Clinton urges Hamas to end violence as it pursues reconcilation Fri Feb 27, 6:33 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that talks to reconcile Palestinian factions will only produce results if Hamas agrees to recognize Israel and other international terms.Clinton made the remarks as she prepared to travel to the region after Fatah and Hamas agreed Thursday to work together to set up a unity government during Egyptian-sponsored talks aimed at ending factional feuding.In an interview with Voice of America radio that was distributed by the State Department, Clinton backed the idea of Palestinian unity.
I believe that it?s important, if there is some reconciliation and a move toward a unified authority, that it?s very clear that Hamas knows the conditions that have been set forth by the quartet, by the Arab summit, she said.With Arab backing, the diplomatic quartet of the United States, the European Union, United Nations and Russia have laid out three conditions that any Palestinian partners in peace talks with Israel must meet.Clinton reiterated those conditions, saying: They must renounce violence, recognize Israel, and abide by previous commitments, such as the Oslo peace accords.Otherwise, I don?t think it will result in the kind of positive step forward either for the Palestinian people or as a vehicle for a reinvigorated effort to obtain peace that leads to a Palestinian state, Clinton said.A State Department official said Clinton and Foreign Minister Franco Frattini of Italy, which currently holds the presidency of the Group of Eight wealthy nations, backed those conditions during a meeting here Friday.The official told reporters on the condition of anonymity that the two had a mind meld and agreed on the need to send a united message on Hamas after Frattini said some unspecified members of the European Union were willing to yield.The official said President Barack Obama's administration would not deal with any unity government that included a Hamas contingent which rejected the conditions.But he was not ruling out dealing separately with Mahmud Abbas, a Fatah leader who is the president of the US-backed Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank, if he ends up heading a unity government with Hamas.
He also said that aid for the people in Gaza is very clearly not going to be funnelled through Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and which fought Israel in a three-week war ending in a fragile truce on January 18.Clinton is due Monday in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to join an international conference aimed at raising money for the Palestinians to rebuild the war-battered territory.The United States is reportedly ready to contribute 900 million dollars, but Clinton suggested it depends on how well the Palestinians meet the conditions of the quartet.I will be announcing a commitment to a significant aid package, but it will only be spent if we determine that our goals can be furthered rather than undermined or subverted, she told Voice of America.
Netanyahu and Livni fail to agree on coalition By ARON HELLER, Associated Press Writer – Fri Feb 27, 1:24 pm ET
JERUSALEM – Israel edged closer to a government of hawks and right-wing religious parties Friday after Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu failed to persuade his chief moderate rival to join a coalition that could help avert a showdown with the Obama administration.Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni refuses to sign up unless Netanyahu openly endorses the vision of dividing the land into separate Jewish and Palestinian states.Two states for two peoples is not an empty slogan — it is the only way Israel can keep its existence as a Jewish, democratic state," Livni said after their meeting. Just as I cannot accept vague statements, neither can the world. This is a matter of principle, not semantics.Netanyahu said he had made Livni a generous offer of partnership, adding that he intended to promote the diplomatic process with the Palestinians. Nevertheless, he said he encountered a complete rejection of unity from Ms. Livni.The breakdown in their talks came as President Barack Obama's Mideast envoy George Mitchell was in the region meeting with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.Livni did not shut the door completely on an agreement, and Netanyahu still has five weeks to cobble together a government. The two deadlocked in the Feb. 10 election, but Netanyahu was appointed to form a coalition because he had greater support from the elected lawmakers.Netanyahu can form a hard-line government that will give him a 65-seat majority in the 120-seat parliament. But that means virtually any of his partners could bring down the government in a dispute. A centrist government with Livni also would help Netanyahu ward off international pressure and avoid a clash with a U.S. president who has promised to become aggressively involved in pursuing Mideast peace.Livni, who heads the centrist Kadima Party and served as chief negotiator with the Palestinians, supports the formation of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Netanyahu does not.Diplomatic activity continued Friday, with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana touring Gaza. He was the highest ranking European official to visit the territory since it was overrun by Hamas in June 2007.
Solana did not meet with representatives of Hamas, boycotted internationally as a terror group. The international community has demanded the group recognize Israel and renounce violence, conditions it has refused.I came to express solidarity with the people of Gaza and to tell them that we will be helping them in the reconstruction process, Solana said, standing at the ruins of the American International School of Gaza, which was destroyed by Israeli bombs during its recent offensive against Hamas militants.On Monday, international donors will meet in Egypt for a conference on Gaza's reconstruction. The Palestinians are seeking $2.8 billion dollars. The EU's executive office, the European Commission, said Friday it was earmarking $556 million for the Palestinians in 2009, though it was not clear how much would go to Gaza. The U.S. is expected to pledge $900 million.Israel and Hamas are holding talks through Egyptian mediation meant to produce a long-term truce in Gaza in the aftermath of Israel's three-week offensive against Hamas, which ended Jan. 18. Hamas wants Israel to open Gaza's blockaded border crossings, a step Israel says it won't take until Hamas returns an Israeli soldier held since June 2006.
Hamas is also holding talks with its Fatah rivals aimed at ending the violent spat between them, which culminated in Hamas' rout of Fatah and takeover of Gaza. The goal is to forge a power-sharing agreement.
EU's Solana on unprecedented Gaza visit Fri Feb 27, 8:41 am ET
GAZA CITY (AFP) – EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana toured the war-shattered Gaza Strip on Friday, his first such trip since the Islamist Hamas seized power in the Palestinian territory in June 2007.I came to Gaza to see by myself the situation and the destruction and to show the solidarity to the good people of Gaza who have suffered so much, he said at a news conference.I wanted to see with my eyes the level of destruction, he said of the devastation wrought by Israel's 22-day military offensive that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians.He viewed the ruins of the American International School and the wasteland of Ezbet Abed Rabbo, where scores of Palestinians huddle in shanties erected on mounds of rubble that used to be their homes.His visit came ahead of an international conference in Egypt on the rebuilding of Gaza.I hope the meeting that will take place on Monday will be a good meeting with good consequences for people here, said Solana.Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere was on a similar visit to Gaza on Friday, touring areas hard hit by the Israeli offensive which ended on January 18.Neither Solana nor Stoere were due to meet any representative of Hamas, which the European Union, Israel and the United States consider a terrorist organisation.We have not had any meeting with Hamas at the political level since June 2007, said Norwegian foreign ministry spokesman Haakon Svane.The Islamist movement violently seized power in the Gaza Strip in June 2007, ousting forces loyal to moderate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.
EU to donate 436m euros in aid to Gaza Fri Feb 27, 6:53 am ET
BRUSSELS (AFP) – The European Commission announced Friday that it would donate 436 million euros (553 million dollars) in aid to the conflict-torn Gaza Strip at an international donors conference next week.By offering a substantial aid package we confirm our generosity and commitment towards the Palestinians, EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in a statement.The commissioner is to pledge the funds, for this year, on Monday at a donors conference in Egypt aimed at helping rebuild Gaza following Israel's war on Hamas, which started in late December.The European Union is the biggest donor of funds to the Palestinians, providing more than half a billion euros each year, but it holds little political influence over Israel.The Palestinian Authority has said that it will seek 2.8 billion dollars to rebuild Gaza, even as Israel warned of another military strike if arms smuggling into the Hamas-run Palestinian enclave continues.We will dedicate part of our assistance to early recovery after the conflict at the beginning of the year, notably for urgently needed removal of rubble and unexploded ordinance and for providing assistance for traumatised children,Ferrero-Waldner said.The funds will also be used to back a cash for work scheme and repair shelters damaged during Israel's attack on Hamas militants, aimed at ending rocket attacks launched from Gaza on Israeli citizens.
In announcing the pledge, the commissioner also called on Israel to end its blockade of the impoverished Palestinian territory, to allow aid and goods to enter unhindered.The crucial problem at the moment is not related to funding but to access,she said.In the aftermath of the crisis, a clear priority remains the immediate and unconditional reopening of all Gaza crossings on a regular and predictable basis, for the flow of humanitarian and commercial goods as well as people.The Gaza Strip has been under a tight Israeli blockade since Hamas seized power in June 2007, ousting forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas whose power base is now limited to the West Bank.Israel insists it will not reopen its crossing points until Hamas releases Gilad Shalit, a soldier captured by Palestinian militants in a deadly cross-border raid from Gaza in June 2006.More than 70 countries are expected at Monday's meeting in the Egyptian coastal resort of Sharm El Sheikh.Egypt has been mediating a consolidation of the Gaza truce after Hamas and Israel declared on January 18 their own ceasefires to end the 22-day war, in which more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed.Sporadic attacks have continued on both sides since.Humanitarian agencies have repeatedly called for better access to Gaza.
Palestinians agree to work to form unity govt by Sakher Abu El Oun Sakher Abu El Oun – Thu Feb 26, 2:54 pm ET
CAIRO (AFP) – Rival Palestinian groups Fatah and Hamas agreed on Thursday to work together to set up a unity government after Egyptian-sponsored reconciliation talks aimed at ending long-running factional feuding.It is indeed a historic day, former Palestinian premier Ahmed Qorei said at a press conference announcing the creation of five joint committees, including one tasked with forming a national unity government.Qorei, a member of the Fatah faction of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, said the committees, which will also cover issues such as security, national reconciliation, elections and reform of the umbrella group the Palestine Liberation Organisation, would complete their work by the end of March.We have started a new chapter of reconciliation and unity.Fatah and Hamas have long been rivals but their feuding came to a head in June 2007 when the Islamists seized control of Gaza, routing forces loyal to Abbas after days of deadly street battles.The takeover, branded a coup by Abbas, split the Palestinian territories into two separate entities and dealt a major blow to international efforts to forge a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians.Earlier, officials from two smaller Palestinian factions said the groups involved in talks had agreed to form a unity government by the end of March but Qorei did not confirm this deadline.No doubt some of the results of the committees will be immediately implemented, such as the government committee...it will be immediately formed and take full charge in Gaza and the West Bank, Hamas delegation leader Mussa Abu Marzuk told the press conference.As part of the agreement, the factions have also agreed to release prisoners held by Hamas and Fatah and to end a war of words being played out in the media, Qorei said.
The international community has been pushing the Palestinians to try to form a government it would find acceptable, as Hamas is boycotted as a terrorist outfit by Israel and the West.Thursday's agreement comes just days ahead of an aid meeting for Gaza being held on Monday in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, where the Palestinians are seeking billions of dollars from international donors.Egypt had originally called for Palestinian reconciliation talks in November, but Hamas withdrew at the last minute, complaining that Fatah was continuing to arrest Hamas members in the West Bank.The reconciliation process was relaunched by Egypt after Israel's 22-day war on Gaza that ended last month with more than 1,300 Palestinians killed and buildings and infrastructure throughout the impoverished territory destroyed.British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, visiting Cairo on Wednesday, had called for the Palestinians to form a new government of technocrats to oversee political and economic reconstruction in readiness for elections.Hamas trounced Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian general election but its government was boycotted by Israel and the West which regard the Islamists as terrorists, and attempts at forging a national unity government failed.Thursday's conference stemmed from Egyptian proposals for a lasting ceasefire following the January 18 end of the Gaza war. Cross-border violence has continued since then as Egypt has tried in vain to mediate a truce between Hamas and Israel.Hamas has said it was close to agreeing an 18-month truce with Israel but the talks were stalled after Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert conditioned the deal on the release of captured soldier Gilad Shalit.
Senior Israeli negotiator Ofer Dekel met Suleiman on Thursday to discuss efforts to release Shalit who was seized by Gaza militants in June 2006.Hamas has demanded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, many implicated in attacks on Israelis, in exchange.
Obama's Mideast envoy talks Gaza with Israeli leaders by Patrick Moser – Thu Feb 26, 1:53 pm ET
TEL AVIV (AFP) – US President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell discussed the situation in Gaza with senior Israeli officials on Thursday on his second regional trip to try to advance stalled peace talks.We are going to discuss before the gathering of the donor states in Egypt the situation in Gaza, outgoing Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told reporters before the talks with Mitchell at a Tel Aviv hotel.Israel believes that there is a need to help ... humanitarian needs and to find a way to do so without strengthening Hamas, the terrorist organisation that runs Gaza, she said.Mitchell said only that he was looking forward to the talks. He later met Benjamin Netanyahu, the hawk charged with forming Israel's new government, but had nothing to say before or after.The former US senator's visit comes ahead of an international conference on reconstruction for the Gaza Strip in Egypt on Monday, due to be attended by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.Mitchell met later in the day for talks with outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, whose spokesman Mark Regev described them as positive and said the premier had expressed support for the conference.
On Friday, Mitchell was due to hold talks with Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak before heading to the occupied West Bank for meetings with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad on Friday.Clinton is to visit Israel and the West Bank following the Gaza aid meeting in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.Obama has vowed to vigorously pursue Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, which were relaunched to much fanfare at a US conference in November 2007 but have made little progress since.According to the Israeli press, Mitchell, one of the architects of accords that brought peace to Northern Ireland, plans to rent offices in Jerusalem with a view to visiting the region every month.The peace negotiations have been on ice since the December-January war in Gaza that Israel launched in response to militant rocket fire and that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.Ministers from the Middle East peace Quartet may meet in Sharm El-Sheikh on the sidelines of the Gaza aid conference, a Russian foreign ministry source was quoted as saying on Wednesday.The Quartet has endorsed a roadmap that calls for a Palestinian state coexisting peacefully alongside a secure Israel.Mitchell arrived in Israel from Turkey, where he said Ankara was important in efforts to solve the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.As an important democratic nation with strong relations with Israel, (Turkey) has a unique role to play and can have significant influence on our efforts to promote comprehensive peace in the Middle East,he told reporters after talks with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Turkey has been Israel's main regional ally since a 1996 military cooperation agreement, but their flourishing ties were strained because of strong criticism by Ankara of Israel's 22-day deadly onslaught on Gaza.
Israeli rivals divided over Palestinian state By Joseph Nasr – Thu Feb 26, 1:13 pm
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Differences over Palestinian statehood are likely to scupper Benjamin Netanyahu's efforts to forge a broad government with his main rival, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, an official from his Likud party said Thursday.The hawkish Netanyahu, tapped by Israel's president to try to form a governing coalition, planned to meet Livni Friday in another attempt to recruit her centrist Kadima party, which backs the Palestinians' quest for a state.Israel needs a government and it will get one soon, Netanyahu told reporters before a meeting with George Mitchell, Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, who is on his second visit to the region since the U.S. president took office.Netanyahu wants to shift the focus of U.S.-sponsored peace talks from thorny territorial issues that would set the boundaries of a state to shoring up the Palestinian economy.Netanyahu has spoken about Palestinian self-government but alluded only in general terms to a state, saying it must have limited sovereign powers and be demilitarized. He has made no commitment to trade occupied land for peace.There is across-the-board agreement on Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas but there is a big gap between Kadima and Likud on the two states for two people. It's insolvable, Silvan Shalom, a senior Likud legislator and former foreign minister, told Army Radio.Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who meets Mitchell Friday, said the Palestinian Authority would not be able to pursue peace talks with Israel if Netanyahu's government did not express a clear and honest stance on the two-state solution.Livni has said Kadima would not join a government that does not commit clearly to pursuing a peace deal under which a Palestinian state would be created.
LAND-FOR-PEACE
As Israel's chief negotiator with the Palestinians in the outgoing government, Livni has been at the forefront of a land-for-peace process whose declared aims are to achieve a viable Palestinian state and security for Israel.Unfortunately the answers we are receiving from Kadima leaders is that there is no chance of her changing her position. And it seems that tomorrow she will say a final no, Shalom told Israeli Army Radio.Asked about Shalom's remarks, a Kadima spokeswoman said Livni's position was unchanged.Mitchell will meet with members of the outgoing Israeli government on ways to revive peace talks. He will also hold talks with Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.Kadima won 28 of parliament's 120 seats, to right-wing Likud's 27, in a February 10 election. But a strong nationalist bloc emerged from the ballot and Netanyahu has the support of 65 right-wing lawmakers, enough to form a narrow government.A right-wing coalition could lead to friction with the Obama administration, which has pledged to move swiftly toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.Under his mandate from President Shimon Peres, Netanyahu has another 36 days to win parliamentary approval for a government.(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah; Editing by Louise Ireland)
Israel hits Gaza tunnels after rockets fired Thu Feb 26, 8:42 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israeli air strikes hit smuggling tunnels between Hamas-run Gaza and Egypt on Thursday after militants in the enclave fired two rockets into the Jewish state, the army and witnesses said.The afternoon strikes did not result in any casualties, witnesses said.They came after two rockets fired from Gaza struck inside Israel without causing casualties, the army said.The incidents marked the latest violence to rock tenuous ceasefires that Israel and Hamas announced on January 18, ending a 22-day war in the coastal strip that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.Egypt has been mediating in a bid to broker a lasting truce around the impoverished coastal strip, where the Islamists seized control in June 2007, ousting forces loyal to secular president Mahmud Abbas.
Olmert warns Iran over nuclear plant Thu Feb 26, 2:13 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel's outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert shot a thinly-veiled warning at Iran on Thursday after its arch-enemy announced the completion of its first nuclear power plant.We are a strong country, a very strong country, and we have at our disposal (military) capacities the intensity of which are difficult to imagine, Olmert told public radio.We have deployed enormous efforts to reinforce our deterrence capacity, he said. Israel will be able to defend itself in all situations, against all threats, against all enemies. I cannot say more but believe me, I know what I'm talking about.Although the remarks did not mention Iran by name they were clearly aimed at the Islamic republic which Israel considers its enemy number one.Iran began testing its first nuclear power plant Wednesday in the face of deep international concern over its atomic drive and said the long-delayed project could go on line within months.Officials from Iran and Russia, which has been involving in building the power station for the past 14 years, watched over the start of the pre-commissioning in the Gulf port of Bushehr.As for a timetable, the tests should take between four and six, seven months, the head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation Gholam Reza Aghazdeh said at a press conference in Bushehr.And if they go smoothly, then it (the launch of Bushehr) will be even sooner.
He also said Iran is now operating 6,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium, defying international calls that it halt the sensitive nuclear process which is at the heart of Western fears it is secretly trying to build the atomic bomb.We have 6,000 centrifuges working and we plan to increase them. In the next five years we plan to have 50,000 centrifuges, Aghazdeh told reporters.Iran has rejected repeated calls by the UN Security Council -- of which Russia is a permanent member -- for a halt to enrichment, despite three sets of sanctions being imposed for its defiance.The UN nuclear watchdog had said in a report last week that Iran was slowing the expansion of its enrichment activities, with 3,964 centrifuges actively operating in Natanz.
