|
Follow Focus on Jerusalem on 'Twitter'
(FOJ
note) You can actively follow hourly news, comments and articles on the Twitter link posted above.
WEEK OF APRIL 24 THROUGH APRIL 30
Israel Will Never Leave Golan, Netanyahu Tells Putin
(In Moscow meeting,
PM also tells Russian president that the Jewish state will do
‘everything’ to ensure Hezbollah does not get advanced weaponry)
April 25….(Times of Israel) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
on Thursday informed Russian President Vladimir Putin of his “red lines”
regarding the security of Israel’s northern borders, and stressed that the
Jewish state was determined to maintain its control of the Golan Heights.
“I have come to Russia to step up coordination on security matters, to
prevent mistakes, misunderstandings,” Netanyahu said during the two leaders’
meeting in Moscow. “We are not going back to the days when rockets were
fired at our communities and our children from the top of the Golan… and so,
with an agreement or without, the Golan Heights will remain part of Israel’s
sovereign territory.”
The prime minister also stressed that Israel would do
“everything” in its power to block Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah from
obtaining advanced weapons, and was working to assure that no new “terror
front” appeared on the Golan Heights.
The issues of the Syrian civil war and the ownership of
the Golan had been expected to top the agenda at the meeting. Russia has
been carrying out air raids in Syria in support of embattled Syrian
President Bashar Assad since September. And although Moscow recently
announced it would withdraw many of its troops from the war-torn country,
Russian planes still regularly fly sorties there.
Israeli airstrikes in Syria have also been the topic of
previous high-level meetings between Moscow and Jerusalem. A number of
airstrikes in Syria have been attributed to Israeli efforts to prevent
advanced weapons from reaching Hezbollah. Netanyahu was also expected to
address Russian-backed peace efforts in Syria, which have reportedly become
entangled with the status of the Golan Heights, an area effectively annexed
by Israel in 1981 in a move not recognized by the rest of the world. The
prime minister has previously gone on the record saying that Syrian peace
talks needed to take Israel’s position into account.
According to Israel’s Channel 2, the
first clause of a draft agreement aimed at settling the brutal civil war in
Syria, being worked on with the support of the US, Russia and other major
world powers, specifies that the Golan Heights is Syrian territory and must
be returned to Syria.
The prime minister has drawn fire internationally in the
past few days, after holding a cabinet meeting on the Golan, in which he
declared the plateau would remain in Israel’s hands forever. Netanyahu has
also previously gone on the record saying that Syrian peace talks, brokered
between Moscow and Washington, needed to take Israel’s position into
account.
During the meeting, Netanyahu was also likely to lobby
for Russia to cancel the sale of the advanced S-300 air defense system to
Iran, which has already begun to be implemented. Netanyahu has asked Putin
to nix the sale on several previous occasions, to no avail. On Tuesday the
head of Russia’s state-owned defense conglomerate said Moscow would complete
its delivery of the S-300 system to Iran by the end of the year, after
months of speculation over whether it would be transferred to Tehran at all.
The Russian-made missile defense system is one of the most advanced of its
kind in the world, offering long-range protection against both airplanes and
missiles. Netanyahu asked Putin to help reestablish the United Nations
Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) presence on the Golan Heights between
Israel and Syria. Israel is interested in making sure that Hezbollah and
other Iranian-backed terror groups are not able to use a power vacuum on the
Syrian side of the Golan Heights to set up a base near the border for
attacks against Israel.
Islamic Nations call Emergency Meeting on Golan Heights
April 25….(Times of Israel) The world’s largest body of
Islamic nations has called for an emergency meeting over statements made
last week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel would never
relinquish control over the Golan Heights. The Organisation of Islamic
Cooperation will meet Tuesday at its headquarters in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia,
to discuss “Israeli escalation against the occupied Syrian Golan,” joining
others in the region to express alarm over Netanyahu’s declaration
During a cabinet
visit to the area last
Sunday, Netanyahu said that Israel does not oppose current efforts to reach
a political agreement to end the Syrian civil war, but that Israel’s
boundary line with the country will not change, referring to Jerusalem’s
hold on the plateau. “I convened this celebratory meeting
in the Golan
Heights to send a clear message: The Golan will always remain in Israel’s
hands. Israel will never withdraw from the Golan Heights,” he declared.
