March 5, 2012

Middle East News: World Press Roundup

NEWS: In Israel there is both support and condemnation of a Palestinian citizen of Israel judge who stayed silent during the national anthem. Israeli officials cast a wary eye on the Sinai. Some supporters of Israel pressure Pres. Obama on the issue of Iran. Speculation grows that Israel may be considering special forces actions in Iran. Palestinian officials say they will give Israel a new deadline to agree ground rules for another round of talks. Former PM Olmert will address the next J Street conference. A new poll suggests that most Americans still have more positive views of Israel than the Palestinians. Palestinians find it hard to sell food products in Israel. Pres. Abbas may be preparing to send PM Netanyahu a letter asking about Israel's position regarding peace talks. In spite of turning against the Syrian regime, Hamas has not made any progress with the United States. Divisions in Hamas are threatening the primacy of its Politburo leader. Relations between Egypt and Hamas grow warmer, but are still distant. COMMENTARY: Colin Kahl says advocates of an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities should recall the outcome of the attack on Iraq's nuclear program. Doyle McManus says the US should not let itself be compromised by Israeli brinksmanship. Ha'aretz says Israel should heed Obama's advice on Iran. Chemi Shalev says Obama's hard-core detractors won't be swayed no matter what he says. Ron Kampeas looks at the upcoming Obama-Netanyahu meeting. Mostafa Zein says all US administrations look at the Middle East only through the Israeli lens. Rami Khouri says Hamas' break with Syria signals the end of the “resistance axis.” Oudeh Basharat says the time has come for Palestinians to speak out against atrocities in Syria. David Remnick says Israel's democracy is imperiled by extremism. Daniel Levy says Israeli domestic politics make it less likely that there would be any attack against Iran.

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Anger and Compassion for Arab Justice Who Stays Silent During Zionist Hymn

JERUSALEM — It was supposed to be a passing of the torch, yet another solemn state ceremony at the president’s residence in Jerusalem. But the retirement last week of Israel’s chief justice and the swearing in of her successor turned into a kind of Rorschach inkblot test about the nature of Israeli democracy.

Israel Guards Against Increased Terror Peril From a Laxly Patrolled Sinai

NEGEV DESERT, Israel — For decades, the striking ridges and shady passes of the western Negev Desert along Israel’s border with Egypt were an alluring gateway to the pristine beaches of the Sinai Peninsula.

Today, though, from the Israeli side at least, the jagged landscape of red-brown mountains seems to cast longer shadows and has grown more menacing.

U.S. Backers of Israel Pressure Obama Over Policy on Iran

WASHINGTON — On the eve of a crucial visit to the White House by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, that country’s most powerful American advocates are mounting an extraordinary public campaign to pressure President Obama into hardening American policy toward Iran over its nuclear program.

Israel's calculus on Iran: Shaped by leaders' youth in daring commando unit?

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are two rivals turned partners who face a grave decision on whether or not to attack Iran against the counsel of Israel’s key ally, the United States.

Palestinians to give Israelis deadline on talks

JERICHO, West Bank — Palestinian officials said Saturday they plan to give a deadline to Israel to accept ground rules for negotiations, and suggested that a 'no' will allow them to shelve Mideast talks until it does.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is to spell out the requirements in a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki. He said he did not know by when Netanyahu would have to respond.

Olmert to address J Street conference

Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will appear before the J Street organization at the end of the month, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday.

The liberal advocacy group is scheduled to hold its annual conference in Washington at the end of March. The event will be attended by some 2,500 Jewish leaders, senior government officials and congressmen.

Olmert will be the guest of honor and the main speaker at the event.

J Street is considered a left-wing Jewish lobby which aims to promote a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Americans still favor Israelis to Palestinians

Americans continue to view Israelis far more favorably than Palestinians, according to a poll released this weekend ahead of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s meeting on Monday with US President Barack Obama.

Seventy-one percent of Americans said they had positive views of Israel, compared with just 19% who said the same of the Palestinians, according to a Gallup poll conducted over the first week of February.

Republicans were more likely to be well disposed toward Israel than independents or Democrats, with favorability ratings at 80, 71 and 65%, respectively.

Palestinians Struggle to Put Their Food on Israeli Tables

Palestinian farmers say they can’t penetrate the Israeli market because of reluctance by Israelis to buy products with a Palestinian brand.

Israeli agriculture officials acknowledged the problem, but said they were trying to help by exposing Israelis to more Palestinian wares.

Agriculture is a pillar of the Palestinian economy. While they export to the Arab world, the U.S. and Europe, Palestinians are trying to sell their “Product of Palestine” brands to in neighboring Israel, which is a big market and no more than hour’s truck drive away.

PA letter to ask Israel’s position on peace talks

JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas will send a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asking Israel to state its position regarding restarting peace talks.

The letter, which reportedly will be delivered to Netanyahu as soon as he returns from his visit to North America, will accuse Israel of harming the process by not fulfilling its obligations under current agreements and inform Israel what steps the Palestinian Authority requires of Israel in order to be willing to restart talks.