The visiting head of the Russian nuclear agency, Sergei Kiriyenko, announced that construction of the 1,000-megawatt Bushehr plant had been completed but that Russia would remain involved for one year after it goes on stream.We have reached a deal to establish a joint venture to operate the plant, he said, adding that the two sides were also in talks to sign a 10-year contract for the delivery of nuclear fuel by Russia.Despite being the world's number four crude producer and having the second largest gas reserves, Iran insists it needs nuclear power to sustain a growing population whose fossil fuels will run out in the coming decades.The plant's start-up will be a leap forward in Iran's efforts to develop nuclear technology but is likely to further unnerve Western powers, rattled by the launch this month of an Iranian satellite on a home-built rocket.Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak called for tougher sanctions against Iran.Although the plant is not a central part of Iran's military nuclear operations, the announcement of completion of work shows the importance of the concrete steps that the free world, led by the United States, should take as time is pressing, Barak said. As part of the pre-launch process, Iran was carrying out comprehensive tests of equipment at the plant which Kiriyenko said involved loading dummy fuel rods into the reactor. Most of the systems have had more than 97 percent of the equipment installed, Kiriyenko said, adding that some parts that required further testing included heat insulators.
Bushehr was first launched by the US-backed shah in the 1970s using German contractors but was shelved after the Islamic revolution until Russia became involved in 1995.The International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been investigating Iran's nuclear programme for six years, said last week it had been informed by Tehran that the loading of fuel into the reactor was scheduled to take place during the second quarter of 2009.The 87 tons of fuel supplied by Moscow is currently under IAEA seal.The IAEA said in a report issued last Thursday that Tehran is continuing to enrich uranium, but has slowed down the expansion of its enrichment activities.In all, IAEA inspectors had been able to verify that Iran has accumulated 839 kilogrammes (1,846 pounds) of low-enriched uranium, while Iran had told the agency that it had added another 171 kilogrammes this month. Estimates vary, but analysts calculate that anywhere between 1,000-1,700 kilogrammes would be needed to convert into high-enriched uranium suitable for one bomb.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
NETANYAHU TURNS TO RIGHT
Israel's Gaza pointman reinstated after apology to Olmert Wed Feb 25, 1:28 pm ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Amos Gilad was reinstated as Israel's pointman for Gaza truce talks on Wednesday after he apologised to Ehud Olmert for his sharp criticism of the outgoing prime minister.The remarks were unjustified, were said in error and it would have been better if they had not been said, Gilad said, according to the prime minister's office.Last week he lashed out at Olmert for linking the Egyptian-mediated truce talks to the release of a captive Israeli soldier.On Sunday Olmert removed Gilad from his duties, but following the apology, he told him: I intend to bring this matter to an immediate close.An official close to Olmert later confirmed that Gilad would resume his functions as pointman in the truce negotiations.Olmert had faced criticism that firing Gilad would hamper efforts to conclude a long-lasting truce with the Islamist Hamas group following the Gaza war in December and January.Gilad said last week that insisting at the last moment on freedom for Shalit as a condition for a ceasefire to take effect risked alienating key ally and mediator Egypt.Gilad is an experienced senior defence ministry official who clinched a six-month truce between Israel and Hamas in June.He has been shuttling between Israel and Egypt for weeks to try to forge a lasting truce to replace January 18 ceasefires that ended Israel's 22-day military onslaught but have been repeatedly strained by tit-for-tat attacks.More than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the war.
Netanyahu turns to the right to form Israel coalition By Joseph Nasr FEB 25,09
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Benjamin Netanyahu's hawkish Likud party launched talks on Wednesday with right-wing parties on forming Israel's next government after he failed in initial efforts to enlist his main centrist rival in a broad coalition.
Netanyahu, who has said he wants to shift the focus of Palestinian statehood talks from territorial to economic issues, was chosen on Friday by President Shimon Peres to try to form a government and become prime minister for the second time.Likud negotiators met officials of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman and other right-wing factions later near Tel Aviv on terms for political partnership in a governing coalition.A spokeswoman for Lieberman said he would push to secure either the defense, finance or foreign affairs portfolio for himself. She said the party also wants the justice and internal security portfolios.Yisrael Beiteinu, which came in third after the centrist Kadima party and the Likud in a February 10 election, opposes Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank.It advocates trading land in Israel where Arab citizens live for Jewish settlements in the West Bank in any peace deal with Palestinians and calls for all Israelis to take an oath of loyalty to the Jewish state.A narrow right-wing government and a prominent role for Lieberman could put Netanyahu on a collision course with Washington, where the Obama administration has pledged swift pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.Likud spokeswoman Dina Libster denied Israeli media reports that Netanyahu had ruled out appointing Lieberman as defense minister and would offer him either the finance or foreign affairs portfolios.Ministerial appointments were not on the agenda today,Libster said.
U.S. DIPLOMACY
Amid the Israeli coalition-building, Hillary Clinton will make her first visit to Israel and the West Bank as U.S. secretary of state next week, Israeli officials said.President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, was due to precede her on Thursday.Netanyahu has asked Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister and its chief negotiator with Palestinians, to join him in a broad coalition government. She has so far refused but the two were expected to hold further talks on Friday.Kadima wants guarantees from Netanyahu that his new government would engage in U.S.-backed talks with the Palestinians with the aim of achieving a Palestinian state, officials from Livni's party said.Gideon Sa'ar, a lawmaker who heads Likud's negotiating team, declined to say whether it would accept Kadima's demand.Under the mandate Netanyahu received from Peres on February 20, he has 42 days to form a government. Netanyahu served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999.(Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Editing by Diana Abdallah)
Israeli warplanes strike Gaza after rocket fire Wed Feb 25, 7:45 am ET
GAZA CITY (AFP) – Israeli warplanes launched two air strikes along the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt on Wednesday as delegates from three Palestinian factions were crossing at a nearby terminal, witnesses said.They said the two air strikes left large craters and caused damage to surrounding homes near the border, where smugglers operate a massive underground network of tunnels to supply goods to the besieged territory.There were no immediate reports of anyone killed or wounded.An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that two air strikes had been carried out in the area.Palestinian militants had earlier fired two crude homemade rockets into southern Israel without causing any casualties, according to the military.
Delegations from the Islamic Jihad group and two factions from the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) headed by the Western-backed president Mahmud Abbas were crossing into Egypt at the time of the Israeli raid.The delegations were to attend talks in Cairo aimed at reconciling the feuding factions. Abbas's Fatah party and Hamas have been bitterly divided since the Islamist movement seized control of Gaza in June 2007.Israel launched hundreds of air strikes on the smuggling tunnels during its war on Gaza last month that left more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead before coming to a halt on January 18.
Syria has built missile facility at suspect site: diplomats Wed Feb 25, 5:54 am ET
VIENNA (AFP) – Syria has told the UN nuclear watchdog that a suspect site bombed by Israeli planes in 2007 is now a missile facility, diplomats close to the IAEA revealed Wednesday.The head of Syria's Atomic Energy Commission, Ibrahim Othman, made the revelation to a closed-door briefing of the International Atomic Energy Agency late Tuesday, diplomats who attended the meeting told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.The US alleges the remote desert site, known alternatively as Al-Kibar or Dair Alzour, had been a covert nuclear reactor being built with North Korea's help and very near completion, until it was razed to the ground by Israeli bombers in September 2007.But Damascus has consistently rejected the claims, maintaining it was a disused military facility.Soon after the bombing, Syria levelled the site and built a new structure there that resembled the former main building.IAEA inspectors visited Al-Kibar last June, but have so far declined to reveal the nature of the new building, even when pressed on the issue by member states late last year.It was Othman, who revealed the nature of the site at a preparatory briefing Tuesday ahead of the IAEA's March board meeting next week, diplomats said.Last year, the watchdog said a significant number of particles of man-made uranium had been found at Al-Kibar.And in a report last week, it revealed that even more unexplained man-made uranium had turned up in the samples taken from the site which would require a clear explanation on the part of Syria has to how it got there.In the past, Damascus has argued that the uranium could have come from the Israeli bombs which flattened Al-Kibar.But the IAEA has effectively ruled out such an explanation.
Israel's Peres ushers in right-leaning parliament By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer – Tue Feb 24, 12:25 pm ET
JERUSALEM – Israel's president ushered in a right-leaning parliament Tuesday and gave lawmakers a tall order: conclude an elusive peace deal with the Palestinians by the end of their term.Shimon Peres delivered his appeal just days after selecting the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu to form a coalition government following this month's national election.Netanyahu can easily put together a government of lawmakers who oppose the sweeping territorial concessions that would be necessary for a deal.But a government of nationalist and religious hard-liners could put Israel sharply at odds with the Obama administration, which wants to aggressively pursue an end to 60 years of Mideast conflict. Next week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make her first visit since taking office. Top Mideast envoy George Mitchell will make a second trip this week.Netanyahu has been approaching centrist parties in an effort to give his new government greater stability and a moderate face that the international community would more easily accept. He has six weeks to form a government.
At the swearing-in ceremony of the 18th Knesset, or parliament, Peres told lawmakers that peace with the Palestinians would be recognized as regional peace with all of Israel's neighbors. It was time, he said, to put war aside.We countered fire with fire, yet the cessation of violence should be concluded through negotiations. Negotiations with the Palestinians need to continue until an accord will be found, he said. We don't want to rule over another people, and we don't want another people to rule over us.The 120 lawmakers elected Feb. 10 then took the oath of office.The centrist Kadima Party, led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, won 28 seats, one more than Netanyahu's Likud. However, Peres appointed Netanyahu to put together the next government because he has the support of a majority of the elected lawmakers.Both Kadima and the smaller, dovish Labor Party have so far spurned Netanyahu's offer to join his government.Livni is key to a broad-based government because of her party's size. But after meeting with Netanyahu on Sunday, she said the two had deep disagreements regarding talks with the Palestinians. She has also said she would refuse to serve as a fig leaf for a government that did not promote peace.Should Netanyahu fail to bring moderates into his government, his major partner will be Avigdor Lieberman's ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party, which wants to redraw Israel's borders to put large concentrations of Israeli Arabs under Palestinian jurisdiction and have those who remain sign loyalty oaths to the Jewish state or lose their citizenship.
Another partner would be the small, religious National Union Party. After the swearing-in ceremony, party lawmaker Michael Ben Ari derided Peres for using the occasion to talk about the illusion of two states for two peoples. This phrase is a disaster,he said.In his remarks to the Knesset, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert echoed Peres' vision of tranquility. It is my wish that this Knesset will witness peace and security for the state or Israel, he said.He also wished the legislature something his government did not enjoy — a full four-year term.Olmert is trying to use his last weeks in office to reach a long-term truce with Gaza Strip militants and bring home a soldier held by Gaza's ruling Hamas movement for nearly three years.A truce deal has implications beyond cementing the informal Jan. 18 cease-fire that ended Israel's three-week offensive in Gaza. Without it, there is little chance of advancing already troubled talks to reconcile feuding Palestinian factions who maintain rival governments in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel president urges Europeans to shun Hamas Tue Feb 24, 7:14 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday urged Europeans to shun Hamas, telling the European parliament's president that the Islamists who rule Gaza are a murderous terrorist group.Europeans must understand that Hamas is a dangerous and murderous terrorist organisation and must stop immediately showing any sympathy and support as this attitude prevents the continuation of the peace process, Peres told Hans-Gert Poettering.Poettering on Monday led delegation of European parliamentarians to the Gaza Strip, which was devastated by a 22-day Israeli military offensive in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed.Following his visit, the European official expressed grave concern about the situation in the Palestinian enclave that is reeling under an Israeli blockade imposed after Hamas seized power in June 2007.We have to help the people of Gaza by opening the borders, while preventing Hamas from arming again. We are in favour of peace and resolutely against war and terrorism, he said.EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was also scheduled to visit Gaza later this week as part of a Middle East tour aimed at helping consolidate the ceasefires that ended Israel's war on Gaza on January 18.
European and US officials had generally stayed away from the Gaza Strip for years, but several have travelled to the impoverished territory since the end of the Israeli offensive.Influential US Senator John Kerry and two other Democratic US congressmen last week visited the war-shattered coastal strip.The EU, the United States and Israel all blacklist Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
Palestinians ask Obama to press Israel to halt demolitions Mon Feb 23, 12:27 pm ET
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) – The Palestinian Authority urged the US president on Monday to press Israel to scrap a plan to raze almost 90 homes in annexed Arab east Jerusalem.We call on President Barack Obama to intervene personally to have this project stopped, said Yasser Abed Rabbo, one of the main aides of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.The Palestinian owners of 88 houses in the Silwan neighbourhood have received eviction notices saying that the structures will be destroyed because they were built or expanded without the necessary permits. The move would affect about 1,500 people.It is a massacre that Israel will commit in this Holy City, Abed Rabbo told a news conference, calling for urgent Arab and international action to halt this dangerous project.He said some of the houses affected by the orders had been built before Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War.He called for a day-long strike in east Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied West Bank to protest against the plan.The Gulf Cooperation Council, which groups the six Gulf Arab states, backed the call for US intervention to stop what it called these racist acts that defy human rights and international law.This is a dangerous step taken within the Zionist entity's strategy to change the demographic reality in Jerusalem, signalling the occupier's attempts to turn the city Jewish, the grouping's secretary general Abdulrahman al-Attiya said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.Silwan, which abuts the Old City of Jerusalem, is home to 10,000 Palestinians.Sixty Jewish families also live in the neighbourhood around the City of David archaeological park which Israeli authorities say was the capital of the ancient Israelite kingdom.Israel, which considers the whole of Jerusalem its eternal, undivided capital rarely grants building permits to Arab residents of east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want to make the capital of their promised state.According to the Israeli B'Tselem human rights organisation, Israeli authorities have demolished some 350 houses in east Jerusalem since 2004, saying that they were built without permits.
Al Qaeda's Zawahri tells Hamas don't accept truce Mon Feb 23, 5:43 am ET
DUBAI (Reuters) – Al Qaeda's second-in-command urged Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip not to succumb to Arab pressure for a truce with Israel and vowed to support fighting against the Jewish state.The militant leader in a recording posted on the Internet on Monday also called on Muslims in Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia to press ahead with fighting crusaders -- a term used to denote the West -- and their agents.Israel's Arab aides are trying to impose a calm (truce) on the people of Gaza to stop their jihad ... I tell our brothers and folk in Gaza that jihad to liberate Palestine and all Islamic land should not stop, Ayman al-Zawahri said.Egypt has been negotiating a truce between Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Israel following an Israeli offensive late in December in the coastal strip to punish Hamas for firing rockets at Israeli towns. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed.I reaffirm to our brothers the fighters in Gaza and everywhere that the mujahideen against crusaders in various battle zones are willing to give their brothers in Gaza and everywhere training and preparation, said Zawahri.Without naming Hamas, which al Qaeda has often criticized for dropping suicide bombings to play a political role, Zawahri advised the Islamist group against blending with non-Islamist factions under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas's Fatah movement is the largest of 11 groups that constitute the PLO, which in the early 1990s signed peace accords with Israel that aim to establish a Palestinian state.Talk of fixing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is futile, said Zawahri.The PLO is a secular entity that does not uphold Islamic law and it is the entity that dropped jihad from its covenant.Hamas has said Egypt will host reconciliation talks between Palestinian factions on Wednesday.The Egyptian militant leader also urged Somalis not to fall for a secular constitution and said militants there will not drop their weapons and fight the U.S.-made government.Somalia's new President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed earlier this month selected the Western-educated son of a murdered former leader to be prime minister in a power-sharing government intended to end civil conflict in the Horn of Africa nation.Zawahri praised what he described as an increasing jihadist awakening in the Arabian Peninsula and called on Yemeni tribes to follow the example of Afghan tribes in fighting U.S. influence in the central Asian country.In his recording Zawahri also urged Afghans to rally around the Taliban militant, al Qaeda's key ally in Afghanistan, to drive away U.S.-led forces.(Reporting by Inal Ersan; Editing by Matthew Jones)
Four dead in Gaza tunnel collapse Sun Feb 22, 7:55 am ET
GAZA CITY (AFP) – Four Palestinians were killed on Sunday when a tunnel used for smuggling between the Gaza Strip and Egypt collapsed on top of them, medics said.The victims were between the ages of 17 and 25, they said. The tunnels were thought to have collapsed after torrential downpours that hit the region over the last several days.Smuggling tunnels have mushroomed along the Gaza-Egypt border since June 2006, when Gaza militants seized an Israeli soldier in a deadly cross-border raid.Since then, the enclave's border crossings with Israel have remained largely closed, as has the one at Rafah with Egypt -- the only one that bypasses the Jewish state.The tunnels are used to smuggle supplies into the territory that Israel has largely sealed off to all but humanitarian aid since Hamas seized control there in June 2007.The Israelis say they are also used to smuggle weapons.
2 rockets fired from Lebanon toward Israel By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer – Sat Feb 21, 2:47 pm ET
BEIRUT – Two rockets were fired from southern Lebanon toward northern Israel Saturday, triggering an Israeli response and raising fears of renewed hostilities on the tense border.Lebanese leaders rushed to condemn the rocket attack and vowed not to allow southern Lebanon to become a launch pad for attacks against the Jewish state.The brief cross-border exchange was the third this year. Israel and the militant group Hezbollah fought a brutal 34-day war in the region in 2006. More than 1,200 people in Lebanon — most of them civilians — and 159 in Israel died in the conflict.It was not immediately known who fired the two rockets Saturday, and no group accepted responsibility.One rocket slammed into a mostly Christian Arab village, causing minor injuries to at least one Israeli.Lebanese security officials said the rockets were fired from the Mansouri and al-Qulaila areas near the coastal town of Naqoura. Officials with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in south Lebanon said the second rocket fell short, landing in Lebanon.An Israeli army spokesman said a woman was injured and the military responded to the rockets. He would not specify the kind of response, but Lebanese security officials said Israel responded by firing at least six shells on villages in the area where the rockets had been launched.No injuries were reported. The security officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.Lebanese President Michel Suleiman condemned the rocket attack, saying he would not allow southern Lebanon to become a rocket launching pad against Israel. In a statement released by his office, Suleiman said the firing of rockets on Israel posed a challenge to the Lebanese government.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said in a statement that the rockets fired from south Lebanon threatened security and stability in the region and violated a U.N. resolution that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war. He also called Israel's retaliation an unjustified violation of Lebanese sovereignty.The Israeli military said the Lebanese government and military were responsible for preventing such attacks.
Saniora called on the army and U.N. peacekeepers to step up patrols and coordination in order to prevent such incidents.The head of the 13,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force deployed along with Lebanese troops along the border, Maj. Gen. Claudio Graziano, contacted senior military commanders in Lebanon and Israel and called for maximum restraint.Troops from the U.N. force, known as UNIFIL, and the Lebanese army located the rocket launch site and are continuing intensive patrols throughout the area, UNIFIL said.Israeli paramedics in Jerusalem said one rocket landed in northern Israel, causing minor injuries to three people who were taken to a hospital.The rocket exploded in a mostly Christian, Arab village in the Galilee region, leaving a large groove in the ground next to a house. Drops of what appeared to be dried blood were sprayed on the pavement and shrapnel smashed through a kitchen window, filling the sink with glass.I was sleeping when I heard something like a bomb, resident Masad, who did not give his last name, told AP Television News. I got up and saw something unbelievable — a katyusha, referring to the type of rockets generally used by militant groups in south Lebanon.Around half of the residents of Israel's hilly Galilee area are Arabs, most of them ethnic Palestinians.
