PRINT ALL
EMAIL TO A FRIEND
DOWNLOAD TO PDF
RSSEvents | Daily News | About Us | Resources | Contact Us | Donate | Site Map | Privacy Policy
[5]
GAZA, Feb 8 (Reuters) - Hamas's Gaza-based leadership challenged on Wednesday a Palestinian reconciliation deal signed by the Islamist group's political chief in exile and President Mahmoud Abbas of the rival Fatah movement.
Bringing divisions within Hamas to the surface, the group's "Change and Reform" Gaza parliamentary bloc came out against a key clause in the pact under which Abbas would serve both as president and prime minister of a future Palestinian government.
RAMALLAH, Feb. 8 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Wednesday told U.S. peace envoy David Hale that there are no contradictions between the Palestinian reconciliation and peace with Israel.
The state-run Wafa news agency quoted Abbas, who held talks in Ramallah with Hale, as saying that peace for the Palestinians is strategic and the internal Palestinian reconciliation is a national Palestinian need.
JERUSALEM — In a high-stakes gamble, an imprisoned member of a Palestinian militant group has waged a hunger strike for almost two months, trying to draw attention to Israel’s military justice system and its treatment of detainees who can be held without charge for lengthy periods.
REPORTING FROM JERUSALEM -- High drama exists in Israel's soccer league for reasons other than goals scored, as political tension and racism sometimes play out on and off the fields.
The Beitar Jerusalem soccer club, most recently owned by Dan Adler and Adam Levine of the U.S., remains closely associated with its fans' far right-wing politics and slurs against opposing players.
The club faces numerous penalties because of fan behavior, with Beitar fans often chanting personal and religious insults at other players. A group dubbed "La Familia" is viewed by many as setting the tone.
RAMALLAH, Feb. 9 (Xinhua) -- Hamas authorities obstruct the work of Central Elections Commission (CEC) in the Gaza Strip, CEC chairman Hanna Nasser said Thursday.
Two weeks after Hamas allowed the CEC to operate in Gaza, the commission's staff are not yet allowed to start updating voter records, Nasser told Xinhua.
Hamas' government "asked us to linger in preparing for elections," Nasser explained, adding that this delay was unjustifiable."
School children from the Efrat settlement and residents of the neighboring Palestinian village of Jurat al-Shama planted trees together in an initiative that promoted co-existence in the West Bank, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Wednesday.
The event, held on the Jewish holiday of Tu B'Shvat, aimed to block the hazardous dust that is being disseminated by a nearby tree-processing plant.
WASHINGTON (JTA) -- A pro-Palestinian Presbyterian church affiliate pulled down its Facebook page after Jewish groups complained about offensive postings.
The movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel — long painted as a fringe group by the Israel advocacy community — is seeking to wrap itself in the mantle of the mainstream American left. At the movement’s first-ever national conference, presenters and attendees compared BDS to the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott, the Cesar Chavez grape boycott and the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, from which it draws inspiration.
They also worried about how to brand themselves in easily accessible sound bites.
Egyptian Intelligence Chief Mourad Mowafi on Wednesday met with Azzam al-Ahmed, member of Fatah’s Central Committee, to discuss Palestinian reconciliation efforts.
Ahmed briefed Mowafi on the Doha Declaration in this regard, which was signed Monday by Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled Meshaal, chairman of Hamas’s political bureau, the state-run Middle East News Agency MENA reported.
After the meeting, Ahmed said he briefed Mowafi because Egypt sponsors the reconciliation and is tasked by the Arab League to monitor its implementation.
First the old peace was lightly wounded. After Israel gave the Palestinians most of Gaza, the first bus blew up at Dizengoff Square. After Israel gave the Palestinians Nablus and Ramallah, buses started blowing up in downtown Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. And after Israel suggested that the Palestinians set up a sovereign state on most of the occupied territories, they responded with a wave of terror. And as suicide terrorists were running amok in our cities, it started to dawn on people that maybe there was something defective about the promise of a great peace.
It is indeed true that Israel does not have, and quite possibly could not have, an "umbrella definition of a Hebrew nation that, from a political and legal standpoint, is supposed to embrace us in all our factions and variations, including religious and ethnic ones, while separating religion and state," as Doron Rosenblum wrote (Haaretz, February 3 ). Such lamentations over the lack of "Israeliness," and therefore, of "normalcy," date back many years, and represent the feelings of a nontrivial segment of Israeli society.
