Press TV – US State Department spokesman Mark Toner has reiterated Washington’s rejection of Palestinian plans to seek UN recognition of an independent state.

“We don’t believe it’s a good idea, we don’t believe it’s helpful,” AFP quoted the US State Department spokesman as saying on Tuesday.

The Palestinians are expected to seek a UN vote on the recognition of an independent state in September.

US-brokered talks between Israel and the Palestinians resumed in September 2010. The talks collapsed shortly afterwards when Israel refused to extend a moratorium on settlement building in the occupied territories.

Israel has insisted that all issues, including the settlements, should be hammered out in direct talks.

Meanwhile, Israeli media reports indicate that Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu is considering other proposals, including an ‘interim deal’ or partial withdrawal from the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians, however, have rejected any partial agreement and called for a comprehensive solution to the illegal Israeli settlements.

Palestinians argue that the settlement projects, which contravene UN Security Council Resolutions 446, 452, and 465, are aimed at preventing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East al-Quds (Jerusalem) as its capital.

Israel occupied and annexed East al-Quds in 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the international community and the United Nations.

Just released secret cables detailing the talks held between President Medvedev and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao at the start of the BRICS Summit, in Sanya, say that the personal letter hastily delivered to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah [photo top left being bowed to by Obama] by President Obama’s top National Security adviser Thomas E. Donilon yesterday proves the American leader is prepared to throw Israel to the “Arab Wolves” in return for Saudi oil.

According to these cables, King Abdullah personally phoned Obama on 29 January and warned him not to humiliate embattled Egyptian President-for-life Hosni Mubarak and further stated that if the US withdrew its $1.5 Billion support to Egypt, Saudi Arabia would pay it instead.

Obama, however, refused to heed King Abdullah’s warning opting instead to back Egypt’s military that ousted Mubarak in coup and yesterday placed the former Egyptian President and his 2 sons in custody causing Mubarak to suffer a heart attack which has put him in hospital in what is described as an “unstable” condition.

So enraged did King Abdullah become after being spurned by Obama that he not only turned to both Russia and China for immediate support of his monarchy, he also ordered Saudi military troops and police to invade the neighboring Kingdom of Bahrain to put down a popular uprising that has seen thousands of protesters killed and jailed in what is the home of the American Navy’s 5th Fleet.

Though the revolution in Bahrain is still being censored from American news media outlets by Obama’s direct order, the same cannot be said of the rest of the World who stand appalled at the blatant hypocrisy that has left the US at a loss to explain its self-contradictions while it allows thousands to be killed by “friendly” dictatorial regimes, while bombing those of Nations it doesn’t like.

So insanely contradictory has US policy under Obama become, one of his top generals, US Africa Command (AFRICOM) General Carter Ham, warned this past week that many of the rebels the US and NATO are protecting in Libya are preparing to go to Iran or Afghanistan to fight and kill US Troops after they oust Kaddafi.

Even worse, new reports are emerging that the US frustration over the Libyan war has forced Washington to consider supporting al-Qaeda operatives and deploying American ground troops in Libya, while at the exact same time they are, also, said to be preparing to send American Troops into Yemen to fight al-Qaeda.

To what the worst plan of Obama’s is, however, according to Chinese leader Hu these cables say, is his preparing to throw Israel to the “Arab Wolves” after agreeing in his letter to King Abdullah to allow the formation of a Palestinian state based on the borders that existed in 1967, meaning the Israelis would have to give up their capital city Jerusalem, which they have vowed they will never do.

Though this unprecedented and historic news of Obama’s changing of official US policy towards the Jewish state has been censored in the US, it has not been elsewhere, especially in Israel where the Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot is reporting that the American’s will side with the United Nations to create a Palestinian state this September because of what “senior” US officials attribute to Obama’s latest stance to “the revolutions storming the Arab world.”

To anyone being able stop Obama from destroying Israel it appears unlikely, especially in light of him blocking a European bid to break the deadlock in the Middle East peace process at an International meeting that had been scheduled this week.

And in what has to be one of greatest historical ironies of all time, Spanish Crown Prince Felipe restated his Nation’s support for an independent Palestinian stateduring talks yesterday with Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas, a country, mind you, that in 1492 expelled all of its Jewish citizens.

To what Israel’s reaction will be to the treachery of Obama in selling them out to Saudi Arabia they have never made any secret of and describe it as the “Masada Complex” that is defined as “the conviction that it is preferable to fight to the end rather than to surrender and acquiesce to the loss of independent statehood.”

