Wednesday, January 06, 2010

US ENVOY 2 YRS OR LESS FOR PEACE TALKS

U.S. Mideast envoy: 2 years or less for peace talks
Wed Jan 6, 9:55 pm ET


WASHINGTON (Reuters) – George Mitchell, the U.S. Middle East envoy, said on Wednesday that Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations should take no longer than two years and could be finished sooner than that.Mitchell said in an interview on the Charlie Rose television program on PBS he plans to return to the region in the next few days and hopes to make progress on political, security and economic tracks of the peace process.We think that the negotiation should last no more than two years, once begun we think it can be done within that period of time, Mitchell said. We hope the parties agree. Personally I think it can be done in a shorter period of time.He said an Israel-Syria track could operate in parallel with an Israeli-Palestinian track.Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signaled on Monday that he is considering a proposal to relaunch stalled Middle East peace talks at a U.S.-backed summit with Israeli and Egyptian leaders early in the new year.Israel, Egypt and the United States want Abbas to reopen talks, but he refuses as long as Israel refuses to agree to a permanent freeze on construction in Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in East Jerusalem.

Israel has frozen most settlements for 10 months, although it is still building new homes in parts of East Jerusalem captured from Jordan in the 1967 war.Mitchell, who shuttled to the Middle East a dozen times in 2009, also helped broker a peace accord in Northern Ireland.(Editing by Alan Elsner)

Israel's Barak threatened over West Bank plans: officials
By Dan Williams – Wed Jan 6, 3:12 pm ET


JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has received dozens of death threats from people who fear Jewish settlements in the West Bank will be disbanded as part of peacemaking with the Palestinians, officials said on Wednesday.

In November, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu infuriated settlers by partially freezing new housing in the enclaves for 10 months. He called the moratorium a bid to coax Palestinians into resuming U.S.-sponsored negotiations suspended a year ago.

Dozens of threats have been received in recent weeks against the (defense) minister in the form of letters,said an Israeli defense official, who declined to be named.
Appearing in Tel Aviv, ex-general Barak did not provide details on the threats but described them as a response to the construction freeze. Though accompanied by unusually large number of bodyguards, he made clear he was unfazed.I wouldn't tread on a fly if I didn't have to, and, when necessary, I'm not afraid of anything or anyone," he said in a speech.The country has an elected government. When an elected government makes a decision, this decision must be implemented.About half a million settlers live among 2.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in a 1967 war. Palestinians want those territories, as well as the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, for a state.Israel has said it would evacuate isolated settlements while annexing major settlement blocs under any peace accord. That, like Netanyahu's moratorium, has been rejected by Palestinians as inefficient. Washington wants a settlement freeze, for now.A security source said Israel's Shin Bet domestic intelligence service believes there are a couple of dozen settlers or sympathizers who would be willing to attack a government figure in a bid to scotch any West Bank withdrawals.There may be up to a further 1,000 people who would support such actions, or attacks on Palestinians aimed at diverting Israeli forces from settler evacuations, the source said.

Many Israelis consider the West Bank a Jewish birthright. In 1995, an ultranationalist shot dead then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after he signed interim peace accords which gave the Palestinians a measure of self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza.The far-right Israeli opposition party National Union accused the Netanyahu government of exaggerating the assassination specter in order to besmirch the settlers.We see this as cheap spin,said spokesman Itamar Ben-Gvir.(Additional reporting by Ori Lewis; editing by Richard Williams)

Protests mark start of Orthodox Christmas in Bethlehem
Wed Jan 6, 2:23 pm ET


BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AFP) – Orthodox Christmas celebrations kicked off in the traditional birthplace of Jesus on Wednesday to the sound of bagpipes and protests by Palestinians accusing church leaders of selling land to Israelis.Palestinian boy-scouts played bagpipes and hundreds of pilgrims watched a colourful procession led by Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem Theophilos III through Manger Square in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city of Bethlehem.Two columns of Palestinian riot police escorted the top Orthodox cleric in the Holy Land to the Church of the Nativity, built on the site where Christians believe Mary gave birth to Jesus after she and Joseph found no room at the inn.Theophilos was elected patriarch in 2005 to replace Irineos, dismissed by the church over an alleged multi-million-dollar sale of church land in annexed Arab east Jerusalem to Jewish investors.The protesters chanted slogans against Theophilos and held up signs in English, Arabic and Greek accusing him of betraying his Palestinian followers.He did not fulfil his promise to cancel the deal, said Marwan Tubasi, President of the Council of Arab Orthodox Organisations and Palestinian deputy tourism minister.Tubasi said Theophilos has since also approved the lease of further church land to an Israeli company.

Property transactions with Israelis anger Palestinians who see east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state.Following the procession, Theophilos began Christmas ceremonies for Greek, Syrian and Coptic churches, leading prayers at the ancient Church of the Nativity.Some other Orthodox churches also joined in rites that were attended by hundreds of tourists and pilgrims.Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas was due to attend midnight mass.The Orthodox faith uses the old Julian calendar in which Christmas currently falls 13 days after its more widespread Gregorian calendar counterpart on December 25.The Armenian Church will celebrate the city's third Christmas on January 19.

Egypt allows through Gaza aid convoy after protests By Yusri Mohamed – Wed Jan 6, 1:25 pm ET

RAFAH, Egypt (Reuters) – Egypt has reached a deal with members of an aid convoy to take supplies to Palestinians in Gaza after protests overnight, but Cairo barred their private cars from crossing, an Egyptian security source said.Cairo had insisted the food and other supplies should enter Gaza via an Israeli-controlled checkpoint but convoy leaders wanted to use the Egyptian-controlled Rafah border crossing.Overnight, Egyptian security forces and members of the convoy, which is led by left-wing British politician George Galloway, threw stones at each other when tempers frayed over the route the trucks were to take.And in a further sign of the tensions surrounding the border, an Egyptian soldier was killed and four Palestinians were wounded in a gunbattle in Rafah during a separate protest against an anti-smuggling wall Cairo is building on the Gaza border.The official Egyptian news agency MENA said 17 Egyptian soldiers were also injured and seven foreign activists were arrested.The shooting was the most serious incident between Egyptian forces and Hamas since Cairo began an underground steel barrier a month ago. The project could choke off the movement of weapons and goods through tunnels into the Gaza Strip.Israel and Egypt maintain a blockade of the territory, which is ruled by Hamas Islamists who oppose international efforts to achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace.

