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[5]
’s defense minister, , observed on Thursday that President ’s grip on power was slipping away.
“The disintegration is not abstract; it is real,” Mr. Barak said after a tour and debriefing with the local commander. “It is getting closer.”
Palestinian Authority officials Thursday concern over the safety of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in refugee camps in Syria.
They said that some 300 Palestinians have been killed since the beginning of the uprising in Syria in March 2011.
More than 500,000 Palestinians are believed to be living in Syria, mostly in a number of refugee camps.
The PA announced Thursday that it was in contact with the Syrian authorities and opposition to avoid involving Palestinians in the escalating violence.
During the first Gulf War in the winter of 1990, Israelis huddled in sealed rooms and donned gas masks as Iraqi President Saddam Hussein lobbed Scud missiles at the Jewish state. Israeli intelligence knew that Hussein had a stockpile of chemical weapons and was worried that he might use them.
The deepening unrest in Syria threatens to drive an unlikely wedge between many American conservatives and their allies in Israel on the eve of Mitt Romney’s friendly visit to the country.
Even before the violence intensified and closed in on Damascus this week, Romney and his advisers were pushing for more direct American support of the Syrian rebels, while the Obama administration focused bringing international pressure to bear and working through proxies.
Israel on Thursday released one of the Islamic militant Hamas movement's most senior members, the speaker of the now-defunct Palestinian parliament. Abdel Aziz Dweik, 64, was freed after serving six months without charges, his aide Baha Mahmoud said. Israel confirmed the release.
Hamas defeated the Fatah movement of internationally backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2006 parliamentary elections. After the vote, Israel began arresting Hamas legislators in the West Bank and east Jerusalem.
Egypt's President Mohamed Morsi promised to exert more efforts to lift a blockade on the Gaza Strip, which is ruled by Hamas, a Hamas official said Thursday.
The promise was made during a meeting between Morsi and a delegation from Hamas in Cairo Thursday, according to the official, Ayman Taha.
It is the first time that an Egyptian president has sat with Hamas, the Islamic movement that took over Gaza after routing forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in 2007.
Palestinian reconciliation is frozen until Hamas allows the elections committee to resume its work in the Gaza Strip, an official from President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party said Thursday.
"We are not ready to hold any meeting with Hamas before it cancels its unjustified position," said Azzam al-Ahmad, a member of Fatah Central Committee, referring to the closure of the Central Elections Commission (CEC) office in Gaza.
Hamas took over Gaza in 2007 after routing pro-Abbas forces in deadly battles.
"Israel will locate and act against terror all over the world," Israeli President Shimon Peres said Thursday in a strong response to a suicide bombing against Israeli tourists in Bulgaria a day earlier.
Five Israelis were killed, along with the Bulgarian bus driver, at the Burgas airport when an as-yet unidentified man detonated a powerful charge that ripped through a tour bus full of just- arrived Israeli tourists.
Israeli officials maintained Thursday that Iran was behind a suicide bombing that killed five Israeli tourists in Bulgaria and vowed to settle the score, but indicated that retaliation was unlikely to take the form of a military strike on Iran.
Thousands of Palestinians traveled from inside Israel and the occupied West Bank to the Al-Aqsa Mosque to perform the first Friday prayers during the holy month of Ramadan.
Crossings experienced a large volume of traffic, particularly at the Qalandiya checkpoint north of Jerusalem. Israeli forces deployed at crossings and checkpoints throughout Jerusalem and the West Bank.
The Al-Aqsa Foundation for Waqf and Heritage and other groups are implementing a campaign under the Ministry of Religious Affairs to protect the mosque during the Ramadan period.
The American Jewish Committee, a centrist pillar of America’s organized Jewish community, is breaking with the long-standing establishment consensus that settlements on the Israeli-occupied West Bank pose no impediment to peace.
The committee, in a press release issued on July 12, affirmed the legality of settlements throughout the West Bank and rejected the notion that the territory was under legal occupation.
You won’t find a shower here, and don’t even think about a mobile phone. Nor are any of these girls dreaming of amusement parks. Welcome to a summer camp for the daughters of the outposts: three days of Krav Maga (a martial art and eclectic self-defense system developed in Israel), whitewashing of unauthorized buildings and tree-planting.
