Latest developments in Arab world's unrest
By The Associated Press – Tue Apr 12, 4:23 pm ET
LIBYA-Sporadic fighting and shelling took place in the two main areas of conflict in Libya, Misrata and Ajdabiya, while French and British foreign ministers questioned whether NATO was being aggressive enough in its campaign of airstrikes to protect Libyan civilians around the embattled towns.
EGYPT-Former President Hosni Mubarak is admitted to a Sharm el-Sheikh hospital with heart problems the same day he was to be interrogated over allegations of corruption and attacks on the protesters whose 18-day uprising brought about his downfall. Military police also successfully cleared a four-day-old protest out of Cairo's Tahrir Square with minimal difficulty.
SYRIA-Pro-government gunmen attacked two villages in the northeast in a move to crush a popular uprising against President Bashar Assad as the country's leading pro-democracy group urged the Arab League to impose sanctions on the regime. The White House joined a growing chorus of international condemnation, saying the escalating repression by the Syrian government is outrageous.
YEMEN-Tens of thousands of Yemenis, including uniformed officers, demonstrated against President Ali Abdullah Saleh and condemned a mediation proposal by neighboring Gulf countries that called for the long-serving leader to step down, but guaranteed his immunity from prosecution.
BAHRAIN-The daughter of a prominent rights activists beaten up and arrested by police has gone on hunger strike calling for his release and that of her husband and other relatives taken by authorities as part of a widespread crackdown on protests by Shiites calling for more political freedoms.
Forum seeks more US action in Muslim world conflicts
by Karin Zeitvogel – Tue Apr 12, 3:36 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The head of a global Islamic group Tuesday called for the United States to be more active in solving conflicts in the Muslim world, in particular the long-running dispute between Israelis and Palestinians.In a speech to open the US-Islamic World Forum, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), said the Middle East peace process should be the cornerstone of US-Muslim world relations and called on Washington to take a more active role in seeking solutions to conflict-ridden situations in the Muslim world.The Muslim world has seen improvements in relations with the United States since President Barack Obama took office, said Ihsanoglu, but tensions between the two sides will persist if the Israel-Palestinian conflict is not resolved.There are certain concerns -- I should say certain grievances -- concerning the Palestinian issue, Ihsanoglu told reporters.This should be addressed in a concrete way. Without addressing these issues properly, we will still find certain problems between the Muslim world and the United States,he said.
US Senator John Kerry called at the three-day forum for anyone here who can intervene and play a role to do so, to help revive the peace talks between Palestinians and Israelis, which broke down last year.Since then, the Palestinians, with backing from Britain, France and Germany, have been pushing for the Middle East diplomatic Quartet, comprised of the three European nations and the United States, to lay down clear parameters for any new negotiations.Those parameters would include a reference to the borders that existed before the 1967 Six Day War, and the establishment of Jerusalem as the capital of both states. The Palestinians also want the Quartet to issue a condemnation of continuing Israeli settlement expansion.On Tuesday, as the US-Islamic World forum opened, diplomats at the United Nations said Washington had blocked a bid to break the deadlock in the Middle East peace process by not agreeing to a meeting in Berlin where Britain, France and Germany wanted to outline a settlement to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.We all know that if one wants to advance peace in the Middle East you don't put the Palestinian question on the back burner, you put it on the front burner. There has to be a peace treaty between Israel and the Palestinians, the Palestinian envoy to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told AFP.But despite the moribund state of the peace talks, Kerry said he was optimistic that a resolution on the long-running conflict could be finalized before the UN General Assembly in September.I hope the United States can do things to make a difference and I hope Israel will do things to make a difference, Kerry said at the forum, also urging Palestinian President Mahmud Abbas to be flexible in his demands.US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to address the issue in a speech she will give to the forum later Tuesday.Officials from more than 30 Muslim majority nations, including Jordan, Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan and Afghanistan are in Washington for the annual meeting, which aims to build greater understanding between the United States and Muslim countries.In its eighth year, the forum is being held at a time of unprecedented change in the Arab world, with uprisings against autocratic leaders across the Middle East and North Africa.Ihsanoglu urged the United States and other Western countries to allow change to come from within in the uprisings, which he called revolutions from the people themselves.These are nations that were kept out of the context of history for so many years and now are joining the rest of the world in the democratic process, he said.The whole world should help them without forcing a solution on them, he added.
