Hezbollah urges power-starved Lebanon to build nuclear plant
Tue Aug 24, 6:29 pm ET
BEIRUT (AFP) – Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah on Tuesday called on Lebanon to consider building a nuclear power plant in the energy-starved nation.I call on the Lebanese government to seriously consider ... building a nuclear power plant for the peaceful purpose of generating electricity, which would be more cost-efficient than the plan the government has endorsed, Nasrallah said in a speech broadcast via video link.Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility, which will provide a large part of Iran's electricity needs, cost much less than the (Lebanese) state's reform plan, Nasrallah said in a speech to mark an iftar, the evening meal that breaks the dawn-to-dusk Ramadan fast.We may even develop a nuclear plant that meets all of Lebanon's power needs and even sell power to Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, Jordan and other countries.The Lebanese government in June adopted a six million dollar (4.7 million euro) reform plan for the electricity sector, which includes infrastructure for liquefied petroleum gas and a pipeline along the coast.
Electricity has been a constant concern since the end of the 1975-1990 civil war in Lebanon, which allocates the third largest slice of its budget to power supply, after debt servicing and salaries.The country suffers daily power cuts, including in the capital where many businesses and apartment blocks use generators to tide them over during lengthy blackouts.Angry Lebanese have staged a string of protests demanding better power supply, mainly in the impoverished north and in areas near the airport.Hezbollah's main backer Iran said on Saturday it has started loading fuel into the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear power plant, in the face of stiff opposition from world powers over its controversial atomic programme.The United States has said there was no proliferation risk from the civilian plant because of Russian involvement.
Hezbollah: Iran can equip Lebanese army
Tue Aug 24, 4:40 pm ET
BEIRUT – The leader of Lebanon's Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group says authorities should formally ask Iran to help equip the country's military.Sheik Hassan Nasrallah vows his Iranian-backed group would use its friendship with Iran to secure assistance to the national army.His televised comments Tuesday were in response to a decision by a U.S. congressman this month to suspend $100 million worth of American military aid over concerns the weapons could be turned on Israel and that the militant Hezbollah group may have influence over the Lebanese army.The Lebanese government has since opened an account at the central bank to receive donated funds to buy weapons for the country's military.
Hamas urges Jordan, Egypt to boycott Mideast talks launch
Tue Aug 24, 4:18 pm ET
DAMASCUS (AFP) – Exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal urged the Egyptian and Jordanian leaders on Tuesday to boycott the resumption early next month of direct Israeli-Palestinian talks to be hosted by Washington.I appeal to President Hosni Mubarak (of Egypt) and (Jordan's) King Abdullah II not to back these negotiations which are rejected by the Palestinians, Meshaal said in Damascus where he lives in exile.Mubarak and the Jordanian monarch have been invited by the United States to join a summit in Washington on September 2 during which Israel and the Palestinians are due to resume direct peace talks after a 20-month hiatus.The results of these negotiations will be catastrophic for the interests and the security of Jordan and Egypt, and are aimed at liquidating the Palestinian cause, Meshaal said in a speech.
The political leader of the Islamist group that rules in the Gaza Strip insisted that the talks are only the fruit of an agreement between US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.He added that the Palestinian people will not feel bound by the outcome of these negotiations because the Palestinian negotiators renounced their demands that Israel freeze settlement building in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem.Hamas formally rejected Washington's call for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks to resume next month, immediately after US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last Friday announced the September 2 summit.Hamas rejects the American call for the resumption of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said at the time.This invitation is a new attempt to fool the Palestinian people after the Annapolis experience, during which we were promised a Palestinian state within a year, but many years have passed and we are still at square one.A relaunch of negotiations amid much fanfare at Annapolis in Maryland in November 2007 had produced no visible results by the time the talks collapsed when Israel launched its devastating military 22-day offensive on the Gaza Strip just over a year later.
