Category Archives: Failed foreign policy

Cease Fire Effective Friday in Syria, Assad/Hezbollah in Control

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These talks have been underway for quite some time and the United States was not invited to participate. It is being reported that Hezbollah is the guarantor of the process and will manage the weapons control. Notice that Russia, Turkey, Syria and Iran don’t mention destruction of Islamic State or terminating the role of coalition nations participating in the Raqqa region, the headquarter location for ISIS.

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Syria Cease-Fire Agreement Reached

Deal brokered between Turkey and Russia; Syrian military confirms truce, which is set to go into effect at midnight

WSJ: MOSCOW—Russia, Turkey and Syria announced that a cease-fire would go in effect in Syria early Friday morning, in a deal hammered out between Ankara and Moscow to bring the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and opposition groups into peace talks.

Details of the cease-fire were still emerging, but statements by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Foreign Ministry and Syria’s military said it would begin at midnight local time in Syria.

Mr. Putin said agreements had been reached earlier Thursday between the Syrian regime and the “militant opposition” for a cease-fire and for arrangements to monitor it. While acknowledging the accords were “very fragile,” he also said consensus had been reached over the “readiness of peace talks to resolve [the situation] in Syria.

The Turkish Foreign Ministry said Ankara and Moscow would be guarantors of the plan “to cease all armed, including aerial, attacks.” Under the accord, each side is to refrain from seizing further territory, the ministry said.

In his remarks, Mr. Putin didn’t identify the militant groups that had agreed to the truce, but Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu

said they included the “main forces” of the armed opposition.

Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said the cease-fire deal excluded groups designated as “terrorist organizations” by the United Nations Security Council. Islamic State and the Syrian Conquest Front, an armed group linked to al Qaeda, have been excluded from previous truces in the nearly six-year-old war.

The ministry also said that Ankara hoped that a successful cease-fire would lead to a renewal of the U.N.-supported process for a political transition in Syria.

Russia, Iran and Turkey agreed in Moscow last week to hold talks in Kazakhstan next month aimed at ending the fighting in Syria. Those talks would exclude the U.S.

The U.S. has participated in the U.N.-backed process in Geneva to end the fighting in Syria. Following last week’s meeting in the Russian capital, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov played down the U.N. initiative while promoting the diplomatic push by Tehran, Moscow and Ankara. “I believe that the most effective format is the one that you see today,” Mr. Lavrov said.

A U.S. official said Wednesday the Obama administration wasn’t opposed to the talks being held in Kazakhstan, even if American diplomats weren’t directly involved. The State Department’s only condition, the official said, is that the negotiations are consistent with resolutions approved by the U.N. on Syria.

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Given the standing 3 zones in Israel now where constant ground battles happen and John Kerry wants to add a 4th for Palestine, the same proposal is on the table in agreed draft form for Syria. Russia and Turkey are calling it zones of influence. ‘Influence’? Really? No one is reporting that Iran is in full agreement or what the future holds for Syria, meaning who is responsible for reconstruction and creating a stage for Syrians to return to their homeland….but do these powers even care?

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Russia, Turkey, Iran eye dicing Syria into zones of influence

Reuters: Syria would be divided into informal zones of regional power influence and Bashar al-Assad would remain president for at least a few years under an outline deal between Russia, Turkey and Iran, sources say.

Such a deal, which would allow regional autonomy within a federal structure controlled by Assad’s Alawite sect, is in its infancy, subject to change and would need the buy-in of Assad and the rebels and, eventually, the Gulf states and the United States, sources familiar with Russia’s thinking say.

“There has been a move toward a compromise,” said Andrey Kortunov, director general of the Russian International Affairs Council, a think tank close to the Russian Foreign Ministry.

“A final deal will be hard, but stances have shifted.”

Assad’s powers would be cut under a deal between the three nations, say several sources. Russia and Turkey would allow him to stay until the next presidential election when he would quit in favor of a less polarizing Alawite candidate.

Iran has yet to be persuaded of that, say the sources. But either way Assad would eventually go, in a face-saving way, with guarantees for him and his family.

“A couple of names in the leadership have been mentioned (as potential successors),” said Kortunov, declining to name names.

Nobody thinks a wider Syrian peace deal, something that has eluded the international community for years, will be easy, quick or certain of success. What is clear is that President Vladimir Putin wants to play the lead role in trying to broker a settlement, initially with Turkey and Iran.