The militant Hezbollah group has a large rocket arsenal but is not believed to have used them against Israel since their 2006 war. It has denied involvement in recent rocket attacks on Israel. Hezbollah officials refused to comment on Saturday's rocket attack. But local television stations reported that Hezbollah denied it was responsible for the rocket firing. Rockets from Lebanon have been fired into Israel on two occasions during Israel's Gaza offensive last month. Palestinian militant groups are suspected of launching them. The Syria-based radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command denied the group was responsible for Saturday's rocket attack and urged Lebanese authorities to find those who was responsible for the incident.Associated Press Writer Diaa Hadid contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Amos Gilad was reinstated as Israel's pointman for Gaza truce talks on Wednesday after he apologised to Ehud Olmert for his sharp criticism of the outgoing prime minister.The remarks were unjustified, were said in error and it would have been better if they had not been said, Gilad said, according to the prime minister's office.Last week he lashed out at Olmert for linking the Egyptian-mediated truce talks to the release of a captive Israeli soldier.On Sunday Olmert removed Gilad from his duties, but following the apology, he told him: I intend to bring this matter to an immediate close.An official close to Olmert later confirmed that Gilad would resume his functions as pointman in the truce negotiations.Olmert had faced criticism that firing Gilad would hamper efforts to conclude a long-lasting truce with the Islamist Hamas group following the Gaza war in December and January.Gilad said last week that insisting at the last moment on freedom for Shalit as a condition for a ceasefire to take effect risked alienating key ally and mediator Egypt.Gilad is an experienced senior defence ministry official who clinched a six-month truce between Israel and Hamas in June.He has been shuttling between Israel and Egypt for weeks to try to forge a lasting truce to replace January 18 ceasefires that ended Israel's 22-day military onslaught but have been repeatedly strained by tit-for-tat attacks.More than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the war.
Netanyahu turns to the right to form Israel coalition By Joseph Nasr FEB 25,09
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Benjamin Netanyahu's hawkish Likud party launched talks on Wednesday with right-wing parties on forming Israel's next government after he failed in initial efforts to enlist his main centrist rival in a broad coalition.
Netanyahu, who has said he wants to shift the focus of Palestinian statehood talks from territorial to economic issues, was chosen on Friday by President Shimon Peres to try to form a government and become prime minister for the second time.Likud negotiators met officials of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party of Avigdor Lieberman and other right-wing factions later near Tel Aviv on terms for political partnership in a governing coalition.A spokeswoman for Lieberman said he would push to secure either the defense, finance or foreign affairs portfolio for himself. She said the party also wants the justice and internal security portfolios.Yisrael Beiteinu, which came in third after the centrist Kadima party and the Likud in a February 10 election, opposes Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank.It advocates trading land in Israel where Arab citizens live for Jewish settlements in the West Bank in any peace deal with Palestinians and calls for all Israelis to take an oath of loyalty to the Jewish state.A narrow right-wing government and a prominent role for Lieberman could put Netanyahu on a collision course with Washington, where the Obama administration has pledged swift pursuit of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.Likud spokeswoman Dina Libster denied Israeli media reports that Netanyahu had ruled out appointing Lieberman as defense minister and would offer him either the finance or foreign affairs portfolios.Ministerial appointments were not on the agenda today,Libster said.
U.S. DIPLOMACY
Amid the Israeli coalition-building, Hillary Clinton will make her first visit to Israel and the West Bank as U.S. secretary of state next week, Israeli officials said.President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, was due to precede her on Thursday.Netanyahu has asked Kadima leader Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister and its chief negotiator with Palestinians, to join him in a broad coalition government. She has so far refused but the two were expected to hold further talks on Friday.Kadima wants guarantees from Netanyahu that his new government would engage in U.S.-backed talks with the Palestinians with the aim of achieving a Palestinian state, officials from Livni's party said.Gideon Sa'ar, a lawmaker who heads Likud's negotiating team, declined to say whether it would accept Kadima's demand.Under the mandate Netanyahu received from Peres on February 20, he has 42 days to form a government. Netanyahu served as prime minister from 1996 to 1999.(Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Editing by Diana Abdallah)
Israeli warplanes strike Gaza after rocket fire Wed Feb 25, 7:45 am ET
GAZA CITY (AFP) – Israeli warplanes launched two air strikes along the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt on Wednesday as delegates from three Palestinian factions were crossing at a nearby terminal, witnesses said.They said the two air strikes left large craters and caused damage to surrounding homes near the border, where smugglers operate a massive underground network of tunnels to supply goods to the besieged territory.There were no immediate reports of anyone killed or wounded.An Israeli military spokeswoman confirmed that two air strikes had been carried out in the area.Palestinian militants had earlier fired two crude homemade rockets into southern Israel without causing any casualties, according to the military.
Delegations from the Islamic Jihad group and two factions from the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) headed by the Western-backed president Mahmud Abbas were crossing into Egypt at the time of the Israeli raid.The delegations were to attend talks in Cairo aimed at reconciling the feuding factions. Abbas's Fatah party and Hamas have been bitterly divided since the Islamist movement seized control of Gaza in June 2007.Israel launched hundreds of air strikes on the smuggling tunnels during its war on Gaza last month that left more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis dead before coming to a halt on January 18.
Syria has built missile facility at suspect site: diplomats Wed Feb 25, 5:54 am ET
VIENNA (AFP) – Syria has told the UN nuclear watchdog that a suspect site bombed by Israeli planes in 2007 is now a missile facility, diplomats close to the IAEA revealed Wednesday.The head of Syria's Atomic Energy Commission, Ibrahim Othman, made the revelation to a closed-door briefing of the International Atomic Energy Agency late Tuesday, diplomats who attended the meeting told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.The US alleges the remote desert site, known alternatively as Al-Kibar or Dair Alzour, had been a covert nuclear reactor being built with North Korea's help and very near completion, until it was razed to the ground by Israeli bombers in September 2007.But Damascus has consistently rejected the claims, maintaining it was a disused military facility.Soon after the bombing, Syria levelled the site and built a new structure there that resembled the former main building.IAEA inspectors visited Al-Kibar last June, but have so far declined to reveal the nature of the new building, even when pressed on the issue by member states late last year.It was Othman, who revealed the nature of the site at a preparatory briefing Tuesday ahead of the IAEA's March board meeting next week, diplomats said.Last year, the watchdog said a significant number of particles of man-made uranium had been found at Al-Kibar.And in a report last week, it revealed that even more unexplained man-made uranium had turned up in the samples taken from the site which would require a clear explanation on the part of Syria has to how it got there.In the past, Damascus has argued that the uranium could have come from the Israeli bombs which flattened Al-Kibar.But the IAEA has effectively ruled out such an explanation.
Israel's Peres ushers in right-leaning parliament By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer – Tue Feb 24, 12:25 pm ET
JERUSALEM – Israel's president ushered in a right-leaning parliament Tuesday and gave lawmakers a tall order: conclude an elusive peace deal with the Palestinians by the end of their term.Shimon Peres delivered his appeal just days after selecting the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu to form a coalition government following this month's national election.Netanyahu can easily put together a government of lawmakers who oppose the sweeping territorial concessions that would be necessary for a deal.But a government of nationalist and religious hard-liners could put Israel sharply at odds with the Obama administration, which wants to aggressively pursue an end to 60 years of Mideast conflict. Next week, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make her first visit since taking office. Top Mideast envoy George Mitchell will make a second trip this week.Netanyahu has been approaching centrist parties in an effort to give his new government greater stability and a moderate face that the international community would more easily accept. He has six weeks to form a government.
At the swearing-in ceremony of the 18th Knesset, or parliament, Peres told lawmakers that peace with the Palestinians would be recognized as regional peace with all of Israel's neighbors. It was time, he said, to put war aside.We countered fire with fire, yet the cessation of violence should be concluded through negotiations. Negotiations with the Palestinians need to continue until an accord will be found, he said. We don't want to rule over another people, and we don't want another people to rule over us.The 120 lawmakers elected Feb. 10 then took the oath of office.The centrist Kadima Party, led by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, won 28 seats, one more than Netanyahu's Likud. However, Peres appointed Netanyahu to put together the next government because he has the support of a majority of the elected lawmakers.Both Kadima and the smaller, dovish Labor Party have so far spurned Netanyahu's offer to join his government.Livni is key to a broad-based government because of her party's size. But after meeting with Netanyahu on Sunday, she said the two had deep disagreements regarding talks with the Palestinians. She has also said she would refuse to serve as a fig leaf for a government that did not promote peace.Should Netanyahu fail to bring moderates into his government, his major partner will be Avigdor Lieberman's ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party, which wants to redraw Israel's borders to put large concentrations of Israeli Arabs under Palestinian jurisdiction and have those who remain sign loyalty oaths to the Jewish state or lose their citizenship.
Another partner would be the small, religious National Union Party. After the swearing-in ceremony, party lawmaker Michael Ben Ari derided Peres for using the occasion to talk about the illusion of two states for two peoples. This phrase is a disaster,he said.In his remarks to the Knesset, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert echoed Peres' vision of tranquility. It is my wish that this Knesset will witness peace and security for the state or Israel, he said.He also wished the legislature something his government did not enjoy — a full four-year term.Olmert is trying to use his last weeks in office to reach a long-term truce with Gaza Strip militants and bring home a soldier held by Gaza's ruling Hamas movement for nearly three years.A truce deal has implications beyond cementing the informal Jan. 18 cease-fire that ended Israel's three-week offensive in Gaza. Without it, there is little chance of advancing already troubled talks to reconcile feuding Palestinian factions who maintain rival governments in the West Bank and Gaza.
Israel president urges Europeans to shun Hamas Tue Feb 24, 7:14 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israeli President Shimon Peres on Tuesday urged Europeans to shun Hamas, telling the European parliament's president that the Islamists who rule Gaza are a murderous terrorist group.Europeans must understand that Hamas is a dangerous and murderous terrorist organisation and must stop immediately showing any sympathy and support as this attitude prevents the continuation of the peace process, Peres told Hans-Gert Poettering.Poettering on Monday led delegation of European parliamentarians to the Gaza Strip, which was devastated by a 22-day Israeli military offensive in which more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed.Following his visit, the European official expressed grave concern about the situation in the Palestinian enclave that is reeling under an Israeli blockade imposed after Hamas seized power in June 2007.We have to help the people of Gaza by opening the borders, while preventing Hamas from arming again. We are in favour of peace and resolutely against war and terrorism, he said.EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana was also scheduled to visit Gaza later this week as part of a Middle East tour aimed at helping consolidate the ceasefires that ended Israel's war on Gaza on January 18.
European and US officials had generally stayed away from the Gaza Strip for years, but several have travelled to the impoverished territory since the end of the Israeli offensive.Influential US Senator John Kerry and two other Democratic US congressmen last week visited the war-shattered coastal strip.The EU, the United States and Israel all blacklist Hamas as a terrorist organisation.
Palestinians ask Obama to press Israel to halt demolitions Mon Feb 23, 12:27 pm ET
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) – The Palestinian Authority urged the US president on Monday to press Israel to scrap a plan to raze almost 90 homes in annexed Arab east Jerusalem.We call on President Barack Obama to intervene personally to have this project stopped, said Yasser Abed Rabbo, one of the main aides of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.The Palestinian owners of 88 houses in the Silwan neighbourhood have received eviction notices saying that the structures will be destroyed because they were built or expanded without the necessary permits. The move would affect about 1,500 people.It is a massacre that Israel will commit in this Holy City, Abed Rabbo told a news conference, calling for urgent Arab and international action to halt this dangerous project.He said some of the houses affected by the orders had been built before Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan during the 1967 Six-Day War.He called for a day-long strike in east Jerusalem and the rest of the occupied West Bank to protest against the plan.The Gulf Cooperation Council, which groups the six Gulf Arab states, backed the call for US intervention to stop what it called these racist acts that defy human rights and international law.This is a dangerous step taken within the Zionist entity's strategy to change the demographic reality in Jerusalem, signalling the occupier's attempts to turn the city Jewish, the grouping's secretary general Abdulrahman al-Attiya said in a statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency.Silwan, which abuts the Old City of Jerusalem, is home to 10,000 Palestinians.Sixty Jewish families also live in the neighbourhood around the City of David archaeological park which Israeli authorities say was the capital of the ancient Israelite kingdom.Israel, which considers the whole of Jerusalem its eternal, undivided capital rarely grants building permits to Arab residents of east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want to make the capital of their promised state.According to the Israeli B'Tselem human rights organisation, Israeli authorities have demolished some 350 houses in east Jerusalem since 2004, saying that they were built without permits.
Al Qaeda's Zawahri tells Hamas don't accept truce Mon Feb 23, 5:43 am ET
DUBAI (Reuters) – Al Qaeda's second-in-command urged Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip not to succumb to Arab pressure for a truce with Israel and vowed to support fighting against the Jewish state.The militant leader in a recording posted on the Internet on Monday also called on Muslims in Yemen, Afghanistan and Somalia to press ahead with fighting crusaders -- a term used to denote the West -- and their agents.Israel's Arab aides are trying to impose a calm (truce) on the people of Gaza to stop their jihad ... I tell our brothers and folk in Gaza that jihad to liberate Palestine and all Islamic land should not stop, Ayman al-Zawahri said.Egypt has been negotiating a truce between Hamas, which controls Gaza, and Israel following an Israeli offensive late in December in the coastal strip to punish Hamas for firing rockets at Israeli towns. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed.I reaffirm to our brothers the fighters in Gaza and everywhere that the mujahideen against crusaders in various battle zones are willing to give their brothers in Gaza and everywhere training and preparation, said Zawahri.Without naming Hamas, which al Qaeda has often criticized for dropping suicide bombings to play a political role, Zawahri advised the Islamist group against blending with non-Islamist factions under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization, led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas's Fatah movement is the largest of 11 groups that constitute the PLO, which in the early 1990s signed peace accords with Israel that aim to establish a Palestinian state.Talk of fixing the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is futile, said Zawahri.The PLO is a secular entity that does not uphold Islamic law and it is the entity that dropped jihad from its covenant.Hamas has said Egypt will host reconciliation talks between Palestinian factions on Wednesday.The Egyptian militant leader also urged Somalis not to fall for a secular constitution and said militants there will not drop their weapons and fight the U.S.-made government.Somalia's new President Sheikh Sharif Ahmed earlier this month selected the Western-educated son of a murdered former leader to be prime minister in a power-sharing government intended to end civil conflict in the Horn of Africa nation.Zawahri praised what he described as an increasing jihadist awakening in the Arabian Peninsula and called on Yemeni tribes to follow the example of Afghan tribes in fighting U.S. influence in the central Asian country.In his recording Zawahri also urged Afghans to rally around the Taliban militant, al Qaeda's key ally in Afghanistan, to drive away U.S.-led forces.(Reporting by Inal Ersan; Editing by Matthew Jones)
Four dead in Gaza tunnel collapse Sun Feb 22, 7:55 am ET
GAZA CITY (AFP) – Four Palestinians were killed on Sunday when a tunnel used for smuggling between the Gaza Strip and Egypt collapsed on top of them, medics said.The victims were between the ages of 17 and 25, they said. The tunnels were thought to have collapsed after torrential downpours that hit the region over the last several days.Smuggling tunnels have mushroomed along the Gaza-Egypt border since June 2006, when Gaza militants seized an Israeli soldier in a deadly cross-border raid.Since then, the enclave's border crossings with Israel have remained largely closed, as has the one at Rafah with Egypt -- the only one that bypasses the Jewish state.The tunnels are used to smuggle supplies into the territory that Israel has largely sealed off to all but humanitarian aid since Hamas seized control there in June 2007.The Israelis say they are also used to smuggle weapons.
2 rockets fired from Lebanon toward Israel By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer – Sat Feb 21, 2:47 pm ET
BEIRUT – Two rockets were fired from southern Lebanon toward northern Israel Saturday, triggering an Israeli response and raising fears of renewed hostilities on the tense border.Lebanese leaders rushed to condemn the rocket attack and vowed not to allow southern Lebanon to become a launch pad for attacks against the Jewish state.The brief cross-border exchange was the third this year. Israel and the militant group Hezbollah fought a brutal 34-day war in the region in 2006. More than 1,200 people in Lebanon — most of them civilians — and 159 in Israel died in the conflict.It was not immediately known who fired the two rockets Saturday, and no group accepted responsibility.One rocket slammed into a mostly Christian Arab village, causing minor injuries to at least one Israeli.Lebanese security officials said the rockets were fired from the Mansouri and al-Qulaila areas near the coastal town of Naqoura. Officials with the United Nations peacekeeping mission in south Lebanon said the second rocket fell short, landing in Lebanon.An Israeli army spokesman said a woman was injured and the military responded to the rockets. He would not specify the kind of response, but Lebanese security officials said Israel responded by firing at least six shells on villages in the area where the rockets had been launched.No injuries were reported. The security officials spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.Lebanese President Michel Suleiman condemned the rocket attack, saying he would not allow southern Lebanon to become a rocket launching pad against Israel. In a statement released by his office, Suleiman said the firing of rockets on Israel posed a challenge to the Lebanese government.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora said in a statement that the rockets fired from south Lebanon threatened security and stability in the region and violated a U.N. resolution that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war. He also called Israel's retaliation an unjustified violation of Lebanese sovereignty.The Israeli military said the Lebanese government and military were responsible for preventing such attacks.
Saniora called on the army and U.N. peacekeepers to step up patrols and coordination in order to prevent such incidents.The head of the 13,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force deployed along with Lebanese troops along the border, Maj. Gen. Claudio Graziano, contacted senior military commanders in Lebanon and Israel and called for maximum restraint.Troops from the U.N. force, known as UNIFIL, and the Lebanese army located the rocket launch site and are continuing intensive patrols throughout the area, UNIFIL said.Israeli paramedics in Jerusalem said one rocket landed in northern Israel, causing minor injuries to three people who were taken to a hospital.The rocket exploded in a mostly Christian, Arab village in the Galilee region, leaving a large groove in the ground next to a house. Drops of what appeared to be dried blood were sprayed on the pavement and shrapnel smashed through a kitchen window, filling the sink with glass.I was sleeping when I heard something like a bomb, resident Masad, who did not give his last name, told AP Television News. I got up and saw something unbelievable — a katyusha, referring to the type of rockets generally used by militant groups in south Lebanon.Around half of the residents of Israel's hilly Galilee area are Arabs, most of them ethnic Palestinians.
The militant Hezbollah group has a large rocket arsenal but is not believed to have used them against Israel since their 2006 war. It has denied involvement in recent rocket attacks on Israel. Hezbollah officials refused to comment on Saturday's rocket attack. But local television stations reported that Hezbollah denied it was responsible for the rocket firing. Rockets from Lebanon have been fired into Israel on two occasions during Israel's Gaza offensive last month. Palestinian militant groups are suspected of launching them. The Syria-based radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command denied the group was responsible for Saturday's rocket attack and urged Lebanese authorities to find those who was responsible for the incident.Associated Press Writer Diaa Hadid contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
Saturday, February 21, 2009
NETANYAHU TO BE NEW ISRAELI LEADER
Iran has enough fuel for a nuclear bomb, report says Vahid Salemi / Associated Press A technician works at a nuclear facility outside Isfahan, Iran.The report by the IAEA, the United Nations' nuclear watchdog, surprises diplomats and arms control experts. Officials note that major obstacles remain to building a weapon.By Borzou Daragahi February 20, 2009 LATIMES.
