Peace Now Director General Yariv Oppenheimer briefed APN on October 13 on the recent confrontation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, on settlement activity in East Jerusalem, and on Peace Now's role as Israel's gatekeeper of the two-state solution vision. Note: Due to technical difficulties, the first few minutes of the briefing have been cut off.
--From a letter by over 300 Israeli figures, including former diplomats and minister, sent to the British Parliament ahead of its non-binding vote today on Palestinian independence.**
APN's daily news review from Israel
Friday October 10, 2014
Quote of the day:
"The Israeli government is living a contradiction. In public, when it faces public opinion and rightist
voters, it curses the Palestinian reconciliation government. But under the counter, quietly, it cooperates with
it."
--Haaretz reporter Barak Ravid on yesterday's Palestinian unity government cabinet meeting - the first held in Gaza
since Hamas got power in the Strip in 2007.**
Please join us for a briefing call with Yariv Oppenheimer, the Director of Israel’s Peace Now movement, on Monday,
October 13, at 11:00 AM Eastern Time.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a rough meeting in the Oval Office on October 1st.
President Obama chided him for Israel’s settlement activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Right after the meeting, administration officials provided a glance into what Netanyahu probably heard from Obama. New settlement activity “will only draw condemnation from the international community, distance Israel from even its closest allies, poison the atmosphere not only with the Palestinians, but also with the very Arab governments with which Prime Minister Netanyahu said he wanted to build relations,” said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
Netanyahu was fuming as he left the White House for New York, where he told Israeli reporters who he thinks is responsible for the rocky meeting with President Obama.
NOTE: No News Nosh Thursday.
-The drop in Israeli weapons exports last year. **
Approving new settlement construction on the eve of his meeting with Obama wasn’t enough. Blaming Peace Now for the White House’s criticism of settlement expansion wasn’t enough either. Prime Minister Netanyahu just had to stick a finger in President Obama’s eye by accusing him of being un-American.
White House fumes at PM’s 'American values' statement that echoes malicious rhetoric of birthers and other crazy Obama-haters.
Chemi Shalev
You want to give Benjamin Netanyahu the benefit of the doubt. You prefer to assume that he knew not what he was doing, that he fell in love with his own wisecrack, as he is wont to do, and simply didn’t think things through. You want to believe that we have not reached the stage when the Israeli prime minister would wantonly detonate a stink bomb in an American president’s face, as if he couldn’t care less.
Nonetheless, you have to wonder. You can say a lot of things about Netanyahu: Stupid isn’t one of them. So how could have gone down the route of declaring White House criticism of his government’s moves in East Jerusalem “un-American”? How could he have ignored the multiple numerous alarm bells and whistles that should have warned him to think twice and even thrice before taking this road? How could he have exposed himself to the kind of withering reaction issued by the White House yesterday, summed it up in one loaded little word: “odd.”