That would bolster his narrative of Russia regaining its mantle as a world power and serious Middle East player.

“It’s a very big prize for them if they can show they’re out there in front changing the world,” Sir Tony Brenton, Britain’s former ambassador to Moscow, told Reuters. “We’ve all grown used to the United States doing that and had rather forgotten that Russia used to play at the same level”

BACKROOM DEALS

If Russia gets its way, new peace talks between the Syrian government and the opposition will begin in mid-January in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, a close Russian ally.

The talks would be distinct from intermittent U.N.-brokered negotiations and not initially involve the United States.

That has irritated some in Washington.

“So this country that essentially has an economy the size of Spain, that’s Russia, is strutting around and acting like they know what they are doing,” said one U.S. official, who declined to be named because of the subject’s sensitivity.

“I don’t think the Turks and the Russians can do this (political negotiations) without us.”

Foreign and defense ministers from Russia, Turkey and Iran met in Moscow on Dec. 20 and set out the principles they thought any Syria deal should adhere to.

Russian sources say the first step is to get a nationwide ceasefire and then to get talks underway. The idea would then be to get Gulf states involved, then the United States, and at a later stage the European Union which would be asked, maybe with the Gulf states, to pick up the bill for rebuilding.

The three-way peace push is, at first glance, an odd one.

Iran, Assad’s staunchest backer, has provided militia fighters to help Assad, Russia has supplied air strikes, while Turkey has backed the anti-Assad rebels.

Putin has struck a series of backroom understandings with his Turkish counterpart Tayyip Erdogan to ease the path to a possible deal, several sources familiar with the process say.

Moscow got Iran to buy into the idea of a three-way peace push by getting Turkey to drop its demands for Assad to go soon, the same sources said.

“Our priority is not to see Assad go, but for terrorism to be defeated,” one senior Turkish government official, who declined to be named, said.

“It doesn’t mean we approve of Assad. But we have come to an understanding. When Islamic State is wiped out, Russia may support Turkey in Syria finishing off the PKK.”

Turkey views the YPG militia and its PYD political wing as extensions of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which has long waged an insurgency in its largely Kurdish southeast.

“Of course we have disagreements with Iran,” said the same Turkish official. “We view some issues differently, but we are coming to agreements to end mutual problems.”

Aydin Sezer, head of the Turkey and Russia Centre of Studies, an Ankara-based think tank, said Turkey had now “completely given up the issue of regime change” in Syria.

Turkey’s public position remains strongly anti-Assad however and Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Wednesday a political transition with Assad was impossible.

Brenton, Britain’s former ambassador, said Moscow and Ankara had done a deal because Moscow had needed Turkey to get the opposition out of Aleppo and to come to the negotiating table.

“The real flesh in the game the Turks have, and the fear they have, is of an autonomous Kurdistan emerging inside Syria that would have direct implications for them,” he said.

Ankara launched an incursion into Syria, “Operation Euphrates Shield”, in August to push Islamic State out of a 90-km (55-mile) stretch of frontier territory and ensure Kurdish militias did not gain more territory in Syria.

REALPOLITIK

The shifting positions of Moscow and Ankara are driven by realpolitik. Russia doesn’t want to get bogged down in a long war and wants to hold Syria together and keep it as an ally.

Turkey wants to informally control a swathe of northern Syria giving it a safe zone to house refugees, a base for the anti-Assad opposition, and a bulwark against Kurdish influence.

The fate of al-Bab, an Islamic State-held city around 40 km (25 miles) northeast of Aleppo, is also a factor. Erdogan is determined that Turkish-backed rebels capture the city to prevent Kurdish militias from doing so.

Several sources said there had been an understanding between Ankara and Moscow that rebels could leave Aleppo to help take al-Bab.

Iran’s interests are harder to discern, but Ali Akbar Velayati, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s top adviser, said Aleppo’s fall might alter a lot in the region.

By helping Assad retake Aleppo, Tehran has secured a land corridor that connects Tehran to Beirut, allowing it to send arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Russian and Western diplomatic sources say Iran would insist on keeping that corridor and on Assad staying in power for now. If he did step down, Tehran would want him replaced with another Alawite, which it sees as the closest thing to Shia Islam.

Iran may be the biggest stumbling block to a wider deal.

Iranian Defence Minister Hossein Dehghan has said Saudi Arabia must not take part in talks because of its stance on Assad – Riyadh wants the Syrian leader to step down.

