Trump's tragic mistake
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Column-One-Trumps-tragic-mistake-489828
- By Caroline B. Glick -
Israel is the most immediate casualty of Trump's decision to embrace Abbas and the PLO, because the PLO is Israel's enemy.
By all accounts, US President Donald Trump is a friend of the Jewish state.
It is due to Trump's heartfelt support for Israel and the US-Israel alliance that his meeting Wednesday with PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas at the White House is most discouraging.
By meeting with Abbas, and committing himself to working toward achieving a peace deal between Abbas and his PLO and Israel, Trump undermines Israel.
He also undermines himself and his nation.
Israel is the most immediate casualty of Trump's decision to embrace Abbas and the PLO, because the PLO is Israel's enemy.
Abbas is an antisemite. His doctoral dissertation, which he later published as a book, is a Holocaust denying screed.
Abbas engages in antisemitic incitement on a daily basis, both directly and indirectly. It was Abbas who called for his people to kill Jews claiming that we pollute Judaism's most sacred site, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, with our "filthy feet." The Palestinian media and school system which he controls with an iron fist both regularly portray Jews as evil monsters, deserving of physical annihilation.
Abbas's PLO and his Palestinian Authority engage as a general practice in glorifying terrorist murderers. As has been widely reported in recent weeks, his PA and PLO also incentivize and underwrite terrorism to the tune of $300 million a year, which is paid, in accordance with PA law, to convicted terrorists sitting in Israeli prisons and their families.
And that's just the money we know about.
In welcoming Abbas to the White House, Trump chose to ignore all of this in the interest of fostering a peace deal between Israel and the PLO.
There are three problems with this goal. First, the peace process between Israel and the PLO is predicated on the notion that the US must pressure Israel to make massive concessions to the PLO. So simply by engaging in a negotiating process with the PLO, Trump has adopted an antagonistic position toward Israel.
The second problem is that Abbas himself has proven, repeatedly, that he will never support a peace deal with Israel. Abbas opposed Israel's peace offer at Camp David in 2000. He rejected then-prime minister Ehud Olmert's peace offer in 2008. He rejected then-president Barack Obama's peace offer in 2013. Since then, Abbas made no sign of moderating his position.
The third problem with Trump's decision to engage in peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians is that any hypothetical deal a hypothetical Palestinian leader would accept, would endanger Israel's very existence. So in the unlikely event that he reaches "the deal," his achievement will imperil Israel, rather than protect it.
Again, Israel isn't the only party harmed by Trump's decision to embrace the Palestinian dictator whose legal term of office ended eight years ago.
Trump himself is harmed by his move.
Trump moves is self-destructive for two reasons. First, he is setting himself up for failure. By positioning himself in the middle of a diplomatic initiative that will fail, he is guaranteeing that he will fail.
Trump's move also endangers the support of one of his key constituencies. Evangelical Christians in the US voted overwhelmingly for Trump in both the Republican primaries and in the general election. They rallied to his side due to Trump's pledge to appoint anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court, and to support Israel. By initiating a diplomatic process that pits his administration against Israel, Trump places that support in jeopardy.
Then there is the US itself.
Trump's engagement with the PLO harms US core interests in two ways. First there is the issue of coalition building.
Consider for a moment the other anti-American autocrat Trump reached out to this week.
Trump's recent invitation for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to visit him in Washington has been roundly criticized by Washington's foreign policy elite. Last year Duterte stunned Washington when he launched an expletive-filled denunciation of Obama and announced he is ditching the Philippines' longstanding alliance with the US in favor of an alliance with China.
Obama did nothing to convince Duterte to change course. While understandable from Obama's perspective, the fact is that the US needs to restore its alliance with Manila to secure its interests in the Far East.
The most acute threat the US now faces is North Korea's threat to launch a nuclear attack against America. Due to the passivity and hapless diplomacy of Trump's predecessors, Pyongyang may well have the means to carry out its threats.
To protect itself and its interests against North Korea, the US must build up and strengthen a coalition on allies in the Far East. The Philippines, with its strategic location and naval bases, is a key component of any US coalition against North Korea.
In the longer term, the US has a vital interest in restoring its alliance with the Philippines to contend with the rapidly rising strategic threat China poses to its interests.
Hence, despite the fact that Duterte is a potty-mouthed strongman and bigoted authoritarian, US interests require Trump to embrace him.
This then returns us to Abbas.
