Ron Bousso | Jerusalem | Nov 6

AFP - Israel kept mum on Friday on Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's announcement that he will not seek re-election, but officials said the Jewish state is keen on the moderate remaining in office.

The government has refrained from officially commenting on Abbas's announcement late on Thursday that he would not stand in the Palestinian general election he has called for January.

"This is an internal (Palestinian) affair," Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told public radio. "We don't interfere in others' internal affairs.

** Mahmoud Abbas feels betrayed by Barack Obama
** Arab League chief asks Abbas to run in election

Ilene R. Prushe | Ramallah, West Bank | Nov 3

CSM - Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad brought the PA back from the brink once. Now he wants to create Palestinian settlements, in effect, to counter Israeli moves.

Palestinian elections are scheduled to be held in less than three months, but the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority (PA), Salam Fayyad, isn't concerned about running for office.

Rather, he's set his sights on a longer-term platform: establishing a Palestinian state by 2011 – a goal he outlined recently in a clear, well-organized booklet titled "Palestine: Ending the Occupation, Establishing the State."

"All I'm campaigning for is the two-year statehood program," said Dr. Fayyad in an interview Sunday. "The idea is unabashedly that two years down the road, we will have something that will look like a Palestinian state."

Karen DeYoung and Howard Schneider | Jerusalem | Nov 1

WaPo - Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Saturday that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had offered "unprecedented" concessions on West Bank settlement construction in an effort to restart peace talks, a departure from the administration's earlier criticism of Israel and a possible signal of impatience with the refusal of Palestinian leaders to join negotiations.

At the start of a day of diplomacy that stretched from Abu Dhabi to Jerusalem, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas rejected Israel's latest offer, relayed by Clinton, to curb most West Bank construction.

The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said the plan would have excluded about 3,000 Israeli housing units under construction and would not have applied to East Jerusalem -- thus falling well short of what has become a firm Palestinian demand for resuming direct talks with Israel.

"The U.S. said that is the best they can get" from Netanyahu, even though the Obama administration considers settlements 'illegal and illegitimate,' " Erekat said. The Palestinians will not accept a resumption of talks on that basis, he said.

Unprecedented would be Clinton expecting and demanding Israel to follow UN resolutions. The best they can get? I bet cutting defense aid might turn some heads. And this should go over real well:

AFP - Israel's premier savoured a victory on Sunday after Washington hailed his "unprecedented" position on settlements and backed his call for peace talks to resume without the construction freeze sought by the Palestinians.

"There is no question that the United States are our staunchest friends and that Israel's firm stance on its positions pays off," Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon happily told public radio on Sunday.

Speaking before the weekly cabinet meeting, Science and Technology Minister Daniel Hershkowitz proclaimed: "The US administration understands what we have always said -- that the real obstacle to negotiations are the Palestinians."

This is not good:

Palestinians expressed deep disappointment and frustration at Clinton's words, which signaled a departure from past U.S. calls for a complete freeze on settlement activity.

"If America cannot get Israel to implement a settlement freeze, what chance do Palestinians have of reaching agreement with Israel on permanent status issues?" Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.

Similar sentiments were voiced by Jordan and Egypt, the only two Arab countries to have peace agreements with Israel. The two countries said most of the blame lay with Israel, but signaled their unhappiness with the American shift.

Jordan's King Abdullah II traveled to Cairo for talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. After the meeting, a royal palace statement released in Jordan said both leaders "insisted on the need for an immediate halt of all Israeli unilateral actions, which undermine the chances of achieving peace, especially the settlement construction."

Nov 2/Reuters - The Arab League chief said Arab states shared the Palestinian position that resuming negotiations was futile without a freeze on settlement expansion.

"I am telling you that all of us, including Saudi Arabia, including Egypt, are deeply disappointed ... with the results, with the fact that Israel can get away with anything without any firm stand that this cannot be done," Moussa(Arab League Secretary-General) told reporters.

** Abbas spokesman: Netanyahu has more influence in US than in Israel
** Palestinians accuse Clinton of hurting peace talks
** Clinton: Mideast Talks Should Resume Without Preconditions
** Bibi to Palestinians: ‘Get a grip’

Oct 31

AFP - The US House of Representatives is expected to vote Tuesday on a resolution calling on President Barack Obama to reject the UN's Goldstone report, which accuses Israel and Palestinian militants of war crimes in Gaza.

The bipartisan proposal calls on President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton "to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration" of the Goldsone report, dismissing it as "irredeemably biased and unworthy of further consideration or legitimacy."

