Sunday, April 17, 2016

Golan Heights Back In Play - Draft Agreement For Syrian War Includes Israel Returning Golan Heights To Syria



This is particularly interesting when considering the details of Ezekiel 38-39 and the coming Gog-magog war, which will come from the far north and will be thwarted on the "mountains of Israel":


Netanyahu to battle Obama, Putin over the Golan




The Israeli cabinet holds its weekly session Sunday April 17, on the Golan. Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu will visit Moscow on Thursday, April 21 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin and to launch the most important battle of his political career, and one of Israel’s most decisive contests of the last 10 years: the battle over the future of the Golan Heights.

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources and its sources in Moscow report exclusively that Israel’s top political leaders and military commanders were stunned and shocked last weekend when they found out that US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed to support the return of the Golan to Syria. The two presidents gave their top diplomats, Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the green light to include such a clause in a proposal being drafted at the Geneva conference on ending the Syrian civil war.

Israel captured the Golan from the Syrian army 49 years ago, during the Six-Day War in 1967 after the Syrian army invaded Israel.

In 1981, during the tenure of then Prime Minister Menachem Begin, Israel passed a law defining the Golan as a territory under Israeli sovereignty. However, it did not state that the area belongs to Israel.

While Israel was preparing for a diplomatic battle over the future of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, Obama and Putin decided to deal a diplomatic blow to Israel and Netanyahu’s government on an unexpected issue, the Golan.

It is part of an endeavor by the two powers to use their diplomatic and military cooperation regarding Syria to impose agreements on neighboring countries, such as Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
For example, Washington and Moscow are trying to impose an agreement regarding the granting of independence to Syrian Kurds, despite Ankara’s adamant opposition. The two presidents are also pressuring Riyadh and Amman to accept the continuation of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s rule, at least for the immediate future.

DEBKAfile’s sources report that just like the other diplomatic or military steps initiated by Obama and Putin in Syria, such as those for Assad’s eventual removal from power, the two powers see a resolution of the Golan issue as a gradual process that may take a long time, perhaps even years. But as far as they are concerned, Israel will have to withdraw from the Golan at the end of that process.

It should be noted that Prime Minister Netanyahu is not traveling to Washington to discuss the Golan issue with Obama. The frequent trips by the prime minister, senior officials and top IDF brass to Moscow in recent months show where the winds are blowing in the Middle East.

However, Moscow is not Washington, and Israel has no lobby in the Russian capital defending its interests.
It should be made very clear that the frequent trips by senior Israeli officials to Moscow have not created an Israeli policy that can influence Putin or other senior members of the Russian leadership. Putin has made occasional concessions to Israel on matters of minimal strategic importance, but on diplomatic and military steps regarding Syria and Iran he has shown little consideration of Jerusalem’s stance.

It should also be noted that there has been no basis for the enthusiasm over the Russian intervention in Syria shown by Netanyahu, Israeli ministers and senior IDF officers.


Amid these developments, three regional actors are very pleased by Washington and Moscow’s agreement to demand Israeli withdrawal from the Golan: Syrian President Assad, the Iranian leadership in Tehran and Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah. 

Now, they do not need to risk a military confrontation with Israel over the Golan because Obama and Putin have essentially agreed to do the dirty work for them. 



Cabinet to meet on Golan to underscore that Israel won’t relinquish Heights




The cabinet is scheduled to hold its weekly meeting on the Golan Heights on Sunday, to send a message to the international community that Israel has no intention of relinquishing the area.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to underline this point in a statement to the press at the outset of the meeting.

Netanyahu relayed to US Secretary of State John Kerry in a recent phone conversation Israel’s concerns about a draft agreement intended to end the Syrian civil war that includes a clause calling for Israel to return the Golan Heights to Syria, Channel 10 reported on Monday.

Israel took control of the Golan Heights during the Six Day War, and extended Israeli law to it in 1981, de facto annexing it.

According to the report, Netanyahu made clear that such language would be unacceptable to Israel. He is expected to discuss this issue – as well as Israel’s interest in any future Syrian agreement – when he flies to Moscow on Thursday for one day for a meeting with President Vladimir Putin.

This will be Netanyahu’s third meeting with Putin since September, when he paid another lightening visit to the Moscow, to set up a mechanism to prevent the accidental confrontation of Russian and Israeli fighter planes over Syria.

Two months later, he met the Russian president on the sidelines of the Paris climate conference. The two leaders also speak regularly on the phone.

The cabinet meeting on the Golan will be the second time in a week that Netanyahu has gone to the area, having observed a large military training exercise there on Monday. During that visit Netanyahu surprised many observers by acknowledging that Israel has acted dozens of times beyond the northern border to prevent Hezbollah from attaining “game-changing weaponry.” 





Israel's defense tech should worry Iranians, says IAI head


Iran has good reason to be concerned by Israel’s defense capabilities, a senior engineer at the Israel Aerospace Industries, a government-owned company that manufactures military and civilian aircraft and products, said on Saturday.

“We are developing some of the the most advanced systems designed to give the fullest most and hermetic protection possible in the face of this kind of threat,” said Inbal Kreiss, speaking at a cultural event in the southern city of Beersheba.

“The Iranians should of course be worried by Israel’s defense capabilities,” she said. “We are the leader in this type of technology.”

“We are working to develop these defense systems in order to protect ourselves,” Kreiss added. “We’re constantly trying to stay ahead of the newest technologies.”
The advanced system, which Israel has been developing with the United States since 2008, is a major part of the multi-layered air defense array that Israel has designed to protect itself against a range of missile threats — from short-range rockets fired from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, to longer-range threats like a missile launch from Iran.

The Arrow 3 is designed to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles outside the atmosphere, intercepting the weapons and their nuclear, biological or chemical warheads close to their launch sites.




