September 13, 2012

RAMALLAH, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haneya postponed his visit to Egypt to next week, a Palestinian official said Thursday.

The visit was planned to take place Thursday but was postponed for "technical reasons," said Yousef Rizka, an aide to Haneya.

Haneya has a scheduled meeting with Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Qandil, a spokesman said earlier this week.

Palestinian prisoners in Israel on hunger strike for release of elderly

RAMALLAH, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian prisoners in Israel went on a hunger strike on Thursday to urge for the release of their colleagues who have been held before Israel and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) signed their peace accords in 1993, a Palestinian official said.

Few choices for voters in upcoming election

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) -- The registration process for local elections ended Tuesday with 200 municipalities registering only one bloc of candidates, officials said Thursday.

The West Bank has 353 electorates but 200 of them will not be contested in October's municipal election because voters will only be able to vote for one list of candidates.

Abdul Kareem Sidir, undersecretary of the Ministry of Local Government, told Ma'an that 16 municipalities in the Jerusalem area decided to run on joint lists, which means candidates will be unopposed.

Abbas offers condolences to US after deadly attack in Libya

JERUSALEM (Ma'an) -- President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday called US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to offer his condolences on the death of the American ambassador to Libya.

"On behalf of myself, personally, and all Palestinian people, we offer sincere condolences to the US president after the US ambassador in Libya was killed in a criminal attack," Abbas said, according to the official Palestinian Authority news agency Wafa.

Israel takes cut of Palestinian tax revenues

RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Israeli authorities have seized millions of shekels in tax revenue for the Palestinians to compensate for an Israeli company's unpaid electricity bills, officials said Wednesday.

Finance Ministry officials say Israel kept 35 million shekels ($9 million) of the 260 million shekels ($66 million) in customs taxes it collected on behalf of the Palestinian Authority in September. The Israeli Ministry of Finance confirmed the deduction.

For first time, Israeli state agency opposes segment of West Bank separation fence

The Israel Nature and Parks Authority has reneged on its consent to construction of the separation fence near the Palestinian village of Battir, south of Jerusalem.

It is the first time a government agency has expressed opposition to the construction of a segment of the fence.

In a document sent recently to the Defense Ministry, the INPA cited damage to the landscape and to relations with residents of the Palestinian village, and demanded that the Defense Ministry find an alternative way of ensuring security in the area.

Liberman calls Abbas a 'liar, a coward and a wimp'

Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman kept up his campaign against Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday, calling him a "liar, coward and wimp" who would quit if he had any modicum of self-respect.

Liberman, who last month sent a letter to the Quartet calling for Abbas' replacement, said at a briefing with reporters that the PA leader neither represents anyone nor controls anything. He repeated his charge in the letter to the Quartet that Abbas was engaged in diplomatic terrorism, which he said was even worse than conventional terrorism.

Neocon Gambits

It is hard to overestimate the risks that Benjamin Netanyahu poses to the future of his own country. As Prime Minister, he has done more than any other political figure to embolden and elevate the reactionary forces in Israel, to eliminate the dwindling possibility of a just settlement with the Palestinians, and to isolate his country on the world diplomatic stage.

Netanyahu risks overplaying hand in Iran dispute

JERUSALEM, Sept 12 (Reuters) - The public row between Israel and the United States this week will make it hard for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to launch a unilateral strike against Iran and risks undermining his domestic standing.

Despite years of warning about the dangers of Iran gaining nuclear weapons, the Israeli leader has failed to convince any major world power of the need for military action and has yet to persuade his domestic audience that Israel should go it alone.

U.S. and Israel need mutual diplomacy, not recriminations

The United States and Israel do many things well together. We do strategic cooperation, security planning, intelligence sharing, economic and trade relations, and cultural interaction. Every day, scores of official and unofficial interactions take place between our governments and our two peoples, and for the most part, they are extraordinarily productive and mutually beneficial.

The Fayyad opportunity is fading

The news generated by the Middle East in recent years has usually been bad. Hamas took over the Gaza Strip, the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt and Turkey became an aggressive neo-Ottoman power. The Iranian rebellion was quashed, Iraq was drawn into the Shi'ite sphere of influence and Syria turned into a gruesome slaughterhouse. Even in Libya, which raised hopes for a while, the American ambassador was murdered on Wednesday.

The next president and the peace process

Two days after taking office, Barack Obama announced a major Middle East initiative, complete with a high-level special envoy, to restart Israeli- Palestinian peace talks. It was a major blunder. It was poorly prepared, asked more of the Israelis than the Palestinians, raised Palestinian expectations beyond Obama’s ability to deliver and he failed to take his case directly to the Israeli people. And he had no Plan B.

Don’t look for a repeat next January no matter who is in the Oval Office.

Washington needs to appreciate the other side

As Americans (and many others in the world) were marking last Tuesday the 11th anniversary of the horrendous 9/11 terrorist attack by Al Qaida, there is no doubt that many are still wondering whether the US is now a safer place or US governments can avoid similarly devastating incidents. The obvious grievances that motivated the attackers were attributed to the one-sided US policies in the Middle East, still a source of great concern to many inside the US and others elsewhere.

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