The measure also "reaffirms its support for the democratic, Jewish state of Israel, for Israel's security and right to self-defense," as well as "Israel's right to defend its citizens from violent militant groups and their state sponsors."

When will Congress reaffirm its support for the rights of Palestinians? Don't hold your breath, I can see Congress disavowing the report...except for wrongs done by Palestine

Ilene R. Prusher | Jerusalem | Oct 29

CSM - J Street challenges the dominant role AIPAC has played in defining how US Jews see Israel. Why is a prominent Israeli politician not attending J Street's national conference in Washington this week?.

Since the 1950s the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has been the mainstream voice of the Jewish-American community and its efforts to strengthen support for Israel in Washington.

Along comes J Street, a young upstart founded last year, in part as an answer to AIPAC – perceived by many progressive American Jews to have a clear right-wing tilt, and hardly representative of those want to see a much more aggressive push towards a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

J Street, in the thick of its first national conference in Washington that began Sunday and concludes Wednesday, has attracted 1,500 attendees – above and beyond what its organizers expected. Perhaps more interestingly, it has attracted the attention of the highest levels of government and diplomacy, and has the blogosphere buzzing about what it all means for the future of US-Israel relations.

National Security Adviser General James Jones, one of the most senior US officials to address the conference, told J Street participants Tuesday that the Obama administration believes that "Israeli security and peace are inseparable." But what's been particularly noticeable is who among beltway powerbrokers is not making his way over to the conference at the Grand Hyatt. Missing is Michael Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the US appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ian Black | Oct 28

The Guardian - Ehud Olmert, Israel's prime minister during the Gaza war, would probably face arrest on war crimes charges if he visited Britain, according to a UK lawyer who is working to expand the application of "universal jurisdiction" for offences involving serious human rights abuses committed anywhere in the world.

Neither Olmert nor Tzipi Livni, the foreign minister during the Cast Lead offensive, and a member of Israel's war cabinet, would enjoy immunity from prosecution for alleged breaches of the Geneva conventions, predicted Daniel Machover, who is involved in intensifying legal work after the controversial Goldstone report on the three-week conflict. Neither are ministers any longer.

Prosecutions of Israeli political and military figures remain likely despite the failure to obtain an arrest warrant for Ehud Barak, the defence minister, when he visited the UK earlier this month, he said. In the Barak case a magistrate accepted advice from the Foreign Office that the minister enjoyed state immunity and rejected an application made on behalf of several residents of the Gaza Strip.

"This needs to be tested at the right time and in the right place," Machover said. "One day one of these people will make a mistake and go to the wrong country and face a criminal process — and then it'll be a matter for the courts of that country to give them a fair trial: that's what the Palestinian victims want."

Oct 27

BBC - Israel is denying Palestinians access to even the basic minimum of clean, safe water, Amnesty International says.

In a report, the human rights group says Israeli water restrictions discriminate against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

It says that in Gaza, Israel's blockade has brought the water and sewage system to "crisis point".

Israel says the report is flawed and the Palestinians get more water than was agreed under the 1990s peace deal.

In the 112-page report, Amnesty says that on average Palestinian daily water consumption reaches 70 litres a day, compared with 300 litres for the Israelis.

It says that some Palestinians barely get 20 litres a day - the minimum recommended even in humanitarian emergencies.

Amnesty says that Israel denies West Bank Palestinians to dig wells, and has even destroyed cisterns and impounded water tankers.

At the same time, the report claims, Israeli settlers are enjoying swimming pools and green gardens.

Jerusalem | Oct 22

AFP - A representative of Israel's Atomic Energy Commission held several meetings with an Iranian official to discuss nuclear issues in the region, the commission's spokeswoman said on Thursday.

The spokeswoman declined to give details of the meetings, but the Haaretz daily said the officials discussed the chances of declaring the Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

"There were several meetings between a representative of our commission and an Iranian official in a regional context," spokeswoman Yael Doron told AFP.

"These meetings were held behind closed doors," she said, adding that they were organised by Australia.

She declined to give further details of the talks, the first between the two archfoes to be officially disclosed since the shah of Iran was deposed in 1979.

Judith Miller & David Samuels | Oct 22

The Independent - You might think Palestinian refugees would be welcomed by their Arab neighbours, yet they are denied basic rights and citizenship

It is a cynical but time-honoured practice in Middle Eastern politics: the statesmen who decry the political and humanitarian crisis of the approximately 3.9 million Palestinians in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Gaza ignore the plight of an estimated 4.6 million Palestinians who live in Arab countries. For decades, Arab governments have justified their decision to maintain millions of stateless Palestinians as refugees in squalid camps as a means of applying pressure to Israel. The refugee problem will be solved, they say, when Israel agrees to let the Palestinians have their own state.

