Israel and Palestinians seek quick understandings By Allyn Fisher-Ilan AUG 31,08
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday, hoping to cap his scandal-plagued leadership of Israel with a document of peace understandings within the next two weeks, officials said. Olmert's Kadima party votes on September 17 on his successor. Suspected of corruption, Olmert has promised to resign after the ballot, although he could stay on as caretaker prime minister for weeks or months until a new government is formed.Israeli officials said Olmert aimed to persuade Abbas to agree to a document of understandings, serving as a framework for a peace agreement, that they could take to Washington ahead of the Kadima poll.Abbas has been cool to the idea of any partial agreement despite U.S. hopes of reaching at least an outline of a peace deal before President George W. Bush leaves office in January.Neither Olmert nor Abbas made any statement at the start of their talks in Jerusalem.But Yasser Abed Rabbo, an aide to Abbas, told Reuters it was premature to speak about a document. He said "the differences on the core issues are still very wide.Tzipi Livni, Israel's foreign minister and front-runner in the Kadima race, has cautioned against papering over differences with Abbas in U.S.-brokered talks and rushing towards an accord.
Her comments were echoed by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a Middle East visit last week.Olmert spokesman Mark Regev, while acknowledging that Israel would press on with efforts to reach a historic agreement, said he was not aware of any time limit.Cabinet minister Eli Yishai of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party said Olmert, who was questioned again by police on Friday and has denied any wrongdoing in a series of corruption probes, doesn't have legal legitimacy to negotiate, and certainly not to reach any agreement.
NEW PROPOSALS
A senior Abbas aide said Rice had proposed several bridging proposals during her 25-hour visit last week and they would be discussed at the Olmert-Abbas meeting in Jerusalem.They included working out a territorial swap and basing the borders of a future Palestinian state on lines that existed before Israel captured the West Bank in a 1967 war, while taking into account several major Jewish settlement blocs.The issue of Jerusalem would be resolved as part of the borders debate but religious sites and the walled Old City where they are located would be discussed at a later stage, the aide said.On the fate of Palestinian refugees, the aide said the United States would work internationally to provide them with compensation and discussions would begin on deciding how many could return to what is now Israel.There was no immediate Israeli or U.S. comment on the aide's remarks.Israel's Haaretz newspaper said Olmert may propose international oversight for talks aimed at resolving the dispute over Jerusalem. Israel considers all of Jerusalem its capital, a claim that has not won international recognition. Palestinians want Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.(Additional reporting by Wafa Amr in Ramallah; Editing by Dominic Evans)
Olmert, Abbas meet as Olmert's departure looms By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer AUG 31,08
JERUSALEM - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who plans to resign under the taint of corruption probes, wants Palestinian peace negotiators to sign a document outlining any agreements reached with Israel before he leaves office, Olmert aides said Sunday. Palestinians, while acknowledging some progress in delineating the final borders of their future state, rejected the notion of a partial accord.The Israeli prime minister sat down Sunday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for the latest of the meetings they have held every few weeks since U.S.-sponsored negotiations resumed in November after a seven-year breakdown.Olmert has said he would step down after his Kadima Party elects a new leader in September, and the meeting Sunday could be one of the last between the two leaders. His impending resignation could throw the already faltering peace negotiations further into uncertainty.Olmert would like the sides to sign a document outlining agreement on some of the key issues before he leaves office, a so-called shelf agreement that would not be immediately implemented, officials from Olmert's office said Sunday.
A vague agreement of this kind would show what progress has been made and indicate where the negotiations would be picked up by the next Israeli leader. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the goal had not been officially made public.
Palestinians have rejected that approach. Yasser Abed Rabbo, an aide to Abbas, said before the meeting Sunday that the Palestinians will not accept any partial deal like a framework or shelf agreement.He said the talks between Olmert and Abbas would center on Israel's ongoing settlement construction, which he called the most critical issue that threatens the whole peace process now.Peace negotiators on both sides privately report progress in their efforts to outline future borders of Israel and a Palestinian state. But no agreements have been announced or signed, and the talks have not been accompanied by serious goodwill gestures that could help them succeed.With little progress visible on the ground and with the hardline Islamic Hamas still firmly in control of the Gaza Strip, the agreed-upon deadline for a final peace deal — January 2009, when President Bush leaves office — is now regarded as all but out of reach.Associated Press Writer Mohammed Daraghmeh in Ramallah, West Bank contributed to this report.
