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A macabre legal wrangle is under way over who should pay the hospital bill for an American art student who lost an eye after being struck by a tear-gas canister fired by an Israeli border police officer at a Palestinian-led protest in the West Bank.
The student, Emily Henochowicz, 21, was injured on May 31 after she joined Palestinian and foreign activists protesting that morning’s deadly raid by Israeli naval commandos on a Turkish boat trying to breach the blockade of Gaza. Israeli security forces fired tear gas to disperse the demonstration after a few Palestinian youths threw rocks.
Pilots of commercial airlines that fly into Israel are expressing increased opposition to a security program imposed by the country’s Ministry of Transport that they say could subject inbound flights to possible attack by Israeli warplanes.
Last week, an Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 flight to Tel Aviv was intercepted as it approached Israeli airspace when pilots failed to correctly submit a code confirming their identity as required under the security program. The plane was prohibited from landing until it was determined not to be a security threat.
While Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited Washington this week to talk about peace gestures toward the Palestinians, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman was planting a tree in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank -- an indication of permanence that few Palestinians would welcome.
The contrast showed the confusion U.S. officials face in figuring out how willing Israel might be to cede territory as part of a two-state solution to the conflict.
For the sixth time in a decade, farmer Ismail Mohamed Salem watched Israeli bulldozers raze his home in this disputed Bedouin village.
Hours later, he sat next to the rubble and vowed to rebuild — yet again.
"This is my land," said Salem, 70, as his grandchildren lay sleeping on straw mats next to the demolished structure, now a 20-foot pile of twisted aluminum, broken concrete and splintered wood. "Why should I leave?"
Salem's home was among 45 demolished early Tuesday as part of a long-running dispute between Arab tribes in the Negev desert and the Israeli government.
In a surprise visit to Amman on Tuesday, Israel's prime minister tried to mobilize Jordan's king in his effort to persuade the Palestinians to resume direct peace talks, though the chief Palestinian negotiator again rejected the idea.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's quick trip to neighboring Jordan came after a Palestinian document, obtained Monday by The Associated Press, noted that President Barack Obama's envoy is also pressing the Palestinians to restart direct peace negotiations with Israel.
The Ramallah-based government led by premier Salam Fayyad will be disbanded and a new Palestinian Authority cabinet will be formed next week, a high-ranking Fatah official said Tuesday.
Fatah's parliament speaker Azzam Al-Ahmad told Ma'an radio that President Abbas would consult with Palestinian factions over the new structure of the PA. Fayyad or another politician will be tasked with forming a government, he said.
Egyptian forces took control of 10 smuggling tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border area of Salah Ad-Din in Rafah on Wednesday and thwarted a cement-smuggling operation, a security source said.
Forces seized a tunnel after receiving information on its location, the official told Ma'an. The tunnels were raided and 30 bags of cement were found inside. The smugglers fled the scene before security forces arrived.
The cement, weighing approximately 1.5 tons, was confiscated. The tunnels will be demolished, the source said.
Six Palestinians were injured and four others were arrested during clashes with Israeli police in East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, witnesses said.
The witnesses said angry Palestinian young men threw stones at Israeli police and settlers who came to inspect a site where the municipality of Jerusalem is planning to build an entertainment place.
The Israeli police used rubber-coated metal bullets and tear gas to disperse the crowds, the witnesses added.
Palestinian officials said on Tuesday that the lack of Arab donations to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) this year might lead to a severe financial crisis in the upcoming months.
Palestinian Labor Minister Ahmed Majdalani told Xinhua that Arab states have only paid 20 percent of what they have pledged to give in aid to the PNA.
"Our Arab brothers are cutting off the financial supports when our European friends are honoring their pledges to financially boost the PNA," he said.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has laid down "impossible" conditions for moving to direct peace talks, Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said on Wednesday, according to French news agency AFP.
"The Palestinians have set three impossible conditions: that the negotiations start from the point they left off at the end of 2008 when Ehud Olmert was prime minister, that they be based on a total Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 lines and that the freeze of [settlement] construction continue," Shalom was quoted as saying.
