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Gargantua wrote:

The US envoy to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, has accused the UN of damaging the prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

The organisation "has outrageously been one of the world's foremost centres of hostility towards Israel", she said.

ostap bender wrote:

Zuper wrote:Izrael bombardovao/bombarduje Gazu, ima zrtava, ukljucujuci i decu.

stoka

Zuper wrote:
Isitne radi, Hamas ispaljuje rakete na Izrael.
E, sada, da li je ovo pravi odgovor...

Teach US a lesson, do away with US dollar in oil trading: Vell Paari

KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) today suggested that the Muslim world stop the trading of oil in the US dollar in retaliation to the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
MIC treasurer-general Datuk Seri S. Vell Paari said the trading could be done in some other currency that was acceptable in the oil and gas producing countries.
“The power and influence possessed by the King of Saudi Arabia, King Salman Abdulaziz Al Saud, and Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak will be able to convince oil-producing countries to do away with the trading of oil in the US dollar.
“This will teach the US a lesson as its decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will have consequences.
“Since the Muslim world is blessed with oil, it could be the only practical ‘weapon’ to be used against the United States,” he said in a statement today.
Vell Paari also said that Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s new capital would derail any bid to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
He advised all quarters that it was time to take concrete steps to protect the Palestinians and to exert power and pressure on the United States with respect to the Palestinian cause.
Trump had announced on Wednesday the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and stated that the US would shift its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in the near future.

Why the Patriot Missile Might Fail America's Military

America risks entering into a war with the mistaken belief that it has a shield against the enemy’s missiles when all it has is a sieve.

Joseph Cirincione


It turns out that history does repeat itself. The news that the Patriot anti-missile system failed to shoot down a Scud in Saudi Arabia is in November 2017 is exactly what happened when the Patriot system failed spectacularly in Saudi Arabia in the Gulf War of 1991.
Then, as now, the public and officials were misled by quick, false claims of success. Then, as now, journalists reported the claims as fact without checking. Then, as now, the claims of success were used to justify huge increases in missile defense budgets. Then, as now, the administration trumpeted the false claims as proof that missile defense works.
It does not. Even shooting down simple, short-range missiles like Scuds is extraordinarily complex. It is exponentially more difficult still to shoot down a long-range missile like the ones North Korea is testing. Compared to these sophisticated, ocean-spanning missiles, modified Scuds, like the one that forces in Yemen shot at the Riyadh airport, are large, slow and usually launched from fixed sites. Still, Saudi Arabia could not hit one after firing five interceptors at it, according to new reporting from The New York Times and analysts at the Middlebury Institute in Monterey.

I spent almost a year examining the performance of the Patriot missile on the Gulf War for the House Government Operations Committee in 1992 (a summary of the investigation is available here). We learned a great deal about the performance of these Scuds and the Patriot PAC-2 system. Very little of this has been explained to officials, the public or to those who are being sold the Patriot system.
Basic Scuds are designed to fly about three hundred kilometers. To increase the range, Iraqi engineers in 1991 lengthened the missile and lightened the warhead. This seems to be what the Yemeni engineers did to produce the “Burqan-2” Scud variant used in this attack. This increases the range to about six hundred kilometers, but it has the unintended effect of destabilizing the missile in flight.
In the Gulf War, a launch would carry the Scud out of the atmosphere into a brief flight in space. It peaks at about one hundred kilometers altitude and then falls back towards earth. As it reenters, the nose of the Scuds, instead of pointing downwards, were often too light and thus the missile hit the air flat, like a paper airplane without a paper clip to keep it aerodynamic. The resulting stress tore the missile apart. It would disintegrate, sometimes in great fiery tumbles, sometimes streaking like a comet with pieces trailing behind.
The Patriot computers in the Gulf War misinterpreted this break-up. It depicted on its screen not one but two, three or a dozen Scuds streaking in towards the Patriot fire unit. It looked to the troops buttoned up in the small control van as if one missile had blossomed into several, now diving into the area they were supposed to defend. They followed protocol and would launch one or two interceptors per target (or the computers would take over and automatically fire the missiles).
Observers outside would often interpret the explosion of the Patriot’s warhead as evidence that it had intercepted its target. But the PAC-2 warhead is designed to explode in front of its target, spraying shrapnel it hopes will hit. The Patriot has to explode with a few tens of meters of the warhead to have any hope of hitting it. In case after case, the Patriots would be launched at relatively slow-flying debris from the disintegrating missile, whose warhead had often detached and would spiral in toward the ground. Crews would get “probable kill” symbols on their computers and, if there were no reports of damage (they rarely went outside to check), they would declare a confirmed kill. When they examined debris from the Scud, they thought the Patriot had caused the damage, when it was just the heat and stress of the reentry.
That is precisely what seemed to have happened in Riyadh . . . again. The Iraqis in 1991 and the Houthis in 2017 modified the Scuds and created—by accident—a stealthy, fast-flying, maneuvering reentry vehicle cloaked by decoys. It’s accuracy is very poor, but it is also impossible to hit. In 1991, software fixes were rushed into the field, but about half of the 158 Patriots fired in that conflict were likely fired at false targets and debris.

