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)