Scepticism about the prospects for a wider deal abounds.

Dennis Ross, an adviser to Democratic and Republican administrations, now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said he did not think a deal would bring peace to Syria.

“I doubt this will end the war in Syria even after Aleppo,” Ross told Reuters. “Assad’s presence will remain a source of conflict with the opposition.”

Ah…Rex Tillerson has Another Special Friend in Russia

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We are supposed to dislike the NYT’s for many reasons, but there are times when researchers do good work even if some truths hurt. Such is the case with Rex Tillerson and Igor Sechin.

 HuffPo

MOSCOW — It’s June 2014. War is underway in eastern Ukraine, and Russia has recently annexed Crimea. Western countries are introducing sanctions against Russian companies and the people in President Vladimir V. Putin’s inner circle. It seems that Russia will soon be completely isolated from the rest of the world.

But the 21st World Petroleum Congress is taking place in Moscow. The atmosphere at the Crocus Expo International Exhibition Center, where the congress is being held, is decidedly nonconfrontational. On a stage, two men in suits hold an amicable conversation, addressing each other as “my friend.” The men are captains of the global petroleum industry: Rex W. Tillerson, the chief executive of Exxon Mobil, and Igor I. Sechin, the head of Rosneft, Russia’s state oil company, and one of Mr. Putin’s longtime allies.

Mr. Sechin is not just the chief executive of Rosneft, he is also one of the heroes of contemporary Russian politics. He is believed to have served as a K.G.B. agent in Africa and had no real experience in the business world until he was over 40. He didn’t come to lead the state oil company because of his business acumen; he earned his position through his loyalty to Mr. Putin.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mr. Sechin aligned himself with Mr. Putin, another former K.G.B. officer, as he began consolidating power in post-Soviet politics. Everywhere Mr. Putin went, Mr. Sechin was by his side as a trusted aide and adviser.

In 2003, Russian authorities arrested Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the owner of Yukos, a huge oil company. At the time, Mr. Sechin was working as Mr. Putin’s deputy chief of staff, and though he had no formal judicial or investigatory authority, Mr. Khodorkovsky accused him of initiating his arrest — and the campaign that followed to nationalize Yukos. It’s impossible to know, but it seems likely. Following Mr. Khodorkovsky’s arrest, Rosneft absorbed Yukos’s assets. In 2004, Mr. Sechin was appointed to head Rosneft’s board.

Mr. Sechin isn’t just a businessman, though. He’s an influential political figure and a crucial Putin ally who has demonstrated his power. The arrest last month of Aleksei Ulyukayev, the minister of economic development, on charges of bribery was widely viewed as an act of revenge by Mr. Sechin. With the arrest, the first of an active government minister in post-Soviet Russia, he again confirmed his image as the most sinister man in the president’s inner circle.

Earlier this year, Mr. Sechin’s expansion was so aggressive that it seemed plausible that Mr. Putin himself would get tired of him, and would try to rid himself of such an odious comrade in arms.

Now Mr. Sechin has nothing to fear. A gift has arrived from across the ocean. This man, whose international experience up to this point has been limited to his friendship with Hugo Chávez, the deceased president of Venezuela, has an exclusive international trump card that even Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov lacks. More here.

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Judicial Watch says it this way, ‘Rex and the Russian Swamp’:

Amid controversy over the extent of Kremlin penetration into the American electoral system (detailed last week in Investigative Bulletin), Donald Trump has doubled down on the Russian connection with his nomination of ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to become the next secretary of state.

Mr. Trump has been signaling a new Russia tilt for months and Mr. Tillerson seems an excellent candidate to carry it out. Whether this is sound policy or sheer folly remains to be seen, but from an anti-corruption perspective—taking Mr. Trump at his pledge to “drain the swamp”—the Tillerson nomination is strange indeed.

Mr. Tillerson is up to his eyeballs in Russian oil deals with Vladimir Putin, whose kleptocratic regime makes the Washington swamp look like the pool at Mar-a-Lago. Last week, U.S. intelligence leaked a new estimate of Mr. Putin’s personal wealth: $85 billion.

His Kremlin salary: $144,444.

You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. Mr. Tillerson’s role in the Rosneft oil deal is a case in point. Rosneft is a Russian energy giant closely allied with Mr. Putin. Mr. Tillerson negotiated a deal with Rosneft giving ExxonMobil access to vast Russian oil reserves in the Arctic and Black Sea. ExxonMobil pledged millions to provide the technology and expertise for exploration and drilling. In return, it received a one-third stake in the venture. Successful exploitation of the oil fields could bring more than $100 billion into ExxonMobil coffers.

