April 16, 2012

Middle East News: World Press Roundup

NEWS: Israel is blocking pro-Palestinian activists from boarding flights bound for Israel. The “flytilla” is gaining attention, but not access to the country. Israel dismisses the protest, pointing to human rights abuses in Syria, Iran and other countries. An Israeli officer is suspended from duty after striking a foreign national in the face with his rifle. Pres. Abbas says Israel is attempting to maintain the status quo, defends security cooperation with Israel, and dismisses the idea of dismantling the PA. IDF chief Gantz says Israel “can handle all its enemies.” US Amb. to Israel Shapiro reiterates his government will veto any further Palestinian UN membership efforts at the Security Council. The PA has moved to ban the sale of Israeli potatoes in areas under its control. A new poll suggests that Jewish Americans, including ardent supporters of Israel, are more suspicious of evangelical Christians than is generally assumed. COMMENTARY: Noah Browning says the Arab uprisings have yet to find a Palestinian equivalent. Akiva Eldar says PM Netanyahu fears successful negotiations on Iran's nuclear program. Yitzhak Laor says Israel must remember that it has committed atrocities like many other countries. Amira Hass says the Israeli military is persistently evicting Palestinians from their homes. Dan Calic says Israel can and should push the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab states to counter the Palestinian refugee issue. Jeff Barak says Israel has mishandled the “flytilla” from a PR perspective. Barry Rubin takes on three common ideas he calls “myths” about Israel. Musa Keilani says Palestinians should focus on institution-building and diplomacy until there is a new Israeli government that is willing to negotiate seriously. The Forward says arrests of journalists by the PA are disturbing intimidations of the press. Jeffrey Goldberg agrees that Hussein Ibish is not a “Zionist,” but someone pragmatically interested in ending conflict.

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Israel Moves to Block Activists From Entering

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Hundreds of police officers fanned out at Ben-Gurion International Airport on Sunday as Israel moved to block scores of pro-Palestinian campaigners from entering the country.

In Israel, pro-Palestinian activists get attention, if not entry

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Israel blocked or detained all but a handful of hundreds of pro-Palestinian foreign activists who planned to gather here Sunday, and the event appeared to be something of a bust.

Or maybe not. A media scrum stood alongside a phalanx of hundreds of police officers deployed at the airport in Tel Aviv, where travelers participating in the fly-in were scheduled to arrive. Present at an evening news conference in this biblical city were one French woman who had made it past immigration authorities and about a dozen cameras.

Israel dismisses 'flytilla' protest, pointing to human rights abuses in Syria, Iran

Tel Aviv

Israel denied entry and deported several dozen pro-Palestinian activists who arrived at Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday, as fears of a mass confrontation at the country’s main international gateway prompted a deployment of hundreds of police and security personnel.

Israeli officer suspended for striking foreign national

JERUSALEM (Reuters) -- Israel's military suspended a senior officer who struck an activist in the face with a gun, an army spokesman said on Monday, after a video of the incident was put on the Internet.

The video showed Lieutenant-Colonel Shalom Eisner holding his M-16 rifle in both hands and shouting at a group of demonstrators taking part in a bicycle rally in the occupied West Bank, before suddenly striking a man in the face.

Interview: Abbas says Israel aims to keep status quo

ON BOARD PRESIDENTIAL JET (Ma'an) -- Israel seeks to maintain the status quo by talking about peace without making any efforts to achieve it, President Mahmoud Abbas said on Sunday.

Abbas, on a regional tour in Asia, told Ma'an that the Israeli government's stated support of a two-state solution was a "slogan for public opinion."

"Israel talks about the two-state solution without taking a single step towards that solution ... (they are) comfortable with the status quo and don't seek to reach a solution," he said.

Abbas defends security cooperation with Israel

RAMALLAH, April 16 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he will not stop security liaison with Israel despite the breakdown of peace negotiations.

Abbas, in an interview with a Palestinian newspaper, also said he will not dissolve the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) in response to the lack of chances to build an independent state.

Abbas dismisses idea of dismantling PA

TOKYO (Ma’an) -- President Mahmoud Abbas on Saturday dismissed the idea of dismantling the Palestinian Authority, during an interview with Japanese media.

"Where do the writers of such reports get their ideas and information from," Abbas replied when asked by Japanese media about the proposal raised in a US magazine.

Yossi Beilin, one of the authors of the Oslo Accords, made the appeal in Foreign Policy magazine.

Regarding a letter being sent to Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, next week, Abbas said it would highlight the negative effects of settlement activity.

Gantz: Israel can handle all enemies

"The Shoah was the darkest period in the history of mankind and Judaism," IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz said on Monday, "But we mustn't forget that even before (the Holocaust) and after it there were those who sought to erase Jacob's descendents from the face of the planet."

Speaking at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Gantz stressed that "today the situation is completely different. We are facing these threats with an army that can handle everything."

'US will veto any Palestinian statehood bid at UN'

The United States will continue to act against Palestinian attempts to gain recognition through the United Nations, and if necessary will use its veto to that end, US ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said Monday.

