Israel seen failing to keep road map promises Mon Feb 11, 7:29 PM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Palestinian Prime Minister Salaam Fayyad on Monday accused Israel of failing to keep its commitments to freeze Jewish settlement activity and to ease checkpoints that limit Palestinian mobility on the West Bank. In a speech to Arab Americans, diplomats and journalists, Fayyad complained of a lack of progress on these issues more than two months after the U.S.-hosted conference in Annapolis, Maryland, where the two sides agreed to start negotiations with a goal of reaching a peace agreement by the end of this year.Annapolis was a major step forward, but I cannot say we are not having difficulties. In the two months following Annapolis, Israeli incursions and bombings on Palestinians and their property claimed the lives of 165 people, injured another 521, and caused untold damage to property, Fayyad said.Fayyad made the comments before he was to meet Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She is expected to visit Israel and the Palestinian territories in early March, a U.S. official said.
Most of the violence against Palestinians has occurred in the Gaza Strip, where the Hamas Islamist movement forcibly seized control from the Palestinian Authority in June.Militants in Gaza hit southern Israel daily with rockets and mortars, in what Hamas says is a response to Israeli attacks. Hundreds of attacks have killed two Israelis in the past year.In response to the rocket attacks, the Jewish state has frequently launched raids against militants in Gaza. These have killed around 700 Palestinians including civilians in the past 12 months, Gazan officials say.
SETTLEMENT FREEZE
Under the U.S.-backed road map peace plan launched in 2003, the Palestinians committed to crack down on militants launching attacks on Israel. The Jewish state, among other things, committed to freeze all settlement activity.What I see has not happened -- not happened to the extent it should or it can -- is progress on these issues, progress on the implementation of commitments under the road map, he said. I do not see sufficient commitment on the part of Israel to the ... settlement freeze.Fayyad faulted Israel for having issued a tender for more than 300 housing units around Jerusalem the week after the Annapolis conference -- a step that drew a rare rebuke of Israel from the U.S. government -- and for failing to ease the checkpoints that limit Palestinian mobility in the West Bank.I do not believe that Israel, or the process for that matter, can afford waiting until there is an absolutely perfect alignment of stars over the Middle East. such checkpoints can be removed, he said. They cannot be removed overnight ... (but) why can't that process begin?
Israel argues that the checkpoints are needed to protect itself against Palestinian suicide bombers.Israel has worked to strengthen the Palestinian Authority headed by President (Mahmoud) Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad in the hopes of ending Palestinian terror and reaching a peace agreement, said an Israeli official who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.The only thing choking the Palestinian economy is continued Palestinian terror, including by elements affiliated with the Palestinian Authority as well as continuous rocket attacks on Israel's civilian population,the official added.(Writing by Arshad Mohammed; editing by Mohammad Zargham)
Israeli calls mount to topple Hamas in Gaza by Ron Bousso
Mon Feb 11, 4:37 PM ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) - Leading Israeli politicians called on Monday for toppling Hamas in the Gaza Strip as the country again grappled with how to halt persistent rocket fire from the Islamist-run territory.
As tensions rose, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's closest ally threw cold water on hopes that Israel and the Palestinians would make peace this year, a goal they set for themselves at a US meeting in November.We have to overturn the Hamas regime, pulverise its military force and liquidate all of its leaders, without making an artificial distinction between those who wear suicide belts and those who wear diplomat suits, said Tzahi Hanegbi, head of parliament's powerful foreign affairs and defence committee.His comments reflected mounting Israeli anger over rockets fired from Gaza after an eight-year-old boy had his leg amputated after he was wounded by shrapnel on Saturday.During a visit to Germany on Monday, Olmert said Israeli forces had been authorised to act to change the situation so that the inhabitants of Sderot and other Israeli towns targeted by Palestinian rockets can live in security.
On Sunday, Olmert ruled out a widespread ground offensive in Gaza but warned that no one from Hamas was immune to Israeli strikes.We will continue to reach all the terror bodies -- those responsible for them, those who send them and those who operate them. We will not exclude anyone, he said.A spokesman for Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since it seized control in June, warned Israel against targeting its leaders.The Israeli occupation should know that it will pay an unprecedented price if it proceeds with this kind of foolishness, Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.The launching of rockets is directly tied to the Israeli escalation. The continuation of this escalation means the continuation of the rockets and the resistance to protect our people.But while Israeli officials cautioned against an expanded ground offensive in Gaza, hundreds of residents of the rocket-battered southern Israeli town of Sderot protested in Tel Aviv, bringing traffic to a standstill on a main road.Truck-mounted loudspeakers blared the rocket alarm that frequently rings out across Sderot as protesters held signs with pictures of Olmert and the caption Failure -- go home.They then continued to Jerusalem, where they held a demonstration in front of Olmert's office.