Now Syria's Foe, Hamas Still No Friend

Washington — In foreign relations, it is a longtime maxim that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But despite its recent shift against the regime in Syria, that rule has done nothing, so far, for Hamas with the American government.

The abrupt smashing of a decades-long bond between Hamas, which is designated by the United States as a terrorist organization, and Syria, a family-led dictatorship, is unlikely to facilitate Hamas’s rehabilitation, experts say, despite current efforts by the U.S. to assemble a wide coalition against the Syrian regime.

'Most serious' division in Hamas' history tests Meshaal's acumen

JERUSALEM // Once firmly in control of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal no longer appears to be the Palestinian-Islamist group's undisputed leader.

Rivals are stridently criticising the 55-year-old and the sweeping changes he has recently tried to engineer within Hamas. Such public dissension had been practically unheard of within the group's tightly regimented ranks.

Others, sensing his weakened hand, seem to be not-so-subtlety jockeying for his position.

Egypt warms to Hamas, but not allies yet

CAIRO AND JERUSALEM // When Egypt provided a public platform last month for Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister, it was seen as a more independent nation risking longtime ties with the United States and Israel to please its Islamist friends.

To many observers, Mr Haniyeh's speech at Al Azhar University in Cairo, declaring his support for Syrian rebels fighting to topple the regime of Bashar Al Assad, also signalled the break-up of the revolutionary axis stretching from Tehran to Gaza City, and a major shift in the politics of the Middle East.

Before attacking Iran, Israel should learn from its 1981 strike on Iraq

On June 7, 1981, eight Israeli F-16 fighter jets, protected by six F-15 escorts, dropped 16 2,000-pound bombs on the nearly completed Osirak nuclear reactor at the Tuwaitha complex in Iraq. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon saw the reactor as central to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s quest to build nuclear weapons, and they believed that it posed an existential threat to Israel.

Israel's brinkmanship, America's peril

Last week, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, confirmed a no-longer-surprising fact: the Pentagon has sent the White House a menu of options for going to war with Iran.

Israel would be wise to listen to Obama's advice on Iran

U.S. President Barack Obama didn't wait for his private meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to clarify his position on Iran's nuclear program. Speaking at the annual conference of AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the U.S. leader urged everyone to set the war drums aside.

Obama’s unequivocal support for Israel won’t sway his diehard detractors

There are many people in both America and Israel who wouldn’t believe Barack Obama’s commitment to Israel’s security even if he sang Hatikvah, enlisted in the IDF and did reserve duty guarding an isolated West Bank outpost. These people are now dissecting the president’s speech to the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington on Sunday in a way that will offer incontrovertible proof that it ranks a close second after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s pledge to wipe Israel off the map.

Obama and Netanyahu to meet under the shadow of Iran and their own histories

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- As if their own fraught history and the prospect of a nuclear Iran weren’t enough, Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu will bring to their meeting on Monday each nation’s vexing and at times self-contradictory relationship with war.

Obama, facing what could be a tough re-election battle, must reconcile dueling American impulses: to stand up to bullies and to keep away from protracted bloody involvements overseas.

Obama and the Sanctity of Israel

When US Administrations translate sanctity into reality, they find only Israel, especially in times of presidential or parliamentary elections, when sanctity turns into financial and media support for this or that candidate, and when the hundreds of millions of dollars become the main voter. Barack Obama has not departed from this golden rule since he reached the White House. When he was a candidate for the presidency, he visited Israel. He wore the Jewish skullcap (kippah) during his visit to the holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem.

Hamas rattles the Resistance Axis

The decision last week by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas to abandon its external headquarters in Damascus and support Syrians demonstrating for the removal of Bashar Assad’s regime is noteworthy on several levels. All of them affirm the vulnerable and changing nature of strategic conditions across the Middle East.

Time for Palestinians to speak out

A hurricane the size of Katrina has hit the Middle East coastline - a hurricane of hypocrisy. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who represents a country that has been making regular use of its veto in the United Nations Security Council in support of the Israeli occupation, is disgusted by the veto cast by Russia on a resolution condemning the Syrian regime. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who imprisons Palestinians under a 45-year wall of occupation, sheds tears over human rights in Syria.

Threatened

Democracy is never fully achieved. At best, it’s an ambition, a state of becoming. In America, it took generations for blacks, women, and gays and lesbians to win the rights of citizenship—rights that, in many instances, remain incomplete. (Various contenders for the Presidency are now competing to scale back such rights.) The twenty-first century began with a fraudulent Presidential election. And this is in the luckiest of nations. Elsewhere—in Russia, in Hungary, in Zimbabwe—the fragility of democratic aspiration is a brutal fact of history.

Netanyahu Won't Attack Iran

The intensity of background spin emanating from Washington and Jerusalem threatens to leave very little to the imagination in advance of the March 5 meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Various U.S. officials, current and former, named and anonymous, have shared their skepticism regarding Israel's ability to inflict decisive damage on Iran's nuclear-enrichment program, as well as their trepidation at the costs, consequences, and retaliatory attacks that might follow from an Israeli strike.

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