Mideast talks will fail: Iran
Tue Aug 24, 4:20 am ET
TEHRAN (AFP) – Direct peace talks between Israel and Palestinians will fail as long as the root of the problem remained, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said on Tuesday.We don't think (peace) talks are going to yield any results, Mehmanparast told reporters at his weekly press conference.The root of the Palestinian problem should be cured. We cannot see a solution to the Palestinian issue when the Palestinians have been driven out to other countries, while occupiers and invaders have come from other countries (to Palestinian territories), Mehmanparast said.Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas have accepted a US invitation to relaunch direct peace negotiations in Washington on September 2 following a 20-month hiatus.The Palestinians insist talks should lead to the creation of an independent state, and sought an Israeli freeze on settlement activity for the talks to resume.Netanyahu has made it clear there should be no preconditions for the talks.The Islamic Republic of Iran does not recognise Israel and relations between the two have deteriorated under the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has infuriated Western countries by claiming that the Holocaust was a myth.Israel, believed to be the sole nuclear weapons holder in the Middle East, has never ruled out a military strike against Tehran to stop its controversial atomic programme.
Mideast passions quiet over NY mosque showdown By BRIAN MURPHY, Associated Press Writer – Mon Aug 23, 5:48 pm ET
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – On the streets of lower Manhattan, there's no mistaking how the passions flow: One side saying its their patriotic duty to block a planned Islamic center and the other insisting America cannot curtail freedoms as revenge for the Sept. 11 attacks.But in the Middle East — where the imam spearheading the plans is now touring on a U.S.-funded outreach mission — the proposed mosque and community center near the former World Trade Center towers is viewed in less stark tones.Much of it circles back to what the showdown says about Islam's identity in the West, theories about the roots of Islamophobia or even whether the plans in New York are worth the fight.Mideast commentators argue that many in the region view the clash as a wholly American spectacle — about political posturing and the lingering wounds of 9/11 — that distracts from genuine troubles such as Iran's growing clout or Israel's pressure on Gaza.The mosque is not an issue for Muslims and they don't care about it being built, wrote Saudi columnist Abdel Rahman Rashed in the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat newspaper.Some Muslims would even consider building a mosque there would be a permanent reminder of the acts of terrorists, who carried out their crime in the name of Islam, he added.Despite the power of the 9/11 memories, other Muslim struggles in the West have brought far greater public outcry in the Middle East — such as Switzerland's ban on new minaret construction and the growing European moves to outlaw burqas and other Islamic coverings.
There is indifference, complained Sheik Fawzi el-Zefzaf, a member of Egypt's Islamic Scholars Association. The Arab and Muslim worlds should be supporting the imam, he said, referring to Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, whose Cordoba Initiative is behind plans for the $100 million, 13-story project about two blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood.Rauf plans to travel Tuesday to Qatar — home of the influential Al-Jazeera television network — as part of a State Department-funded trip that began last week in Bahrain. Rauf has avoided any extensive comments of the New York project. Instead, he has stuck closely to less-volatile subjects such as battling extremism and Islam's compatibility with the U.S. Constitution and other Western values of freedom and open debate.In an interview with Bahrain's Al Wasat newspaper published Monday, Rauf said he was trying to reach out to Islamic scholars to urge Muslims worldwide to become more effective members of their communities and have complete nationalism — apparently meaning integration with local laws and standards.
He stressed that Muslims can remain faithful as well as actively engaged in the affairs of the countries where they live.I see that every religious community faces challenges, but the real challenge lies in keeping true to the core values of the faith and how to express these values in a specific time and place, the imam was quoted as saying.But Rauf's refusal to publicly answer questions about the New York mosque on his 15-day Mideast trip stands in stark counterpoint to the scenes Sunday near Ground Zero.Hundreds of demonstrators squared off — sometimes in nose-to-nose confrontations. No mosque, no way, some chanted. Others replied with cries: We say no to racist fear! Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan, said the rage against the project is like a metastasized anti-Semitism.Fear is back, with a vengeance, wrote James Zogby, president of the Arab American Institute in a commentary published in The National, which is supported by Abu Dhabi's government. It rules the street and we have every right to be concerned. What is needed now is are strong voices appealing to our better selves.Others in the Mideast media and Web chat rooms have chewed over whether President Barack Obama — and the Democrats by extension — will pay a political price for his stance that Muslims have the right to build the center at the site. Obama, however, has not commented on whether he thinks the plan should move forward.
