September 14, 2012

Middle East News: World Press Roundup

NEWS: An Israeli court rules in favor of settlers in a dispute over a house in occupied Hebron. PM Netanyahu denies he is trying to meddle in US electoral politics. Israelis in Tel Aviv seem unconcerned by the threat of missiles. Palestinian negotiators mourn the death of Amb. Stevens, describing him as a good and fair man. The Israeli military persists in repeatedly destroying a Bedouin village in the Negev. A small group of protesters in Gaza hold their own demonstration against an anti-Muslim film. Israeli Bedouins may join the protest movement as well. Palestinians and Israelis are taking foreigners on “dual narrative” tours of the "holy land." Palestinian families in occupied East Jerusalem decry the lack of proper schooling facilities. COMMENTARY: Eric Lewis says, for all his talk about American exceptionalism, Mitt Romney seems willing to allow Netanyahu to dictate a conflict with Iran. Charles Krauthammer says Pres. Obama has abandoned Israel. The Forward says Netanyahu has come perilously close to making Israel a US election issue. Rachel Shabi says Israel should understand the power of words, as well as weapons, in the new Middle East. JJ Goldberg draws three lessons from the controversy over Jerusalem in the DNC platform. Avi Issacharoff says West Bank protests this week demonstrated that Netanyahu's concept of “economic peace” is hollow. Ashraf al-Ajrami says, even amid protests, Palestinians must remain united. Khaled Abu Toameh says the protests were an attempt by elements within Fatah to get rid of PM Fayyad. Xinhua says 19 years after the signing of the Oslo Accords, peace between Israel and the Palestinians seems no closer. Jon Donnison says, one year after the failed UN bid, Palestinians have all but disappeared from the world stage.

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Israeli court: Settlers can return to Hebron home

JERUSALEM — An Israeli court has ruled that Jewish settlers can return to a home in the West Bank city of Hebron from which they were evicted four years ago.

The settlers claimed they had legally bought a four-story structure in Hebron, a city that has become a flashpoint in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Palestinian owner claimed the purchase documents were forged. The settlers had to move out in 2008.

PM: I'm not interfering in US presidential election

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu dismissed as “completely groundless” allegations he is manufacturing a crisis with US President Barack Obama just before the November 6 American election to influence the outcome in favor of Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

Netanyahu, in a Rosh Hashana interview with The Jerusalem Post that will appear in full on Sunday, said his call for the United States and the international community to set red lines for Iran was not at all connected with the US political campaign.

In Israel's Tel Aviv, missiles seem like a distant notion

 

JERUSALEM, Sep. 13 (Xinhua) -- Nobody seems to be thinking about a nuclear Iran or a possible missiles attack on the streets of Tel Aviv, Israel, this week. Everything seems normal, and mundane urban life seems to continue its daily routine in the " city that never stops."

However, there is still a tangible threat of a looming war with Iran. Or at least, that is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak have tried to signal over the past few months: prepare for war.

Slain US envoy 'understood Palestinian situation'

BETHLEHEM (Ma'an) -- Palestinian negotiators on Thursday remembered US ambassador Christopher Stevens as fair-minded and described his death in Libya as a major loss for American foreign policy.

Stevens, who was killed with three colleagues late Tuesday in an attack on US institutions in Benghazi, served years earlier as a political officer at the US consulate in Jerusalem.

Among the ruins of Bedouin al-Araqib

AL-ARAQIB, Negev (Ma'an) -- Saba Ismail Araqib, heavily pregnant, strides purposefully around the ruins of her destroyed village in the Negev desert of southern Israel.

"This tent was demolished a few weeks ago, and this one was my father's house," she says, gesturing to broken wooden beams and tarpaulin strewn around the dusty hill, until reaching her flattened marital home on the edge of the plateau.

Gazans join protests against anti-Muslim film

GAZA STRIP -- Dozens of Palestinians in Gaza Strip on Wednesday burned an American flag in front of the United Nations headquarters to protest a U.S. film mocking the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

About 100 members of the militant group Popular Resistance Committees chanted anti-American slogans and called for the death of the California filmmaker behind the movie.

“We call upon Arab and Islamic countries to expel American ambassadors until Obama administration apologizes to Muslims around the world,” said one protester, who would only identify himself as Abu Mussab.

Israeli Bedouin to protest anti-Islam film

Bedouin in Israel's Negev will hold a protest march on Friday against the anti-Islam movie that has sparked a wave of demonstrations across the Muslim world.

