to attempt to do this, he said, was Carter — “a president deeply hostile to Israel,” and who recently said that Hamas is not a terrorist organization.” Carter’s efforts at the UN didn’t work either, he said Carter, he noted, allowed through a similar UNSC decision, in 1980. All subsequent presidents stood by the commitment not to try to impose conditions at the UNSC, Netanyahu said — until Friday.The US abstention came in “a complete contradiction” to a “specific commitment by President Obama in 2011,” he said. It was “a shameful anti-Israel ambush” by the administration, he said.“The whole Middle East is going up in flames,” he said, “and the Obama administration and the Security Council” target Israel, the region’s only democracy. “How shameful.”He said Israel “is not alone” in opposing the decision and the skewed stance against Israel. “Our friends” in the incoming administration, and numerous Republic and Democratic legislators, he said, have told him they will fight the decision with all their power. “We’ll change this decision,” he said they promised him. “We won’t let anybody hurt the State of Israel.”US legislators intend to pass a law to punish states or organizations, including the UN, that seek to hurt Israel. The US alone, he noted, provides a quarter of the UN’s funding.He said Israel was “on a journey” to improve its relations with the nations of the world. “It could be that this scandalous decision yesterday will accelerate this process. This is the straw that broke the camel’s back. Yesterday’s decision is a recruitment call to all our many friends in the US and around the world — friends who have had enough of the UN’s hostile treatment of Israel and who intend to push fundamental change at the UN.”Therefore, he said, invoking the spirit of the Hanukkah festival which began on Saturday, “the light will oust the darkness.”
Kiev summons Israeli envoy to protest cancellation of its PM’s visit-Netanyahu disinvited Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Groysman after his government voted for anti-settlement UN resolution-By Raphael Ahren December 26, 2016, 5:52 pm-THE TIMES OF ISRAEL
The Foreign Ministry in Kiev on Monday summoned Israel’s ambassador for a dressing-down to protest Jerusalem’s decision to cancel a visit to Israel this week by Ukraine’s prime minister.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday disinvited Volodymyr Groysman as a consequence of Kiev voting in a favor of an anti-settlements resolution at the United Nations Security Council.“We’re confirming that our ambassador Eli Belotsercovsky was summoned to the Foreign Ministry in Kiev for a meeting following Israel’s decision regarding the visit of Ukraine’s prime minister,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Emmanuel Nahshon said.Groysman, who became Ukraine’s first Jewish prime minister earlier this year, was scheduled to arrive in Israel on Tuesday for a two-day visit that would have included meetings with Netanyahu, President Reuven Rivlin and other top officials.Ukraine on Monday defended its decision to vote in favor of Resolution 2234, hinting at its own conflict with Russia as a driving force behind the decision.Without explicitly mentioning Moscow’s annexation of Crimea and a civil war in the country’s east with Russian-backed separatists, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said it “experienced itself the tragic consequences brought by” the violation of international law, effectively drawing a parallel between Israeli building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Russian policies.“That’s why our position was formed on the basis of our consistent line to ensure the respect for the international law by all its subjects,” the statement read.The Security Council resolution, which was passed by a 14-0 vote on Friday, with only the United States abstaining, calls on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” while also expressing its “grave concern that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution.”Since the measure was passed, Israel has taken a number of retaliatory steps against the countries that supported its passage, including an official dressing-down of the Security Council members’ ambassadors to Israel on Sunday.In its statement defending Ukraine’s vote in favor of the measure in light of the Israeli backlash, the Foreign Ministry in Kiev described the resolution as “balanced,” and said its “yes” vote should not affect ties.“We are confident that active and emotional internal debates in Israel will not impact traditionally friendly Ukrainian-Israeli relationship, based on mutual respect and joint interests,” the statement read.Following the removal from office of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 as a result of protests against his government and its policies, unmarked Russian troops invaded and occupied the Crimean Peninsula, which was was annexed to Russia after a hasty and internationally unrecognized referendum in March 2014.Beginning in 2014, Russia has also sent troops and sponsored paramilitaries to occupy parts of eastern Ukraine and has backed the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
Ukraine hints conflict with Russia led it to back UN measure-Kiev says anti-settlement Security Council motion, which led to Netanyahu canceling visit by Ukraine’s PM, won’t harm countries’ good ties-By Times of Israel staff December 26, 2016, 3:21 pm