Rosneft was formerly known as the Yukos Oil Company, Russia’s largest energy enterprise. In 2003, Mr. Putin decided he wanted it.

Yukos’s founder, the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, was becoming a threat to Mr. Putin. He jailed Mr. Khodorkovsky on bogus fraud charges, seized Yukos assets and bankrupted the company. Mr. Khodorkovsky served ten years behind bars. Other Yukos officials were jailed or fled the country. American and Russian investors were robbed. The Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague awarded investors $50 billion in damages, but the decision was later overturned.

Some might say Mr. Khodorkovsky got off easy. Here’s a list of Putin critics who ended up dead.

Yukos was raped and pillaged and its assets were transferred to Rosneft. Control of the company was given to a key Putin lieutenant, Igor Sechin. Like Mr. Putin, Mr. Sechin is a former KGB agent. Mr. Sechin is a leading figure in the siloviki—literally, “strongmen”—faction of former law enforcement, military and intelligence figures around Mr. Putin.

In 2012, Mr. Tillerson struck his deal with Rosneft. “Today really is a historic day,” Mr. Tillerson said at the signing ceremony.

Former Yukos officials and shareholders felt differently. When the Mafia or a drug cartel washes its ill-gotten gains into a new, “clean” financial entity, that’s called money laundering. “Through today’s agreement with Exxon,” the Committee for Russian Economic Freedom declared, “Rosneft has finally managed to give an aura of legitimacy to the theft of assets stolen from Yukos.” The former CFO of Yukos wrote in the Moscow Times that “Exxon is investing with a company whose largest assets were stolen from Yukos shareholders by the Russian government.”

Mr. Tillerson has a long history with Mr. Sechin. In 1998, Mr. Tillerson ran ExxonMobil’s oil and gas enterprise on Sakahalin Island, off the coast of Siberia. Mr. Sechin took over the Russian side of the project in 2004. Mr. Tillerson’s ExxonMobil predecessor as CEO tried to buy into Yukos but was driven off by the jailing of Mr. Khodorkovsky.

Mr. Tillerson persisted. The Rosneft deal giving ExxonMobil access to Arctic and Black Sea oil fields elevated the relationship between Mr. Tillerson and the Kremlin leadership. Mr. Tillerson calls Mr. Sechin a “friend.” Mr. Sechin says he wants to come to the United States to ride motorcycle with Mr. Tillerson. In 2013, Mr. Putin awarded Mr. Tillerson the Russian Order of Friendship for his “big contribution to developing cooperation in the energy sector.”

The bromance hit a rough patch in 2014 when the U.S. government sanctioned Russian officials and entities—including Mr. Sechin and Rosneft—for annexing Crimea and sending forces into Ukraine. The Rosneft deal was put on hold. Losses to ExxonMobil are estimated at more than $1 billion. In 2015, Mr. Tillerson declared at a conference, “We’ll await a time in which the sanctions environment changes or the sanctions requirements change.”

He may not have to wait much longer.

Obama/Kerry: Diplomatic Terrorism on Israel

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Israel was on the edge at least last October, they knew that Obama and Kerry had something in the pipeline against Israel. So it comes down to who wins the debate over Jerusalem? Should there even be a debate and Israel is fighting back on the never-ending use of the words ‘occupy’ and ‘settlement’s and should.

 CBS

Bloomberg: When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was re-elected last year, the White House threatened to reconsider long-standing U.S. policy to veto U.N. Security Council resolutions on Israel’s presence in the West Bank. At issue was a last-minute interview in which Netanyahu said there would be no Palestinian state as long as he was prime minister. He took back that statement after the election. Nonetheless, the White House directed policymakers to draw up a set of options for how Obama could “preserve the two-state solution,” according to one U.S. official privy to the process.

So far, nothing has come of Obama’s threat. Indeed last month, Obama signed an agreement with Israel to extend the U.S. subsidy of its military for another ten years. In foreign policy, Obama is focused on the collapse of U.S. policy in Syria, which has become an even greater humanitarian emergency in the last month with the Russian and Iranian-led siege of Aleppo. Politically, the White House is working to elect Hillary Clinton as Obama’s successor.