TRUCKS TO GO THROUGH

Under the compromise aid deal, 158 trucks will be allowed through Rafah in Gaza, the Egyptian security source said, but 40 private cars in the convoy would have to stay in Egypt for a month for security procedures and then pass through into Gaza via an Israeli checkpoint.As part of the deal, Turkey would intervene to guarantee that Israel would allow the cars into Gaza, the source said.A Turkish Foreign spokesperson said Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had spoken to his Egyptian counterpart Ahmed Aboul Gheit early on Wednesday and the pair were in frequent contact over the progress of the convoy.The Egyptian security source said some of the trucks had already begun their journey, with the Rafah authorities allowing in 20 at a time. MENA said Egypt would close the Rafah border on Thursday after the convoy had passed through into Gaza.Egypt's ruling National Democratic Party welcomed the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza, but rejected any attempt to violate Egypt's border controls.The deal followed a sometimes violent confrontation in the early hours in the Egyptian port city of Arish, some 40 km (25 miles) from the border with Gaza.A Reuters correspondent saw security forces throwing stones at several hundred people traveling with the convoy, and police used water cannon to force them to end an occupation of the harbor. Around 40 convoy members suffered minor injuries and 15 police were hurt, witnesses said.Cairo has imposed strict regulations and restrictions on pro-Palestinian foreign activists who have held protests in Egypt since late December to mark the first anniversary of Israel's three-week offensive on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.(Writing by Yasmine Saleh; Additional reporting by Patrick Werr and Yasmine Salah; Editing by Jon Boyle)

Israel successfully tests anti-rocket system
Wed Jan 6, 1:23 pm ET


JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel has completed tests on its Iron Dome anti-missile system, designed to provide a response to the thousands of rockets fired at Israel by Hamas and Hezbollah, the defence ministry said.The system, which can intercept short-range rockets and artillery shells, underwent its final tests in the past 48 hours, a statement said.For the first time, Iron Dome faced multiple threats simultaneously. All the threats were intercepted with complete success, the statement said.The next phase in the development of the system was to integrate it into the army, the statement said.Israel hopes the system will provide it with a means to dealing with rocket fire from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and from Lebanon.Palestinian militants have fired thousands of home-made rockets into southern Israel, prompting Israel's devastating assault on the Islamist Hamas in Gaza on December 27, 2008.The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah also fired some 4,000 rockets into northern Israel during a 2006 war with Israel, which now believes Hezbollah has an arsenal of some 40,000 rockets.Making Iron Dome operational will transform Israel's political and security situation on the northern and southern fronts, said Pinhas Buchris, the ministry's director general.

Israel will consult legal advisers on future military action By Robert Marquand – Wed Jan 6, 11:47 am ET CH SC MON

Paris – After an overwhelming attack on Gaza by Israeli forces a year ago, the Israeli army was accused of contravening laws of war – including shelling of civilians with white phosphorus munitions, and destroying civil infrastructure like water purification and sewage plants, and even targeting a relatively remote egg farm that supplied much of Gaza.Israel has insisted that the Israeli Defense Forces contravened no war-crimes laws in trying to stop Hamas missile attacks in its Operation Cast Lead, as the war was called -- and it has refused the kind of self-review needed to block prosecutions of war crimes, either by third-party national courts or the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague.Yet a new directive by Israel’s military chief of staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashenazi, ordering future military operations to be attended by legal advisers, suggests that Israel has undergone some kind of internal assessment of the war, and is attempting either to improve conduct in future military operations or preclude future attempts at war-crimes charges.

New rules suggest that Israel is trying to show, under the principle of command responsibility, that military leaders under battle are aware of their responsibility, and that subordinate soldiers are aware of principles set forth in the Geneva Conventions, says Mark Ellis, director of the International Bar Association in London. I applaud the step toward responsibility, though it would not create immunity for Gaza.The announced policy comes at a time when Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who was foreign minister during the Gaza operation, recently canceled plans to visit London following issuance of an arrest warrant by a British court, which used the legal claim of universal jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes. And last week, fearing arrest warrants in Great Britain, several Israeli military officers canceled a trip when British authorities said they could not guarantee the officers would not be arrested.Legal advisers would be consulted during battleUnder the new rules, the Israeli army would consult legal advisers not only during planning stages, which Israel says it did ahead of Gaza last year, but also during battle. Under international law, a state can block war-crimes prosecution if it shows good faith in conducting self-review of its behavior. So far, Israel has said it is satisfied that its behavior in the Gaza war, which inflamed Arabs and drew severe criticism in Europe, was appropriate.Yet the determination of a need to improve IDF operations, coming after Israeli soldiers, in a movement called breaking the silence, were critical of the army’s behavior, indicates that Israel has in fact reviewed its operations and has found that it fell short of its professed satisfaction that illegal or excessive military acts did not occur, some analysts say.

Reports from Gaza after the conflict, which included a UN report authored by eminent jurist Judge Richard Goldstone of South Africa (himself Jewish) suggest that of some 1,400 deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, the civilian toll was as high as 900 persons, including many children. Israel suffered 13 casualties. The report recommended that both Israel and Gaza authorities formally investigate allegations, and that, lacking this, that the Security Council take it up.Israel did not cooperate with the Goldstone Report, as it is known, forcing the Goldstone team to enter Gaza from Egypt. Israeli officials and media have decried the report as biased. The UN General Assembly voted to refer it to the Security Council, but the US did not; the US House of Representatives on Nov. 3 voted 344 to 36 to condemn the report. Earlier, the Obama administration pressured Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to seek to suspend immediate action on the report's recommendations. ICC chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has begun a preliminary investigation into the Gaza war. Analysts like Mr. Ellis argue that the ICC is unlikely to try any Gaza case, since Israel is not a signatory to the Rome Statutes that govern jurisdiction, and that the court cannot of itself recognize Gaza as a state. It would require the Security Council to refer the case to the ICC, as in the recent example of indictments against Sudan, for a prosecution to move forward.Also of interest:Israel court stirs fierce debate with Highway 443 ruling.

Saudi, Jordan kings meet on Palestinian issue
Tue Jan 5, 3:29 pm ET


RIYADH (AFP) – King Abdullah II of Jordan and Saudi King Abdullah discussed the Palestinian problem on Tuesday, the official news agency SPA said, amid a swirl of regional diplomacy aimed at restarting Middle East peace talks.During the meeting they discussed the overall situation in the Arab world, particularly developments in the Palestinian case and efforts to achieve peace in the region, SPA said.The Jordanian leader's one-day visit came in the wake of visits to regional heavyweight Saudi Arabia by Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal.

The Saudis hoping to push the two into a pact of reconciliation that would enhance their position in possible peace negotiations with Israel, according to Arab diplomats.Other meetings appeared to be aimed at gathering support from other Arab states for a deal.Meshaal met on Tuesday with officials in Bahrein while Abbas was in Qatar and Kuwait.Meanwhile, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal flew to Damascus on Tuesday to meet Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. He will then travel to the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, whose government has overseen reconciliation talks between the two leading Palestinian factions.On Sunday, Meshaal told journalists in Riyadh a pact was very near, but that Hamas still had differences with some of Egypt's proposals. He did not offer details.

