 KHALED ABU TOAMEH
The Palestinian Authority on Sunday demanded a public apology from one of the most prominent Islamic scholars, who called for stoning President Mahmoud Abbas to death. Egyptian scholar Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi said that if it is proven that Abbas had instigated Operation Cast Lead against the Gaza Strip, he must be stoned. "During the debate raised over the UN's Goldstone Report that accused Israel of war crimes against Gaza, there were reports that Abbas encouraged Israel to launch its attack," Qaradawi said in a Friday khutba (sermon) at the Omar bin al-Khattab mosque in Doha, Qatar. "There also were reports that he foiled a vote on the report by the UN Human Rights Council," he said, calling on the Arab League to investigate the matter. "If it is proven that Abbas instigated the Israeli war against Gaza, he deserves to be publicly stoned in Mecca because this would be a betrayal on his part," he added. Qaradawi emphasized, however, that he was not issuing a fatwa, or Islamic religious decree, against Abbas. He said his appeal was aimed at prompting the Arab League and other Arab and Islamic groups to launch an inquiry into Abbas's alleged involvement in the war. PA Minister for Religious Affairs Mahmoud Habbash strongly condemned Qara-dawi's statements against Abbas and demanded that he publicly apologize to the Palestinians for insulting their president. Habbash accused Qaradawi, who is a Qatari citizen living in Doha, of exploiting his status and the podium offered him in mosques for incitement and slander. The PA's official news agency, Wafa, noted that Qaradawi was the one who had issued fatwas allowing Hamas to kill innocent Palestinians in theGaza Strip. The agency said that the scholar was being ungrateful to Abbas, who was the one who found him a job in Qatar when the PA president was a senior government official in the emirate. JPost 
 France on Friday urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to stay in office despite his recent announcement that he will not seek re-election. Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said he will travel to the Middle East in the coming days and would hold talks with Abbas, whose decision was seen in Paris as a new "threat to peace." "I will press Mahmud Abbas to obstinately continue his work for peace, that is, for the creation of a Palestinian state," Kouchner said in Paris. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman dismissed Abbas' announcement as an empty threat, saying it was "nothing to get worked up about." "He has resigned in the past during his tenure as Palestinian prime minister under chairman Yasser Arafat," said Lieberman, who is the first senior Israeli official to comment on Abbas' announcement. Another official said Jerusalem had no intention of abandoning the efforts to jumpstart the peace talks "as soon as possible and without preconditions." In Cairo, Arab League chief Amr Mussa urged Abbas to reconsider his decision and assured the beleaguered leader of his support, Egyptian state news agency MENA reported. Source: YNet
 THE Obama administration's quest to restart Middle East peace talks looks increasingly doomed after the influential Arab League yesterday said there was a sense of failure around the US efforts. Secretary-General of the Arab League Amr Moussa said "failure is in the atmosphere" following Israel's refusal to bow to calls from Washington to halt growth in Jewish settlements in the West Bank. His comment was made in Morocco during a visit by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who sought before an Arab audience to soften her weekend praise of Israel that the Netanyahu government had made an "unprecedented" effort by agreeing to a temporary halt to new settlements. While Israel is prepared to resume peace talks, Palestinian leaders insist they will not unless there is a complete freeze of settlements. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said yesterday Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had restated this to US Middle East envoy George Mitchell. "We do not put conditions for resuming negotiations, but we want the talks resumed on the basis of the provisions of the road map, which stipulates the cessation of all forms of settlement activity in the Palestinian territories," Mr Erekat said. Mrs Clinton's "unprecedented" comment in praise of Israel led to a backlash in the Arab world, which she tried to address yesterday. Earlier this year, US President Barack Obama and Mrs Clinton repeatedly stated that the US wanted Israel to halt all settlement activity. Israel refused to do this, saying such a policy would prevent "natural growth" of the settlements in which about 300,000 Jewish people live. The US has now clearly accepted that Israel will not agree to their request and is trying to salvage the peace process by crafting a new deal under which Israel will agree to a moratorium -- most likely for nine months -- to new settlement activity apart from 3000 new housing units already approved. Without the support of the bulk of the 22 Arab and Muslim countries in the Middle East, any peace agreement with Israel, which would give Israel landing rights and normalised relations with most of these countries, would be unlikely to hold. Mrs Clinton said yesterday: "The Obama administration's position on settlements is clear, unequivocal and it has not changed. "As the President has said on many occasions, the US does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements." While the Israeli offer of a temporary halt to new settlements "falls far short of what we would characterise as our position or what our preference would be", she said she would support any moves towards a two-state solution. "I will offer positive reinforcement to either of the parties when I believe they are taking steps that support the objective reaching a two-state solution," she said. Clearly seeking to appear to all sides to be balanced, Mrs Clinton yesterday used the same word -- unprecedented -- to praise the Palestinian Authority for improved security in the West Bank. But her balancing act does not appear to be working: Mr Abbas is under enormous pressure from his own ranks to refuse negotiations with Israel without a freeze on settlements. Since Mr Obama first called for a halt to building activity in the West Bank, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced Israel will proceed with 3000 new houses that had already been approved. Both major Palestinian factions -- Mr Abbas's Fatah faction and the militant Hamas faction that runs the Gaza Strip -- are strongly opposed to any talks without a freeze on settlements. Source: The Australian
 Iran has denied newspaper reports that its officials held secret talks recently with their Israeli counterparts to explore the possibility of declaring the Middle East a nuclear-free zone. The Haaretz on Thursday reported that Meirav Zafary-Odiz, of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, and Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), met several times on September 29 and 30 in Cairo, the Egyptian capital. But Ali Shirzadia, the spokesman for the Islamic Republic's atomic energy organisation, said there was no truth in the claim.