Obama's election was widely welcomed across the Middle East, but his popularity has suffered over perceptions he has failed to take a harder line with Israel and expanded the war in Afghanistan. Lebanese political affairs analyst, Salim Nasser, wrote in the pan-Arab daily Al Hayat that the firestorm over the mosque plans is a political bomb that will end up wounding Obama and his party. Two professors at Al-Azhar, Sunni Islam's leading scholarly institution, stated in a widely read editorial in the Egyptian daily Al-Masry Al-Youm, that the real damage has been to the international perception of Islam since the New York battles can only end up reinforcing the memory of 9/11.From Kuwait, Egyptian publisher Ahmed el-Adly said Muslims' image in the West has been ravaged time and again after 9/11 and other jihad-inspired attacks in London, Madrid and elsewhere. He wondered if the New York mosque proposal is the right goal at the right time. No need to rock the boat, he said. Associated Press writers Sarah El Deeb in Cairo and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report. (This version CORRECTS that el-Adly's comments were made in an interview).
Gaza Mall sparks debate over Israeli blockade By BEN HUBBARD, Associated Press Writer – Mon Aug 23, 11:49 am ET
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – Palestinians in this blockaded territory can now buy $80 bottles of perfume, Turkish-made suits and Israeli yogurt at the new Gaza Mall. But with only two floors of shops connected by a broken elevator and a staircase, Gaza's first shopping center is a far cry from the sprawling luxury malls famous elsewhere in the Middle East.Nevertheless, for the war-battered residents of the impoverished coastal strip, it is a symbol of pride and normalcy. But the mall has become more than just a modest attempt at a shopper's paradise. Since its opening last month, it has become the focus of an argument over how bad things really are in Gaza.Israel has pointed to photos of the mall's toy displays, supermarket and racks of clothes as proof that Gazan suffering has been exaggerated, amid claims of a humanitarian crisis and a crippling lack of building materials because of an Egyptian-Israeli blockade of the territory.This clearly belies all the moaning about the human catastrophe in Gaza, said Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor.Occupying the first two floors of an existing Gaza office tower, the shopping center features a fried chicken restaurant — now closed during the day for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan — and a supermarket on the ground floor. The upstairs has a toy store, a perfume and accessories shop and clothing stores.
If they have the cash, shoppers can now buy Pringles chips, Israeli yogurt, Turkish-made suits and $80 bottles of perfume. But Gazans maintain that the mall doesn't change the fact that the coastal strip sufferes from rampant unemployment, poor utilities and the border closures that keep people locked in.People say there are no problems because Gaza has mayonnaise and ketchup, said Gaza dentist Samir Ziara, 59, while browsing the mall's supermarket. If you lock someone in a room but take care of all of his basic needs, is that enough to make him happy? Local media heavily reported the mall's festive opening last month. Hamas Social Affairs Minister Ahmed al-Kurd cut the ribbon. Other Hamas officials also attended, though Hamas and mall administrators denied any official connection.Many Israelis, however, took the news as proof that life in Gaza wasn't as bad as Palestinians, media outlets and the United Nations often claim.Images from the new mall make one wonder about the humanitarian crisis all these international aid ships are sailing to, wrote Jacob Shrybman on the Ynet Israeli news website.Similarly, Israel's Government Press Office sent a sarcastic e-mail to foreign correspondents in May suggesting that while they cover alleged humanitarian difficulties in Gaza they also visit a recently opened Olympic-size swimming pool and the Roots Club, a luxury restaurant. We have been told the beef stroganoff and cream of spinach soup are highly recommended, read the e-mail.Mall manager Saladin Abu Abdu brushed off the criticisms and played down the mall's importance.It has no excess or luxury, he said. The only thing special here is that we collect everything under one roof. That's what you can't find elsewhere.The economy in the impoverished territory has been in decline since Hamas militants overran the strip in 2007 and Israel and Egypt responded with a strict blockade. Most of Gaza's merchandise was then smuggled in through tunnels under the Egyptian border.Then a deadly Israeli raid on a flotilla seeking to break the blockade in May drew widespread international criticism, and Israel loosened restrictions on consumer goods — many of which can now be bought at the new mall.
