October 4, 2010

Middle East News: World Press Roundup

Israeli soldiers are convicted of using a nine-year-old boy as a human shield. Palestinians say peace talks depend on a settlement freeze extension. The Washington Post looks at the definition of “Jewish state.” Aaron David Miller identifies five myths about Middle East peace. The LA Times looks at one of the largest Israeli settlements, and at a major West Bank highway, and says FM Lieberman should go. The Arab League will meet on Friday to discuss negotiations. Israeli forces kill a Palestinian man in Jerusalem. An Irish Nobel laureate is challenging Israel's decision to prevent her entry. Since peace talks began in 1991 settlements have continued to expand. Palestinians and Israelis are blaming each other for threats to continued negotiations. FM Lieberman is a key cabinet vote on settlements as pressure mounts on PM Netanyahu to reject American offers. Palestinians say they plan to invest $2 billion in Jericho. Ha'aretz looks at the possibility of a third intifada. Leonard Fein looks at David Grossman's new book. Uri Avnery says former PM Olmert's views on peace should be taken seriously.

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Israeli Soldiers Convicted of Using Boy as Shield

JERUSALEM — An Israeli military court convicted two soldiers on Sunday of using a 9-year-old Palestinian boy as a human shield by forcing him to check bags for explosives in Israel’s 2008-9 Gaza war.

The court said that the two soldiers, both infantry sergeants, had taken part in an operation to seize an apartment building in Tel al-Hawa, a southern suburb of Gaza City, while under attack from Hamas fighters.

Palestinians: Peace talks hinge on Israeli settlement construction

JERUSALEM - The Palestinian leadership said on Saturday that there would be no resumption of peace talks without a halt to Israeli settlement building in the West Bank, backing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in a dispute that has imperiled recently renewed negotiations.

Defining 'Jewish state': For many, term has different meanings

Nine years ago, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell delivered a speech on the Middle East in which he briefly called on Palestinians to recognize Israel as a "Jewish state." Powell doesn't recall how the phrase ended up in his speech, but David Ivry, then the Israeli ambassador to the United States, says he persuaded an aide to Powell to slip it in.

Five myths about Middle East peace

Yet again, Israelis and Palestinians are negotiating (or trying to), and yet again, a U.S. administration is in the middle of the muddle. We've seen this movie many times before, and I've watched it up close as a negotiator and adviser for both Democratic and Republican secretaries of state. Is there any reason to believe that this time around, there will be a happy ending? Mutual suspicions, domestic political constraints and substantive differences between the parties are hampering the talks.

Future of vast Jewish enclave in West Bank far from settled

Reporting from Ariel, West Bank

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Ron Nachman had waited 10 months for this day. But when Israel's West Bank construction moratorium expired a week ago and settlers celebrated with balloons and bulldozers, the mayor of the fourth-largest Jewish settlement was nowhere to be found.

Nachman, 68, was in the hospital undergoing chemotherapy for recently diagnosed bladder cancer.

In Israel, a highway that divides

Highway 443 cuts through Palestinian territory but has been closed to Palestinians since 2002, after several Israeli drivers were fatally attacked. Now it's reopening, and so are some national wounds.

Reporting from Highway 443, West Bank - Cruising down this disputed four-lane highway, with all its twists and turns, is like taking a road trip through the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You pass the walls and barriers that keep Palestinians from accessing Highway 443 as it slices through their land. Then there are the hazardous corridors where Israeli drivers have been shot and killed.

Not on the same page

One can't help but wonder: What would former Israeli Prime Ministers Ariel Sharon or Yitzhak Rabin have done if their foreign ministers had delivered jaw-dropping speeches to the U.N. General Assembly contradicting their policies on peacemaking with the Palestinians, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's did this week?

Arab Peace Initiative to hold urgent session

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- The Arab Peace Initiative will hold an urgent meeting of Arab foreign ministers on Friday in Sirtre, Libya over direct negotiations before meeting for an extraordinary Arab League summit, the deputy Arab League chief said.

Ahmad Bin Hali told reporters Saturday that President Mahmoud Abbas will address the committee and updated officials on US efforts to save talks from collapse in light of Israel's decision not to extend its settlement freeze in the West Bank.

