By Gregg Roman: At the end of 2017, the far-left Jewish advocacy group J Street will celebrate its 10th anniversary. At its inception, J Street promised to be the first political movement “to explicitly promote American leadership to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” However, the organization’s pursuit of this goal was an abject and damning failure.
Circumstances couldn’t have been more amenable toward J Street’s lofty goal. Within 14 months of J Street’s inception, Barack Obama swept to power in elections that also left both houses of Congress controlled by Democrats.
By Jonathan Ferziger: What’s the capital of Israel? Israelis say it’s Jerusalem, and indeed the prime minister’s office is there, as well as the parliament, the highest court and most government ministries. No other country, however, recognizes Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. It’s considered disputed territory, subject to negotiation with the Palestinians. All the embassies in Israel are in Tel Aviv, 70 kilometers to the west. So Israelis perked up when Donald Trump, during the U.S. presidential campaign, vowed to relocate the American embassy to Jerusalem, a move that would lend legitimacy to their claim to the city. Israelis have heard this promise from presidential candidates before, only to see it broken after the new president took office. Yet the past is an uncertain guide when it comes to predicting what Trump will do.
1. What’s so special about Jerusalem?
Jerusalem is sacred to followers of the three major monotheistic religions. It is home to the Temple Mount, the holiest site in the world for Jews, who come from around the world to pray at the Western Wall, the last remaining supporting wall of the biblical temple. Muslims revere the same plateau as the Noble Sanctuary, where the Al-Aqsa mosque stands as the third-holiest place in Islam, after Mecca and Medina. Not far away in Jerusalem’s Old City is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which Christians revere as the site of Jesus’s tomb. When the United Nations voted in 1947 to divide British-ruled Palestine into separate Arab and Jewish states, it didn’t want either side controlling Jerusalem, due to its religious resonance. Instead, it set aside the city as an international zone to be administered by a UN council of trustees.
By Peter Baker and Mark Landler: President Trump and his advisers, venturing for the first time into the fraught world of Middle East peacemaking, are developing a strategy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that would enlist Arab nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt to break years of deadlock.
The emerging approach mirrors the thinking of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who will visit the United States next week, and would build on his de facto alignment with Sunni Muslim countries in trying to counter the rise of Shiite-led Iran. But Arab officials have warned Mr. Trump and his advisers that if they want cooperation, the United States cannot make life harder for them with provocative pro-Israel moves.
The White House seems to be taking the advice. Mr. Trump delayed his plan to move the United States Embassy to Jerusalem after Arab leaders told him that doing so would cause angry protests among Palestinians, who also claim the city as the capital of a future state. And after meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan last week, Mr. Trump authorized a statement that, for the first time, cautioned Israel against building new West Bank settlements beyond existing lines.
By David P. Goldman: Iran is dying, and no one knows it better than Vladimir Putin, who worked successfully to raise Russia’s fertility rate, unlike Iran’s theocrats, who have failed to persuade Iranians to have children.
Russia’s relationship to the only Shi’ite state of significance is less an alliance than a dalliance, motivated by Moscow’s fear of Sunni radicalism and its desire to establish a strategic beachhead in the Middle East.
But Iran is a depreciating asset whose value will disappear within a 20-year horizon. The question is not whether, but at what price Russia will trade it away.
By Robert Farley: The technology that binds all of these other systems together is the Israeli soldier. Since 1948 (and even before) Israel has committed the best of its human capital to the armed forces. The creation of fantastic soldiers, sailors, and airmen doesn’t happen by accident, and doesn’t result simply from the enthusiasm and competence of the recruits. The IDF has developed systems of recruitment, training, and retention that allow it to field some of the most competent, capable soldiers in the world. None of the technologies above work unless they have smart, dedicated, well-trained operators to make them function at their fullest potential.
