PA demands apology from cleric who called for stoning Abbas

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

Can Hamas Be Stopped from Seizing West Bank?

by Khaled Abu Toameh

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, are hoping that Israel will withdraw to the pre-1967 lines within the next two years to enable the Palestinians to establish an independent state with half of Jerusalem as its capital.

But under the current circumstances, an Israeli pullout from these areas could, ironically, mark the beginning of the end of the Abbas-Fayyad era.

In an interview published this week in a Kuwaiti newspaper, Abbas revealed that he had solid proof and “verified information” that Hamas was planning to take over the West Bank.

It could also see the Iran-backed Hamas movement and its allies sitting on the outskirts of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

If Israel wants to pull back from any territory, it needs to make sure who is going to be in control of that area. The last time Israel withdrew from a territory was in the summer of 2005, when it handed the Gaza Strip over to forces loyal to Abbas.

Two years later, Hamas managed to toss Abbas’s people out of the Gaza Strip in less than a week.

If Israel repeats the same mistake and hands over the West Bank to Abbas and Fayyad when they are still weak and do not enjoy much credibility among their own people, there is no doubt that Hamas will end up sitting on hilltops overlooking Ben Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv, and the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.

Both Israel and the Palestinian Authority say that Hamas has never abandoned its dream of extending its control from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank. Hamas, on the other hand, has never hidden its intention of overthrowing the Abbas-Fayyad regime and replacing it with a government that reports directly to Bashar Assad in Damascus and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Tehran.

Abbas and Fayyad are in power in the West Bank largely thanks to the presence of the Israeli security forces in these territories. Abbas and Fayyad know very well that had it not been for the presence of the Israeli army in the West Bank, it is highly likely that Hamas would have been able to achieve its goal a long time ago.

Many Palestinians are convinced that if a free and democratic election were to be held in the West Bank these days, Hamas would win again for two reasons: first, because the US-led sanctions against Hamas have earned the movement greater sympathy among Palestinians and, second, because of Fatah’s failure to implement major reforms and get rid of icons of financial corruption among its top brass.

Despite ongoing efforts to reconstruct the Fatah-dominated security forces, they are still far from being able to assume full responsibilities in the West Bank.

Over the past few years, the IDF, in cooperation with the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), has been waging a relentless war on Hamas and other terror groups in the West Bank, including Abbas’s armed militia, the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

This war has resulted in the killing or detention of hundreds of terror suspects and the confiscation of large amounts of weapons and ammunition. But the war has not yet ended and there is still a lot that needs to be done to clean the area.

While Israel has been struggling to eliminate hard-core terror cells in the West Bank, the security forces controlled by Abbas and Fayyad have been focusing their efforts mainly on Hamas’s political activists and supporters.

Those suspected of involvement in terror activities end up in Israeli prisons and detention centers, while the Palestinian security forces are busy rounding up mosque preachers, university professors and students, as well as charity workers suspected of being affiliated with Hamas.

The massive clampdown on Hamas may have caused serious damage to its terror infrastructure, but it has by no means affected popular support for the movement among Palestinians in the West Bank.

Hudson New York

Jordan asks Canada to seize Dead Sea scrolls

Jordan has asked Canada to seize the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea scrolls, on display until Sunday at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, invoking international law in a bid to keep the artifacts out of the hands of Israel until their disputed ownership is settled.

Even if Canada ignores the request, it will make other countries think twice before accepting the controversial exhibit.

Summoning the Canadian chargé d'affaires in Amman two weeks ago, Jordan cited the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict, to which both Jordan and Canada are signatories, in asking Canada to take custody of the scrolls.

Jordan claims Israel acted illegally in 1967 when it took the scrolls from a museum in east Jerusalem, which Israel seized from Jordan during the Six-Day War and subsequently occupied.

The Hague Convention, which is concerned with safeguarding cultural property during wartime, requires each signatory “to take into its custody cultural property imported into its territory either directly or indirectly from any occupied territory. This shall either be effected automatically upon the importation of the property or, failing this, at the request of the authorities of that territory.”

This means Canada must act, says Jordan. “The Government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan would be grateful if the Government of Canada would confirm … whether it is prepared to assume its international legal responsibility, and the means by which it intends to do so,” it wrote.