In contrast to Duterte, no US interest is served by embracing Abbas.
The US's chief challenge in the Middle East today is to form a coalition of states and actors that can help it stem Iran's rise as a nuclear-armed, terrorism- sponsoring regional power. The members of such a coalition are clear.
Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE stand united today in their opposition to Iran, its nuclear program, its support for Sunni and Shi'ite jihadists and terrorist groups, and its moves to establish an empire of vassals that spans westward through Iraq, Syria and Lebanon, southward to Yemen and eastward through Afghanistan.
The members of Iran's coalition include its Lebanese foreign legion Hezbollah, the Assad regime, the Shi'ite militias in Iraq, Hamas, other Sunni terrorist groups aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood and Yemen's Houthis.
By embracing the PLO, rather than build and strengthen the anti-Iranian alliance of Israel and the anti-Iranian, anti-Muslim-Brotherhood Arab states, Trump is tearing that alliance apart. In its place he is cobbling together an anti-Israel alliance comprised of Iran's allies in Qatar and to a degree in Turkey, the PLO, and at least passively, Hamas. This anti-Israel alliance is supported, grudgingly, by the Saudis, Egyptians and others who cannot afford to be seen abandoning the Palestinians.
In other words, by embracing the PLO, Trump is strengthening Iran and its supporters at the expense of Israel, the US-aligned Sunni states and the US itself.
Moreover, by embracing the PLO Trump is directly undermining the US's goal of defeating terrorism in two key ways.
First, Trump's move undermines congressional efforts to block further US funding of Palestinian terrorism. Today, the Taylor Force Act, which enjoys massive support in both houses of Congress, is making its way through Congress. The act will block US funding of the PA due to its payments to terrorists and their families.
On Wednesday Trump pledged to keep those funds flowing. This pits him against the Republican-controlled Congress. Congressional sources relate that the Taylor Force Act is just the first move toward holding the PLO accountable for "its monstrous behavior."
To embrace Abbas, Trump will either have to veto the Taylor Force Act and other congressional initiatives or insist on receiving a presidential waiver for implementing them. Such waivers, like the presidential waiver to block the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem, will ensure that US taxpayers will continue to incentivize Palestinian terrorism against Israel.
The second way Trump's decision to embrace the PLO harms the US's efforts to fight terrorism became clear this week with Hamas's new PR document. Hamas's new policy document departs not one iota from the Muslim Brotherhood group's devotion to the goal of destroying Israel.
In adopting its new document, which calls for Israel to withdraw, first and foremost, from Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, Hamas has adopted the PLO's wildly successful strategy of engaging in a dual campaign against Israel, waging terrorist war against Israel on the one hand while winning the support of the West on the other.
Hamas's document is a restatement of the PLO's 1974 phased plan for destroying Israel.
The PLO's plan - which it continues to implement today - involves accepting limited territorial gains from Israel. The territory that Israel cedes in each phase will not become a Palestinian state. Rather it will serve as a launching ground for a new war against Israel.
Under the phased plan, the PLO adopted the ruse that it is interested in territorial compromise with Israel, in order to advance its actual goal of destroying Israel piece by piece.
Trump's decision to become the fourth US president to welcome a PLO chief to the White House, and his apparent decision to continue funding the terrorist group are new evidence of the wild success of the PLO's strategy.
Just as the Hamas document neither contradicts nor abrogates its genocidal pledge to eradicate Israel boldly asserted in its covenant, so the PLO's phased plan and its subsequent embrace of the "peace process" neither contradicted nor superseded its founding charter that calls for Israel's destruction.
PLO leaders simply stopped discussing their founding documents in their dealings with gullible Westerners keen to win peace prizes.
In a similar fashion, the Western media received news of Hamas's PR stunt with respect and interest. Given the reception, Hamas has every reason to expect that in due time, its transparent ruse will open the doors of the chanceries of Europe and beyond to its terror masters.
In other words, by embracing Abbas and the PLO on Wednesday, Trump empowered Hamas. He signaled to Hamas - and to every other terrorist group in the Middle East - that to receive international support, including from his administration, all you need to do is say that you are willing to follow the PLO's dual strategy of engaging simultaneously in terrorism and political warfare and subterfuge.
There is no upside to Trump's move. It will not bring peace. It harms prospects for peace by empowering Abbas and his terrorist henchmen.
It will not strengthen Israel. It places Israel on a collision course with the Trump White House and undermines its regional posture.