[Note: According to the 1st-century C.E. Jewish-cum-Roman historian Flaviu Josephus, after Rome destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple in 70, the Great Revolt ended-except for the surviving Zealots, who fled Jerusalem to the fortress of Masada, near the Dead Sea. There, they held out for three years. Once it became apparent that the Roman Tenth Legion's battering rams and catapults would soon succeed in breaching Masada's walls, Elazar ben Yair, the Zealots’ leader, decided that all the Jewish defenders should commit suicide. Interesting to note about Flaviu Josephus is that without him no record would exist of the events that occurred at Masada, but which in that same writing said that an Egyptian priest from Heliopolis named Osarseph was the true historical figure Moses was based upon.]

And to how monstrously brutal the United States under Obama has become one need look no further than the celebrated Rolling Stone Magazine writer Matt Taibbi, who in his latest article titled “The Real Housewives of Wall Street” on the “shadow economy” of America describes what can only be called the largest theft in human history, and as we can, in part, read:

“…following an act of Congress that has forced the Fed to open its books from the bailout era, this unofficial budget is for the first time becoming at least partially a matter of public record. Staffers in the Senate and the House, whose queries about Fed spending have been rebuffed for nearly a century, are now poring over 21,000 transactions and discovering a host of outrages and lunacies in the “other” budget.

It is as though someone sat down and made a list of every individual on earth who actually did not need emergency financial assistance from the United States government, and then handed them the keys to the public treasure.

The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. “Our jaws are literally dropping as we’re reading this,” says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. “Every one of these transactions is outrageous.”

Most unfortunately in all of these events are the American people remaining willfully ignorant of them, and as they will soon discover, they have done so at their peril as the bodies of their Soldiers will soon count not just in the thousands, but in the millions as their war for oil shows no mercy or no bounds.

© April 13, 2011 EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com.

by Emad Drimly, Saud Abu Ramadan

RAMALLAH, Feb. 1 (Xinhua) — Palestinian officials said on Wednesday that the Palestinian leadership is expecting that the meeting of the international Quartet of the Middle East mediators, which will convene in Germany on Saturday, will recognize a Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967.

The Palestinians had earlier postponed applying to the Security Council to get a global condemnation of Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The postponement was made to wait for the outcome of the upcoming Quartet’s meeting that will be held in the German city of Munich.

“It is a historic opportunity for the Quartet to recognize the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem and follow other world’s countries who had recently declared their official recognition,” Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Xinhua.

He urged the Quartet to recognize an independent Palestinian state “and consider all what had been built of settlement on the occupied Palestinian territories, including east Jerusalem annulled, illegal and violates the international laws , as well as the decision of annexing east Jerusalem.”

Erekat warned that “if the Quartet doesn’t make these decisions, the entire region will attend more unrest and blood shedding.” The Quartet, which includes the United States, Russia, the United Nations and the European Union, will convene in Munich on Saturday to study the situation in the Middle East.

United States Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and the Quartet peace envoy to the Middle East Tony Blair will attend the meeting in Munich on Saturday.

Over the past few weeks, eight Latin American countries, mainly Argentina and Brazil, as well as Cyprus and Surinam had officially declared their recognition of establishing an independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, with east Jerusalem as its capital.

Israel and the U.S. opposed the ongoing official recognition of the world’s countries of an independent Palestinian state. Israeli officials said that these decisions are a violation of the interim peace deals signed with Israel, where this issue has to be decided through bilateral peace talks.

As some western sources expected that the Quartet meeting will adopt a strong decision related to the Israeli settlement construction in the Palestinian territories, Erekat denied that such a decision will be an alternative to demanding a complete cessation of settlement.

Read the full article.

Paraguay has recognized Friday Palestine as “free and independent state” within the 1967 borders, said Friday the Paraguayan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, following the lead of eight other South American countries including Brazil and Argentina.

“The Republic of Paraguay reiterates explicitly recognizing this state as free and independent, with the borders of June 4, 1967,” the ministry said in a statement.

One hundred States already recognized Palestine in the world, mostly from the years that followed the declaration of “independence” proclaimed in 1988.

But at the stalling of the peace process, Palestinian officials have intensified their efforts to obtain recognition of their state by new countries. After reaching a critical mass of countries, they hope to bring their claim before the Security Council of the UN.

Twelve countries in South America, eight countries have already recognized the Palestinian State: Venezuela in 2005, and since December 3, 2009, cascade behind Brazil: Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Guyana, Chile and Peru.

Only Colombia would go its own way. “Israel is an ally of a very strategic military point of view” for the country, “said Colombian political scientist at the University Alejo Vargas.

Source.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week said the violent overthrow of Tunisia’s government effectively highlights why it is a bad idea to rush into recognizing or establishing an independent Palestinian state.