"This lie is a kind of psychological operation designed to affect the constant success of Iran's dynamic diplomacy in the Geneva and Vienna meetings," Shirzadia was quoted by Iran state television's website on Thursday as saying. The Haaretz report said that the talks in Cairo were the first direct meeting between official representatives of the two countries since the fall of the Shah in 1979. The meetings were held behind closed doors, and all participants committed to complete secrecy to allow a full and frank discussion, the paper said.
But it added that news of the talks was leaked by Australian sources to the Australian daily, The Age.
The reported meetings came amid controversy over Iran's nuclear programme. Western countries, notably the US, accuse Tehran of seeking to develop atomic weapons, but Iran insists its nuclear facilities are for non-military use.
Israel, which neither denies nor confirms possession of nuclear weapons, is said to have any where between 100 and 200 nuclear warheads, making it the sixth-largest nuclear power.
Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferataion Treaty (NPT), but Israel is not.
Haaretz reported the meetings were held at the Four Seasons Hotel under the auspices of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND). They were also attended by representatives of the Arab League, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Turkey, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, along with European and American officials.
During the meetings, Zafary-Odiz explained the Israeli policy of being willing, in principle, to discuss the Middle East as a nuclear-free zone, according to Haaretz.
The paper added that she detailed Israel's unique strategic situation, saying regional security must be strengthened, security arrangements agreed upon and a peace agreement sealed before Tel Aviv would feel at liberty to discuss nuclear disarmament. The exchanges between the two officials took place within three panel sessions, the paper reported. Each session dealt with one of the issues with which the ICNND is concerned - declaring the Middle East a nuclear-free zone, preventing nuclear proliferation in the region and matters of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Zafary-Odiz and Soltanieh did not meet or shake hands outside the sessions.
According to Haaretz, Soltanieh directly asked Zafary-Odiz in one of the sessions: "Do you or do you not have nuclear weapons?" Zafary-Odiz smiled, but did not respond. Source: Al Jazeera (English)
 By Khaled Abu Toameh Tens of thousands of Palestinians living in Jordan have been stripped of their Jordanian citizenship over the past few months. The Arab governments want the Palestinian issue to be Israel's problem alone. But Israel will never be able to handle this matter alone. Defending the measure, the Jordanians authorities claim that it is actually intended to help the Palestinians as it will thwart any attempt to settle them permanently in the kingdom. "Jordan is not Palestine and Palestine is not Jordan," the Jordanian Minister of the Interior, Nayef al-Kadi, explained. "The Palestinians should be allowed to return to their homes in Palestine." The US and its Western allies must press the Arab dictatorships to end their anti-Palestinian policies and start treating Palestinians in a better way.