Speaking at the Netanya Academic College, Shapiro said that there are no shortcuts to peace in the Middle East, and the Palestinians must return to direct negotiations with Israel without preconditions, on the basis of what was outlined by US President Barack Obama.

Palestinians Ban Sale of Israeli Produce

The Palestinian Authority (PA) started to block the sale of Israeli potatoes as part of a new policy to support local farmers and remove foreign produce in the marketplace, agriculture officials told The Media Line.

“We are doing this to protect the farmers because they can’t sell their potatoes due to the cheaper ones the Israelis are unloading on us,” said Zakaria Salawdeh, a deputy director of the Palestinian Agriculture Ministry, saying that the ban wasn’t directed against Israel for political reasons.

Jews Cast Wary Eye on Evangelicals

Washington — Advocates for improved relations between Jews and Christian evangelicals had hoped that years of working together to support Israel would build bridges between the two otherwise distant communities. But a new poll indicates that mistrust and suspicion still run deep, at least on the Jewish side.

Only one in five Jewish Americans holds favorable views of those aligned with the Christian right, a category that includes most of Israel’s evangelical supporters.

Arab revolts fail to stir divided Palestinians

RAMALLAH, West Bank, April 15 (Reuters) - Popular uprisings have transformed the Middle East and North Africa in the past year, unseating four veteran autocrats and capturing the imagination of a generation of youths. But the protests have left Palestinians - long at the centre of the Arab world's main political conflict - unmoved.

Dejected by lingering political divisions and exhausted by decades of mostly fruitless rebellion against Israel, they appear to have lost their appetite to take their fight for change up another level.

Netanyahu fears victory over Iran's nuclear program

A recent skit on the sketch comedy "Eretz Nehederet" featured a "debate" about the Iranian nuclear program between U.S. and Israeli leaders.

After some discussion, U.S. President Barack Obama accedes to the position of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and he urges them to attack Iran. Netanyahu and Barak exchange frightened glances and plead with Obama to stop them.

Israel should never forget its Mideast atrocities

The person who symbolized "the other Germany" more than anyone in West Germany, the person who was Germany's conscience throughout his literary career, has made the Israeli establishment and its clones crazy. These people have responded pettily and violently. Gunter Grass' service in the Wafen SS when he was 17 has nothing to do with his positions. You need lots of chutzpah and maybe even ignorance to think the Germans don't know how many despicable Nazis Israel catered to, as long as they supported its policies.

From Yamit to the Jordan Valley, the IDF continues to force Arabs from their homes

Last week, evacuees of Yamit marked the 30th anniversary of the demolition of their illegal settlement in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula. Radio reports blithely skirted the fact that the construction of these Sinai settlements was preceded by mass destruction. Under orders from then-defense minister Moshe Dayan and Southern Command head Ariel Sharon, in 1972 the Israel Defense Forces secretly expelled 1,500 Bedouin families from the Al-Ramilat tribes, from a 140,000 dunam area.

Let's talk about refugees

This month a meeting took place with little fanfare, addressing a subject that has sat on the sidelines throughout the peace process, having received only the slightest media attention. The topic of the meeting was about refugees.

No, not Palestinian refugees; Jewish refugees.

For many years the world has heard about the "right of return." This refers to Arabs who became displaced during the defensive war Israel was forced to fight when the surrounding Arab countries attacked it the day after declaring independence in 1948.

Much ado about flytilla

Making predictions in a newspaper column is a risky business, but anyway, here goes.

At the time of writing over the weekend, Israel Police and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) are putting together the final pieces of their plan to block the planned “fly-in” of leftwing activists to Ben-Gurion Airport, from where the activists intend to travel to the West Bank to demonstrate their solidarity with the Palestinians.

The three myths that distort every discussion of Israel

Whatever side you are, or aren’t, on, and whether you never think about these issues or are an impassioned activist, there are three fundamental issues about Israel, its enemies, and the Middle East that tie the narrative into knots.

Each of these ideas, of course, has a strong basis in fact. Yet no matter how counter-intuitive you find the following points questioning the conventional wisdom, they are nonetheless accurate. You can’t understand events without grasping them.

1. Israel’s existence is jeopardized.

Netanyahu’s offer for peace

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be drafting a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, detailing his offer of renewed peace negotiations in response to a Palestinian statement on their stand.

Netanyahu’s letter, according to officials quoted in the Israeli news media, will contain nothing new except that it will not include a demand for Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state.

Netanyahu will restate his demand that Israel maintain control over the Jordan Valley and that any future Palestinian state be demilitarised, according to the reports.

The Press on Trial

As investigative stories go, it doesn’t read like a blockbuster, hardly in the league of a Watergate scandal or the groundbreaking constitutional challenge ignited by the publication of the Pentagon Papers. The January 30 story appeared in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Ghad, written by Yousef al-Shayeb, and it described the kind of government corruption that, frankly, many have come to expect the world over.

Hussein Ibish Is Not a Zionist

Hussein Ibish, of the American Task Force on Palestine, has written an extremely sensible piece about Middle East pragmatism, in which he takes on advocates of the so-called one-state solution, who argue, among other things, that any Arab who supports a two-state solution is an Uncle Tom, or worse, an actual Zionist:

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