Mall administrators, however, say about 80 percent of the goods on the shelves are still coming through the smuggling tunnels.The shopping center has its own generator, exempting it from the frequent power outages in most Gaza homes and is also air conditioned, although a recent visitor found the interior only slightly less stifling than the sticky, Mediterranean heat outside.Pushing a cart piled high with glassware, diapers, toilet paper, shampoo, chocolate, a food processor and a dish rack, Osama Saleh, 35, said Gaza now had more goods than he'd seen before. They are easing the blockade a bit, but the crisis is more than that, he said, adding that few Gazans had the cash to shop like him. The unemployment here is unbelievable.
About one-third of Gaza's work force is currently jobless, and 80 percent of the population depends on food aid. While consumer goods enter, Israel still bans exports and many raw materials that could allow Gaza's factories to reopen. Israel says those problems are due to the refusal of Hamas — whose charter calls for Israel's destruction — to engage with the Jewish state. It's something new and nice, said Ziara, the dentist, pushing a cart holding Israeli yogurt, a bucket of laundry detergent, a hunk of cheese and a bottle of corn oil. Ziara said his practice affords him a comfortable life but that being stuck in Gaza is emotionally taxing. He can't visit his two brothers who live in Saudi Arabia, he said, and hasn't seen his 22-year-old son since he left to study in France three years ago. It's pretty small for a mall, said Saleh, who was born in Gaza, but having lived for 18 years in Miami, Fla. had seen bigger. I'm used to the huge ones, but by Gaza standards it's nice.
Israel police: Former PM Olmert should stand trial
Mon Aug 23, 10:06 am ET
JERUSALEM – Israeli police have recommended that former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert stand trial on corruption charges for his role in a real estate deal during his time as Jerusalem mayor a decade ago.Police said on Monday that Olmert is suspected of fraud, breach of trust and taking bribes to promote an apartment project in the city.
Olmert has denied any wrongdoing but stepped down last year to battle the charges. His spokesman, Amir Dan, calls the allegations baseless.A police recommendation is standard practice in Israel and usually the first step before an indictment.Olmert is currently on trial on separate charges of accepting illicit funds from an American supporter and double-billing Jewish groups for trips abroad, also before he became prime minister.
Israeli PM aims to surprise sceptics by Steve Weizman – Sun Aug 22, 10:49 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he wanted to surprise the sceptics by reaching a settlement with the Palestinians at revived US-sponsored direct peace talks next month.I know there is a lot of doubt after the 17 years which have passed since the start of the Oslo (peace) process, Netanyahu told reporters at a weekly cabinet meeting.We are seeking to surprise the critics and the sceptics, but in order to do this we need a real partner on the Palestinian side. It is possible to succeed with a hand extended in peace, but only if someone on the other side likewise extends one.Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas have accepted a US invitation to relaunch direct peace negotiations in Washington on September 2 following a 20-month hiatus.It will be the latest in a series of attempts since secret talks in the Norwegian capital produced a 1993 Declaration of Principles on autonomy with the goal of a peace agreement which has yet to materialise.US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's announcement on Friday of yet another relaunch was welcomed by Netanyahu.I welcome the US invitation to start direct talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority without preconditions... The achievement of a peace agreement between us and the Palestinian Authority is a difficult thing, but it is possible.Israeli media commentators on Sunday did not share Netanyahu's enthusiasm.
