I like how President Trump keeps calling our situation things like "everlasting peace in the Middle East" while here in Israel it is a barely tenuous ceasefire. 

An interesting anecdote happened regarding the recent signing of normalization agreement between Bhutan and Israel. Hamechadesh reported on it, and I have not yet been able to find any mention of it anywhere else.

Reuters is reporting that the Bahrainian Commerce and Tourism Minister Zayed bin Rashid al-Zayani announced today it would not distinguish imports from Israel between products made from settlements in occupied territories and those made within the Israel (ie within the green line).

According to Times of Israel, PA officials, President Abbas and others, have said they will make a number of demands of USA President-elect Joe Biden.

The news is reporting that a delegation from the United Arab Emirates is due to arrive in Israel today. This will be the first delegation from the UAE coming to Israel, after a few from Israel have traveled to the UAE. 

What is the best response to the Israel-United Arab Emirates peace deal?

Good job to US President Donald Trump for brokering this deal of normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, in exchange for freezing of the sovereignty/annexation plan.

as my grandfather used to say... peace is always better than war.

So, Jason Greenblatt is stepping down as Trump's special peace envoy to the Middle East. Greenblatt is being replaced by a guy named Avi Berkowitz. Berkowitz has served as a an assistant to Jared Kushner. Berkowitz is 30 years old and learned in yeshiva in Kol Torah, before moving on to University, including Harvard Law School, and his career.



Besides for being young, Berkowitz looks extremely young. He must be very talented to achieve so much at such a young age. I hope he is brilliant and truly talented. He will face a lot of challenges - the Palestinians will accept him and anything he offers as little as they accepted anything else from anyone Trump set, adding that to his youth and being another devout Orthodox Jew, even more than the previous envoy, and it seems unlikely the Palestinians will give him the time of day. Everyone else might have a hard time taking him seriously considering his lack of experience and his apparent youth, but that is probably easier to overcome than the Palestinian bias against him as an orthodox Jewish representative of Donald Trump..

Best of luck to Avi Berkowitz, the United States, and to the Middle East.

We will not be slaves or servants for Greenblatt, Kushner and Friedman. We need the economic (support), the money and the assistance, but before everything there is a political solution. For America to turn the whole cause from a political issue into an economic one, we cannot accept this

  -- PA President Mahmoud Abbas

A quick reminder to his Majesty: Annex 1 deals with the border. Annex 2 deals with water from the Jordan River that is transferred to Jordan. I have a feeling that you need that water more than you need a few dunams of land. https://t.co/g9e6Quxylg

— Ben Waxman (@benwaxman) October 21, 2018

there are some dramatic headlines in the news about Jordan canceling a couple of clauses in the peace agreement contract with Israel.

I saw the Hebrew headlines and did not really understand the issue, but hoped that if Jordan is unilaterally canceling some of the clauses Israel would respond in kind.

I looked on the main English news sites and did not find an article about this until I found one on Arutz 7. It turns out from the article that the cancellation of the clauses are actually part of the agreement.

According to Arutz7, Israel gave some farmland in the Jordan valley and Naharayim areas to Jordan as part of the peace agreement. Jordan agreed to lease the land to Israel for 25 years so Israeli farmers could continue working that land. The agreement allowed either side to back out of the lease, giving one years notice. Now, 24 years later, with one year left on the lease, Jordan has informed Israel that it will not be renewing the lease in a year from now.

I don't know what their reasons are, and it does not really matter, even if it is a shame, and even if the farmers would love to continue the lease (which I do not know to be true or false). The agreement gives them the right to decide not to renew the lease. Basically, the headlines are dramatic, but this is what Israel originally agreed to.

Ehud Olmert gave an interview yesterday in which he had some interesting things to say. I havent seen the full video and full interview, and when I do it will be posted. So far I have only seen clips and excerpts in articles.

Of the various topics discussed in the interview, the part I have found most interesting is his discussion of why he was "taken down" - why he was investigated and put in jail.

Olmert claims that he was very close to making peace with the Palestinians and that is why Adelson and Netanyahu had him brought down. He says he freed himself, I presume he means of his previous opinions, and went where nobody before had been willing to go and was very close to achieving peace because of it.

This goes against the narrative we have heard, from both right wing and left wing sources, about why Olmert failed to make peace despite his willingness to go further than any other prime minister in what he was offering to the Palestinians. The narrative says that he made the offer but the Palestinians did not even get back to him about it - they rejected it by not even responding.

Just because he made an offer does not mean he was close to making peace, considering the Palestinians did not accept the offer, did not make a counter-offer or counter-claim, and did not even bother responding to the offer in any way. It means he offered more, but it does not mean he was close to making peace.

I have heard that basic narrative over the years from both right wing and left wing sources discussing what happened back then. They may argue on defining it and on what it means for the future and for the integrity of the parties involved, but I have never heard a different narrative about what happened.

Yet comes along Olmert, the main player of the time, and says he was close and was brought down because of it. Is the basic narrative we have been fed all these years wrong? Was he really close? Is Olmert simply delusional and was not actually as close as he thinks he was. Was he so caught up in making peace that he did not see, and still does not see, that as interested as he was the Palestinians were not? Did the Palestinians really get back to him and the proposal just needed a little more tweaking?