Netanyahu explained that the Palestinian Authority is made up of armed warring factions. Even when the PA regime does manage to instill calm, it is through heavy-handed police-state measures, the very kind of thing that led to the Tunisian rebellion.

“We cannot simply say ‘We are signing a peace agreement,’ close our eyes and say ‘We did it,’ because we do not know with any clarity that the peace will indeed be honored,” said Netanyahu in a public statement.

Netanyahu was expressing the Israeli fear that the people it signs a peace agreement with today may not be in power tomorrow, and could be replaced by people with a totally different agenda.

Evidence that this is more than just possible, and is actually inevitable, can be seen in the Gaza Strip. Israel fully withdrew from Gaza in order to bolster the “moderate” regime of PA leader Mahmoud Abbas. Instead, the Palestinian public saw it as a military victory for Hamas, and voted the blood-soaked terror group into power.

Netanyahu voiced his concern amid a wave of international recognition of a Palestinian state outside the framework of a peace agreement with Israel.

Source.

In Jericho, Russian president says Moscow has not changed its position since 1988 when it ‘recognized independent Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem’

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Tuesday Moscow had recognized an independent Palestinian state in 1988 and was not changing that position adopted by the former Soviet Union.

But on his first visit to the Israeli-occupied West Bank as Russian head of state, Medvedev stopped short of making a ringing declaration of recognition of Palestinian statehood by the Russian Federation that he represents.

Read the full article.

The Palestinian foreign minister says he will seek United Nations recognition for a Palestinian state in September and is currently lobbying for votes worldwide.

The move is part of the Palestinians’ so-called Plan B of pursuing an alternative to a negotiated peace deal while talks with Israel remain stalled. Riad Malki’s announcement Sunday followed Chile’s recognition of Palestine, making it the fifth South American country to do so recently.

While a majority for Palestine in the General Assembly seems possible, recognition by the Security Council — whose decisions are legally binding — would likely face an American veto.

Read the full article.

US President Barack Obama’s demands during his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Tuesday point to an intention to impose a permanent settlement on Israel and the Palestinians in less than two years,” the Israeli daily, Ha’aretz, wrote on Monday. We may draw a similar conclusion from analyses such as the one by Tony Karon in Asia Times Online. [1]

United States-Israel rifts have widened to the point where the BBC recently reported that the US would “seriously consider abstaining” if the United Nations Security Council were to vote on a resolution on Jerusalem (presumably against Israel). US officials promptly denied the report, but in any case, the US is pushing extraordinarily hard a literal interpretation of “the 1967 border”. This is a strong indicator that Obama might secretly hope to impose a solution.

Last December, American officials spoke of a timeframe of two years until the creation of a Palestinian state. At that point, it seemed like an unrealistic hope, but so did the healthcare overhaul until recently. A bilateral compromise among Israelis and Palestinians appears now less likely than ever; however, Obama’s head-on collision with the Israeli government, coupled with his open support of a new, moderate and more efficient Palestinian leadership (that of the technocrat Prime Minister Salam Fayyad), has increased the likelihood of another scenario.

Read the full article.

Israel has rejected the idea of foreign countries recognizing a Palestinian state, after France suggested the recognition could soon take place.

“Imposing this kind of semblance of a partial solution from outside goes against the very idea of peace,” AFP quoted a senior Israeli official as saying on condition of anonymity.

The remarks came after French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said on Saturday that a Palestinian state could soon be recognized even before negotiating its borders.

“The issue before us at the moment is the building of a reality: France is training Palestinian police, businesses are being created in the West Bank,” Kouchner told the French newspaper the Journal du Dimanche.

“It follows that one can envision the proclamation soon of a Palestinian state, and its immediate recognition by the international community, even before negotiating its borders,” he added.

Read the full article.

Jerusalem – Palestinian Authority leaders say that they are launching a new diplomatic campaign to gain international backing for a Palestinian state, after which they will unilaterally declare statehood in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem – without waiting for a peace treaty with Israel.

Israel pushed back Sunday, issuing a warning that such a declaration of statehood would destroy previous peace agreements and goodwill.

The already rocky road to peace talks – which the US and other international mediators have for months been trying to coax Israelis and Palestinians back onto – just got rougher.

The statehood push comes just 10 days after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the he would not seek office in the next Palestinian elections, and phrased his announcement as an effective threat of resignation not just from office but the peace process itself. Israeli intransigence and US ineffectiveness over Israeli settlements were largely to blame, he said.

Now, Mr. Abbas plans to actively solicit worldwide support for a declaration of Palestinian statehood, irrespective of any negotiations with Israel.

Read the full article.