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Israeli officials announced on Sunday the arrest of two Palestinian teenagers from this village in the northern West Bank who they said were responsible for the killing of five members of the Fogel family in the neighboring Jewish settlement of Itamar last month.
Israeli security officials said that the two suspects, ages 17 and 18, had confessed and carried out a reconstruction of the attack.
For Vittorio Arrigoni, an Italian pro-Palestinian activist who friends said fought peacefully for justice, the end was as violent as it was incongruous.
Police officers from Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza, found his body in a house in Gaza City that was empty of furniture, except for the mattress on which the body was lying, according to witnesses. The doctor who performed the autopsy said Mr. Arrigoni’s killers had used a plastic cord to strangle him.
As Christians get ready to celebrate Easter, Palestinian Christians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are envious of fellow Christians from all over the world who are able to visit Jerusalem’s holy Christian sites and worship freely while they cannot.
Since Israel cut off East Jerusalem from the rest of the occupied Palestinian territories in the early 1990s, Palestinian residents of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been required to get Israeli army permission before they can enter Jerusalem.
Gaza police on Monday released the photos of four men identified as the prime suspects in the murder of Italian activist and journalist Vittorio Arrigoni.
Police said the four were currently fugitives, and apparently in hiding.
The four were identified as Abdul-Rahman Al-Breizat, Mahmoud Muhammad Nimir Salfiti, Muhammad Al-Breizat, and Bilal Al-Umari.
Police did not say whether any of the men were affiliated with a political, religious or military group in the coastal enclave.
Two men detained earlier were not directly involved in the murder, police said.
Overall Palestinian support for suicide bombings against Israeli civilians, the firing of rockets into Israel has dropped since 2009, with a majority opposed to both, a poll showed on Sunday.
The survey conducted by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre found that support for Palestinian "military operations of any kind' against Israel fell from 53.3 percent in January 2009 to 37.1 percent in April of this year.
Israeli forces erected checkpoints around the town of Beit Ummar Sunday afternoon, and carried out several home invasions, delivering summons to appear for questioning to at least one resident, locals said.
Town activist Mohammad Ayyad Awwad told Ma'an that the measures came as part of an increase in restrictions and harassment against residents, and following the construction of a fence along the southern side of the village, restricting movement of residents and caging them into the town center.
Hundreds of Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip and the West Bank marked on Sunday the Palestinian Prisoner Day with demonstrations calling on Israel to release the prisoners, as thousands of prisoners in Israeli jails went on a one-day hunger strike.
In Gaza City, hundreds of Palestinians, including mothers, children and wives of the prisoners in Israeli jails demonstrated in front of the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), calling on Israel to release more than 7,000 Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in 12 Israeli jails.
The deposed premier of the Hamas government called on the Islamic movement to keep holding a soldier hostage unless Israel accepts Palestinian demands.
In a speech in Gaza City, Ismail Haneya also called on the Palestinian people to support his movement to "achieve an honorable swap" in which a number of Palestinian and Arab prisoners will be released from Israeli jails.
The Hamas kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit in a cross-border raid near the Gaza Strip in 2006.
Germany and Egypt have mediated to broker a deal between the Hamas and Israel, but the gap between the two sides was wide.
Last month, I met with a man who impressed me as none other has over the last 10 years. His name is David Grossman, and he was in New York to receive the National Jewish Book Award for his magnificent novel "To the End of the Land." Grossman, whose talent is enormous, has been fighting for peace in his country for 30 years.
Who was chiefly responsible for the fact that Israel was surprised by the Egyptian and Syrian attacks on Yom Kippur in 1973? Many say that it was the Intelligence branch of the Israel Defense Forces - and in particular, the head of Military Intelligence, Maj. Gen. Eli Zeira.
The chief of staff during that war, David Elazar, also pointed an accusatory finger upward, to then defense minister Moshe Dayan, while Dayan placed almost all the blame on the lower echelon, leaving it with Zeira. Dayan deflected a little of the excess criticism in the direction of the prime minister, Golda Meir.
Three months into the Egyptian revolution, Israel is concerned that the new government's policy toward Israel could become hostile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told European Union ambassadors last week in Jerusalem.
"I am very concerned over some of the voices we've been hearing from Egypt recently," Netanyahu told the envoys. "I'm especially concerned over the current Egyptian foreign minster's statements."
Turkish Minister Egemen Bagis mocked Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during a recent Television appearance on a local talk show.
Speaking ahead of the upcoming elections in the country, Bagis said "In Israel, they have a foreign minister who flushes the toilet during a radio interview. In his youth, he was a bouncer at a nightclub in Moldova. He still thinks of himself as a bouncer, and can't make the transition into the role of a politician," he said.
The families of the two terrorists who confessed to murdering five members of the Fogel family refuse to believe the two committed the massacre. Hakim Awad's mother, Nawef, claimed that her son was at home the night of the murder and never left the house. "Five months ago Hakim underwent a surgery in his stomach and I'm sure he was tortured and forced into confessing."
The mother claimed that Israel was trying to cover up for crimes it committed in Awarta last month and noted that their home in the village was very far from the settlement of Itamar.
Following Sunday's revelations with regards to the arrest of two Palestinians from the village of Awarta for the murder of the Fogel family in the Itamar massacre last March, villagers in Awarta, the village adjacent to the settlement of Itamar, were stunned to discover that two teens, Hakim Mazen Awad (18) and Amjad Mohammad Awad (19) are the main murder suspects.
A Kassam rocket fired from the Gaza Strip exploded in the Sha'ar Hanegev Regional Council Monday afternoon.
Warning sirens sounded prior to the rocket landing.
Police spokesperson Micky Rosenfeld confirmed that the rocket landed near a kibbutz in the area.
