March 1, 2011

Middle East News: World Press Roundup

The National praises PM Fayyad's state-building program. PM Netanyahu warns that settlement building cannot continue unrestrained. H.D.S. Greenway says peace is in sight. Questions are raised by the PLO dissolving of its negotiations unit. A Jerusalem conference is closed by Israel. The PA says an Israeli investigation into an attack in 2002 makes excuses for murder. Israel may recognize many outposts. Israel is concerned about the emerging new Arab order. Pres. Abbas points to an international consensus against settlement building. Hamas accuses Israel of escalating tensions. Settlers attack Palestinian villages. Bradley Burston asks what if Israeli forces treated settlers as they do Palestinians. Alon Idan says Netanyahu does not recognize his weakened position. A new poll shows favorable American attitudes towards Israel. Dennis Ross tells the J Street conference that time is running out for peace. DM Barak says Israeli citizens cannot take the law into their own hands. Gershon Baskin says Israelis can learn from J Street. The Swedish FM spends a night in Nablus. Hamas demands UN schools in Gaza stop teaching about the Holocaust. Fayyad says he's offered Hamas a pragmatic agreement, and seeks public input through social media.

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Salaam Fayyad offers 'pragmatic' olive branch to Hamas

If nothing else, Salaam Fayyad is reasonable, a trait that befits a man who is a trained economist and has spent more of his life in academia than politics.

Which is why after more than four years of bitter infighting between Hamas and Fatah, the largest faction of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority last month invited the Gaza Strip's Islamist rulers to join a national unity government.

Netanyahu Warns on Settlements

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu berated leaders of his conservative-leaning Likud Party on Monday after they pressed him for more settlement construction, telling them that Israel was under international pressure and operating in a complex new reality in the Middle East.

“People don’t understand the reality they are living in,” Mr. Netanyahu was quoted as telling an assembly of Likud ministers and legislators, as well as some leaders of Jewish settler councils from the West Bank, who then passed on the remarks to the Israeli news media.

In Mideast, peace map is in sight

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM has it that with the Arab world in turmoil, this is a time for Israel to batten down the hatches, and put any talk of peace with the Palestinians on ice for awhile. But there are Israeli voices, both in and out of government, who say this is exactly the time, with the old Arab order changing, to lance the Palestinian boil and go for a two-state solution.

Future Cloudy As Palestinians Dissolve Peace Team

As popular uprisings continue to spread across the Middle East, Palestinian leaders have made a number of moves aimed at appeasing would-be protesters in the West Bank.

Among those is the dismantling of their entire peacemaking apparatus, which has become deeply unpopular after years of failed peace talks. Palestinian officials say it is now unclear who would negotiate for them if the peace process resumes.

Israel shuts down Jerusalem event

Israeli police and intelligence agents forcibly shut down two events in East Jerusalem on Tuesday morning, citing "security reasons" for the clampdown.

Armed police and border guards prevented guests from entering a conference on "Defending Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem" at the Capitol Hotel on Salah Addin Street in Jerusalem, organizers said.

Police handed organizers a warrant signed by minister of internal security Yitzhaq Ahronovitch addressed to the hotel administration. The warrant warned that the meeting was banned for "security reasons."

PA: Israel assassination probe 'making excuses for murder'

The Palestinian Authority on Monday slammed an Israeli investigation which found the killing of 13 civilians in Gaza during an assassination was not a disciplinary offense.

In July 2002, Israeli forces dropped a one-ton bomb on the Gaza City home of Hamas leader Salah Shehadeh, killing 13 civilians including his wife, daughter and eight other children.

Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert appointed a committee of military generals to probe the killings after a rights group petitioned the Israeli Supreme Court demanding an investigation.

Report: Israel to legalize tens of outposts

Israel is moving to "immediately dismantle all illegal settlement outposts built on privately-owned Palestinian land," Israeli media reported Tuesday citing army officials.

The Israeli daily Haaretz reported that the decision would legalize other outposts, which were determined to be on "state lands."

The announcement came hours after Israeli troops took down two sheds in an outpost near Havat Gilad, an illegal settlement in the northern West Bank near Nablus.

News Analysis: Israel worried with New Arab system

Israeli leadership is watching the latest developments in the Arab world with great concern and anxiety, and it's not clear whether the emerging Arab regimes and a new Arab world will enhance the Israeli security or not, according to analysts.

Israeli officials are worried about the loss of those leaders who created the environment for the historic reconciliation with the Israeli state, such as former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, said analysts.

Abbas: International consensus against settlement building

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday said there is an international consensus against construction of settlement, when 14 countries in the Security Council voted against it.

Abbas told reporters as he met with Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt in Ramallah that the 14 countries representing the international community in the Security Council condemned settlements and called for halting it.

