PERES IN FRANCE

Israel's Peres welcomed to France, warned on settlements MAR 10,08

PARIS (AFP) - Israeli President Shimon Peres began a state visit on Monday seeking warmer ties with France, despite his host Nicolas Sarkozy calling for a halt to Jewish settlements in the occupied territories. As a friend, I say to you that the Israel's security depends on stopping the settlements, Sarkozy said, according to the French president's spokesman David Martinon.France joined the United States and other countries Monday in warning the Israelis after they unveiled plans for a new settlement in annexed east Jerusalem that they could scupper the faltering Israeli-Palestinian peace process.Sarkozy also assured his Israeli guest that the security of Israel is not in question and France will always be at Israel's side, Martinon said.Peres is the first foreign leader to be treated to a state visit by Sarkozy, who is seen as friendlier towards Israel than his predecessor Jacques Chirac and has moved toward closer relations with the United States, Israel's strongest ally.The Israeli president, who will spend five days in France, called France a true friend of the Jewish people, since the Holocaust, and an honest and true friend of the state of Israel since its creation.After talks between the two leaders, Martinon said Sarkozy told Peres he was convinced that the best guarantee for Israel's security is the creation of a modern Palestinian state, democratic and viable before the end of 2008.The project for 400 homes in the mainly Arab eastern part of Jerusalem followed on the heels of plans to build hundreds of new housing units in a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank.The Palestinians have said Israel's settlement activity would shatter efforts to relaunch the peace process that has been largely stagnant since it was revived at a US-hosted conference in late November.On another major issue, Iran, Peres told reporters after his talks with Sarkozy that the two leaders hold the same view that Tehran represents the greatest danger to world security.

He like us agrees that Iran is the greatest danger threatening us today, Peres said, calling the Islamic republic a center for terrorism and suspected of pursuing a nuclear programme to build an atomic bomb, a charge that Tehran denies.The Israeli leader's schedule on Monday included a stop at a Paris synagogue to attend a ceremony for the eight students killed in an attack last week by a Palestinian gunman on a Jewish religious school in west Jerusalem.
Peres was also honoured Monday night at a state dinner at the Elysee palace.The Israeli leader on Tuesday will meet with Prime Minister Francois Fillon and parliament leaders before travelling to Lyon on Wednesday to visit a centre that traces the history of the French Resistance and Jewish deportations during World War II.
On Thursday, he will help inaugurate the Paris book fair, which runs to March 19 and will highlight Hebrew literature on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of Israel's creation.Several Muslim countries and writers' associations have said they would boycott the fair after organisers announced that 39 Israeli writers were being invited to mark the occasion.

Bush: Cheney to press for Mideast peace By BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer Mon Mar 10, 4:36 PM ET

WASHINGTON - President Bush, dispatching Vice President Dick Cheney to the Middle East, said the goal is to get Israelis and Palestinians to hold firm to the promises they've made toward peace. Bush said Monday in the Oval Office that Cheney would reassure people that the United States is committed to a vision of peace in the Middle East.As Cheney tries to help hold together fragile negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, Bush says he's still optimistic that a peace deal can happen before he leaves office.Cheney departs Sunday for a trip to Oman, Saudi Arabia, Israel, the West Bank and Turkey. Oil is also on his agenda, as the White House — coping with high energy prices that have socked American consumers — continues to push for greater oil production in the Mideast.The vice president's visit comes on the heels of a brief troubleshooting mission to the Mideast by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. She was able to pressure the moderate Palestinian leadership to resume peace talks with Israel, which broke off after a deadly Israeli military incursion into Gaza.

I'm optimistic that we'll be able to achieve a vision that shows a way forward, and I'm optimistic leaders will step forward and do the hard things necessary so people don't have to live in deprivation and fear, Bush said, addressing reporters after a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.In his final year in office, Bush has turned a Mideast peace deal into a signature foreign policy goal. But violence in the Gaza Strip and southern Israel has hampered the peace talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Cheney will meet with both men.Palestinians have also condemned Israeli plans to build more housing in disputed east Jerusalem — an area the Palestinians hope to make the capital of a future independent state.