At first glance, one is shocked. The images one recalls of the pastoral desert border between Israel and Egypt have been erased. The landscape is cut by a grey, towering metal fence. At the top of it one sees not only barbed wire, but also sharp knives. Alongside this menacing fence lies more barbed wire, affixed to the earth, with a patrol road nearby.
Benjamin Netanyahu was the big winner of the recent Likud primaries. However, he too realizes that the party that sent him to the Prime Minister’s Office is slipping through his fingers. Likud is distancing from him.
However, some politicians will respond to the above with a chuckle. For years they have been saying that Netanyahu has not changed at all, and that Likud is not distancing from him at all. Bibi is just like Moshe Feiglin, with a softer veneer, they say. The primaries’ results will force Netanyahu to rip the mask off his face.
The Obama administration has taken some unusual steps to discourage an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities in the coming months. After diplomatic, intelligence and military leaders failed to get the message across in private, they went public.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, through columnist David Ignatius, said his biggest worry is the strong likelihood of an Israeli attack before summer.
The words people use, often unconsciously, can have a critical impact. Dangerously misleading terminology remains a major obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace.
The current initiative by Palestine to upgrade its status at the United Nations from “observer entity” to member state or, temporarily failing that, “observer state” is commonly referred to, by both supporters and opponents of this initiative, as an effort to “achieve statehood” or “recognition of statehood” through the United Nations. It is nothing of the sort.
To understand the new unity agreement between the two Palestinian factions, Fatah and Hamas, it helps to recall the story of the village beggar and his cake.
It happened once that the village beggar asked the rabbi for a ruble to buy some food. An hour later the rabbi saw the beggar in the market, eating a slice of cake. Incensed, the rabbi rushed to rebuke him: “When I give you a ruble you should eat a meal, not cake!”
“Excuse me,” the beggar replied. “Yesterday I had no money, so I couldn’t eat cake. Today I have money, but I shouldn’t eat cake. Tell me, rabbi, when can I eat cake?”
The Palestinian reconciliation agreement between Fatah and Hamas should be placed in its right context, i.e. in the context of the transformations witnessed in the Arab region.
Jaffa -- Mahmoud al-Zahar, the co-founder of Hamas, was clearly satisfied as he spoke to Israeli TV following the historic Palestinian reconciliation pact signing last week.
“Your intelligence organizations are not so impressive after all,” he told Channel 10 News.
Israeli leaders were certainly caught off guard when news broke that Fatah and Hamas had reached a deal to mend ties, four years after a schism erupted between the two Palestinian factions and Hamas security forcibly ousted Fatah personnel from the Gaza Strip. Al-Zahar was rubbing Israel’s lack of anticipation in its face.
One of the least-noticed consequences of the Arab Spring might be called the “mainstreaming of Hamas.” The chief of the Palestinian party and militia, which the West knows chiefly for its suicide attacks on Israel, has declared repeatedly that it has decided to set aside violent resistance and, in the spirit of the Arab Spring, concentrate on demonstrations and other nonviolent methods.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/23276
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/23276
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/23276
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.americantaskforce.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/hamas-split-threatens-palestinian-unity-deal/
[7] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-02/09/c_131399273.htm
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle-east/palestinian-prisoner-on-55th-day-of-hunger-strike-to-protest-detention-without-trial/2012/02/09/gIQAzKvs0Q_story.html
[9] http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/02/national-tensions-israel-soccer.html
[10] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-02/09/c_131401354.htm
[11] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4187269,00.html
[12] http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/02/08/3091585/pro-palestinian-presbyterians-close-facebook-page-after-complaints
[13] http://www.forward.com/articles/151058/
[14] http://www.egyptindependent.com/node/646566
[15] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/a-new-peace-is-needed-1.411838
[16] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/in-praise-of-israel-s-abnormality-1.411841
[17] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4187120,00.html
[18] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4187081,00.html
[19] http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=257041
[20] http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-EdContributors/Article.aspx?id=257030
[21] http://www.forward.com/articles/151055/
[22] http://www.daralhayat.com/portalarticlendah/360122
[23] http://www.egyptindependent.com/node/430109
[24] http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2012/02/06/the-mainstreaming-of-hamas-continues-as-palestinian-unity-gains-steam/?xid=gonewsedit
Front Page Features