The demonstration, which is slated to leave from the mosques in the city of Rahat and will end in the center of the city, comes against the backdrop of violence in the Arab world, including in Egypt, Yemen and Libya, where U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed on Tuesday. The violence may have been sparked by an anti-Muslim film, "Innocence of Muslims."

The two sides of the Holy Land

With a Palestinian Muslim guide and an Israeli Jewish guide, it wasn't a typical Jerusalem tour.

Aziz Abu Sarah, 32, grew up in East Jerusalem throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers, the only Jews he had ever met. Student Shira Nesher, 24, had toured East Jerusalem as a military tour guide during her national service, teaching soldiers about the Arab enemy.

On this summer afternoon in Jerusalem, they stood together in front of 28 tourists - Israelis, foreigners and two Palestinians - to describe what they had learned in the years since.

East Jerusalem Families Demand Improvement of Schools

JERUSALEM -- Dressed in school uniforms and wearing small backpacks, dozens of boys walk in the street, passing a gas station and an auto body shop. They turn into a narrow alleyway and walk uphill toward a residential white stone building.

Israeli Fallout

It should go without saying, but apparently does not, that the tragic crisis unfolding in the Middle East calls for sober statesmanship rather than political posturing. The jihadist murder of the American ambassador to a newly liberated Libya; the carnage unleashed by the Assad regime on the Syrian people; the emergence of a Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt; the conundrum of Iranian nuclear ambitions — the region presents decades worth of complex challenges telescoped into real time.

The abandonment

There are two positions one can take regarding the Iranian nuclear program: (a) it doesn’t matter, we can deter them; or (b) it does matter, we must stop them.

In my view, the first position — that we can contain Iran as we did the Soviet Union — is totally wrong, a product of wishful thinking and misread history. But at least it’s internally coherent.

Israel on the Ballot

It’s difficult to recall a time when an Israeli prime minister has inserted himself into a presidential election campaign in the way that Benjamin Netanyahu has. It’s even harder to recall a time when a trusted ally openly urged the American president to undertake a questionable, unpopular and highly risky war. We sure hope Netanyahu knows what he’s doing, because the stakes for him — and for the two nations he professes to care about the most — could not be higher.

Israel: Learn the power of words, not just might, in the new Middle East

It’s pretty hard to combine schadenfreude with escalating panic, but when it comes to regional pronouncements, Israeli commentators have a special talent. Witness this incongruous cocktail in the analysis of Egypt’s new leadership – the gist of so much of which is: The Muslim Brotherhood in power is horrifying for Israel, but at the same time terrible news for Egyptians, who really shouldn’t be experimenting with the democracy to which they, being Arabs, clearly aren’t suited.  

Jerusalem, Why Did We Forget Thee?

In a few days we’ll celebrate one of the emotional peaks in the Jewish calendar, the twice-yearly proclamation that ends the Yom Kippur fast and Passover feast: Next year in Jerusalem.

We won’t mean it literally. For most it’s a metaphorical prayer for a better world, expressing faith that history has direction and meaning, with heavenly Jerusalem its symbolic end-point. But it’s also a literal affirmation of devotion to the earthly Jerusalem.

A new era of discontent

RAMALLAH - In many ways, the Palestinian protest movement that swept the West Bank for nearly seven days before fading out late this week symbolizes the end of an era, the era of the Palestinian Authority. Thousands of protesters took to the streets, clashing with Palestinian security forces, hurling shoes at photographs of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and defacing other PA symbols. In the process, they revealed the pros and cons of the "economic peace" theory espoused by Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Palestinians Angry with Leaders, But Unity Remains Key

The recent developments that took place in different regions of the West Bank, mainly in Galilee and Nablus, are reminiscent of the First and Second Intifadas.

Palestinians are revolting against the Palestinian Authority (PA) as if they wish to topple it, because they see it as their worst enemy. According to the protesters, the main reason for their demonstrations is the soaring price of goods — mainly gas and other products — in addition to low salaries and a delay in disbursing the wages of government officials.

A "Palestinian Spring": A Renewed Fatah Bid to Remove Fayyad

It is no secret that Fatah has long been trying to get rid of Fayyad who, its representatives argue, had been imposed on the Palestinians by the Americans and Europeans.

Abbas and Fatah have been trying for years to replace Fayyad with one of their own so that they could regain control over the Palestinian Authority's finances.

The US and most Western donors have repeatedly made it clear to Abbas that removing Fayyad from his post would prompt them to reconsider financial aid to the Palestinians.

Peace with Israel remains far away 19 years after Oslo treaties