Hamas accuses Israel of escalation as fragile ceasefire on edge of collapse

The deposed government of the Islamic Hamas movement, which rules the Gaza Strip, on Monday accused Israel of escalating violence against the Palestinians in the coastal enclave as an undeclared fragile ceasefire between military factions and Israel is about to collapse.

Taher al-Nouno, spokesman for the Hamas government, told Xinhua that the current Israeli military escalation on the Gaza Strip "is part of the Zionist enemy's nature, where it expresses the internal crisis that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu is passing through and the failure of the peace process."

Settlers attack West Bank villages following outpost demolitions

Israeli settlers damaged houses and cars in a Palestinian village in the West Bank on Tuesday, police and witnesses said, in an apparent show of anger over the Israeli demolition of homes in an unauthorized settler outpost.

Police say settlers are suspected of smashing windows of seven Palestinian cars and throwing a fire bomb at a Palestinian house.

What if Israeli forces treated West Bank settlers like Arabs?

Around here, you ignore omens only at your peril.

The settlement movement knows how the omens have been running for it today. All black. All unexpected.

Imagine a sunny day in winter, on which someone brilliant, compassionate, articulate, truly peace-minded, and actually popular, announces candidacy for the head of - of all things - Israel's Labor Party.

Unheard of. Absurd. But true. The name is Shelly Yachimovich.

Netanyahu has failed to recognize his weakened status

Last week Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He phoned to say he was disappointed that Germany's had voted for a UN Security Council condemning the settlements. Merkel reportedly responded: "How dare you. You are the one who disappointed us. You haven't made a single step to advance peace." In response to Merkel's aggressive remarks, Netanyahu promised to deliver a new speech about the peace process within two or three weeks.

Poll: Americans still favorable towards Israel

Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu 's relationship may be shaky, the peace process is deadlocked – but Americans still have our backs. The latest Gallup Poll reveals that the majority of Americans, about 63%, continued to rate Israel favorably in 2011.

Nearly 17% of Americans favor the Palestinians and 20% are impartial – supporting both sides equally or indifferently.

Americans have not been affected by European and global de-legitimization efforts, not even by the apartheid week organized by Israel's adversaries in campuses around the world.

Dennis Ross: Time running out for peace; status quo unsustainable

The Obama Administration's "ongoing strategic discussions with the Israelis have taken on a character, a range of issues, intensity, and a frequency that is simply unprecedented," Dennis Ross told J Street's annual conference on Monday.

The White House adviser on Middle East peace issues said that one of the Obama Administration's principles was “an unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”

Barak: We can't let citizens take law into their own hands

In reaction to clashes that took place a day earlier in the Gilad Farm outpost in Samaria, Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday said that "We can not let citizens take the law into their hands." "These disturbances damage the rule of law in the country," Barak said during a tour of the Givati Brigade's training in the Negev.

Encountering Peace: Learning from J Street

I am writing from Washington DC, where I’m attending the second annual conference of J Street, together with more than 2,000 American Jews from all walks of life, four MKs from Kadima and one from Labor.

There are a number of other Israelis representing various peace and human-rights organizations.

Swedish FM, in rare move, to spend night in Nablus

Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt arrived in Israel Monday for a four day visit that includes a couple out of the ordinary agenda items: sleeping overnight in Nablus, and touring Israel's northern border.

Bildt, considered among the most critical foreign ministers of Israeli policy inside the EU, has not been in the country for some two years, having canceled a visit here in the Fall of 2009 because of Israeli anger over his refusal to condemn an article in the Aftonbladet newspaper accusing Israel of killing Palestinians and harvesting their organs.

Hamas fights UN's 'poisonous' Holocaust lessons in Gazan schools

Hamas has vowed to stop the United Nations teaching children in Gaza about the Holocaust, saying it will poison their minds.

The history of the Holocaust is planned to be included as part of a human rights curriculum in schools run by the UN Relief and Works Agency, which is responsible for the welfare of Palestinian refugees. More than 200,000 children attend UNRWA schools in Gaza.

Hamas, the Islamist organisation that runs Gaza, has said it will do all it can to stop the teaching of Holocaust studies.

Principles at the foundation of a Palestinian state

The West Bank has had an important anchor as a wave of protests and leaks has washed over the region: the Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad's principled and pragmatic approach to state-building.

Memos leaked from the Palestinian Authority's negotiations with the Israelis forced top-ranking officials in the West Bank to resign. Other leaders were caught flat-footed as protests reached cities in the West Bank. So much has changed in recent months - not, however, Mr Fayyad's plans for Palestinian statehood, nor their merits.

Guest post: Salam Fayyad's Facebook outreach

With Internet-organized protest movements sweeping the Arab world, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is trying his hand at social networking by posting a request on his Facebook page aimed at young Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, asking for suggestions as to who should fill the seats of the new cabinet that he must form in less than six weeks.

"We appreciate the role of the youth and their participation in making this decision, they play a major role in our march toward freedom," said Fayyad.

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