Bush made clear he expects Cheney to prod the leaders to stick to their obligations under the U.S.-backed road map, which calls on the Palestinians to disarm militants and for Israel to halt settlement construction. Those obligations are clear, Bush said.The United States blames recent violence on Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip last July and is deemed by the U.S. to be a terrorist organization.Without naming Hamas, Bush said: There's one force in the Middle East — and some suspect that they're funded from outside governments and outside movements, all aiming to destabilize democracy, all aiming to prevent the vision where people can live side-by-side in peace, all wanting to destroy Israel.Bush said the key question is whether enough will exists to reject those extremist forces.Our mission is exactly along those lines, and I'm optimistic, Bush said.On Monday, Olmert instructed his army to halt airstrikes and raids into the Gaza Strip in response to a serious drop in rocket fire from the territory, allowing Egypt to proceed in its role as a mediator. Israeli defense officials and the Hamas rulers of Gaza said there was no formal truce in place.

Is a third intifada brewing? By Ilene R. Prusher
Mon Mar 10, 4:00 AM ET

Bethlehem, West Bank - Fadi al-Amour and his friends – high school seniors – spent more time last week on the street than in class. Every day, they marched on Rachel's Tomb, guarded by Israeli soldiers, and, along with hundreds of other young Palestinians, pelted the nearest symbol of Israeli power with rocks and Molotov cocktails. We were implementing what our leaders in the prisons tell us we should be doing. Even Marwan Barghouthi has warned that this is where we're going: the third intifada, says Mr. Amour, mentioning the Fatah figure jailed by Israel in 2002 for his role in the last intifada, which lasted from 2000 to 2004.From Gaza rocket strikes and West Bank riots to a deadly shooting inside Jerusalem late last week, many Palestinians are saying – or perhaps hoping – that these incidents of violence will spark a new, much broader conflict with Israel.Those who are encouraging a further escalation say it's overdue. Others, including many who remember the misery of past intifadas, worry that this will just drag the Palestinian cause down a dead-end street.

There might be an escalation in the coming weeks and months, and an escalation has already been going on in Gaza in recent weeks and months, says Ali Jarbawi, a political scientist at Birzeit University, near Ramallah.But, he says, there might be a danger in rushing to label the events of the last few weeks as the start of another intifada. People are feeling a sense of despair. They're frustrated by the [new Israeli-Palestinian negotiations] leading nowhere, and [by] the internal situation between Hamas and Fatah, he says. But I don't see that translating into a concrete, continuous event, which I think is something that defines an intifada. Let's wait and see.But among many average Palestinians, the feelings that were present during the first intifada (1987-93) and the second one are resurfacing again, and quickly.

On Sunday, at the mourning tent at the family home of Alaa Abu Dhaim, who killed eight Israelis late last week at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva in Jerusalem before being shot and killed by a security guard, there were many mixed feelings expressed about where Palestinians are headed, as the Islamic militants of Hamas continue to battle Israel on one front and secular Fatah leaders are sitting down at the negotiating table with their Israeli counterparts on another.Mr. Abu Dhaim, a man in his mid-20s who was due to be married soon, was from the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Jebel Mukaber, meaning he had an Israeli-issued residency card and was free to travel and work in Israel.For many across the tight-knit community of Jebel Mukaber, there was an acknowledgment that Abu Dhaim's act might be a sign of returning to the days of intifada. There was also much reluctance to see that happen.We hope this isn't the start of something bigger, says Mahmoud Abu Dhaim, an uncle of the young man being celebrated as a shahid, or martyr. For years they've been talking about peace but there's no progress. So now we're going back instead of going forward.Another uncle, Tawfiq, says his nephew was extremely normal and showed no sign of political affiliations or training.Conflicting reports have linked the gunman to Hamas and then to Hizbullah; the green and yellow flags of both movements began springing up in Jebel Mukaber after the news broke. Family members said that Israeli police here told them if the family didn't take down all of the flags, as well as the shahid posters that already plastered the walls of the neighborhood, they wouldn't be allowed to have a mourning tent at all.