Tensions rise as Gaza doctors strike against Hamas sackings Sun Aug 31, 5:52 AM ET
GAZA CITY (AFP) - Tensions rose in the Gaza Strip as doctors struck for a second day Sunday to protest what they said was the Hamas-run government's firing of health workers loyal to the rival Fatah movement. Participation in the strike climbed to around 90 percent, a senior medical official at Gaza City's main Al-Shifa hospital said, as patients lined up in hospital waiting rooms across the impoverished territory.Emergency health workers and doctors loyal to Hamas are still working.The medical official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said Hamas-run security forces had started rounding up doctors and health workers and taking them to hospitals by force.The doctors went on strike Saturday to protest the sacking of some 50 doctors and other health workers by the Hamas-run health ministry, saying the decision was politically motivated.Hamas has downplayed the doctors strike and blamed both it and a teachers strike launched last week on Palestinian president and Fatah party leader Mahmud Abbas's government in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Palestinians have been deeply divided along factional lines since Hamas seized power in Gaza in June 2007 after routing security forces loyal to Abbas.Abbas's government, which still pays the salaries of civil servants in Gaza, including the health workers, has denied any involvement in the strike.A similar strike was held this time last year when the Hamas-run government fired veteran surgeon Jumaa al-Saqaa, a die-hard Fatah supporter, from his post as the spokesman for Al-Shifa hospital.
Gaza-Egypt crossing opens for second day Sun Aug 31, 4:44 AM ET
GAZA CITY (AFP) - The Rafah crossing between Egypt and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip was open for a second day Sunday to allow hundreds of people to pass into and out of the besieged territory, officials said. Seventeen buses carrying over 800 people, including medical patients requiring treatment abroad, students, and foreign visa holders, were lined up on the Gaza side, Mohammed Odwan, a spokesman for the crossing, told AFP.On Saturday some 1,900 people crossed into Egypt and nearly 900 crossed from Egypt into Gaza, Odwan said, adding that the crossing would close Sunday night.Israel has sealed Gaza off from all but limited humanitarian aid since the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in June 2007 after driving out forces loyal to Western-backed Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.The sanctions have remained despite a two-month-old truce between Israel and Palestinian militants that has mostly halted the firing of rockets on southern Israel and brought calm to the impoverished territory of 1.5 million people.Israel has said Rafah -- the only crossing it does not control -- should not be opened until progress is made on releasing Gilad Shalit, a 22-year-old corporal captured by Gaza militants in a deadly cross-border raid in 2006.An Israeli security official speaking on condition of anonymity said the decision to open the crossing on the eve of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan was taken by Egypt to ease tensions with Hamas.The opening of the Rafah crossing was a chance to let out steam between Hamas and Egypt, which continues its regular contacts with Hamas in Gaza and abroad (in Syria) on the issue of Gilad Shalit, the official said.Egypt has long served as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, which is blacklisted as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the United States, and the European Union.
ISRAELS INHERITED LAND IN THE FUTURE
And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.
Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.
ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.
WELL ISRAEL WILL GIVE THE RUSSIA-MUSLIM HORDES THE FIRES OF HELL INSTEAD OF THE MUSLIMS-ARABS CLAIMING THEY WILL DO IT TO ISRAEL.
Islamic Jihad threatens Israel with the fires of hell Sat Aug 30, 3:41 PM ET
KHAN YUNES, Gaza Strip (AFP) - The Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad on Saturday threatened to unleash the fires of hell on Israel, as it staged a military parade in the south of the Islamist-ruled Gaza Strip. We will unleash the fires of hell if the Zionist enemy continues its crimes, said the group's military chief Abu Hamzeh after the parade by around 800 Islamic Jihad members, an AFP journalist reported.We're getting ready for the next round, he added, saying the Zionist enemy will have neither peace nor security while it occupies our land.Abu Hamzeh said his group had hundreds of rockets ready to launch at southern Israel.Khader Habib, a political leader in the group, said Islamic Jihad will not rest until we have liberated all of Palestine, referring to the movement's aim to create a Palestinian state in Israel's place.Earlier the militants staged exercises using assault rifles rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns.The parade took place on the site of the former Jewish settlement of Gush Katif, which was evacuated when Israel withdrew settlers and forces from the Gaza Strip in August 2005.Since June 19, Islamic Jihad has generally respected an Egyptian-brokered truce between Israel and Gaza's Islamist rulers Hamas. The truce applies to Gaza only, and Islamic Jihad said it reserves the right to respond to Israeli attacks in the West Bank.