Since 1948, the state of Israel has fielded a frighteningly effective military machine. Built on a foundation of pre-independence militias, supplied with cast-off World War II weapons, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have enjoyed remarkable success in the field. In the 1960s and 1970s, both because of its unique needs and because of international boycotts, Israel began developing its own military technologies, as well as augmenting the best foreign tech. Today, Israel boasts one of the most technologically advanced military stockpiles in the world, and one of the world’s most effective workforces.
Here are five of the most deadly systems that the Israeli Defense Forces currently employ–the foundation of why Israel is a military power no one wants to mess with.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu at Google’s Tel Aviv office
By Daniel Shapiro and Scott Lasensky: When President Trump meets Prime Minister Netanyahu next week at the White House, the two are expected to discuss Iran, Syria and Israeli-Palestinian issues, including the Trump campaign promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and what the White House recently called “settlement activity.”
But if Trump would like to generate even closer ties between the two countries and greater prosperity for Americans and Israelis, he should consider a public pledge to move faster toward renewing the U.S. Free Trade Agreement with Israel and helping Israelis qualify for visa-free travel to the United States.
By Caroline Glick: The PLO is disoriented, panicked and hysterical. Speaking to Newsweek this week, Saeb Erekat, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas’s chief conduit to Israel and the Americans, complained that since President Donald Trump was sworn into office, no administration official had spoken to them.
“I don’t know any of them [Trump’s advisers]. We have sent them letters, written messages. They don’t even bother to respond to us.”
Donald Trump is already looming large over some of the most contentious issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians, emboldening some Israeli officials to take moves that threaten to reignite violence and make the prospect of reviving peace efforts ever more dim.
Two days after his inauguration, the Jerusalem municipality approved delayed plans to build hundreds of apartments in the eastern sector of the city that Palestinians claim for a future capital. Mayor Nir Barkat, echoing the relief of many Israeli officials, declared the dawn of a “new era” following eight years of “pressure from the Obama administration” to freeze settlement building it saw as hindering Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking.
By Alex Fishman: When thousands of members of “The Young” movement marched last Thursday on the streets of Jabalia in the Gaza Strip, chanting the battle cry of the Tahrir Square, “Al sha’ab yureed iskat al-nizam” (the people want the fall of the regime), they attracted the attention of quite a few people in the Israeli defense establishment. There was a feeling that we are witnessing a rerun of the Arab Spring, threatening the Hamas regime this time.
This demonstration was the highlight of about 10 popular protests held in the strip in the past month, since the heavy cold wave began. It was the biggest popular protest since Hamas rose to power about 10 years ago, and it was held on the backdrop of the deteriorating living conditions. Palestinian journalists have been referring to this protest as ‘The Electricity Intifada,’ and it has already generated symbols: A Palestinian who set himself on fire in Jabalia outside the offices of a charity organization, and three babies who died of hypothermia.
By Mitchell Rocklin: “F– – – the Jews, they don’t vote for us anyway.”
The second part of this statement—uttered in 1992 by James Baker, then the Republican secretary of state—was as accurate as the first part was insulting. Jews are indeed overwhelmingly supportive of the Democratic party, and their record in this respect is unbroken all the way back to the early decades of the 20th century. To this day, and despite the party’s growing coldness toward the state of Israel—and the Republicans’ contrasting warmth—American Jews have barely budged from their Democratic allegiances, most recently giving fully 70 percent of their vote to Hillary Clinton in November’s presidential election, just about the same number they gave to Barack Obama in 2012 (though below the 78 percent they gave him in 2008).
How long can this continue? Much ink has been spilled over that question. Only lately, though, has the glimmer of an answer, however partial, begun to manifest itself. Especially in the aftermath of November’s presidential balloting, a number of observers pointed to the voting patterns of, specifically, Orthodox Jews—a group that, according to the Pew Report, identifies with Republicans over Democrats by a margin of two to one. It is true that Orthodox Jews constitute a mere 10 percent of the American Jewish population, but because of their significantly higher fertility, especially when contrasted with the below-replacement birthrates among other, larger sectors of the community, they are on pace to double their share every generation.
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