Yet with a little more than three months left of his presidency, Israeli officials privately say they worry Obama intends to try to level the playing field between the Palestinians and Israelis before he leaves office. The threat of a last-minute speech, executive order, or U.N. action has stirred some of Israel’s friends in Washington. Last month, for example, 88 senators signed a letter to Obama urging him to restate “long-standing U.S. policy” to veto one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N.

The Obama administration has not made such a statement. This week, however, White House spokesman Joshua Earnest “strongly condemned” Israel’s approval of 98 new housing units in the West Bank settlement of Shilo. A CBS correspondent noted that this phrasing is “usually reserved” for terrorist attacks.  More here.

**** So Israel put some assets into the system and worked to determine who, what and when such actions would happen. Since the UN vote, Israel says it has iron clad evidence of the United States complicity in the text for the vote.

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Haaretz: he Egyptians distributed a Security Council resolution on the settlements last week, and demanded a vote within 24 hours, only to withdraw it after pressure from the prime minister’s bureau in Jerusalem and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

Israel’s UN ambassador, Ron Dermer, said Monday that Israel had evidence that the Obama administration was behind the wording of the resolution and had cooperated with the Palestinians behind Israel’s back. The document published on the Egyptian new site might be the evidence Israel has. On December 22, the day the original Security Council vote was to have taken place, the Israeli news site Walla published a report almost identical to the one on the Egyptian news site. Walla quoted a senior Israeli official as stating that in a meeting between Kerry and a Palestinian delegation to Washington headed by Palestinian Liberation Organization Secretary General Saeb Erekat, agreement was reached on the matter of a resolution against the settlements, and that Kerry said the United States would not veto it. More here.

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What else was Israel watching?

On December 23, 2016, the UN General Assembly approved spending $138,700 to create a “database” of all companies that conduct business – directly or indirectly – relating to Israeli “settlements” in Arab-claimed territories. The idea of a boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) blacklist came from a March 2016 resolution of the UN Human Rights Council. According to UN documentation, the $138,700 will be used “to pay for one staff member to create the database over a period of 8 months and present a report” to the Human Rights Council in March 2017. In other words, the December authorization backdated approval of an expenditure for an operation already underway.

When the General Assembly’s Budget Committee met to approve the UN budget, Israel proposed to delete approval specifically for funding the blacklist.The Committee rejected the Israeli amendment 6 in favor (Australia, Canada, Guatemala Israel, Palau and the United States), 151 against, with 6 abstentions (Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Georgia, Honduras and Ghana).

After Israel lost the vote on funding the BDS item, it declared it was “disassociating” from the General Assembly’s subsequent approval of the UN budget as a whole. Despite the U.S. voting against funding the blacklist initially, it voted in favor of the UN budget, and made no mention of any problem funding BDS.

Date
December 23, 2016
Title
Fifth Committee Vote on Israeli Proposed Oral Amendment to Resolution on Programme Budget Appropriations for 2016-2017 Biennium, UN Meeting Coverage
Original Source
https://www.un.org/press/en/2016/gaab4224.doc.htm
Attachment
Click here to view this document in MS Word/PDF format
Note
Israel’s oral amendment was rejected by a vote of 6 in favor (Australia, Canada, Guatemala Israel, Palau and the United States), 151 against, with 6 abstentions (Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Central African Republic, Georgia, Honduras and Ghana)

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So, here is Kerry on 12/28/2016 speaking while Obama is on vacation in Hawaii:

AP: Secretary of State John Kerry says that if Israel rejects a two-state solution for peace with the Palestinian people, “it can be Jewish or it can be democratic.”

Kerry was responding to withering Israeli criticism of the United States’ abstention from a vote condemning Israeli settlement construction. He reiterated the American position that a two-state solution giving both Israelis and Palestinians a home state is the best roadmap to peace. He also made it clear that despite recent differences in policy, the United States continues to be Israel’s closest ally.

Israel has been furious at the United States since the UN vote late last week. But Kerry said in a farewell speech at the State Department on Wednesday that the vote was “in keeping with” American values for democracy.

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The full text of his speech is here, but while he ways that Israel has to be either Jewish or a democracy and not both, Kerry also suggests that Israel pay restitution to the Palestinians. In 2009, the United States gave Gaza $900 million, which is under the control of Abu Mazen.

 

More here.

Obama’s Position is Jews Cannot Pray at Wailing Wall

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How about the first item of order in this decades long debate is eliminating 2 words: ‘occupation’ and ‘settlement’. Beyond that, read on.