Israeli police kill Palestinian in E. Jerusalem

JERUSALEM, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Israeli paramilitary border police killed a Palestinian on Sunday after he entered East Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank without a permit.
A police spokesman said the man, 37, was shot while trying to grab a border policeman's pistol. A Palestinian who said he witnessed the incident, which occurred before dawn, disputed the police account.

Israeli Supreme Court rebukes Irish Nobel laureate

An Irish Nobel peace laureate called Israel an "apartheid" state during a deportation hearing before the country's Supreme Court Monday, prompting a rebuke from a justice who told her to keep her "propaganda" to herself.

Israel has banned Mairead Corrigan Maguire, 66, from entering the country because of her attempt to breach the Gaza naval blockade aboard a vessel in June.

Peace talks come and go, but a settlement grows

The American president was pushing hard for a Mideast peace agreement when six Jewish families arrived on this West Bank hilltop early one morning with cribs, refrigerators, Israeli flags and flatbed trucks carrying mobile homes.

White House condemnation came quickly: "Settlements are an obstacle to peace and their continuation does not contribute to the development of a peace process which we have all been working toward."

It was April 16, 1991.

Israel, Palestinians start to blame each other as talks look shaky

The latest round of the U.S.- sponsored direct peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians were stumbling as the two sides differed on the issue of whether or not Israel should extend its 10-month freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank after it ended last week.

Analysts said that both Israel and the Palestinians are now trying to escape being blamed for delaying the peace talks, while reaffirming close relations with the Washington.

BLAME GAME STARTS

Did Obama appeal to Netanyahu to extend the settlement freeze?

With Israel's ten-month freeze on construction in Jewish settlements on the West Bank ending earlier this week, speculation is rife about what this will mean for the current round of negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians under the supervision of U.S. President Barack Obama. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to walk away from the talks if Israel does not extend the freeze.

Lieberman 'key' to cabinet vote on settlement freeze

A cabinet decision to extend the moratorium on settlement construction, which expired late last month, hinges on the support of either Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman or Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Atias, senior Likud officials told Haaretz yesterday.

The officials said that if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asks the cabinet to extend the freeze, he would need the vote of Atias, a Shas minister seen as a moderate, or of Lieberman, who heads the right-wing Yisrael Beiteinu party.

Palestinians invest $2 billion in Jericho to celebrate its 10,000th birthday

The Palestinian Authority is launching a new branding campaign for the city of Jericho, one of the oldest cities in the world. Celebrations planned for October 10 will be held in honor of the establishment of the city 10,000 years ago.

The city is also expecting to see $2 billion invested in a residential complex and hotels, and the option of an airport is also being discussed.

Years of rage

If anyone needed a reminder, it came 10 days ago, via images broadcast from the clashes in Silwan in East Jerusalem: The funeral of the Palestinian shot dead by an Israeli security guard; the police commanders' explanation that the guard was caught in a nighttime ambush and felt his life was in danger; the masked stone-throwers; the burned Israeli cars with shattered windows; a line of policemen advancing, tossing gas grenades on its way to dispersing the riot.

Pressure mounts on PM to reject US ‘benefits package’

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has begun efforts to persuade Likud cabinet members to support a deal with the US in which Israel would limit construction in Judea and Samaria for 60 days in return for American promises, Likud officials confirmed on Sunday.

While the proposal has not been finalized, Netanyahu’s associates have started making inquiries with the ministers, asking them to be flexible.

David Grossman, a Man Who Owns Israel

In his remarkable recent New Yorker profile of the Israeli writer David Grossman, George Packer observes that the heroine of Grossman’s new novel “embraces the breadth of Israel’s tragedy, a country that can take nothing for granted, not even its own existence.” (The novel, “To the End of the Land,” is newly available in English.) Yet Packer’s lengthy article, though tinged with tragedy to be sure, is colored as well by resolve, even triumph. For the Grossman he portrays is a steadfast Israeli patriot, a man who owns Israel.

Take a good look at Olmert’s fingertips

He was talking about the negotiation he had conducted personally with Mahmoud Abbas, just before he himself was forced to vacate the prime minister’s office. That was the climax of the speech he made last week at a meeting of the “Geneva Initiative”. Before analyzing it, a few words about the host and about the speaker.

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