Russia ‘Flexes Muscles’ in Mediterranean Amid Syrian Crisis http://en.rian.ru/military_news/20130120/178894932/Russia-Flexes-Muscles-in-Mediterranean-Amid-SyrianCrisis-------.html Jan 20, 2013 MOSCOW, January 20 (RIA Novosti) – Russia has started the largest naval exercises in the past few decades in the Mediterranean and Black Seas as a civil war in Syria continues to gain momentum. The drills involve task forces from Russia’s Black Sea, Northern and Baltic fleets, strategic bombers, tactical aircraft, air defense units, paratroopers and naval infantry. An official statement by the Defense Ministry, issued on Saturday, says the exercises “are held in line with the Russian Armed Forces’ 2013 combat training plan and focus on interoperability of task forces from several fleets while on a mission in a far-off maritime zone.” The exercises will continue until January 29 and involve over 60 drills, including anti-submarine warfare missions, missile and artillery firing practices. The training may also include simulated beach landing and convoy escort missions as the task forces have four large landing ships and a variety of auxiliary vessels in their composition. Some of the exercises are expected to be carried out in the eastern part of the Mediterranean, and, possibly close to the territorial waters of Syria, where rebels have recently stepped up their attacks on army installations in their determined drive to oust President Bashar Al-Assad. At least 60,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict since March 2011, according to latest UN data. Russia has faced heavy international criticism over its refusal to back UN sanctions against Syria, its last ally in the Arab world, over what it called the pro-rebel bias of some resolutions proposed by Western nations. Moscow denies it is backing President Bashar Assad and says it is concerned that the Syrian president’s forced departure would only worsen the conflict and lead to the repetition of the so-called ‘Libyan scenario.” The Russian Navy keeps a naval re-supply and maintenance base in the Syrian port of Tartus to support its operations in the Mediterranean.
Russia lifts nationals out of Syria. Moscow, Iran arm Assad for major armored push http://www.debka.com/article/22701/Russia-lifts-nationals-out-of-Syria-Moscow-Iran-arm-Assad-for-majorarmored-push Jan 21, 2013 The Russian emergency ministry said Monday, Jan. 21 that it is sending two planes to Beirut to evacuate 100 Russians from Syria - the first such effort since the uprising against Bashar Assad began in March 2011. Moscow also announced contingency plans to lift 30,000 Russian nationals from the embattled country. This evacuation of Russian nationals starting Tuesday was decided after the Syrian high command received orders from President Assad to organize mobile armored strike groups with massive fire power for a big push to run the rebel forces out of the towns, villages and areas they have captured, mostly in the north and southeast. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that, because they are in a hurry, the Syrian army chiefs decided to use only seasoned officers and men with experience in active service against the rebels, rather than new recruits who would need weeks of combat training. The divisions or brigades holding the line in such trouble spots as Aleppo, Homs and Deraa, are being depleted, some of their units detached for service in the new armored strike groups. Our sources report that Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps officers are supervising the effort for what Assad sees as his biggest assault yet to finally crush the revolt against his regime. Its timing marks two fundamental developments in Syria’s bloody civil war: 1. The self-confidence of Assad and his top military staff is gaining in direct contrast to the weakening of the insurgency. It was therefore decided in Damascus that the time was ripe for a major offensive to push the rebels out of the strategic areas from which they could threaten central government. 2. Western-Arab arms supplies to the rebels have slowed down steeply because the funding from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAR has dried up. The high-grade weapons still in rebel hands were mostly looted from Syrian army bases and stores.