Reporting from Tehran -- Iran has enough nuclear fuel to build a bomb if it decides to take the drastic steps of violating its international treaty obligations, kicking out inspectors and further refining its supply, U.N. officials and arms control experts said Thursday. Iran has made no such gestures and has slowed its expansion of machinery producing nuclear fuel, having increased production capacity by less than 5% over the last three months, according to a report issued Thursday by the International Atomic Energy Agency.The reports, the latest updates from the arms control watchdog for the United Nations, show that Iran had amassed about 2,227 pounds of low-enriched, or reactor-grade, nuclear fuel by late January. Physicists estimate that producing the 55 pounds or so of highly enriched, or weapons-grade, uranium needed for an atomic warhead requires 2,205 to 3,748 pounds of low-enriched uranium.Iran's increased supply of low-enriched uranium surprised diplomats and arms control experts who had assumed that Iran would need until the end of the year to acquire enough fuel for a bomb.One expert, David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said he was blindsided by the report.We are surprised, Albright said.We did not expect this.
Senior officials close to the Vienna-based IAEA told reporters and arms control experts in a conference call Thursday evening that Iranian officials said they had miscalculated their stockpile of low-enriched uranium, an error that was cleared up with agency officials in mid-November but never made public.Iran steadfastly denies that it hopes to build an atomic bomb, which the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says violates the principles of Islam. It says its nuclear program is intended solely to produce energy for Iran's growing population. But the United States, Europe and Israel suspect Iran is trying to attain a nuclear weapons capacity that could have strategic implications for the Middle East. By crossing the 2,205-pound threshold, experts say, Iran has improved its breakout capacity, the ability to renege on treaty obligations, kick out inspectors and quickly build a bomb. The latest IAEA report may complicate the Obama administration's plan to engage diplomatically with the Islamic Republic in an attempt to persuade it to dismantle sensitive elements of its nuclear program.Still, Albright said, the uranium stockpile signifies a capability, not a decision. And even if Iran made such a decision, it would face numerous major hurdles to building a bomb.
For one thing, it doesn't have enough high-speed centrifuges at its facility in Natanz to further refine the uranium, said senior U.N. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.In theory it is possible, one official said.But to do so they would have to use installed capacity. If they would use the facility in Natanz, they're not there.The IAEA report, distributed to members of the agency's board before a March 2 meeting, also says inspectors found no evidence that Iran was trying to further refine the nuclear fuel, which remains under constant surveillance, or to move it to another facility.But Iranian officials have barred inspections of facilities producing centrifuge parts, a move arms control inspectors say adds to worries that Iran may build an undeclared centrifuge facility separate from Natanz. Since November, Iran has added only one new 164-centrifuge cascade at Natanz, suggesting it was slowing the acceleration of its program. About 4,000 centrifuges are now producing nuclear fuel at the facility, with 1,600 more installed but not yet operating, according to the report, which was obtained by The Times.Iran has also barred inspectors from its heavy-water reactor near Arak, which has concerned inspectors who hope to examine the site for possible telltale clandestine features that could be used in a weapons program, said a high-ranking U.N. official. The report also takes Iran to task for refusing to answer questions about a set of classified documents that arms control experts say suggest Iran engaged until 2003 in missile design, radiation experiments and explosives testing consistent with a covert nuclear weapons program. Iran says the documents, dubbed the alleged studies by diplomats and arms control experts, are forgeries.
The agency's report on Syria criticizes Damascus for limiting access to the bombed facility near Dair Alzour, which Syrian authorities say was an unused military site, as well as other facilities. Graphite is often used to build a nuclear reactor, but U.N. officials said they could not yet say whether the graphite traces found were nuclear-grade.Syria has said that artificially modified uranium particles at the site probably came from Israeli bombs. But the IAEA report says the composition of the particles suggests a low probability that they came from munitions.A senior U.N. official told reporters the uranium had been oxidized. Albright said metallic uranium found in reactors would have been oxidized if it was blown up in an airstrike, suggesting that uranium fuel could have been present at the remote Syrian site.U.S. intelligence officials have maintained that no nuclear material had yet been introduced at the site at the time it was bombed by Israel. daragahi@latimes.com
Violence flares on Israel-Lebanon border by Jihad Siqlawi FEB 21,09
EL-QLAYLEH, Lebanon (AFP) – Israel shelled southern Lebanon on Saturday after a rocket slammed into its territory in a tit-for-tat exchange of fire across their tense border, sources on both sides said.Israeli rescue services said three people were injured when the rocket struck near the town of Maalot in the western Galilee region, triggering an immediate response from Israel.The Israeli army considers this a serious incident and believes it is the responsibility of the Lebanese government and the army to prevent this rocket fire, an Israeli army spokesman said.Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the violence, which caused panic on both sides of the border, while the militant Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah denied any involvement.The Israeli shelling is an unacceptable and unjustified violation of Lebanese sovereignty,Siniora said in a statement. The rockets launched from Lebanon threaten the country's security and stability and constitute a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.He was referring to the resolution that brought an end to the devastating 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon that left more than 1,200 people dead.Lebanese President Michael Sleiman reiterated his opposition to the country being used as a platform for the launch of rockets, saying he regards it as a challenge to Lebanon's will.A spokesman for Israel's Magen David Adom emergency rescue service said three people were lightly wounded and another two were treated for shock.Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Mussawi told AFP that the group had nothing to do with the attack, which was launched from a region largely controlled by Hezbollah and its Amal party ally.The head of the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) which patrols the border area urged maximum restraint.
The UNIFIL force commander Major General Claudio Graziano has been in contact with the senior commanders of the Lebanese and Israeli army with a view to ensuring that the cessation of hostilities is maintained, UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane told AFP.A Lebanese army spokesman said Israel fired eight artillery shells after two rockets were launched from a banana plantation near the village of El-Henniyeh, in the El-Qlayleh region about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the border.There were no reports of injuries in Lebanon.One of the two rockets landed in Israel and the second apparently malfunctioned and landed in Lebanon, Bouziane said.Panicked residents could be seen fleeing as Israel retaliated.My six-year-old girl was terrified,said Hassan Faqih, 49, as he headed to the nearby coastal town of Tyre with his wife and two children. We will stay in Tyre if the situation escalates.In January, rockets were fired on two occasions from Lebanon into Israel in attacks that frayed nerves on both sides of the border and raised fears that Israel's war on Gaza in December and January could spread. Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, also denied involvement in those attacks. The Lebanese government, in which Hezbollah is represented, has repeatedly stressed that it is committed to the UN-brokered truce that ended the war. Earlier this month, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak warned that any attack by Hezbollah would prompt a tough response from Israel.
I want to say here, on the border, that I don't recommend that Hezbollah test us because the consequences would be more painful than one can imagine, Barak said during a visit to the frontier area. Maalot was the scene of an attack on a school by Palestinian gunmen in 1974 in which 26 people were killed, most of them children.
2 rockets fired from Lebanon towards Israel By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer –Sat Feb 21, 6:56 am ET
AFP BEIRUT – Two rockets were fired from south Lebanon at Israel early Saturday, with one slamming into a mostly Christian Arab village and causing minor injuries to at least one Israeli, reported Lebanese and Israeli officials.Lebanese security said the rockets were fired from the Mansouri and al-Qulaila areas near the coastal town of Naqoura and said one rocket appeared to have landed in Israel.An Israeli army spokesman said a woman was injured and the military responded to the rockets. He did not elaborate.Israeli paramedics in Jerusalem said one rocket landed in northern Israel, causing minor injuries to three people who were taken to a hospital in the nearby coastal town of Nahariya. Israeli censorship rules do not allow media to report where, specifically, rockets fired from Lebanon land in Israel.The rocket exploded in a mostly Christian, Arab village in the Galilee region, leaving a large groove in the ground next to a house. Drops of what appeared to be dried blood were sprayed on the pavement and shrapnel smashed through a kitchen window, filling the sink with glass.I was sleeping when I heard something like a bomb, local resident Masad, who did not give his last name, told Associated Press Television News. I got up and saw something unbelievable — a katyusha, he said, referring to the type of rocket often used by militant groups in south Lebanon.Around half of the residents of Israel's hilly Galilee area are Arabs, mostly ethnic Palestinians. During Israel's war with Lebanon in 2006, their villages were shelled by Lebanese guerillas, killing a number of people.The Lebanese officials said Israel responded by firing at least six shells on villages in the area where the rockets had been launched. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora condemned both the rocket attack on Israel and the Israeli retaliation.In a statement Saturday, Saniora said the rockets fired from south Lebanon threatened security and stability in the region and violated a U.N. resolution that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006. He also condemned the Israeli firing of shells on Lebanese territory, calling it an unjustified violation of Lebanese sovereignty.No one has claimed responsibility for the rocket firing.The militant Hezbollah group has a large rocket arsenal but is not believed to have used them against Israel since their 2006 war. It has denied involvement in recent rocket attacks on Israel.Rockets from Lebanon have been fired into Israel on two occasions during Israel's Gaza offensive last month. Palestinian militant groups are suspected of launching them.The Syria-based radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command denied the group was responsible for Saturday's incident and urged Lebanese authorities to find those who carried out the attack.The firing came a day after the Israeli president chose hard-line Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu to form a new Israeli government.Associated Press Writer Diaa Hadid contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
U.S. repeats interest in two-state solution in Israel Fri Feb 20, 8:38 pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will continue to press for a two-state solution in Israel's conflict with Palestinians, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said on Friday, after right-wing leader Benjamin Netanyahu was asked to form Israel's next government.We'll have to see how events unfold in Israel, should Mr. Netanyahu become prime minister, and it will be our point of view that this remains a very important element of our approach and our policy, Rice told National Public Radio's All Things Considered program.But she added, Both parties have to want to work in that direction.Netanyahu, 59, leads the hawkish Likud party, which backs a two-state solution, but says any future Palestinian state must be demilitarized and have limited power.On Friday, Netanyahu accepted a mandate to form Israel's next government and immediately called for a broad, national unity coalition with centrist and left-wing partners.Such a coalition might create a middle-of-the-road government immune from pressures from fringe parties that have hamstrung previous Israeli administrations.But there was no sign that his rivals would accept, and Netanyahu may forge an alliance with far-right and ultra-religious parties, which could limit peace-making efforts with the Palestinians.Netanyahu, who served as Israel's prime minister in the late 1990s, now has six weeks to put together a coalition for a second turn at the helm.(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa, editing by Vicki Allen)
Hawkish Netanyahu picked to form Israel govt by Patrick Moser– Fri Feb 20, 3:35 pm
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Hawkish Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu was tasked on Friday with forming a new Israeli government, fuelling concerns that a right-wing coalition could torpedo the Middle East peace process.Accepting the nomination from President Shimon Peres, the former premier named Iran as the main threat to Israel's existence and made no direct reference to peace talks with the Palestinians.Netanyahu is pushing for a broad coalition, evidently keen to avert a repeat of the situation in 1999, when his government collapsed following the defection of far-right parties that accused him of making concessions to Palestinians.Livni, the outgoing foreign minister, emerged from talks with Peres saying she would have nothing to do with a right-wing coalition.I will not be a pawn in a government that would be against our ideals, she said. Israel needs a government based on a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israel, she added.But Netanyahu did not give up on his hopes and invited Livni for talks on Sunday.I turn to the Kadima and Labour leaders: let us close ranks and act together, he said. I want to meet you first and discuss the formation of a broad government coalition.Netanyahu did not directly mention Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and made no mention of the US-backed two-state solution, focusing instead on what he said was the threat from Iran.Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence,he said.The responsibility we face is to achieve security for our country, peace with our neighbours and unity among us.Reacting to the nomination, the Palestinian Authority said it will only deal with the new Israeli government if it is committed to the peace process.We will not deal with the Israeli government unless it accepts a two-state solution and accepts to halt settlements and to respect past accords, president Mahmud Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said.
The United States pledged its support to the incoming government, with State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid saying Washington remains optimistic for a solution to the regional peace process.The US also echoed Netanyahu's emphasis on Iran, when White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Tehran's suspect nuclear program is an urgent problem that has to be addressed and we can't delay addressing.The comments came a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran is continuing to enrich uranium, a key stage in the atom bomb making process, but has slowed down the expansion of its enrichment activities.Netanyahu believes the time is not ripe to discuss the key issues in Middle East peace talks, including the borders of a proposed Palestinian state, and wants to focus on improving daily life in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.He insists Jerusalem will remain Israel's undivided capital. Palestinians want east Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in 1967 and later annexed, to be the capital of their future state.Netanyahu, 59, has also insisted he will not be tied by a recent pledge by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to withdraw settlers from the occupied Palestinian territory. As premier from 1996 to 1999, he put the brakes on the peace process, in part by authorising a major expansion of Jewish settlements. But he also made more concessions than his hardline rhetoric had led Israelis to expect, and under US pressure he concluded two agreements with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Netanyahu has vowed that if he returns to power he will topple the Hamas rulers of Gaza and put a stop to rocket attacks which have continued sporadically since the January 18 end of Israel's 22-day Gaza military offensive that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians.
While Likud, with 27 of the 120 parliamentary seats, has one seat less than Kadima, Netanyahu emerged as the only one able to rally sufficient support to form a government coalition. Netanyahu can count on the support of 65 of the 120 members of parliament, if he relies on parties to the right of his own despite his stated preference for a broad coalition. He has 28 days to put together a coalition. If necessary Peres can extend the deadline by 14 days.
Czechs earmarks 350,000 euros aid to Gaza Fri Feb 20, 12:13 pm ET
PRAGUE (AFP) – The Czech cabinet said it had decided Friday to earmark a further 10 million koruna (350,000 euros, 440,000 dollars) for humanitarian aid to people in the besieged Gaza Strip.The Czech Republic, which holds the European Union presidency, wants to take a strong part in efficient humanitarian aid to Gaza, which has been afflicted by an extensive humanitarian crisis after the armed conflict in January,the cabinet said.The government, which already granted aid worth 175,000 euros to Gaza in January via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), will decide on the specific form of aid after a donor conference scheduled to take place in Cairo on March 2.The situation in Gaza will be one of the main topics for conversation at talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who will meet Czech President Vaclav Klaus and parliament speaker Miloslav Vlcek in Prague on Monday, according to an official programme.
Netanyahu names Iran as Israel's main threat Fri Feb 20, 9:02 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Hawkish Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday named Iran as Israel's main threat after accepting the task of forming a new government in the wake of the tight February 20 elections.Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence, he said at a ceremony at President Shimon Peres's official residence.The terrorist forces of Iran threaten us from the north, the presumptive prime minister said in reference to Lebanon and Syria, where Israel says Tehran supplies arms to Hezbollah and Hamas.For decades, Israel has not faced such formidable challenges.The responsibility we face is to achieve security for our country, peace with our neighbours and unity among us,he said.In a brief speech, Netanyahu did not directly address the issue of stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, nor did he mention the US-backed two-state solution.
Netanyahu urges moderates to join broad government By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer – Fri Feb 20, 4:33 pm ET
JERUSALEM – Benjamin Netanyahu appealed to his moderate rivals Friday to join a unity government — a tricky alliance that would let the hawkish Israeli leader avoid relying on an unstable grouping of right-wingers almost sure to collide with the Obama administration and each other.I call on the members of all the factions ... to set politics aside and put the good of the nation at the center, Netanyahu said during a brief ceremony after President Shimon Peres tapped him to try to put together Israel's next governing coalition.Although the election gave Netanyahu's Likud Party and other right-wing groups a majority in parliament, the prime minister-designate has a delicate task in forming a government.Bringing moderates into a coalition would dilute the power of the nationalists who criticized the peace talks pursued by the outgoing centrist government. Netanyahu opposes sweeping territorial concessions to the Palestinians and wants to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank.However, the centrist factions would produce a more stable government with international support than Netanyahu would probably get with a narrow coalition of conservatives who have their own disagreements. They have far different agendas when it comes to domestic issues, such as whether Israel should allow civil marriages.
In his appeal for a unity government, Netanyahu singled out first and foremost Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, head of the governing Kadima Party, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, chairman of the Labor Party.Livni is the key to a broad-based government and she indicated she might be willing to come on board. But because Kadima remained Israel's largest party in the Feb. 10 election, although far short of a majority, she would certainly demand a high price: sharing the premiership with Netanyahu, who doesn't want to serve only half a term.Livni, who led Israeli negotiators in a year of peace talks with the Palestinians, agreed to meet with Netanyahu on Sunday to discuss his unity overture. Earlier Friday, she said she would not join a hard-line government and was prepared to sit in the opposition if necessary.I will not be able to serve as a cover for a lack of direction. I want to lead Israel in a way I believe in, to advance a peace process based on two states for two peoples, Livni said.The Palestinian Authority's peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said any Israeli government that did not accept the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and continued settlement building will not be a partner.We will not be in the negotiations for the sake of negotiations, Erekat said.
Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the Islamic militant Hamas group that rules the Gaza Strip, said Netanyahu's appointment indicates that there is no possibility for security and stability in the region in the coming period. Hamas is not party to peace talks and is shunned by Israel and Western powers as a terrorist organization.
The center-left Labor Party, like Kadima, champions the establishment of a Palestinian state, and Barak has said he would take Labor into the opposition. Should he change his mind, he would want to remain defense minister, a demand Netanyahu would be expected to meet.While Livni insists on the need for peace efforts, she does not object to joining a government that includes Avigdor Lieberman's ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party, a Netanyahu ally that wants 1 million Israeli Arabs to sign a loyalty oath to the Jewish state.Lieberman has said he would not object to joining a government with Kadima. His secularist agenda is at odds with religious nationalist parties and gives him common ground with moderates.
Many Labor lawmakers, however, say they would not serve in a coalition with Yisrael Beiteinu because of its extremist views.In his speech, Netanyahu did not mention by name either Yisrael Beiteinu or right-wing religious factions whose support persuaded Peres to choose Netanyahu to form the government even though Kadima led the election by winning 28 of parliament's 120 seats.Likud, which got 27 seats, is in a better position to put together a coalition because Lieberman's party won 15 and right-wing religious parties combined took 23 — for a 65-seat bloc in parliament. While Netanyahu owes the hard-liners his second crack at the premiership — he held the job in the late 1990s for a turbulent three years — forming a narrow coalition of nationalist and religious parties would present him an array of domestic and foreign policy headaches. Yisrael Beiteinu wants to redraw Israel's borders to place heavy concentrations of Israeli Arabs under Palestinian jurisdiction and to require those Arabs who remained to sign a loyalty oath or lose their citizenship rights. Those positions have not drawn any criticism from the religious parties, but Lieberman angers them with his vehement opposition to the Orthodox Jewish establishment's control of key aspects of life in Israel, such as marriage. If either party bolted a right-wing coalition in a fight over social issues, the government would fall. The nationalist and religious parties could both cause Netanyahu problems in the international arena if the U.S. were to pressure him to make territorial concessions to the Palestinians. His first government fell apart in 1999 after Washington leaned on him to grant the Palestinians control of large parts of the biblically significant West Bank town of Hebron. The nationalist camp's commitment to expanding West Bank settlements could put Israel at loggerheads with the U.S., the Jewish state's main ally. President Barack Obama has vowed to make ending 60 years of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians a priority, and his new Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, unequivocally favors a halt to all settlement building.
