[IsraelTimes] Asked whether the US is talking to specific countries about taking in Palestinians from Gaza, US special envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff avoids answering directly, saying the Trump administration is “exploring all alternatives and options that lead to a better life for Gazans.”
In the past, Witkoff and US President Donald Trump have pushed for Egypt and Jordan to take in Palestinians, though both countries have vehemently rejected the idea and have instead backed an Arab plan for the post-war management of Gaza that would allow Palestinians to remain in the Strip while it is being rebuilt.
No electricity, no clean water, no sewage system, rubble piled high over shaky foundations over tunnels, and the only work is digging new tunnels — they clearly hate the Gazans with the burning hate of a thousand suns.
Offering a similar update on the hostage negotiations as the one he gave on an earlier interview with CNN, Witkoff tells CBS’s “Face the Nation” that Hamas’s response to his bridge proposal was “not encouraging.”
During his visit to Doha on Wednesday to participate in hostage talks, Witkoff also met with top officials from Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the Palestinian Authority. He says the summit lasted seven and a half hours and discussed a final peace resolution for Gaza in which Hamas would be demilitarized, “which must happen — that’s a red line for the Israelis.”
The terror group has rejected this demand to date, but has privately told Arab mediators that it is prepared to give up governing control of Gaza, two senior Arab diplomats have told The Times of Israel.
Off to be the power behind the throne while the new guys, whoever they are, become the targets of Israel’s deadly ire — until Hamas is ready to throw off the hudna and repeat 10/7. Goody.
While in Doha, Witkoff also put forward a bridge proposal to extend the ongoing ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.
“Hamas came up with their own construct, which essentially disavowed what we discussed and to my mind that was a pretty poor ending,” Witkoff says. “I hope they reconsider because the alternative is not so good for them,” he adds.
[IsraelTimes] Despite a series of statements reiterating Israel’s support for the “Witkoff proposal,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aides do not believe Hamas will ever accept the outline, an Israeli official tells The Times of Israel.
“It’s not going to happen,” says the official. “Everyone is well aware of this.”
The “Witkoff proposal,” which US special envoy Steve Witkoff presented in Doha on Wednesday and detailed in part on Friday, has been said by Israel to call for half the living hostages to be released at the start of an extended ceasefire that would last until the end of the Passover holiday in mid-April, with the possibility of the rest of the hostages being released at the end of the period.
The official says Israel’s insistence that Hamas accept the proposal is a negotiating tactic. “The goal is to get more than just American hostages out because that’s not acceptable in Israel.”
Hamas on Friday offered to release the last living Israeli-US hostage, Edan Alexander, and return the bodies of four others with dual Israeli-US citizenship — Itay Chen, Omer Neutra, Gadi Haggai and Judy Weinstein — in return for extending the truce and the release of more Palestinian security prisoners. Both Israel and the US rejected the Hamas offer, with Witkoff indicating it was disingenuous.
If Hamas does not agree to release hostages who don’t have US citizenship, Israel will end the ceasefire, says the official. “There are war plans crafted. There won’t be an endless amount of time — several weeks at the very most.”
Israel is prepared to send a team back to Doha for talks, says the official, once given a “green light” by Washington.
#1
A peaceful Hamas?
More than likely, it will retire the Hamas Name, due to its well documented, kill anything not Islamic Terrorist Group agenda. Then just start the same genocidal radical Islamic 💩 under another new name.
[X]
Paul A. Szypula 🇺🇸
@Bubblebathgirl
238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization, Tren de Aragua, arrived in El Salvador on Sunday from the US.
23 MS-13 gang members also arrived.
Thank you President Trump or deporting these criminals and President Bukele for taking them.
#2
The 'State of Exception', a concept outlined by Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt in the 1920s, is a right enshrined in the constitution that allows the state to temporarily suspend certain guaranteed rights under special circumstances in order to restore public order.
#3
Whether it's good luck or 4-D chess, DJT his maneuvered both the Dems and Mighty Judge Boasberg into defending one of the most vicious criminal gangs ever to exist. How does he do it?
Posted by: Matt ||
03/17/2025 15:35 Comments ||
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#4
Epic Homan answer to reporter questioning the deportations!