Further analysis will be needed to determine exactly what happened this time. But complicating this autopsy will be who does the analysis. In 1991, most of the after-action analysis was done by officers from the Patriot Program office and officials from Raytheon, the prime contractor for Patriot. Until there is independent evaluation of the effectiveness on our missile defense systems, and until these systems are rigorously tested in real world operating conditions, we can not have any confidence that the systems will perform as advertised.
This is not just a good government issue. American soldiers lives could be unnecessarily endangered if they are deployed in future conflicts based on inaccurate assessments of our missile-defense capabilities. They may depend on Patriot battalions destroying almost all of the enemy missiles, as now claimed, when the actual defensive capabilities may mean that the battalions could actually miss almost all of the threatening missiles.
If such systems are promised to defend large areas or even nations, then we risk entering into war in the mistaken belief that we have a shield against the enemy’s missiles when all we have is a sieve.
Joe Cirincione is president of Ploughshares Fund.

Erdogan: Izrael ubija decu; Netanijahu: Neću da ga slušam
Predsednik Turske Redžep Tajip Erdogan označio je Izrael terorističkom državom, koja ubija decu.

IZVOR: BETA NEDELJA, 10.12.2017. | 21:42

On je dodao da će se boriti svim sredstvima protiv priznanja SAD da je Jerusalim glavni grad jevrejske države.

"Palestina je nevina žrtva, a što se tiče Izraela to je teroristička država, da teroristička", rekao je Erdogan, dodavši: "Nećemo prepustiti Jerusalim na milost države koja ubija decu".

Na to je reagovao premijer Izraela Benjamin Netanijahu, koji je optužio predsednika Turske Redžepa Tajipa Erdogana da bombarduje Kurde i pomaže teroristima, prenela je agencija AFP nakon Netanjahuovog razgovora sa predsednikom Francuske Emanuelom Makronom u Parizu.

"Ne moram da slušam lekcije o moralu od lidera koji bombarduje kurdska sela u Turskoj, zatvara novinare i pomaže Iranu da izbegne međunarodne sankcije i pomaže teroristima, posebno u Gazi", rekao je Netanijahu, odgovarajući na pitanje o Erdoganovoj današnjoj izjavi da je Izrael teroristička država koja ubija decu.

Na zajedničkoj konferenciji za novinare s predsednikom Francuske Emanuelom Makronom u Jelisejskoj palati Netanijahu je naglasio da Izrael ne može imati drugi glavni grad osim Jerusalima i da su pokušaji da se prekine ta "milenijumska veza" apsurdni.

Zato je priznanje Donalda Trampa da je Jerusalim glavni grad Izraela "tako važno", ocenio je izraelski premijer.

French President Emmanuel Macron "firmly and clearly" condemns all kinds of attacks against Israel in recent hours and days, following a meeting in Paris with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Macron also reaffirmed his "disapproval" of U.S. President Donald Trump's move to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Macron said "what's new is that the United States unilaterally recognized something that is not complying with the international law."

He appealed for calm in the Middle East and asked Netanyahu to make gestures toward the Palestinians to "give a chance" to peace. Macron said a gesture could be a settlement freeze.

The French president said he wants to wait for a potential U.S. "mediation" in coming weeks and months and would only support an initiative that would be acceptable by Israelis, Palestinians and other parties in the region.

Did Saudi Arabia Just Try To Give the West Bank to Israel?
The crown prince could be working to engineer a two-state solution that favors Israel.
By GEOFFREY ARONSON • December 12, 2017
 


The Trump declaration recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and relocating the U.S. embassy there is as historically significant to Israel’s control of Jerusalem as the Balfour Declaration was to recognizing the rights of the Jewish people in Palestine.

