Jeff Danziger lives in New York City and Vermont. He is a long time cartoonist for The Rutland Herald and is represented by Counterpoint Syndicate. He is a recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at DanzigerCartoons.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday declined to take the bait when Donald Trump invited him to attack Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Trump hosted Netanyahu and other foreign leaders on a conference call in the Oval Office to announce "normalization of relations," according to the White House.
"Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi? Sleepy Joe, do you think he would have made this deal somehow?" Trump asked Netanyahu.
Instead of attacking Biden, Netanyahu instead responded, "We appreciate the help for peace from anyone in America."
It is not traditional for the U.S. president to ask foreign leaders to attack his political rivals, especially not while operating in the Oval Office. But Trump has repeatedly used traditionally nonpartisan functions of the government to act in service of his own political interests.
From an Oct. 23 press availability:
DONALD TRUMP: Do you think Sleepy Joe could have made this deal, Bibi? Sleepy Joe, do you think he would have made this deal somehow? I don't think so.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Well, Mr. President, one thing I can tell you is we appreciate the help for peace from anyone in America. We appreciate what you've done enormously.
TRUMP: Yeah.
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Jerusalem municipality, undeterred by a U.N. anti-settlement resolution, is due to consider on Wednesday requests for construction permits for hundreds of new homes for Israelis in areas that Israel captured in 1967 and annexed to the city.
Israel is still fuming over the resolution approved last Friday by the United Nations Security Council that demands an end to settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Israel has also described as “shameful” the decision of its long-standing ally the United States to abstain in the vote rather than wield its veto. The Obama administration is a strong opponent of the settlements.
An agenda published by Jerusalem City Hall listed applications for at least 390 new homes whose approval looks certain to intensify international and Palestinian opposition to the Israeli settlement-building.
The Municipal Planning and Construction panel usually meets on Wednesdays and the permit requests were filed before the Security Council resolution.
Settler leaders and their supporters have been urging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to step up construction in East Jerusalem, accusing him of having slowed its pace last year because of international pressure.
Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported on Tuesday that 1,506 housing units for Israelis have already been approved in East Jerusalem this year, compared with 395 in 2015.
The Jerusalem municipality said in a statement on Tuesday it would “continue to develop the capital according to zoning and building codes, without prejudice, for the benefit of all residents”.
Israel considers all of Jerusalem its united capital, a stance not supported by the international community. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of a state they seek to establish in the occupied West Bank and in the Gaza Strip.
Some 570,000 Israelis live in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, in settlements that most countries consider to be illegal and the United States terms illegitimate. Israel disputes that, citing historical, political and Biblical links to the areas, as well as security concerns.
The new U.N. resolution changes nothing on the ground between Israel and the Palestinians and will probably be all but ignored by the incoming U.S. administration of Donald Trump.
However, Israeli officials fear it could spur further Palestinian moves against Israel in international forums.
A U.S. official said after Friday’s vote that Washington’s decision to abstain was prompted mainly by concern that Israel would continue to accelerate settlement construction and put a two-state solution of the conflict with the Palestinians at risk.
The U.S.-backed peace talks have been stalled since 2014.
(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis; Editing by Gareth Jones)
IMAGE: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at his Jerusalem office December 25, 2016. REUTERS/Dan Balilty/Pool
Washington (AFP) — U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met for over two hours with Palestinian negotiators for “constructive” talks on future relations with Israel, a U.S. official said.
The talks come just days after Israel announced its biggest grab of Palestinian land since the 1980s, and as a new showdown looms at the United Nations with the increasingly frustrated Palestinians planning to push a resolution setting a three-year deadline to end the Israeli occupation.
It was Kerry’s first face-to-face talks with Palestinian negotiators since Washington found itself sidelined from the Gaza ceasefire talks in July, when the top U.S. diplomat failed to broker a truce in the war between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip.
“Kerry met with Saeb Erekat and Majid Faraj for about two hours this afternoon,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.
“It was a constructive conversation that covered a range of issues, including Gaza, Israeli-Palestinian relations, and recent developments in the region,” she said, adding they had agreed to talk again in coming weeks.
Kerry had also spoken Tuesday by phone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when he expressed his concerns about new Israeli plans to confiscate some 400 hectares (988 acres) of land in the occupied West Bank for settlement building.
The United States has called on Israel to reverse the decision.
Kerry’s high-profile bid to hammer out a full peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinian Authority collapsed spectacularly amid bitter recriminations in April, despite more than a year of shuttle diplomacy.
State Department officials told AFP the Palestinians had requested Wednesday’s meeting “to brief the secretary on current Palestinian plans on the way forward and next steps in Gaza.”
More than 2,100 Palestinians were killed in Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip, nearly 70 percent of them civilians, which ended last week with an open-ended ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militant groups, brokered by Egypt.
The two sides are supposed to meet soon in Cairo for negotiations on a long-term truce, but no date has been announced yet for the start of the talks.
The Palestinians now intend to seek a U.N. Security Council resolution setting a three-year deadline for ending the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
But the resolution will likely be voted down by a veto from the United States which has long opposed unilateral moves by the Palestinians to seek statehood.
AFP Photo/Mahmud Hams
Interested in world news? Sign up for our daily email newsletter!
The National Memo is a political newsletter and website that combines the spirit of investigative journalism with new technology and ideas. We cover campaigns, elections, the White House, Congress, and the world with a fresh outlook. Our own journalism — as well as our selections of the smartest stories available every day — reflects a clear and strong perspective, without the kind of propaganda, ultra-partisanship and overwrought ideology that burden so much of our political discourse.