IAEA finds graphite, more uranium at Syria site By Mark Heinrich– Thu Feb 19, 1:11 pm ET
VIENNA (Reuters) – U.N. inspectors found graphite and more uranium traces in test samples taken from a Syrian site Washington says was a covert graphite nuclear reactor almost built before Israel bombed it, officials said on Thursday.The first word that graphite particles had turned up came with the release of the International Atomic Energy Agency's second report on Syria in three months. But U.N. officials familiar with it said the IAEA inquiry remained inconclusive.Still, one senior U.N. official said the discovery of additional uranium traces was significant.That, together with graphite traces that are undergoing more tests, raised pressure on Damascus to provide evidence for its denials of wrongdoing.The IAEA's November report said the site bore features that would resemble those of an undeclared nuclear reactor.Thursday's report said Damascus, in a letter to the IAEA this month, had repeated its position that the desert complex destroyed by Israel, known as al-Kibar or Dair Alzour, in September 2007 was a conventional military building only.But Syria, it said, was still failing to back up its stance with documentation or by granting further access for IAEA sleuths to the bombed location and three others cited in U.S. intelligence handed to the U.N. watchdog last year.
Some diplomats said Syria might be playing a waiting game until it sees what U.S. President Barack Obama has to offer as part of his stated intent to engage foes including Iran, an ally of Syria with a disputed uranium enrichment program.The United States says its information indicates the site was a reactor that was close to being built with North Korean assistance and designed to produce plutonium for atomic bombs.The U.N. official said further analysis of swipe samples since November turned up around 40 more instances of processed uranium particles, adding to 40 registered three months ago.He said some graphite traces had been found around the alleged reactor site and also by a water treatment plant 5 km away where equipment for the complex that was bombed to rubble by Israel had been stored temporarily.
SIGNIFICANT FINDING
We are sure it is man-made graphite but not yet sure if it has specifications of nuclear-grade graphite, he said.If you find 40 uranium particles and then 40 more, this constitutes for us a significant finding, because we are now sure this is not just a simple contamination from a person who went to the site for a visit.The IAEA report said the uranium contamination that turned up in soil samples was a chemically processed form of the mineral that was not the enriched variety used to run nuclear power plants or as fissile bomb material.It was extremely unlikely, the report said, that the traces came with munitions Israel had used to smash the complex, as Syria has asserted. Depleted uranium is sometimes used to boost the penetrating power of munitions.The report, to be debated by the IAEA's 35-nation governing board in early March, said the uranium element at issue was not in Syria's declared nuclear inventory. Syria's only official nuclear site is an old research reactor.The presence of the particles at Dair Alzour, imagery of the site available to the agency, and information about certain (nuclear-related) procurement activities need to be fully understood, the report said in its summary.Syria needs to be transparent by providing additional access to other locations alleged to be related to Dair Alzour. These measures, together with the sampling of destroyed and salvaged equipment and debris, are essential for the agency to complete its assessment,it added. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei again called on Syria to take such transparency steps as soon as possible. He also urged Israel and other states to share information to help the IAEA probe, including satellite imagery, and agree to let inspectors share this information with Syria. The IAEA report said Syria was still ignoring IAEA requests to let inspectors take swipe samples from rubble, shrapnel and any equipment that satellite pictures showed were removed from al-Kibar after Israel's air strike to undetermined locations. Syria has also been asked to explain why it landscaped all four sites in question to alter their look after inspectors asked to examine them.(Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Israel's Livni rules out joining right-wing coalition Thu Feb 19, 10:48 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Thursday ruled out joining a Likud-led right-wing coalition, saying her Kadima party would rather move into opposition ranks.Livni made the comments after ultra-nationalist Avigdor Lieberman threw his weight behind Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu while calling for a government that would include the centrist Kadima and his Yisrael Beitenu party.
Today, the bases of a far-right government led by Netanyahu have been set, Livni told members of her party.We have not been elected to give legitimacy to this extreme right-wing government, and will head to the opposition.Kadima won 28 of the parliament's 120 seats, one more than Likud. But because Netanyahu has a stronger chance of garnering majority parliamentary support, President Shimon Peres is likely to ask him to form a government.
Israel says no cease-fire until soldier comes home By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer – Wed Feb 18, 5:54 pm ET
JERUSALEM – Israel declared Wednesday that it will not open the Gaza Strip's blockaded borders until Hamas militants free a captured Israeli soldier, dealing a blow to Egyptian efforts to broker a long-term cease-fire.The decision was condemned by Hamas, which is desperate for border crossings to be opened in order to start repairing destruction from Israel's military offensive in the coastal territory last month.In parallel, the prime minister of the rival Palestinian government in the West Bank announced plans to stream reconstruction money directly to the people of Gaza. That would effectively sideline the Hamas administration in Gaza.Gaza's borders have been sealed by Israel and Egypt since the Islamic militants of Hamas violently seized control of the territory nearly two years ago, driving out supporters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.Israel allows only vital humanitarian supplies to enter, and the Security Cabinet decided that closure will stay in place until Sgt. Gilad Schalit is released. The 11-member body unanimously endorsed the condition, which was set out by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week.
The soldier was captured in a 2006 cross-border raid by Hamas-linked militants who attacked an army base, killing two other soldiers.In return for sending Schalit back, Hamas is demanding the freedom of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, including dozens of convicted killers. It also has insisted the prisoner exchange should be handled separately from the cease-fire negotiations.Olmert insisted on a link. I don't think we need to open the crossings until the issue of Gilad Schalit is resolved, he told the Security Cabinet, according to his office.
Israeli negotiator Ofer Dekel will fly to Cairo on Friday for further indirect talks with Hamas, mediated by Egypt, officials in Olmert's office said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said Dekel would remain in Cairo until an accord is reached.Government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would continue to allow a limited flow of food and humanitarian items into Gaza.Regev said the ministers also agreed that a number of Palestinian prisoners could be released in exchange for the soldier. He would not say how many.
We will have to release terrorists, people who are guilty of very difficult crimes, Regev said. The ministers supported and understood this.Hamas officials, both in Gaza and in the group's exiled leadership in Syria, condemned Israel's decision and accused it of undermining the Egyptian truce effort.Ali Baraka, a Hamas leader based in Damascus, Syria, said Israel's decision comes in the face of Egyptian efforts because this position is one of obstinacy.The Palestinian observer at the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that Israel's new demand meant it did not want a truce.Speaking shortly before Israel announced its condition, the United Nation's top Mideast envoy, Robert Serry, warned there is a danger of new fighting in Gaza if a cease-fire deal isn't reached quickly.
He told the U.N. Security Council that a durable cease-fire can be achieved only if there is broad progress on exchanging prisoners, preventing weapons smuggling into Gaza, opening Gaza's borders and uniting Palestinian factions.These steps would also pave the way for the longer term recovery and reconstruction of Gaza, Serry said. As long as the borders are closed, efforts to repair the heavy damage in Gaza will remain frozen because of shortages of cement, glass, nails and other basic supplies. Thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed, and the basic infrastructure was hit hard during the Israeli offensive.
Support for Hamas' rule could be eroded by a failure to begin repairs.
Salam Fayyad, the prime minister in the Abbas administration, told The Associated Press in the West Bank city of Ramallah that he will present a plan to donors to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in aid directly to owners of damaged homes in Gaza, working with Gaza's banks. That would bypass Hamas, although Fayyad would not say that this was his goal. Hamas insists on a role in allocating aid, but donors are balking at working with the Islamic militant group, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union. It was unclear if Hamas would try to block the funding, risking harsh criticism from its people.
Also complicating the situation is Israel's political turmoil.
Olmert, who is the focus of investigations into alleged corruption, will step down after a new government is formed following last week's parliamentary election. The results of the vote were inconclusive. Israel's president, Shimon Peres, received the official election results Wednesday evening and started consultations with the 12parties. In a statement, he said he would complete the talks Thursday. Based on those discussions, Peres will pick either centrist Tzipi Livni of Kadima or Benjamin Netanyahu of the hard-line Likud to try to form a governing coalition. The prime minister-designate would have up to six weeks to form a government. Associated Press writers Karin Laub in Ramallah, West Bank, Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Reporting from Tehran -- Iran has enough nuclear fuel to build a bomb if it decides to take the drastic steps of violating its international treaty obligations, kicking out inspectors and further refining its supply, U.N. officials and arms control experts said Thursday. Iran has made no such gestures and has slowed its expansion of machinery producing nuclear fuel, having increased production capacity by less than 5% over the last three months, according to a report issued Thursday by the International Atomic Energy Agency.The reports, the latest updates from the arms control watchdog for the United Nations, show that Iran had amassed about 2,227 pounds of low-enriched, or reactor-grade, nuclear fuel by late January. Physicists estimate that producing the 55 pounds or so of highly enriched, or weapons-grade, uranium needed for an atomic warhead requires 2,205 to 3,748 pounds of low-enriched uranium.Iran's increased supply of low-enriched uranium surprised diplomats and arms control experts who had assumed that Iran would need until the end of the year to acquire enough fuel for a bomb.One expert, David Albright of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said he was blindsided by the report.We are surprised, Albright said.We did not expect this.
Senior officials close to the Vienna-based IAEA told reporters and arms control experts in a conference call Thursday evening that Iranian officials said they had miscalculated their stockpile of low-enriched uranium, an error that was cleared up with agency officials in mid-November but never made public.Iran steadfastly denies that it hopes to build an atomic bomb, which the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, says violates the principles of Islam. It says its nuclear program is intended solely to produce energy for Iran's growing population. But the United States, Europe and Israel suspect Iran is trying to attain a nuclear weapons capacity that could have strategic implications for the Middle East. By crossing the 2,205-pound threshold, experts say, Iran has improved its breakout capacity, the ability to renege on treaty obligations, kick out inspectors and quickly build a bomb. The latest IAEA report may complicate the Obama administration's plan to engage diplomatically with the Islamic Republic in an attempt to persuade it to dismantle sensitive elements of its nuclear program.Still, Albright said, the uranium stockpile signifies a capability, not a decision. And even if Iran made such a decision, it would face numerous major hurdles to building a bomb.
For one thing, it doesn't have enough high-speed centrifuges at its facility in Natanz to further refine the uranium, said senior U.N. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.In theory it is possible, one official said.But to do so they would have to use installed capacity. If they would use the facility in Natanz, they're not there.The IAEA report, distributed to members of the agency's board before a March 2 meeting, also says inspectors found no evidence that Iran was trying to further refine the nuclear fuel, which remains under constant surveillance, or to move it to another facility.But Iranian officials have barred inspections of facilities producing centrifuge parts, a move arms control inspectors say adds to worries that Iran may build an undeclared centrifuge facility separate from Natanz. Since November, Iran has added only one new 164-centrifuge cascade at Natanz, suggesting it was slowing the acceleration of its program. About 4,000 centrifuges are now producing nuclear fuel at the facility, with 1,600 more installed but not yet operating, according to the report, which was obtained by The Times.Iran has also barred inspectors from its heavy-water reactor near Arak, which has concerned inspectors who hope to examine the site for possible telltale clandestine features that could be used in a weapons program, said a high-ranking U.N. official. The report also takes Iran to task for refusing to answer questions about a set of classified documents that arms control experts say suggest Iran engaged until 2003 in missile design, radiation experiments and explosives testing consistent with a covert nuclear weapons program. Iran says the documents, dubbed the alleged studies by diplomats and arms control experts, are forgeries.
The agency's report on Syria criticizes Damascus for limiting access to the bombed facility near Dair Alzour, which Syrian authorities say was an unused military site, as well as other facilities. Graphite is often used to build a nuclear reactor, but U.N. officials said they could not yet say whether the graphite traces found were nuclear-grade.Syria has said that artificially modified uranium particles at the site probably came from Israeli bombs. But the IAEA report says the composition of the particles suggests a low probability that they came from munitions.A senior U.N. official told reporters the uranium had been oxidized. Albright said metallic uranium found in reactors would have been oxidized if it was blown up in an airstrike, suggesting that uranium fuel could have been present at the remote Syrian site.U.S. intelligence officials have maintained that no nuclear material had yet been introduced at the site at the time it was bombed by Israel. daragahi@latimes.com
Violence flares on Israel-Lebanon border by Jihad Siqlawi FEB 21,09
EL-QLAYLEH, Lebanon (AFP) – Israel shelled southern Lebanon on Saturday after a rocket slammed into its territory in a tit-for-tat exchange of fire across their tense border, sources on both sides said.Israeli rescue services said three people were injured when the rocket struck near the town of Maalot in the western Galilee region, triggering an immediate response from Israel.The Israeli army considers this a serious incident and believes it is the responsibility of the Lebanese government and the army to prevent this rocket fire, an Israeli army spokesman said.Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora denounced the violence, which caused panic on both sides of the border, while the militant Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah denied any involvement.The Israeli shelling is an unacceptable and unjustified violation of Lebanese sovereignty,Siniora said in a statement. The rockets launched from Lebanon threaten the country's security and stability and constitute a violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1701.He was referring to the resolution that brought an end to the devastating 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel in Lebanon that left more than 1,200 people dead.Lebanese President Michael Sleiman reiterated his opposition to the country being used as a platform for the launch of rockets, saying he regards it as a challenge to Lebanon's will.A spokesman for Israel's Magen David Adom emergency rescue service said three people were lightly wounded and another two were treated for shock.Hezbollah spokesman Ibrahim Mussawi told AFP that the group had nothing to do with the attack, which was launched from a region largely controlled by Hezbollah and its Amal party ally.The head of the UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) which patrols the border area urged maximum restraint.
The UNIFIL force commander Major General Claudio Graziano has been in contact with the senior commanders of the Lebanese and Israeli army with a view to ensuring that the cessation of hostilities is maintained, UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane told AFP.A Lebanese army spokesman said Israel fired eight artillery shells after two rockets were launched from a banana plantation near the village of El-Henniyeh, in the El-Qlayleh region about 10 kilometres (six miles) from the border.There were no reports of injuries in Lebanon.One of the two rockets landed in Israel and the second apparently malfunctioned and landed in Lebanon, Bouziane said.Panicked residents could be seen fleeing as Israel retaliated.My six-year-old girl was terrified,said Hassan Faqih, 49, as he headed to the nearby coastal town of Tyre with his wife and two children. We will stay in Tyre if the situation escalates.In January, rockets were fired on two occasions from Lebanon into Israel in attacks that frayed nerves on both sides of the border and raised fears that Israel's war on Gaza in December and January could spread. Hezbollah, which is backed by Syria and Iran, also denied involvement in those attacks. The Lebanese government, in which Hezbollah is represented, has repeatedly stressed that it is committed to the UN-brokered truce that ended the war. Earlier this month, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak warned that any attack by Hezbollah would prompt a tough response from Israel.
I want to say here, on the border, that I don't recommend that Hezbollah test us because the consequences would be more painful than one can imagine, Barak said during a visit to the frontier area. Maalot was the scene of an attack on a school by Palestinian gunmen in 1974 in which 26 people were killed, most of them children.
2 rockets fired from Lebanon towards Israel By ZEINA KARAM, Associated Press Writer –Sat Feb 21, 6:56 am ET
AFP BEIRUT – Two rockets were fired from south Lebanon at Israel early Saturday, with one slamming into a mostly Christian Arab village and causing minor injuries to at least one Israeli, reported Lebanese and Israeli officials.Lebanese security said the rockets were fired from the Mansouri and al-Qulaila areas near the coastal town of Naqoura and said one rocket appeared to have landed in Israel.An Israeli army spokesman said a woman was injured and the military responded to the rockets. He did not elaborate.Israeli paramedics in Jerusalem said one rocket landed in northern Israel, causing minor injuries to three people who were taken to a hospital in the nearby coastal town of Nahariya. Israeli censorship rules do not allow media to report where, specifically, rockets fired from Lebanon land in Israel.The rocket exploded in a mostly Christian, Arab village in the Galilee region, leaving a large groove in the ground next to a house. Drops of what appeared to be dried blood were sprayed on the pavement and shrapnel smashed through a kitchen window, filling the sink with glass.I was sleeping when I heard something like a bomb, local resident Masad, who did not give his last name, told Associated Press Television News. I got up and saw something unbelievable — a katyusha, he said, referring to the type of rocket often used by militant groups in south Lebanon.Around half of the residents of Israel's hilly Galilee area are Arabs, mostly ethnic Palestinians. During Israel's war with Lebanon in 2006, their villages were shelled by Lebanese guerillas, killing a number of people.The Lebanese officials said Israel responded by firing at least six shells on villages in the area where the rockets had been launched. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military regulations.
Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora condemned both the rocket attack on Israel and the Israeli retaliation.In a statement Saturday, Saniora said the rockets fired from south Lebanon threatened security and stability in the region and violated a U.N. resolution that ended the Israel-Hezbollah war in 2006. He also condemned the Israeli firing of shells on Lebanese territory, calling it an unjustified violation of Lebanese sovereignty.No one has claimed responsibility for the rocket firing.The militant Hezbollah group has a large rocket arsenal but is not believed to have used them against Israel since their 2006 war. It has denied involvement in recent rocket attacks on Israel.Rockets from Lebanon have been fired into Israel on two occasions during Israel's Gaza offensive last month. Palestinian militant groups are suspected of launching them.The Syria-based radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — General Command denied the group was responsible for Saturday's incident and urged Lebanese authorities to find those who carried out the attack.The firing came a day after the Israeli president chose hard-line Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu to form a new Israeli government.Associated Press Writer Diaa Hadid contributed to this report from Jerusalem.