#6
Reporter: "You're using a 200-year-old law to circumvent due process"
I note that the reporter appeared to have an Irish accent. What odds he got the background for that question from the New York Times or the Guardian, rather than civics classes?
#7
defending one of the most vicious criminal gangs ever to exist. How does he do it?
Never underestimate the predictability of stupidity.
/Brick Top
These the same people who a couple years ago quoted the Preamble "promote the general welfare" as "legal justification for the implementation of socialism."?
[IsraelTimes] Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has spoken by phone with US President Donald Trump and discussed efforts to end the war between Russia and Ukraine and to restore stability in Syria, Erdogan’s office says.
It says Erdogan told Trump that the United States needs to finalize the F-16 procurement process and Turkey’s re-participation in the F-35 program to develop defense industry cooperation between the two countries.
How many years has he been trying, and failing, to get those planes from America? What does he have to offer now that would change the answer?
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/17/2025 00:00 ||
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#1
S-400's still in place?
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/17/2025 7:57 Comments ||
Top||
#2
...to develop defense industry cooperation between the two countries. Why give support to (Fascist) Turkey until it disgorges its land grabs in Cyprus and Syria?
[IsraelTimes] Some 15 exiled Palestinian prisoners recently released from Israeli prisons land in Turkey, reports the Al-Araby Al-Jadeed site, citing Egyptian sources.
The Qatari site reports that this week, Malaysia and Indonesia are both expected to receive 15 freed Palestinian prisoners as well.
Small numbers, but those exiled are supposed to be the worst of the worst, and some among those allowed to remain have already managed to get themselves killed — a well-deserved death sentence even before they went back to their old ways.
The first phase of the ceasefire with Hamas in Gaza saw Israel release some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, including over 270 serving life terms in connection with the murders of dozens of Israelis.
[IsraelTimes] In report showing them with blurred faces, men identified as ex-air force colonel and disillusioned IRGC officer say ‘the power of the Israeli army must help the Iranian nation’
A man said to be a retired colonel in the Iranian air force urged Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to facilitate a coup by striking the home of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, in an interview with Israel’s Channel 12 broadcast on Saturday.
Goodness. Yet another Moslem in the region wanting Israel to play Janissaries and do the work for them. The Saudis and other oil sheikhs also want Israel to defeat Iran so they needn’t risk themselves.
“Netanyahu needs to order an attack on Khamenei’s home,” the man said.
“And we, the military can take over sensitive political centers and officially announce Iran’s freedom and friendship with Israel,” he added.
How will you reward Israel for taking on the risk and the expense?
The man — whose face was blurred and who used the pseudonym Arash — also claimed 95 percent of Iranians were pleased with the IDF’s retaliatory strikes on military sites in the Islamic Republic, which he said has “taken us, the people, hostage.”
True.
The man said Iranians “have this kind of wish that Israel will go further” than it had in the April and October retaliatory strikes “so that the nation will be emboldened and take to the streets.”
“They themselves will cut [the regime’s] roots from the country,” he added, noting the weakening of Iran’s air defenses and its regional proxies.
Also speaking to Channel 12, a man said to have been a cleric in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — which is separate from the military and answers directly to Khamenei — urged Israel to attack Iran.
“I don’t see Israel as criminal. We say ‘death to Israel,’ but Israel doesn’t say ‘death to Iran,'” said the man, whose face was also blurred and who used the pseudonym Javad.
“We’ve been friends days since the days of Cyrus [the Great],”
…king of the Medes and the Persians, conquerer of Babylonia, among others, all back in the 6th century BC. That debt has long since been repaid, not that Cyrus the Great demanded more than that his Jews be law-abiding citizens who shared their prosperity with his empire, which they did with great enthusiasm. The Jews have ever since described him as the Platonic ideal of a gentile ruler…
he said. “Cyrus saved the Jews of Babylon. Now we expect something in return — that you lend us a hand of friendship, that the power of the Israeli army come to help the Iranian nation.”
Arash and Javad were both said to be speaking to Israel’s Channel 12 from inside Iran — an exceptional feat, given the country’s tight censorship and its leaders’ open commitment to destroy Israel.