While confirming that Canada has received a message from Jordan, a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said yesterday that “differences regarding ownership of the Dead Sea scrolls should be addressed by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. It would not be appropriate for Canada to intervene as a third party.”

The ROM's exhibition of the scrolls, mounted “in partnership with the Israel Antiquities Authority,” opened on June 27.

While Jordan has acted only recently in asking Canada to take custody of the scrolls, the Palestinian Authority has made its position known since April, when Salam Fayyad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, wrote to Prime Minister Stephen Harper concerning what it argues is the illegal use of the scrolls.

More at the Globe and Mail

H/T: Smooth Stone

PA arrests another suspect in shooting attack

Ali Waked

The Palestinian Authority has arrested a Palestinian who was allegedly involved in last Thursday's shooting attack, which left Rabbi Meir Hai killed. Ynet has learned that the Palestinian military intelligence arrested the suspect, who is considered a close friend of the three cell members.

A Palestinian security official confirmed the arrest in a conversation with Ynet, but refused to say whether the man is suspected of being personally involved in the attack or whether he was arrested as part of the PA's efforts to prevent a response to the assassination of the three Fatah cell members in Nablus on Saturday.

The PA continued its efforts over the past day to calm the Fatah members and security officials who fear that the Nablus assassination marks the end of the truce with Israel and a return to the pursuit of wanted Palestinians.

The Palestinians fear that those who were pardoned by Israel will continue to be pursued. The last Palestinian detainee is also included in the list of Palestinians pardoned by Israel.

The police forensics lab determined Sunday that one of the rifles seized from the Palestinians who were killed in Nablus was used in last week's murder of Rabbi Meir Hai.

The M-16 rifle, which belonged to Tanzim member Anan Sabah, was found to be compatible with the bullet shells found at the scene of Hai's murder. Sabah had been released from an Israeli prison as part of the amnesty deal with the Palestinian Authority in 2007, in which Israel agreed not to hunt down Palestinian gunmen who agreed to lay down their arms.

"No two weapons leave the same indentation on the ammunition," a police official said Sunday. The lab test results are admissible in court.

YNet

Bethlehem's exodus

The pilgrims will be there as midnight Mass at the Church of the Nativity is again broadcast live around the world this Christmas Eve -- but the town of Bethlehem is fast losing its last few year-round Christian residents.

Christians are fleeing the town of Christ's birth, and the much-reported hardship that Israel inflicts on residents of the West Bank town has little to do with it.

It's the same reality across the Arab world: rising Islamism pushes non-Muslims away.

Islamists frown on real-estate ownership by non-Muslims -- Christian, Jew or anything else.

And though the secular Palestinian Authority still controls the West Bank, the clout of groups like Hamas is growing: Even in Bethlehem, where followers of history's most famous baby once thrived, Christians are ceding the land.

Yes, ever since the PA took control of the West Bank in the early '90s, its leaders have taken care to show the world an idealized picture of Muslim-Christian solidarity.

But it's a facade -- a way to score anti-Israeli political points.

That tradition continues: Monday, the Palestinian news agency Maan reported on Palestinian Christians "trapped" in Gaza as Israel refuses to let them travel to Bethlehem to celebrate Christmas with their brethren.

In fact, the Israelis decline to let people travel from Hamas-controlled Gaza for the simple reason that Hamas is still sponsoring suicide-bomb and other attacks on its civilians.

(It also threatens the secularists of Fatah, the ruling party in the West Bank.) Gaza residents can't go to Egypt, either (Cairo's even building a wall to keep them out), because Hamas and its parent, the Muslim Brotherhood, threaten the regime.

Back to the exodus: Fifty years ago, Christians made up 70 percent of Bethlehem's population; today, about 15 percent.

Indeed, the Christian population of the entire West Bank -- mostly Greek Orthodox and Roman Catholic, with Copts, Russian Orthodox, Armenians and others -- is dwindling.

But, again, the story's the same in Egypt, Iraq and elsewhere in the Mideast. Practically the only place in the region where the Christian population is growing is in Israel.