One can imagine the response of the United Nations and European countries if the Knesset tomorrow approved a law that bans Palestinians from working in any profession or if Israel started stripping the 1.4 million Arabs of their citizenship. The next time the terms apartheid or oppression are used with reference to the Middle East, one must remember the intolerable conditions of Palestinians in most of the Arab countries. With a 70% Palestinian population, Jordan is clearly seeking to solve its own "demographic problem." In other words, the Jordanians would like to see fewer Palestinians in their kingdom. Like most of the Arab countries, the Jordanians have never felt completely comfortable playing host to large numbers of Palestinians. Read more here....Source: Hudson New York
By Dr. Walid Phares Over the past months, the narrative of Washington’s “new direction” in world affairs blurred the clarity of the confrontation with the terror forces worldwide. Are we at conflict with a global threat? The administration, insisting on treating the issue locally, claimed otherwise. But during President Barack Obama’s July 11th speech in Accra, he said that “when there’s a genocide in Darfur or terrorists in Somalia, these are not simply African problems — they are global security challenges, and they demand a global response.” This zigzag between local and global risk is confusing not only to the public but to strategists as well. If terrorism in Somalia is a global security challenge, then it is a global threat. And thus it is a global confrontation, call it war or call it anything else. Therefore, the response has to be global, security, military, political, economic, and ideological. Responding to the Jihadi threat throughout Africa must be continental and integrated with international efforts. The president should have drawn the attention of his audience to the trans-African Jihadi threat commencing in Somalia with the al-Shabab, and thrusting through the immensity of the Sahel via Chad, Niger, Mali, and Mauritania. The menace is even wider as the Salafists (al Qaeda-like Jihadists) threaten northern Africa via Algeria, Morocco, and even Egypt. Unfortunately, neither the Cairo nor the Accra speeches described the terror threat in full. In the next few years, 50 percent of the continent will be involved in a full-fledged war with terror. That is not a little detail obstructing development; that is the main threat against social, economic, and democratic progress across Africa. The Jihadists aren’t just some extremists with local demand: they have an all-out agenda diametrically opposed to the modern democratic agenda and to U.S. efforts in international development. In his speech Obama raised another point of confusion created by the administration: The ideology of the global threat. Since early 2009, (but also under the last two years of the George W. Bush administration), all reference to the existence of “an” ideology, doctrine, or school of thought of the foe, let alone its name, was scrapped out of the lexicon. The “J” word (Jihad) was banned along with all “I” words (Islamism, etc). Until the Accra address, the Obama speech writers wanted the public to digest the idea that there is no ideological battle. But in front of an all-African legislative audience in Ghana, Obama resuscitated the unavoidable conclusion: “That is why we must stand up to inhumanity in our midst. It is never justified, never justifiable to target innocents in the name of ideology.” So is it or is it not an ideology, regardless of what one wishes to call it? In Africa, we cannot convince the people subjected to Wahhabi, Salafi, or Khomeinist propaganda that ideology has nothing to do with the massacre of black men, women, and children. But in Cairo, we didn’t raise the issue. In Washington, we act as if we want it to go away by changing our lexicon. In the end, Africa knows all too well the nature of the ideological menace. It knows its name, its goals, and it has seen its work. The U.S. must catch up with the continent’s deep and dramatic knowledge of the roots of “evil.” Twice in his speech, Obama asserted that “we must start from the simple premise that Africa’s future is up to Africans.” Indeed, after the receding of Western colonialism during the last decades of the 20th century, who is obstructing Africa’s global independence? What regional and international organizations are controlling the African vote at the United Nations, paralyzing the African Union when it decides to intervene against ethnic cleansing in Darfur, southern Sudan, and Biafra, or to solve civil wars in Cote d’Ivoire and Somalia? The Arab League controls 10 of Africa’s countries and the Organization of the Islamic Conference covers half of the continent. Both organizations are essentially commanded by oil-producing regimes and jointly “colonize” the African Union. NATO, the EU, the CIS, and the OAS have no membership in Africa. But OPEC’s big boys determine at what price Nigerians, Ghanaians, and others must sell their oil. What I have coined as “oil imperialism” in my last book has been devastating third world independence since 1973, when petrodollars pushed back against the West and intimidated weaker nations. If oil regimes can exert influence in the world’s most powerful capitals, how can poor African nations resist their domination? FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Dr Walid Phares is the author of The Confrontation: Winning the War against Future Jihad. He is the Director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a visiting scholar at the European Foundation for Democracy. Source: Faith Freedom
CAIRO, June 24 Arab foreign ministers pledged on Wednesday to take required steps to support U.S. approach of achieving a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. After an extraordinary meeting at the Arab League headquarters in Cairo, Arab foreign ministers welcomed the positive points in U.S. President Barack Obama's speech which he delivered at Cairo University on June 4.  | | Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa (L) attends the Arab League emergency foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo, capital of Egypt, on June 24, 2009. The Arab League held the meeting on Wednesday to discuss U.S. President Barack Obama's recent speech made in Cairo to the Muslim world. (Xinhua/Zhang Ning)