As part of that cause, Iran supports an “Axis of Resistance” network of regional proxies, which includes Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Gaza’s Hamas and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.
Arash said he had been forced to resign from the military after he refused to help train Hamas in guerrilla tactics and urban warfare. It was unclear when the episode had taken place.
Possibly within the last several years, possibly even before that…
He noted Israel’s recent successes against Iran’s proxies in the wars in Gaza and Lebanon that followed October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
An estimated 20,000 - 30,000 dead Hamasniks plus associated Gazan civilians, perhaps about half as many Hezbollahniks ditto — and that when hobbled by an American administration that was strongly anti-Israel and slow-walking weapons sales. Think what they’ll be able to accomplish when the American government is supportive…
Hezbollah, unprovoked, began attacking Israel a day later. In September the following year, Israel stepped up operations against Hezbollah, detonating booby-trapped pagers it had covertly sold to the terror group and assassinating its long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah.
“Israel has hurt the leaders of the resistance movements. In the pager attack and others, Nasrallah himself said they took a heavy blow,” said Arash. “What the IRGC thinks now is that Hamas won’t recuperate. Hezbollah won’t recuperate. Where do they place their stock? In Yemen.”
Yemen is currently taking American fire. They may not much longer be a viable option.
Asked about Israel’s attack on Iran’s air defenses in late October — which followed Iran’s October 1 missile attack that sent millions of Israelis into bomb shelters — Arash said that the Islamic Republic’s airspace was “wide open.”
“The computer system that receives orders and launches missiles at planes — those systems have been taken completely offline,” he said.
Arash said Israel’s attack mainly hit “sites with S-300 anti-ballistic missile silos that Russia gave Iran, as well as drones.”
“Now they have no advanced anti-plane systems,” he said. “They have the same old systems we used in the [1980-1988] Iran-Iraq War, two pipes that we sit behind and shoot out of.”
An evocative description — the man has the soul of a poet, appropriate for a culture even whose astronomers wrote in quatrains.
A former Israeli intelligence officer interviewed by Channel 12 explained that the Iran-Iraq War had been the reason Tehran did not disband its military, which was loyal to the deposed shah, immediately after the 1979 revolution that heralded the Islamic Republic.
Then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini had planned to replace the military with the IRGC, but the war’s manpower crunch required him to keep the military intact, the Israeli officer said.
The Iranian birthrate has been below replacement for a while — the current total fertility rate being 1.91 and the median male age now 33.6 per the CIA World Factbook— limiting available military age men.
The officer added that the Iranian military remains underfunded and had relatively little influence over decision-making, compared with the IRGC. The latter, he said, is identified with Iran’s hardliners and had been the driving force behind Iran’s attacks on Israel last year.
Arash, the retired Iranian officer, said that “all the soldiers in the military feel estranged from the IRGC, from this regime. I can even say that 60% of soldiers in the IRGC hate it.”
Javad, a former IRGC mullah, said, “The military generally comprises the lower classes, so they have negative thoughts about the regime, compared with the IRGC.”
Javad also reported that the IRGC was “shocked” by Israel’s assassination of Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh at a Guard guesthouse in Tehran in July.
Of course they were. How could they have imagined that Allah would allow the Jews such a victory over his own best beloveds?
“You can see the IRGC didn’t put out a statement,” he said.
He also noted that the IRGC “has lost a very strong front in Syria” when Iran-backed President Bashar al-Assad was deposed in December. “That front has fallen to Israel’s hands. Now, the Syrian regime is attacking Lebanon on behalf of Israel’s interests.
On their own rather than Israel’s, of course. But the sillies dare to believe they are Allah’s preferred brand, which goes to show.
And that was a very fatal blow.”
According to Channel 12, Javad had become recently disillusioned with the Islamic Republic after the regime harassed him over a personal matter. The falling-out was said to have cost Javad his religious privileges and hurt his social status.
“I’m a Shiite, and until this incident, there have been many videos of me taking part in rallies and such,” he said. “But I’m happy my mind has opened up. I consider them enemies, those who say Israel… is corrupt, when they themselves are corrupt.”