Threats to Israel Posed by Resolution 2334

  1. In terms of Israel, the approach underlying Resolution 2334, whereby “the Western Wall is tantamount to the Yitzhar settlement,” or “the Ramot neighborhood in Jerusalem is equivalent to the settlement of Elon Moreh,” eliminates any chances of negotiations toward a two-state arrangement.
  2. The resolution rewards Palestinian obduracy, the Palestinian strategy of avoiding negotiations with Israel, and the expectation that the international arena will dictate the parameters for the arrangement. Therefore, the resolution will encourage the Palestinians to adhere to their refusal to return to the negotiating table and exhibit the flexibility required in any genuine negotiation.
  3. The resolution increased the risk of Israelis at certain political and military echelons being brought to trial before the International Criminal Court in The Hague. It will be difficult to conduct peace negotiations in an atmosphere of “a legal witch hunt” of Israeli leaders and commanders.
  4. The delegitimization movement and the boycott of Israel will become stronger and receive moral and political encouragement, which can be translated into legal, political, public, and economic measures.
  5. The resolution places the Israeli issue as a bone of contention between American Democrats and Republicans and threatens America’s longstanding bipartisan support of Israel.
  6. The resolution damages Israeli deterrence, since a significant portion thereof is based on the strategic alliance with the United States and its support of Israel.
  7. The report on issues referred to in the resolution, which the UN Secretary-General is requested to release every three months, will guarantee constant preoccupation with these topics at the expense of more important issues and will nourish an ongoing anti-Israeli campaign.

At the same time, Resolution 2334 was not passed pursuant to Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter, and, therefore does not allow the UN to impose sanctions and other practical measures against Israel without a further resolution. One can assess that the new administration in the United States, which is more sympathetic toward Israel than the Obama administration, will veto any attempt to pass resolutions pursuant to Chapter 7.

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CR: Here we go again with the U.N. peddling the biggest geo-political hoax of all time — that Israel’s control over Judea and Samaria is illegal, that it belongs to a distinct Arab people called “Palestinians,” and that the source of Islamist mayhem across the globe is a smattering of Jewish homes being built in their ancestral land. Land, which by the way, is virtually invisible on a map compared to the mass of land controlled by Islam.

While Islamic jihadists are blowing up every corner of the world, what is “the international community” focused on? Yup, those pesky little Jewish homes built in their ancestral home on a parcel of land not even visible on the map. The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution before the Christmas weekend that “reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law.”

Obama instructed the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to abstain from vetoing that resolution, an unprecedented step given our history of vetoing anti-Israel resolutions. Worse, it appears that Obama was likely the ringleader behind the resolution because, according to Israeli sources, Vice President Joe Biden convinced Ukraine to support the resolution, a move that shocked Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Actually, Israeli sovereignty over Judea and Samaria is enshrined into international law

The notion that there is any moral equivalence between Jews building homes in their homeland that they won back in a defensive war (after it was illegally occupied by Jordan) and brutal terrorists illegally occupying land that was never given to them, is reprehensible. But first, a brief history lesson …

The only binding resolution of international law, a resolution which has never been countermanded to this very day, is the July 1922 Mandate for Palestine. Adopted by the League of Nations, that resolution recognized the “historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.” It called for the creation of a Jewish national homeland anywhere west of the Jordan River.

Once the League of Nations was disbanded and the United Nations formed in its stead, the international community agreed to maintain all agreements and not “alter in any manner the rights whatsoever of any states or any peoples or the terms of existing international instruments to which Members of the United Nations may respectively be parties.” [Article 80, UN Charter, emphasis added] This provision wasn’t inserted by accident; it was known as “the Jewish People’s clause” at the time it was adopted in 1945 in order to enshrine the 1922 Mandate into international law.

The Mandate for Palestine adopted by the League of Nations was the last legally binding document delineating regional borders. In Article 5 of the Mandate it explicitly states “The Mandatory shall be responsible for seeing that no Palestine territory shall be ceded or leased to, or in any way placed under the control of the Government of any foreign Power.”

The Palestine Mandate (and Iraq) was given to Britain to serve as a temporary trustee based on the resolution between the four principle Allied Powers in April 1920 at the San Remo Conference in Italy, which was signed by 51 nations. It was at that conference where the world powers adopted the 1917 Balfour Declaration (which originally allocated the eastern part of the Mandate for a Jewish state as well) creating a Jewish state. This same conference that created the Jewish state west of the Jordan River also created Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq as Arab states.