Meanwhile, Defence Minister Ehud Barak told the foreign affairs and defence committee that the army would take any necessary step to return peace and security to the residents of Sderot.The latest surge in violence came shortly after the Gaza-Egypt border was sealed on February 3, two weeks after it was breached by militants in response to a temporary Israeli freeze of all fuel and aid shipments to Gaza.Twenty-three people, all but one of them militants, have been killed by army raids while Gaza gunmen have fired more than 100 rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel, wounding a handful of people.On Monday, India, a close ally of Israel, condemned the use of force on the civilian population of Palestine and (called) upon all sides, including Israel, to exercise restraint,according to a foreign ministry statement.The violence threatens to further undermine peace talks revived at a US-hosted conference in November after a seven-year freeze and aimed at concluding a peace treaty by the end of 2008. Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon -- Olmert's closest ally -- appeared to scale down the ambitions of US President George W. Bush, who had hoped to shepherd a peace deal before he leaves office in January 2009. I believe President Bush is expecting a declaration of principles. If it will be more detailed or less detailed is less important, Ramon said. It has to be detailed enough in order to implemented in the years after 2008, two or three years after.
Hamas leaders hiding from Israeli hits By DIAA HADID, Associated Press Writer FEB 12,08
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - Hamas leaders in Gaza turned off their cell phones, avoided public appearances and were sleeping in safe houses after Israel threatened Monday to assassinate those responsible for Palestinian rocket attacks on border towns. Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned that Israel could bring down the Hamas regime and he ordered plans for a large ground invasion of Gaza. But he said troops would not move soon, all but admitting that Israel has no quick answer for the rocket barrages and leaving his threats as mostly verbal pressure on Hamas.It was the first time a senior official hinted so strongly that Israel was prepared to overthrow Hamas if the Palestinians didn't do it themselves.Also Monday Vice Premier Haim Ramon, a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, scaled back hopes for a peace treaty this year with moderate Palestinians. Olmert and Abbas promised President Bush to make efforts to complete the deal, but Ramon said the goal now is a declaration of principles.
Ramon said Hamas' days in control of Gaza were numbered.I believe the combination of (Israeli) steps against Hamas in Gaza will bring an end to the Hamas regime in Gaza, said. It might take a few months, but the Hamas regime in Gaza will not last, Ramon told reporters in Jerusalem.Barak told parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Israel's long-term plan was to weaken Hamas and under certain circumstances even taking down Hamas, a meeting participant said.I don't see the Palestinians giving Gaza back to Fatah, the party of moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Outside developments might bring this about, the participant quoted Barak as saying. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was secret.Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Barak said he ordered the military to prepare for a broad operation in Gaza, but emphasized the offensive would not take place immediately. In the meantime, he said, the army will operate in every way to halt the rocket fire on southern Israel.Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, told a Hamas Web site that Israel would not succeed in bringing down Hamas.These comments by Barak and Ramon confirm that the aim of the current aggression on Gaza isn't about security, it is political, and it aims to try destroy Hamas. But it's a failed war, and it will fail, he said.Hamas leaders weren't taking chances.Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and others haven't been seen in public for days. They were sleeping in safe houses, avoiding crowds and staying out of cars for fear Israel would strike the vehicles from the air, the officials said. They also switched off their cell phones, afraid they could be tracked.We are taking all the precautions. We take the Israeli threats seriously,said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum.Israel, which is negotiating a peace deal with Palestinians based in the West Bank, has made it clear it has no intention of implementing any accord until Hamas is removed from power in Gaza.Hamas overran the territory in June, expelling forces loyal to Abbas, who is trying to negotiate the peace deal with Israel.Israel has offered amnesty to 52 wanted militants, the Palestinian Cabinet said in a statement Monday. Israeli security officials confirmed that amnesties were offered to militants allied with Abbas, part of a program to boost Abbas' power and prestige to face the threat from Hamas.Israel carried out two attacks in Gaza at nightfall Monday, both sides said. No one was hurt. Pressure has been building on Olmert to take tougher action after an 8-year-old Israeli boy from the southern town of Sderot lost a leg in a Palestinian rocket attack on Saturday. On Monday, protesters from Sderot blocked traffic on a major Tel Aviv highway, demanding that Olmert resign. AP correspondents Laurie Copans and Amy Teibel in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Digging up Jerusalem's past is tricky By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer Sun Feb 10, 2:07 PM ET
JERUSALEM - Underneath the homes and ragged streets of the Palestinian neighborhood of Silwan lie the remnants of a glorious Jewish past: coins, seals, a water tunnel hewn by a Judean king 2,700 years ago, a road that led to a biblical Temple. But archaeology is hard-wired into the politics of modern-day Arab-Israeli strife, and new digs to unearth more of this past are cutting to the heart of the charged argument over who owns the holy city today.Israel says it's reconnecting with its ancient heritage. Palestinians contend the archaeology is a political weapon to undermine their own links to Jerusalem.Lying on a densely populated slope outside the walled Old City, the area is known to Israelis as the City of David, named for the legendary monarch who ruled a Jewish kingdom from this spot 3,000 years ago. It is the kernel from which Jerusalem grew.But Silwan is in east Jerusalem, which Israel captured from Jordan in 1967 and which Palestinians claim for the capital of a future state.Palestinians and Israelis are trying again to negotiate a peace deal, one which must include an agreement to share Jerusalem. The collision in this neighborhood — between Silwan and the City of David — encapsulates the complexities ahead.The organization funding the digs, the Elad Foundation, is associated with the religious settlement movement and is committed to preventing Israel from ever ceding the area in a peace deal. It says it has a yearly budget of close to $10 million, nearly all of it from donations, and is buying up Palestinian homes in Silwan to accommodate Jewish families. Around 50 have moved in so far, living in houses flying Israeli flags and guarded by armed security men paid for by the Israeli government.At the same time, the City of David digs have expanded through the neighborhood, carried out by respected Israeli government archaeologists with funding from Elad.