3. According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, Russian officials up to the level of President Vladimir Putin examined the Iranian-Syrian armored strike group tactics and approved. These developments, according to Western intelligence sources familiar with the Syrian situation, explain the recently intensified coordination between Moscow, Tehran and Damascus and the resulting accelerated flow of Russian and Iranian weapons to the Syrian army. Russian arms ships are lining up at the Syrian port of Tartus to unload their freights, while Iranian air transports are touching down and taking off at speed from Damascus and Aleppo military airports. Arms deliveries are coming in aboard large Russian naval vessels, including the Azov andAklexander Shabalin landing craft, the amphibious Kaliningrad and others. To camouflage heir rapid movements in and out of Tartus, the Russian navy Sunday, Jan. 20, announced a large-scale sea maneuver would take place in the Mediterranean up until Jan. 29. None of the ships taking part in the drill were identified except to say that they came from Russia’s Baltic, North and Black Sea fleets. Our military sources report that the Russian deliveries consist mainly of armored vehicles, self-propelling recoilless guns, all-purpose vehicles for rough terrain and a variety of missiles and rockets for combat in built-up areas – all items clearly designed to outfit Assad’s new armored strike units. Tehran, for its part, is sending ammo, spare parts for Syrian tanks and artillery and missiles. According to those sources, the Syrian army plans to kick off its new offensive at Daraya, a small town near Damascus which is held by the Free Syrian Army.
Russia says it is not planning full Syria evacuation http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/22/us-syria-crisis-russia-idUSBRE90L0SM20130122? Jan 22, 2013
(Reuters) - Russia said on Tuesday it had started evacuating scores of citizens who wanted to leave Syria but denied the move was the start of a mass exodus. Two senior diplomats played down the significance of decision, announced on Monday, to send aircraft to bring Russians home almost two years after the start of the revolt against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad. "We are not talking about a full evacuation ... It is not planned that everyone will leave," Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Denisov said, according to state-run news agency Itar-Tass. "We are helping those who want to leave," Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on the sidelines of a meeting in Moscow between Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Lebanese President Michel Suleiman. Russia has been Assad's most powerful foreign protector, vetoing three U.N. Security Council resolutions aimed to push the president out or press him to end the bloodshed. But Bogdanov, President Vladimir Putin's Middle East affairs envoy, made waves in December when he was quoted as saying Syrian rebels could defeat Assad's forces and that Russia was making preparations to evacuate its citizens if necessary. Russian officials have tried to row back since then on the issue of the outcome of the fighting, which has escalated from a crackdown on protests to a civil war.
"At the beginning there were predictions (that the fighting would last) two to three months, four months," Bogdanov said on Tuesday. "The military-political situation could develop in various ways, but we think it (the conflict) may be prolonged." Russia's Emergencies Ministry said on Monday it was sending two planes to Lebanon on Tuesday to evacuate more than 100 citizens from Syria. Three buses carrying Russian citizens crossed the border from Syria into Lebanon on Tuesday, Itar-Tass reported. Some were expected to arrive in Russia late on Tuesday or early on Wednesday. The Emergencies Ministry said it had no information about any further flights. Russian officials say there are tens of thousands of Russian citizens in Syria, many of them Russian women married to Syrians and their children. Voice of Russia radio, citing Russian diplomats, said the total figure was more than 33,000, but officials at the Russian consulate in Damascus declined to comment. Moscow says it has no intention of propping up Assad but insists he must not be pushed from power by outside forces, such as the United Nations, and that his exit must not be a precondition for a peace deal. Report: Iran to deploy warships to Mediterranean, Red Sea http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east/report-iran-to-deploy-warships-to-mediterranean-red-sea1.494552 Jan 17, 2013 Iran is set to deploy its 24th fleet of warships to the Mediterranean and the Red Sea in a show of strength, Iran's Press TV quoted Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari as saying on Wednesday.
“The Navy’s 24th fleet of warships will patrol the north of the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden, Bab-elMandeb, the Red Sea, Suez Canal and the Mediterranean Sea for three months and will even sail as far as southeastern Asian countries,” Sayyari said. The deployment will show Iran's naval capabilities, Sayyari said, as well as demonstrating its ability to counter any threat against Iran's interests, adding that enhancing the Navy’s combat capabilities does not constitute a threat to any country in the region.
“We announce that we are able to provide security in the region with the help of all neighboring countries,” Press TV quoted the commander as saying. On December 30, Mehr news agency reported that Iran's navy was conducting a five-day sea maneuver near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, issuing dozens of warnings to foreign planes and warships that approached its forces. Mehr quoted Adm. Amir Rastgari, spokesman for the exercise, as saying that naval and air defense forces on 30 occasions warned off reconnaissance planes, drones and warships belonging to "extra-regional forces" that approached the drill, using a term that the Islamic Republic commonly employs to refer to the militaries of the U.S. and its allies.