Gulf Arabs want Arab summit cancelled: Bahraini minister
– Tue Apr 12, 2:24 pm ET
DUBAI (Reuters) – Gulf Arab states have asked the Arab League to cancel a summit scheduled to be held in Baghdad in May, the Bahraini foreign minister said on Tuesday, after Iraq criticized Bahrain's crackdown on Shi'ite protesters.GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council), in a letter to the Arab League secretary general, asks for cancellation of planned Arab summit in Iraq, Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa said in a Twitter posting.He gave no reason for the move.The Arab summit was originally scheduled to be held in Iraq in March, but was delayed until May due to the unrest that has gripped several countries in the Middle East.A heavy-handed security crackdown by Bahrain's Sunni rulers on Sh'ite protesters has sparked criticism from Iraq, Iran and Shi'ite groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, adding to tensions between Sunni Gulf countries and their Shi'ite-led neighbors in the world's top oil-exporting region.Bahrain is a close ally of Saudi Arabia that fears the regional influence of Shi'ite powers Iran and Iraq and diplomats say the small island state in the past has launched diplomatic initiatives on behalf of Riyadh.(Reporting by Andrew Hammond; Writing by Frederik Richter; Editing by Alison Williams)
Spanish royal meets Palestinian president
– Tue Apr 12, 1:29 pm ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Spanish Crown Prince Felipe restated his nation's support for an independent Palestinian state during talks on Tuesday with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, a local news agency said.Prince Felipe, accompanied by his wife, Princess Letizia, met Abbas at his presidential headquarters in Ramallah as part of a tour of Israel and the West Bank.The prince reiterated Spain's position in support of the peace process and the right of the Palestinian people to establish an independent state alongside Israel, said a statement carried by official Palestinian news agency WAFA.For his part, Abbas said the Palestinian Authority remained committed to the peace process, based on legitimate international resolutions and international law, the statement said.Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been on hold since late last year after an Israeli moratorium on settlement building expired. The Palestinians have refused to hold talks while Israel builds on land they want for their future state.Abbas said during Tuesday's meeting that any peace process required clear terms of reference, and stressed that settlement activity in all its forms must stop for negotiations to begin.During the meeting, which was attended by Spain's foreign minister, Abbas offered thanks for the great support he said Spain's king, government and people had offered the Palestinians.
Palestinian Authority largely ready to govern state: UN
– Tue Apr 12, 1:24 pm ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – The Palestinian Authority is now largely ready to govern a state, the office of the United Nations special coordinator for the Middle East peace process said in a report on Tuesday.In six areas where the UN is most engaged, governmental functions are now sufficient for a functioning government of a state, said the report, which will be submitted to Palestinian donor nations meeting in Brussels on Wednesday.But the report warned that it would be difficult for the Palestinian Authority to make any additional progress while the Israeli occupation continued and peace talks remained stalled.The key constraints to the existence and successful functioning of the institutions of a potential state of Palestine arise primarily from the persistence of the occupation and the unresolved issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the report said.The institutional achievements of the Palestinian state-building agenda are approaching their limits within the political and physical space currently available.The Palestinian Authority (PA) has set itself a September 2011 deadline to be ready for statehood, with the hope of pressuring Israel and the international community to recognise a Palestinian state.