Green light for new settler homes in east Jerusalem
Tue Jan 5, 11:53 am ET


JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israeli authorities said on Tuesday they had approved the construction of 24 homes for Jewish settlers in occupied east Jerusalem in a move the Palestinians said would further threaten peace efforts.The Jerusalem municipality gave its green light for the construction of four residential buildings on the historic Mount of Olives, a spokesman said, adding that the buildings would comprise 24 flats.The construction is part of a project launched by the Irving Moskowitz family, which has already built a religious school in the neighbourhood and aims to help develop a strong Jewish presence in mainly Arab east Jerusalem.We condemn this decision in the strongest language and we condemn the Israeli government's continuing construction of settlements in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat told AFP by phone from Doha, where he is travelling with president Mahmud Abbas.(Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu's government is talking about peace and negotiations in a way that is totally opposed to the reality on the ground where settlement activity is continuing,he added.A 10-month moratorium on new building permits for settler homes in the occupied West Bank announced by Netanyahu in late November excludes construction in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured in 1967 and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.

Israel insists that the entire city is its eternal, indivisible capital, but Palestinians are determined to make Jerusalem's eastern sector the capital of their promised state.Some 200,000 Jewish settlers live in east Jerusalem alongside 270,000 Palestinian residents.Israel's continued expansion of settlements is one of the biggest obstacles to the resumption of peace talks with the Palestinians, now suspended for a year.

CIA bomber coerced to work for Jordan spy agency By JAMAL HALABY, Associated Press Writer – Tue Jan 5, 6:42 pm ET

ZARQA, Jordan – The suspected Jordanian double agent who killed seven CIA officers in Afghanistan was thrown into jail by Jordanian intelligence to coerce him to track down al-Qaida's No. 2 leader, Mideast counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.The 32-year-old doctor's allegiance was to al-Qaida from the start, however, and not to his Jordanian recruiters or their CIA friends — and it never wavered, a Middle East counterterrorism official told The Associated Press.He and two other counterterrorism officials gave identical accounts of how and when Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi was recruited.Jordanian intelligence believed the devout young Muslim had been persuaded to support U.S. efforts against al-Qaida in Afghanistan and wanted al-Balawi to help capture or kill Ayman al-Zawahri, a fellow doctor from Egypt who was Osama bin Laden's right-hand man, according to another counterterrorism official based in the Middle East.All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment on matters involving the CIA and Jordan's national security.Family and friends said al-Balawi, a father of two young daughters, had practiced medicine in a clinic at a Palestinian refugee camp near Zarqa, the hometown of slain al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. One high school classmate, Mohammed Yousef, described al-Balawi as brilliant, well-spoken and well-mannered, though he kept mostly to himself and did not mingle much with relatives or friends.

The doctor also spoke openly about wanting to die in a holy war, Yousef said, adding that in Internet postings he called tirelessly for jihad against Israel and the United States.If the love of jihad entered a man's heart, it will not abandon him, even if he wanted so, al-Balawi said in an interview published by the Ana Al-Muslim, or I, the Muslim, Web site.Jordanian intelligence was aware of these provocative statements when they arrested al-Balawi last March after he signed up for a humanitarian mission to the Gaza Strip with a Jordanian field hospital in the wake of Israel's offensive there, the counterterrorism officials said.Al-Balawi was jailed for three days and shortly after that, he secretly left his native Jordan for Afghanistan, they said, suggesting he had agreed to take on the mission against al-Qaida.Once in Afghanistan, al-Balawi provided valuable intelligence information that helped foil al-Qaida terror plots on Jordan, the officials said. His Jordanian recruiters then offered al-Balawi to their CIA allies as someone who would help them capture or kill al-Zawahri.On Dec. 30, the Jordanian was invited to Camp Chapman, a tightly secured CIA forward base in Khost province on the fractious Afghan-Pakistan frontier, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a foreign government official.He was not closely searched, according to former and current U.S. intelligence officials, apparently because of his perceived value as someone who could lead American forces to senior al-Qaida leaders.Shortly after the debriefing began, al-Balawi set off his explosives, a former U.S. intelligence official said. The blast killed seven CIA employees and Ali bin Zaid, a senior Jordanian intelligence officer and relative of Jordan's King Abdullah II.Yousef, al-Balawi's high school friend, said the doctor had deceived family and friends, telling them in March he was going to Turkey for medical studies and to be with his wife, a Turkish journalist.

He fooled us, saying he was going to continue his medical studies, but he embarked on a suicide mission, said a close relative, who requested anonymity, citing instructions from Jordanian authorities to the family not to talk to the media.He never called us,the bearded relative said, weeping.He said the family found out about al-Balawi's death in a telephone call last Thursday from a man who claimed to be from the Taliban.A Jordanian official living abroad denied al-Balawi was a double agent, saying he was a sometime contact of the Jordanian intelligence who had no formal role as an intelligence officer. The official said al-Balawi had been arrested by Jordanian authorities about a year ago and was investigated before being released for what the official said was a lack of evidence. The official said al-Balawi then traveled to Pakistan, saying he planned to study there, and contacted Jordanian authorities by e-mail soon after. Al-Balawi claimed to have important information about al-Qaida plans to target Jordanian interests, the official said.

Jordan shared that information with the United States, and maintained contact with al-Balawi electronically, the official said, adding that Jordan has no confirmation that al-Balawi was the suicide bomber. Still, the case raises uneasy questions about how the CIA could have been duped for so long. A U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday the danger of using informants is inherent but unavoidable. He said intelligence agencies have to rely on unsavory individuals to penetrate terrorist groups because no one else has the access. He said those hazards were neither denied nor ignored by the CIA officers. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. Questions also remain about why the bomber was not searched for weapons or explosives prior to his meeting with CIA officers, which is standard protocol even for visiting dignitaries, said senior foreign government official and more than a dozen former CIA officers. Also unclear is why so many people were present for the debriefing. For physical security reasons and to protect the identifies of both informants and CIA officers, debriefings are generally conducted with two or three people. Former CIA officers said the large group and failure to screen for a bomb suggest a lapse in what the CIA calls tradecraft — standard operating procedures meant to maximize security, secrecy and intelligence gathering. The Pakistani Taliban has claimed they used a turncoat CIA operative to carry out the attack, saying it was in revenge for a top militant leader's death in a U.S. missile strike.