U.S. repeats interest in two-state solution in Israel Fri Feb 20, 8:38 pm ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will continue to press for a two-state solution in Israel's conflict with Palestinians, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said on Friday, after right-wing leader Benjamin Netanyahu was asked to form Israel's next government.We'll have to see how events unfold in Israel, should Mr. Netanyahu become prime minister, and it will be our point of view that this remains a very important element of our approach and our policy, Rice told National Public Radio's All Things Considered program.But she added, Both parties have to want to work in that direction.Netanyahu, 59, leads the hawkish Likud party, which backs a two-state solution, but says any future Palestinian state must be demilitarized and have limited power.On Friday, Netanyahu accepted a mandate to form Israel's next government and immediately called for a broad, national unity coalition with centrist and left-wing partners.Such a coalition might create a middle-of-the-road government immune from pressures from fringe parties that have hamstrung previous Israeli administrations.But there was no sign that his rivals would accept, and Netanyahu may forge an alliance with far-right and ultra-religious parties, which could limit peace-making efforts with the Palestinians.Netanyahu, who served as Israel's prime minister in the late 1990s, now has six weeks to put together a coalition for a second turn at the helm.(Reporting by Andrea Shalal-Esa, editing by Vicki Allen)
Hawkish Netanyahu picked to form Israel govt by Patrick Moser– Fri Feb 20, 3:35 pm
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Hawkish Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu was tasked on Friday with forming a new Israeli government, fuelling concerns that a right-wing coalition could torpedo the Middle East peace process.Accepting the nomination from President Shimon Peres, the former premier named Iran as the main threat to Israel's existence and made no direct reference to peace talks with the Palestinians.Netanyahu is pushing for a broad coalition, evidently keen to avert a repeat of the situation in 1999, when his government collapsed following the defection of far-right parties that accused him of making concessions to Palestinians.Livni, the outgoing foreign minister, emerged from talks with Peres saying she would have nothing to do with a right-wing coalition.I will not be a pawn in a government that would be against our ideals, she said. Israel needs a government based on a two-state solution for Palestinians and Israel, she added.But Netanyahu did not give up on his hopes and invited Livni for talks on Sunday.I turn to the Kadima and Labour leaders: let us close ranks and act together, he said. I want to meet you first and discuss the formation of a broad government coalition.Netanyahu did not directly mention Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and made no mention of the US-backed two-state solution, focusing instead on what he said was the threat from Iran.Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence,he said.The responsibility we face is to achieve security for our country, peace with our neighbours and unity among us.Reacting to the nomination, the Palestinian Authority said it will only deal with the new Israeli government if it is committed to the peace process.We will not deal with the Israeli government unless it accepts a two-state solution and accepts to halt settlements and to respect past accords, president Mahmud Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said.
The United States pledged its support to the incoming government, with State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid saying Washington remains optimistic for a solution to the regional peace process.The US also echoed Netanyahu's emphasis on Iran, when White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters Tehran's suspect nuclear program is an urgent problem that has to be addressed and we can't delay addressing.The comments came a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran is continuing to enrich uranium, a key stage in the atom bomb making process, but has slowed down the expansion of its enrichment activities.Netanyahu believes the time is not ripe to discuss the key issues in Middle East peace talks, including the borders of a proposed Palestinian state, and wants to focus on improving daily life in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.He insists Jerusalem will remain Israel's undivided capital. Palestinians want east Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in 1967 and later annexed, to be the capital of their future state.Netanyahu, 59, has also insisted he will not be tied by a recent pledge by outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to withdraw settlers from the occupied Palestinian territory. As premier from 1996 to 1999, he put the brakes on the peace process, in part by authorising a major expansion of Jewish settlements. But he also made more concessions than his hardline rhetoric had led Israelis to expect, and under US pressure he concluded two agreements with the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Netanyahu has vowed that if he returns to power he will topple the Hamas rulers of Gaza and put a stop to rocket attacks which have continued sporadically since the January 18 end of Israel's 22-day Gaza military offensive that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians.
While Likud, with 27 of the 120 parliamentary seats, has one seat less than Kadima, Netanyahu emerged as the only one able to rally sufficient support to form a government coalition. Netanyahu can count on the support of 65 of the 120 members of parliament, if he relies on parties to the right of his own despite his stated preference for a broad coalition. He has 28 days to put together a coalition. If necessary Peres can extend the deadline by 14 days.
Czechs earmarks 350,000 euros aid to Gaza Fri Feb 20, 12:13 pm ET
PRAGUE (AFP) – The Czech cabinet said it had decided Friday to earmark a further 10 million koruna (350,000 euros, 440,000 dollars) for humanitarian aid to people in the besieged Gaza Strip.The Czech Republic, which holds the European Union presidency, wants to take a strong part in efficient humanitarian aid to Gaza, which has been afflicted by an extensive humanitarian crisis after the armed conflict in January,the cabinet said.The government, which already granted aid worth 175,000 euros to Gaza in January via the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), will decide on the specific form of aid after a donor conference scheduled to take place in Cairo on March 2.The situation in Gaza will be one of the main topics for conversation at talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who will meet Czech President Vaclav Klaus and parliament speaker Miloslav Vlcek in Prague on Monday, according to an official programme.
Netanyahu names Iran as Israel's main threat Fri Feb 20, 9:02 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Hawkish Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday named Iran as Israel's main threat after accepting the task of forming a new government in the wake of the tight February 20 elections.Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence, he said at a ceremony at President Shimon Peres's official residence.The terrorist forces of Iran threaten us from the north, the presumptive prime minister said in reference to Lebanon and Syria, where Israel says Tehran supplies arms to Hezbollah and Hamas.For decades, Israel has not faced such formidable challenges.The responsibility we face is to achieve security for our country, peace with our neighbours and unity among us,he said.In a brief speech, Netanyahu did not directly address the issue of stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, nor did he mention the US-backed two-state solution.
Netanyahu urges moderates to join broad government By AMY TEIBEL, Associated Press Writer – Fri Feb 20, 4:33 pm ET
JERUSALEM – Benjamin Netanyahu appealed to his moderate rivals Friday to join a unity government — a tricky alliance that would let the hawkish Israeli leader avoid relying on an unstable grouping of right-wingers almost sure to collide with the Obama administration and each other.I call on the members of all the factions ... to set politics aside and put the good of the nation at the center, Netanyahu said during a brief ceremony after President Shimon Peres tapped him to try to put together Israel's next governing coalition.Although the election gave Netanyahu's Likud Party and other right-wing groups a majority in parliament, the prime minister-designate has a delicate task in forming a government.Bringing moderates into a coalition would dilute the power of the nationalists who criticized the peace talks pursued by the outgoing centrist government. Netanyahu opposes sweeping territorial concessions to the Palestinians and wants to expand Jewish settlements in the West Bank.However, the centrist factions would produce a more stable government with international support than Netanyahu would probably get with a narrow coalition of conservatives who have their own disagreements. They have far different agendas when it comes to domestic issues, such as whether Israel should allow civil marriages.
In his appeal for a unity government, Netanyahu singled out first and foremost Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, head of the governing Kadima Party, and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, chairman of the Labor Party.Livni is the key to a broad-based government and she indicated she might be willing to come on board. But because Kadima remained Israel's largest party in the Feb. 10 election, although far short of a majority, she would certainly demand a high price: sharing the premiership with Netanyahu, who doesn't want to serve only half a term.Livni, who led Israeli negotiators in a year of peace talks with the Palestinians, agreed to meet with Netanyahu on Sunday to discuss his unity overture. Earlier Friday, she said she would not join a hard-line government and was prepared to sit in the opposition if necessary.I will not be able to serve as a cover for a lack of direction. I want to lead Israel in a way I believe in, to advance a peace process based on two states for two peoples, Livni said.The Palestinian Authority's peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said any Israeli government that did not accept the establishment of an independent Palestinian state and continued settlement building will not be a partner.We will not be in the negotiations for the sake of negotiations, Erekat said.
Fawzi Barhoum, a spokesman for the Islamic militant Hamas group that rules the Gaza Strip, said Netanyahu's appointment indicates that there is no possibility for security and stability in the region in the coming period. Hamas is not party to peace talks and is shunned by Israel and Western powers as a terrorist organization.
The center-left Labor Party, like Kadima, champions the establishment of a Palestinian state, and Barak has said he would take Labor into the opposition. Should he change his mind, he would want to remain defense minister, a demand Netanyahu would be expected to meet.While Livni insists on the need for peace efforts, she does not object to joining a government that includes Avigdor Lieberman's ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu Party, a Netanyahu ally that wants 1 million Israeli Arabs to sign a loyalty oath to the Jewish state.Lieberman has said he would not object to joining a government with Kadima. His secularist agenda is at odds with religious nationalist parties and gives him common ground with moderates.
Many Labor lawmakers, however, say they would not serve in a coalition with Yisrael Beiteinu because of its extremist views.In his speech, Netanyahu did not mention by name either Yisrael Beiteinu or right-wing religious factions whose support persuaded Peres to choose Netanyahu to form the government even though Kadima led the election by winning 28 of parliament's 120 seats.Likud, which got 27 seats, is in a better position to put together a coalition because Lieberman's party won 15 and right-wing religious parties combined took 23 — for a 65-seat bloc in parliament. While Netanyahu owes the hard-liners his second crack at the premiership — he held the job in the late 1990s for a turbulent three years — forming a narrow coalition of nationalist and religious parties would present him an array of domestic and foreign policy headaches. Yisrael Beiteinu wants to redraw Israel's borders to place heavy concentrations of Israeli Arabs under Palestinian jurisdiction and to require those Arabs who remained to sign a loyalty oath or lose their citizenship rights. Those positions have not drawn any criticism from the religious parties, but Lieberman angers them with his vehement opposition to the Orthodox Jewish establishment's control of key aspects of life in Israel, such as marriage. If either party bolted a right-wing coalition in a fight over social issues, the government would fall. The nationalist and religious parties could both cause Netanyahu problems in the international arena if the U.S. were to pressure him to make territorial concessions to the Palestinians. His first government fell apart in 1999 after Washington leaned on him to grant the Palestinians control of large parts of the biblically significant West Bank town of Hebron. The nationalist camp's commitment to expanding West Bank settlements could put Israel at loggerheads with the U.S., the Jewish state's main ally. President Barack Obama has vowed to make ending 60 years of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians a priority, and his new Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, unequivocally favors a halt to all settlement building.
IAEA finds graphite, more uranium at Syria site By Mark Heinrich– Thu Feb 19, 1:11 pm ET
VIENNA (Reuters) – U.N. inspectors found graphite and more uranium traces in test samples taken from a Syrian site Washington says was a covert graphite nuclear reactor almost built before Israel bombed it, officials said on Thursday.The first word that graphite particles had turned up came with the release of the International Atomic Energy Agency's second report on Syria in three months. But U.N. officials familiar with it said the IAEA inquiry remained inconclusive.Still, one senior U.N. official said the discovery of additional uranium traces was significant.That, together with graphite traces that are undergoing more tests, raised pressure on Damascus to provide evidence for its denials of wrongdoing.The IAEA's November report said the site bore features that would resemble those of an undeclared nuclear reactor.Thursday's report said Damascus, in a letter to the IAEA this month, had repeated its position that the desert complex destroyed by Israel, known as al-Kibar or Dair Alzour, in September 2007 was a conventional military building only.But Syria, it said, was still failing to back up its stance with documentation or by granting further access for IAEA sleuths to the bombed location and three others cited in U.S. intelligence handed to the U.N. watchdog last year.
Some diplomats said Syria might be playing a waiting game until it sees what U.S. President Barack Obama has to offer as part of his stated intent to engage foes including Iran, an ally of Syria with a disputed uranium enrichment program.The United States says its information indicates the site was a reactor that was close to being built with North Korean assistance and designed to produce plutonium for atomic bombs.The U.N. official said further analysis of swipe samples since November turned up around 40 more instances of processed uranium particles, adding to 40 registered three months ago.He said some graphite traces had been found around the alleged reactor site and also by a water treatment plant 5 km away where equipment for the complex that was bombed to rubble by Israel had been stored temporarily.
SIGNIFICANT FINDING
We are sure it is man-made graphite but not yet sure if it has specifications of nuclear-grade graphite, he said.If you find 40 uranium particles and then 40 more, this constitutes for us a significant finding, because we are now sure this is not just a simple contamination from a person who went to the site for a visit.The IAEA report said the uranium contamination that turned up in soil samples was a chemically processed form of the mineral that was not the enriched variety used to run nuclear power plants or as fissile bomb material.It was extremely unlikely, the report said, that the traces came with munitions Israel had used to smash the complex, as Syria has asserted. Depleted uranium is sometimes used to boost the penetrating power of munitions.The report, to be debated by the IAEA's 35-nation governing board in early March, said the uranium element at issue was not in Syria's declared nuclear inventory. Syria's only official nuclear site is an old research reactor.The presence of the particles at Dair Alzour, imagery of the site available to the agency, and information about certain (nuclear-related) procurement activities need to be fully understood, the report said in its summary.Syria needs to be transparent by providing additional access to other locations alleged to be related to Dair Alzour. These measures, together with the sampling of destroyed and salvaged equipment and debris, are essential for the agency to complete its assessment,it added. IAEA Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei again called on Syria to take such transparency steps as soon as possible. He also urged Israel and other states to share information to help the IAEA probe, including satellite imagery, and agree to let inspectors share this information with Syria. The IAEA report said Syria was still ignoring IAEA requests to let inspectors take swipe samples from rubble, shrapnel and any equipment that satellite pictures showed were removed from al-Kibar after Israel's air strike to undetermined locations. Syria has also been asked to explain why it landscaped all four sites in question to alter their look after inspectors asked to examine them.(Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Israel's Livni rules out joining right-wing coalition Thu Feb 19, 10:48 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Thursday ruled out joining a Likud-led right-wing coalition, saying her Kadima party would rather move into opposition ranks.Livni made the comments after ultra-nationalist Avigdor Lieberman threw his weight behind Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu while calling for a government that would include the centrist Kadima and his Yisrael Beitenu party.
Today, the bases of a far-right government led by Netanyahu have been set, Livni told members of her party.We have not been elected to give legitimacy to this extreme right-wing government, and will head to the opposition.Kadima won 28 of the parliament's 120 seats, one more than Likud. But because Netanyahu has a stronger chance of garnering majority parliamentary support, President Shimon Peres is likely to ask him to form a government.
Israel says no cease-fire until soldier comes home By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer – Wed Feb 18, 5:54 pm ET
JERUSALEM – Israel declared Wednesday that it will not open the Gaza Strip's blockaded borders until Hamas militants free a captured Israeli soldier, dealing a blow to Egyptian efforts to broker a long-term cease-fire.The decision was condemned by Hamas, which is desperate for border crossings to be opened in order to start repairing destruction from Israel's military offensive in the coastal territory last month.In parallel, the prime minister of the rival Palestinian government in the West Bank announced plans to stream reconstruction money directly to the people of Gaza. That would effectively sideline the Hamas administration in Gaza.Gaza's borders have been sealed by Israel and Egypt since the Islamic militants of Hamas violently seized control of the territory nearly two years ago, driving out supporters of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.Israel allows only vital humanitarian supplies to enter, and the Security Cabinet decided that closure will stay in place until Sgt. Gilad Schalit is released. The 11-member body unanimously endorsed the condition, which was set out by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert this week.
The soldier was captured in a 2006 cross-border raid by Hamas-linked militants who attacked an army base, killing two other soldiers.In return for sending Schalit back, Hamas is demanding the freedom of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, including dozens of convicted killers. It also has insisted the prisoner exchange should be handled separately from the cease-fire negotiations.Olmert insisted on a link. I don't think we need to open the crossings until the issue of Gilad Schalit is resolved, he told the Security Cabinet, according to his office.
Israeli negotiator Ofer Dekel will fly to Cairo on Friday for further indirect talks with Hamas, mediated by Egypt, officials in Olmert's office said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, said Dekel would remain in Cairo until an accord is reached.Government spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would continue to allow a limited flow of food and humanitarian items into Gaza.Regev said the ministers also agreed that a number of Palestinian prisoners could be released in exchange for the soldier. He would not say how many.
We will have to release terrorists, people who are guilty of very difficult crimes, Regev said. The ministers supported and understood this.Hamas officials, both in Gaza and in the group's exiled leadership in Syria, condemned Israel's decision and accused it of undermining the Egyptian truce effort.Ali Baraka, a Hamas leader based in Damascus, Syria, said Israel's decision comes in the face of Egyptian efforts because this position is one of obstinacy.The Palestinian observer at the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York that Israel's new demand meant it did not want a truce.Speaking shortly before Israel announced its condition, the United Nation's top Mideast envoy, Robert Serry, warned there is a danger of new fighting in Gaza if a cease-fire deal isn't reached quickly.
He told the U.N. Security Council that a durable cease-fire can be achieved only if there is broad progress on exchanging prisoners, preventing weapons smuggling into Gaza, opening Gaza's borders and uniting Palestinian factions.These steps would also pave the way for the longer term recovery and reconstruction of Gaza, Serry said. As long as the borders are closed, efforts to repair the heavy damage in Gaza will remain frozen because of shortages of cement, glass, nails and other basic supplies. Thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed, and the basic infrastructure was hit hard during the Israeli offensive.
Support for Hamas' rule could be eroded by a failure to begin repairs.
Salam Fayyad, the prime minister in the Abbas administration, told The Associated Press in the West Bank city of Ramallah that he will present a plan to donors to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in aid directly to owners of damaged homes in Gaza, working with Gaza's banks. That would bypass Hamas, although Fayyad would not say that this was his goal. Hamas insists on a role in allocating aid, but donors are balking at working with the Islamic militant group, which is listed as a terrorist organization by Israel, the U.S. and the European Union. It was unclear if Hamas would try to block the funding, risking harsh criticism from its people.
Also complicating the situation is Israel's political turmoil.
Olmert, who is the focus of investigations into alleged corruption, will step down after a new government is formed following last week's parliamentary election. The results of the vote were inconclusive. Israel's president, Shimon Peres, received the official election results Wednesday evening and started consultations with the 12parties. In a statement, he said he would complete the talks Thursday. Based on those discussions, Peres will pick either centrist Tzipi Livni of Kadima or Benjamin Netanyahu of the hard-line Likud to try to form a governing coalition. The prime minister-designate would have up to six weeks to form a government. Associated Press writers Karin Laub in Ramallah, West Bank, Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
SYRIA DEVELOPING CHEMICAL WEAPONS
Syria developing chemical weapons site: Jane's Wed Feb 18, 12:54 pm ET
LONDON (AFP) – Syria has increased activity at a suspected chemical weapons production site, a move likely to increase tension with Israel, Jane's defence information group said Wednesday.Satellite imagery of the Al Safir site in northwest Syria does not suggest that Damascus is arming for an offensive but will fuel concern in neighbouring Israel, the respected group said.The satellite imagery that ... Jane's has examined suggests that Damascus has sought to expand and develop Al Safir and its chemical weapons arsenal, said Christian Le Miere, editor of Jane's Intelligence Review.Further expansion of Al Safir is likely to antagonise Israel and highlight mutual mistrust, even as peace talks between the two neighbours progress intermittently, he added.The London-based information group said it studied imagery from commercial satellites taken between 2005 and 2008.The site contains not only a number of the defining features of a chemical weapons facility but also that significant levels of construction have taken place at the facility's production plant and adjacent missile base.This does not suggest that Syria is arming itself for an offensive but it could have regional security implications given Syria's tension with its neighbour, Israel, it said in a statement.A clear sign that it is a military facility, and not a civilian complex, is the level of security -- overall access is via a military checkpoint and there are more security points between different parts of the site, Jane's said.Le Miere added: Construction at the Al Safir facility appears to be the most significant chemical weapons production, storage and weaponisation site in Syria.Its presence indicates Syria's desire to develop unconventional weapons, either to act as a deterrent to conflict with Israel or as a force enhancer should any conflict ensue,he added.