But according to new revelations, the announcement could be part of a grander plan to help Israel wrest control of Jerusalem, as well as the West Bank, from the Palestinians for good, leaving the Arabs with their own state of Gaza only.

Anyone looking to the State Department for guidance about any of this is bound to be disappointed. Foggy Bottom’s first public defense of the president’s blockbuster announcement would have been laughable if it weren’t so depressing. Indeed, Thursday’s State Department briefing, starring good soldier David Satterfield, could have been pilfered from the popular British comedy “Yes, Prime Minister.”

Satterfield, a highly regarded professional who has labored for 40 years in the barren vineyards of Middle East diplomacy, channeled the show’s star dissembler, Sir Humphrey Appleby. The acting assistant secretary did Sir Humphrey proud—he talked and talked and said nothing at all.

Thankfully, far more instructive insights about the linkage between the announcement and Trump’s broader plans for the region were provided to TAC by a senior Palestinian official last week. This official was briefed on the details of the surprise meeting last month between Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority (and head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the PLO), and Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salman (MBS), Saudi Arabia’s heir to the throne.

The 82-year-old Abbas was summoned to Riyadh on November 6 by the 32-year-old MBS as part of the latter’s high-powered effort to engineer a joint Arab-U.S. offensive against Iran and its allies. He was not the first Arab leader to be invited. Days before his arrival, Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri was strong-armed by MBS into a sudden, though short-lived, resignation as part of the anti-Iran offensive.

MBS was in high dudgeon, according to the source, as he is playing a high-stakes gamble to cement both his leadership and his corollary offensive. On this score, MBS announced that the Arab Peace Initiative (API)—a Saudi-sponsored grand bargain promising Arab recognition of and peace with Israel in return for the creation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza with east Jerusalem as its capital—is effectively dead.

It’s time for Plan B, declared the crown prince: a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, fattened by undetermined Egyptian transfers of land in the Sinai Peninsula. When the startled Palestinian leader asked about the place of the West Bank and East Jerusalem in this scheme, MBS replied, “We can continue to negotiate about this.”

“What about Jerusalem, the settlements, [West Bank] Areas B and C?” Abbas pressed.

“These will be issues for negotiation, but between two states, and we will help you.”

According to the source, MBS offered the Palestinian leader $10 billion to sweeten the bitter pill he had just prescribed. “Abbas can’t say no [to the Saudis],” the source explained, “but he can’t say yes.”

The New York Times, reporting its own version of the meeting on December 3, confirmed through Palestinian, Arab, and European sources privy to Abbas’s side of the conversation that MBS offered “vastly increased financial support for the Palestinians, and even dangled the possibility of a direct payment to Mr. Abbas, which they said he refused.” In that Times piece, sources said the offer Abbas “could only refuse” involved a Palestinian state with “noncontiguous parts of the West Bank and only limited sovereignty over their own territory (Gaza).” The vast majority of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal by most of the world, would remain.

So who put the “Gaza-Plus” idea into MBS’s head? The genealogy is not hard to decipher, and it can be traced to one place only: Israel.

The creation of a Palestinian state in Gaza has long been viewed by key Israeli officials as a way of compelling Arab acquiescence to Israel’s annexation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Various iterations of the idea have been bouncing around Israel’s right wing for almost two decades.

All share a desire for an agreement by Israel’s Arab neighbors to cede territories in order to enable Israel to gobble up the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Former Netanyahu aide and NSC head Uzi Arad and his successor Giora Eiland—along with other Israelis who served with Netanyahu—have mooted this solution. For their patrons, Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank and Jerusalem is an absolute non-starter.

How then to communicate this Israeli idea to Riyadh at the very moment when Trump and Netanyahu were finalizing understandings related to the Trump declaration on Jerusalem?

Only days before the MBS-Abbas meeting, U.S. envoys Jared Kushner (the president’s son-in-law and majordomo) and Jason Greenblatt (the Trump Organization’s former lawyer and current Mideast peace envoy) traveled to Riyadh for late-night deliberations with the crown prince.

Kushner, as we know, is a longstanding friend of Netanyahu’s—he even led a parents’ foundation to funnel money to the West Bank settlements. He travels in circles where Jerusalem as “the eternal, undivided capital of the Jewish People” and the “Gaza Plus” idea are common currency. Gaining Kushner’s support for the proposals as the basis for a new American strategy that places an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Jerusalem in the deep freeze is like pushing on an open door.