| In his speech, Obama vowed to find a fair solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Obama administration had urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to accept the two-state solution and freeze the construction of settlements in the West Bank. Arab foreign ministers welcomed Obama's proposals to solve the Arab-Israeli conflict, according to a statement issued after the meeting. They stressed that resuming talks with the Israeli side should rely on halting all settlements activity, adding that they prefer achieving comprehensive peace in the Middle East according to the Arab peace initiative. The Arab peace initiative, which embodies the two-state guideline, was proposed by Saudi Arabia and adopted in the Arab summit held in Beirut in 2002. It offers the Arab acceptance of the Jewish state in exchange for an independent Palestinian state on the pre-1967 borders. A comprehensive peace would not be achieved without ending Israeli occupation and withdrawal from all Arab occupied territories and solving the issue of the Palestinian refugees, said the foreign ministers. Source: Xinhua |
By Robert Spencer Genocide in Darfur? Relax! At its summit last week in Qatar, the Arab League decisively rejected the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. “We emphasis our solidarity with Sudan and our dismissal and rejection of the decision handed down by the International Criminal Court,” read the Arab League communiqué. It is worth exploring with what exactly the Arab League is expressing solidarity. Al-Bashir has overseen the genocidal campaign of the government-backed Janjaweed militias in the Darfur region of western Sudan, in which 400,000 people have been killed and over 2,500,000 left homeless. In 2004, the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan said the situation in Darfur was “world’s greatest humanitarian crisis.” Read more ...Source: Human Events
 OMAR al-Bashir, the Sudanese President, made a pilgrimage to Mecca yesterday, threatening the credibility of the International Criminal Court, which has issued a warrant for his arrest. Mr al-Bashir's journey to Saudi Arabia was his most daring act of defiance since he became the first sitting head of state to be named a fugitive from international justice last month and the court's highest-profile target. The court, designed to dispense justice based on the premise that there are universal moral standards that apply to all human behaviour, wants Mr al-Bashir to face trial for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Sudanese region of Darfur. While the 108 member nations that signed up to support the International Criminal Court (ICC) have a duty to arrest him, Mr al-Bashir has visited five countries since the warrant was issued - all non-ICC members - as he tries to polarise views against the court by portraying it as a vehicle for Western interference in Arab and African nations. The ICC's four current cases are all against Africans, which some believe presents it with an image problem that Mr al-Bashir is doing his best to exploit. The court's supporters are now prepared for at least one African nation to withdraw its support from the world's first permanent court for international justice after Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader and President of the African Union (AU), called it "a new world terrorism" this week. Mr al-Bashir was given a boost by the Arab League at the conclusion of its summit, which he attended in Qatar on Monday. "We reiterate our solidarity with Sudan and our rejection of the measure of the ... International Criminal Court against his Excellency," it said in its final statement. Embarrassingly Ban Ki Moon, the United Nations Secretary-General, was also at the summit and in the same room as Mr al-Bashir, though he was careful to avoid any contact. The UN set up the process that led to the creation of the court under the Rome statute of 1998. Mr al-Bashir's visit to Mecca, a short distance from Qatar, was said by the Saudi press agency to be a minor pilgrimage known as omra, in which he met officials from the Grand Mosque. The trip may help Mr al-Bashir cement support throughout the wider Islamic world, further eroding the court's authority. Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi Foreign Minister, has said that issuing the warrant was a politicised decision that would not lead to the stability of Sudan or "solve the Darfur issue". The International Coalition for the ICC, which represents the court's supporters, criticised those nations which welcomed Mr al-Bashir and scorned his attempts to drive a wedge between the Arab world and the court. "He probably has a great deal to ask forgiveness for, if that is one of the purposes of going to Mecca," said Bill Pace, chairman of the coalition. "It is too early to say if the recognition by the Arab governments of Mr al-Bashir will hurt the ICC more than it will hurt the reputation of the Arab League and governments. "It was expected that an arrest warrant for a sitting head of state would create tremendous controversy, and not only in the Arab world, but wherever leaders have fear of justice." It is in Africa, where Mr al-Bashir has visited his neighbours Egypt, Eritrea and Libya, where fears are most acute that one of the continent's 33 signatories to the ICC will withdraw. The AU, representing 53 countries on the continent, pressured the ICC to delay issuing its arrest warrant against Mr al-Bashir for at least a year to avoid jeopardising the Sudanese peace process. Jean Ping, the AU commissioner, is close to the Government of his native Gabon, an ICC signatory that some believe could be the first to walk away. Critics of the court are urging it to find non-African cases but that process will take time. Mr al-Bashir has closed down 16 aid groups in Sudan since the arrest warrant was issued on March 4 and appears to have strengthened his grip. "If there was an election now he would win it. The people admire a strong man and he has also managed to show himself as a victim of the West," said Faizal Silaik, deputy editor of the daily newspaper Ajras al-Huriya. Source: The Australian
 January 01, 2009 The Israelis just struck back hard at Hamas in Gaza. In response, the United Nations, the European Union and the Arab world (at least publicly) expressed their anger at the killing of over 300 Palestinians, most of whom were terrorists and Hamas officials.