THIS ARMY WILL FAIL, THE BIBLE SAYS THE EU (EUROPEAN UNION) ARMY WILL BE THE ONLY ONE THAT SUCCEEDS IN GUARENTEEING ISRAELS SECURITY.
Egypt FM moots Arab force for Gaza Sat Aug 30, 3:36 PM ET
CAIRO (AFP) - Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said an Arab force for the Gaza Strip could help end violence in the impoverished territory, the official news agency MENA reported on Saturday. However the minister, in a magazine interview to appear on Sunday, stopped short of making a direct appeal for the deployment of such a force in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.The presence of an Arab force in the territory could help stop violence and end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said in the interview, excerpts of which were published by MENA.Abul Gheit said the idea warrants careful study and deserves to be taken seriously.Egypt is sponsoring unity talks between the Islamist Hamas and Fatah, the rival movement of secular Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.Hamas violently seized power in Gaza after routing forces loyal to Abbas in June last year and tension between the rivals bursts periodically into bouts of bloodletting.In response, Israel sealed off the tiny coastal territory to all but very limited humanitarian supplies.Israel says the sanctions aim to put pressure on Palestinian militants who fired rockets and mortar rounds at southern Israel almost daily before a truce took effect on June 19.Abul Gheit stressed that his suggestion cannot take form until Palestinian unity is restored and after an appropriate study is carried out.He stressed that Egypt and the Arab League could play a role in this matter.Hamas and Egypt temporarily opened the Rafah crossing to Gaza on Saturday for the first time in weeks, allowing some 2,000 Gazans to cross into Egypt or to return to the Gaza Strip.Rafah in southern Gaza is the territory's only border crossing that is not under Israeli control.
Israel tightens grip on West Bank's Jordan Valley By KARIN LAUB, Associated Press Writer Sat Aug 30, 2:38 PM ET
MASKIYOT, West Bank - They live just a couple of miles from each other along a country road winding through parched fields, but they are worlds apart. Avinadav Vitkon, an Israeli freelance writer, is putting down roots in this strip of West Bank land known as the Jordan Valley, helping to establish a new Jewish settlement with his government's backing. Palestinian farmer Jasser Daraghmeh is barely hanging on to the 10 acres he says have been in his family for years.Vitkon, 29, lives in a trailer, but will eventually move with his wife and four young children into one of 20 homes to be built on an adjacent hill. Daraghmeh, a 34-year-old father of six, expects the Israeli military to demolish his family's wooden shack because it was built without a permit.Their differing fortunes are the product of a struggle for control of this valley alongside the Jordan River — biblical terrain which Israelis and Palestinians both say they need for national survival.Human rights groups say Israel has systematically fostered Jewish communities at the expense of Palestinian growth in several areas of the West Bank it wants to keep, and the Jordan Valley is among the hardest hit. Israelis move freely through the valley, while Palestinians are hampered by building restrictions and roadblocks, one of which even keeps them from nearby Dead Sea beaches.The West Bank was captured by Israel from the kingdom of Jordan in the 1967 war. The Jordan Valley is ill-defined geographically, but by some measures is roughly one-fourth of the West Bank. Palestinians regard it as the breadbasket of the state they hope to achieve, and the only place big enough to absorb large numbers of refugees.Israel says it needs the Jordan Valley as a buffer against Arab attack.
