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GAZA CITY — The women were bleary-eyed, their voices weak, their hands red and calloused. How could they be expected to cook and clean without water or electricity? What could they do in homes that were dark and hot all day? How could they cope with husbands who had not worked for years and children who were angry and aimless?
Sitting with eight other women at a stress clinic, Jamalat Wadi, 28, tried to listen to the mental health worker. But she could not contain herself. She has eight children, and her unemployed husband spends his days on sedatives.
With their warm words and smiles for the cameras in the Oval Office last week, President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took an important step toward surmounting what has lately been a serious obstacle to progress in the Middle East peace process – a frosty U.S.-Israel relationship. Like galaxies in an expanding universe, each party to the process — Americans, Israelis, Palestinians and Arabs — seems to have been moving farther away from all of the others.
A Palestinian woman was killed and five other were injured Tuesday night by Israeli artillery fire in the residential area of Juhor Addik east of Gaza City, medics said.
Chief of ambulance and emergency services Muawiya Hassanien told Ma'an that the injuries were serious and all were evacuated to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital for treatment. Ni'ma Abu Sa'id, 38, was pronounced dead upon arrival, he said.
Witnesses said Israeli forces entered the neighborhood and fired artillery shells toward civilian homes, which is close to the northern Karni crossing with Israel.
Israel's parliament revoked the privileges of Palestinian Knesset member Haneen Zoabi on Tuesday for her participation in May's Gaza-bound aid flotilla attempting to break Israel's blockade.
Following the announcement, Zoabi told Ma'an radio that she was expecting the majority of her peers to vote in favor of invalidating her diplomatic passport and revoking her right to receive funding for legal expenses.
Israeli bulldozers destroyed six buildings, including at least three homes, in contested east Jerusalem on Tuesday, resuming the demolition of Palestinian property after a halt aimed at encouraging peace talks.
Jerusalem house demolitions are a volatile issue because of conflicting Israeli and Palestinian claims to the city's eastern sector. Israel sees it as part of its capital city, while Palestinians want it for their own future capital.
A Palestinian boy was wounded by Israeli gunfire on Wednesday in northern Gaza Strip, a Palestinian emergency officer said.
The 13-year-old boy was with a group of workers collecting stones in an open area watched by Israeli forces manning security fence separating between Gaza and Israel in Beit Hanoun town in northern Gaza, said Mu'awia Hassanein, director of ambulance.
The boy was moderately injured, Hassanein added.
Many young people go to look for gravel in areas close to the Israeli borders. Israel restricts the shipment of construction materials, including gravel into Gaza.
The police refuse to carry out a court order to evict Jewish residents of the Beit Yonatan building in East Jerusalem, the city's legal advisor, Yosef Havilio, charged on Tuesday.
The order was issued two years ago, and five months ago, then-attorney general Menachem Mazuz ordered the police to execute it without delay. But so far, nothing has happened.
On Tuesday, Havilio sent an angry letter to Police Commissioner David Cohen. Two weeks ago, he wrote, the city's eviction department asked the Jerusalem police to set a date for the eviction, but the police have yet to do so.
The more insoluble a conflict, it seems, the more durable the axioms that help keep a solution at bay.
All too often, the problem is not that the axiom is unhelpful or untrue, but that over time it has come, ploughshare into sword, to be adopted by one side or the other as a weapon.
So it is, that dyed-in-the-wool anti-Palestinians have long delighted in denouncing the Palestinian movement for having failed to produce a home-grown Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King.
The Jerusalem municipality will dim lights that illuminate the walls surrounding the old city on Tuesday evening, as a gesture of solidarity with convicted spy Jonathan Pollard, who has been incarcerated in the United States for almost a quarter-century.
Pollard was arrested in 1986 as he tried to seek asylum in the Israeli Embassy in Washington. He was convicted of espionage for Israel and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Aspart of Tuesday's event, a special message calling upon U.S. President Barack Obama to release Pollard will be projected onto the darkened city walls.
Senior Hamas official Mohammad Abu-Tir will be expelled from Israel this Sunday, the Jerusalem Magistrates' Court ruled on Wednesday. It still remains unclear to which country he will be deported.