Palestinian unity talks delayed: Egypt by Fatima El-Bacha – Wed Feb 18, 11:58 am ET
CAIRO (AFP) – Egyptian-brokered talks aimed at reconciling feuding Palestinian factions have been delayed, state news agency MENA quoted a senior Egyptian official as saying on Wednesday.Palestinian reconciliation talks scheduled for February 22 have been delayed for a short period because more discussions are needed, the unnamed official said.The talks are part of an Egyptian-proposed plan to end Israel's massive three-week offensive against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in December and January that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians.Its initiative called for an immediate Gaza ceasefire, followed by meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials to secure a long-term ceasefire, and the reconciliation talks.A long-running feud between Hamas and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah faction exploded in June 2007 when the Islamist faction seized control of the Gaza Strip after more than a week of deadly street battles.Hamas beat Fatah in parliamentary elections in January 2006 but its government was boycotted by Israel and much of the international community because the Islamists would not recognise Israel or renounce violence.Egypt last tried to reconcile Palestinian factions in November, with the aim of forming a government of national unity acceptable to the international community.But the Islamists withdrew from those talks at the last minute, saying Fatah forces were continuing to arrest Hamas members in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Egypt's efforts to secure a lasting truce between Israel and Hamas suffered another setback on Wednesday after Israel's security cabinet voted to make any truce conditional on the release of a captive soldier.
The 12-member security cabinet voted unanimously to back outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's insistence that Gilad Shalit should be released as part of a truce with Hamas.Hamas rejected the cabinet's decision and stuck to its position that Shalit's release be negotiated separately as part of a prisoner exchange involving hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.Shalit was seized by Gaza militants in a deadly cross-border raid in June 2006.Hamas has said any truce must include the opening of Gaza's border crossings, which Israel has closed to all but humanitarian aid since the Islamist movement seized power.
EU grants 41m euros in Gaza aid Wed Feb 18, 8:17 am ET
AMMAN (AFP) – The European Union will grant the UN agency for Palestinian refugees 41million euros (over 51 million dollars) to meet humanitarian needs in the Gaza Strip, a joint statement said on Wednesday.The contribution was announced by European Commission Representative for the West Bank and Gaza Strip Christian Berger at a closed-door meeting of the UN Refugee and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Amman on Tuesday, it said.Berger said UNRWA, which cares for some 4.3 million refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, has already received 19 million euros out of the total amount.We have already mobilised 18 million euros... as a response to the dire humanitarian situation caused by the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip. We are also contributing one million euros to help with UNRWA's ongoing reform plans,he said.We will mobilise a further 22 million euros in the near future.UNRWA Commissioner General Karen Abu Zayd said the agency's aid programmes face a 52-million-dollar shortfall this year.Support... has never been so important in light of our human development and relief work in the wake of the Gaza conflict, she said.Jordan's Queen Rania, who is of Palestinian origin, appealed at Tuesday's meeting for urgent aid for UNRWA.We are in very dire need of much more assistance and without which I think UNRWA won't be able to operate, said the wife of King Abdullah II.UN chief Ban Ki-moon said in January the United Nations will launch a 613million dollar appeal to meet the massive needs in Gaza, where Israel's 22 war in December and January killed more than 1,300 people and caused huge destruction.
Unexploded bombs missing in Gaza: UN Wed Feb 18, 5:25 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – UN officials said Wednesday that several large, unexploded Israeli bombs left over from last month's war in the Gaza Strip have gone missing in the Hamas-ruled territory.A number of aerial bombs and other materiel retrieved in Gaza were being held in a collection area at a traffic police compound in Gaza City, a UN official told AFP on condition of anonymity. This has disappeared.The missing munitions include three 2,000-pound (900 kilogram) bombs and eight 500-pound (230 kilogram) bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes during the 22-day offensive that killed over 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.We are anxious to return this ordnance. It's dangerous materiel and needs to be disposed of in a safe manner, UN spokesman Richard Miron said.The UN said it did not know who had taken the bombs and did not accuse the Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza of being involved in the incident.
Israel launched the offensive -- the largest it has ever carried out against the Palestinian territory -- on December 27 in what it said was a bid to halt the firing of crude, homemade rockets on Israeli communities near the border.The conflict came to a halt on January 18 when Israel and Hamas declared separate ceasefires, but the calm has been strained since then by dozens of rocket attacks and several deadly Israeli air strikes on the territory.
Israeli security cabinet meets on Gaza truce by Jean-Luc Renaudie– Wed Feb 18, 3:47 am ET
JERUSALEM, (AFP) – Israel's powerful security cabinet was meeting on Wednesday to decide whether to back Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's insistence that a captive soldier be released as part of a Gaza truce deal.A vote to support the position of the outgoing premier risks further complicating Egyptian efforts to broker a lasting truce around the enclave as its Hamas rulers have already rejected the condition.
Olmert first made the demand that Gilad Shalit, a soldier seized by Gaza militants in June 2006, be released as part of a truce deal at the weekend.We want first to resolve the Shalit issue and then will look into the reopening of crossings and the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip, he said on Tuesday, repeating his position.His demand was swiftly rejected by Hamas's exiled leader Khaled Meshaal, who again accused Israel of backtracking on the terms of a proposed long-term truce by linking the lifting of the blockade to the soldier's release.Israel is responsible for blocking Egypt's efforts to broker a truce by adding a new condition at the last minute, Meshaal said after Damascus talks with Arab League chief Amr Mussa.A truce can come about only in exchange for a lifting of the blockade and the reopening of the crossing points. It is unacceptable to combine the truce issue with the question of Israeli prisoner Gilad Shalit, Meshaal said.Egypt, which has been acting as intermediary in separate negotiations for a Gaza truce and for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for Shalit, has also said that the two issues should be kept separate.Egypt will not change its position on the truce -- the matter of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is a separate issue which can in no way be linked to the truce negotiations,the state-owned Egyptian daily Al-Ahram quoted President Hosni Mubarak as saying.Israel's pointman for the Egyptian negotiations, senior defence ministry official Amos Gilad, also lashed out at the changed Israeli position.Suddenly, the order of things has been changed. Suddenly, first we have to get Gilad. I don't understand that. Where does that lead, to insult the Egyptians? To make them want to drop the whole thing? What do we stand to gain from that? the Maariv daily quoted him as saying.
The Egyptians have shown extraordinary courage. They've given us manoeuvering room, they're trying to mediate, they're investing efforts, they're showing goodwill of a kind they've never shown before, he said.Mubarak has been fair and courageous...What are we thinking? That they work for us? That they're a subordinate unit of ours?
Shalit was captured in a deadly cross-border raid from Gaza in June 2006.His family on Tuesday evening issued a statement demanding that his release should be the first condition in any accord on a truce with Hamas.The chance which currently presents itself must not be missed as it was in previous agreements, Israeli army radio quoted the statement as saying in reference to a six months' truce in Gaza agreed between Israel and Hamas in June last year.Egypt has been acting as a go-between in efforts to consolidate the separate ceasefires that ended Israel's deadly 22-day Gaza offensive on January 18. The war killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.The ceasefires have been consistently rattled by Palestinian militant rocket fire and Israeli military raids.Early on Wednesday Israeli jets struck a Hamas position and seven smuggling tunnels on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Noone was reported hurt in the strike.
Gaza, slump seen spurring rise in anti-Semitism By Adrian Croft and Avril Ormsby – Tue Feb 17, 5:44 pm ET
LONDON (Reuters) – Israel's offensive in Gaza and the global economic downturn have spurred a rise in physical and verbal attacks on Jews, participants in an international conference on anti-Semitism said Tuesday.In the last six weeks, we have seen an explosion of anti-Semitic activity and behavior -- which I would describe as a pandemic -- as a result of both the Gaza war and the economic crisis being blamed on Jews, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a U.S. civil rights group, said.Since World War Two we have not seen so many attacks on Jews, Jewish institutions, synagogues, he told Reuters during a London conference on anti-Semitism attended by 125 legislators from 40 countries.British Foreign Office Minister Mark Malloch-Brown said there had been a sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Britain and elsewhere in Europe after the Gaza campaign.Several countries have reported an increase in anti-Semitism during Israel's 22-day offensive in Gaza which ended with a January 18 truce with Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.France's main Jewish association CRIF recorded more than 100 attacks in January, up from 20 to 25 a month in the previous two years.
Some 250 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in Britain in the four weeks after fighting began in Gaza, compared with 541 incidents over the whole of last year, a charity that protects the Jewish community was reported last week as saying.In Venezuela, armed men vandalized the Tiferet synagogue in January while Turkey's centuries-old Jewish community said it was alarmed by anti-Semitism that emerged during protests at Israel's Gaza assault.(There's) no doubt that each time when Israel has to struggle, to fight, to protect its citizens, the anti-Semitic feelings all over the world grow up, said Natan Sharansky, a former Israeli government minister.A survey by the Anti-Defamation League published last week found that stereotypes about Jewish power in business still held strong in Europe.The poll of 3,500 people in Austria, France, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Spain and Britain found 31percent blamed Jews in the financial industry for the global economic crisis.David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, a lobby group, said there was a consensus at the conference that anti-Semitism had reached new heights.
Israel's campaign in Gaza was just another factor in a much larger issue, he said. While anti-Semitism was focused to a large degree in Europe, it was a global problem, he said.The increase in anti-Semitism was set against a backdrop of the economic crisis which only makes matters worse by accusing Jews of nefarious economic crimes, he told Reuters.The legislators, most of whom were not Jewish, agreed to a declaration urging governments to stop anti-Semitic programs being broadcast on satellite television and to teach children about the Holocaust, racism and anti-Semitism.(Additional reporting by Marie-Claire Fennessy)(Editing by Richard Balmforth)
UN: 5 tons of bombs stolen under Hamas guard By IAN DEITCH, Associated Press Writer –Tue Feb 17, 3:01 pm ET
JERUSALEM – Five tons of unexploded Israeli bombs stored in the Gaza Strip under Hamas police guard have been stolen, U.N. officials said Tuesday.U.N. spokesman Richard Miron said the explosives were being stored in Gaza until a U.N. team of disposal experts could disarm them, but they disappeared.The bombs were dropped on Gaza during Israel's offensive there last month, according to another U.N. official. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said three one-ton bombs and eight quarter-ton bombs were taken from the warehouse in northern Gaza.It's clearly extremely dangerous and needs to be disposed of in a safe manner, Miron said. The material was under guard by Hamas police between Feb. 4 and 14 when it was stolen, he said.Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner told The Associated Press that the explosives were probably taken by Hamas. He said Israel had been informed by the U.N. about the missing ordnance.Hamas officials in Gaza contacted by the AP said they had no knowledge of the matter.
The Israeli Haaretz daily reported that a U.N. bomb disposal team has been working in Gaza for the past three weeks, but it has been hindered by Israeli refusal to allow some of its equipment into Gaza or approve an area for neutralizing the explosives.The paper said several other warehouses hold unexploded ordnance in Gaza, some close to residential areas. There have been no reports of thefts from other locations.During the 23-day offensive, Israeli aircraft dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on Gaza and fired artillery and tank shells, aiming at Hamas strongholds but also leveling apartment buildings in areas said to be under Hamas control. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed, about half of them civilians, according to Palestinian figures.
Pope to visit Jordan mosque during Holy Land tour By JAMAL HALABY, Associated Press Writer – Tue Feb 17, 10:40 am ET
AMMAN, Jordan – Pope Benedict XVI will visit Jordan's largest mosque during his first papal tour of the Holy Land in May, a local Roman Catholic priest said Tuesday.
The pope's stop at the Hussein bin Talal Mosque in Amman will be his second visit to a Muslim place of worship since becoming pope in 2005, said Rifat Bader, a Catholic priest in Jordan who is the spokesman for the Jordanian leg of the pope's Holy Land tour. In 2006, Benedict prayed at Turkey's famous Blue Mosque in Istanbul.He will also meet there with Muslim leaders and religious scholars at the mosque, underlining the coexistence between religions, Bader told The Associated Press.The mosque, built in outskirts of Amman nearly four years ago, is named after the late King Hussein, who died in 1999.Jordan will be the pope's first stop on the Holy Land tour from May 8-15, Bader said. He will also travel to Israel and the West Bank, making stops in cities including Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Bader said discussions were under way to possibly add Gaza on the pope's itinerary.During his three-day stay in Jordan, the pope will also visit biblical sites including Mount Nebo, where Moses is said to have first seen the promised land, and a spot on the Jordanian River, where Jesus is believed to have been baptized, Bader said.The pope also plans to hold a public Mass in Jordan, where 3 percent of the country's 5.8 million people are Christians.Benedict will then travel to Israel, where President Shimon Peres is expected to escort him. Bader said the pope will stop at the recently renovated Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum during his visit to Jerusalem and will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.The late Pope John Paul II came to the Holy Land in a 2000 pilgrimage, visiting Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The visit to the Mideast comes at a time of strained relations between the Vatican and Israel. The fragile relations worsened last month when the German pope reinstated an excommunicated bishop who has questioned the extent of the Holocaust. Benedict later condemned the bishop's remarks and spoke out against anti-Semitism.
Relations between the Vatican and the Muslim world have also been tense in recent years. In 2006, Benedict made remarks on Islam and holy war during a speech in Germany that angered many Muslims, leading him to backtrack and declare himself deeply sorry.(This version CORRECTS SUBS graf 7 to correct to number of Christians in Jordan is 3 percent.)
Hezbollah says has right to possess air defenses By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer – Mon Feb 16, 5:16 pm ET
BEIRUT – The leader of Hezbollah said Monday that his militant group has the right to possess air-defense weapons to face the Israeli warplanes that regularly fly over Lebanon.Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, however, refused to confirm or deny persistent Israeli reports that Hezbollah may have acquired anti-aircraft missiles.He did say an air defense system would change the balance of power by shattering Israel's air superiority after Hezbollah managed to withstand Israel's air, ground and sea bombardment during their 2006 war.Nasrallah spoke via a video link to a rally commemorating last year's assassination of Hezbollah's top military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed by a car bomb in Syria. Hezbollah blames Israel, which has denied involvement.Nasrallah said Israeli media report occasionally that Hezbollah has acquired sophisticated air defense missiles.I will not deny or confirm the reports, Nasrallah said, but added that such weapons would weaken Israeli air power and change the region's power equation.What I want to confirm today is that we have the full right to possess any weapons, including air defense weapons. Also, we have the full right to use this weapon if we want, he said.The Iranian-backed Hezbollah fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006 that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and 159 in Israel. Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets at Israel.
Israel cautions anew against a nuclear-armed Iran Mon Feb 16, 4:19 pm ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told a forum of military chiefs on Monday that Israel would regard a nuclear-armed Iran as an "existential threat" that would speed up a regional arms race.Israel's military spokesman released Barak's comments after the United Nation's nuclear watchdog chief said global nuclear disarmament work was being hampered by Arab perceptions Israel wasn't abiding by a non-proliferation treaty.Barak told a closed forum of military chiefs at a strategy session that if Iran obtained atomic weapons it would pose a central threat to world order, the statement said.He added it would dramatically accelerate nuclear proliferation in the region.Israel is believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, though it has never acknowledged such a program or ever testing atomic weapons.The Jewish state has long denounced Iran's nuclear program as a threat to its existence and also cites remarks made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying Israel should be wiped off the map.U.S. President Barack Obama has warned Tehran of tougher sanctions if it does not halt its disputed nuclear work, but in a departure from his predecessor George W. Bush, said last week he also saw the possibility of diplomatic openings with Iran.Iran says it seeks nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, in order to generate electricity.Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, referred on Monday to Arab perceptions of Israel in the context of global nuclear disarmament efforts.The nuclear non-proliferation regime has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of Arab public opinion because of the perceived double-standards concerning Israel.ElBaradei said further that Israel was the only state in the region outside the NPT and known to possess nuclear weapons, referring to a global nuclear non-proliferation treaty never signed by the Jewish state.
Israel must continue peace process: Livni by Charly Wegman Charly Wegman – Mon Feb 16, 3:41 pm ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Tzipi Livni, who is bidding to become Israel's next prime minister, said on Monday the Jewish state has no option but to continue with internationally backed peace talks with the Palestinians.We have to continue with the peace plan launched at Annapolis, Livni told a conference of US Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.If we don't continue with the plan, we will not be able to count on the support of the international community against Iran, Hezbollah (Lebanon's Shiite militia) or Hamas (the Islamist rulers of the Gaza Strip), said Livni, who as foreign minister has been at the forefront of the negotiations.Direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were relaunched after a seven-year hiatus at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November 2007 with the US aim of securing a deal before the end of George W. Bush's presidency in January 2009.The plan is backed by the so-called Middle East diplomatic quartet, comprising Russia, the European Union, the United Nations and the United States.Negotiations were to have focused on core issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and the fate of Palestinian refugees, but little progress has been made.The process has now stalled completely as Livni and her hawkish right-wing rival Benjamin Netanyahu, the two front-runners after a parliamentary election on February 10, bid separately to form a workable governing coalition.The majority of Israelis understand that if Israel wants to remain an independent Jewish state, in the end the territory will have to be divided, Livni said.We can carry out negotiations while still fighting against terrorism.
The Annapolis peace process envisages separate Palestinian and Jewish states co-existing peacefully side by side.Livni repeated her views later in an interview with Channel 2 television.My government will make progress in the peace process, she said. I will not be associated with freezing this process, and I am ready if necessary to join the opposition.Livni's centrist Kadima party has called for a power-sharing deal with Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party amid furious haggling in the wake of the tight parliamentary election.Although Kadima won 28 seats in last week's general election, one more than the Likud, Netanyahu is widely tipped to become the next prime minister.Under Israeli law, the person charged with trying to form a new government is not necessarily the leader of the largest party but the one with the best chances of cobbling together a coalition capable of securing a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.Livni's Kadima party said on Sunday that if Livni is not prime minister, it would rather consider going into opposition.Netanyahu has indicated that Middle East peace talks should focus on improving Palestinian daily life before negotiations on core issues can begin.When he became Israel's youngest premier in 1996, Netanyahu put the brakes on the peace process with the Palestinians, in part by authorising a major expansion of Jewish settlements.
LONDON (AFP) – Syria has increased activity at a suspected chemical weapons production site, a move likely to increase tension with Israel, Jane's defence information group said Wednesday.Satellite imagery of the Al Safir site in northwest Syria does not suggest that Damascus is arming for an offensive but will fuel concern in neighbouring Israel, the respected group said.The satellite imagery that ... Jane's has examined suggests that Damascus has sought to expand and develop Al Safir and its chemical weapons arsenal, said Christian Le Miere, editor of Jane's Intelligence Review.Further expansion of Al Safir is likely to antagonise Israel and highlight mutual mistrust, even as peace talks between the two neighbours progress intermittently, he added.The London-based information group said it studied imagery from commercial satellites taken between 2005 and 2008.The site contains not only a number of the defining features of a chemical weapons facility but also that significant levels of construction have taken place at the facility's production plant and adjacent missile base.This does not suggest that Syria is arming itself for an offensive but it could have regional security implications given Syria's tension with its neighbour, Israel, it said in a statement.A clear sign that it is a military facility, and not a civilian complex, is the level of security -- overall access is via a military checkpoint and there are more security points between different parts of the site, Jane's said.Le Miere added: Construction at the Al Safir facility appears to be the most significant chemical weapons production, storage and weaponisation site in Syria.Its presence indicates Syria's desire to develop unconventional weapons, either to act as a deterrent to conflict with Israel or as a force enhancer should any conflict ensue,he added.