Today, the valley has a distinctly Israeli feel, with Jewish settlements, Hebrew billboards, war memorials and a Jewish seminary lining a sleek highway packed with Israeli motorists.Some 6,000 Israeli settlers live in 25 communities sprinkled across the area, whose West Bank sector stretches about 60 miles north to south, ending at the Dead Sea.Dubi Tal, a settler leader, says Israelis in the region are confident enough in the future to be investing in date palms, which take years to bear fruit.Still, the fate of the settlements is on the table again in peace talks. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat says Israel appears willing to cede the settlements while keeping troops in the area, possibly to be replaced by international border monitors.They don't want to keep the Jordan Valley, but they want certain arrangements, Erekat said of his Israeli counterparts, who would not speak publicly about plans for the region.After the 1967 war, Israel adopted the view that the valley was vital to deter Arab attack from the east. But today Israeli strategists are divided.Proponents of compromise note that Israel and neighboring Jordan have been at peace for 14 years and that Iraq is not the formidable foe it was under Saddam Hussein. Besides, they say, the bigger threat comes from ballistic missiles, not the conventional ground forces that fought in 1967.Also, any peace deal would entail a land swap, and given how small Israel and the West Bank are to begin with, the valley may be too large to trade.However, some warn that giving up the strategic area and with it direct control over the West Bank's border crossings would allow weapons and militants to reach the Palestinian territories, as happened after Israel pulled out of Gaza in 2005.In all likelihood, were Israel to abandon the strategic barrier of the Jordan Valley, shoulder-fired missiles capable of taking down a 747 jumbo jet would soon appear on high ground in the West Bank that dominates (Israel's international) Ben Gurion Airport, said Dore Gold, a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.
All the same, peace is preferable, counters Shaul Arieli, an Israeli former negotiator. Strategic depth is very important for Israel, but Israel can have better security with a peace agreement than by keeping the West Bank, he said. Israel hasn't built a settlement in the valley since the 1980s, according to the Israeli settlement watchdog group Peace Now. So why build Maskiyot? Some think it has less to do with security than with internal maneuverings between the Israeli government and the powerful settler movement now that peace talks with the Palestinians have resumed. At the moment, talk of peace sounds wishful because leadership is lacking on both sides. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is largely paralyzed by his rivalry with the Islamic militant Hamas, while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, plagued by corruption scandals, says he will step down next month. Vitkon and his family headed to Maskiyot, 25 miles south of the Sea Of Galilee, after being evacuated from Gaza, along with some 8,500 other settlers, in 2005. In February, the Vitkons and eight other settler families, all but two from Gaza, moved into trailers at Maskiyot. Construction of permanent homes is to begin in the fall, said Tal, the settler leader. The government will pave an access road, and hook up the homes to water and electricity. Just two miles away, Farsiyeh has dwindled from about 100 families before 1967 to about 20 living in far-flung shacks, according to Daraghmeh, the farmer. Some 53,000 Palestinians live in the Jordan Valley, about half in the ancient city of Jericho where Palestinians run their own administration. The rest live under full Israeli control, squeezed between settlements, military zones and off-limits nature reserves. Daraghmeh says it's getting harder to water his crops. He points to a pile of black plastic pipes, remnants of his irrigation system. The Israeli military says it destroyed the pipeline running from a nearby spring to his fields because it was illegal. His legal aid lawyer, Abdallah Hamad, said farmers in the area have traditionally used the spring and are allowed by Israel to draw water but can't use pumps and pipes. Daraghmeh said he is determined to stay because, with his siblings gone in search of better jobs, he's the last of his family to farm the land. He said he is switching to crops he can grow with brackish water from nearby hot springs. The farmer unfolded a piece of paper — an order in Hebrew to demolish the shack he built two years ago. People know that even if they apply for a permit, they won't be able to obtain it, said Hamad, his lawyer. That's why they keep building ... without applying for permits.Associated Press Writer Dalia Nammari in the Jordan Valley contributed to this report.
Bush's Mideast peace timeline looking unattainable By STEVEN GUTKIN, Associated Press Writer Sat Aug 30, 3:15 AM ET
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip - From the Gaza neighborhoods where Hamas radicals now collect money for utilities and mete out justice, President Bush's goal of forging an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal within five months is looking increasingly unattainable. Every effort to drive the Islamic militia from power has failed, and the group now appears more entrenched than ever in Gaza, one of two territories Palestinians claim for their would-be state.Peace negotiators representing Israel and the West Bank's moderate Palestinian leadership privately report progress in their efforts to outline future borders. But the talks are taking place in a vacuum, and haven't been accompanied by serious goodwill gestures that could help them succeed.And Israel's corruption-tainted prime minister, who launched the talks together with the Palestinian president, has said he would step down after his party elects a new leader next month.Visiting the region earlier this week, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she believes success is still possible, God willing. But these days it's hard to find anyone else optimistic about the deal's January 2009 target date, announced with great fanfare at a U.S.-hosted Mideast peace conference nine months ago.In a sign of diminished hope, Rice's latest visit received little media attention in Israel, easily eclipsed by the story of a missing French girl. Ordinary Palestinians and Israelis are increasingly fatigued over their long conflict and the fruitless attempts to solve it.Of all the obstacles to peace, perhaps none is more formidable than Hamas' violent takeover of the Gaza Strip 14 months ago. The moderate Palestinians holding talks with Israel control only the West Bank, but say their future state must include both the West Bank and Gaza, two separate land masses located on opposite sides of Israel.Israeli officials say even if the peace talks bear fruit, the result will be a mere shelf agreement — to be taken off the shelf only after Hamas' rivals in the secular Fatah movement, led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, retake Gaza.Regional players have begun to rethink their strategies because Hamas doesn't appear to be going anywhere any time soon.
