A major showdown awaits Palestinian leader in Riyadh

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas is on his way Tuesday to Riyadh where he faces a stern demand to break away from the Turkish-Qatari-Jordanian line-up fighting US political steps in the region. DEBKAfile reports that Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman will not give way on this demand and, if Abbas holds out, the showdown could end in the Saudis cutting off assistance to the Palestinian Authority.

New US military moves in the Mid-East & Israel’s Syria air raid were coordinated

 

The US hands-off to Iran’s top general in Iraq, Ali Abdullah Saleh’s changeover of sides in the Yemen war and Trump’s’ thinking on Jerusalem – all signal a new, proactive US strategy for the region.

Central Intelligence Agency chief Mike Pompeo was uncharacteristically frank when he addressed high-ranking US military and security officials on Saturday, Dec. 2, at the Reagan Presidential Foundation. He revealed that he had sent a note to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Al Qods chief, Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and explained: “I sent it because he had indicated that forces under his control might in fact threaten US interests n Iraq.”

DEBKA Exclusive: Iranians, Palestinians meet secretly in Brussels

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report explusively on Wednesday that Iran and the Palestinian Authority held secret talks in the Belgian capital. The Iranian delegation was made up entirely of officials representing Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, the sources said.

Report: Soviet Docs Show Palestinian President Was Once KGB Agent in Syria

Mahmoud Abbas / AP

 

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was a Soviet agent working for the KGB in Damascus, Syria in 1983, Israel’s Channel 1 reported Wednesday.

Channel 1’s foreign news editor Oren Nahari reported that documents from the Mitrokhin Archive, upheld by KGB defector Vasily Mitrokhin, show Abbas was once a Soviet spy.

Iran’s New Palestinian Terror Group: Al-Sabireen

• The Iranians are also believed to have supplied their new terrorist group in the Gaza Strip with Grad and Fajr missiles that are capable of reaching Tel Aviv.
• The leader of Al-Sabireen, Hisham Salem, is a former commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. His activities and rhetoric have worried many in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who fear that his group is beginning to attract many of their followers.
• Salem has been accused by many Palestinians of helping Iran spread Shia Islam inside the Gaza Strip, where all Muslims belong to the rival Sunni denomination.
• This, of course, is bad news for [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas, who is now watching as many of his former loyalists have come onto Iran’s payroll and are sharing its radical ideology.
• Many Palestinians and Arabs in the region are already voicing concern. The last thing Abbas, Egypt’s President Sisi and Jordan’s King Abdullah need is another Iranian terror group such as Hezbollah in the Middle East.
• It now remains to be seen whether the Obama Administration and other Western powers will wake up and realize that the Iranians are continuing to fool them, not only regarding Tehran’s nuclear program, but also concerning its territorial ambitions in the Middle East.
• Unless the U.S. and Western powers realize that Iran remains a major threat to world peace, Al-Sabireen and other terrorist groups will one day manage to establish a UN-recognized Palestinian state that would pose an existential threat to Israel and destabilize the entire Middle East.

Palestinians torch Joseph’s Tomb in West Bank as unrest continues

 

Hundreds of Palestinian rioters set fire to the site revered by some Jews as the tomb of the Biblical patriarch Joseph in the West Bank city of Nablus early Friday, ahead of an emergency United Nations Security Council session to discuss the ongoing violence.

Palestinian security forces extinguished the blaze early Friday before Israel Defense Forces could arrive on the scene, according to the Jerusalem Post. There were no injuries in the fire, but the tomb suffered severe damage.

Palestinians: Why Our Leaders Are Hypocrites and Liars

While Hamas and Islamic Jihad are continuing to exploit our teenagers in the Gaza Strip by training them to join the jihad against Jews and “infidels,” our leaders in the West Bank are committing a similar crime against Palestinian youths.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) leadership, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, who falsely describes himself as President of the State of Palestine, has been encouraging our teenagers to engage in the so-called “popular resistance” against Israel. But these leaders, including Abbas himself, are not willing to send their own children and grandchildren to participate in the “popular struggle.” As usual, our leaders want the children of others to take to the streets and throw stones and firebombs at Jews.

President Mahmoud Abbas says Palestine no longer bound by agreements with Israel

The “Palestinian” people, a KGB created proxy tasked with taking on “evil” Israel, is now engineering an excuse for further agitating the Jewish state. Before the Americans came to the Middle East, the Soviets were there laying their traps which have effectively worked. The United States is now bogged down, chasing hundreds of terrorist ghosts that are easily replaceable — and with its first anti-American president in history.

 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has declared he is no longer bound by agreements signed with Israel and called on the United Nations to provide protection for Palestinians, describing Israel’s decades-long military occupation as “unsustainable”. Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly following weeks of rising tensions in Jerusalem and across the West Bank, President Abbas said Israel was destroying the two-state solution.

He described “an apartheid regime that is currently imposed on the territory of the state of Palestine and against the Palestinian people on the one hand, and another regime of privileges and protection to the Israeli settlers on the other hand”.

Why Is the Pope Provoking War in Israel?