Yet in the two decades since the end of the Cold War, after two Gulf wars, and the rise and fall of the Oslo peace process, not a single Palestinian refugee has returned to Israel – and only a handful of ageing political functionaries have returned from neighbouring Arab countries to the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, failed peace plans and shifting political priorities have resulted in a second Palestinian "Nakba", or catastrophe – this one at hands of the Arab governments. "Marginalised, deprived of basic political and economic rights, trapped in the camps, bereft of realistic prospects, heavily armed and standing atop multiple fault lines," a report by the International Crisis Group (ICG) in Lebanon recently observed, "the refugee population constitutes a time bomb."

Howard Schneider | Oct 20

WaPo - A Palestinian cooperative looks to trade olive oil for foreign cash

For centuries, olive harvesting here has been a mostly local industry.

Farmers, their relatives and neighbors beat the trees with sticks or strip the olives from branches by hand, then cart them to a local press and sell or trade the oil in nearby markets. Harvest workers keep a share of the crop for their labor, and olive press owners keep a share of the oil -- a testament to the small-scale, bartered nature of the undertaking.

That model can help sustain a household, but in a new factory on the outskirts of this northern West Bank village, an effort is underway to reshape the olive industry so it can help sustain a wider Palestinian economy.

With savvy marketing in the United States and Europe, and fair-trade and organic certifications that attract top dollar from Western consumers, a six-year-old farmers cooperative is breaking some of the traditional bounds of the olive industry and beginning to pull in hard currency from abroad.

The Palestine Fair Trade Association now has 1,200 farmers and 20 olive press owners who take advantage of a guaranteed "fair trade" price from Canaan Fair Trade, an affiliated company set up to market Palestinian-made products abroad. The arrangement means higher prices for the farmers and, perhaps as important, a way to turn the year's crop into a lump sum of cash, rather than the trickle of money many received by selling oil or olives through the year.

Bradley Burston | Oct 15

Haaretz - I put off reading the Goldstone report the same way I put off scheduling a colonoscopy. I now realize it was for many of the same reasons. You know it's going to be tremendously uncomfortable, you don't want to know what they're going to find, and the consequences could be life-threatening. I know that I am not alone. Despite the many people who have made strident declarations about the report, few have actually read it, end to end.

It's a tough slog, the hundreds of pages of the UN-sponsored report on allegations of war crimes in Gaza. The material is infuriating at times, the content inconsistent, the methodology slapdash. But for anyone who cares about the future of this place, and for anyone who has paid close attention to the hyperbole and factual errors of Israeli leaders in condemning it, the read is more than worthwhile - if only for the key element of its surprise ending: A marked degree of fairness.

It does not question the right of Israel - or, for that matter, the Palestinians - to self-defense, but it accuses both sides of having resorted to war crimes in the course of, or in the name of, defending themselves. The inquiry breaks new ground for the UN, and breaks sharply from its original mandate, in addressing Palestinian attacks against Israeli civilians.

Tel Aviv | Oct 12

Reuters - Israel and the United States will hold their biggest joint air-defence exercise next week, the Israeli military said, testing missile interceptors that would serve as a strategic bulwark in any showdown with Iran.

The drill, dubbed Juniper Cobra, has taken place every two years since 2001 but now underscores efforts by the Americans to reassure Israel as they and other world powers pursue negotiations to curb Iran's nuclear programme.

An Israeli defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the manoeuvres would begin on Oct. 20, having been postponed from their original Oct. 12 start-date.

But a military spokeswoman, Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Leibovich, said holding the exercise next week did not constitute a postponement.

"The exercise will happen next week in accordance with the original plan," she said.

U.S. forces including 17 naval ships and ground personnel operating the Aegis, THAAD and Patriot missile shields will be meshed with Israel's Arrow II interceptor for the drill, the defence official said.

"It will be the biggest Juniper Cobra ever," the official said, adding the exercise would be overseen by Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, chief of the U.S. Navy's Sixth Fleet, as well as by the commander of Israel's air defence arm.

Oct 11

Haaretz - Turkey has dropped Israel's participation in the joint air-force drill planned to take place within the country's jurisdiction, as reported on Israel Radio on Sunday.

The annual drill was scheduled to begin on Monday with air-forces from the U.S., NATO, Italy and Israel but was delayed to an unknown date after the U.S. withdrew its participation following Turkey's request to ban Israel from the exercise.