In a statement released Sunday, the 57-member OIC called
the comments “provoking acts” and said they considered them “a serious
escalation and flagrant violation of the Resolutions of international
legitimacy and International Law.”
Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six Day War
from Syria and effectively annexed it in 1981. The international community
never accepted Israel’s annexation, and Israeli leaders see in the turmoil
in Syria a chance to
convince the world to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan.
The OIC announcement follows a similar meeting of the
Arab League on the issue last Thursday during which Arab League chief Nabil
al-Arabi called for a special criminal court to be set up for Israel. The
US, Germany, Syria and others all either condemned or said they opposed
Netanyahu’s stance. The OIC held its annual summit earlier this month,
focusing on the Palestinian cause, conflicts in member states and combating
terrorism. During the summit the OIC passed a resolution on the Palestinian
issue and support for international efforts to relaunch a “collective
political peace process.
WEEK OF APRIL 17 THROUGH APRIL 23
US and Russia Team Up to Force Israel Out of Golan Mts.
April 18....(DEBKA) The Israeli
cabinet holds its weekly session Sunday April 17, on the Golan. Prime
Minister Benyamin Netanyahu will visit Moscow on Thursday, April 21 to meet
with Russian President Vladimir Putin and to launch the most important
battle of his political career, and one of Israel’s most decisive
contests of the last 10 years: the battle over the future of the Golan
Heights.
Debkafile’s
intelligence sources and its sources in Moscow report exclusively that
Israel’s top political leaders and military commanders were stunned and
shocked last weekend when they found out that US President Barack Obama and
Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed to support the return of the
Golan to Syria. The two presidents gave their top diplomats, Secretary of
State John
Kerry and
Foreign Minister Sergei
Lavrov, the green light to include
such a clause in a proposal being drafted at the Geneva conference on ending
the Syrian civil war.
Israel captured the Golan from the Syrian
army 49 years ago, during the Six-Day War in 1967 after the Syrian army
invaded Israel. In 1981, during the tenure of then Prime MinisterMenachem
Begin, Israel passed a law defining
the Golan as a territory under Israeli sovereignty. However, it did not
state that the area belongs to Israel.
While Israel was preparing for a diplomatic battle over the future of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Obama and Putin decided to deal a diplomatic blow to Israel and Netanyahu’s government on an unexpected issue, the Golan. It is part of an endeavor by the two powers to use their diplomatic and military cooperation regarding Syria to impose agreements on neighboring countries, such as Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. For example, Washington and Moscow are trying to impose an agreement regarding the granting of independence to Syrian Kurds, despite Ankara’s adamant opposition. The two presidents are also pressuring Riyadh and Amman to accept the continuation of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s rule, at least for the immediate future.
Debkafile’s
sources report that just like the other diplomatic or military steps
initiated by Obama and Putin in Syria, such as those for Assad’s eventual
removal from power, the two powers see a resolution of the Golan issue as a
gradual process that may take a long time, perhaps even years. But as far as
they are concerned, Israel will have to withdraw from the Golan at the end
of that process. It should be noted that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not
traveling to Washington to discuss the Golan issue with Obama. The frequent
trips by the prime minister, senior officials and top IDF brass to Moscow in
recent months show where the winds are blowing in the Middle East.
However, Moscow is not Washington, and Israel has no lobby in the Russian capital defending its interests. It should be made very clear that the frequent trips by senior Israeli officials to Moscow have not created an Israeli policy that can influence Putin or other senior members of the Russian leadership. Putin has made occasional concessions to Israel on matters of minimal strategic importance, but on diplomatic and military steps regarding Syria and Iran he has shown little consideration of Jerusalem’s stance. It should also be noted that there has been no basis for the enthusiasm over the Russian intervention in Syria shown by Netanyahu, Israeli ministers and senior IDF officers. All of the calls by a number of Russia experts, mainly those of debkafile, for extreme caution in ties with Putin have fallen on deaf ears among the political leadership in Jerusalem and the IDF command in Tel Aviv. Amid these developments, three regional actors are very pleased by Washington and Moscow’s agreement to demand Israeli withdrawal from the Golan: Syrian President Assad, the Iranian leadership in Tehran and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Now, they do not need to risk a military confrontation with Israel over the Golan because Obama and Putin have essentially agreed to do the dirty work for them.