For hundreds of years, the Vatican created rivers of blood trying to seize control of the Holy Land from Muslims. Today the Vatican apparently endorses Palestinian sovereignty. Why?

Pope Francis is a man on a mission. But what is his mission exactly? The rhetoric and body language, the gracious gestures, the smiles and salutations give the impression of a selfless liberator determined to broker peace, cooperation and tranquility.

But take a closer look at his decisions and actions. In actuality, the Vatican is creating tension, disunity and instability that are likely to lead to conflict and war.

The pope’s recent stance on the Arab-Israeli conflict is a perfect example.

Recognizing ‘Palestine’

Pope calls Palestinian leader “angel of peace” during visit

After the official recognition of the ‘state of palestine’, you can see just how corrupt the Vatican is. Israel is running out of choices to whom it can rely on. The United States under Barack Obama has been throwing it under the bus and bolstering its enemies for years now. As the Vatican now thumbs its nose in Israeli affairs, the best choice it has at the moment is Germany for protection. This will be the new trend.

 

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis praised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as an “angel of peace” during a meeting Saturday at the Vatican that underscored the Holy See’s warm relations with the Palestinians.

Francis made the compliment during the traditional exchange of gifts at the end of an official audience in the Apostolic Palace. He presented Abbas with a medallion and explained that it represented the “angel of peace destroying the bad spirit of war.”

King of Sweden congratulates ‘State of Palestine’ on its ‘National Day’

The king of Sweden on Saturday congratulated the people of the “State of Palestine” on their “National Day” in a letter.

It marked the first time a European monarch officially hailed the Palestinians’ unilateral declaration of independence in 1988.

“On the occasion of the National Day of the State of Palestine I wish to convey to your Excellency my best wishes for your health and happiness and for the prosperity of the people of the State of Palestine,” Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden wrote in a letter to Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority and chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Peres proposes ‘UN for religions’ to pope at Vatican

Are things shaping up for a revival of the Holy Roman empire? Only time will tell.

Francis had ‘interest, encouragement’ for idea, papal spokesman says.

VATICAN CITY – Former president Shimon Peres emerged from a Vatican City audience with Pope Francis Thursday after proposing a kind of United Nations for religions.

…

He used the talks to highlight human rights abuses from Hamas and to discuss the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe.

But the main topic of conversation was Peres’s idea to create a UN-like organization he called “the United Religions.”

Netanyahu’s dilemma: Back Obama’s save Hamas policy, or fight for its downfall with Egypt and Saudis

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu entangled himself Saturday and Sunday, July 26-27,  in the net he had cast to blur the effect of the unanimous decision by the security-political cabinet of Friday to turn down the ceasefire proposals proposed by US Secretary of State John Kerry and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. The two diplomats and their partners, a brace of European ministers and Qatar and Turkey, who met in Paris to concoct a peace framework for Gaza, were privately dubbed by wags in Jerusalem the “Save Hamas Squad.”

Netanyahu tried to present the flat cabinet “no” to the ceasefire as a “no, maybe.”

His purpose was to leave an opening for the US and UN to ginger up their pro-Hamas framework for ending hostilities in the Gaza Strip by incorporating elements that Israel’s security needs half way. If that was done, Israel, he indicated, would be amenable to joining lengthy ceasefire accords with Hamas, or even making unilateral halts in violence.

US officials: Even if Israel doesn’t like it, Palestinians will get state

Members of Kerry’s team slam Netanyahu, empathize with Abbas, warn Palestine will rise ‘whether through violence or via int’l organizations’

American officials directly involved in the failed Israeli-Palestinian peace process over the last nine months gave a leading Israeli columnist a withering assessment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of the negotiations, indicated that Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has completely given up on the prospect of a negotiated solution, and warned Israel that the Palestinians will achieve statehood come what may — either via international organizations or through violence.

Speaking on condition of anonymity to Nahum Barnea, a prominent columnist from Israel’s best-selling daily Yedioth Aharonoth, the officials highlighted Netanyahu’s ongoing settlement construction as the issue “largely to blame” for the failure of Secretary of State John Kerry’s July 2013-April 2014 effort to broker a permanent peace accord.

They made plain that US President Barack Obama had been prepared to release spy-for-Israel Jonathan Pollard to salvage the talks. And they warned that “the world will not keep tolerating the Israeli occupation.”

Secret US-Hizballah talks. Washington plans to include Lebanon, Syria deals in Iran nuclear pact

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas’ initiation of a unity pact with the Hamas extremists last week did not come out of the blue. It was prompted by the direct contacts the Obama administration has secretly established with the Lebanese Hizballah. Abbas reasoned that if Washington can start a dialogue with a terrorist organization, so too can his own PLO and Fatah.

debkafile’s Washington sources report that the Obama administration appears to have carried over to Lebanon the doctrine set out by the late Richard Holbrooke for Afghanistan, whereby dialogue with Taliban should be made the centerpiece of Washington’s strategy for US troop withdrawal. Holbrooke’s influence on Secretary of State John Kerry dated back to his run for the presidency in 2004.