It will not help the US to build a coalition to defeat Iran and its vassals. It subverts the coalition that already exists by embarrassing the Sunnis into siding with terrorists against Israel.
It does not advance the US war on terror. It empowers terrorists to kill Israelis and others by using US tax revenues to fund the PA, providing a blueprint for other terrorists to wage political war against the West and Israel.
And it harms Trump by alienating a key constituency and undermining his relations with Congress.
It is hard to see how Trump, now committed to this dangerous folly, can walk away from it. But to diminish the damage, a way must be found, quickly.
Congress, really? - Bill Wilson - www.dailyjot.com
President Donald Trump is not only fighting the radical and extreme left at every juncture of his presidency, he is fighting his own party, which controls congress. Case in point is the Congressional budget, which doesn't fund the border security expansion, does fund Planned Parenthood, and pushes the government to spending a trillion dollars. What gives? No wonder the radical left is rejoicing with the Republican budget. No wonder that Congress has one of the lowest public approval ratings in history. Does anyone in leadership there have any sense? Americans voted for less government, not increased government. The federal government doesn't need to be so big and irresponsible with our tax dollars.
Speaker Paul Ryan should be ashamed. Here he is running in his district on fiscal conservatism, yet he is advancing a big government, leftist and, quite frankly immoral, budget. There is no way that Planned Parenthood should receive one dollar of taxpayers' money. It is an abortion machine that ends the lives of hundreds of thousands of unborn each year. How can Paul Ryan or any other self-respecting elected leader justify the use of tax dollars to fund this organization of death? Draining the swamp should start right there in congress where the swamp creatures say one thing in their districts at home and do another once they get to the seat of power.
The Washington Post reports that Democrats believe they have set the stage to block Trump's agenda for years to come because Ryan and his henchmen worked with them on major concessions. In short, the Republicans are being out-played, out-smarted, and out-witted by their big government socialist Democrat rivals. The Post writes: "Democrats' lopsided victory on the five month deal, which is likely to be approved this week, means it will be very difficult, if not impossible, for the GOP to exert its will in future budget negotiations, including when it comes to Trump's 2018 budget blueprint." The Post blames conservative members of Congress who wouldn't budge, forcing Ryan to work with the Democrats to avoid a government shutdown if a budget is not passed.
So the big-spending Democrats got their Christmas list filled and more with the Ryan cave-in. Trump will get the blame. And the very thing that Americans wanted out of the last election gets drowned in the rising swamp. See how difficult changing from radicalism to pragmatism is? Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer said that his party had a strategy and it worked because Democrats and Republicans in Congress were closer to one another than Republicans were to Trump. Wow. Romans 16:18 says, "For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple." When you have a Congress full of people who are drunk on power and grafted to a political system, there is plenty of room for deception and destructive shenanigans,
Can Trump Survive Abbas?
http://www.prophecynewswatch.com/article.cfm?recent_news_id=1212
- Ben Cohen -
There was something of a motivational speaker about President Donald Trump as he welcomed Mahmoud Abbas, the gerontocrat at the helm of the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the last 12 years, to the White House May 3.
At their joint appearance, Trump was confident and beaming. Abbas, in turn, came across as eager and respectful. As Trump surely knows, to sell something you need to believe in it--and to look like you believe in it.
In tone and body language, both leaders pulled that off in their comments on prospects for a final Israeli-Palestinian peace deal, even if they came across as overly self-conscious in doing so.
On the face of it, there is no doubting Trump's personal investment in securing what he sees as the ultimate deal.
"Over the course of my lifetime, I've always heard that perhaps the toughest deal to make is the deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians--let's see if we can prove them wrong," Trump declared.
Whether his administration has the mettle and the patience to pull off a lasting agreement that will suffer many false starts along the way, during a process facing the implacable opposition of people far more devious than the congressional Republicans who derailed the repeal of Obamacare, remains very much an open question.
For his part, as he stood alongside Trump, Abbas gave the impression of playing ball more than he ever did than when President Barack Obama was in charge.
During Obama's second term, Abbas refused direct talks with Israel following the collapse of the 2013-2014 negotiations, pursuing a policy of sulky unilateralism that aimed to secure international recognition of a Palestinian state.
"We believe that we are capable and able to bring about success to our efforts because, Mr. President, you have the determination and you have the desire to see it come to fruition and become successful," Abbas gushed.