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians have been on hold since late 2010 over the issue of Jewish settlement in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.But the Palestinians have said they will seek United Nations recognition for a unilateral declaration of statehood if the talks do not resume, and have touted their state-building efforts as evidence of their readiness for statehood.In a statement accompanying the report, UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process Robert Serry, praised Palestinian Authority president Mahmud Abbas and prime minister Salam Fayyad.This is a decisive period, he said, warning that progress could be retarded or even unravelled without more Israeli cooperation and a return to negotiations.No-one should underestimate what is at stake now. What we urgently need are further steps on the ground that can enable a broadening of this progress, he said.I believe Israel needs to roll back measures of occupation to match the PA?s achievements. I also stress the urgent need for Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations on a two-state solution to resume.The report also stressed that the continuing divide between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and the Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip deprives the PA of the ability to extend its institutional authority.The progress that has been achieved by the PA must be more meaningfully connected to all areas of de jure PA responsibility and to all Palestinian citizens.
Hamas and Abbas's Fatah party, which dominates the Palestinian Authority, are bitter rivals whose antagonism boiled over in 2007, a year after the Islamist group won legislative elections.After fierce street battles, Hamas routed Fatah fighters from Gaza and seized control of the coastal strip, where it remains in charge.It has not participated in the state-building programme championed by Fayyad, and successive rounds of reconciliation talks between Hamas and Fatah have been unsuccessful.
Hamas must prove captured Israeli soldier alive
– Tue Apr 12, 8:52 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Red Cross officials have met with Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Syria and asked him to furnish proof that an Israeli soldier captured by militants is alive, according to Israel's Channel 10 TV.Red Cross officials in Jerusalem told AFP on Tuesday they had no comment on their reported efforts for Gilad Shalit, seized in 2006 by Gaza-based militants with ties to Hamas, who is believed still held somewhere in the coastal strip.Channel 10 said that the meeting came after Shalit's family threatened a sit-in outside the organisation's Tel Aviv branch unless it stopped visiting Hamas prisoners in Israel while Hamas denied the Red Cross access to Shalit.Germany's Spiegel news magazine reported on Monday that German efforts to negotiate the release of Shalit... appear to have failed.
Also on Monday, Yaakov Peri, a former head of Israel's Shin Bet security agency, told a news conference that Israel should be prepared to release Palestinian militants who had killed Israelis if that was what was needed to secure Shalit's release.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later responded in a statement that past experience had shown that dozens of Israelis were killed in attacks committed by terrorists released in previous prisoner exchanges.Hamas, which took control of the Gaza Strip a year after Shalit's capture, has demanded hundreds of prisoners in exchange for his release, including scores of top militants responsible for deadly attacks.But talks over a prisoner swap broke down in December 2009 and have not resumed since, angering Shalit's family which wants the Israeli government to agree a deal to secure his release.The last sign of life received from Shalit's captors was in October 2009 when a video recording showed him looking gaunt, but apparently in good health.
Diplomats: Quartet meeting on Mideast delayed
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press – Tue Apr 12, 2:01 am ET
UNITED NATIONS – The United States blocked an initiative by Britain, France and Germany to restart stalled Israeli-Palestinian talks by proposing the outlines of a final settlement to their long conflict, U.N. diplomats and a U.S. official said Monday.The three European countries wanted U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the European Union to propose a settlement text at a meeting of the Quartet of Mideast mediators — the U.S., U.N., EU and Russia — tentatively scheduled to take place Friday in Berlin on the sidelines of a NATO ministerial meeting, the diplomats said.But a U.S. official said the Obama administration didn't think a Quartet meeting would produce anything useful in terms of getting the talks restarted.It wasn't the right time, the official said.A European diplomat expressed regret that the meeting was postponed, saying it was time for a strong signal from the Quartet to try to get talks moving since U.S. efforts have failed.Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said the secretary-general will be traveling in the coming days but there's no announcement of a Quartet meeting to make at present.The Israelis and Palestinians have agreed to President Barack Obama's target date of September 2011 for an agreement, but negotiations collapsed weeks after they restarted last September following the expiry of an Israeli settlement construction slowdown. The Palestinians insist they will not resume peace talks until Israel halts settlement building in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, lands Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war, which the Palestinians want for their future state.
