Israel Will Buy 20 F-35 combat jet

JERUSALEM Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak has agreed in principle on Sunday, the purchase of 20 jet fighter that can avoid radar stealth artificial United States under an agreement worth 2.75 billion U.S. dollars, according to several defense officials said.Warplanes F-35 is expected to be delivered between 2015 and 2017, said an Israeli defense official, as quoted from Reuters.Some Israeli officials have been talking about the country’s old enemy, Iran, which potentially has developed nuclear weapons in the mid-decade.Israel gives the impression that the planes F-35 will not be used for preventive action, but rather to bolster the country’s deterrence.A ministry statement said Barak “has been approved in principle the recommendations of the Israel Defense Forces and the Ministry of Defense to move forward” with the purchase.

Stealth fighter planes, made by Lockheed Martin Corp., “will provide a continuing Israeli air superiority and maintain the technological advances in our region,” said Barak was quoted as saying in a statement.The defense officials said Israel had initially planned to buy 20 aircraft, which is expected to reach full price of 2.75 billion U.S. dollars, which will be closed to the granting of annual U.S. defense amounted to 3 billion dollars.Some officials predict that the final approval of the agreement can be given at the end of September by a panel of Israeli government ministers.Israel will become the first foreign country to sign an agreement to buy F-35, or the Joint Attack Fighter aircraft, outside the eight international partners who have helped to develop the plane.

The treaty has been negotiated since September 2008, when the first Pentagon approved the sale of 25 jet fighters with more options in the coming years.F-35 aircraft is designed to avoid radar detection and can play a role in efforts to strike Israel what Israel regarded as a threat to their survival posed by Iran’s nuclear program. Tehran denies Western and Israeli accusations that the country has been trying to produce atomic weapons.

Defense Ministry Director General Udi Shani declared Israel’s incorporation of technology into the F-35 has played a role in Barak’s decision to buy the planes.Israel, widely regarded as the only country in the Middle East which has a nuclear arsenal, has also been considering a cheaper option – the purchase of fighter version of the Boeing F-15 which has modification. (AFP)

Jewish settlers planned a mass protest in downtown Jerusalem on Wednesday night

downtown Jerusalem

JERUSALEM  Jewish settlers planned a mass protest in downtown Jerusalem on Wednesday night in what they said would be the largest show of resistance to the government’s new slowdown on new housing construction in the West Bank.

Police expected thousands of people to attend the demonstration, to take place outside the residence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The size of the turnout could reflect how widespread support is for increasingly fierce settler resistance to the government building ban.

Separately, Israel’s parliament on Wednesday gave preliminary approval to a piece of legislation that would require a national referendum on any peace deal that gives up control of east Jerusalem or the Golan Heights.

Netanyahu announced the 10-month halt in most West Bank construction late last month in an attempt to restart peace talks, which broke down a year ago. The new restrictions have infuriated Jewish settlers and their backers in Netanyahu’s hard-line coalition, and government inspectors have been harassed while trying to enforce the ban.

The settlers have been struggling to regain their strength since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005, uprooting all 8,000 settlers who were living there.

At the Wednesday protest, lawmakers and settler leaders planned to speak out against Netanyahu, whom they accuse of caving to American pressure.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, himself a settler, said the protest was legitimate.

“If someone came to you and froze construction on your house while you were building it, you would also object,” he told Israel Radio. “I just hope the struggle and the resistance remain within the framework of a legitimate political protest that is acceptable in a democratic state.”

While Netanyahu has painted his order as an unprecedented concession, the Palestinians have dismissed it as insincere and insufficient, since it does not include east Jerusalem or 3,000 homes already under construction in the West Bank. The Palestinians claim all of the West Bank and east Jerusalem as parts of a future independent state. They say they will not resume talks until all settlement construction ceases.

Speaking after a meeting of top ministers and security chiefs on Wednesday, Netanyahu said the Palestinians seem to have adopted a strategy of “rejecting negotiations with Israel.”

“This is a mistake. There can be no genuine solution without direct negotiations with Israel, in the framework of which we will reach agreements and arrangements between the sides,” he said.

The Israeli settlement watchdog group Peace Now also cast new doubts on the building freeze, saying that building in the West Bank continues to take place at a greater pace than elsewhere in Israel.

“Beyond the political dispute going on around the settlements, the argument of the settlers that they are discriminated against is simply not true,” said Peace Now leader Yariv Oppenheimer.

Some 300,000 settlers live in the West Bank, in addition to 180,000 Jewish Israelis living in east Jerusalem, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed soon after. Netanyahu opposes any withdrawal from east Jerusalem, which Israel considers part of its eternal undivided capital.

If approved, the measure passed by parliament Wednesday could constrain the ability of any future Israeli government to turn over captured land as part of a peace deal.

While the Palestinians seek east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state, Syria demands the return of the Golan Heights. Israel captured both areas in the 1967 Mideast war and subsequently annexed them.

The measure was approved by parliament 68 to 22, but it needs to pass two more parliamentary votes to become law.