The naval drill, dubbed "Velayat-91", was a show of strength in the face of mounting pressures over its disputed nuclear program, which the West suspects may be aimed at producing nuclear weapons. Iran denies the charges. Iran has threatened to close the strait over Western sanctions but has not repeated the threats lately. The strait is the passageway for one-fifth of the world's oil supply.
German Patriot missile troops arrive in Turkey http://www.dw.de/german-patriot-missile-troops-arrive-in-turkey/a-16536356 Jan 21, 2013
Germany has sent 240 soldiers to southern Turkey as part of a NATO mission using Patriot missiles to deter cross-border airstrikes from war-torn Syria. Units are also being provided by the Netherlands and the US. The main German contingent flew out of Berlin Sunday, headed for Kahramanmaras, 100 kilometers (62 miles) inside Turkey's border with Syria, where two German Patriot units are to be fully operational by early February. An advance Bundeswehr team is already on site and the missiles with launch equipment arrived by ship in Turkey on Monday. The deployment will number some 350 German soldiers, including medics. The NATO alliance agreed in early December to the stationing of two units from each of the three NATO partners at the request of its member Turkey after Syrian shelling along the border killed five Turkish civilians in October. NATO said it was a purely defensive move. Germany's Bundestag parliament approved the deployment - limited to one year - on December 14. Syria's allies, Iran and Russia, opposed the Patriot deployment, saying they feared that it could spark regional conflict that could draw in NATO. 'Deterrent effect' German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere said the Patriots should have a "deescalating effect" on Syria where forces of President Bashar Assad and rebels have clashed for nearly two years. "We learnt during the Cold War that deterrence can only function when in doubtful moments one is ready to use the weapons," de Maiziere told the Neuen Osnabr端cker newspaper on Saturday. "Should Syrian rockets be fired at Turkey then NATO will use the Patriot missiles," he said, adding, however, that he did not expect the German Bundeswehr troops to be involved in combat. Turkey's border with Syria is 900 kilometers (560 miles) long. The Dutch, German and US Patriots will be stationed around three southeastern Turkish cities. The PAC-2 version of the Patriot missile works by exploding close to an incoming missile. The more advanced PAC-3 hits the incoming missile directly.
Israel election: Netanyahu 'will not dismantle settlements' http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21075558 Jan 18, 2013 Israel's prime minister has said no Jewish settlements in the West Bank will be removed during his next term in office if he wins elections on Tuesday.
Benjamin Netanyahu told Israel's Maariv newspaper: "The days when bulldozers uprooted Jews are behind us, not in front of us." The future of Jewish settlements has been a key stumbling block in peace talks with the Palestinians. Polls predict Mr Netanyahu will comfortably win next week's polls. About 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since Israel occupied the area in 1967. The international community considers the settlements illegal, though Israel disputes this. 'Love for the land' Asked if he could promise no settlements would be dismantled during the next four years, Mr Netanyahu replied: "Yes." "We haven't uprooted any settlements, we have expanded them," he added. "Nobody has any lessons to give me about love for the Land of Israel or commitment to Zionism and the settlements."
Israel leader says Iran key issue, not settlements http://news.yahoo.com/israel-leader-says-iran-key-issue-not-settlements-120243288.html Jan 20, 2013 JERUSALEM (AP) — Two days before national elections, Israel's prime minister on Sunday shrugged off international criticism of Israeli settlement construction, charging instead that Iran's suspect nuclear program the real threat to regional security. Speaking to his Cabinet, Benjamin Netanyahu said he had told a group of visiting U.S. senators over the weekend that "the problem is not building ... The problem in the Middle East is Iran's attempt to build nuclear weapons ... This was, and remains, the main mission facing not only myself and Israel, but the entire world." Israel, the U.S. and much of the international community believe Iran may decide to produce nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies. Netanyahu, who has repeatedly spoken of the Iranian nuclear program throughout his four year-term and long before, has claimed credit for helping put the issue on the international agenda.