Palestinian unity talks delayed: Egypt by Fatima El-Bacha – Wed Feb 18, 11:58 am ET
CAIRO (AFP) – Egyptian-brokered talks aimed at reconciling feuding Palestinian factions have been delayed, state news agency MENA quoted a senior Egyptian official as saying on Wednesday.Palestinian reconciliation talks scheduled for February 22 have been delayed for a short period because more discussions are needed, the unnamed official said.The talks are part of an Egyptian-proposed plan to end Israel's massive three-week offensive against the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in December and January that killed more than 1,300 Palestinians.Its initiative called for an immediate Gaza ceasefire, followed by meetings with Israeli and Palestinian officials to secure a long-term ceasefire, and the reconciliation talks.A long-running feud between Hamas and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah faction exploded in June 2007 when the Islamist faction seized control of the Gaza Strip after more than a week of deadly street battles.Hamas beat Fatah in parliamentary elections in January 2006 but its government was boycotted by Israel and much of the international community because the Islamists would not recognise Israel or renounce violence.Egypt last tried to reconcile Palestinian factions in November, with the aim of forming a government of national unity acceptable to the international community.But the Islamists withdrew from those talks at the last minute, saying Fatah forces were continuing to arrest Hamas members in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.Egypt's efforts to secure a lasting truce between Israel and Hamas suffered another setback on Wednesday after Israel's security cabinet voted to make any truce conditional on the release of a captive soldier.
The 12-member security cabinet voted unanimously to back outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's insistence that Gilad Shalit should be released as part of a truce with Hamas.Hamas rejected the cabinet's decision and stuck to its position that Shalit's release be negotiated separately as part of a prisoner exchange involving hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.Shalit was seized by Gaza militants in a deadly cross-border raid in June 2006.Hamas has said any truce must include the opening of Gaza's border crossings, which Israel has closed to all but humanitarian aid since the Islamist movement seized power.
EU grants 41m euros in Gaza aid Wed Feb 18, 8:17 am ET
AMMAN (AFP) – The European Union will grant the UN agency for Palestinian refugees 41million euros (over 51 million dollars) to meet humanitarian needs in the Gaza Strip, a joint statement said on Wednesday.The contribution was announced by European Commission Representative for the West Bank and Gaza Strip Christian Berger at a closed-door meeting of the UN Refugee and Works Agency (UNRWA) in Amman on Tuesday, it said.Berger said UNRWA, which cares for some 4.3 million refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, has already received 19 million euros out of the total amount.We have already mobilised 18 million euros... as a response to the dire humanitarian situation caused by the recent conflict in the Gaza Strip. We are also contributing one million euros to help with UNRWA's ongoing reform plans,he said.We will mobilise a further 22 million euros in the near future.UNRWA Commissioner General Karen Abu Zayd said the agency's aid programmes face a 52-million-dollar shortfall this year.Support... has never been so important in light of our human development and relief work in the wake of the Gaza conflict, she said.Jordan's Queen Rania, who is of Palestinian origin, appealed at Tuesday's meeting for urgent aid for UNRWA.We are in very dire need of much more assistance and without which I think UNRWA won't be able to operate, said the wife of King Abdullah II.UN chief Ban Ki-moon said in January the United Nations will launch a 613million dollar appeal to meet the massive needs in Gaza, where Israel's 22 war in December and January killed more than 1,300 people and caused huge destruction.
Unexploded bombs missing in Gaza: UN Wed Feb 18, 5:25 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – UN officials said Wednesday that several large, unexploded Israeli bombs left over from last month's war in the Gaza Strip have gone missing in the Hamas-ruled territory.A number of aerial bombs and other materiel retrieved in Gaza were being held in a collection area at a traffic police compound in Gaza City, a UN official told AFP on condition of anonymity. This has disappeared.The missing munitions include three 2,000-pound (900 kilogram) bombs and eight 500-pound (230 kilogram) bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes during the 22-day offensive that killed over 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.We are anxious to return this ordnance. It's dangerous materiel and needs to be disposed of in a safe manner, UN spokesman Richard Miron said.The UN said it did not know who had taken the bombs and did not accuse the Islamist Hamas movement ruling Gaza of being involved in the incident.
Israel launched the offensive -- the largest it has ever carried out against the Palestinian territory -- on December 27 in what it said was a bid to halt the firing of crude, homemade rockets on Israeli communities near the border.The conflict came to a halt on January 18 when Israel and Hamas declared separate ceasefires, but the calm has been strained since then by dozens of rocket attacks and several deadly Israeli air strikes on the territory.
Israeli security cabinet meets on Gaza truce by Jean-Luc Renaudie– Wed Feb 18, 3:47 am ET
JERUSALEM, (AFP) – Israel's powerful security cabinet was meeting on Wednesday to decide whether to back Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's insistence that a captive soldier be released as part of a Gaza truce deal.A vote to support the position of the outgoing premier risks further complicating Egyptian efforts to broker a lasting truce around the enclave as its Hamas rulers have already rejected the condition.
Olmert first made the demand that Gilad Shalit, a soldier seized by Gaza militants in June 2006, be released as part of a truce deal at the weekend.We want first to resolve the Shalit issue and then will look into the reopening of crossings and the rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip, he said on Tuesday, repeating his position.His demand was swiftly rejected by Hamas's exiled leader Khaled Meshaal, who again accused Israel of backtracking on the terms of a proposed long-term truce by linking the lifting of the blockade to the soldier's release.Israel is responsible for blocking Egypt's efforts to broker a truce by adding a new condition at the last minute, Meshaal said after Damascus talks with Arab League chief Amr Mussa.A truce can come about only in exchange for a lifting of the blockade and the reopening of the crossing points. It is unacceptable to combine the truce issue with the question of Israeli prisoner Gilad Shalit, Meshaal said.Egypt, which has been acting as intermediary in separate negotiations for a Gaza truce and for an exchange of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails for Shalit, has also said that the two issues should be kept separate.Egypt will not change its position on the truce -- the matter of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit is a separate issue which can in no way be linked to the truce negotiations,the state-owned Egyptian daily Al-Ahram quoted President Hosni Mubarak as saying.Israel's pointman for the Egyptian negotiations, senior defence ministry official Amos Gilad, also lashed out at the changed Israeli position.Suddenly, the order of things has been changed. Suddenly, first we have to get Gilad. I don't understand that. Where does that lead, to insult the Egyptians? To make them want to drop the whole thing? What do we stand to gain from that? the Maariv daily quoted him as saying.
The Egyptians have shown extraordinary courage. They've given us manoeuvering room, they're trying to mediate, they're investing efforts, they're showing goodwill of a kind they've never shown before, he said.Mubarak has been fair and courageous...What are we thinking? That they work for us? That they're a subordinate unit of ours?
Shalit was captured in a deadly cross-border raid from Gaza in June 2006.His family on Tuesday evening issued a statement demanding that his release should be the first condition in any accord on a truce with Hamas.The chance which currently presents itself must not be missed as it was in previous agreements, Israeli army radio quoted the statement as saying in reference to a six months' truce in Gaza agreed between Israel and Hamas in June last year.Egypt has been acting as a go-between in efforts to consolidate the separate ceasefires that ended Israel's deadly 22-day Gaza offensive on January 18. The war killed more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.The ceasefires have been consistently rattled by Palestinian militant rocket fire and Israeli military raids.Early on Wednesday Israeli jets struck a Hamas position and seven smuggling tunnels on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Noone was reported hurt in the strike.
Gaza, slump seen spurring rise in anti-Semitism By Adrian Croft and Avril Ormsby – Tue Feb 17, 5:44 pm ET
LONDON (Reuters) – Israel's offensive in Gaza and the global economic downturn have spurred a rise in physical and verbal attacks on Jews, participants in an international conference on anti-Semitism said Tuesday.In the last six weeks, we have seen an explosion of anti-Semitic activity and behavior -- which I would describe as a pandemic -- as a result of both the Gaza war and the economic crisis being blamed on Jews, Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a U.S. civil rights group, said.Since World War Two we have not seen so many attacks on Jews, Jewish institutions, synagogues, he told Reuters during a London conference on anti-Semitism attended by 125 legislators from 40 countries.British Foreign Office Minister Mark Malloch-Brown said there had been a sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Britain and elsewhere in Europe after the Gaza campaign.Several countries have reported an increase in anti-Semitism during Israel's 22-day offensive in Gaza which ended with a January 18 truce with Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.France's main Jewish association CRIF recorded more than 100 attacks in January, up from 20 to 25 a month in the previous two years.
Some 250 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in Britain in the four weeks after fighting began in Gaza, compared with 541 incidents over the whole of last year, a charity that protects the Jewish community was reported last week as saying.In Venezuela, armed men vandalized the Tiferet synagogue in January while Turkey's centuries-old Jewish community said it was alarmed by anti-Semitism that emerged during protests at Israel's Gaza assault.(There's) no doubt that each time when Israel has to struggle, to fight, to protect its citizens, the anti-Semitic feelings all over the world grow up, said Natan Sharansky, a former Israeli government minister.A survey by the Anti-Defamation League published last week found that stereotypes about Jewish power in business still held strong in Europe.The poll of 3,500 people in Austria, France, Hungary, Poland, Germany, Spain and Britain found 31percent blamed Jews in the financial industry for the global economic crisis.David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee, a lobby group, said there was a consensus at the conference that anti-Semitism had reached new heights.
Israel's campaign in Gaza was just another factor in a much larger issue, he said. While anti-Semitism was focused to a large degree in Europe, it was a global problem, he said.The increase in anti-Semitism was set against a backdrop of the economic crisis which only makes matters worse by accusing Jews of nefarious economic crimes, he told Reuters.The legislators, most of whom were not Jewish, agreed to a declaration urging governments to stop anti-Semitic programs being broadcast on satellite television and to teach children about the Holocaust, racism and anti-Semitism.(Additional reporting by Marie-Claire Fennessy)(Editing by Richard Balmforth)
UN: 5 tons of bombs stolen under Hamas guard By IAN DEITCH, Associated Press Writer –Tue Feb 17, 3:01 pm ET
JERUSALEM – Five tons of unexploded Israeli bombs stored in the Gaza Strip under Hamas police guard have been stolen, U.N. officials said Tuesday.U.N. spokesman Richard Miron said the explosives were being stored in Gaza until a U.N. team of disposal experts could disarm them, but they disappeared.The bombs were dropped on Gaza during Israel's offensive there last month, according to another U.N. official. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said three one-ton bombs and eight quarter-ton bombs were taken from the warehouse in northern Gaza.It's clearly extremely dangerous and needs to be disposed of in a safe manner, Miron said. The material was under guard by Hamas police between Feb. 4 and 14 when it was stolen, he said.Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner told The Associated Press that the explosives were probably taken by Hamas. He said Israel had been informed by the U.N. about the missing ordnance.Hamas officials in Gaza contacted by the AP said they had no knowledge of the matter.
The Israeli Haaretz daily reported that a U.N. bomb disposal team has been working in Gaza for the past three weeks, but it has been hindered by Israeli refusal to allow some of its equipment into Gaza or approve an area for neutralizing the explosives.The paper said several other warehouses hold unexploded ordnance in Gaza, some close to residential areas. There have been no reports of thefts from other locations.During the 23-day offensive, Israeli aircraft dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on Gaza and fired artillery and tank shells, aiming at Hamas strongholds but also leveling apartment buildings in areas said to be under Hamas control. About 1,300 Palestinians were killed, about half of them civilians, according to Palestinian figures.
Pope to visit Jordan mosque during Holy Land tour By JAMAL HALABY, Associated Press Writer – Tue Feb 17, 10:40 am ET
AMMAN, Jordan – Pope Benedict XVI will visit Jordan's largest mosque during his first papal tour of the Holy Land in May, a local Roman Catholic priest said Tuesday.
The pope's stop at the Hussein bin Talal Mosque in Amman will be his second visit to a Muslim place of worship since becoming pope in 2005, said Rifat Bader, a Catholic priest in Jordan who is the spokesman for the Jordanian leg of the pope's Holy Land tour. In 2006, Benedict prayed at Turkey's famous Blue Mosque in Istanbul.He will also meet there with Muslim leaders and religious scholars at the mosque, underlining the coexistence between religions, Bader told The Associated Press.The mosque, built in outskirts of Amman nearly four years ago, is named after the late King Hussein, who died in 1999.Jordan will be the pope's first stop on the Holy Land tour from May 8-15, Bader said. He will also travel to Israel and the West Bank, making stops in cities including Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Bader said discussions were under way to possibly add Gaza on the pope's itinerary.During his three-day stay in Jordan, the pope will also visit biblical sites including Mount Nebo, where Moses is said to have first seen the promised land, and a spot on the Jordanian River, where Jesus is believed to have been baptized, Bader said.The pope also plans to hold a public Mass in Jordan, where 3 percent of the country's 5.8 million people are Christians.Benedict will then travel to Israel, where President Shimon Peres is expected to escort him. Bader said the pope will stop at the recently renovated Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum during his visit to Jerusalem and will meet with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.The late Pope John Paul II came to the Holy Land in a 2000 pilgrimage, visiting Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories.
The visit to the Mideast comes at a time of strained relations between the Vatican and Israel. The fragile relations worsened last month when the German pope reinstated an excommunicated bishop who has questioned the extent of the Holocaust. Benedict later condemned the bishop's remarks and spoke out against anti-Semitism.
Relations between the Vatican and the Muslim world have also been tense in recent years. In 2006, Benedict made remarks on Islam and holy war during a speech in Germany that angered many Muslims, leading him to backtrack and declare himself deeply sorry.(This version CORRECTS SUBS graf 7 to correct to number of Christians in Jordan is 3 percent.)
Hezbollah says has right to possess air defenses By HUSSEIN DAKROUB, Associated Press Writer – Mon Feb 16, 5:16 pm ET
BEIRUT – The leader of Hezbollah said Monday that his militant group has the right to possess air-defense weapons to face the Israeli warplanes that regularly fly over Lebanon.Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, however, refused to confirm or deny persistent Israeli reports that Hezbollah may have acquired anti-aircraft missiles.He did say an air defense system would change the balance of power by shattering Israel's air superiority after Hezbollah managed to withstand Israel's air, ground and sea bombardment during their 2006 war.Nasrallah spoke via a video link to a rally commemorating last year's assassination of Hezbollah's top military commander, Imad Mughniyeh, who was killed by a car bomb in Syria. Hezbollah blames Israel, which has denied involvement.Nasrallah said Israeli media report occasionally that Hezbollah has acquired sophisticated air defense missiles.I will not deny or confirm the reports, Nasrallah said, but added that such weapons would weaken Israeli air power and change the region's power equation.What I want to confirm today is that we have the full right to possess any weapons, including air defense weapons. Also, we have the full right to use this weapon if we want, he said.The Iranian-backed Hezbollah fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006 that killed more than 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and 159 in Israel. Hezbollah fired thousands of rockets at Israel.
Israel cautions anew against a nuclear-armed Iran Mon Feb 16, 4:19 pm ET
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told a forum of military chiefs on Monday that Israel would regard a nuclear-armed Iran as an "existential threat" that would speed up a regional arms race.Israel's military spokesman released Barak's comments after the United Nation's nuclear watchdog chief said global nuclear disarmament work was being hampered by Arab perceptions Israel wasn't abiding by a non-proliferation treaty.Barak told a closed forum of military chiefs at a strategy session that if Iran obtained atomic weapons it would pose a central threat to world order, the statement said.He added it would dramatically accelerate nuclear proliferation in the region.Israel is believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, though it has never acknowledged such a program or ever testing atomic weapons.The Jewish state has long denounced Iran's nuclear program as a threat to its existence and also cites remarks made by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad saying Israel should be wiped off the map.U.S. President Barack Obama has warned Tehran of tougher sanctions if it does not halt its disputed nuclear work, but in a departure from his predecessor George W. Bush, said last week he also saw the possibility of diplomatic openings with Iran.Iran says it seeks nuclear technology for peaceful purposes, in order to generate electricity.Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, referred on Monday to Arab perceptions of Israel in the context of global nuclear disarmament efforts.The nuclear non-proliferation regime has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of Arab public opinion because of the perceived double-standards concerning Israel.ElBaradei said further that Israel was the only state in the region outside the NPT and known to possess nuclear weapons, referring to a global nuclear non-proliferation treaty never signed by the Jewish state.
Israel must continue peace process: Livni by Charly Wegman Charly Wegman – Mon Feb 16, 3:41 pm ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Tzipi Livni, who is bidding to become Israel's next prime minister, said on Monday the Jewish state has no option but to continue with internationally backed peace talks with the Palestinians.We have to continue with the peace plan launched at Annapolis, Livni told a conference of US Jewish leaders in Jerusalem.If we don't continue with the plan, we will not be able to count on the support of the international community against Iran, Hezbollah (Lebanon's Shiite militia) or Hamas (the Islamist rulers of the Gaza Strip), said Livni, who as foreign minister has been at the forefront of the negotiations.Direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks were relaunched after a seven-year hiatus at a conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November 2007 with the US aim of securing a deal before the end of George W. Bush's presidency in January 2009.The plan is backed by the so-called Middle East diplomatic quartet, comprising Russia, the European Union, the United Nations and the United States.Negotiations were to have focused on core issues such as the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and the fate of Palestinian refugees, but little progress has been made.The process has now stalled completely as Livni and her hawkish right-wing rival Benjamin Netanyahu, the two front-runners after a parliamentary election on February 10, bid separately to form a workable governing coalition.The majority of Israelis understand that if Israel wants to remain an independent Jewish state, in the end the territory will have to be divided, Livni said.We can carry out negotiations while still fighting against terrorism.
The Annapolis peace process envisages separate Palestinian and Jewish states co-existing peacefully side by side.Livni repeated her views later in an interview with Channel 2 television.My government will make progress in the peace process, she said. I will not be associated with freezing this process, and I am ready if necessary to join the opposition.Livni's centrist Kadima party has called for a power-sharing deal with Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party amid furious haggling in the wake of the tight parliamentary election.Although Kadima won 28 seats in last week's general election, one more than the Likud, Netanyahu is widely tipped to become the next prime minister.Under Israeli law, the person charged with trying to form a new government is not necessarily the leader of the largest party but the one with the best chances of cobbling together a coalition capable of securing a majority in the 120-seat Knesset.Livni's Kadima party said on Sunday that if Livni is not prime minister, it would rather consider going into opposition.Netanyahu has indicated that Middle East peace talks should focus on improving Palestinian daily life before negotiations on core issues can begin.When he became Israel's youngest premier in 1996, Netanyahu put the brakes on the peace process with the Palestinians, in part by authorising a major expansion of Jewish settlements.
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