US questions Israeli probe into Palestinian teen’s death

Al-Ayyam added Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes in Jerusalem has increased by 40 percent. The last US-backed talks on statehood collapsed in 2014. “Or try something new?”

That would signal US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, a move that would infuriate Palestinians, who claim the eastern sector of the city, captured by Israel in 1967, as their capital. “But that doesn’t mean it is the right plan”. Israel knows that American bipartisanship is crucial to its well-being.

According to Barghouti, the electoral victory of US President-elect Donald Trump has already emboldened Israel’s far-right settlement movement.

The Palestinian Ministry of Health identified the slain Palestinian as Jihad Muhammad Said Khalil, 48, from the village of Beit Wazan in the West Bank district of Nablus.

US presidents have long struck a delicate balance in the Israel-Palestinian conflict. “And I tell them: hold your horses”. “Would that come to pass under a Trump administration?”

More than 200,000 Israeli settlers now live in communities in East Jerusalem, which Israel has occupied along with the rest of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and parts of Egypt and Syria during the 1967 war.

“But I will give it one hell of a shot”, he said in a TV interview.

Jerusalem’s mayor, Israeli businessman Nir Barkat, has also since reiterated his calls for expanded settlement building in Jerusalem, and Israel’s parliament last week backed a bill to retroactively legalise settlement outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land in the West Bank. Rabbi Dr. Leonard Matanky, Honorary President of the RCA, stressed the statement’s request that “both the President and the President-Elect not pivot from longstanding US policy that a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties”. Consequently, the Prime Minister issued a directive against Israeli ministers contacting Trump’s team. These stories, and more, coming up, stay tuned.

Netanyahu, in his 22-minute address to the conference, did not mention his ministers’ overtures to the incoming USA administration. Indicates formal role unlikely but he could be a player on Mideast peace.

“I am supremely optimistic”, he declared. I am hopeful about Israel.

But asked if he expected any new initiative from Obama before his term ends, Lieberman said: “I don’t think so”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks as he chairs the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2016. But Netanyahu has said nothing. “You see sparks of change”.

“His inflammatory rhetoric and alliance with Israel are not going to help the Arab world or the peace process”.

But Hazem Khairat, Egypt’s ambassador in Tel Aviv, said it was the other way around. The Times reported that Priebus was afraid Trump would receive questions he might not be prepared to answer.

Agreeing that ties between Israel and United States will improve under the Trump administration, Dr Michael Doran, a senior fellow from Hudson Institute in Washington, who also participated in the panel discussion said that “we are going to see the most pro-Israel American administration ever”.

Netanyahu fears this, and though a hawk, he is not a religious ideologue who is ready to kill the two-state solution.