It was impossible to verify the claim independently, but it is highly unusual for the Pakistani Taliban to claim credit for an attack in Afghanistan. Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA unit that tracked bin Laden, said it's inconceivable that the bombing could have been carried out without the knowledge of the al-Qaida-linked Haqqani network. The autonomous Afghan Taliban faction — whose leader was once a U.S. ally — is a serious threat to American and NATO troops in Afghanistan's east and operates on both sides of the border with Pakistan. There is no way this operation would have occurred in Khost without the knowledge and active support of Jalaluddin (Haqqani) and/or his son,Scheuer said.They and their organization own the area — and especially right around Khost — and nothing occurs that would impact their tribe or its allies without their knowledge and OK. Both men, moreover, would be delighted to help bin Laden in any way they can.The bombing — the worst attack against the CIA in decades — exposed the close cooperation between Jordanian intelligence and the CIA, which has for decades helped fund and train Jordanian operatives. In return, Jordan has acted as a proxy jailer for the CIA, interrogating several al-Qaida militants who were flown in on rendition flights from Guantanamo Bay. A key U.S. ally in the Middle East, Jordan has consistently offered intelligence to the United States on militants and helped track down Jordanian-born al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a U.S. airstrike in Iraq in June 2006. Jordan has a vested interest to fight al-Qaida, which has plotted several deadly attacks against the pro-U.S. Arab kingdom. The plots included a bungled attempt to bomb the U.S. Embassy and tourist attractions during Millennium celebrations in Jordan and a 2004 foiled attack using chemicals on the Amman headquarters of the Jordanian intelligence, which experts said would have killed thousands.

The bombing of the CIA base was an embarrassment for Jordan. The country's pro-U.S. government has gone to great lengths to conceal its connection with the attack on the CIA to avoid angering Arabs already disgruntled with Washington's Mideast policy, which they regard as biased in favor of Israel. Al-Balawi came from a nomadic Bedouin clan from Tabuk, in western Saudi Arabia, which has branches in Jordan and the West Bank. He was born in Kuwait in 1977 to a middle-class family of nine other children, including an identical twin brother. He lived there until Iraq's 1990 invasion of the rich Gulf nation when the family moved to Jordan. He graduated with honors from an Amman high school and studied medicine in Turkey. AP writers Pamela Hess and Anne Gearan in Washington and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

Fearing arrests, Israel delays officers' trip to UK
Tue Jan 5, 11:37 am ET


JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel has delayed a visit by senior military officers to Britain over fears the group could be arrested there on war crimes charges, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said on Tuesday.These officers were invited by Great Britain, but they will stay in Israel as long as we do not have a 100 percent guarantee that they will not become objects of criminal lawsuits in that country, Ayalon told public radio.In a meeting with British Attorney General Baroness Patricia Janet Scotland later on Tuesday, Ayalon protested the warrants and warned that this would impede normal bilateral ties, his office said.In December, Tzipi Livni, the leader of Israel's main opposition party Kadima and foreign minister during the Gaza war a year ago, cancelled a visit to Britain after an arrest warrant was issued against her by a British court, sparking a diplomatic row.British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has insisted that Livni is welcome and has voiced his determination to change the law that allows British courts to issue warrants for alleged war crimes suspects around the world.The Hamas rulers of Gaza, considered a terror organisation by Israel and the West, have said they were providing information to European lawyers investigating alleged war crimes by Israel during the Gaza war.Ayalon said he would discuss the matter on Tuesday with Britain's attorney general, who is currently in Israel on a private visit.

This legislation is often misused, Ayalon said.It initially targetted Nazi criminals, but terrorist organisations like Hamas are today using it to take democracies hostage.We have to put an end to this absurdity, which is harming the excellent bilateral relations between Israel and Britain, he said.A UN fact-finding mission to Gaza last year said both Israel and Palestinian militant groups were guilty of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity during the 22-day war that ended on January 18, 2009 with mutual ceasefires.The war, which Israel launched in response to rocket fire from the Hamas-run territory, killed some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

Hamas pledges loyalty to Arabs: Saudi minister
Tue Jan 5, 11:35 am ET


SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (AFP) – Exiled Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal has assured Saudi Arabia his movement is loyal to Arab states, the kingdom's foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said on Tuesday.I asked Khaled Meshaal whether the movement stood with Arabs or with others, Prince Saud said, referring to Iran, a strong regional backer of Hamas, the Islamist group that rules Gaza.Meshaal insisted that Hamas was an Arab movement and that the Palestinian question was an Arab issue, the Saudi minister said at the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh after talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.The exchange between Prince Saud and Meshaal occurred on Sunday during a visit by the Hamas leader to Saudi Arabia.Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite non-Arab Iran have been traditional rivals in the Middle East.Tensions have recently mounted between the two as Saudi Arabia accuses Iran of supporting Huthi rebels in northern Yemen, which the kingdom has fought along its border with Yemen.

Prince Saud's visit to Egypt is part of a string of regional meetings aimed at reviving peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, which have been stalled for a year.Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah II were in Egypt on Monday for talks with Mubarak, a week after a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.On Sunday in Riyadh, Meshaal said Egyptian-led talks aimed at reconciling the Palestinian Islamist movement and its rival Fatah were close to bearing fruit.US President Barack Obama has repeatedly called on Israel and the Palestinians to resume peace talks, but the Palestinians have demanded Israel first freeze all settlement activity and commit to a framework for the talks.The Palestinians have insisted the borders of their promised state encompass all of their land Israel occupied in 1967, including mostly Arab east Jerusalem -- which Israel later annexed in a move not recognised by the international community -- as their capital.Hamas's takeover of Gaza in 2007, which shrank Abbas' powerbase to the West Bank and deepened Palestinian divisions, has also hampered peace talks with Israel.

Abbas, Mubarak discuss peace at Egyptian resort
Mon Jan 4, 8:48 am ET


SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas gave no indication on Monday of any resumption soon of peace talks with Israel, despite optimism of progress voiced by officials on both sides.Abbas met Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, but did not make any comment at a brief news conference about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's proposal for an Egyptian-hosted summit with Abbas.Israel, Egypt and the United States want Abbas to resume negotiations broken off a year ago over the Gaza war, but he refuses to sit down to talks as long as Israel allows construction of any kind in Jewish West Bank settlements.

Abbas said the Palestinian Authority's stance had not changed.Our stand is known from the past and our stand remains the same -- and in agreement with our brothers in Egypt -- which is that we have no objections on negotiations or meetings in principle and we do not set conditions,Abbas said.There have been signs that progress was being made toward renewing the negotiations.An aide to Abbas said last week the region would see important political activity in the next two weeks. Israel's ambassador to Washington Michael Oren has said Mubarak has a key role to play in resuming talks.U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell is expected to return to the region early this year, and Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit and Intelligence Head Omar Suleiman are due to visit Washington on Friday.Abbas said he did not know what had happened in talks between Mubarak and Netanyahu in Cairo last week, and added he did not wish to comment on that meeting until after Aboul Gheit and Suleiman returned from Washington.