Perhaps he can afford to do so. In Mideast policy circles right now, there is much talk of the positive response Jason Greenblatt, Trump's international negotiations representative, has encountered among Palestinians. This, in turn, has made the Trump administration more amenable to entreaties from Arab leaders to bring Abbas into the heart of the negotiating process.
For now, this is paying off for Abbas, whose principal goal is to remain in power--which is, incidentally, the same principal goal of every autocrat on the planet, from Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro to Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. And he is showing he means it.
After taking full control of his Fatah faction last November, Abbas in recent weeks has moved against his Hamas rivals in Gaza, cutting salaries to Gazan PA employees and informing Israel the PA would no longer pay for the electricity the Jewish state supplies to Gaza (Hamas won't sign a separate supply deal since it doesn't recognize Israel.)
Protests against Abbas's government among West Bank Palestinians were met with a forthright response from stick-wielding Palestinian security officers.
This is the sort of resolve Abbas doubtless feels will impress Trump. For the same reason, Trump would do well to realize that what Abbas can actually deliver is rather limited in terms of both substance and endurance.
However desperately the president wants the elixir of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, he must also be aware of the profound sadness, anger and disbelief that pictures of the 1993 Oslo Accords, signed on the White House lawn, now evoke. A president as brand-aware as Trump surely wants to minimize the risk of the same outcome 20 years from now.
Hence, if any forthcoming peace process is to survive all the way to a written agreement, with Trump in the role, as he put it, of "mediator, facilitator, arbitrator," American officials need to confront the elephant in the room--namely, who succeeds Abbas.
Abbas is 82 years old. To give him his due, he's entitled to tell all those who have speculated about his health during the last decade that, as Mark Twain said first, "reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." But will Abbas be with us three years from now, or even one year? Any sensible policy plan will need to account for scenarios without Abbas.
The degree of opposition among ordinary Palestinians to Abbas right now is another indicator of how important the succession question is. Jordan's King Abdullah and Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi may have told Trump that Abbas is indispensable, but a rapidly growing majority of Palestinians can't wait to see the back of a man who was legally required to leave office eight years ago.
Abbas has not groomed a successor, and in this vacuum others have come to the fore. Most obviously, there is Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah terrorist currently jailed for life in Israel on five counts of murder. As of this writing, Barghouti is entering the third week of a hunger strike, and 1,600 other Palestinian prisoners are following his example.
Only Barghouti knows whether he is prepared to take his hunger strike as far as Bobby Sands, the famous Irish Republican Army prisoner who expired in a British jail in 1981 after 66 days without food--and whose death unleashed a torrent of international sympathy for the Republican Army cause.
But his more immediate calculations will have factored in the enormous popularity he enjoys among Palestinians. As the leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs terrorist group, Barghouti is in a much better position to build an internal consensus with Hamas, and other Islamist and leftist factions, than Abbas is.
Barghouti, then, casts a huge shadow over the succession question. So, collectively, does Hamas, which this week launched a charm offensive based on a new political document that, predictably, has been seized by several commentators as evidence of newfound "moderation."
Moderation, in this context, means Hamas might accept a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders if it doesn't also need to recognize Israel's legitimacy. It also means Hamas can earn compliments for clarifying its terror operations are directed against "Zionists," and not "Jews."
Still, whichever blind alley these positions pull the Palestinians down, it is likely to be more popular than any concessions made by Abbas on final status issues like Jerusalem, or the descendants of the 1948 Palestinian refugees.
Can Trump's enthusiasm for peace enable the emergence of a Palestinian leader who is willing to participate in good faith negotiations--as Abbas repeatedly says he is--but who is not tainted by corruption, political back-stabbing and illegal retention of power, as Abbas is?
It is a tall order, which is why the president may eventually need to settle for much less than a glittering peace-signing ceremony in the Rose Garden.
Putin & Trump discuss Iranians on Israel's border -
Israel was seriously dismayed Wednesday, May 3, when first reports reached Jerusalem about the telephone conversation between Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin Tuesday, during which Trump agreed to consider Putin's plan for "de-escalation zones" in Syria, in place of the American security zones proposal. The Russian president's plan includes the posting of Iranian military officers as co-monitors for those zones, one of which is to be located on the Syrian-Israeli border.
President Trump described the conversation as "Very good."