The celebratory flyers read: The Islamic Movement in Jebel Mukabar congratulates its people for the martyr Alaa Abu Dhaim, who answered the call to his God in a heroic operation in Dir Yassin. Dir Yassin was the name of an Arab village that existed near the site of the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva until 1948, the year of the war that led to Israel's establishment.Just as the use of the name Dir Yassin conjures a sense of decades-old revenge so close to Israel's 60th anniversary this May, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Abu Dhaim's choice of target was itself symbolic.The terrorist ... did not choose it by coincidence in his pursuit of victims, Mr. Olmert said at Sunday's cabinet meeting. Mercaz Harav is a very special place in Jerusalem and for the Zionist movement. It is the flagship of religious Zionism. It is the place from which have come forth the best soldiers for many generations, he said, adding that it has educated and nurtured tradition and legacy, as part of Israel's resilience.At Abu Dhaim's home, from which there is a clear view of a West Bank separation barrier cutting through the landscape, relatives and friends said the motivation for the attack might have come from many places, but most palpably, from the recent violence in the Gaza Strip.Responding to Palestinian missile attacks on its southern communities, Israel launched a short but intensive military campaign on Gaza the week before last, in which approximately 126 Palestinians died in the space of several days. Two Israeli soldiers died in the operation; several citizens have been injured by Katyusha and Qassam rockets launched by Palestinian militants. According to the Associated Press, Egyptian officials have been meeting with Hamas representatives in an effort to forge some kind of cease-fire between Hamas and Israel.Up the street from Abu Dhaim's house in East Jerusalem, a group of men who would usually be at work on Israeli construction sites sat drinking coffee together for the day because they deemed the atmosphere too tense to go to work in the Jewish parts of town, due to the yeshiva shooting. Most had lived through one if not two intifadas. Now in their late 20s and early 30s most were less than enthusiastic about the start of a new intifada and hoped it wouldn't come to be. At the same time, they said, their lives had not improved and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict seemed to be growing worse. No amount of violence is ever going to bring peace. But what we see on television of what Israel is doing in Gaza is much more disturbing than seeing an army jeep on my corner, says Mahmoud Abbas, no relation to the president. For Amour and his friends, they welcome another intifada. About last week's shooting attack in Jerusalem, they said: Inshallah [God-willing], there should be more operations like this.Amour, the most vocal of his clique, explains it this way. We welcomed it completely. And if the Israelis hit Gaza again, things will start up again here.

Pope denounces endless spiral of destruction and death in Israel Sun Mar 9, 9:41 AM ET

VATICAN CITY (AFP) - Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday denounced the endless spiral of death and destruction in Israel, and urged Israelis and Palestinian authorities to continue to negotiate to build a peaceful future.In recent days violence and horror has again bloodied the Holy Land, feeding an endless spiral of destruction and death, he told thousands of pilgrims in St. Peter's square for his weekly angelus.His call came after a Palestinian gunman shot dead eight students, mostly teenagers, at a Jewish theological school this week in the deadliest such attack in Jerusalem since February 2004.I encourage Israel and Palestinian authorities in their intention to continue, through negotiation, to build a peaceful and just future for their people, he added.

Benedict called on all in the name of God to leave the tortuous ways of hate and vengeance to take, in a responsible way, the paths of dialogue and confidence.The pontiff indicated that he wanted the same for Iraq.He renewed his appeal for the release of the Chaldean Catholic archbishop of Iraq's northern city of Mosul, Faraj-Farraj Rahhu, who was kidnapped on February 29, and said his thoughts were with the large number of Iraqis who continue to suffer blind, absurd violence.