Hamas approves $540 mln budget for Gaza
Mon Jan 4, 8:05 am ET


GAZA CITY (AFP) – The Hamas-run government in the Gaza Strip on Monday announced a 540-million-dollar (377-million-euro) budget for 2010 with just 55 million dollars coming from taxes and other local sources of revenue.MP Jamal Nassar, the head of the Palestinian parliament's budget committee, declined to say how the Islamist group would make up the 485-million-dollar shortfall, saying only that it would be covered by aid and assistance.Israel and Egypt have sealed Gaza off from all but vital goods since the Islamist movement seized power in June 2007, but Hamas, which is backed by Iran and Syria, is believed to smuggle cash and weapons through tunnels from Egypt.Despite the blockade, the Hamas-run government has regularly paid 22,000 civil servants, including thousands of security forces, since it drove out forces loyal to the Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.The budget includes 30 million dollars to aid Jerusalem and the steadfastness of its people, but it was not clear how the money would reach the city, which is under complete Israeli control.Iran has been a staunch supporter of Hamas since the movement won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, although Tehran says its aid does not extend to military arms and training, as Israel has alleged.

Sunday, January 03, 2010

ISRAELI DIPLOMATS TO DIPLIMATICAL

Israeli diplomats too diplomatic, FM says
Sun Jan 3, 5:02 pm ET


JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel's outspoken foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman told the Jewish state's ambassadors to stop grovelling and defend its national honour, an official at his ministry said on Sunday.I have seen that some ambassadors identify themselves with the other side to such an extent that they are all the time trying to justify and explain, the ultra-nationalist thundered during a closed meeting with some 150 envoys at the foreign ministry last week, the official said on condition of anonymity.Terms like national honour have value in the Middle East, he said as his audience listened in stunned silence.There must not be an attitude of obsequiousness and self-deprecation, and the need to always justify the other side. This is the wrong approach, said the Soviet-born Lieberman in comments that were first reported by the liberal Haaretz daily.The era of grovelling is over, he concluded. We must be on good terms and respect the host nations, but we will not tolerate insults and challenges.We will not turn the other cheek. There will be a response to everything.

The leader of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu party is known for controversial statements, including once saying as an MP that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak could go to hell if he continued to decline to visit the Jewish state.As a result, Israel's top diplomat is currently not welcome in Egypt, one of only two Arab countries with which the Jewish state has diplomatic relations.His blunt comments, particularly regarding Israel's Arab minority, have earned him a reputation as a needed firm hand among admirers and as a racist bully among critics.

Hamas leader claims progress in Palestinian talks By DONNA ABU-NASR, Associated Press Writer – Sun Jan 3, 10:51 am ET

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – The leader of Hamas said Sunday that significant progress has been made in Egyptian-sponsored talks aimed at reconciling his militant Palestinian group with the rival Fatah movement.The two main Palestinian factions have been bitterly divided since Hamas violently seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007, leaving Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah in control only of the West Bank.The split has complicated peace efforts with Israel as well as reconstruction of the impoverished and war-damaged Gaza Strip. Efforts to bring them together in a power-sharing arrangement failed and the Egyptian-mediated talks are now aimed at ending the division by holding new Palestinian elections.Khaled Mashaal, who is based in Damascus, Syria, said Hamas still has reservations over the latest Egyptian proposal, which calls for presidential and legislative elections in the first half of this year as well as a reorganization of the security forces under Abbas' authority. He did not elaborate.Hamas and seven other radical, Damascus-based Palestinian factions have rejected the proposal because it does not state that Palestinians have the right to keep fighting Israel. Fatah, which favors negotiations with Israel, has accepted the Egyptian plan.We have made big strides in the Palestinian-Palestinian negotiations and talks that have taken place in Cairo, Mashaal said.We are in the final stages.The problem is the completion of the (Egyptian) paper ... so it can satisfy everybody's demands, Mashaal said during a visit to Saudi Arabia.The kingdom sponsored a unity agreement between the two factions in February 2007. But that effort fell apart in bickering over implementation, and in June of that year Hamas ousted its rivals from Gaza in a five-day civil war.

The Hamas leader spoke after talks with Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal. A week earlier Abbas visited for the kingdom talks with King Abdullah.Mashaal also blamed Israel for a delay in indirect negotiations to exchange hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli Sgt. Gilad Schalit, who was captured by Palestinian militants in 2006.We are still following the negotiations through the German mediator, he said.The Israeli position keeps changing. They take one step forward and two back.

Radical Jewish sect spends Sabbath in Gaza
Sat Jan 2, 2:40 pm ET


GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Several members of an anti-Zionist Jewish sect have spent the Jewish Sabbath in Gaza with some of Israel's most bitter enemies, the militant Islamic group Hamas.Yisroel Dovid Weiss, a leader of the radical Neturei Karta, said Saturday that his group was in Gaza to show support for the Palestinian people.The sect decries Israel's existence because they believe Jews must live in exile without a country of their own until the coming of the Messiah.Neturei Karta traditionally supports Israel's enemies — most notably Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom members hugged at a Holocaust denial conference in 2006.They are estimated to have up to a few thousand followers and are mostly shunned by mainstream Judaism.

IF ISRAEL SO CALLED ACTS LIKE SPOILT CHILDREN,ARABS ,MUSLIMS ACT LIKE THE WORLDS CONTROL FREAKS TO BLEND IN COMPLETELY WITH THE NEW WORLD ORDER NUT CONTROL FREAKS.

Israel acts like the world's spoilt child: Saudi Arabia
Sat Jan 2, 12:14 pm ET


RIYADH (Reuters) – Saudi Arabia said on Saturday said Israel was the world's spoilt child" and got away with what Riyadh said were violations of international law and war crimes without punishment. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal also urged countries to adopt a firm and serious stance to put an end to the policy of settlements in occupied Palestinian territories and in Jerusalem.Not reaching solutions (for the Middle East conflict) is (the result of) the special treatment Israel gets, he said at a news conference with visiting Turkish counterpart Ahmet Davutoglu.When they violate international law, other countries get punished but not Israel ... Israel has become like the spoilt child of the international community.

It (Israel) gets away with anything it does without accountability or punishment, he added.Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is backed by Riyadh, has insisted Israel freeze Jewish settlement building before peace talks for a Palestinian state in territory Israel captured in a 1967 war resume. He has rejected a temporary halt to construction ordered by Netanyahu as insufficient.Israel announced on Monday plans to build nearly 700 new Jewish homes in areas of the occupied West Bank it considers part of Jerusalem, prompting strong U.S. criticism implying they could undermine peace talks.Prince Saud said the policy of expanding settlements was a source of deep concern and condemnation for both us and the international community.