The legality of the 1922 Mandate was adopted that same year by the U.S. Congress in H.J. Res. 360 and signed by President Warren Harding. The newly created Arab country of Jordan attacked Israel in 1948 seeking to annihilate its inhabitants and illegally occupied Judea and Samaria until 1967. That year, Israel won back the territory originally allocated for a Jewish State as part of the 1922 League of Nations agreement.

There is no such thing as “’pre-67 borders.” They were merely 1949 armistice lines between Israel and neighboring countries after they launched an illegal war of extermination. It has nothing to do with the notion of a unique Arab “Palestinian” entity west of the Jordan River. There was never any internationally recognized legal sovereign occupying Judea and Samaria from the time the British Empire fell until 1967. Jordan’s occupation of the area west of the Jordan River was never recognized. To the extent there is an Arab Palestinian state it is the modern state of Jordan, which already sucked up 77% of the original Mandate of Palestine allocated for a Jewish State under the first plan of the Balfour Declaration.

In many respects, this is the biggest global fake news story of our time.

Although the U.N. has bloviated time and again about Israel “withdrawing” from the region, those are merely recommendations and political arguments. They are not legal arguments because once that land was allocated for the Jewish state by the binding charter of the U.N., it cannot be rescinded without Israel’s consent any more than Florida can be taken away from the U.S. and be returned to Spain without our consent.

Until fairly recently, even the Left was forced to admit this legal and historical reality. During an interview with Matt Lauer on October 1, 1997, then-Secretary of State Madelaine Albright reluctantly admitted that although she was unhappy about recent construction in Judea, it was indeed legal:

SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: I wasn’t happy. We had had a conversation, and I felt
that going forward with those kinds of buildings was not helpful. It is not
in any way not part of what they can do, but they shouldn’t do it.MR. LAUER: It’s legal.SECRETARY ALBRIGHT: It’s legal. But I think that, in this kind of an
atmosphere, it’s very important not to take actions that are viewed by the
other side as creating more difficulties.

Unfortunately, over the past generation the geo-political elites and the media has repeated the lie about an Arab “Palestinian state” and “illegal Israeli settlements” so many times that it has become true in the minds of so many people. It’s a classic strategy domestic liberals employ when they conflate political arguments with legal arguments. In many respects, this is the biggest global fake news story of our time.

The reality is that Arab squatters living in that region have no legal right to a state in that land, much less a right to murder Jews who build homes in the rightful territory of their state duly adopted by international law. But even those who subscribed to this nonsense over the past few decades must wake up and smell the Jihad. The fact that Jihad has spread to every corner of the world, including in the West itself, should demonstrate incontrovertibly that the source of the problem is not a few homes built in the Samarian hills by Jews. The problem is global Islamic supremacism.

It was heartening to see Donald Trump release a statement opposing the U.N. resolution and threaten their funding. But he needs to take it a step further and end the entire policy of promoting a second Palestinian State (the first being Jordan) altogether. Pursuit of an Arab “Palestinian” state has been one of the most wrongheaded failed policies in modern history and it’s time for the Republican Party to formally abandon it forever.

 

2016: Islamic State Over There, Over Here

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WT: Law enforcement agencies have arrested nine Northern Virginia residents on charges of aiding the Islamic State since the terrorist group rose to power in Syria and Iraq in 2014 and launched social media propaganda to attract followers, a government message to police states.

The Northern Virginia Regional Intelligence Center issued profiles of the nine in a Dec. 21 report labeled “law enforcement sensitive.”

Such reports are designed to help state and federal agents recognize trends in the types of individuals who are influenced by the Islamic State’s message and how they communicate across terrorist networks.

A defense attorney in one of the cases accused police of anti-Muslim bias; his client later pleaded guilty.

Somalis living in Minnesota appear to receive the most press attention in the U.S. for wanting to help or join the Islamic State. The FBI arrested six residents of Somali origin in April after they made arrangements to leave Minnesota for Syria. Last December, a 20-year-old man of Somali origin was arrested on accusations of leading a group of ethnic Somalis attempting to fight for the Islamic State.

The Northern Virginia report shows that Muslims seeking to become mass killers live near the seat of American government.

Of the nine Northern Virginians who were arrested, all but one were in their teens and early 20s. They included a police officer, a Starbucks barista, Army soldiers, bankers and a cabdriver. Four of the nine graduated from Northern Virginia high schools, one with honors. Two attended Northern Virginia Community College.