Would-be MK says he was joking about ‘blowing up’ Muslim shrine http://www.timesofisrael.com/center-left-slams-right-wingers-talk-of-blowing-up-muslim-shrine/ Jan 20, 2013 Center-left party leaders Tzipi Livni and Yair Lapid castigated Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party on Saturday as including dangerous extremists. They both focused on a 2011 speech in Florida by Americanborn Jeremy Gimpel, 14th on the Jewish Home list, in which he apparently rejoiced at the possibility of the Dome of Rock on the Temple Mount being blown up, and the cornerstone of a third Jewish Temple laid in its place.
Israel election_ Right-wing Bennett challenges Netanyahu.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPzE6eVIao8 Recent polling suggests Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is set to return to power in Tuesday's general election. But he faces some tough competition from the new leader of the right-wing Jewish Home party, Naftali Bennett, who is attracting support from voters.
Jeremy Gimpel - Habayit Hayehudy http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=f-NO4l8Gzj0#!
In his speech, part of which was broadcast on Channel 2 on Friday night, Gimpel urges his audience in a Florida church to imagine “the golden dome” — the 1,300-year-old Muslim shrine atop the mount, the site of the biblical Jewish temples in Jerusalem’s Old City. “Let’s say the dome was blown up and we laid the cornerstone of the temple,” Gimpel says with enthusiasm. He tells the Christian audience that they’d surely all rush to be in Israel if that happened. He adds that since he is being recorded, he is refraining from expressing more radical sentiments.
Assad's overthrow "red line" for Iran: supreme leader's aide http://news.yahoo.com/assads-overthrow-red-line-iran-supreme-leaders-aide-132415335.html Jan 20, 2013 DUBAI (Reuters) - A senior aide to Iran's supreme leader warned against the overthrow of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, saying his fate was a "red line", in one of the Islamic state's strongest messages of support for the Damascus government. Iran has steadfastly backed Assad's rule since an uprising against his rule began almost two years ago and regards him as an important part of the axis of opposition against arch-foe Israel. "If the Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is toppled, the line of resistance in the face of Israel will be broken," Ali Akbar Velayati, who is seen as a potential contender in Iran's June presidential election, said in an interview broadcast on Sunday. "We believe that there should be reforms emanating from the will of the Syrian people, but without resorting to violence and obtaining assistance from the (United States of) America," he told Lebanon's Al-Mayadeen satellite television. Asked if Iran sees Assad as a red line, Velayati said: "Yes, it is so. But this does not mean that we ignore the Syrian people's right in choose its own rulers." More than 60,000 people have died in the uprising against Assad, part of the Arab Spring protests that have swept aside four heads of state since 2011. Iran, a regional Shi'ite Muslim power which backs Lebanon's Hezbollah group, describes many Syrian opposition groups as "terrorists" who are backed by Western and Arab states. Assad follows an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam. Velayati blamed what he called "reactionary" Arab states for the violence in Syria and singled out Qatar, accusing it of bringing in fighters from Somalia and Afghanistan to help topple Assad.
Velayati said all parties linked to the crisis in Syria needed to negotiate. "Anyone who comes to the talks cannot negotiate on the table and support the armed elements, but must enter the negotiations and stop supporting the armed elements," he added. The Islamic Republic has sought international backing for its six-point plan to resolve the Syrian conflict. The plan calls for an immediate end to violence and negotiations between all parties to form a transitional government, but does not call for Assad to step down.