This policy casts doubts on the seriousness of (Israel's) commitment to the peace process,Prince Saud said.Saudi Arabia floated in 2002 an Arab peace plan that calls for a complete Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem and a fair solution to the crisis of Palestinian refugees in exchange for normalized ties with the Arab world.(Reporting by Souhail Karam)

Israeli warplanes hit Gaza after rocket attack
Sat Jan 2, 2:26 am ET


GAZA CITY (AFP) – Israeli aircraft attacked at least four targets in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip early on Saturday, wounding two people in retaliation for a rocket strike on Israel, officials said.Two explosions were heard in Gaza City, one north of the city and one in the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunis. Palestinian medics and witnesses said all the missiles appeared to land in open fields.Two people, including a child, were lightly wounded, medics said.An Israeli military spokesman said warplanes had attacked two tunnels militants were digging in the direction of Israel, apparently to infiltrate the country and carry out attacks.Israel routinely retaliates after rocket attacks from Gaza, and the latest air strikes came after a rocket hit the southern town of Netivot on Thursday without causing casualties.We will not tolerate any attempt to disrupt the calm in Israel's southern communities, the spokesman said.

It marked the latest violence along Gaza's border, which has been mostly quiet since a war Israel launched on the Islamist Hamas in Gaza on December 27, 2008 in response to rocket fire ended with mutual ceasefires on January 18.The ceasefires have largely held, despite violations by both sides.

Peacemaking in the Mideast: Obama's Year of Missteps By MASSIMO CALABRESI / WASHINGTON – Fri Jan 1, 2:40 pm ET

It has taken President Obama just 10 months to achieve something each of his immediate predecessors delivered in their final year in office: failure in the Middle East peace process. Riding a wave of optimism in January, the President on his second day in office named retired Senator George Mitchell as his Middle East special envoy, tasked with kick-starting the dormant negotiations over a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite his best intentions, Mitchell's - and Obama's - efforts have managed only to undermine peace advocates on all sides and have pushed hopes for a final agreement into the distant future. The President now faces tough choices over how to proceed.(See pictures of Israeli soldiers sweeping into Gaza.)Obama distinguished himself from his predecessors by attacking the problem early; Bill Clinton and George W. Bush waited until their lame-duck years to do so. Moreover, Obama faced perhaps the worst Middle East peacemaking environment inherited by any President in decades. He took office as Israel was wrapping up its costly and controversial offensive against Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip, an operation that produced accusations of war crimes by a U.N. human-rights investigation and galvanized anti-Israel sentiment around the world. Within weeks, Israel's electorate had installed a right-wing governing coalition beholden to parties opposed to a Palestinian state and committed to expanding Israeli settlements on territories captured in 1967. On the Palestinian side, he faced an enfeebled and fractured leadership, further burdened by rising expectations owing to a perception that Obama would be more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause.

Obama quickly exacerbated these problems with a series of tactical mistakes. He drew a line in the sand over Israeli settlements, insisting that all construction outside Israel's 1967 borders stop in order to revive negotiations. Not only did this set a politically unachievable goal for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, it meant that anything short of a full freeze would look like a loss for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas was already politically damaged by the Gaza war; anything less than full Israeli compliance - particularly in East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians see as the capital of their future state - became politically intolerable for him, and he refused to negotiate until Israel complied with Obama's demand. Washington then made matters worse by pressuring a reluctant Abbas to visit the U.N. General Assembly in New York for a handshake photo opportunity with Obama and Netanyahu, then sending him home with no tangible wins. By the fall, Abbas was talking of resigning.Through either clumsiness or misunderstanding or outright error, they hurt him to the extent that he felt he had to step down, says Robert Malley, a former U.S. Middle East peace negotiator now with the International Crisis Group. By year's end, the process remained in a stalemate: Israel had offered a partial settlement freeze but not enough to get the Palestinians back to the table. And most of the negotiating action was going on via back channels between Israel and Hamas, the radical rulers of Gaza, over an exchange of Palestinian prisoners for the captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. (If Hamas succeeds in freeing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners by playing hardball with the Israelis, a Shalit deal would further undermine Abbas in the eyes of his own people.) (See pictures of heartbreak in the Middle East.)

The Administration's failures have led many to urge scrapping the entire approach and trying something new. Some are pushing for the U.S. to deal separately with Israel and the Palestinians and try to forge a deal in the role of intermediary. The problem with that approach is that failure would be even more costly, since the U.S. would own the process, and would leave nowhere to go. Others say the U.S. should walk away and let the parties go to the table themselves when they are ready to talk - an approach reminiscent of James Baker, but no more likely to succeed now than it did in the early 1990s.Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is emphasizing a bottom-up approach that focuses on creating the infrastructure of Palestinian statehood through economic development and empowering security and administrative structures. Some Western observers even argue that any final-status talks should be abandoned for now to concentrate on backing Fayyad's efforts. But Palestinians are unlikely to remain quiescent without some hope for early statehood. (Fayyad is an independent, rather than a member of President Abbas' Fatah movement, and is not representative of a significant political base.) European Union leaders are taking Fayyad's idea further, pressing in the direction of some form of international recognition of Palestinian claims to a state based on the 1967 borders:We are all in the international community defending the two-state solution, said Spain's Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos, whose country on Dec. 18 inherited the E.U. presidency for next year.Why should we wait for a Palestinian state? We have Israel as a state. We want its neighbor, the Palestinians, to have the same status.Moratinos emphasized that this should be achieved through negotiation. But his statement, taken together with a recent E.U. declaration urging negotiation to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of two states - an idea that Netanyahu refuses to even discuss - signals growing European impatience with Israel.

For now, though, the Administration is sticking with its approach of pushing for direct talks on a two-state solution, hoping that continued pressure will bring the Israelis and Palestinians to the table. If negotiations can be restarted, Washington is confident of making progress. If not, it will face the same kind of full-scale policy review that it undertook on Afghanistan and Iran - only much later, and after much more damage to the process.