WEEK OF APRIL 10
THROUGH APRIL 16
Iran to US:
Missile Program ‘Not Open to Negotiation’
April 12….(Fox News) Iran’s foreign
minister said Sunday the Islamic Republic’s ballistic missile program is
“not open to negotiation” with the United States, seemingly spurning an
overture from Secretary of State John Kerry. Kerry said Thursday during a
visit to Bahrain that the US and its regional allies were “prepared to work
on a new arrangement to find a peaceful solution” to the dispute over recent
Iranian ballistic missile tests. The missile tests are not covered by the
US-Iranian nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of
Action, agreed to this summer; however, the US and its allies contend the
launches go against a UN Security Council Resolution.
Some Western experts fear the missiles
could one day be used to deliver nuclear payloads. But Foreign Minister
Javad Zarif rejected Tehran making any concessions to the international
community on the missile topic. “Secretary Kerry and the US State Department
know well that Iran’s missile and defense capabilities are not open to
negotiation,” Zarif said. The
Tehran Timesreported the remarks which were first
made public by the country’s ISNA news agency. Framing the launches as an
issue of self-defense, Zarif said “There would be no JCPOA for defense
issues,” The Guardian reported. Instead, Zarif countered that the U.S.
should halt “the selling of weaponry which are used to slaughter the
defenseless Yemeni people or employed by the Zionist regime in Israel.”
Zarif also suggested the US should be
concerned that some of its allies were arming ISIS. “The US needs to view
regional issues more seriously than raise baseless and threadbare
allegations against Iran,” Zarif said, The Guardian reported. “Mr. Kerry
should ask US allies where the Islamic State’s arms come from.”
Iran has tested ballistic missiles in
October and March. The US has responded with some sanctions on individuals
and businesses, but not broad-based national sanctions, which some
administration critics have called for.
Undersecretary of State for Political
Affairs Thomas Shannon said
last week during
congressional testimony that one of Iran’s primary purposes for continuing
the ballistic launches was to assuage hard-liners in the country who were
upset by the terms of the nuclear deal. He also said missile tests would
likely to continue. “Iran is intent on pursuing a ballistic missile
program,” Shannon said. “It sees it not only as part of its larger strategic
weapons program, but it also plays a larger political role in Iran,
especially in the aftermath of the JCPOA.”
* Iran-Hezbollah’s
Growing Threat Against US National Security Interests in the Middle East
April 12….(Foundation for the Defense of
Democracies) The Syrian uprising constitutes one of the greatest
challenges that Iran and Hezbollah have faced in decades. The collapse of
the Assad regime would have, in the words of then-Commander of US Central
Command General James Mattis, dealt Iran “the biggest strategic setback in
25 years.” It
would have cut Iran’s only land bridge to Lebanon, and deprived Hezbollah of
its strategic depth. Unfortunately, the situation
in Syria has resulted in the opposite effect. While many, perhaps most,
observers have tended to view Syria as a bloody quagmire that will erode
Iranian ambitions, Tehran has deftly exploited the conflict, turning the
strategic challenge it faces into an opportunity to expand its influence
throughout the region. In doing so, Iran has followed a well-developed
template. It
is building up Shiite militias, which it recruits from around the Greater
Middle East, on the model of Hezbollah. This means
it places the militias under the operational command of the Iranian
Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and demands from them full allegiance to
the Iranian regional project. The template goes back to the earliest days of
the Islamic Revolution, but in recent years Iran has expanded its use to an
extent never-before seen, with the biggest growth being in Iraq. Hezbollah,
however, is the crown jewel of this region-wide network, with nodes in
Syria, the Arab Gulf states, and, of course, Yemen. This is arguably the
most significant and most under-appreciated development in the region over
the past five years. Iran’s expansionist drive, through its legion of Shiite
militias based on the model of Hezbollah and often trained by the group, has
not been opposed by the US. If anything, Washington has effectively
acquiesced to it, viewing it as a means to affect a new regional
“equilibrium.
This
has forced traditional US regional allies, from Israel to Saudi Arabia, to
look for measures to try and stop this emerging shift in the regional
balance of power, which directly impacts their national security interests.
Although the effects are region-wide, this Iranian strategy has played out
most consequentially in Syria. Five years into the uprising against the
Assad regime, Iran and Hezbollah have secured their core interests in Syria.