No injuries or damage were reported.
The South has experienced a relative calm for over a week since a tense ceasefire with Hamas was brokered.
Last Friday, two Grad rockets exploded separately in the cities of Ashkelon and Ashdod overnight.
No casualties or damages were reported.
The Likud’s right wing geared up for a fight before the Pessah holiday, with MK Danny Danon requesting a special faction meeting before Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s anticipated trip to the US next month.
Danon expressed concern Sunday that “instead of hearing from the prime minister what he intends to tell the Americans from him, we’ll end up hearing it first on C-Span, the congressional television channel.”
Netanyahu is expected to address Congress on May 24, in what some are already dubbing “Bar-Ilan II.”
Gil Hoffman is the chief political correspondent and analyst for The Jerusalem Post. I met him in Cincinnati, where he spoke on recent developments in the Middle East. What follows is a synopsis of our interview together (4/5/2011).
Q: Netanyahu, Abbas, and Obama all agree in theory on the need for peace through a two-state solution. Why is there currently no progress on this issue?
Daniel Viflic, 16, was on a school bus in southern Israel on 7 April when it was hit by an anti-tank missile fired from the Gaza Strip.
The driver was slightly hurt in the attack, which happened just after the other children had been dropped off.
Nineteen Palestinians died in the ensuing wave of Israeli air strikes and Palestinian counter-attacks.
It was the most serious violence since Israel's conflict with Hamas in Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009.
About 1,400 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians, and 13 Israelis, including 10 soldiers, were killed.
Eleven Muslim students arrested for disrupting a speech by Israeli U.S. Ambassador Michael Oren at the University of California, Irvine pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges.
The students were arraigned April 15 in Orange County Superior Court on charges of conspiracy to disturb a meeting and misdemeanor disturbance of a meeting.
The murder of an Italian activist in Gaza last week has raised questions about the capability of Hamas to control radical groups, some with suspected links to al Qa'eda, operating in the Palestinian territory.
Vittorio Arrigoni, 36, part of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement, was found dead in an empty apartment building in Gaza City. An al Qa'eda-inspired group calling itself Tawhid and Jihad released a video of his kidnapping on Thursday and is widely believed to have carried out the murder.
Many questions are being asked whether it is possible to resume peace negotiations in the Middle East that can achieve real and concrete results after the peace process has been faltering over the past few months. A total of 10 months have passed since US President Barack Obama announced his determination to bring peace to the Middle East on his first day in the White House. However, there have been no indications that such a peace would be reached.
The Barack Obama Administration has drafted the features of its new strategic policy resulting from the “Arab Spring” with an effaceable pencil, as it is still at the stage of reacting and responding to events. There is not yet what would be called a “blueprint” for a strategic framework for broad American policy towards the Middle East, since ‘using permanent ink’ would tie down the hands of President Barack Obama at a time when he needs flexibility for electoral reasons.
Justice Richard Goldstone was condemned by many apologists for Israel’s human rights record for his conclusion that Israel intentionally targeted Palestinian civilians as a matter of policy during the 2008-9 Gaza war. Goldstone’s United Nations-backed report accused both Israelis and Palestinians of war crimes, and called on both sides to investigate, prosecute and punish their own personnel.
Controversy is good, if it helps to promote truth and justice, and this is what we have now in relation to the 2010 “Goldstone Report” about the conduct of Israel and Hamas during the 2008-09 Gaza war.
It continues to generate fresh controversy in light of recent statements by the four members of the original fact-finding commission established by the U.N. Human Rights Council (UNHRC).
THE OTHER day, the almighty General Security Service (Shabak, formerly Shin Bet) needed a new boss. It is a hugely important job, because no minister ever dares to contradict the advice of the Shabak chief in Cabinet meetings. There was an obvious candidate, known only as J. But at the last moment, the settlers' lobby was mobilized. As director of the "Jewish department" J. had put some Jewish terrorists in prison. So his candidature was rejected and Yoram Cohen, a kippah-wearing darling of the settlers was appointed instead.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/18558
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/18558
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/18558
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.americantaskforce.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/18/world/middleeast/18palestinian.html?ref=middleeast
[7] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/16/world/middleeast/16gaza.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast
[8] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/babylonbeyond/2011/04/west-bank-palestinian-christians-denied-access-to-holy-places-in-jerusalem-during-easter.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BabylonBeyond+(Babylon+%26+Beyond+Blog)
[9] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=379833
[10] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=379637
[11] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=379669
[12] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-04/17/c_13833160.htm
[13] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2011-04/16/c_13832401.htm
[14] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/supporting-israel-means-questioning-its-policies-1.356546
[15] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/netanyahu-choice-cabinet-stability-or-israel-s-interests-1.356544
[16] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/netanyahu-concerned-new-egypt-government-will-be-anti-israel-1.356323
[17] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4058234,00.html
[18] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4058186,00.html
[19] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4057965,00.html
[20] http://www.jpost.com/Defense/Article.aspx?id=217095
[21] http://www.jpost.com/DiplomacyAndPolitics/Article.aspx?id=217009
[22] http://blogs.jpost.com/content/us-israel-relations-interview-gil-hoffman
[23] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-13115127
[24] http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/04/17/3086921/irvine-11-arraigned-for-disrupting-oren-speech
[25] http://www.thenational.ae/news/worldwide/middle-east/hamass-ability-to-control-radical-groups-in-question
[26] http://www.aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=3&id=18826
[27] http://www.daralhayat.com/portalarticlendah/255968
[28] http://www.jordantimes.com/?news=36612
[29] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Columnist/Apr/16/Goldstone-the-person-and-the-process.ashx#axzz1JsSsQyuO
[30] http://arabnews.com/opinion/article363801.ece
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