Kushner, who is said to have bonded with his fellow thirty-something royal, is MBS’s best source for all things Israeli. Assuming that Kushner and MBS are on the same page regarding the Gaza scheme, and the MBS-Abbas meetings suggest they are, their agreement adds a new and troubling dimension to Trump’s Jerusalem declaration.

Such a U.S.-Saudi understanding  is consistent with the Saudis’ effective abandonment of their own Arab Peace Initiative. The Saudi leader himself undermined a key element of that proposal when, in April 2016, Saudi Arabia agreed to join the Israel-Egypt strategic partnership established by their peace treaty without Israeli concessions on a Palestinian state, as the price for reestablishing Saudi control over the strategic Red Sea islands of Tiran and Sanafir.

The source noted that MBS himself wrote a formal letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu outlining the unprecedented Saudi pledge to participate—along with Egypt, Israel, and the United States—in upholding the security terms of the historic peace treaty between Israel and Egypt.

That decision, and the letter, could be understood in Israel as a practical demonstration that Saudi Arabia was indeed prepared to engage with Israel without any quid pro quo requiring a Palestinian state, in Gaza, Jerusalem, or indeed anywhere.

A call by TAC to the Saudi embassy went unreturned on Monday. The White House denied the plan to the New York Times, as did the Saudi government, and an Abbas spokesman called the reported Saudi offer “fake news” that “does not exist.”

Nevertheless, the details of the meeting were confirmed by several people to TAC and the Times, and they provide some badly needed context to the Jerusalem declaration. Confident of Saudi support for the Gaza option and its historic agreement to strategic collaboration with Washington, Egypt, and Israel independent of progress on Palestine, Trump can be forgiven for assuming a Saudi carte blanche in his effort to remake the Middle East, with recognition of Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem at its center.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/did-saudi-arabia-just-try-to-give-the-west-bank-to-israel/

Saudijska Arabija je saopćila da je presrela raketu ispaljenu prema glavnom gradu te zemlje Rijadu iz susjednog Jemena.

Pobunjenici iz pokreta Husi kazali su da su ispalili balističku raketu prema kraljevskoj palati Yamama u kojoj su smještene institucije vlasti Saudijske Arabije, saopćio je Mohammed Abdul Salam, glasnogovornik Husija.

Christians in Bethlehem refused to meet with Pence today.

All 13 denominations canceled meetings to discuss "Ending Persecution of Christians in the Middle East".

They boycotted the meetings saying that Pence isn't welcome due to the Trump policies regarding Israel. @CNN

Zračna obrana Saudijske Arabije oborila je sedam balističkih projektila koje je jemenska pobunjenička milicija Houthi ispalila u nedjelju na Rijad, od čijih je krhotina jedan čovjek poginuo.
To je prva žrtva u glavnom gradu tijekom trogodišnje vojne kampanje koju vodi koalicija saudijskih saveznika u Jemenu.

Several dead, hundreds injured in IDF-Palestinian clashes at #GreatReturn protest
Published time: 30 Mar, 2018 10:00
Edited time: 30 Mar, 2018 12:42


At least seven people have died and up to 500 others have been injured during clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops along the border of the Gaza Strip and Israel, according to media reports.

The Palestinian Health Ministry reported the casualties after hundreds demonstrated Friday afternoon. IDF troops fired live rounds, rubber-coated steel pellets and tear gas at the protesters during the ongoing violence.




Thousands have gathered along the border for a six week-long ‘Great Return’ protest. The mass demonstration got underway on Friday as Palestinians held a mass rally to commemorate Land Day, which marks the killing of six unarmed civilians by Israeli forces in 1976.



Hamas said as many as 100,000 Palestinians will take part in Friday’s massive demonstration. The protest coincides with the week-long Jewish holiday of Passover, which regularly leads to increased tensions in the already-volatile region.

The six week-long demonstrations are calling for the right of return for Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel. The protests are set to culminate in May as Israel celebrates the 70th anniversary of its independence, which Palestinians call Nakba (castastrophe) day.

Tent cities have been set up by Palestinian activists, backed by factions of Fatah and Hamas, at five locations along the border. They feature medical facilities, media zones, portable toilets, running water and electricity.