Israel maintains that the Palestinians should not be setting conditions for talks and note that in the past, they have negotiated while settlement construction continued.The U.S. veto on Feb. 18 of a Security Council resolution that would have condemned illegal Israeli settlements and demanded an immediate halt to all settlement building spurred Britain, France and Germany, who supported the measure, to issue a joint statement expressing serious concern about the stalemate in the Middle East peace process.Since the U.S. efforts have been unsuccessful, diplomats said, the three European powers decided to try a new approach in pressing for a substantial declaration from the Quartet that would outline a peace solution, including borders, in hopes of breaking the deadlock.But having the EU and U.N. take the lead would sideline the United States, Israel's closest ally which has tried unsuccessfully for months to get face-to-face negotiations going, as well as Russia, an ally of the Palestinians.Britain, France and Germany had been pressing key capitals — including Washington and Jerusalem — to support a new EU and U.N. initiative in the Quartet.The U.S. decision to delay the meeting is certain to irritate the three key U.S. allies.In place of the Quartet meeting, foreign ministers of Britain, Germany, Italy, France and the United States will hold a meeting of the so-called Quint, a five-nation panel that deals with Kosovo and broader Balkans issues, the U.S. official said.Associated Press Writer Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.
Preparations for new Gaza flotilla on track: organisers
– Mon Apr 11, 1:34 pm ET
ATHENS (AFP) – A flotilla of ships is preparing to sail to Gaza to mark the first anniversary on May 31 of a deadly Israeli raid against a similar convoy, organisers said Monday.Preparations are on track, adequate conditions for the departure of the ships will be met by the end of May, Vaggelis Pissias, an organiser of the Ship to Gaza mission, told a news conference in Athens.Dubbed Freedom Flotilla II, the mission will bring together participants from 50 countries in a bid to break Israel's blockade of Gaza.Israeli troops raided a previous flotilla last May 31 in a controversial operation that left nine Turkish activists dead and drew international condemnation.For security reasons, organisers said they would not disclose the number of ships taking part this year or their point of departure, although they have previously said 15 ships could participate, compared with six last year.
Organisers said in a statement that the Israeli government was threatening to attack the new flotilla and they called on their respective governments, the international community and the United Nations to not bend in the face of what they called Israeli terrorism.This year's flotilla will carry construction materials and pharmaceutical products among other goods, Greek activist Dimitris Plionis said.Speaking to European representatives earlier this month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called plans for a new flotilla a provocation and said it was in the common interest of Israel and Europe for the flotilla to be stopped. Netanyahu has also called on UN chief Ban Ki-moon to help stop the flotilla.Israel imposed its blockade on Gaza in June 2006 and Israeli restrictions on imports and exports were tightened a year later when Hamas seized power in the territory of 1.5 million people, ousting loyalists of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.In the face of international condemnation of its raid on the flotilla, Israel eased some of its restrictions on goods entering and leaving Gaza.But it maintains tight restrictions on items it says could be used by Hamas, including some building materials, and continues to control Gaza's airspace and sea access.
Palestinians to tell West they ready for statehood
By Mohammed Assadi – Mon Apr 11, 9:07 am ET
RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) – The Palestinians are ready for statehood, according to a report to be presented to major aid donor countries in Brussels this week by Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.He will present facts and figures to show how his Palestinian Authority has used hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign assistance over the past two years to create justice, education, energy, health, water, security and housing services.I believe that our governing institutions have now reached a high state of readiness to assume all the responsibilities that will come with full sovereignty on the entire Palestinian occupied territory, Fayyad says in the 63-page document.But he underlines that unless Israel's military occupation comes to an end, these accomplishments can only achieve so much.Without a change to the status quo, the positive impact of internal reforms to build a strong and healthy economy will be limited in both scope and sustainability, the report says.