“The corruption at the top has doubled,” he said. “The corruption and prostitution in Iran have doubled.”
He proceeded to illustrate his compatriots’ discontent with their government’s generous support for Palestinian terror groups even as Iranians suffer from international sanctions on their economy.
“I was in Tehran on a mission,” he said. “One of the IRGC kids said, jokingly, ‘death to Palestine,’ and we all laughed.”
“Even so,” Javad added, “he knew that if he really wanted to say something tomorrow… [the regime] will easily assassinate him.”
The interviews were broadcast as the US struck Houthi targets in Yemen and warned Iran to stop supporting the rebels, who have threatened to resume attacks on Red Sea shipping and Israel. Iran responded on Sunday that Washington has “no authority” to dictate Iran’s foreign policy.
Meanwhile, Khamenei last week rejected US President Donald Trump’s offer to negotiate a deal for the White House to lift sanctions on Iran in exchange for oversight of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear facilities.
The Trump dawa, providing an opportunity for peaceful surrender before turning to the non-peaceful approach, just as the Prophet Mohammed modelled. Like Alinsky, the method is available to all…
Trump — who scrapped such a deal in his first term — has indicated the alternative to a deal would be airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
See?
Though Tehran has said its nuclear program is strictly peaceful, it has enriched uranium to near-weapons-grade levels unfit for civilian use.
*shrug* Everyone knows it’s taqqiya, or one of the other required Moslem lies.
Israeli officials have repeatedly indicated that Jerusalem could take advantage of Iran’s low air defenses to strike the nuclear facilities.
Speaking to Channel 12, Javad said, “I live with the hope… that in coming months I’ll see this happen. Israel against Iran — in the end it’s in the hands of the US. The Iranians understand that, too.”
Deus vult.
Posted by: trailing wife ||
03/17/2025 00:00 ||
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[IsraelTimes] Defense Minister Israel Katz cautions Israel’s enemies against testing Jerusalem’s “decisive” defense capabilities and confirms that the Iron Beam laser interception system is nearly operational during a visit to the Rafael defense technology firm.
“Our enemies should know and understand clearly — we have many means to deliver a decisive blow. If they raise a hand against Israel again—that hand will be severed,” says Katz while touring Rafael’s facilities alongside company leadership and top defense officials.
The advanced Iron Beam technology, which uses lasers to intercept rockets and drones for a fraction of the cost of the Iron Dome, will be implemented later this year, according to the Defense Ministry.
“The laser system is the weapon of the future, capable of neutralizing an entire layer of threats…with outstanding and continuously improving results. Israeli citizens need this protection,” says Katz.
The Iron Beam is not meant to replace the Iron Dome or Israel’s other air defense systems but to supplement and complement them, shooting down smaller projectiles and leaving larger ones for the more robust missile-based batteries such as the David’s Sling and Arrow systems.
According to the Defense Ministry, the Iron Beam doesn’t run out of ammunition so long as there’s an energy source.
The defense minister hails critical technology developed by Rafael, such as the Iron Dome and David’s Sling, which have protected Israeli citizens from aerial threats over the past year and a half, the Defense Ministry says.
Since the war in Gaza began on October 7 of last year with the Hamas invasion and massacre, more than 26,000 rockets, missiles, and drones have been launched at Israel from multiple fronts.
[NY Post] An Iraqi father charged with attempting to "honor kill" his teenage daughter outside her high school in Washington state appeared to care more about his car than his daughter as he was being arrested, new bodycam footage shows.
Ihsan Ali allegedly choked his 17-year-old daughter to the point of unconsciousness and punched her boyfriend in the face outside Timberline High School in Lacey in October because she refused to marry an older man in another country.
A chilling new video of the aftermath shows Ali yelling in Arabic to wife Zahraa Ali, who has also been charged, appearing concerned about police stealing their car as he’s being led by cops into the back of a cruiser in handcuffs.
"Zahraa, Zahraa, come here," he yells, according to a transcript of the arrest translated by the Daily Mail
He called to another daughter, Haneen, and his wife to "take the car from [police] and drive it away so they don’t steal it. They took the car! They’re going to steal it!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/17/2025 11:16 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