Hezbollah has taken significant losses at the tactical level but those have
been offset by significant gains: Hezbollah is now better equipped and more
operationally experienced than ever before. The first-order priority for
Hezbollah and Iran was to secure Assad’s rule in Damascus and Western Syria.
Maintaining control over key real estate in order to ensure territorial
contiguity with Lebanon was essential. In fact, the Iran-Assad-Hezbollah
axis showed a willingness to forgo ancillary territory relatively early in
the conflict in order to secure the corridor between what might be called
Assadistan and Hezbollahstan. Specifically, Hezbollah and Iran were
determined to hold the areas adjacent to Lebanon’s eastern border and secure
the routes to Damascus. This is essential for safeguarding arms transfers
from Iran to Lebanon, as well as for protecting weapons storage depots on
Syrian soil. Hezbollah is now reportedly also working to ethnically cleanse
these areas. The campaign to create the security corridor has ensured that
Hezbollah’s supply lines have remained open and uninterrupted. In fact,
shipments into Lebanon from Syria may have even accelerated, and they may
have included the transfer of certain strategic weapons systems that were
kept on Syrian soil, as evident from the list of reported Israeli airstrikes
over the last three years.
As part of its effort to secure the
border, Hezbollah deepened its partnership with the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF),
whose cooperation has been vital, and not only on the Syrian front. As
Hezbollah began to face backlash in the form of car bombs in Beirut over its
involvement in Syria in 2013, it looked to the LAF for support in protecting
its domestic flank. The partnership between the LAF and Hezbollah has grown
to such an extent that it is now meaningful to speak of the LAF as an
auxiliary force in Hezbollah’s war effort. Indeed, in explaining the recent
decision by Saudi Arabia to pull its $3 billion grant to the LAF, Saudi
columnist Abdul Rahman al-Rashed wrote, “Hezbollah has started to use the
army as its auxiliary in the war against the Syrians, which protects its
lines and borders.” In certain instances, LAF troops and Hezbollah forces
have deployed troops jointly, such as during street battles with the
followers of a minor Sunni cleric in Sidon in 2013. The LAF routinely raids
Syrian refugee camps and Sunni cities in Lebanon, rounding up Sunni men and
often detaining them without charges. In a number of cases, it has arrested
defected Syrian officers in the Free Syrian Army, either handing them back
to the Assad regime, or, in some cases, delivering them to Hezbollah, which
then uses them in prisoner swaps with the Syrian rebels. The LAF-Hezbollah
synergy is broadly recognized in the region, with strategic implications
that have been only dimly perceived in the United States. The Saudis, as I
noted above, have reacted by withdrawing their aid to the LAF, and they are
by no means alone. The Israelis have no choice to but expect that if war
should break out between them and Hezbollah, the LAF will come to the direct
aid of the latter. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have therefore warned
that in the next war, they will certainly target the LAF. In contrast to the
policies of Israel and Saudi Arabia, the US is not making its aid to the LAF
contingent on it severing its operational ties with Hezbollah, a policy
which many in the Middle East see as facilitating the partnership between
the two.
Hezbollah’s influence in Lebanon is by no
means limited to its partnership with the LAF. Hezbollah exploits the weak
and dysfunctional Lebanese state in order to advance its interests. It
exerts direct influence over, for example, the Lebanese customs authority
and the financial auditor’s office in order to protect its criminal
enterprises, and uses Lebanese territory for the training of Shiite militias
in the Iranian network. As Lebanon’s Interior Minister observed earlier this
month, Lebanon
is now the IRGC’s “external operations room for training and sending
fighters all over the world.” Through Hezbollah,
Iran has made the Lebanese state complicit in its activities.
In his address to the United Nations
General Assembly last October, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
revealed that despite Israel’s interdiction efforts, and in violation of
UNSCR 1701, Iran had managed to bring advanced weapons systems into Lebanon,
specifically the Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship cruise missiles, SA-22
(Pantsyr-S1) air defense system, and precision-guided surface-to-surface
missiles, which presumably includes the upgraded Iranian Fateh-110 missiles
with integrated GPS navigation. The Yakhont and the precision-guided
missiles pose serious threats to Israel because they are capable of hitting
strategic installations and targets deep inside the country as well as
offshore. These advanced systems are, of course, in addition to the
estimated 100,000 rockets and missiles that Hezbollah has already stored in
Lebanon, mainly in civilian areas. When one considers that Hezbollah has the
capability to rain down 1,500 rockets a day on Israel, it becomes clear that
civilian casualties in the next war will be much higher on both sides than
in any of the previous wars.