The four "de-escalation zones" proposed would be situated at:
1. The northwestern province of Idlib up to the Turkish border;
2. The central Syrian province of Homs (where also the Al-Shariat air base hit by US Tomahawks last month is located);
3. The East Ghouta suburb of Damascus (including also a big military airfield);
4. The Southern region along Syria's borders with Jordan and Syria.
The Russian president explained that the "guarantor countries" - i.e. Russia, Turkey and Iran - would appoint the monitors for the de-escalation zones.
debkafile's military and intelligence sources report that Israel was deeply concerned to discover that President Trump had nodded to Putin going forward with his plan, despite Iran's active involvement. He was even ready to send a US official for the first time to the fourth round of the Syrian peace talks between the Syrian government and opposition in Astana Wednesday, although this process is jointly sponsored by Russia, Turkey and Iran. Stuart Jones, acting assistant Secretary of State, was sent to attend the meeting in the Kazakh capital as an observer, thereby elevating the former American representation from ambassador..
This development caused Israeli disquiet on a number of grounds:
a) The Iranian monitors for the new zones will sit directly opposite the Israeli border. Notice has gone out to Washington and Moscow that the Israeli government will on no account countenance an Iran military presence along its border.
b) Israel also eyes with mistrust the possible deployment of Russian and Turkish offices along its border with Syria.
c) Declaring eastern Damascus a protected zone would obstruct Israel aerial operations for keeping Iranian air shipments of advanced weapons via Syria out of Hizballah's hands. Iran would be able to renew its shipments under full protection.
You can read more about the Russian and American "zones" for Syria in the coming issue of DEBKA Weekly out Friday, May 5.
d) There were also some misgivings in Israel about the way National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster characterized President Trump's approach to foreign policy, shortly before Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas arrived at the White House on Wednesday.
"The president is not a super-patient man," he said. He does not have time to "debate over doctrine, and instead seeks to challenge failed policies of the past with a businessman's results-oriented approach," McMaster said.
The trouble is that Middle East issues, such as the Syrian conflict and Israeli security, demand patience and rather more than a businessman's results-oriented approach, else they may lead to such potentially disastrous consequences as an Iranian military presence that is far too near and dangerous for Israel to countenance.
Abbas Misleads Trump: 'We Are Raising Our Children on a Culture of Peace'
- by Aaron Klein -
Standing alongside President Donald Trump at the White House today, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas attempted to whitewash decades of official PA incitement to violence and anti-Israel indoctrination that continue unabated until today.
"Mr. President, I affirm to you that we are raising our youth, our children, our grandchildren on a culture of peace," Abbas claimed. "And we are endeavoring to bring about security, freedom and peace for our children to live like the other children in the world, along with the Israeli children in peace, freedom and security."
Despite the PA's repeated use of maps that erase Israel and PA propaganda calling for the dismantlement of the Jewish state, Abbas claimed that the "Palestinian people recognize the state of Israel."
The PA's media and education arms incite against Israel regularly. Here are a few examples from Breitbart Jerusalem's coverage from the past two weeks alone:
- A leading Islamic cleric appointed by Abbas claimed in a PA TV sermon earlier this week that Israel is waging war against the Muslim world with drugs and "sex mania."
- Official PA TV broadcast a special edition of a TV show from the family home of a terrorist who murdered his Israeli employer 15 years ago, referring to him as a "hero" and a "source of pride for Palestine."
- On Abbas's Fatah TV, a Palestinian woman declared that the real meaning of "The Promised Land" is the place where Allah will fulfill his promise to exterminate all the Jews.
- Abbas's Fatah party published an anti-Semitic cartoon comparing Israel to the Islamic State terror group.
- An official PA daily newspaper published a cartoon last week depicting the message, "Water the soil with your blood."
During today's joint appearance, Trump lectured Abbas to end anti-Israel incitement.
Trump stated:
But there cannot be lasting peace unless the Palestinian leaders speak in a unified voice against incitement to violate - and violence and hate. There's such hatred. But hopefully there won't be such hatred for very long. All children of God must be taught to value and respect human life, and condemn all of those who target the innocent.
Trumps Ultimate Negotiation - Israel/Palestinian Peace Deal - By Sean Savage -
President Donald Trump and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas met for the first time at the White House Wednesday as Trump's nascent administration ventures down the road of its predecessors, making a fresh bid to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
"We want to create peace between Israel and the Palestinians. We will get it done. We will be working so hard to get it done," Trump said alongside Abbas during a press conference.