Meet the next Palestinian president



What conclusions should we draw from the plans for a new “nonviolent” intifada campaign to “free Palestine,” conceived for the post-Mahmoud Abbas era by Marwan Barghouti and his associates together with Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and reported earlier this week by The Times of Israel?


From the Hasharon Prison where he is serving five life terms for his role in Second Intifada murders, Barghouti, the Fatah Tanzim leader who anticipates succeeding Palestinian Authority President Abbas, has reached understandings with Hamas’s leadership abroad in recent weeks about coordinating a struggle against the Israeli occupation, forcing Israel back to the pre-1967 lines, ending the Oslo Accords and reversing Palestinian recognition of Israel.


Clearly, the day after Abbas leaves office will be a much gloomier day for Israel. We may well end up missing the rais, however troubling his hierarchy’s ongoing incitement against Israel, simply because, in principle, he supports talks with Israel and opposes terror attacks and intifadas.
If Barghouti does indeed take over, we may miss Abbas even more, especially as the convicted and jailed killer is planning intensively for his succession, and right now it does not seem that anyone is going to seriously challenge him.


Barghouti was arrested 14 years ago this month in the home of his friend Ziad Abu Ein (who later died of a heart attack at an anti-Israel demonstration). Since then, although imprisoned in Israel — indeed, partly because he is imprisoned in Israel — Barghouti has become the most popular Palestinian leader in the West Bank and Gaza. He has already declared his intention to run in any presidential election, and if such elections are held, his chances of winning are excellent.

Israeli officials, and perhaps also the Hamas leadership in Gaza, may want to prevent such elections — and there is potential for argument, confrontation and endless delay over such modalities as whether such a vote would extend to East Jerusalemites. But in light of the bleak political reality and the backing Barghouti enjoys from Hamas’s leadership abroad as well, there could be such widespread support for Barghouti as to prompt the Palestinians to hold elections even without Jerusalem; almost anything, just to get him elected.

In the interim, Barghouti’s associates have nominated him as a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize, with the help of Nobel laureates from Argentina and Tunisia, and are trying to brand him as a Palestinian Nelson Mandela. He is, of course, nothing of the sort. He was an integral supporter and orchestrator of the armed Second Intifada, including suicide terror attacks after his comrade Raed al-Karmi was eliminated in Tulkarm in early 2002.

His new plan may declaredly focus on nonviolent protest, but he is emphatically more radical than Abbas — hence the trust Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders place in him. His ostensible preference may be for a two-state solution arrived at via talks, but unlike Abbas, he believes that if talks do not work, the next recourse must be to take action — in other words, an intifada.





Predictions Of Biblical Quakes On Horizon Lead To This Alarm: "We Are In A Race Against Time"


"When you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. These things must happen first, but the end will not come right away." Then he said to them: "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven."  Luke 21:9-11

According to a new story from Michael Snyder at End Of The American Dream and seismologist Roger Bilham of the University of Colorado, 'current conditions' happening right now upon our planet Earth 'might trigger at least four earthquakes greater than 8.0 in magnitude and what we've been witnessing in seismic activity across the planet in recent days may only be 'the beginning' as also shared in the 1st video below. 

Snyder tells us "if (Bilham's) predictions are accurate, our planet could be on the precipice of a wave of natural disasters unlike anything that any of us have ever experienced before" leading ANP to ask, are we now witnessing Biblical prophecy unfolding? We're warned below that the course of world events could literally change overnight.

 
While proving to us that all of this recent seismic activity didn't just start this past week, and in fact the entire year has shown a lot of unusual earthquake activity across Asia, we're also reminded of all of the heavy volcanic activity throughout the world recently and the many signs that we may be witnessing the unfolding of long-warned prophecy before our very eyes...


After a 5th major earthquake in just 72 hours has struck Asia, killing at least 20 people, scientists fear a 'monster quake' is about to strike as the Prime Minister of Japan, Sinzo Abe, has warned: "We are in a race against time". We also learn from CNN that the ground in Japan is 'swaying every hour'. From Snyder: 
According to Volcano Discovery, 38 volcanoes around the globe are erupting right now.  This is definitely an unusually high number.
In Matthew 24, Jesus warned us that there would be earthquakes in “divers places” just prior to His return. This is something that I discuss quite a bit in my new bookIf we truly are in the times that the Bible refers to as “the last days”, we should expect the shaking of our planet to continue to intensify.
If seismologist Roger Bilham is right and we do begin to see a series of absolutely massive earthquakes, that could dramatically change the course of world events literally overnight.
Even a single magnitude 8.0 earthquake in a major city in Japan, China or the United States would cause global markets to crash and would mean billions of dollars in economic damage.
So let us hope that the crust of our planet begins to stabilize, but let us also not ignore the warnings of the scientists.

What they are warning us about right now lines up perfectly with what Jesus warned us about nearly 2000 years ago, and that is a very sobering thing to consider.





Strong Ecuador earthquake kills 28, causes 'considerable damage'




At least 28 people died in Ecuador when a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck off the country's northwest Pacific coast late on Saturday, causing "considerable damage" near the epicenter as well as in the largest city of Guayaquil.

The Andean nation's government recommended residents leave coastal areas over concern for rising tides following the quake.



Alarmed residents streamed into the streets of the capital Quito, hundreds of kilometers (miles) away, and other towns across the nation.


"Based on preliminary information, there are 16 people dead in the city of Portoviejo, 10 in Manta and two in the province of Guayas," said Vice President Jorge Glas in a televised address. "We continue to receive information."

The country's Geophysics Institute in a bulletin described "considerable damage" in the area of the epicenter and in Guayaquil, without providing further details.

It said the quake struck at around 8:00 p.m. at a depth of 20 km (12.4 miles).




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