Ukraine on Monday defended its decision to vote in favor of an United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements last week, apparently pointing to its own conflict with Russia as a driving force behind its decision.Without explicitly mentioning the Russian annexation of Crimea and a civil war in the country’s east with Moscow-backed separatists, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said it “experienced itself the tragic consequences brought by” the violation of international law, effectively drawing a parallel between Israeli building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Russian policies.“That’s why our position was formed on the basis of our consistent line to ensure the respect for the international law by all its subjects,” the statement read.UNSC Resolution 2334, which was passed by a 14-0 vote on Friday, with only the United States abstaining, calls on Israel to “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem,” while also expressing its “grave concern that continuing Israeli settlement activities are dangerously imperiling the viability of the two-state solution.”Since the measure was passed, Israel has taken a number of retaliatory steps against the countries that supported its passage, including an official dressing down of the Security Council members’ ambassadors to Israel on Sunday.On Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is also Israel’s foreign minister, canceled the planned visit this week of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman to Israel due to Ukraine’s vote in favor of the resolution.In its statement defending Ukraine’s vote in favor of the measure in light of the Israeli backlash, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry described the resolution as “balanced,” and said its “yes” vote should not affect ties.“We are confident that active and emotional internal debates in Israel will not impact traditionally friendly Ukrainian-Israeli relationship, based on mutual respect and joint interests,” the statement read.Following the removal from office of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 as a result of protests against his government and its policies, unmarked Russian troops invaded and occupied the Crimean Peninsula, which was was annexed to Russia after a hasty and internationally unrecognized referendum in March 2014.Beginning in 2014, Russia has also sent troops and sponsored paramilitaries to occupy parts of eastern Ukraine and has backed the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.
Trump: UN has potential but currently a club for ‘people to have a good time’-Days after blasting world body for anti-settlements vote, president-elect questions its effectiveness-By AP and Times of Israel staff December 27, 2016, 12:56 am
US President-elect Donald Trump on Monday questioned the effectiveness of the United Nations, saying that it was currently just a club for people to “have a good time.”Coming just days after Trump’s tweet on Friday lamenting “Israel’s loss” at the UN Security Council where a resolution calling for a halt to Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem was passed 14-0 with a US abstention, the president-elect took to Twitter again to claim the world body “has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!”On Friday, after the vote against Israeli settlements was passed, Trump warned, “As to the UN, things will be different after Jan. 20th,” referring to the day he takes office.In a striking departure from past policy of incumbent presidents waiting on the sidelines, Trump tried to scuttle the resolution, answering Israel’s call on Thursday to pressure Egypt — which drafted it — to withdraw the proposal and calling for a US veto.The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 26, 2016-When on Friday, Malaysia, Senegal, Venezuela and New Zealand pushed for a vote, the Obama administration opted to abstain, saying the decision was a result of the Israeli government’s policies and recent pro-settlement remarks.Israel, for its part, reacted furiously, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials accusing the Obama administration of abandoning and “ambushing” its main Mideast ally and of colluding with the United Nations against Israel.Netanyahu went on a diplomatic blitz on Sunday, Christmas Day, summoning the ambassadors of 10 (China, Russia, France, Angola, Egypt, Japan, Ukraine and Uruguay) of the 14 states who supported the resolution for a dressing down by directors of the Foreign Ministry’s respective regional departments.In the case of Great Britain and Spain, the deputy ambassadors were summoned because their respective bosses were currently not in the country. Israel has no diplomatic ties with Venezuela and Malaysia.In addition, in an extremely rare move, Netanyahu also summoned US Ambassador Dan Shapiro and personally met with him for “clarifications” on the US decision to abstain.He also recalled the Israeli ambassadors to Senegal and New Zealand, two of the four countries that sponsored the resolution that have diplomatic relations with Israel. Israeli aid to Senegal has also been halted.He further cancelled this week’s visit to Israel of Ukraine’s prime minister, opted not to schedule a meeting with Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, and reportedly told ministers to minimize their working relations with countries that backed the resolution.Vowing not to be forced by international pressure into withdrawing from disputed territory, Netanyahu said on Saturday that Trump’s incoming administration had indicated that it would join an all-out war against what he called a “shameful” and “scandalous” decision.
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