Israel bracing for ‘more tense and Islamist’ region in the coming year
(JNS.org) Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Director of Military Intelligence Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, in his annual intelligence assessment to Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz and the IDF general staff, warned on Monday that Israel will face an increasingly volatile region in the coming year, one that is “more tense and Islamist in nature than before,” Israel Hayom reported. According to Kochavi, the area is “experiencing a series of crises, both regional and internal, which add to the overall sensitivity of the players involved and could lead to unexpected flare-ups.” Kochavi said the annual intelligence assessment “is the result of a long and thorough process of research and analysis.” “The work is led by the research unit and utilizes all of the existing intelligence-gathering bodies in the intelligence branch, as well as ones created in the passing year,” he said
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Arab League head: Egypt should amend peace treaty with Israel
(JNS.org) Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby told The Cairo Review of Global Affairs in an article published this week that Egypt should amend its 1979 peace treaty with Israel because the latter is violating the accords with respect to the Palestinians. Elaraby, 77, was appointed secretary-general in July 2011, after a brief stint as Egyptian foreign minister in the first government of the post-Hosni Mubarak era. He said the Egypt-Israel peace treaty should be amended on the security front as well as the commercial area, Israel Hayom reported. “People in Egypt under the former regime have added things which are not in the treaty,” he said. “People say Camp David requires Egypt to sell gas to Israel. Gas was not there at that time. Camp David and the treaty speak about the right of Israel to bid for oil which Egypt does not need. But people think that it contains obligations on Egypt to sell oil to Israel, which is not true.”
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Abbas to proceed with UN statehood bid
(JNS.org) At a meeting with Israeli Members of Knesset, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas told MK Zehava Gal-On (Meretz) that he will proceed with plans in September to ask the UN General Assembly for recognition of a Palestinian state for the second year in a row, the Jerusalem Post reported. Despite Abbas’s plan to go to the UN again, he insists that he still supports a two-state solution, telling the Israeli MK, “We want to live peacefully next to Israel. The decision to go to the UN is not an alternative to the peace negotiations, but an option for preserving the two-state solution.” Last year, Abbas caused an international uproar and drew condemnation from the U.S., Israel and some European states over a unilateral bid to have the UN admit Palestine (West Bank and Gaza) as a member state. Ultimately, Abbas’s initiative failed, as he was unable to garner the necessary votes in the UN Security Council.
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Israel and Jordan prevent pro-Palestinian activists from entering West Bank
(JNS.org) Israel and Jordan prevented around 100 pro-Palestinian activists from entering the West Bank at the Allenby Bridge border crossing on Sunday, Israel Hayom reported. Traveling on buses, the activists claim they were attempting to deliver school supplies to Palestinian students in Bethlehem. However, the Israeli Ministry of Defense described the activists as “provocateurs and known troublemakers” and the event as a “failed publicity stunt.” The ministry said that there are no restrictions on delivering school supplies to Palestinian students and that they are other options to do so. This event is the latest in a series of attempts by pro-Palestinian activists to enter Israel. Last spring activists attempted a “flightilla” to board planes and fly to Israel, but most were prevented from boarding in their country of origin.
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Petition rallies support for findings on anti-Israel bias at California state schools
(JNS.org) The pro-Israel education and advocacy organization StandWithUs has garnered more than 1,500 signatures on a petition urging the University of California (UC) system’s President’s Advisory Council on Campus Climate to accept a report whose findings reveal that anti-Israel bias on UC campuses negatively impacts Jewish students and faculty members. Alice Huffman, president of the California NAACP, and Richard Barton, national education chair of the Anti-Defamation League, conducted the report on California state schools titled “University of California Jewish Student Campus Climate Fact Finding Team Report and Recommendations.” According to StandWithUs, the report urges the UC system “to develop model institutional protocols that will ensure that bigotry, intimidation, and undue bias are marginalized, that Jewish students, faculty, and community members’ rights to free speech are protected, and that the university sets clear guidelines for responsible, reasonable debate.” The StandWithUs petition counters a petition launched by the UC Ad Hoc Committee on Jewish Campus Climate and endorsed by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an organization some in the Jewish community consider to be anti-Israel due to its support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The Ad Hoc Committee on Jewish Campus Climate contends in its petition that the report “distorts campus life, and its recommendations threaten free speech on campuses.” The UC President’s Advisory Council is set to decide in late October whether or not to accept the report’s findings.
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Preceding reprinted with permission from JNS report