By Tomorrow We Might Know The Beginning
Of Plans that will set the stage for the Ending
Of Prophesied Finish of the Age of the Gentiles!
Today’s Meeting Between Obama and Net any
ahu
Is Previewed By The Excerpt From The UK Guardian,
It Gives an Excellent Assessment of What’s at Stake!
What is decided cannot lead to true Middle East Peace,
But it is likely to open the door to how a false peace Will!
There’s no HUMAN plan that can change what’s Prophesied
And Prophecy Indicates ONLY Jesus Christ Brings True Peace!
May 18, 2009
http://www.tribulationperiod.com/
I, like many of you, anxiously await the outcome of the historic meeting of the two new leaders of America and Israel. We may finally be able to know the “how” of how the long awaited false peace, the time of false “Peace and safety,” will come on the turbulent Middle East, a false peace that will be broken by “sudden destruction” upon those who proclaim it. Believers cannot “know” for sure the exact time it will come, but they should be able to know the general time of “sudden destruction” by events which lead up to it, for God did not plan to keep them in “darkness” about it. The meeting later this morning is likely to shed some light into the darkness of the “how” it will happen.
I Thessalonians 5:3,4 – For when they shall say, Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape. [4] But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief.
The meeting and the players are graphically outlined in the excerpt which follows.
Begin The Observer Excerpt Extracted from the UK Guardian via World News
Obama makes his bid for Middle East peace
Tomorrow the Israeli prime minister meets the US president at the White House. The following week Obama will also meet the Egyptian and Palestinian leaders. America has signalled it wants solutions in the Middle East, but are the president’s guests ready to make concessions?
Jason Burke and Ewan MacCaskill in Washington and Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem
The Observer,
Sunday 17 May 2009
Late tomorrow morning President Barack Obama will welcome Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, into the Oval Office at the White House. Leave five minutes for the pleasantries, 30 seconds for the coffee to be poured, and 84 and a half minutes will remain to kick-start what is perhaps the most ambitious bid to bring peace to the Middle East for nearly a decade.
Once again, true to his campaign motto of “Yes we can”, Obama is boldly plunging in where others fear to tread. May will see an extraordinary series of meetings for the new president: Netanyahu will be followed to the White House by President Mubarak of Egypt and Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian National Authority. Other regional allies will be consulted, envoys dispatched, world leaders called and cajoled. And then, in the first week of June, Obama will fly to Egypt, where he will deliver a historic speech aimed not just at outlining his own strategy for bringing peace to the Middle East, but also at reframing America’s entire relationship with the Muslim world, so damaged during recent years.
The contrast with hi s pre
decessors could hardly be greater. President Bush was committed to isolating Iran while fighting in Iraq, and gave almost unconditional support to Israel; Obama has elected to engage with Iran, is withdrawing from Iraq, and has signalled a very different approach to Israel. After the radical change that Bush sought in the Middle East comes a new bid to alter the political map of one of the world’s most dangerous and critical strategic zones.
There is a sense of urgency and commitment – and an equal desire to avoid getting bogged down. According to Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Washington is looking for “real results”. David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, returned to London from talks with Hillary Clinton, his American counterpart, saying that the administration was “throwing itself into the peace process”. Obama is reported to have plunged into an in-depth study of the history and geography of the issue, reading up on key issues such as Jewish settlements, the Golan Heights, the right of return of Palestinian refugees and the security threat to Israel. Tony Blair, the Middle East envoy for the “quartet” of the US, the European Union, the UN and Russia, is convinced that something important is about to happen; he told the US Senate foreign affairs committee last week that Obama can “reinvigorate the credibility of the road to peace” as he stood in front of a map pointing a laser pen at strategic locations in the territories occupied by Israel after the 1967 Six-Day War, which could feature in negotiations.
Though Blair described himself as “optimistic”, few doubt that the obstacles remain enormous. Chief among them may be the president’s ability to devote the attention necessary to the impossibly complicated issues. Obama and his team are already fighting a host of foreign policy fires bequeathed them by the Bush administration – in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq – while wrestling with massive economic problems. “Obama is fighting on a huge number of fronts and the extent to which he can actually deliver on them has got to be doubtful,” said Nicholas Pelham, the Jordan-based Middle East expert for the International Crisis Group thinktank.
And though the departure of Bush was greeted with a regional sigh of relief, Obama’s charm and presence may not be as effective in the hard-bitten world of the Middle East as elsewhere.
“Certainly goodwill and charisma will take him some distance but not far, especially not in the Middle East. I think any honeymoon he had is over,” said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a specialist at the conservative Foundation for Defence of Democracies in Washington.
On the ground, there is deep scepticism.
For Efraim Inbar, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, “American foreign policy has always been characterised by sudden bursts of optimism and naivety”, and few predict a breakthrough.