Syria rejects any talk of Assad's removal http://news.msn.com/world/syria-rejects-any-talk-of-assads-removal Jan 20, 2013 BEIRUT — Syria's foreign minister said on Saturday any discussion of President Bashar al-Assad's future was "unacceptable," a week after an international envoy said the president should not be part of a transitional government. Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem's comments showed the government has dug in against foreign pressure for a deal with the rebels fighting to topple Assad. "No one should dare discuss the position of the president ... this is unacceptable," he told Syrian state television in an interview. World powers have been deadlocked in their efforts to promote a transitional government they hope could prevent more bloodshed in the 22-month-old uprising against Assad, which has turned into a civil war that has killed more than 60,000 people. United Nations and Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who recently visited Assad and Syrian officials, told Reuters a week ago Assad should not be part of a transitional government. Syrian officials condemned his comments and said the mediator was biased toward governments supporting the rebels. Moualem said Assad's proposal earlier this month for a new parliament and constitution was the only way forward out of the conflict. He reiterated the embattled leader's argument that only "nationalistic opposition" could participate. Their definition excludes the armed opposition or any group that supports intervention in Syria's conflict, even though they are now the driving force of the rebel movement. The opposition, for its part, has rejected anything but Assad's removal. International talks in Geneva last June, led by Brahimi, proposed a transitional government but left open Assad's future. The proposal foundered after opposition backers like the United States insisted Assad not play a role, while Russia, Assad's main arms supplier, said foreign powers should not impose restrictions on the transition. SYRIAN INTERPRETATION OF GENEVA PLAN In his interview with Syria TV on Saturday, Moualem said Assad's proposed initiative for national dialogue was Damascus's only accepted reading of the Geneva transition plan. "There were a lot of ambiguities (in the Geneva proposal) and we were unable to clarify them. So this Syrian political program is our interpretation of the transitional period mentioned in the Geneva declaration," he said. "We will not discuss anything outside of this program." Assad's pitched a three-stage initiative earlier in January which calls for national dialogue, creation of a new constitution, and a new parliament, followed by national referendums. But the reforms are similar to previous ones made by the Assad, which the opposition rejected as superficial. Moualem said all those who wanted reform would accept it. "What more democracy could one want than this?" The current government, he said, would lay the groundwork for dialogue and transition over the next two to three months. He said efforts would continue despite daily clashes, which now regularly kills more than 100 Syrians per day. "The question is if the violence doesn't stop should we continue with the dialogue or not? I say we should continue." The minister also said that Syria's borders, a large portion of which have fallen into rebel hands, should be brought back under control by international efforts.
"This issue is actually something for the United Nations. They should come up with a mechanism, but what mechanism? It must be something that the Syrian government agrees to."
China's Buying A Fleet Of Russian Bombers Perfect For Taking On The US Navy http://www.businessinsider.com/china-buys-tu-22m3-david-cenciotti-the-aviationist-2013-1 Jan 20, 2013 Chinese websites are again reporting that Russia has agreed to sell Beijing the production line for the Tupolev Tu-22M3 bomber at a cost of $1.5 billion. Once in service with the Chinese Naval Air Forces the Tu-22M3 will be known as the “H-10″. The deal struck with Russia includes 36 aircraft: a batch of 12 followed by a second batch of 24 additional bombers. The Tu-22 will be employed in the maritime attack role and used to attack targets from low levels to avoid radar detection. The Tu-22 is a Soviet supersonic, swing-wing, long-range strategic and maritime strike bomber. It was developed during the Cold War and is among the closest things to a modern stealth bomber. However, it will get updated with indigenous systems and an extended range making it a significant threat to many latest generations weapon systems. That's even more true if the deal with Russia includes the Raduga Kh-22 (AS-4 ‘Kitchen’) long-range antiship missile, in which case this could be a significant change in the strategic balance of the region. The Tu-22 bombers will give China another tool to pursue the area denial strategy in the South China Sea and the Pacific theatre; a fast platform to launch cruise missiles, conventional or nuclear weapons in various regional war scenarios. In other words, a brand new threat to the U.S. Navy in the region.
Netanyahu hits back at Obama: I won’t capitulate http://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-hits-back-at-obama-i-wont-capitulate/ Jan 19, 2013 Days after President Barack Obama was quoted as castigating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for ostensibly turning Israel into a pariah nation and threatening its long-term survival, Netanyahu hit back Saturday night, declaring that if he were to capitulate to demands for a retreat to the pre-1967 lines, “we’d get Hamas 400 meters from my house.” Israelis can and will decide for themselves who best represents their interests, Netanyahu retorted in a Channel 2 interview. Alluding to Obama’s calls for an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement based on the pre1967 lines with land swaps, and a halt to building over the pre-67 lines in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said, “When they say, ‘Go back to the ’67 lines,’ I stand against. When they say, ‘Don’t build in Jerusalem,’ I stand against.” He added: “It’s very easy to capitulate. I could go back to the impossible to defend ’67 lines, and divide Jerusalem, and we’d get Hamas 400 meters from my home.” That would not happen under his leadership, he said.