Prior to this, Abu-Tir, who lives in the Abu Tor neighborhood of Jerusalem, will be required to deposit NIS 50,000 (about $12,900) with the court. If he fails to do so, he will remain in detention by court order. In addition, he will be required to post NIS 100,000 (about $25,800) self-bail and a third-party bail of NIS 100,000.
Leslie Gelb, who held senior positions in the US Administration and was a New York Times editor, currently, serves as the president emeritus of the US Council on Foreign Relations. Over the weekend, he published a scathing op-ed against President Obama and his team on the Daily Beast website.
“Whoever advised President Obama to flay Israel publicly until this week should be fired,” he wrote. “Only advisers with no experience in dealing with Israel could have believed that Israeli leaders like Prime Minister Netanyahu would bow to public attacks.”
The IDF has told the Palestinian Authority it is willing to consider a request to permit Jewish Israelis to visit a number of West Bank cities as part of an effort to strengthen the Palestinian economy, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
On Monday, OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrahi visited Jenin as a guest of the PA’s local security commander. He spent close to four hours there, during which he toured a mall and soccer field, and met with Palestinian security chiefs and local businessmen.
All the right words were spoken. Praise was effusive. The handshake made a perfect photo op. The wives had tea.
Now that the July 6 summit between President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been duly recorded, the true test of its worth will begin. It is clear that, for both political and pragmatic reasons, Obama seriously wants to preside over a peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians. The question is whether Netanyahu and his Palestinian counterparts want it as bad, and are willing to sacrifice for this elusive but necessary goal.
Israeli bulldozers have destroyed six buildings in occupied East Jerusalem, resuming the demolition of Palestinian property after a halt aimed at encouraging peace talks, provoking Palestinian anger and US "concern".
Tuesday's demolitions were the first since a halt in October aimed at encouraging so-called peace talks, and Palestinians said they proved the Israeli government was not committed to the negotiations.
Day after day US President Barack Obama, who is still not a highly seasoned politician, discovers that talk in election campaigns is one thing but political reality is another, and that, as they say, "talk is cheap" during and prior to election campaigns, and even at Cairo University and earlier at the Turkish parliament. However, matching words with deeds is a completely different matter.
Israel’s decision in May to drop commandoes onto a flotilla of pro-Palestinian activists was brutal. The killing of nine civilians by those commandoes was a terrible consequence. Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip and occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank, not to mention the road blocks, destruction of homes, and other daily torments of the Palestinians, are also a form of institutionalized inhumanity.
The Obama-Netanyahu meeting in Washington last week was an elegant exercise in short-term realpolitik. Very short-term.
US President Barack Obama needs urgently to project an image of tranquility, friendship and cooperation in his relationship with Israeli PM Binyamin Netanyahu. This helps his administration ensure the support of a variety of pro-Israel sectors of American society as mid-term congressional elections approach. It also seeks to correct the impression that Obama has simply mismanaged his relations with Netanyahu and Israel and fumbled the peace process from the start.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/14085
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/14085
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/14085
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.acpus.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/14/world/middleeast/14gaza.html?_r=2&ref=middleeast
[7] http://thehill.com/opinion/op-ed/108275-tough-road-ahead-in-middle-east-
[8] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=299333
[9] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=299345
[10] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/israeli-bulldozers-raze-6-east-jerusalem-buildings-799340.html
[11] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-07/14/c_111952903.htm
[12] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/police-delaying-evacuation-of-settlers-from-controversial-east-jerusalem-building-1.301802
[13] http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/a-special-place-in-hell-israelis-need-a-gandhi-of-their-own-1.301496
[14] http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/jerusalem-honors-convicted-spy-pollard-on-9-000th-day-of-incarceration-1.301734
[15] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3919723,00.html
[16] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3919019,00.html
[17] http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=181364
[18] http://www.forward.com/articles/129220/
[19] http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/07/2010713232211445287.html
[20] http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=21610
[21] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=116995#axzz0teI2bIGx
[22] http://www.bitterlemons.org/issue/isr1.php
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