Egypt has brokered a cease-fire between Hamas and Israel. Abbas has proposed setting up a government of technocrats in Gaza and stationing peacekeepers from Arab countries there. As part of a prisoner exchange deal with the militants, Israel is expected to yield to Hamas' demands to release Palestinian prisoners who killed Israelis. Jordan has begun rebuilding its relationship with Hamas after years of discord.Gaza, home to 1.5 million mostly impoverished Palestinians who are not free to come and go, is posing sharp dilemmas to Israel and the West.As part of its two-month-old truce agreement with Hamas, Israel has begun to ease the blockade of Gaza it imposed after the militants took over, each day allowing in some 90 supply trucks carrying food, medicine, school supplies, cement, gravel and, most recently, candy and other sweets for the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, said Israeli military spokesman Peter Lerner.Israel is loosening the squeeze at a snail's pace, however, because it doesn't want to forfeit its leverage over Hamas as it attempts to secure the release of an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas-linked militants in 2006. Israel also feels that easing the blockade could further entrench the militants in power and reduce their incentive to allow Abbas' forces back into Gaza.On the other hand, maintaining or intensifying the blockade would increase the desperation of Gaza's people and likely lead to more deadly fighting with Israel — a scenario that in the past has undermined the peace efforts of Palestinian moderates.Fourteen months of punishing sanctions have accomplished little else than to amplify misery. The private sector has been decimated, with almost all factories shut down. Reduced fuel supplies and lack of spare parts have badly damaged waste collection, sewage treatment and the operation of hospitals. Some 80 percent of Gaza's people now rely on U.N. food handouts just to survive.At the same time, Hamas' grip on life in Gaza has deepened, with many blaming Israel and the West, not the Islamic radicals, for their plight.If you don't pay your gas or electricity bills in Gaza these days, Hamas cuts it off. Crime is down, but human rights violations are up. Motorists have to pay to register their vehicles, and Hamas-run courts appear to be better run than their predecessors under Fatah.A 44-year-old man named Shawki recently stood outside a court building in Gaza and said he has been trying unsuccessfully for years to obtain a just ruling on a land dispute. Today I will get my rights, he said. They (Hamas) have real courts and real police.As both Hamas' rule and its split with Fatah intensify, Egypt has begun meeting with various Palestinian factions in an effort to end the internal Palestinian divide that is seen as a major impediment to statehood. Still, the Fatah-dominated Palestine Liberation Organization has come up with a contingency plan if Fatah and Hamas fail to reconcile. According to PLO officials, the organization is considering declaring Gaza a rebel territory under the control of illegal militias — a designation that would set the stage for the West Bank government to stop facilitating the arrival of food, electricity, water, medical supplies, currency and other materials into Gaza. Hamas rule in Gaza isn't the only major obstacle to Mideast peace. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's decision to resign amid a series of corruption probes raises a very big and unanswered question of whether his replacement will also pursue peace.
There's a growing sense among Israelis that their 41-year occupation of Arab lands captured in the 1967 Mideast war is not sustainable in the long run. Olmert has been seeking to unload those territories through peace talks with Abbas — including a meeting between the two leaders scheduled for this Sunday. But he has failed to halt settlement activity and ease onerous travel restrictions, measures that could show Palestinians that they have more to gain through diplomacy than violence. Abbas also has a long way to go before fulfilling his end of the bargain. Israel believes he has not yet reined in the extremists who, if left unchecked, could overrun the West Bank as they did Gaza after Israel withdrew its settlers and troops from that territory in 2005. Steven Gutkin is the AP's bureau chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories. AP correspondent Ibrahim Barzak contributed to this report from Gaza City, Gaza Strip.