First, there is massive “negotiation fatigue”; local populations are now “allergic to so-called peace processes”, in the words of one local analyst with long experience of brokering agreements between hostile parties.
Secondly, the Palestinians are split between the relative moderates of the West Bank and the extremists of Hamas, the Islamist armed organisation in the Gaza Strip, so a united response to any putative Israeli negotiating offer is unlikely. The violence of the war fought in Gaza earlier this year by the Israelis in a bid to stop missile attacks by Hamas militants has further embittered an atmosphere already poisoned by years of violence and further polarised the region. The rockets fired into Israel caused deaths, shock and anger. Hamas is still committed by its charter to the destruction of the state of Israel, and the popularity of Abbas, the key moderate interlocutor on the Palestinian side for Obama, is waning.
And everywhere economic hardship and a sense of humiliation are as deep as ever.
“The situation on the ground is not very conducive to progress currently,” admitted Tamara Cofman Wittes of Washington’s Brookings Institution thinktank. ” On both sides there are very weak leaders and a breakdown of trust.
The Palestinians cannot offer the Israelis anything at the moment.”
Nor is there much sign that the Israelis are keen to be offered much. “There is great scepticism about the Palestinians being able to reach any agreement and implement it,” said Inbar at Tel Aviv.
Though centrists actually won recent elections, it was Netanyahu, known for his tough stance on security issues, who was able to form a government in Israel with a solid bloc of right-wing support in the Knesset, the Israeli parliament. Netanyahu, who appointed a prominent nationalist as a foreign minister, has not once spoken of an independent Palestinian state since taking power, despite this being the basis of almost all peace negotiations for years. Instead, he insists that Iran and its nuclear ambitions are by far the most pressing regional issue and should be the focus of efforts for now.
He suggested to Egypt’s Mubarak and to Jordan’s King Abdullah in meetings last week that the best thing would be more investment in the Palestinian economy and more training for the Palestinian security forces to reduce extremism and violence. This will almost certainly be the same message he delivers when he sees Obama. “You have a series of blockages that will keep the status quo. The realities of the Middle East will impose themselves as they always do,” said Dr Toby Dodge, Middle East expert at Queen Mary College, the University of London.
The shape of Obama’s ambitious new plan is now becoming clear. First, after years of strong support from the US, Israel – the largest single beneficiary of American overseas aid – now appears likely to come under much greater pressure to make crucial concessions.
And last night, Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak said he believes Netanyahu will endorse the creation of a Palestinian state during his upcoming meeting with Obama in Washington.
The Bush administration was solidly behind Israel. Obama’s position is more ambiguous. In his home town, Chicago, before running for the presidency, he made comments sympathetic to the Palestinians but later adopted a more pro-Israeli line. Secretary of state Clinton, as senator for New York, was regarded by contrast as a solid supporter of Israel, but in recent weeks has been critical of Jewish settlement expansion in the West Bank.
America last week voted for a UN Security Council statement drafted by Russia that reaffirmed the backing of the international community for a formula that would see a “two-state solution” – that is, an independent Palestinian state established on land under Israeli military occupation for 42 years. Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, indicated that the US wanted to reinvigorate proceedings of the quartet group as another means of moving forward.
US officials have even mentioned that they would like to see Israel sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, which would put it under pressure to declare and give up its nuclear arsenal – unthinkable a year ago – and have moved to open space for a possible deal with a Palestinian government that might include the extremists of Hamas.
“Prepare yourself for change,” the veteran Israeli journalist Eitan Haber last week counselled Netanyahu, who had a fiery relationship with President Clinton while he was prime minister in the late 1990s. “This is not the America you used to know.”
At the very least, the new tone of the US administration has sparked broad political debate in Israel.
On Thursday night, dozens of right-wing Jewish settlers gathered on congested Aza Street in Jerusalem outside Netanyahu’s heavily guarded home.
With placards and speeches they challenged the new prime minister not to give an inch when he sees Obama tomorrow. “You don’t have a mandate for concessions,” read one of the boards in Hebrew.
But the next morning, the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom placed one of its weekly advertisements in the Ha’aretz newspaper reading simply: “The real Israeli patriots are hoping – if not praying – that president Obama will influence prime minister Netanyahu, and not the other way around.”
In America, powerful lobby groups representing Israeli interests appear resigned to a change in US policy. Earlier this month, at the annual meeting in Washington of the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the vice-president, Joe Biden, reflected the new approach of the administration when he called for a freeze of Jewish settlements on the West Bank, prefacing his remarks with: “You won’t like this.”
But Aipac is adaptable: after eight years in which it was in tune with Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, it voted in Lee Rosenberg, a Chicago businessman close to Obama, as its president-elect.
The real strength of Obama’s strategy lies in the regional dimension. His team is following the dictum “If you can’t solve a problem, make it bigger”. Their aim is to dilute the knotty intricacies of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute in a broader environment, in the hope that regional powers such as Jordan and Egypt can offer Israel incentives that the weakened Palestinians cannot or will not give.
