Israel Policy Forum is shocked and appalled by the column published in the Atlanta Jewish Times by its owner and publisher Andrew Adler calling for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “to give the go-ahead for U.S.-based Mossad agents to take out a president deemed unfriendly to Israel in order for the current vice president to take his place, and forcefully dictate that the United States policy includes its helping the Jewish state obl
In an ideal world, if we were writing this up as a scenario we would say let’s put this all on hold, and everyone stays away happily and nothing changes for the worse, and we pick it up perhaps when everyone is stronger. But status quos are not status quos and people know that. They either get better – or more commonly – they actually get worse because they are left neglected. I fear that this status quo, over the next 10 or 11 months if there isn’t some very significant policy activity, will deteriorate into violence.
In his series of meetings with leaders in Europe this week, Benjamin Netanyahu was faced with one issue time and again-the need to freeze settlement construction in the West Bank.
In Netanyahu's meeting with Gordon Brown on Tuesday, Brown called settlement construction an obstacle to a two state solution, saying that a freeze would likely open the door to normalization measures by Arab states.
With the mediation of a German intelligence official, talks are under way to secure a deal to release IDF soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for Palestinian prisoners. Ha'aretzreports that Hamas politburo chief Khaled Meshal will fly to Cairo next week to discuss the deal.
Ma'ariv quotes Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Damascus as saying "We trust the German mediator."