Israel-Turkey relations have been tense since Cast Lead, especially in light of a televised fracas between President Shimon Peres and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the Davos Conference this past January.

JPost - Defense officials told the Post that Turkey informed Israel of the cancellation of the Anatolian Eagle exercise last week, which was to also include US, Italian and NATO forces, saying this was because the planes that Israel was going to send likely bombed Hamas targets during Operation Cast Lead in the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

Patrick Martin | Jerusalem | October 9

The Globe and Mail - It wasn't so much because of Barack Obama, but a surprising mood of peace prevailed over most of Jerusalem Friday.

Surprising because, all week long, tensions had been building throughout the city, and Friday’s midday prayers at the al-Aqsa mosque in the Old City were expected to be the climax.

Simon McGregor-Wood | Jerusalem | Oct 6

ABC News - The U.S. ally is being accused by Palestinians of colluding with Israel and the United States in sidelining the controversial Goldstone report on Israel's military operation in Gaza.

The U.N.-sponsored report attracted widespread coverage last month with its stark allegations that both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes. Israel launched a concerted campaign to discredit the report. Most Palestinians saw it as a valuable diplomatic weapon with which to pressure Israel.

But, in Geneva Friday, Abbas, under pressure from the United States and Israel, agreed to defer a U.N. Human Rights Council vote on the report until next March, effectively burying it.

The story has outraged Palestinians across the political spectrum. Abbas is being accused of treachery. Even his moderate Fatah colleagues have publicly expressed their dismay

AP - Syria has postponed a planned visit by the Palestinian President amid controversy about his decision to suspend efforts to have Israeli officials prosecuted for war crimes

AFP - Chief Palestinian negotiator Erekat says Palestinian president 'seriously considering' asking Arab and Islamic bloc to officially take UN committee's conclusions on Gaza war to international bodies, in light of controversy raised around report

Oct 3

Al Jazeera - Barack Obama, the US president, has agreed to abide by a 40-year policy of allowing Israel to keep nuclear weapons without opening them to international inspection, according to a US newspaper.

In a report on Saturday, The Washington Times quoted three unnamed sources as saying Obama had confirmed to Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, that he would maintain the "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

The incident reportedly occurred when the two met at the White House in Washington DC in May.

Ari Rabinovitch | Jerusalem | Oct 2

Reuters - Israel on Friday received a video of a captured soldier and released 19 Palestinian women from its jails in a deal with the Islamist group Hamas that could be a step towards a larger prisoner swap.

Israeli officials said the video of Gilad Shalit, who was captured in June 2006 by Palestinian militants in a cross-border raid, was authenticated before the women were released.

A convoy of Red Cross jeeps carried 18 women through the Beitunya checkpoint into the West Bank and the 19th was taken into the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. A 20th woman prisoner will be released on Sunday, officials said.

No details of what the video shows were immediately released, but a militant source in Gaza said it showed Shalit dressed in civilian clothes and was recorded two months ago.

In November 2005, reports surfaced that that Germany would sell Israel 2 AIP-equipped SSK Dolphin Class submarines. In 2006, the deal was finalized at a total of $1.27 billion, with the German government picking up 1/3 of the cost. The new boats were built at the Howaldtswerke-Deutche Werft AG (HDW) shipyard, in the Baltic Sea coastal city of Kiel.

Now, reports indicate that both submarines have been delivered early…

The Dolphin Class, and Its Improvements

The Dolphins are quiet diesel-electric attack submarines that evolved from Germany’s famous and ubiquitous U209 Class. They can fire torpedoes and missiles from their 533mm torpedo tubes, perform underwater surveillance, and even launch combat swimmers via a wet and dry compartment.

Germany had already donated two Dolphin submarines to the Israeli navy after the Gulf War in the early 1990s. The first-of-class INS (Israeli Naval Ship) Dolphin was commissioned in 1999, while INS Leviathan was commissioned in 2000. The Israelis later bought a 3rd submarine for $350 million total, using a 50/50 shared cost arrangement with the German government. INS Tekuma (“revival, renewal”) also entered service in 2000.

A hostile takeover of Zionism

Israel is teetering toward theocracy, with the rise of the Haredim.

.....In the Haredim, the religious Zionists have acquired potent allies. Their followers obey orders without question. “They fear excommunication,” explained Prof. Ben Yehuda. “They are largely unprepared for surviving outside their tight-knit communities.”

The two groups are united in wanting greater religiosity in Israel.

They seek strict adherence to Biblical rules governing the Sabbath, to Halachic rules concerning food, to age-old traditions of separating men from women, and to the strict observance of Orthodoxy in all aspects of people's lives, from birth, through education, marriage and death to burial.

