Building Freeze

The news as reported by Al Jazeera:

Quartet urges settlement freeze
Statement of diplomatic bloc calls on Israeli PM to extend moratorium due to expire at the end of September.

"The world sponsors of the Middle East peace process have called on Israel to extend its settlement moratorium, in a bid to map out a peace deal within the next year.

According to a statement released on Tuesday, the Quartet, comprising the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, piled further pressure on Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, to extend the 10-month settlement freeze due to expire at the end of September.

"The Quartet noted that the commendable Israeli settlement moratorium instituted last November has had a positive impact and urged its continuation," the statement read.

Barack Obama, the US president, and Hillary Clinton, his secretary of state, have already urged Netanyahu to extend the moratorium on new settlement activity on land in the West Bank captured in the 1967 war.

The Palestinians have said they will drop out of the peace talks, launched just this month with Obama's backing, unless the freeze continues." -more

Quiz Time

As reported by CBN News on September 20:

Pal. Authority: Death Penalty for Selling Land to Jews

JERUSALEM, Israel - "Israel's peace partner reaffirmed on Sunday that Palestinians convicted of selling land to Jews would face the death penalty for "high treason."

PA officials claim the death penalty deters Arabs from selling land to Jews living in Judea and Samaria, which they envision free of Jewish residents in a future Palestinian state.

But one Palestinian affairs expert said while such laws may deter the sale of land, they give credence to the perception of Palestinian terrorism.

Dr. Hillel Frisch of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University said imposing the death penalty for the sale of land is "pretty stringent in the modern conception of human rights."

"It certainly reflects that a Palestinian democracy has already been placed in the coffin a long time ago," Dr. Frisch told CBN News. "The idea even of a semi-liberal state is long past us," he said. -more

Survivors

We live our lives and they tell us what's going on, and we believe them. And then the future comes along and once it's history it's easy to see what really happened.

So I thought about how current events might look from the perspective of one possible future (hopefully a future that America and the West will somehow manage to avoid).

A Question

According to the MEMRI Iranian Media Blog:

"Iranian expatriate human rights activists report that 4,000 students demonstrated in Tehran to mark Students Day today, shouting "Death to (Iranian Supreme Leader Ali) Khamenei " and "Khamenei is a Murderer and His Religious Authority Is Null and Void," as well as "Death to the Government That Deceives the People."

At Amir Kabir University in Tehran, 1,500 students shouted for the "coup government" to step down, and chanted "Death to the Dictator" (referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad)." -more

To see a video of this week's Iranian student anti-Ahmadinejad demonstrations click on Tehran Video

Bibi Versus The Iceman

I thought that I'd draw Obama and Bibi Netanyahu as battling SuperHeroes, but they came out looking like a pair of phony costumed TV wrestlers putting on a show! * * * The Arab-Israeli conflict will end when the Arab states accept the existence of a Jewish State in the region as natural. Political correctness requires that we ignore this obvious truth and pretend that the problem is simply a border dispute between "Palestinians" and Israelis.

Netanyahu's Road Map

According to YNET:

Agreement reached between PM, defense and housing ministers to freeze building starts in settlements blocs and east Jerusalem until early 2010 enrages settler leaders. 'If Netanyahu implements Livni's policy – government's days are numbered,' Ariel mayor warns

"Settler leaders were furious Tuesday morning after learning of the agreement to freeze building starts in the territories, including in the settlement blocs and east Jerusalem" -more

Your thoughts?