Iran and
Hezbollah clearly intend to leverage their success in Syria to change the
balance of power with Israel.
Specifically, they have set their sights on expanding into the Golan
Heights, and on linking it to the south Lebanon front. They signaled the
importance they attached to this effort by sending a group of high-ranking
Iranian and Hezbollah officers on a mission to Quneitra in January 2015. The
Israelis destroyed that particular group, but we can be certain that they
will resume their push there at a later date. Iran and Hezbollah have
invested in local Syrian communities to create a Syrian franchise of
Hezbollah. Besides developing Alawite militias, they have also invested in
Syria’s Shiite and Druze communities. The Druze, by virtue of their
concentration in southern Syria, are particularly attractive as potential
partners. Hezbollah has cultivated recruits from the Druze of Quneitra and
has used them in a number of attacks in the Golan over the past couple of
years. In addition to recruitment to Syrian Hezbollah or other Shiite
militias in Quneitra, there have also been some efforts with the Druze of
Suwayda province near the Jordanian border.
As
a result, the IDF is preparing for offensive incursions by Hezbollah into
northern Israel in the next conflict. For Israel,
Hezbollah’s use of Lebanon as an Iranian forward missile base, its expansion
into Syria with an aim to link the Golan to Lebanon, and the prospect of
this reality soon getting an Iranian nuclear umbrella, creates an
unacceptable situation which, under the right circumstances, could easily
trigger a major conflict. It is hardly surprising, then, that Israeli
officials have been loudly voicing the position that any settlement in Syria
cannot leave Iran and Hezbollah in a position of dominance, and certainly
not anywhere near the Golan. Unfortunately, this position is directly at
odds with current US policy. President
Obama has stated that any solution in Syria must respect and protect
so-called Iranian “equities” in Syria. When one actually spells out what
these “equities” are, namely preserving the Syrian bridge to Hezbollah in
Lebanon, it becomes clear that US policy in Syria inadvertently complicates
Israel’s security challenge. It also complicates
the challenges of other critical US allies, such as Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
WEEK OF APRIL
3 THROUGH APRIL 9
What Does the Bible Say About Abortion?
April 4….(Lynne Copeland) God speaks very clearly in
the Bible on
the value of unborn children. God’s
Word says
that He personally made each one of us, and has a plan for each life: Before
I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart. Jeremiah
1:5
Even before I was born, God had chosen me to be His. Galatians 1:15
For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my
mother’s womb. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me
were written in Your book before one of them came to be. Psalm
139:13, 16
Your hands shaped me and made me. Did You not clothe me
with skin and flesh and knit me together with bones and sinews? You gave me
life. Job
10:8-12
This is what the Lord says, He who made you, who formed
you in the womb Isaiah
44:2
Did not He who made me in the womb make them? Did not the
same One form us both within our mothers? Job
31:15
Because man is made in God’s own image (Genesis 1:27),
each life is of great value to God: Children are a gift from God. Psalm
127:3 He
even calls our children His own: You took your sons and daughters whom you
bore to Me and sacrificed them. You slaughtered My children.Ezekiel 16:20,21
The Bible says of our Creator,
In His hand is the life of every living thing and the breath
of every human being. Job 12:10 God,
the giver of life, commands us not to take the life of an innocent person:
Do not shed innocent blood. Jeremiah
7:6
Cursed is the man who accepts a bribe to kill an innocent
person. Deuteronomy
27:25
Taking the life of the unborn is clearly murder! He
didn’t kill me in the womb, with my mother as my grave. Jeremiah 20:17
and God vowed to punish those who ripped open the women with child. Amos 1:13
The unborn child was granted equal protection in the law;
if he lost his life, the one who caused his death must
lose his own life: If men who are fighting hit a pregnant woman, and she
gives birth prematurely, but there is no serious injury, the offender must
be fined, if there is serious injury, you are to take life for life. Exodus 21:22,23
Life is a gift created by God, and is not to be taken away
by abortion. God is “pro-choice,” but He tells us clearly the only
acceptable choice to make: I have set before you life and death,blessings and curses.
Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. Deuteronomy
30:19
|