Friday, January 01, 2010

U-O JEWS MAKE RARE VISIT TO GAZA

Ultra-Orthodox Jews make rare visit to Gaza
JAN 1,2010


GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – A small group of ultra-Orthodox Jews were preparing Friday to celebrate the Jewish Sabbath in Gaza, in an unlikely show of support for Palestinians in the Hamas-run coastal territory.Bearded and wearing black hats and coats, the four members of a tiny Jewish group vehemently opposed to Israel's existence were a rare sight in the poverty-stricken Palestinian territory.Members of the Neturei Karta group have expressed support for the Iranian regime and for others who oppose the Jewish state, which they believe was established in violation of Jewish law. They made a similar visit to Gaza last year.It's crucial that the people of Gaza understand the terrible tragedy here is not in the name of Judaism, said one of the men, Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss of New York City, as the four prepared to observe the Sabbath at a Gaza City hotel.Gaza is still recovering from Israel's devastating military offensive a year ago, which was aimed at halting rocket fire from the territory. Thirteen Israelis and almost 1,400 Gazans were killed in the three-week war.The four men are American and Canadian citizens. Israel bans its citizens from visiting the blockaded territory. Weiss and his comrades entered Gaza through a border crossing with Egypt.Neturei Karta, Aramaic for Guardians of the City, was founded seven decades ago in Jerusalem by Jews who opposed the drive to establish the state of Israel, believing only the Messiah could do that.Considered marginal even among ultra-Orthodox Jews, the group's size is estimated at between a few hundred to a few thousand people.(This version CORRECTS Corrects time element in graf 3 to last year sted earlier tis year.)

Leading Egypt clerics back Gaza tunnel barrier: report
Fri Jan 1, 6:21 am ET


CAIRO (AFP) – A council of leading Muslim clerics has supported the Egyptian government's construction of an underground barrier along the border with Gaza to impede tunnelling by smugglers, a report said on Friday.The Islamic Research Council of Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam's highest seat of learning, said that the tunnels were used to smuggle drugs and threatened Egypt's security, the Al-Masri Al-Yawm newspaper reported.It is one of Egypt's legitimate rights to place a barrier that prevents the harm from the tunnels under Rafah, which are used to smuggle drugs and other (contraband) that threaten Egypt's stability, the paper quoted the clerics as saying.Those who oppose building this wall are violating the commands of Islamic law, they added, after a meeting attended by Egypt's top cleric Sheikh Mohammed Said Tantawi, who is a government appointee.Construction of the underground barrier has drawn angry condemnation from the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip, which relies on the tunnels for food and fuel, as well as the weapons and other contraband the barrier is designed to stop.

Israel has sealed the territory off to all but very limited supplies of basic goods ever since the Islamist group seized control in 2007, ousting forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.Hamdi Hassan, an Islamist member of the Egyptian parliament, has filed a lawsuit against President Hosni Mubarak demanding a halt to construction of the barrier, the newspaper reported.

Israel's Netanyahu proposes Egypt peace summit
By Dan Williams – Thu Dec 31, 3:35 pm ET


JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has proposed an Egyptian-hosted summit with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as a possible way to resume stalled peace talks, Israeli officials said on Thursday.The offer was the latest sign that progress was being made toward renewing U.S.-backed negotiations frozen for a year.Palestinian and Egyptian officials had no immediate comment on the plan, which two Israeli officials said Netanyahu raised on Tuesday at talks in Cairo with Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak.Abbas was due to meet Mubarak next week and U.S. President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy George Mitchell is expected in the region in early 2010 for a new push to resume peace talks.Israel's idea of an Egypt-hosted peace summit with Abbas was proposed during Netanyahu's talks with Mubarak, an Israeli official told Reuters. Another official confirmed Netanyahu had raised the summit idea. Netanyahu's office would not comment. On Wednesday, a spokesman, Mark Regev, said Israel hopes to indeed see the resumption of talks with the Palestinians in the near future.Nabil Abu Rdainah, an aide to Abbas, said the region will see important political activity in the next two weeks.Egypt's Foreign Minister Ahmed Abould Gheit was quoted by Palestinian newspapers as saying that judging from comments he made during his Cairo visit Netanyahu is moving forward.

ARAB PEACE PLAN

Netanyahu, a right-wing leader who took office in March, has repeatedly said he was ready to resume talks with Abbas, stalled since a three-week Gaza war launched last December and a subsequent Israeli election, without any conditions.Abbas has insisted Israel freeze Jewish settlement building before the talks for a Palestinian state in territory Israel captured in a 1967 war may resume, and has rejected a temporary halt to construction ordered by Netanyahu as insufficient.But in remarks marking the anniversary of his Fatah movement on Thursday, Abbas made just a passing reference to the settlements, and seemed to leave the door open to renewed talks.We are with the peace process, he said in a speech in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Our hand will remain outstretched to peace, a just peace that ends the Israeli occupation.Abbas also urged Israel to adopt an Arab peace plan that calls for a complete withdrawal from the West Bank in exchange for normalized ties with the Arab world.Israeli media, quoting Palestinian and U.S. diplomatic sources, reported Netanyahu was ready to negotiate a withdrawal to the 1967 borders as part of a land swap with Palestinians so Israel could keep some settlement blocs.

Israeli officials could not say when an Egypt-based summit may take place.

Michael Oren, Israel's ambassador to Washington, told Reuters that Mubarak had a key role to play in resuming talks.I know that Egypt is a country of immense prestige in the Arab world, and influence, and when Egypt throws that prestige and influence behind a certain process, that has an impact. Oren said.There's a sense of some forward movement in Middle East talks, he added.(Additional reporting by Erika Solomon and Ali Sawafta in Ramallah)(Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan)

Four years on, Sharon's legacy wanes in Israel
by Ron Bousso – Thu Dec 31, 2:05 pm ET


TEL AVIV (AFP) – On Monday, former prime minister Ariel Sharon will have been in a coma for four years. With peace hopes bogged down, Israel today is a far cry from what it was when he suffered a massive stroke.A steely general nicknamed the bulldozer, the now 81-year-old left a leadership vacuum that many feel has yet to be filled when he slipped into unconsciousness on January 4, 2006.And with Middle East peace efforts currently stalled, ties with Washington strained and concerns rising over the growing influence of arch-foe Iran, Israel faces crucial decisions in the coming years.Now connected to a feeding tube and showing very low brain activity, Sharon built a powerful and controversial legacy that culminated four months before the stroke that felled him, when he ordered Jewish settlers and soldiers to pull out of the Gaza Strip after 38 years of occupation.Hailed by supporters at the time as a historic step towards peace, the unilateral withdrawal is now seen by many Israelis as having paved the way for the violent takeover 2007 of the coastal strip by the Palestinian Hamas group.The presence on Israel's southern border of an Iranian-backed Islamist movement pledged to its destruction is today one of the major threats facing the Jewish state.

