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President Obama is nominating a top foreign policy aide, Daniel B. Shapiro, as ambassador to Israel — tapping for the sensitive diplomatic post a Hebrew-speaking Middle East specialist who has been in charge of outreach to the American Jewish community.
If he wins Senate confirmation, Shapiro, whose nomination was announced Wednesday, will replace James Cunningham, a George W. Bush appointee who will be rotating out of the job later this year.
When the game was finally over, after extra time and penalty kicks, the Palestinian squad had lost to Thailand. But the Palestinian national team's first official soccer match on home turf Wednesday gave thousands of raucous fans who braved a cold and rain-lashed night a taste of international recognition.
A qualifying game for the 2012 London Olympics, the match was more than a sporting event. It was also freighted with symbolism for both organizers and ordinary people who packed the stadium in Al-Ram, a West Bank suburb of Jerusalem that is cut in two by Israel's separation barrier.
The PLO representative office in Copenhagen has been designated as a mission with full diplomatic status, giving officials powers equal to that of other countries.
Denmark is the latest in a string of European nations to recognize Palestinian diplomats with full rank, making the announcement Wednesday after British officials did the same in London, Dublin, Paris and Stockholm.
The official Palestinian Authority news agency WAFA quoted President Mahmoud Abbas, who learned of the change at a news conference in the Danish capital, as saying it "supports us politically and diplomatically."
An Israeli court issued a decision last week allowing Israeli settlers to take part of a Palestinian family home in the Rad Al-Amoud neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem.
The court decision came after an 11-year battle between the Hamdella family and American-Israeli billionaire Irving Moskowitz, who purchased the property in 1990 from a Jewish group claiming to own the land.
The Palestinian Authority-appointed Central Elections Commission announced Wednesday that voter registration had opened, in the latest step ahead of July 9 municipal elections.
Registration will continue for one week only, a statement from the CEC said, and would include teams sent out to high schools to ensure participation of voters who turned 17 since the last voter registration was conducted in 2010.
Hamas has presented what it described as a new Palestinian unity initiative, a move widely seen as an attempt to pre-empt any public pressure for change in the territory it runs while revolt flares in the Arab world.
The proposal, raised with several factions at a meeting late on Wednesday, called for a unified leadership to handle Palestinian affairs until the Palestine Liberation Organisation is restructured to include Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticised Jewish settlers who assault Palestinians or Israeli security personnel in the occupied West Bank, calling them a "marginal minority".
Alluding to violent protests and attacks perpetrated since the attempted removal of an unauthorised settlement last week, Netanyahu told a parliamentary panel: "Israel shall not tolerate or accept any attacks on Arab residents as a means of protest against the government."
Netanyahu said he was referring to "a small and marginal minority, a small extremist group of among our brothers, the settlers.
The Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip reshuffled his Cabinet on Thursday, naming the first foreign minister for the isolated militant-run Palestinian territory.
Hamas said Ismail Haniyeh's move was unrelated to the unrest rocking the Arab region, but it is likely to be seen as an effort by the hard-line movement to convey a more open image to the outside world.
For the first time since the group's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, there is a Hamas foreign minister. Haniyeh appointed Mohammed Awad to the post. Awad will also keep his job as planning minister.
A top Israeli diplomat says smuggling of arms from Egypt into the Gaza Strip has grown following the unrest in the Arab world.
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon says Israel has observed "increased activity" in Gaza. He accused militants of "trying to take advantage of the uncertainties in the region to booster their capabilities to attack Israeli cities and Israeli citizens."
Ayalon says explosives and terrorists are also being smuggled. Gaza militants have fired thousands of rockets at Israel in recent years.
Israel's prime minister has appointed a new security adviser — an ex-general known for his hawkish views.
A statement from Benjamin Netanyahu's office Wednesday said Yaakov Amidror will become Israel's new National Security Council chief, replacing Uzi Arad, a longtime Netanyahu confidant who resigned.