Palestinian leaders aim to ask the United Nations General Assembly in September for recognition of statehood on all of the territory Israel occupied in 1967, including Gaza -- over which Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas have no control.Israel has warned that such unilateral moves are not a substitute for a Middle East peace treaty that would establish a Palestinian state by mutual consent.Palestinians seek to go to an international forum and avoid peace negotiations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told EU diplomats on Monday.It pushes peace further back.
INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT
But the Palestinian leadership is plowing ahead with clear signs of international encouragement. The number of countries that recognize Palestine as a state has risen this year to 110, more than half the membership of the United Nations.The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund last week praised the performance of the PA, saying in separate reports that it was well-positioned to run an independent nation.
Fayyad said his government had connected all Palestinian residential areas, including remote ones, to the electricity grid, and paved and fixed 2,250 km (1,400 miles) of streets.While they make up two parts of the same future state in theory, Gaza and the West Bank have never been more divided, politically and geographically. Abbas and Fayyad want peace with Israel. Hamas, which controls Gaza, rejects any deal that accepts the Jewish state.The Israeli occupation, says the report, remains the most significant challenge to economic development in Palestine.Restrictions on movement and access, as well as lack of control over borders and natural resources continue to be real barriers to the growth of the economy.Palestinians administer their own affairs in islands of land in a West Bank landscape peppered with Jewish settlements. They have no access to some 60 percent of West Bank land.Lack of access to natural resources for example, including land and water, severely constrains any sustainable progress through out the economy, the report says.The document will be presented on April 13 to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, a 12-member committee of the European Union and United States which serves as the principal policy-level coordination mechanism for assistance to the Palestinians.(Editing by Douglas Hamilton and Andrew Heavens)
Israel should topple Hamas: Lieberman
– Mon Apr 11, 3:06 am ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel should not settle for a truce with Hamas in Gaza, and should instead seek to topple the Islamist rulers of the coastal strip, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said on Monday.The goal that we have settled on, of seeking a return to calm, is a grave error because it will allow Hamas to reinforce along the lines of Hezbollah, Lieberman told public radio, referring to the Lebanese militia with which Israel fought a 2006 war.The objective must be to force Hamas out of power, said Lieberman, who heads the ultra-nationalist Yisrael Beitenu party.To return to calm accepts a war of attrition in which Hamas can determine when there is a lull and when the front is heating up, he said.A tense truce appeared to be taking hold between Hamas and Israel early Monday, after both sides stepped back from the brink on Sunday.
The calm came after several days of confrontation between Israel and the Islamist group, which have raised tensions to their highest levels since Israel's 2008-2009 war on Gaza.The fighting, which has left at least 18 Palestinians dead, came after an anti-tank missile fired from Gaza hit an Israeli school bus on Thursday, wounding two people, one of them a teenager who was critically injured.Hamas said the attack was in response to an earlier Israeli assassination of three senior members of the Islamist group.Israel responded to the bus attack with air strikes across the Gaza Strip, as Palestinian militant groups fired a barrage of rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel.But both Israeli and Hamas officials expressed interest in a truce by Sunday, and the rate of rocket fire dropped off significantly as a period of calm took hold.Lieberman's opposition to the truce is at odds with the support expressed for a ceasefire by other Israeli officials including Defence Minister Ehud Barak, but he ruled out a coalition breakup over the issue.I don't want a government crisis, or to quit the coalition. We can influence much more from the inside than from the opposition, he said.Others within Lieberman's Yisrael Beitenu party, including National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau, expressed support for a new campaign of assassinations targeting Hamas members.