For several prior weeks, Hamas terrorists had been daily launching rockets into Israeli towns that border Gaza. The recent volleys of missiles had insidiously become more frequent -- up to 80 a day -- and the payloads larger. Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists were reportedly supplying their own training and expertise.
These terrorists point to the Lebanon war of 2006 as the proper template for provoking an Israeli counter-response that will bog down the Israeli Defense Forces in the streets of urban Gaza and ensure that Palestinian civilians are harmed on global television. Watching both this week's war and the world's predictable reaction to it, we can recall the Gaza rules. Most are reflections of our postmodern age, and completely at odds with the past protocols of war.First is the now-familiar Middle East doctrine of proportionality. Legitimate military action is strangely defined by the relative strength of the combatants. World opinion more vehemently condemns Israel's countermeasures, apparently because its rockets are far more accurate and deadly than previous Hamas barrages that are poorly targeted and thus not so lethal. If America had accepted such rules in, say, World War II, then by late 1944 we, not the Axis, would have been the culpable party, since by then once-aggressive German, Italian and Japanese forces were increasingly on the defensive and far less lethal than the Allies. Second, intent in this war no longer matters. Every Hamas unguided rocket is launched in hopes of hitting an Israeli home and killing men, women and children. Every guided Israeli air-launched missile is targeted at Hamas operatives, who deliberately work in the closest vicinity to women and children. Killing Palestinian civilians is incidental to Israeli military operations and proves counterproductive to its objectives. Blowing up Israeli non-combatants is the aim of Hamas' barrages: the more children, aged and women who die, the more it expects political concessions from Tel Aviv. By this logic, the 1999 American bombing of Belgrade -- aimed at stopping the genocide of Slobodan Milosevic -- was, because of collateral damage, the moral equivalent of the carefully planned Serbian massacres of Muslim civilians at Srebrenica in 1995. Third, culpability is irrelevant. The "truce" between Israel and Hamas was broken once Hamas got its hands on new stockpiles of longer-range mobile rockets -- weapons that are intended to go over Israel's border walls. Yet, according to the Gaza rules, both sides always deserve equal blame. Indeed, this weird war mimics the politically correct, zero-tolerance policies of our public schools, where both the bully and his victim are suspended once physical violence occurs. According to such morally equivalent reasoning, World War II was only a tragedy, not a result of German aggression. Once the dead mounted up, it mattered little what were the catalysts of the outbreak of fighting. Fourth, with instantaneous streaming video from the impact sites in Gaza, context becomes meaningless. Our attention is glued to the violence of the last hour, not that of the last month that incited the war. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 to great expectations that the Palestinians there would combine their new autonomy, some existing infrastructure left behind by the Israelis, Middle East oil money and American pressure for free and open elections to craft a peaceful, prosperous democracy.
The world hoped that Gaza might thrive first, and then later adjudicate its ongoing disputes with Israel through diplomacy. Instead, the withdrawal was seen not as a welcome Israeli concession, but as a sign of newfound Jewish weakness -- and that the intifada tactics that had liberated Gaza could be amplified into a new war to end the Zionist entity itself. Fifth and finally, victimization is crucial. Hamas daily sends barrages into Israel, as its hooded thugs thump their chests and brag of their radical Islamic militancy. But when the payback comes, suddenly warriors are transmogrified into weeping victims, posing teary-eyed for the news camera as they deplore "genocide" and "the Palestinian Holocaust." At least the Japanese militarists did not cry out to the League of Nations for help once mean Marines landed on Iwo Jima. By now, these Gaza asymmetrical rules are old hat. We know why they persist -- worldwide fear of Islamic terrorism, easy anti-Westernism, the old anti-Semitism, and global strategic calculations about Middle East oil -- but it still doesn't make them right. Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and author, most recently, of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War." Source: RealClearPolitics
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KHALED ABU TOAMEH
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