By linking all the various elements of the complex matrix of conflicts and rivalries that comprise Middle Eastern politics, the White House hopes to get something, somewhere, to give.
Some of those blocks might be clearing. Moderate Arab states such as Jordan and Egypt, as well as US allies like Saudi Arabia, are concerned both by the continuing threat of radical Islamic violence and by Iran’s bid for regional primacy and may be prepared to make concessions themselves or press the Palestinians to do so.
Last week King Abdullah refloated the idea of Arab and Islamic states recognising Israel in return for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. “The Arab peace initiative has offered Israel a place in the neighbourhood and more – acceptance by 57 nations, the one third of the UN members that do not recognise Israel,” King Abdullah told a World Economic Forum meeting in Jordan.
“This is true security – security that barriers and armed forces cannot bring, inaction is not an option.”
This month’s push will climax when Obama delivers his speech in Egypt, outlining his strategy while simultaneously restarting US relations with the Islamic world.
Time, however, is short. Mark Fitzpatrick, nuclear specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, says the Iranians could be, in a worst-case scenario, 12 to 18 months from building a nuclear weapon. According to King Abdullah, failure to find a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians would lead to war within the same period. Tomorrow’s meeting with Netanyahu is only the first step on a long, hard road.
The key players
Binyamin Netanyahu
Israel’s new right-wing prime minister believes the Palestinians are not ready for a state that would allow Israel to live in security without attacks from militant groups such as Hamas. Instead, he wants to focus on economic development and more training for the Palestinian security forces. He sees Iran’s nuclear ambitions as a far more pressing issue for the region.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
Iran’s president, who faces an election next month against two reformist candidates, supports the Palestinians, and is often accused of funding and arming the Islamist movement Hamas. He is a bitter opponent of Israel. He wants to maintain Iran’s nuclear programme, against the mounting concerns of Israel and the West.
Bashir Al-Assad
Syria’s president for the past nine years wants re-engagement with the West and a peace deal with Israel that would see the return to Syria of all the Golan Heights, which Israel captured in the 1967 war and later annexed. Indirect talks were mediated by Turkey last year but broke off when Israel launched its war in Gaza.
Honsi Mubarak
Egypt’s president for the past 28 years supports the Palestinian goal of an independent state. He wants Egypt to maintain its role as the key player in the Arab world and his government has been trying to broker a new truce and prisoner swap between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, and a reconciliation between the rival Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah.
Mahmoud Abbas
The president of the Palestinian Authority wants to negotiate a full peace agreement with Israel that would create a viable, independent Palestinian state along the pre-1967 war borders with a capital in east Jerusalem and an agreed solution to the question of Palestinian refugees. He is under pressure from those Palestinians who complain that peace talks, which began in 1991, have failed to achieve full statehood.
The key issues
Syria and the Golan Heights
The Golan Heights are an area of disputed sovereignty wrested from Syrian control by Israel in 1967, which then annexed the 700 square miles of territory in 1981. Syria has insisted ever since on the return of the land and the UN backs its claim. Although previous Israeli governments came close to negotiating the return of the land, Netanyahu has said that Israel will keep the Golan Heights forever, saying that giving them back would mean giving Syria’s ally, Iran, a route into Israel.
Refugees’ right of return
The right of return of Palestinians forced to flee their homes was acknowledged in a UN resolution in 1948 and the principle has been enshrined in international law. The government of Israel says allowing Palestinian refugees back to their former homes in Israel cannot be a right, but has to be treated as a political demand to be resolved as part of a peace settlement.
It would also like to restrict the right to Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. Around 3.7 million Palestinians live in refugee camps in the Middle East.
The role of Hamas
Founded in 1987 to fight for an Islamic Palestinian state, Hamas shot to political success in 2006 when it won a landslide victory in the Palestinians’ first democratic parliamentary elections, wresting control from the ruling and fractured Fatah party. Hamas’s original charter is committed to replacement of Israel by an Israeli Palestinian state.
The recent invasion of the Gaza Strip was in part prompted by Hamas firing rockets into Israel, in response to the economic blockade of the Strip by Israel that began in 2007. Hamas emerged intact from the Israeli onslaught and its popularity will be a crucial factor in any new peace process. Its military wing is considered a terrorist organisation by the US, the UK and the EU.
Israeli settlements
One of the most contentious issues of the conflict is the fate of the communities of Jewish settlers who have moved on to disputed territories or land owned by Palestinians and built homes, citing a biblical right to be there. The settlements have existed and expanded since the 1967 Six Day War, when they were backed as strategically important. Israeli governments have both actively encouraged the settlements and also, during the Gaza withdrawal in 2005, removed people by force. The Palestinians believe settlements are a barrier to peace and the UN security council, the EU and the International Court of Justice have said that they violate international law.
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