“It’s easy to do, and they’d applaud,” he went on, presumably referring to the US-led international community. “They’d applaud just like they applauded the parties (in the 2005 Israeli government) that pulled out of Gaza. Those parties got applause, and we got a rain of rockets.” Netanyahu said that no matter what pressures were applied, “I have to stand up for our vital interestsW when speaking in Congress, and at the UN.” In a newspaper interview on Friday, Netanyahu also pledged not to dismantle any settlements in the next four years if he is reelected prime minister on Tuesday, as polls suggest he will be. The key focus of Obama’s reported criticism was Netanyahu’s settlement construction policies, which recently included plans for thousands of homes in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in response to the
Palestinian Authority’s successful gambit to gain nonmember observer state status from the UN in November.
“With each new settlement announcement, in Obama’s view, Netanyahu is moving his country down a path toward near-total isolation,” Goldberg added. “And if Israel, a small state in an inhospitable region, becomes more of a pariah — one that alienates even the affections of the U.S., its last steadfast friend — it won’t survive. Iran poses a short-term threat to Israel’s survival; Israel’s own behavior poses a long-term one.”
Palestinians: Apartheid state if Netanyahu wins http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4334311,00.html Jan 19, 2013 Mohammed Ishtayeh, a top aide to Palestinian PresidentMahmoud Abbas, told The Associated Press on Friday that his boss has been warning that ensuring Israel's future as a democracy with a Jewish majority will not be possible if settlement building continues and that Israel could end up with a Jewish minority ruling over an Arab majority. Ishtayeh warned Israel could end up with "an apartheid style state, similar to the one of former South Africa." "In the long run it will be against the Israeli interests because ... we Palestinians will be the majority and will struggle for equality," he said, adding that Abbas had met repeated this message in meetings with several Israeli leaders in the past year. Abbas "told them frankly there are Palestinians who are now calling for the one-state solution, because they no longer see the two-state solution viable," Ishtayeh said. Abbas's office said the Palestinian president spoke with multiple leaders in 2012 from Israel's centrist opposition, including lawmakers from the Labor, Kadima and Meretz parties, along with mayors, university professors and social activists. He said a mayor from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party was among them. Labor parliamentarian Daniel Ben-Simon told the AP he met with Abbas in Ramallah recently and was warned that time is running out for a two-state solution. "Abbas said the two state solution benefits both nations but he warned that if there is no two state solution within the next two or three years then it won't be practical anymore," Ben-Simon said. "Abbas told me explicitly ... the idea of a one state solution is escalating among Palestinians." Palestinian officials have been closely following the Israeli election campaign, fearing Netanyahu's ambitious plans for settlement construction over the next four years could prove lethal to their dreams of a state, Ishtayeh said. More than 500,000 Israelis already live in settlements that dot the West Bank and ring east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' hoped-for capital. Some in Abbas' circle are holding out hope that President Barack Obama will re-engage in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict, and, freed from domestic electoral considerations in his second term, get tougher with Netanyahu on settlements. Another aide, Nabil Shaath, suggested Europe is ready to jump in with its own peace plan if Washington is not. But short of trying to rally international opinion, it seems Abbas can do little if Netanyahu wins Tuesday. "We believe the two-state solution is still possible, but Netanyahu and his current and upcoming coalition are killing this solution, they...will be intensifying the buildings in the settlements, and they have no peace platform," Ishtayeh said. The conflict with the Palestinians has largely been missing from Israeli political discourse this campaign season in Israel. The centrist LaborParty, which led peace talks with the Palestinians in the past, has shifted almost exclusively to domestic concerns, such as growing income gaps. The Americans "keep talking about negotiations and the need to restart the negotiations," Shaath said. "But what is needed is for the US to pressure Israel to stop settlement activities and to go to real negotiations, to reach an agreement within six months."
Defiant Netanyahu set to confound critics
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/71832200-6176-11e2-957e-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=published_links %2Frss%2Fworld_mideast%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct#axzz2IT2TzMUf Jan 18, 2013 A monumental banner of Benjamin Netanyahu hanging on a bridge over a busy intersection in Tel Aviv shows the Israeli prime minister standing next to Jerusalem’s Western Wall with the slogan: “A strong Netanyahu, a strong government.” In the campaign leading up to Tuesday’s election, the forceful leader has presented himself as a bulwark of Zionist values and the sole guarantor of security in a region dangerously roiled by the Arab spring.