They also want their rules to be followed in deciding just who is a Jew and who therefore can enjoy the privileges of a Jewish state.

To obtain these goals they have influenced the platforms and growth of political parties, appointments to the rabbinical courts and government policy.

As a result, religious schools get a disproportionate share of the education budget, El Al planes don't fly on the Sabbath and publicly run buses are segregated on a growing number of runs. More

Ramallah | Sept 24

UPI - Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad says the Palestinian Authority plans to proclaim a de facto state by 2011.

A vital component in that historic undertaking will be the U.S.-trained Palestinian security forces
fanning out across the West Bank to re-establish order. But some Israelis see this new force as a threat.

Palestinian leaders say they can no longer sit and wait for the U.S.-driven peace process to stumble forward. Taking a leaf out of the Israelis' book, they are seeking to establish their own "facts on the ground" -- and a functioning security apparatus is one of the most important.

UPI | Cairo | Sept 23

UPI - Damascus in a report submitted to the United Nations claims Israel is burying nuclear waste, and possibly more, in the occupied Golan Heights.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry in a report linked to allegations of human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories blames Israel for "the crime" of disposing of nuclear, radioactive and other hazardous waste in tunnels throughout the Golan Heights.

The Damascus complaint says the move is part of an effort to prevent Syria from reclaiming the territory occupied and later annexed by Israel, the government-backed Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram reports.

It's really hard not to categorize this as "Humor & Satire".

The Gaza Report’s Wasted Opportunity

Israel intentionally went after civilians in Gaza — and wrapped its intention in lies. That chilling — and misguided — accusation is the key conclusion of the United Nations investigation...

The report stunned even seasoned Israeli diplomats who expected no quarter from an inquiry set up by the United Nations Human Rights Council, which they believe to be deeply biased against Israel. They expected the military operation to be condemned as grossly disproportionate. They expected Israel to be lambasted for not taking sufficient care to avoid civilian casualties. But they never imagined that the report would accuse the Jewish state of intentionally aiming at civilians.

Zafrir Rinat | New York | September 17

Ha'aretz - The water supply in the Gaza Strip is on the very of collapse due to pollution that has been worsened by damage to infrastructure during Operation Cast Lead, according to a United Nations Environment Program report released Tuesday.

Sewage contamination of the water table far exceeds allowable levels set by the World Health Organization, the report states. The UN report notes that it will take more than 20 years and a billion dollars to rehabilitate the water system in Gaza.

Donald Macintyre | Jerusalem | Sept 16

The Independent - Report also censures Hamas but accuses Israelis of punishing entire population of the Palestinian Strip

Israel targeted "the people of Gaza as a whole" in the three-week military operation which is estimated to have killed more than 1,300 Palestinians at the beginning of this year, according to a UN-commissioned report published yesterday.

A UN fact-finding mission led by the South African judge Richard Goldstone said Israel should face prosecution by the International Criminal Court unless it opened independent investigations of what the report said were repeated violations of international law, "possible war crimes and crimes against humanity" during the operation.

Using by far the strongest language of any of the numerous reports criticising Operation Cast Lead, the UN mission, which interviewed victims, witnesses and others in Gaza and Geneva this summer, says that, while Israel had portrayed the war as self-defence in response to Hamas rocket attacks, it "considers the plan to have been directed, at least in part, at a different target: the people of Gaza as a whole.

"In this respect the operations were in furtherance of an overall policy aimed at punishing the Gaza population for its resilience and for its apparent support for Hamas, and possibly with the intent of forcing a change in such support," the report said.

The 575-page document presented to yesterday's session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva was swiftly denounced by Israel. The foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said the UN mission had "dealt a huge blow to governments seeking to defend their citizens from terror", and that its conclusions were "so disconnected with realities on the ground that one cannot but wonder on which planet was the Gaza Strip they visited".

Vicky Buffery | Paris | Sept 9

Reuters - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has accused Israel of genocide against the Palestinian people, telling a French newspaper that the bombing of Gaza late last year was an unprovoked attack.

"The question is not whether the Israelis want to exterminate the Palestinians. They're doing it openly," Chavez said in an interview with Le Figaro published on Wednesday.

The Venezuelan president, who has just completed a tour of Middle Eastern and Arab countries, brushed aside Israeli assertions that its attack on Gaza was a response to rocket fire from Islamist group Hamas which rules the coastal enclave.

"What was it if not genocide? ... The Israelis were looking for an excuse to exterminate the Palestinians," Chavez said, adding that sanctions should have been slapped on Israel.