Fakhri Abu Diab, a neighborhood activist, said the Elad Foundation has made it clear that he and his neighbors are in the way.They want the land without the people,he said.None of the finds that the archaeologists highlight for the public are from the eras of Christian or Muslim rule. They are looking only for Jewish ruins, said Abu Diab. It's as if we're not here.Elad denies having any intention of driving out Silwan's Palestinians. There will always be Jews and Arabs living together here, said Doron Spielman, Elad's international director of development. Dozens of Silwan Arabs are employed by Elad, he said, and the foundation's activities include neighborhood beautification projects which improve life for Palestinian residents.Still, he said, We do not deny we have a Zionist dream — to reveal the ancient city beneath the ground and create a thriving Jewish neighborhood above the ground.More than 160 feet under Silwan on a recent afternoon, a visitor walked for half an hour in darkness and knee-deep water through Hezekiah's tunnel, the stillness disturbed only by a party of South American tourists bellowing the theme song from the Indiana Jones movies.The Old Testament books of Kings and Chronicles recount the tunnel's origins: Hezekiah, king of Judea, dug it to channel water inside the city walls ahead of a siege by Assyrian armies.Measuring 1,750 feet long — about a third of a mile — the tunnel was dug around 700 B.C. by two teams that started from each end and met in the middle, an engineering feat brought to life by their chisel marks, still visible on the walls, and recounted in an inscription they mounted on the wall.The City of David shows us the history and archaeology of Jerusalem since the day it was founded. Jerusalem's foundations are here, said archaeologist Eli Shukrun, standing near the entrance to another tunnel — a long, dank-smelling Roman-era sewer through which Jews fled Jerusalem as it was torched by Rome's legions in 70 A.D.The sewer ran beneath a road that led up to the Second Temple, the center of the Jewish faith, destroyed in the same Roman assault.Roni Reich of Haifa University, another City of David archaeologist, gives voice to the history pulsing through Jerusalem, reeling off the names of history's giants associated with the city — David, Jesus, the Roman Emperor Constantine, the Muslim ruler Saladin.
It's hard to list another city similar to this one, he said. And this hill is where it all started.The dig regularly yields important and colorful finds such as 2,500-year-old pins used to hold robes closed, and seals stamped with the names of Yehochal ben Shlemiyahu and Gemaryahu ben Shafan, two figures mentioned in the biblical book of Jeremiah. Archaeologists not connected to the City of David digs don't dispute their importance. Amihai Mazar, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said the site has already revealed important details of Jerusalem's history. He mentioned the discovery of massive Canaanite fortifications 3,700 years old and of thousands of fish bones indicating the diet favored in this landlocked city on the desert's edge. This site doesn't stop surprising us,Mazar said. The archaeologists at the site say their work has nothing to do with politics. But others charge their colleagues with complicity in Elad's agenda of moving Jews to the Arab neighborhood. The City of David dig is connected by its umbilical cord to politics, said Rafi Greenberg, an Israeli archaeologist from Tel Aviv University who dug at the site in the 1970s and 1980s, before Elad was involved. No amount of dealing with ceramics and rocks can obscure the fact that the work is being done to establish facts in the present, he said. He rejected his colleagues' claim to academic neutrality, saying: They are being compensated for their cooperation with findings and money.Reich said the people paying for the dig haven't interfered in his work. I can divide the political from the archaeological, he said. The people from Elad have never affected our archaeological judgment.