Later, in a luncheon with senior advisers, Trump expressed even greater confidence in achieving peace.
"It's something that, I think, is frankly maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years," he said.
Trump made a similar claim in an interview last week with Reuters.
"I want to see peace with Israel and the Palestinians," the president said. "There is no reason there's not peace between Israel and the Palestinians--none whatsoever."
In his remarks at Wednesday's press conference, Abbas flattered the American leader, expressing confidence in Trump's "great negotiating ability" and saying he looks forward to working with Trump to "come to that deal, to that historical agreement to bring about peace."
Yet Abbas also reserved some airtime for criticizing Israel, saying, "It's about time for Israel to end its occupation of our people and our land."
Abbas proceeded to lay out familiar negotiation parameters that most Israeli leaders have dismissed, including a Palestinian capital in eastern Jerusalem and borders based on the pre-1967 lines.
Grant Rumley, a research fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank, told JNS.org it was apparent in the language of Trump and Abbas how far apart the two leaders might be on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"I think it's noticeable that Trump referenced peace, while Abbas referenced the two-state solution," Rumley said.
"I think fundamentally, the two sides are going to have divergent views on just where they see this relationship going," he said. "Trump wants a deal, however that may look. Abbas wants the traditional two-state solution peace process."
Ahead of the Trump-Abbas meeting, senior administration officials, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo and international negotiations representative Jason Greenblatt, had what many viewed as surprisingly positive meetings with Palestinian officials in Ramallah, with Abbas telling Greenblatt he believes a "historic" peace deal is possible under Trump's guidance.
Meanwhile, in State Department documents published last month by Foreign Policy, the Trump administration is planning a 4.6-percent increase in American aid--amounting to $215 million for the fiscal year of 2018--to Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank and Gaza.
Direct Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have been stalled since 2014, when peace talks brokered by the Obama administration collapsed, marking the latest setback for American involvement in the Middle East peace process.
"Here we go again. The same old pretense that the Palestinians are morally equal with the Israelis, the same ignoring of Palestinian rejectionism, the same illusion that another signed agreement will end the conflict, another president believing he can succeed where his predecessors failed," Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum think tank, told JNS.org after Trump and Abbas met Wednesday.
During his meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in February, Trump expressed openness to Israeli-Palestinian conflict resolutions other than a two-state solution, breaking with American presidential administrations' longstanding exclusive support for two states.
"I'm looking at two state and one state, and I like the one that both parties like...I can live with either one," Trump said at the time.
Hamas's political maneuvering
Amid the Trump-Abbas meeting, Hamas has also been stepping up its political maneuvering. Earlier this week, the Gaza-ruling Palestinian terror group released a policy document indicating its willingness to accept the premise of a future Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders.
In an interview with CNN following the document's release, Hamas's outgoing political leader Khaled Mashaal said Trump has a "historic opportunity" for peace, mirroring Abbas's language.
"This is a historic opportunity to pressure Israel...to find an equitable solution for the Palestinian people," Mashaal said. "And it will be to the credit of the civilized world and the American administration to stop the darkness that we have been suffering from for many years."
Experts have dismissed Hamas's policy document as a smokescreen by the terror group to gain greater appeal among the international community and the Palestinian population.
"This is not a sign of moderation so much as a ploy to end the faction's international isolation," the FDD think tank said in a policy memo. "The other element of this new document is the internal Palestinian political angle. In acknowledging the 1967 borders and dropping its call for Israel's destruction, Hamas is making a play at the rival party Fatah's supporters."
Hamas drove Fatah forces loyal to Abbas, the latter faction's leader, out of Gaza in 2007. Since then, the Palestinian factions have waged an ongoing struggle as repeated reconciliation efforts failed.
The latest tensions between Abbas and Hamas flared Wednesday, when Abbas's PA announced it would stop paying for electricity Israel sends to Gaza, worth at least $11 million per month. Hamas leaders accused Abbas of attempting to "dry up" the terror group's financial resources.
The Israeli government also dismissed Hamas's stated policy changes, with Netanyahu spokesman David Keyes saying Hamas is "attempting to fool the world, but it will not succeed."
"Daily, Hamas leaders call for genocide of all Jews and the destruction of Israel," he said. "They dig terror tunnels and have launched thousands upon thousands of missiles at Israeli civilians. Schools and mosques run by Hamas teach children that Jews are apes and pigs. This is the real Hamas."
