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[5]
Ziad Asali, president & founder, American Task Force on Palestine. Interview with Middle East Bulletin.
Can you tell us a little bit about the newly released report, “Palestine: Moving Forward, Priority Interventions for 2010”? What are the core principles behind it? How to does it relate to the original August cabinet document?
Before Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad stepped on stage here Tuesday before a gathering of Israeli intellectuals and policymakers, he had already been likened to Israel's founder, David Ben-Gurion, vilified as the leader of a movement bent on undermining the peace process and dismissed as a technocrat without popular support.
But his presence here -- at a packed conference in the heart of Israel, in a town named after the founder of modern Zionism -- perhaps said as much as any comment about the role he has played as the Palestinians' chief go-between with Israel and the West.
In the wake of a Hamas claim on Friday that Israeli agents assassinated one of its operatives in Dubai last week, the Islamist movement is vowing to take revenge against the Jewish state for the militant’s death – even if it means going abroad. Hamas officials from Damascus, Syria, and the Gaza Strip are threatening to match what they say is Israel's expansion of the conflict to foreign countries.
In a bedroom overlooking Jabaliya refugee camp's narrow, potholed streets, an array of new cosmetics and a hairbrush are lined up neatly in anticipation of a daughter's early release from prison.
Next to a portrait of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a framed photo of Wafa al-Biss looks out into the room she has not seen since being arrested at the Israeli border with 20 pounds of explosives sewn into her underwear in 2005. She was 21 years old.
In the photo, Wafa is dressed in bluejeans, heavy makeup, and a lace head scarf. She is unsmiling, almost defiant.
Addressing an audience alongside Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Salam Fayyad said rolling back should start by ending army incursions in the West Bank, where the Palestinians aim to establish their state, along with Gaza.
"Unfortunately those incursions continue," Fayyad told the Herzliya Conference, which annually attracts prominent figures in the Israeli political and diplomatic establishment.
The Islamist group Hamas on Wednesday formally rejected allegations it had committed war crimes during last year's fighting in Gaza, charges made in a United Nations report.
Hamas officials said the group set out in a 52-page response handed to a U.N. official in Gaza that the killing of three Israeli civilians in rocket attacks during Israel's Dec. 27, 2008-Jan. 18, 2009 offensive was an accident and military installations had been targeted.
A senior Fatah leader is visiting Gaza for the first time since the territory was seized by Fatah's Islamic militant Hamas rivals in 2007.
Nabil Shaath, a Gaza native, said Wednesday that his three-day trip is meant to improve the atmosphere between the two factions. Repeated attempts at reconciliation have failed.
Shaath handed his passport to Hamas border guards for registration, in a symbolic recognition of Hamas authority. Shaath says the trip has the blessing of Fatah's leader, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Police on Wednesday said they had destroyed the third explosive device washed ashore in Israel this week.
Bomb disposal experts carried out a controlled explosion at Palmachim beach, some 10 kilometers south of Tel Aviv, police said.
Two barrels packed with explosive charges were picked up on Israeli beaches at Ashkelon and Ashdod on Monday. Two more are believed to have exploded on the shores of the Gaza Strip.
Dubai warned Israeli intelligence as well as Hamas of working "behind its back" on Wednesday, in the wake of the assassination of Hamas strongman Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last month.
Dubai police chief Dahi Halfan warned international intelligence agencies from working "behind our back," saying anyone who did so "should be wary of his own back.
Halfan added that that threat was also applicable "to any intelligence organization around the world, whether Mossad, Hamas or any other agency."
As the grandson of anarchists, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for fanatics. Expressions of extremism, and passionately reasoned, exquisitely twisted world views make me feel, how shall I put this, at home.
So it was with a certain relish that I approached the cover story of a recent issue of Commentary, "The Deadly Price of Pursuing Peace," written as it was by a talented colleague and friend, Evelyn Gordon.
The IDF risked the lives of Palestinian civilians in order to minimize the risk posed to its soldiers during Operation Cast Lead, the Independent quoted "a high-ranking" IDF officer as saying in a report published Wednesday.
The officer, who reportedly served as a commander during the war in Gaza, acknowledged that following the heavy casualties in the Second Lebanon War, the IDF went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimize military casualties.
In a rare speech to an Israeli audience, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Tuesday that Israel must show the Palestinians that it is beginning to roll back the occupation, and that the way to do that is primarily by stopping both settlement construction and IDF incursions into Palestinian areas.
The Israeli leadership has recently turned its attention – even if contemptuously – to the possible threat of a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. Regardless of whether such a move will take place or not, the real issue is not in the declaration itself but in the possibility that it points to a deeper cultural change among the Palestinians – a change which was also noted with the participation of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad Tuesday night in the 2010 Herzliya Conference and his subsequent speech.
Ehud Barak, Israel's defence minister, last night delivered an unusually blunt warning to his country that a failure to make peace with the Palestinians would leave either a state with no Jewish majority or an "apartheid" regime.
His stark language and the South African analogy might have been unthinkable for a senior Israeli figure only a few years ago and is a rare admission of the gravity of the deadlocked peace process.
A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year's Gaza war, The Independent can reveal.
If this commander's quote represents the rules of engagement as they were applied during Operation Cast Lead, then it is a smoking gun because it proves the case that Israel was charged with. It proves the main revelations in the Breaking the Silence report. When I read the testimonies in that report – some of which were difficult to read – what was common to them was a change to rules of engagement so that either there were no rules, or they allowed soldiers to shoot anything that moved in the vicinity.
Israel destroyed two Gaza smuggling tunnels in response to Hamas' attempt to attack Israeli targets in the Mediterranean Sea.
Israel's Air Force on Tuesday night struck the tunnels used by Hamas in the southern Gaza Strip, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
On Wednesday, a third explosives-laden barrel released by Palestinian terrorists washed up on the beach at Palmachim, in central Israel.
Well-informed official French sources have revealed to Asharq Al-Awsat that US Envoy to the Middle East, George Mitchell, has called for French and European officials to pressure Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to return to the negotiating table with the Israelis.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/10972
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/10972
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/10972
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.americantaskforce.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://middleeastprogress.org/2010/02/paving-the-way-for-palestinian-statehood/
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/02/AR2010020202854.html
[8] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0202/Hamas-threatens-to-take-fight-against-Israel-beyond-Gaza
[9] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0202/Israel-mulls-freeing-Hamas-underwear-bomber/(page)/2
[10] http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6115ZB20100202
[11] http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE6121FG.htm
[12] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/fatah-leader-visits-gaza-in-goodwill-trip-210662.html
[13] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1147276.html
[14] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1147270.html
[15] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1147257.html
[16] http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=167669
[17] http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=167626
[18] http://www.jpost.com/Home/Article.aspx?id=167599
[19] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/03/barak-apartheid-palestine-peace
[20] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israeli-commander-we-rewrote-the-rules-of-war-for-gaza-1887627.html
[21] http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/michael-sfard-laws-of-conflict-do-not-allow-for-killing-civilians-in-this-way-1887631.html
[22] http://jta.org/news/article/2010/02/03/1010452/israel-strikes-gaza-tunnels-in-response-to-barrel-bombs
[23] http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=1&id=19737
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