New Israeli system alters war against Gaza rockets
By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press – Sun Apr 10, 5:51 pm ET
JERUSALEM – A new Israeli-made missile defense system has gotten off to an encouraging start, shooting down at least eight rockets in a test run that could potentially change the long-running war between Israel and Palestinian rocket squads in Gaza.Israeli officials say the $200 million Iron Dome has performed beyond all expectations, raising hopes the military has finally found a way to rob Hamas militants of their most potent weapon: the short-range rockets that have made life miserable for large swaths of the population over the past decade.The repeated successes have raised spirits in Israel's embattled southern region, prompted a congratulatory visit to an Iron Dome battery on Sunday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and fueled calls, perhaps unrealistic, that the system be deployed nationwide. Experts say Iron Dome is the first system in the world capable of knocking down rudimentary rockets favored by militants around the globe.Yet officials and analysts warn the excitement may be premature, noting the system is in its infancy and that armed groups in Gaza possess plenty of other formidable weapons.
We will not be able to protect every house, every installation, every site in the state of Israel, Netanyahu acknowledged, even as he hailed the Iron Dome as a most impressive technological achievement.Iron Dome is a key element of what Israel refers to as its multi-layer missile defense shield, a series of systems meant to defend the country from everything from medium-range missiles that could be launched from Iran, hundreds of miles away, down to the short-range projectiles possessed by enemies on its northern and southern borders. These primitive rockets, which fly just a few miles and are in the air for just seconds, have eluded Israel's high-tech military for years.With the system in use for just a few days, it is far too early to declare it an unabashed success. Two decades ago, Israel used the American-made Patriot missiles to shoot down incoming Scuds fired by Iraq during the 1991 Gulf War. Israel and the U.S. touted the Patriot as a great success, only to admit in later years that it had often missed its targets.
But so far, the results have been encouraging.Its computer system detects the launch of a rocket almost instantly and calculates its trajectory. If it is headed toward an open area, its operator can let it land. But if it is traveling toward a population center or other sensitive target, the operator can fire an interceptor missile from a box-like launcher pointed at the sky.The interceptor homes in on the approaching projectile and destroys it in a shower of shrapnel. Israel has deployed two batteries, protecting the major southern cities of Ashkelon and Beersheba.Ilan Bitton, a former commander of Israel's air defenses, said the system had successfully passed its first baptism of fire.Those rockets, had they not been intercepted over the weekend and had they landed, would have caused serious damage, certainly to property and perhaps to human life, he said.Officials caution that no system can hermetically seal Israel's skies. Iron Dome is expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars for every launch, a sharp contrast to the Palestinian rockets that can cost as little as several hundred dollars to make.The two operational batteries can defend only a small area of the south, and the technology is ineffective against shorter-range projectiles like mortar shells. Since suffering heavy losses in an war against Israel two years ago, Hamas has replenished is arsenal with other weapons, such as guided anti-tank missiles like the one that struck an Israeli school bus last week, wounding two people.Isaac Ben-Israel, a former Israeli air force general and lawmaker, said Iron Dome would be effective if combined with other defense systems and offensive military operations against militants.
It's the beginning of a significant change, he said.The road is long, but it's real. He said it was the first time that any country had developed a defense against short-range rockets like the ones fired from Gaza.A new chapter has opened in the history of conflict between offense and defense in border wars, (reducing) the feeling of helpless vulnerability that civilians and soldiers have felt, wrote the Haaretz daily in an editorial.Israel's media brimmed with calls for wider deployment of the batteries. Israel would need a total of 20 batteries to provide adequate defense for its borders with Gaza and Lebanon, said Meir Elran, a scholar at the Institute of National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. Such a deployment would require financial assistance from the U.S., he said.But even in its currently limited form, officially designated a trial period, the system is important, he said.The Iron Dome is already raising great hopes among the public. It was featured on the front pages of all major Israeli newspapers Sunday, a reflection of how much years of rocket fire have shaped the national psyche.All of Israel is now believed to be in the rocket range of Hamas militants in Gaza, or the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon. Removing that threat, or even limiting it, is key to easing fears in this jittery country.
