The Treasury Department, in a detailed study it declined to make public, has concluded Mr. Obama has the authority to suspend the vast majority of those sanctions without seeking a vote by Congress, officials say.
But Mr. Obama cannot permanently terminate those sanctions. Only Congress can take that step. And even if Democrats held on to the Senate next month, Mr. Obama’s advisers have concluded they would probably lose such a vote . . .
White House officials say Congress should not be surprised by this plan.
The PLO is trying to create linkage between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the fight against ISIS. Khaled Abu Toameh deconstructs the idea.
The thousands of Muslims who are volunteering to join Islamic State are not doing so because they are frustrated with the lack of progress in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. They are not knocking on the Islamic State’s doors because they are disappointed that the two-state solution has not materialized.
Kerry is anyway naïve to think that the jihadis believe in something called a “two-state” solution. The only solution the Islamic State believes in is the one that would lead to the establishment of a radical Sunni Islamic Caliphate across the Middle East where the surviving non-Muslims who are not massacred would be subject to sharia law.