Amidror is known as a hard-liner who opposed Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. He has since called to reoccupy the crowded area to stop frequent rocket attacks on southern Israel by Palestinian militants. That view is shared by a relatively small number of Israeli hawks.
The Palestinian presidency on Thursday called on the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators to support a European declaration of principles to settle Israeli- Palestinian conflict.
The declaration, presented by Britain, Germany and France, was announced by the British envoy to the United Nations at a UN Security Council meeting on Feb. 18 when Washington vetoed an Arab bill against the Jewish settlement building.
The state's pledge to the High Court of Justice to remove all outposts on private Palestinian land should raise at least two questions: Why did the state have to wait for a High Court order to acknowledge the illegality of the outposts, and why must it wait until the end of 2011 to remove them?
A walk through Hebron sends you into deep despair. Near the Cave of the Patriarchs, at the end of the plaza surrounded by a low fence, you see destruction and ruin, and especially the inconceivable segregation of the populations.
Four children, maybe eight or nine years old, curse you in Arabic as if by conditioned reflex. You smile at them, try to remove the wall between you, and all of a sudden they change their stance. Now they come closer to the fence and ask you for money. A shekel, sir, a shekel.
You needn't be an optometrist to see that Israel has a vision problem. We have become a nation whose only vision is peripheral.
The appointment of Major General (res.) Yaakov Amidror as Israel's next national security advisor is a dangerous move, given his "fascistic" views, leading leftist figures argue in a letter issued Wednesday.
The letter compares Amidror to Rabbi Dov Lior, who endorsed the killing of non-Jews in a book he wrote.
"Amidror's declaration that in a normal army, a soldier who's scared to charge forward should be shot in the head is blatantly illegal," the letter reads. "This statement disqualifies him for any public post, and certainly a sensitive security-political position."
Free elections set to take place in Egypt may turn ugly for Israel unless the peace process is resumed, UK ambassador Matthew Gould warned on Thursday morning.
Speaking to Israeli press at the British ambassador’s residence in Ramat Gan, he said Egyptian politicians might try to outdo each other with rhetoric critical of the Jewish state to gain voters.
Will the impasse with the Palestinians open opportunities to seek a deal with Syria? The military and intelligence establishment has been urging Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to pursue that track because the issues are more straightforward and the potential strategic benefits much greater. Also, the Syrian dictator keeps telling visitors he is ready for negotiations.
Israelis and Palestinians are so often the focus of events in this region, but now many people are wondering about their place in a changing Middle East.
In the West Bank town of Ramallah, Lina, a student, looked around at the crowds shopping in Manara Square and shrugged her shoulders.
"Other nations are seeking their own freedoms," she said. "But they are forgetting the Palestinian issue.
"We suffer from many things here but until now nobody has made any kind of a revolution in Palestine. Although we are the people that most need a revolution."
For the first time in many months, Palestinian spokesmen appear to indicate a revisit of their political strategy towards liberation and independence.
It is not clear what the new ideas are, but it is obvious that Palestinian plans focusing on a September landmark seem to be in question.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/17897
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/17897
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/17897
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.americantaskforce.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-fg-israel-envoy-20110310,0,3766659.story
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/09/AR2011030904924.html
[8] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=367208
[9] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=367251
[10] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=366902
[11] http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/rival-factions-snub-hamas-unity-offer/
[12] http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/netanyahu-condemns-settler-violence/
[13] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/gaza-strips-hamas-leader-reshuffles-cabinet-1310789.html
[14] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/israel-gaza-smuggling-rising-amid-mideast-unrest-1310689.html
[15] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/netanyahu-picks-hawkish-new-security-adviser-1308664.html
[16] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-03/10/c_13771319.htm
[17] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-s-future-depends-on-removal-of-outposts-1.348257
[18] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-idf-s-masquerade-in-hebron-1.348256
[19] http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/a-special-place-in-hell/might-obama-gamble-on-a-new-netanyahu-peace-plan-1.347948
[20] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4040105,00.html
[21] http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=211566
[22] http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=211475
[23] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12686273
[24] http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=35293