We've seen this movie before, columnist Nahum Barnea wrote in the mass-circulation Yediot Aharonot. And we've seen it again and again and again. It's hard to believe that this time it will have a happy ending.A string of interim agreements since the 1993 Oslo accords gave the Palestinians limited autonomy pending a final-status settlement on an independent state have failed to bear fruit.Top-level talks in 2000 between then Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat at the US presidential retreat of Camp David, triggering a second intifada, or uprising.In 2003, the Quartet of the United States, Russia, the European Union and United Nations produced the roadmap blueprint for peace, aiming to resolve the conflict by 2005. The opening phase only has been implemented.In November 2007, the peace process was relaunched amid fanfare in Annapolis, near Washington, but talks ground to a halt again when Israel launched a major assault on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip in December 2008.The free distribution daily Israel Hayom, which supports Netanyahu, also had reservations.The festive dinner at the White House will be impressive, wrote Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington and Netanyahu confidant.One can only hope that the fate of the process it will be launching will not be the same as that (started) at another ceremony on the White House lawn 17 years ago, when Arafat and then Israeli premier Yitzhak Rabin shook hands.Netanyahu told reporters on Sunday that a settlement must safeguard Israel's national interests, foremostly security.Security, recognition of the national state of the Jewish people and the end of the conflict. There are the three components that will ensure us a real and lasting peace agreement, he said.
The Palestine Liberation Organisation has accepted the US invitation while the Islamist Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip have rejected the planned talks. Nevertheless chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erakat has warned that if Israel pursues its settlement activities in the occupied West Bank and annexed Arab east Jerusalem, the negotiations will founder. If settlements continue after September 26... negotiations will not continue, he said on Sunday -- in reference to a 10-month Israeli moratorium on West Bank construction announced in November.
Lebanon aid trip to Gaza delayed
Sun Aug 22, 9:17 am ET
TRIPOLI, Lebanon (AFP) – A Lebanese aid ship for Gaza was postponed on Sunday to await a green light from a third country as a transit point for the mission to the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian territory.The Mariam, a Bolivian-flagged cargo ship, was to have left from Tripoli in north Lebanon later the same day for Cyprus on the first leg of a crossing to Gaza despite an Israeli warning it could use force to keep the blockade intact.The trip has not been cancelled but delayed, one of the organisers, Samar al-Hajj, told a news conference in Tripoli, as efforts continued to secure authorisation from another state in the region to dock before heading for Gaza.Lebanon and Israel remain technically at war and have no diplomatic ties or maritime links, barring the Mariam's direct departure from a Lebanese port for Israeli-controlled waters.The Mariam, renamed in honour of the Virgin Mary, plans to carry aid to Gaza in a bid to break Israel's four-year siege of Gaza with more than 50 Lebanese and foreign women activists on board.Cyprus has denied the Mariam permission to dock or use its waters and the ship has been trying to negotiate with Greece, Yasser Kashlak, another of the organisers, told reporters.Contacts are under way with Athens to receive the ship but so far we have not received a reply," he said.
Kashlak said he would give Greece until Friday to reply after which the mission would go ahead whatever the outcome. We will then have one plan left, to fly the United Nations flag and leave for Palestine, he said.But Lebanon has said it will not allow the Mariam, which has a male crew and would also carry journalists, to head for any port with which it does not have maritime links.Israel has been putting pressure on Cyprus and Greece not to cooperate with the Mariam, according to Kashlak. I hope that Greece will not bow to the pressure like Cyprus did, he said.
Kashlak was referring to an aid flotilla caught up in a deadly Israeli naval commando raid on May 31 with which Cypriot authorities refused to cooperate.On Saturday, Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi said Lebanese authorities will not authorise the Mariam to leave for the Gaza Strip unless the legal conditions are met.
Rima Farah, the aid mission's spokeswoman, told AFP on Saturday that contacts were also under way with Turkey.Israel came under international censure over its seizure of a six-ship aid fleet bound for the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip when Israeli commandos shot dead nine Turkish activists in a clash on the lead boat.Israel has warned it could use force again to stop the new aid boat to Gaza.