The devastating three-week Gaza war launched one year ago failed to remove Hamas and stirred up a storm of international criticism against Israel.The number of rocket attacks from the Palestinian enclave has decreased dramatically since the war ended on January 18, however.The war also helped the country's military establishment polish an image tarnished by the July-August 2006 war against Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah militia, when thousands of rockets were fired at Israeli cities.Israel's perceived failures in that brief but deadly war were largely blamed on the lack of experience of Sharon's successor Ehud Olmert, who later found himself having to battle for his political survival.Analysts and former Sharon aides believe the Gaza and Lebanon conflicts might never have taken place had Sharon remained at Israel's helm.Gerald Steinberg, a political scientist at Bar Ilan university, believes Sharon would not have allowed the situation in Gaza to escalate the way it did.He would have responded much more forcefully to rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip after the withdrawal, Steinberg said.Former Sharon spokesman Ra'anan Gissin believes Gaza militants may not have attacked a Sharon-led Israel because he was seen as a powerful leader. Olmert was perceived as weak.Sharon also commands respect in Israel for steering the country through the bloody years of the second Palestinian intifada, or uprising, launched in 2000.Even a slew of corruption scandals failed to erode public support for Sharon.He earned Israel international support for his decision to withdraw from Gaza and parts of the West Bank.In 2003, his government signed up to the internationally drafted peace roadmap meant to lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. Shortly after the disengagement from Gaza, Sharon further shook the foundations of Israeli politics by quitting the right-wing Likud party to form the centrist Kadima. Today, Kadima is the largest party in Israel, but it is not in power and its head, former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, is facing growing dissent. Likud now leads a fragmented government coalition that relies heavily on the support of the far-right.

Middle East peace talks have been at a complete standstill since the Gaza war.

Relations with Washington have also soured, largely over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's refusal to order a complete freeze on the construction of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. That is a dramatic change from the Sharon days, said Dov Weissglas, the former premier's chief of staff. Sharon's special relationship with the United States promised that crises between the two countries would be managed in good faith, he said. Sharon was a leader, he reached decisions, decided on clear policies and sought to implement them.

Fatah vows to escalate struggle against occupation
Thu Dec 31, 9:44 am ET


RAMALLAH (West Bank) (AFP) – The secular Fatah movement led by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas on Thursday vowed to step up its struggle against the Israeli occupation with demonstrations and diplomacy.Our programme emphasises the importance of a two-track approach, with the first being the escalation of the popular struggle to resist occupation,the movement said in a statement.The group said it would model the struggle on the weekly demonstrations in two West Bank towns, Bilin and Nilin, where residents hurl rocks and protest against the expansion of Israel's controversial separation barrier.Fatah, which marks the 45th anniversary of the start of its armed struggle on Friday, also vowed to increase movement on the international level to pursue Israel, to isolate it and to force it to answer to international law.We renew our vow to continue the struggle until the end of the occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, with east Jerusalem as its capital, and a solution to the refugee issue, it said.Fatah went on to say that it would not spare any effort in restoring Palestinian national unity and returning the Gaza Strip from the hands of those who have taken it hostage, referring to its Hamas rivals.The two main Palestinian movements have been divided into geographically separated hostile camps since the Islamist Hamas seized power in Gaza in 2007.

The secular Fatah was founded by the late iconic leader Yasser Arafat in the 1950s and formally launched its armed struggle against Israel on January 1, 1965.Arafat entered into peace negotiations with Israel when he signed the 1993 Oslo autonomy accords, but during the 2000 Palestinian uprising Fatah's armed wing, the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, carried out scores of deadly attacks.When Abbas became president following Arafat's death in 2004 he brought the armed struggle to a halt, but the movement has never given up its right to resistance against the Israeli occupation of lands seized in 1967.

Israeli jails holding 7,500 Palestinians: ministry
Thu Dec 31, 7:52 am ET


RAMALLAH, West Bank (AFP) – At least 7,500 Palestinians were being held in Israeli jails and detention facilities at the end of 2009, the Palestinian Authority said on Thursday.The detainees include 34 women, 310 children and 304 people being held under administrative detention without trial, according to a report published by the prisoners affairs ministry.The detainees also include 17 MPs, most of them from the Islamist Hamas movement, two former ministers, and a number of political leaders.

The vast majority of the prisoners, 6,330, are from the occupied West Bank. Another 750 detainees hail from the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, and some 420 are from annexed Arab east Jerusalem and Israel, the ministry said.The longest serving prisoners are two brothers, Fakhri and Nail Barghuti, and Akram Mansur, all of whom have been in prison for 32 years.They are among 317 prisoners jailed before the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994 following the Oslo autonomy accords.The ministry said 197 prisoners have died in Israeli custody since 1967.More than 5,000 people were detained at some point in 2009, an average of 14 per day, but most were later released.Israel and Hamas have been struggling for months to reach a prisoner exchange deal that would see hundreds of Palestinians released in a swap for for an Israeli soldier captured by Gaza militants in June 2006.Both sides have been tight-lipped about the discussions, which have been carried out through Egyptian and German mediators.

Israel reports sharp drop in attacks in 2009
Thu Dec 31, 4:58 am ET


JERUSALEM (AFP) – The number of attacks on Israelis dropped sharply in 2009, the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet said in its annual report on victims of terrorism published on Thursday.It said the number of attacks was at its lowest level since the start of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in 2000.In all, 15 Israelis were killed during 2009, compared with 36 the previous year, it said. There were no suicide bombings in 2009.Nine of the victims were killed during the military offensive in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip that ended on January 18. Shin Bet included in that figure four soldiers killed in a friendly-fire incident.Another four soldiers were killed in December 2008 at the start of the 22-day offensive which claimed the lives of about 1,400 Palestinians.One soldier was killed in a bomb attack on the Gaza border shortly after the offensive and the other five victims were killed in attacks originating in the West Bank.As of December 24, a total of 566 rockets had been fired from the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, including 160 since the end of the Israeli offensive, the report said.It said there were 636 Palestinian attacks originating in the West Bank in 2009, compared with 983 the previous year.It said authorities foiled dozens of attempts to infiltrate Israel from the Gaza Strip through Egypt to plant bombs or carry out suicide attacks, and noted an increasing involvement of operatives who identify with groups linked to al-Qaeda.

Hamas sees more prisoner swap talks with Israel
Wed Dec 30, 7:55 am ET


GAZA (Reuters) – Hamas does not agree to Israel's latest terms for a prisoner swap and asked a German mediator to continue to pursue a deal, a Hamas official said on Wednesday after leaders of the Islamist group ended talks in Damascus.The consultations will continue and the negotiations will continue. We cannot say that the deal has reached a dead end. And we cannot say that (the talks were) concluded by a deal, Ayman Taha told Reuters in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.Intensified consultations on both sides raised speculation last week that a deal to free Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held captive in the Gaza Strip for more than three years, in return for some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners was imminent.A Hamas source close to the talks said the German mediator who has been shuttling between the sides will begin a new round of negotiations next week.Palestinian officials have said Israel and Hamas have not agreed on a final list of prisoners to be released, including the fate of about 20 Palestinians who were convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis, and which prisoners will be deported.Shalit, now 23, was seized by militants who tunnelled into Israel from the Gaza Strip in a raid in 2006.(Writing by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem, Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi; editing by Tim Pearce)