The double-edged sword of executive orders - Bill Wilson - www.dailyjot.com
Hebrews 4:12 says, "For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." Now don't get me wrong, because I am not saying that anything that men or politicians write is even close to the Word of God, but there are some earthly parallels with Presidential Executive Orders. Think about it. Executive orders cut for and against people, they are powerful and live to regulate, and they certainly reveal the thoughts and intents of the heart of those who write them. The ex-"president" often used executive orders to undermine the intent of the law; so does the current President.
For example, the intent of the heart of the ex-"president" with regard to border security resulted in an invasion of undocumented aliens and so-called "refugees" from terrorist sponsoring nations. He did so by ordering enforcement offices to "stand down." The result has been crime and destruction for many citizens. The current President has issued executive orders to reverse these policies, many of which have been overturned by leftist-appointed judges of the previous "president." The result, however, has been a 60% decline in illegal aliens coming to the United States. While those who agree with the ex-"president" claim racism and bigotry, the heart of the current President is to protect Americans first.
The ex-"president" refused to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, a law defining marriage only between one man and one woman. This led to a Supreme Court decision that allowed marriage to be redefined to include individuals of the same sex. He amended 30 executive orders of other presidents, changing their intent or purpose. The current President is busy issuing executive orders to undo those issued by his predecessor. President Donald Trump, for example, signed an executive order to nullify a previous order on climate change that nearly shut down the coal industry. Trump claimed that the executive order of his predecessor put people out of work with unnecessary regulation using unproven science.
The previous "president" used the Internal Revenue Service to hold his opponents in check by not approving non-profit statuses and Gestapo-like fear tactics for political speech by religious leaders. Trump is also undoing that. In conjunction with the National Day of Prayer, Trump will issue an executive order directing the IRS to use "maximum enforcement discretion" on enforcing IRS policies against religious leaders speaking about politics and candidates from the pulpit. This relaxes enforcement of a 1954 law called the Johnson Amendment that prohibited government-approved not for profit organizations to speak about politics or candidates. Executive orders, you see, can be used for good or for bad. They can uphold or undermine law. But one thing for certain, they reveal the intent of the heart of those who issue them.
The White House budget spin - Bill Wilson - www.dailyjot.com
Congress is passing yet another Continuing Resolution to kick the budget can down the road to September. It's a stop-gap measure that gives the socialists an early Christmas. It continues to fund Planned Parenthood, expands spending to a trillion dollars and gives the Democrats a very strategic position in getting all their tax and spend programs over the next several years. It's a risky political strategy on the part of Republicans and it is a win-win strategy by the socialist Democratic Party. In the worse kind of way, it is bad optics for a President who made promises to drain the swamp and put Americans first--That's the take from the media, but the White House has a different spin.
Vice President Mike Pence is making the rounds to explain why the Trump Administration is supporting the Continuing Resolution until September. A big part of it is defense spending-a $21 billion increase to fund improvements to an aging military that was left to decay under the previous administration. Pence told Rush Limbaugh, "I mean, in a very real sense this was a game-changer because we're just back to putting the safety, security, and the national defense of the American people first, and...I think this sends a decisive message to the world that under President Trump's leadership we're gonna make the strongest military in history even stronger."
Pence said the number one priority for this Continuing Resolution was to strengthen America's defense capabilities. He said, "to get Democrats in Washington, D.C., to agree to a $21 billion increase in a short-term budget bill - and, you know, the president's calling for the largest increase in military spending since the Reagan administration in the upcoming budget, I think is no small - it's no small accomplishment." Pence further said that the bill includes the biggest increase in border security in ten years and reminded Limbaugh that illegal immigration was down 60% since Donald Trump took office. Pence also said that the President signed a bill into law that allows states to block Planned Parenthood funding and that the socialist healthcare replacement bill defunds Planned Parenthood.
Pence also set expectations on repealing socialist healthcare. He said that it will take two phases: first, repealing the taxes and penalties of socialist healthcare, and second, to allow people to buy healthcare across state lines. Pence said the two steps will "sweep the final vestiges of it away." Pence reveals a strategy to achieve success while making the other side think they are winning. It's the art of the deal. We must discern whether these explanations are spin or truth. Certainly, Trump knows how to deal. But he is dealing with extraordinarily cunning swamp dwellers. Let us pray that the President be an Ephesians 4:!4 person: That is not "tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lay in wait to deceive." Pray that he has the wisdom of Solomon.
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