“I always keep a map with me at my office to remind me of where we live,” Mr Netanyahu said in an interview published on Friday that ran alongside a photo of him pointing to a large colour map of the Middle East. Two polls published on Friday showed Mr Netanyahu’s rightwing Likud Beiteinu bloc on course to form Israel’s next government as the largest party by far, with 32 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. If they are correct, the 63-year-old will become Israel’s longest-serving prime minister since David Ben-Gurion, its founding father. The expected victory will confound and frustrate his many critics in Israel and abroad. They argue Mr Netanyahu has deepened Israel’s isolation, forced mainstream political discourse to the right and buried hopes of peace with the Palestinians by embarking on an unprecedented expansion of settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, including nearly 200 units approved this week.
“Netanyahu has made the two-state solution harder for Israel by promoting projects that will need to be removed in order to have a viable Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel,” says Hagit Ofran of the Israeli leftwing activist group Peace Now. Mr Netanyahu’s premiership saw him push Iran’s nuclear programme to the top of the international agenda, with a speech at the UN last year in which he brandished a drawing of a bomb with a lit fuse, urging action if Tehran crossed a “red line” on its capability. Turkey, Israel’s biggest regional ally, severed ties after Israel’s fatal storming of a boat bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza in 2010. Tensions with the US, Israel’s closest ally, were laid bare this week with leaked comments attributed to President Barack Obama warning that the expansion of settlements was driving the Jewish state towards “near-total isolation” and reportedly saying: “Israel doesn’t know what its own interests are.”
“No one decides for the citizens of Israel,” Mr Netanyahu later told the rightwing Israel Hayom newspaper in response to the remarks. “I think that President Obama knows that the ones determining Israel’s vital interests are the citizens of Israel, and they will be the ones to choose who will protect those interests in the best possible way.” If, as the adage holds, every nation gets the government it deserves, a plurality – though not a majority – of Israelis on January 22 will re-elect a leader who reflects a defiant, introspective, pessimistic public mood. A poll published on Friday showed that while 52 per cent of Israelis favoured an independent Palestinian state, 62 per cent did not think a peace agreement was possible. Most Israelis see Likud as the most credible party on security.
“Netanyahu is not telling people, ‘We can get to a solution,’ ” says Rafi Smith, a pollster. “He’s telling them that because everyone around us hates us we have to be strong and hawkish in the way we look at life and at the security issue.” On the campaign trail this month, Mr Netanyahu visited Israel’s fortified border fence with Egypt, built to keep out what the government and some Israeli media call “infiltrators”, including African migrants. Last weekend he dispatched police to drag peaceful protesters from a mountaintop east of Jerusalem where his government plans to expand Jewish settlements, a move Palestinians and Israel’s allies warn would imperil a viable Palestinian state. The prime minister’s march towards re-election has been aided by a centre-left opposition that failed to unite behind a single leader. Labour, Israel’s second-biggest party, campaigned on economic issues, including soaring living costs, but Mr Netanyahu countered by pointing to Israel’s gross domestic product growth during the global downturn and its status as a “technological world power”. Despite the prime minister’s confidence, his Likud Beiteinu will probably have a weaker mandate after the election. The latest projection of 32 seats falls 10 short of the 42 the bloc now holds, meaning it will need to cobble together a broad coalition of rightwing and, say analysts, centrist parties.
“In his first term he had a narrow government, which made it difficult for him to fulfil his mandate,” says Israel Bachar, a political strategist who has advised Mr Netanyahu. “I think the political wisdom now is that every Israeli prime minister is trying to form a unity government or broad coalition, and he will do the same.” Whatever the make-up of the next coalition, Mr Netanyahu on Friday signalled to Israeli media that afterwards he would resist any peace initiative put forward by the Europeans that included a return of Jewish West Bank settlers to Israel’s pre-1967 boundaries – suggesting no retreat from the policies that have frayed Israel’s relations with its allies.
“I don’t deal in giving away concessions,” he told the Maariv newspaper. “Our record has proved this.” eof