A portrait of the two most prominent Palestinian leaders -- current Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and former President Yasser Arafat, who died in 2004 -- hangs in the conference room of the Palestinian Olympic Committee headquarters.
The Palestine Liberation Organization has denied recent reports that the White House issued a notice threatening to cut all aid to the Palestinian Authority if it launches a renewed drive for recognition at the United Nations.
"This is absolutely not true," PLO representative to Washington Maen Rashid Areikat told The Cable this week. "We do not know what they are saying. It's unfounded."
It was labeled the "super coalition" which would give Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a solid majority in the Knesset (parliament) to deal with challenges facing the nation.
However, on Tuesday, Kadima party leader Shaul Mofaz decided to leave the government he had joined only 72 days earlier, after negotiations over a new draft law fell apart.
The day after Kadima joined the government in May, the Knesset was scheduled to vote on a law calling for elections in September, but after Kadima joined the law was scrapped.
The government didn't hesitate to point a finger on Wednesday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, apparently supported by detailed intelligence, immediately blamed Iran for the terror attack on Israelis in Bulgaria that killed seven people.
If this is so, the man behind the attack in Burgas would be Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force, who operates the Guards' overseas operations. Hezbollah assists Quds, but the Lebanese group has been less effective since Imad Mughniyeh's assassination in 2008.
Last week I opened the papers and finally had reason to sigh in relief. A panel headed by retired Supreme Court justice Edmond Levy has determined that Israel is not an occupying power. The bothersome international law that insists that Israel’s colonization of the West Bank is illegal simply doesn’t apply: All settlements are legal!
Two weeks ago, Kenyan police arrested two people suspected of planning a terror attack against Israeli and American targets. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s cabinet declared immediately that the arrest proved Iran’s involvement once again in international terrorism. At the same time, Kenyan media reported that Israeli detectives had arrived in Nairobi to conduct meetings with different security bodies. Israeli officials have refused to comment so far.
One of the primary concerns arguments of the Zionist left, from the time of Yitzhak Rabin's second government and until very recently, was, "What the world will think of us?" The argument went like this: In the absence of peace with the Palestinians, or at the very least of negotiations pretending to be serious, Israel will become a pariah state. Its economy will take a serious beating, and the aspiration of most Israelis to deny that they are part of the geographic region in which they live, and to see their country as part of the Western world, will turn out to be illusory.
Last week the Levy Committee, set up by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to examine the legal status of outposts in the West Bank, announced its findings. According to the committee the IV Geneva Convention does not apply to the West Bank and, therefore, Israel cannot be deemed to be occupying this piece of land. On that basis the 'illegal outposts' in the West Bank, built on what Israel recognizes as state land, should be made legal, and zoning policies should be amended to make it easier for Jews to build in this area.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/26694
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/26694
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/26694
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] https://www.americantaskforce.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/world/middleeast/israel-worries-as-syria-deteriorates.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast
[7] http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=278236
[8] http://www.themedialine.org/news/news_detail.asp?NewsID=35629
[9] http://www.buzzfeed.com/zekejmiller/syria-unrest-will-shadow-romney-trip-to-israel
[10] http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/hamas-speaker-of-palestinian-parliament-released-2419103.html
[11] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-07/19/c_123436767.htm
[12] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-07/19/c_131726472.htm
[13] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-07/19/c_131726320.htm
[14] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/netanyahu-blames-hezbollah-iran-for-bombing-of-tourists-in-bulgaria/2012/07/19/gJQALwkxvW_story.html
[15] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=506249
[16] http://forward.com/articles/159537/levy-report-tests-american-consensus/
[17] http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/culture/2012/07/summer-camp-for-girls-of-the-out.html
[18] http://www.jta.org/news/article/2012/07/19/3100976/palestinian-olympic-participation-brings-conflict-to-the-fore
[19] http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/07/19/palestinians_deny_us_aid_threat
[20] http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/world/2012-07/20/c_123436816.htm
[21] http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/israel-has-no-doubt-about-who-is-behind-the-deadly-attack-in-bulgaria-1.452066
[22] http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/strenger-than-fiction/zionism-2012-a-guide-for-the-perplexed-1.451975
[23] http://www.jpost.com/Features/InThespotlight/Article.aspx?id=278238
[24] http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-israeli-left-s-zombie-argument.premium-1.452366
[25] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/hannah-weisfeld/the-levy-committee-who-ar_b_1661415.html
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