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Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel was formally indicted on three counts of corruption on Sunday, concluding a lengthy criminal investigation that had forced him to resign.
According to the 61-page indictment, which the attorney general, Menachem Mazuz, and the state prosecution presented to the Jerusalem District Court, Mr. Olmert is accused of crimes including fraud, breach of trust, falsifying corporate records and failing to report income. If convicted, he could face years in prison.
Israel has launched an air strike in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. There was damage, but no reports of injuries.
The Israeli air force bombed a tunnel the army said was meant to smuggle Palestinian terrorists from Gaza into Israel. A building over the entrance to the tunnel was destroyed about a kilometer and a-half from the Israeli border fence. The military said the air raid was in response to Palestinians firing a rocket into Israel on Saturday.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel has adopted a new policy of deterrence since he took office five months ago.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will reject any U.S. invitation to
resume peace talks with Israel unless Washington persuades Israel to freeze settlement activity, an aide said on Monday.
Explosions at two sensitive sites in the Gaza Strip [ID:nLU529969] have prompted speculation on Sunday that they were the work of al Qaeda-aligned radicals opposed to the Palestinian enclave's Islamist rulers Hamas.
Here are comments on key questions about the incidents:
WHO WAS BEHIND THE BOMBINGS?
No credible claim of responsibility has been made.
Israel may agree to a West Bank settlement freeze by mid-September and is discussing the technical aspects of a deal with the United States, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said on Monday.
Solana also said after meeting the Israeli premier that a summit between the US, Israeli and Palestinian leaders to relaunch the dormant peace process could take place on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly at the end of September.
Hamas hinted on Monday that Fatah officials who have been in the West Bank for their party’s recent convention might not be allowed to return to the Gaza Strip.
“The Gaza Strip is accessible for all Palestinian people, but officially and in coordination with the government in Gaza. It is not accessible for those who violated the law and coordinated with occupation,” Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum told Ma’an.
Israeli authorities decided to open all three border terminals with the Gaza Strip on Monday for commercial shipments and humanitarian aid, according to Palestinian crossings official Raed Fattouh.
Fattouh said 87 to 97 trucks of merchandise would be delivered to the Strip through the Kerem Shalom crossing. Meanwhile, the Nahal Oz crossing will be open for fuel and cooking gas deliveries, he said.
The crossings official added that the Karni terminal, which is usually closed, would operate for trucks loaded with wheat and animal feed on Monday.
A Military Police investigation into a soldier's killing of a Palestinian near Hebron in January has been going on for seven and a half months, and there is still no end in sight. Yet the sector commander has been giving briefings for the past few months based on his own inquiry into the incident, which he describes as "a serious failure in moral and professional terms."
Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal has promised to include the release of Jordanian prisoners held in Israeli prisons as part of a prisoner exchange deal meant to secure the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit, Jordanian newspaper al-Arab al-Yawm quoted secretary of the National Committee for Jordanian Prisoners and Missing in Israeli Jails as saying.
The matter of Jordanian prisoners has surfaced in the past in talks for a Shalit deal as part of Hamas' demands of prisoners to be released in the second phase of the agreement.
Hamas condemned the United Nations on Sunday, saying it planned to teach Palestinian children in the Gaza Strip about the Holocaust – but the UN agency which runs schools in the enclave would not confirm any change.
Branding the Nazi genocide of the Jews "a lie invented by the Zionists", the Islamist movement which runs the Gaza Strip wrote in an open letter to a senior UN official that he should withdraw plans for a new history book in UN schools.
Hizbullah recruited an Israeli-Arab and ordered him to collect intelligence on IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi ahead of plans to assassinate him to avenge the death of the guerrilla group's military leader Imad Mughniyeh.
On Monday, an indictment was filed at the Petah Tikva District Court against Rawi Sultani, a 23-year-old Israeli-Arab from the town of Tira, alleging that he was recruited by Hizbullah in the summer of 2008 when he traveled to Morocco to attend a Balad Party summer camp.
The head of Hamas’ political bureau, Khaled Meshaal, pledged on Sunday his movement would continue its struggle for “the liberation of Palestine.”
Meshaal was addressing an audience at a tent set up in Sweileh, where he received condolences over the death of his father, Abdul Rahim Meshaal, who was buried on Saturday. “Hamas, which has a political vision, sticks to the land, Jerusalem, the right of return (for Palestinian refugees) and resistance as a way for the liberation of Palestine as well as to the political and diplomatic equations and other spheres of work,” Meshaal said.
If there is any truth in the reports that came out of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's trip to Europe - that the United States agreed Israel can go on building in East Jerusalem - the headlines should have read "Obama has pulled out of the Middle East peace process."
Two international opinion polls released this summer indicate that global views toward the US are improving – in no small part due to the election of Barack Obama as president. The polls, by the Pew Global Attitudes Project and worldpublicopinion.org, both stress that Obama is viewed positively in most of the countries surveyed, but questions remain in the Middle East about the direction of US policies.
When Israeli officials this week meet US Middle East envoy George Mitchell, when President Barack Obama unveils his Middle East peace plan at the UN in New York next month, and when Benjamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas hold a possible first encounter on the sidelines of the General Assembly, the common denominator issue will be Israeli settlement building. The Jewish outposts have for decades been one of the biggest obstacles in the way of a settlement but recently the issue has taken on a new dimension.
How much did the boycott of South Africa actually contribute to the fall of the racist regime? This week I talked with Desmond Tutu about this question, which has been on my mind for a long time.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/8628
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/8628
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/8628
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.americantaskforce.org/gala_2009
[6] http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/31/world/middleeast/31israel.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast
[7] http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-08-30-voa9.cfm
[8] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1111369.html
[9] http://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSLU613098
[10] http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jeFPA6a-73j4ReDF2e18VweEg0Rw
[11] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=222618
[12] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=222536
[13] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1111235.html
[14] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3769707,00.html
[15] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3769461,00.html
[16] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1251145159215&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[17] http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4&section=0&article=125942&d=31&m=8&y=2009
[18] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1111250.html
[19] http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=105903
[20] http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=125934&d=31&m=8&y=2009
[21] http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=125935&d=31&m=8&y=2009
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