Broken dreams, broken pledges in Gaza
by Steve Weizman – Sat Aug 21, 10:08 pm ET
KIBBUTZ KARMIYYA, Israel (AFP) – Dana Chetrit, her husband Alain and their two young children in August 2005 reluctantly left their home in the northern Gaza settlement of Elei Sinai, never to return.They were among 8,000 Israeli settlers evicted by their own government from 21 settlements in Gaza, in a move heralded as ending 38 years of Israeli occupation and as bringing closer an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.To Chetrit, a 36-year-old art teacher, the pullout brought broken dreams, broken promises and a broken marriage.It has not brought a golden age for the Gaza Strip's 1.5 million Palestinians either.Today the coastal territory is run by the militant Islamist movement Hamas while Israel has an iron grip on its airspace and sea lanes, maintaining a total blockade on both while tightly restricting land access.Gazans are no longer admitted to neighbouring Israel, cutting off a job market which used to employ around 20,000 of them every day, and are rarely allowed to export any produce. As a result Gaza unemployment has climbed to about 40 percent and is expected to continue rising, while the United Nations says 80 percent of the population depend on food aid.Still, Gazans say, life today is better than it was when Israeli troops were present everywhere.
My God, I hope those days never return, said Fadi Zindah, 26, who had the settlement of Dugit as his neighbour, 250 meters (yards) from his home in the northern Gaza Strip.We could not leave the house before nine in the morning or after the sunset call to prayer, he said. If we looked out of the window at night, the soldiers would fire immediately, so we had to keep them closed.Mubarak al-Sawarka, 32, who lives between what were once Dugit and Elei Sinai, says he had to show a written permit from the Israeli military to leave home in the morning and return in the evening, with passage allowed only at specific hours.Our life was a big, dangerous prison during the days of the settlements, he said.Five years since soldiers ordered settler Dana Chetrit out of her home, she is still living in temporary accommodation at the Karmiya kibbutz just across the border in Israel.Her marriage collapsed under the strain of the move.As a 22-year-old newly-wed in 1996, she had found her ideal home in the small settlement of Elei Sinai, just inside the Gaza Strip and about five kilometers (three miles) from where she now lives.It was our first home, it was the home we had been looking for, she said. We wanted to live in a communal community, it was cheap, there were other young couples there, everyone was like us.
The idyll was shattered in October 2001 when Hamas gunmen cut through the settlement's perimeter fence and shot dead a 19-year-old girl and her 20-year-old boyfriend.Another 15 Israelis were wounded before the attackers were shot dead in a gun battle with soldiers. Chetrit said the incident only strengthened her attachment to the settlement and her commitment to her neighbours. But in 2004, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza. On August 18, 2005, the Chetrits were turfed out of their home.The violence, however, followed them across the border to the small kibbutz collective farm, where she and the boys now live in a five-roomed prefabricated house.
Gaza militants regularly fire rockets across the border.
In February 2006, a Qassam rocket, produced in the workshops of the Palestinian territory, thudded into a neighbour's house, destroying it and blowing a toddler out of the playpen in which he had been sitting. The injured child recovered but the traumatised parents moved out the same day.Rockets had fallen before but this was a direct hit, Chetrit said. If you had seen the house, you would have been amazed that anybody could come out of it alive.In a separate attack, a rocket fell on the kibbutz football pitch, injuring two people, she said, adding that there were plenty of near misses as well. Of around 50 families from Elei Sinai who were initially housed at Karmiya, only about 20 remain today, some driven out by fear of more rockets. Chetrit, who has been promised land on which to build a home in the nearby village of Talme Yafe, said the bureaucratic wheels are turning very slowly. We haven't yet received a plot, she said. By the time we get building permits ... it could be another four or five years.She is not going to move again until she has a permanent home. Qassams or no Qassams, I'm not leaving again ... I can't see myself packing up again and moving house, she said.
