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Tensions have eased since the recent clash between the Obama administration and Israel over new expansion plans in East Jerusalem, but the controversy is far from resolved. Unless Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu finds a better way to tamp down the expansionist tendencies of his coalition members, a rocky future awaits U.S.-Israeli relations.
Final status issues
Israeli warplanes struck at least four times across Gaza on Friday, damaging a number of structures that the Israeli military said were sites for weapons manufacturing or storage.
A workshop destroyed early Friday morning in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza City.
A military spokesman said the strikes were in response to a Qassam rocket fired from Gaza on Thursday that hit the Ashkelon area on Israel’s central coast. The spokesman added that nearly 20 rockets or mortars had come from Gaza during March, and more than 40 since the beginning of the year.
Senior officials in Fatah, the mainstream faction of the PLO, have for several years taken a backseat approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- leaving negotiations to a few leaders at the top and demonstrations to the grass-roots activists on the street.
Israel on Friday threatened a widescale military operation against the Gaza Strip after a string of air strikes which injured three Palestinian children following rocket attacks from the enclave.
Israel's deputy prime minister, Silvan Shalom, warned that the military would soon launch a new offensive on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip unless the rocket fire was halted.
"If this rocket fire against Israel does not stop, it seems we will have to raise the level of our activity and step up our actions against Hamas," Shalom told public radio.
Israeli planes and helicopters mounted at least seven missile attacks on the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Friday, destroying what a military spokesman described as Palestinian munitions sites. Four air strikes blew up two caravans near the town of Khan Younis, witnesses and Hamas officials said. There were no casualties in this attack.
A fifth missile hit a cheese factory in Gaza City, setting it on fire, the witnesses and Hamas officials said. Hospital officials said two children were slightly wounded by flying debris.
The cobblestone alleyways of Jerusalem's Old City became moving forests of wooden crosses as Christian pilgrims and clergymen commemorated the day of Jesus' crucifixion, Good Friday.
Black-robed nuns filed past metal barriers erected by police as dozens of tourists in matching red baseball hats held up digital cameras. Some pilgrims carried elaborately carved crucifixes, while others had crude crosses made of two planks held together with tape.
On a dusty, wind-swept field overlooking the Mediterranean, a small team of researchers is putting the final touches on what Israel says is a major game changer in tank defense: a miniature anti-missile system that detects incoming projectiles and shoots them down before they reach the armored vehicles.
Israel on Thursday released a senior Fatah official and 11 more Palestinians on bail five days after arresting them for participating in a demonstration in the West Bank, a lawyer said.
Tens of officials from the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' s party and supporters waited Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatah central committee, after he arrived in the city of Ramallah and chanted slogans supporting the popular struggle against the construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a Xinhua photographer said.
The mood of Jewish settlers in the West Bank is becoming increasingly uncompromising, according to a new poll published by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The survey looked at the views of Israelis as the Americans try to reboot the peace process with the Palestinians. It compared opinions today with those of Israelis some five years ago immediately prior to the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
RAMALLAH - Next year, "the birth of a Palestinian state will be celebrated as a day of joy by the entire community of nations," says Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in an exclusive interview to Haaretz.
Relaying Passover greetings to the Jewish community, Fayyad hopes Israelis will also participate in the celebrations for the birth of a new state.
Thousands of Israelis gathered Thursday at the Cave of the Patriarchs in the West Bank city of Hebron to celebrate the addition of the location to Israel's list of national heritage sites, a move initiated by the Land of Israel caucus in the Knesset.
"The masses that have come here, including the 40 members of the Land of Israel caucus, are a guarantee and proof that no one will move us from the Cave of the Patriarchs, not even Hussein Obama," MK Ayoob Kara (Likud) told the crowd.
For the past 20 years, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been a victim of injustice. When he returned from the United States at the end of the 1980s, the leftist elite treated him with boundless hostility. When he headed the opposition during the Oslo years, he was perceived as an agitator and an instigator.
Former US government officials, some of whom are in contact with the current administration, have met in the past months with Hamas leaders, one of the officials who participated in the talks confirmed in a conversation with Ynet on Friday.
Palestinian security forces on Thursday conducted a series of drills in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, including a special display for school children.
The exercises were meant to boost the security forces' image in the eyes of the West Bank's younger population.
Additional drills were held in other parts of the West Bank. In Bethlehem, Italian experts supervised over an exercise that simulated the rescuing of people injured in a car accident.
The new “popular intifada” that Fatah is planning in the West Bank won’t be an armed one, Nabil Shaath, a senior Fatah official, said on Thursday.
Shaath’s clarification came a day after he and some of his colleagues in Fatah called on Palestinians to escalate the “popular resistance” in protest against the settlements, the West Bank security barrier and the decision to build new homes in east Jerusalem.
Israel has formulated a new list of potential gestures towards the Palestinians, Defense Ministry sources said Thursday, as a top Palestinian Authority minister visited Washington for talks with Obama administration officials.
The office of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) and the Defense Ministry recently compiled new proposals for easing restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank, according to Defense officials.
An Israeli journalist is in hiding in Britain, The Independent can reveal, over fears that he may face charges in the Jewish state in connection with his investigation into the killing of a Palestinian in the West Bank.
Uri Blau, a reporter at Israel's liberal newspaper, Haaretz, left town three months ago for Asia and is now in London. Haaretz is understood to be negotiating the terms of his return to Israel with prosecutors, according to an Israeli source, who declined to be identified, because of the sensitivity of the situation.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is insisting the Palestinians recognize Israel as, in his words, “the nation-state of the Jewish people,” a new and problematic demand that raises serious questions about Israel’s “Jewish character.”
The Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, began with the phrase: “His Majesty’s government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people …” This declaration introduces the concept of a Jewish national home into international relations in a most decisive manner.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/12231
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/12231
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/12231
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.americantaskforce.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/editorials/stories/DN-israel_02edi.State.Edition1.291f759.html
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/world/middleeast/03gaza.html?ref=middleeast
[8] http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2010/0401/Changing-course-Fatah-officials-call-for-Palestinian-protests-against-Israel
[9] http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jD0OqkmPxTbu0zEIivBDm5DKyIpg
[10] http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE6301TN.htm
[11] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/christians-converge-on-jerusalem-for-good-friday-507691.html
[12] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/israeli-unveils-tank-defense-system-of-the-future-507511.html
[13] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-04/02/c_13234318.htm
[14] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-04/01/c_13234290.htm
[15] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1160513.html
[16] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1160455.html
[17] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1160350.html
[18] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3871097,00.html
[19] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3870946,00.html
[20] http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=172299
[21] http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=172301
[22] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/journalist-on-the-run-from-israel-is-hiding-in-britain-1934015.html
[23] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=113348#axzz0jwS9FgcG
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