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There's more than a bit of Sam Adams in David Khoury, the mayor of this tiny Christian village in the occupied West Bank. Along with being a politician and patriot, he is a brewer, and he sees the craft as a symbol of the Palestinian state he hopes will emerge here one day.
The U.N. Human Rights Council on Friday shelved a controversial report on Israel's recent war in the Gaza Strip, averting a crisis in the push to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks but potentially scuttling efforts to initiate broad war-crimes prosecutions over the conflict.
Israeli police shut down access to key Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem's Old City on Sunday, spurring Palestinian protesters to throw rocks and bottles in protest – marking the second consecutive Sunday of disturbances near the city's overlapping points of prayer for Jews and Muslims.
Peace talks with Israel are in deadlock and tear gas and rocks are flying at Jerusalem's holy sites, but for all the mounting frustration in the West Bank talk of a Third Intifada seems premature to most Palestinians.
A week after Israeli forces clashed with hundreds of Arabs who believed expansionist Jewish settlers were trying to enter the al-Aqsa mosque compound, there were scuffles again on Sunday and tension will remain high this week during holidays that draw Jewish worshippers to the Western Wall, close to the mosque.
Critics accused Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Sunday of letting down his people by bowing to U.S. pressure and postponing action on a U.N. report that criticised Israel's offensive in Gaza.
The Palestinian Authority agreed in Geneva on Friday to defer a vote in the United Nations Human Rights Council on a resolution that would have condemned Israel's failure to cooperate with a U.N. war crimes investigation led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone. It would also have forwarded his report to the Security Council.
Engulfed by domestic outrage, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas rushed Sunday to limit the fallout from his decision to suspend efforts to have Israeli officials prosecuted for war crimes over last winter's military offensive in Gaza.
The decision set off a wave of condemnation, not just from his Islamic militant Hamas rivals, but also Palestinian human rights groups, intellectuals and commentators. Leading members of the Palestine Liberation Organization and even Abbas' own Fatah movement quickly distanced themselves, saying they had been taken by surprise.
As what many believe will be a decisive round of unity talks for Palestinian factions approach, the 13 participating Palestinian factions are abuzz with comments and criticism around the contents of Egypt’s “Conciliation Proposal,” a detailed plan based on the cumulative agreements from several rounds of talks in Cairo.
The elements of the Egyptian plan include proposals on elections, security, detainees, government, and the function and structure of a supervisory committee to oversee the process.
Elections
The Palestinian Authority has been waging a diplomatic campaign against Israel for the past two weeks over what it terms "provocations" on the Temple Mount.
At a closed briefing for foreign ambassadors last Tuesday, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad warned that the situation on the mount could quickly deteriorate into a "loss of control" by the PA and asked them to submit official protests to Israel over its "provocations" there, a senior Israeli government official said.
Vice Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon recently canceled a planned trip to Britain for fear of being arrested there.
Ya'alon was invited to London to attend a fund-raising dinner for Benji's Home, a group home for soldiers with no family in Israel. The project is the initiative of the parents of Maj. Benji Hillman, who was killed in the Second Lebanon War.
Ya'alon was asked to attend the dinner by the British branch of the Jewish National Fund, which is helping the Hillmans raise money for the project, and said he would if the Foreign Ministry's legal department okayed it.
Palestinian sources told Ynet the United States has reiterated its commitment to the Palestinian Authority in recent days to reach a peace deal with Israel within two years, based on the Road Map and the 1967 borders.
The sources said that in light of the PA's position on the Goldstone Report on Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, the Americans said they would continue to pressure Israel in the matter of settlements, and said this would be put into action in the coming days with special Mideast envoy George Mitchell's visit to the region.
A reporter for the Arab-Israeli news website PLS48.net was injured during the riots that broke out Sunday morning at the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem's Old City. He claims a police officer struck him with a baton and disappeared. Police reject the claims.
Reporter Abdallah Zidan arrived at the Temple Mount at dawn to cover the prayers for his website, which is sponsored by the Islamic Movement's northern branch.
The address last week by US Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner to the UN Human Rights Council on the Goldstone Report must have been music to Israel's ears.
Posner said almost exactly what Israel has been trying to say, without much success, ever since the report was published last month.
Here are some of those statements:
• We believe that the document is deeply flawed and disagree sharply with its methodology and many of its recommendations, including their extraordinarily broad scope.
As part of its attempt to jumpstart Israeli-Palestinian discussions, the US administration has in recent months put forth a significant effort to persuade different Arab nations, headed by the Gulf states, to make certain gestures toward Israel. While in geopolitical terms the Arab-Israeli arena and the Persian Gulf arena are separate, the Persian Gulf states are nonetheless directly or indirectly involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict and are influenced by Israeli-Palestinian relations.
The protesters threw stones and bottles at the police, who responded with tear gas and stun grenades.
Several Palestinians are reported to have been detained, including a former minister, Hatem Abdulqader.
The Israeli police said they had closed the compound because Palestinians had planned a mass gathering there.
Palestinians say they are trying to protect the site, known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount, from Jewish hardliners, who they fear intend to desecrate it.
The United Nations' refugee agency is planning to include the Holocaust in a new human-rights curriculum for pupils in its Gaza secondary schools despite strident opposition to the idea from within Hamas.
John Ging, the UN Relief and Works Agency's (UNRWA) director of operations in Gaza, told The Independent that he was "confident and determined" that the Holocaust would feature for the first time in a wide-ranging curriculum that is being drafted.
In parallel with the United Nations General Assembly meetings held in New York last month, US President Barak Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas.
THINGS have changed over the past decade between Palestinians and the United States, and much for the better. Yasser Arafat was enticed to attend the Camp David meeting in 2000 with the promise that he would not be blamed if it failed. It did, and he was. Last week Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was invited to attend the New York meeting without any such promise. He was not blamed, and the meeting was not a failure.
The meeting dealt with both an immediate crisis and a long-term strategic goal.
Links:
[1] http://www.americantaskforce.org/print/9126
[2] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printmail/9126
[3] http://www.americantaskforce.org/printpdf/9126
[4] http://www.americantaskforce.org/rss/wpr
[5] http://www.americantaskforce.org/gala_2009
[6] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/04/AR2009100401798.html
[7] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/02/AR2009100203935.html
[8] http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1004/p06s04-wome.html
[9] http://www.reuters.com/article/middleeastCrisis/idUSL1117612
[10] http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSL4539077
[11] http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioi_0jtO9RjMwPNRoXNCndRPRq3gD9B4F0EG0
[12] http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=228469
[13] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1118884.html
[14] http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1118866.html
[15] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3785601,00.html
[16] http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3785465,00.html
[17] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1254673320188
[18] http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1254393078556&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
[19] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8289555.stm
[20] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/teach-gaza-children-about-holocaust-un-tells-hamas-1797763.html
[21] http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/business/10354629.html
[22] http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=127040&d=4&m=10&y=2009
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