In other words, all of them appeared to have opportunities via public education to become successful Americans but instead were charged with what amounted to a devotion to violent jihad.

They are suspected of conducting terrorism planning through Twitter, Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp and other platforms and apps, as well as on prepaid phones.

“Local police are in a particularly difficult situation,” said Robert Maginnis, a retired Army officer and researcher on Islamism who lives in Northern Virginia. “They face a severe challenge by Islamists operating in the shadows of our open society. These mostly young male Muslims become radicalized either by Islamist imams at some of the thousands of mosques across America, at school, or over the ever-present internet sites that spew anti-West, anti-Christian hatred.”

These are the nine profiles, according to the intelligence report obtained by The Washington Times:

• Ali Shukir Amin. He pleaded guilty to providing support to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh) and was sentenced to 136 months in prison. An honors student at Osbourn Park High School, Amin wrote a pro-Islamic State blog, had a Twitter account with 7,000 tweets and instructed people on how to use bitcoin to hide money transfers and on how to travel to Syria.

• Reza Niknejad. Also an Osbourn Park student who was attending Northern Virginia Community College, Niknejad, aided by Amin, traveled to Syria in 2015. He was charged in absentia.

• Heather Coffman. She pleaded guilty to making a false statement concerning involvement in international terrorism and was sentenced to 54 months in prison. She joined the Army but was discharged after four months, and later worked as a sales clerk. She operated multiple Facebook accounts to promote the Islamic State and shared terrorism contacts with possible recruits.

• Joseph Hassan Farrokh. He pleaded guilty this year to attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State and received 102 months in prison. He provided $600 to a friend to travel to Syria and attempted to be a foreign fighter.

• Mahmound Amin Mohamed Elhassan. He pleaded guilty in October to aiding Farrokh and lying about his involvement in international terrorism. He spoke openly of supporting the Islamic State and its violence. He had attended Northern Virginia Community College and worked for Starbucks.

• Mohamad Jamal Khweis. He was arrested in Turkey on charges of conspiring to help the Islamic State. His trial begins in April. He graduated from Edison High School and worked for two banks and Highgate Hotels. He traveled to Syria in 2015 to become a foreign fighter before having second thoughts and escaping.

• Mohammad Bilor Jalloh. He pleaded guilty in October to trying to help the Islamic State. He had served as a combat engineer in the Virginia National Guard and worked for consulting firms. He met with Islamic State members in Africa and tried to buy firearms to carry out a Fort Hood-style massacre.

• Haris Qatar. He also pleaded guilty to charges of helping the Islamic State. He attended Northern Virginia Community College and worked for Wells Fargo. He created 60 Twitter handles for Islamic State propaganda and stalked residences in Northern Virginia that were on the group’s “kill lists.” He was preparing to make a video encouraging people to carry out “lone wolf” attacks around Washington.

• Nicholas Young. The oldest of the nine at 36, he has been charged with helping the Islamic State but has not faced trial. He graduated from West Potomac High School and worked as a Metro police officer. He is accused of stockpiling weapons at his home. According to authorities, he traveled to Libya and gave advice to Islamic State followers on how to avoid law enforcement monitoring.

Mr. Maginnis, who stays in contact with local police in Virginia, said the wave of social media rhetoric against law enforcement has made their counterterrorism role more difficult.

“Given our open society, detached parents and politically correct schools, local police in Northern Virginia understandably hesitate to rigorously pursue young Islamist wannabes,” Mr. Maginnis said.

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Hoover Institute:

The goal of the United States and its allies must be the total eradication of the Islamic State. Destroying ISIS begins with eliminating its self-styled caliphate in Iraq and Syria. This can be accomplished by arming local actors and assisting them with advisers, forward air control teams, and airpower. More importantly, the United States must work with regional partners to knit together a political solution to provide Iraqi and Syrian Sunni Arabs a measure of autonomy to prevent the reemergence of ISIS or its ideological successor. The United States must also wage a holistic campaign to combat ISIS elsewhere in the world. Means include pressuring ISIS affiliates through drone strikes and by strengthening partner states, using financial and legal means to impede terrorist financing, combating radicalization in cyberspace and on social media platforms, and focusing intelligence capabilities to uncover ISIS operatives seeking to conduct terror attacks in Europe and the United States.

 

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