Israel

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the Palestinians on Monday to resume negotiations with Israel, issuing the call before a meeting with President Barack Obama on the stalled Middle East peace process.

Saying "no Israeli government has been so willing to restrain settlement activity," Netanyahu told a conference of American Jewish leaders: "I say today to (Palestinian President) Mahmoud Abbas ... let us seize the moment to reach a

historic agreement. Let us begin talks immediately."

"My goal is not negotiations for the sake of negotiations. My goal is to achieve a permanent peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians -- and soon," he said...

Geneva (AP) - The U.N. Human Rights Council voted Friday to endorse a Gaza war crimes report and send it to the Security Council, possibly setting up international prosecution of Israelis and Palestinians accused of war crimes.

The council approved a Palestinian-backed resolution after two days of debate on the Goldstone report, which it had commissioned following the Dec. 27-Jan. 18 conflict in which almost 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.

The resolution passed 25-6, with mostly developing countries in favor and the United States and five European countries opposing. Eleven mostly European and African countries abstained, while Britain, France and three other members of the 47-nation body declined to vote...

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he will never allow any of the country's leaders or soldiers to be put on trial for war crimes.

Netanyahu made the comments during a fiery speech at the opening of the winter session of the Israeli parliament.

Netanyahu opened the speech with an angry tirade against a recent U.N. report that accused Israel of committing war crimes during its war against militants in the Gaza Strip last year...

A political activist and former presidential candidate is calling on President Barack Obama to denounce an obscene suggestion made by former President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor.

Over the weekend, former President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor and vocal supporter of Barack Obama, Zbigniew Brzezinski, suggested that the U.S. should shoot down Israeli jets if they try to attack Iran.

Brzezinski was asked how aggressively Obama should insist that Israel not strike Iran's nuclear weapons facilities. He responded, "We are not exactly impotent little babies. They [the Israelis] have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?" When pressed by the interviewer, he added, "Well, we have to be serious about denying them that right. If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not"...

Holding aloft evidence of Hitler's Final Solution, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday railed against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for his denial of the Holocaust and scolded the United Nations for allowing Ahmadinejad to speak during its opening session of the 64th U.N. General Assembly.

Offering detailed reminders of the war that sent 6 million Jews to their deaths in concentration camps and recalling the agreement within the world body to create the Jewish State, Netanyahu took his turn at the dais to express astonishment at what he witnessed a day earlier.

He commended those who boycotted Ahmadinejad's speech, but condemned those who allowed it...

(CNSNews.com) – President Obama on Tuesday told the protagonists in one of the most intractable conflicts of the last century to “disentangle” themselves from history and “take risks for peace.”

“It’s difficult to disentangle ourselves from history, but we must do so,” U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell quoted Obama as telling Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas. “The only reason to hold office is to get things done.”

The president summoned Israeli and P.A. leaders to a summit on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York to chide them on slow progress, but there was little sign afterward that either side was nearer agreement on the thorny issue of Israeli settlements...

The head of a messianic Jewish ministry says he senses a real uneasiness among the Israeli people since Barack Obama became president of the United States.

Last week U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell met behind closed doors with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and later conferred with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. Mitchell was trying to pave the way for a meeting between the two sides, but Abbas has ruled out talks with Israel until it halts construction in West Bank settlements.

David Brickner, executive director of Jews for Jesus, visited Israel this summer. He says the Israelis are concerned about what direction the Obama administration is taking with regards to the Jewish state...

JERUSALEM (CNN) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that a complete halt of Jewish settlements will not happen, according to a parliament source.

Netanyahu said at a closed-door Knesset committee meeting that Israel would agree only to a partial reduction of housing construction and for a limited time, not the year the United States would like, said a government official who was not authorized to speak about the meeting and did not want to be identified.

Netanyahu said no agreement had been reached on the length of time for the building hiatus, the source told CNN. Netanyahu has said in the past that a moratorium would not apply to East Jerusalem, which Israel claims as part of its sovereign capital since taking the territory away from Jordan during the Six Day War in 1967. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state.

Gaza City, Gaza Strip (AP) - A Hamas spiritual leader on Monday called teaching Palestinian children about the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews a "war crime," rejecting a reported U.N. proposal to include the Holocaust in Gaza's school curriculum.

A senior Israeli official said such statements should make the West think twice about ending its boycott of Hamas, in place since the group seized Gaza by force in 2007.

Hamas spiritual leader Younis al-Astal lashed out after hearing that the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, the main U.N. body aiding Palestinian refugees, planned to introduce lessons about the Holocaust to Gaza students...

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Only four percent of Jewish Israelis believe US President Barack Obama's policies are pro-Israel and 50 percent oppose a temporary freeze of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a poll out on Friday showed.

The survey showed 51 percent considered Obama's administration more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli, as compared with 50 percent in June, the Jerusalem Post said.

The percentage of Jewish Israelis who consider Obama as pro-Israel was down to four percent from six percent in the June 19 poll. By comparison, 88 percent of those interviewed for the June survey thought former US president George W. Bush was pro-Israel...