Turkey’s Erdogan: “Liberate Jerusalem from the Jews”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, under whose tenure as prime minister Turkey’s relationship with Israel devolved from being a crucial bridge between the Jewish state and the Islamic world to being arguably Israel’s most vocal detractor in the region, has etched his animus to Israel even deeper with his declaration on Saturday urging Muslims to liberate Jerusalem from the Jews. Erdogan was delivering a campaign speech in advance of parliamentary elections scheduled for June 7. The venue was a mass rally celebrating 562 years since Constantinople was captured from the Christians by the Turks. The historical context provided Erdogan with his hook linking the Turkish conquest of Jerusalem to next week’s election in Turkey as he declared, “Conquest is Mecca, conquest is Saladin, it’s to hoist the Islamic flag over Jerusalem again.” Reinforcing the trend by Erdogan and his allies to draw himself as a force in Islamic history, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said at the dedication of an airport named “Saladin,” the 12th Century conqueror of the Christian Crusaders, that, “All those who claim that Jerusalem is the Jew’s holy city should be ashamed. We chose the name Saladin in order to send a message with the help of Allah that Jerusalem will always belong to the Kurds, to Turkey, to Arabs, to Muslims.”
ISIS Gains on Assad Regime, Rebel Forces over Weekend
Islamic State (ISIS) fighters made gains against two rival forces in Syria over the weekend, seizing territory from both the Assad regime’s soldiers and the rebel forces seeking its downfall. In central Syria, ISIS grabbed land in Homs province while doing the same in the north, near Aleppo. The gains were milestones according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reported that ISIS now controls an area of Syria and Iraq of more than 115,000 square miles, or the equivalent of Italy’s land mass. Also over the weekend, government troops failed to dislodge ISIS fighters from the area of Palmyra. One local resident was quoted by the French news agency AFP as reporting that, “The road is now open to ISIS from Palmyra [in Syria] to Anbar province in Iraq, with no obstacles.”
Israeli Think Tank Releases Study of Israel vs. Hamas Gaza War
Contrary to the widely-held assessment that the Gaza Strip-based Hamas is “merely” a terrorist organization, the group is, in effect, a structured army that learns from its experiences on the field of battle and is methodically preparing for the next round of fighting: all while waging a parallel effort in the court of public opinion, according to the authors of a new report issued by Israel’s Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. The report asserts that last summer’s 50-day war between Hamas and Israel came about almost accidentally when the volume of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel became intolerable, and had the unintended effect of plunging the two sides into an intense shooting war before the vast array of Hamas’ terror tunnels was completed. This prevented the implementation of a doomsday plan by the Palestinians for a massive coordinated surprise strike by thousands of terrorists against hundreds of Israeli targets – military and civilian — intended to dwarf the scope of America’s 911. The report challenges criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war, offering data and support Israeli claims that its forces exerted maximum to prevent civilian casualties and that Palestinian figures on collateral damage are erroneous. JCPA is headed by Dr. Dore Gold, a former ambassador to the United Nations and longtime senior adviser to Prime Minister Netanyahu, who has just been named to serve as director general of Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Underscoring the bipartisanship of the work from the Israeli perspective, sharing the editorship of “The Gaza War of 2014: The War Israel Did Not Want and the Disaster it Averted,” is Hirsh Goodman, a prominent veteran Israeli journalist whose views are traditionally unambiguously opposite those of Dr. Gold’s.
Another West Bank Checkpoint to Open
A crossing point between Israel and the West Bank that has been closed for ten years will be reopened on June 7 according to a Palestinian official. As the result of an agreement with the Israelis, Palestinians who live inside of Israel will be allowed to access the city of Qalqilya in the northern West Bank through the Eyal crossing point. Officials say the move will make life easier for residents of Israeli communities with large Palestinian populations such as Taybe. The agreement applies to Palestinians who are Israeli citizens who are traveling in private vehicles between the hours of 8am and 8pm.