David Horovitz ,
Middle East envoy Tony Blair on Sunday urged Israel to make a "psychological shift" from indifference and skepticism about the prospects of progress with the Palestinians to an active determination to "make it happen on the right terms."
He said Israel, which turns 60 in May, would "absolutely" still be here in another 60 years, but that "to guarantee its long-term security I believe it needs a viable Palestinian state."
If Israelis feel the same, Blair told The Jerusalem Post, then "the psychological shift that has to happen in the Israeli thinking is to move from saying, 'Well, if it happens, it happens, but frankly I'm skeptical about the whole thing,' to saying, 'Okay, I'm going to try and make it happen.'"
He said he was "sure that the Prime Minister [Ehud Olmert] is absolutely up for it. I've got no doubt about that at all. The next few weeks will tell whether everyone is prepared to get behind that."
At the same time, however, Blair stressed Israel should not "yield" at all on security. And he stopped short of expressing full confidence that the Palestinian leadership, under Mahmoud Abbas, was capable of carrying out the necessary ...   more »

By Nadav Shragai,
An underground passage is being planned in Jerusalem's Old City to link the reconstructed Ohel Yitzhak synagogue in the Muslim Quarter with the Western Wall tunnels in the Jewish Quarter.
The passageway, which is being planned by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, will utilize existing spaces created by archaeological excavations beneath the Muslim Quarter. This would minimize the need for new digging, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz told Haaretz.
The idea still needs approval from the government, security services and the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA).
Rabinowitz, the rabbi of the Western Wall, said the foundation signed an agreement a few days ago with Cherna Moskowitz, who owns the Ohel Yitzhak complex. Moskowitz is the wife of American Jewish tycoon Irving Moskowitz, who has been active in settling Jews in Muslim areas of Jerusalem.
According to the agreement, the Western Wall Heritage Foundation will manage and maintain both Ohel Yitzhak and the areas beneath it that the IAA has excavated. The foundation plans to open an educational institute and museum at the site, which will preserve the antiquities unearthed by the excavations.
IAA Director General Yehoshua Dorfman said that while he has not studied the foundation's plan carefully, his initial ...   more »

Herb Keinon
This week, for the first time, word began filtering out that the US was starting to lean on Israel to take some steps to ensure a successful meeting at Annapolis.
The US, according to diplomatic officials, sent a clear message that Washington has spent a great deal of time, energy and political capital on this event, and wants to make sure it succeeds. The message to Jerusalem was that Israel would have to start evacuating settlement outposts, obligations spelled out under the road map, if it expected the Palestinians to fulfill their own road map obligations.
With US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice due to arrive on Saturday night for her eighth visit this year, and the looming advance of the end of fall - the date by which the Americans have said the long-discussed Annapolis meeting would be held - crunch time is fast approaching.
And, as it approaches, Israelis should buck up for a degree of pressure from Washington that hasn't been felt for a long time.
Because while the Annapolis meeting is, on the surface, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and President George W. Bush's efforts in his last year in office to put his two-state ...   more »

It will not surprise me at all if, when US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns to Israel next week to invite participants to the Annapolis ‘Conference on the Creation of Palestine on Jewish Land,’ that the date she has chosen to convene the event turns out to be November 29.
As Rice sees things, the irony of this choice of date would be positive, injecting some sense of hopefulness into the long-hopeless US-pushed pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace.
The State Department could spin November 29 to generate optimism: It would mark a return to the past, they could say; the chance to heal the sore at its source; a reversal of the disastrous decisions that ignited and continue to fuel the unending conflict in the Middle East.
For Bible-believing Christian Zionists, to hold this conference on November 29 would support what many of us already hold to be true: that the real aim of the land-for-peace process (whether Rice and her president know it or not) is the reversal of something different: the rolling back of the process of Israel’s physical national restoration which God Himself has ordained and brought about.
As such, it is doubly futile - for who ...   more »

By Stan Goodenough
A few days after Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak threatened to cut power and fuel supplies to Gaza in retaliation for rocket attacks from the terrorist-infested strip, a missile barrage slammed into the Negev town of Sderot.
Conflicting reports had Arabs from PLO/PA chief Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah faction and Arabs from the Palestine Islamic Jihad group claiming credit for the nine Kassams that fell as Israelis were headed for work Thursday morning.
No one was injured in the attacks even though a number of rockets hit populated areas.
Observers watched with interest to see if Barak's sanctions would be implemented as threatened.
As of press time there was no sign such a response would be forthcoming anytime soon.
Cowed by international pressure, the Olmert government has until now proven itself unable to stop the almost daily rocket attacks against its people.
Original Source
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michael makovsky ,
November 2 marks the 90th anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, when British foreign secretary Arthur Balfour committed the British Empire to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. This pivotal event led 31 years later to the establishment of the State of Israel. The Declaration was a rare incident when a wildly exaggerated perception of Jewish power - an enduring anti-Semitic feature in Europe and now resurgent throughout the world - actually helped the Jews instead of leading to their persecution.
It is precisely on this anniversary that it is worth recalling one prominent British statesman whose attraction to Zionism was more idealistic than his peers, Winston Churchill. His commitment to Zionism waxed as Britain's waned, and he eventually emerged as a leading Gentile Zionist who contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel.
THE BRITISH first seriously considered establishing some sort of Jewish entity in Palestine early in WWI amid debate over divvying up the Ottoman Empire, which was allied with the Germans. Support for the idea grew in 1917 among various officials for religious, humanitarian, and historical considerations. They were also motivated by a strategic imperative. Imbued with an exaggerated sense of Jewish power, which ...   more »