Epstein Secrets

t been growing closer to each other for several years, with small gestures of mutual accommodation. Israel agreed to return the Sergei courtyard in Jerusalem to Russia in 2008, a small strip of land in a religiously and ethnically divided city that had been sold in 1964 for a load of oranges. It then hal

n welcome this development. Whether by openly endorsing Russian rhetoric about an end of the Cold War and the Great Game, as President Obama did at the U.N. General Assembly in September, or by coining new euphemisms for a reluctance to involve itself in regional wars ("leading from behind"), the current administration

g with it. Sure he'd like to destroy Hamas and negotiate with Abbas -- but on his terms. Indeed, the world of a negotiation over borders, refugees, Jerusalem is a world of great discomfort for Netanyahu, because it will force choices that run against his nature, his politics, and his ideology. Hamas isn

again on center stage. The Palestinian president is nowhere to be found. For all the attention paid to Abbas's statehood initiative this month at the U.N. General Assembly, it seems truly irrelevant now. And once again, this is confirmation of the fact that events on the ground determine what's up and down in Israel a

tanyahu’s immediate predecessor, Ehud Olmert, said in a widely reported speech to the Israeli Knesset in 2008: “We must give up Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem and return to the core of the territory that is the State of Israel prior to 1967, with minor corrections dictated by the reality created since then.

’s future. The newsworthy, and real, shift in U.S. policy was Obama publicly condemning the Palestinian strategy to seek recognition as a state from the U.N. General Assembly in September. He also questioned the accord between Fatah and Hamas. Obama endorsed the idea of a demilitarized Palestinian state, a demand Israel ha

ns and the world. The Palestinians under Mahmoud Abbas want the United Nations to grant them a sovereign state based on the 1967 boundaries with East Jerusalem as its capital. That's all. It is not asking the U.N. to solve the refugee /right-of-return issue or to determine who owns the Temple Mount in Jerusa

e Jewish and Palestinian peoples to self-determination, without prejudice to the rights of all citizens and minority groups. Recall, in this context, U.N. General Assembly resolution 181 of 1947 that called for the establishment of a Jewish state and an Arab state. • Acknowledge institutional and security reform, econom