Gaza militants began to fire rockets and mortar shells into Israel in 2001. Since then, thousands of projectiles have hit southern Israel, killing 18 people and wounding hundreds.While the number of casualties is far below those sustained on the Palestinian side, the rockets and missiles have caused widespread panic and trauma, in part because they can strike civilian population centers at virtually any time. In 2006, Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon bombarded northern Israel with some 4,000 rockets during a month-long war, punctuating the helplessness of Israel's technologically advanced military.Early the next year, Israel commissioned the development of Iron Dome, choosing an Israeli contractor, Rafael, over the American giant Lockheed Martin. Rafael officials have said foreign armies are now inquiring about purchasing the technology.Iron Dome went from the drawing board to combat readiness within less than four years, a remarkably short period of time for a weapons system designed from scratch, according to military experts.One of the programmers involved in the project was Eyal Ron, a manager at mPrest, a small company based in a high-tech park in a suburb of Tel Aviv. The company was put in charge of programming the core of Iron Dome's operating system.There was no system like this, anywhere in the world, in terms of capabilities, speed, accuracy. We felt like a start-up,he said.
Arab League calls for no-fly zone over Gaza
– Sun Apr 10, 2:57 pm ET
CAIRO (Reuters) – The Arab League called on the United Nations on Sunday to impose a no-fly zone over Gaza and lift an Israeli siege of the territory after a flare-up of violence that is stoking fears of a wider escalation.The death toll since Israel launched retaliation for an attack on a school bus that critically wounded a teenager on Thursday has climbed to 19 Palestinian militants and civilians.
Condemning what it called Israel's brutal aggression in Gaza, a gathering of the Arab League's permanent delegates chaired by Oman called on the U.N. to convene its Security Council.The meeting would consider the Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip on an urgent basis to stop its siege and impose a no-fly rule on the Israeli military to protect civilians in the Gaza Strip, the Arab League said in a statement.
An Israeli government official in Jerusalem who declined to be named dismissed the call and said the Arab League should first ensure Gaza militants halt attacks on Israel.If the Arab League wants a no-fly zone in Gaza is it also talking about ground-to-ground missiles that are fired from Gaza on Israeli cities? About missiles fired at school buses? About mortar shells fired at farms? the official said.If the Arab League wants Israeli military aircraft to stop flying over the Gaza Strip then it should first ensure there is no reason for them to be there to protect Israeli citizens.The Cairo-based regional body also said Sudan should press a complaint against Israel at the Security Council over what Sudan has called a missile attack that killed two people.Israel has declined to comment on Khartoum's accusation it launched the strike near Port Sudan airport on Tuesday night.The council of Arab League calls on the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the apparatus of African Union ... to present a complaint against Israel in front of the Security Council and the U.N.'s general assembly, the League said.(Reporting by Ayman Samir and Sarah Mikhail, additional reporting by Ori Lewis in Jerusalem; Editing by Sophie Hares)
Israel warns travellers of Passover attacks
– Sun Apr 10, 12:45 pm ET
JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israel on Sunday urged its citizens and foreign Jews to exercise special caution against possible militant attack when travelling over the Passover holiday as tensions in the Gaza Strip rise.The government routinely issues warnings ahead of Jewish holidays, especially the week-long Passover festival that begins next week, but Sunday's advisory warned of an increased threat because of the spiral in cross-border fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza.Following events in the Gaza Strip, terrorist elements intend to carry out attacks on Israeli and Jewish individuals abroad ahead of, and during, the Passover holiday in the Mediterranean basin and in the far east, the national anti-terror bureau said in a communique issued by the prime minister's office.On April 2, Israeli aircraft struck a car in the Gaza Strip, killing three militant members of the Islamic Hamas movement, in a strike it said was aimed at foiling the kidnapping of Israelis holidaying in Egypt during Passover.On Thursday, an anti-tank missile fired from Gaza hit an Israeli school bus wounding two people including a minor, who was critically injured. Hamas said the act was in revenge for the hits on its men.A string of retaliatory Israeli air raids has since killed at least 18 Palestinians in Gaza, with militants in the coastal strip firing dozens of rockets and mortar rounds into Israel.
