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A prominent Orthodox rabbi has broken a taboo by publicly advocating that his community consider a possible division of Jerusalem to achieve a lasting peace with the Palestinians.
Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of B’nai David Judea wrote in Friday’s Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles that the “worst-case scenario” of returning the Western Wall and the Temple Mount to Arab control would be horrifying and unfathomable to him.
Israel reduced fuel shipments to the Gaza Strip on Sunday, Palestinian officials said, bringing promised pressure on the beleaguered territory's Hamas rulers after months of cross-border rocket attacks.
Mujahed Salameh, head of the Palestinian Authority's Petrol Agency, said diesel deliveries for Gaza's only power plant were 12% below normal and gasoline deliveries were half their normal level. He said the Israeli company that is Gaza's sole fuel supplier told him the Defense Ministry had ordered the limits.
LESS POWER: Israel began cutting fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip on Sunday, in line with its recent decision intended to put pressure on Gaza's leaders in response to months of Palestinian rocket attacks against Israel. Gaza residents have reportedly begun to form lines at gasoline stations, stocking up for the shortage.
srael on Sunday restricted fuel supplies to the 1.4m Palestinians living in Gaza, part of a crackdown on militants operating in the coastal strip and the latest attempt to weaken the grip on the territory of Hamas, the Islamist movement.
Ehud Barak, defence minister, last week gave the green light to a plan to reduce the flow of electricity and fuel into the strip. His decision was prompted by the recent rise in the number of rockets fired from inside Gaza at the Israeli town of Sderot.
The main Middle Eastern issue being discussed in the US these days is not Iraq, Arab-Israeli peacemaking, or Turkish-Kurdish-Iraqi tensions, but rather what to do about Iran and its perceived threat to the region, the US and the world. The Bush administration sets a shrill and aggressive tone on this and is taking action, including this week's new sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, its Quds Force, and several banks.
bitterlemons: We've heard recently Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert talk about the outlying neighborhoods of Jerusalem and that Israel might be willing to "divide" Jerusalem. What do you make of this?
Husseini: First of all, we've been hearing such ideas for a while, but we also see the objections from many others in Israel, so we can't really trust these statements.
Thousands of people and one very active Internet site have been busy these days with Khaled Al-Mudallal's right to return - that is, his right to return to the University of Bradford in England. Mudallal, 22, was supposed to be devoting his entire attention right now to his last year of studies for a bachelor's degree in business administration. But instead, he is stuck in Rafah and cannot see how he will be able to leave the Gaza Strip and finish his studies.
Do not belittle the Annapolis summit. Despite all the prophecies of failure, justified as they are, this summit could still make an important contribution to the history of Israeli-Arab negotiations: For the first time, it will become crystal-clear who aspires toward peace and, more important, who flees from it as if from fire.
President George W. Bush's approval ratings may be in the doldrums and he's only got just over another year to go, but before we order the celebratory fireworks here's a thought. The next American president could make this one look like a boy scout.
As the months pass, the next election looks like a race between Democrat Hillary Clinton and the former mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani for the Republicans. I'm no fan of the coolly calculating Clinton but given the alternative, she's the one I'll be rooting for.
Sit any Friday afternoon on the corner of el-Wad St. and St. Stephen's Road in Jerusalem's Old City, just opposite the Austrian Hospice. Thousands of Muslim worshipers throng to the mosques on Haram al-Sharif. Additional thousands of Orthodox Jews flock to prayers at the Western Wall. And the brown-robed Franciscans bearing the cross turn the corner and proceed to the Third Station of the Cross.
How will/will current path lead Gazans toward a two-state solution?
As a journalist in Gaza, from what I see, all that people care about are the burdens of daily life. No one is talking about Annapolis, about two states. The suffering is extreme. The closure is so severe that it has touched every sector of the Gaza Strip, from businessmen, to farmers, to students, to workers.
Worth noting this past week is an op-ed published on National Review Online by David Feith and Andrew M. Steinberg on why the recent appeal by “some giants of the American political establishment” — namely, “Zbigniew Brzezinski, Brent Scowcroft, Lee Hamilton, and other former high-ranking officials” — for the U.S.
Last Sunday, Hamas government spokesperson, Ghazi Hamad, was alleged to have issued a five page letter in which he criticized and questioned Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip in June. The former editor-in-chief of the Hamas-affiliated weekly Al-Risala has denied the letter’s existence in which he ostensibly declared that the events in June, which resulted in the current duopoly of Palestine, was a “serious strategic mistake that burdened the movement more than it can bear”.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/5821
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/5821
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/5821
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.americantaskforce.org/world_press_roundup/20071029t000000
[6] http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/print/20071028rabitab.html
[7] http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-gazafuel29oct29,1,1670920.story?coll=la-headlines-world&ctrack=1&cset=true
[8] http://www.peacenow.org/mepr.asp?rid=&cid=4173
[9] http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/9998824a-85b1-11dc-8170-0000779fd2ac.html
[10] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=86295
[11] http://www.bitterlemons.org/issue/pal2.php
[12] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/917828.html
[13] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/917818.html
[14] http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10163652.html
[15] http://www.bitterlemons.org/issue/isr2.php
[16] http://middleeastprogress.org/2007/10/the-impact-of-closure/
[17] http://www.ips.org/blog/jimlobe/?p=77
[18] http://miftah.org/Display.cfm?DocId=15176&CategoryId=13
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