The military is preparing to demolish a Jewish seminary building at the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar after residents lost an appeal against its destruction, Army Radio reported Wednesday.
Military sources said that army prosecutors had turned down an appeal against plans to raze the yeshiva, which the government has ruled illegal, in response to attacks by Yitzhar settlers on neighboring Palestinians and the extremist language used by the yeshiva's rabbi, Itzik Shapira.
Martin Indyk served as the U.S. ambassador to Israel from 1995 to 1997 and from 2000 to 2001. Today he is vice president for foreign policy at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.
Assuming Benjamin Netanyahu's government has no intention of extending the freeze on construction in the settlements in September, what impact might that have on direct talks?
The top security official in Hamas-ruled Gaza said Tuesday he is considering setting up a bigger military force, first with volunteers and eventually with conscripts as well.
Such a step could further tighten Hamas' control of Gaza and deepen the rift with the group's Western-backed rivals in the West Bank. Hamas seized Gaza by force in 2007, wresting control from forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
Currently, Hamas has a paid security force of about 18,000.
The foreign policy team of US President Barack Obama is undertaking a reassessment of its policy all over the Middle East, including Israel. No one has made or will make a public declaration about such a change, but a reassessment is nonetheless under way, and we can already detect the first products of this rethinking of policy.
UK Prime Minister David Cameron has condemned the blockade of the Gaza Strip, describing the territory as a "prison camp".
He also criticised Israel for launching an attack on a convoy transporting Turkish activists and aid to Gaza. Nine Turkish citizens died in the raid.
He was speaking to an audience of businessmen during a visit to Ankara.
The Israeli embassy in London said Gazans were prisoners of Palestinian militant Islamist group Hamas.
Israel and Egypt enforce a blockade on Gaza which restricts goods and people from coming in or out freely.
If David Cameron is feeling a tad frustrated by the lack of progress in the Middle East – breaking with usual diplomatese during a visit to Turkey todayto brand Gaza a "prison camp" – then he is not the only one. "Everything is stuck," sighs Jamal Zahalka, a Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament on a visit to London. The small Arab nationalist party he leads is formally committed to the two-state solution which would see a Palestinian state alongside Israel, but he sees no prospect of it. Those in charge are interested only in "conflict management, not resolution", he says.
Among Palestinians, the discussion that has been held in political and media circles in recent weeks about the need to move from indirect to direct talks is perceived as being about Israel trying to escape its responsibilities by trying to shift the focus from substance to form.
Later this week, the Arab League will decide whether to recommend that the PLO move from proximity to direct talks in its negotiations with the Netanyahu government. The American-led Quartet and the moderate Arab states are reportedly pressuring President Mahmoud Abbas to request precisely such a recommendation. This, then, is a good opportunity to reflect on the advantages of US-brokered proximity talks as opposed to direct talks in the Israeli-Palestinian context.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/14311
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/14311
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/14311
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.americantaskforce.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world/middleeast/28israel.html?_r=2&ref=middleeast
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/world/middleeast/28pilots.html?ref=middleeast
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/27/AR2010072704283.html
[9] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/middleeast/la-fg-israel-bedouins-20100728,0,6624860.story
[10] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-ml-israel-palestinians,0,892778.story
[11] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=303073
[12] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=303143
[13] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-07/28/c_13419304.htm
[14] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-07/28/c_13417903.htm
[15] http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-palestinians-have-set-impossible-conditions-for-direct-peace-talks-1.304580?localLinksEnabled=false
[16] http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/report-idf-prepares-to-demolish-yeshiva-at-west-bank-settlement-yitzhar-1.304519
[17] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/features/martin-indyk-i-think-the-settlement-issue-will-be-resolved-1.304477
[18] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3925974,00.html
[19] http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=182821
[20] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10778110
[21] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jul/27/israeli-right-vision-jews-arabs-share
[22] http://www.bitterlemons.org/issue/pal1.php
[23] http://www.bitterlemons.org/issue/isr1.php
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