In Bethlehem, Christians now feel besieged. Growing numbers of rural southern West Bankers from the Hebron area have moved north to Bethlehem in recent years. Many see the land as Waqf -- belonging to the Muslim nation. They increasingly buy or confiscate land -- and talk of laws to ban Christian landownership.

Seeing the trend, many Christians have decided to sell while they still can; real estate is leaving families that have owned it for generations.

Then, too, the Christians of the West Bank have traditionally been wealthier and better educated than the Muslims. When Jordan ruled the area from 1948 and 1967, Christians could get permits to travel abroad -- and emigration became part of the tradition.

Now, having relatives abroad means a chance to escape. There are frequent attacks on Christian cemeteries and churches; Christian-owned businesses are often defaced -- and government jobs have grown scarce for non-Muslims.

For all of the late Yasser Arafat's respectful talk about Christianity and its common purpose with Islam, the West Bank Christian population (not counting Jerusalem) dropped under his rule by nearly 30 percent, from 35,000 in 1997 to 25,000 in 2002. It's even lower now -- less than 8 percent of the population.

Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh wrote recently that, before Pope Benedict visited the Holy Land in May, a Christian merchant told him jokingly, "The next time a pope comes to visit . . . he will have to bring his own priest with him [to] pray in a church because most Christians would have left by then."

A researcher of Arab and Muslim affairs, Jonathan Dahoah Halevy, says Islamists think that "soft" Christians around the world wouldn't intervene on behalf of their brethren in places like Bethlehem. Benedict's visit seems to bear that out: He criticized Israeli policies while ignoring the crucial role Islamists play in chasing Christians out of town.

So there may or may not be room at the inn when you arrive at the little town of Bethlehem, but the innkeeper is unlikely to be a Christian.

NYPost

Rabbis slam Jewish construction freeze

By Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM – A group of hundreds of prominent Israeli rabbis here today slammed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to freeze Jewish West Bank construction as an "irresponsible move that will only cause bloodshed in the region."

"This move not only jeopardizes the residents of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) but will ultimately endanger every Jew in every part of Israel," read a statement from by the Rabbinical Congress for Peace, a coalition of more than 300 Israeli rabbinic leaders and pulpit rabbis, including some of the most respected rabbis in Israel.

The leaders of the Congress asked for an immediate meeting with Netanyahu to "point out his suicidal actions and present to him Jewish law rulings regarding a true and durable peace for the Jewish nation and stability in the region as well."

"There is a clear ruling in the Jewish Code of Law [Orach Chaim Chapter 329] that warns against giving up land to foreigners," the rabbis statement read.

Netanyahu last week announced in a national address that his government had approved a 10-month halt to the construction of new Jewish homes in the West Bank as a bid to restart talks with the Palestinians. He said Israel would not stop construction in eastern Jerusalem and would still allow the building of West Bank synagogues, kindergartens and necessary municipal structures.

Describing the decision as a "painful step," Netanyahu said he was "taking the issue out of broad national security considerations with the goal of renewing negotiations to achieve peace with our neighbors, the Palestinians."

The Palestinian Authority, however, immediately rejected the freeze and demanded more.

Nabil Abu Rudaineh, a top aide to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, told reporters the Palestinians "reject returning to peace talks without the complete cessation of settlement activities in the West Bank and Jerusalem."

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat urged the U.S. to pressure Israel to freeze all construction activity completely in both Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Fatah's strongman Mohammed Dahlan stated Netanyahu's offer "proves once again that Israel is interested not in peace, but in creating facts on the ground" and stated that "overlooking ongoing construction in Jerusalem will put the peace process in jeopardy."

Never in the history of regional talks here did restarting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations depend on any freeze of Jewish construction. The issue largely began after President Obama demanded Jewish construction be halted in the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, leading to a hardening of the PA's bargaining position.

WND

Peace Talks Must Include Jewish Refugee Demands

The Knesset has passed an initial reading of a proposal, stipulating that negotiations on Arab refugees must include demands for compensation of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.

Hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab countries made Aliyah [immigration] to Israel in its early years, after being banished and forced to leave behind property and asset worth billions of dollars.

A legislative proposal on the issue by Knesset Member Nissim Zev (Shas) passed its preliminary Knesset reading on Sunday.

The bill stipulates that in any negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on the rights of Arabs who left Israel in 1948, the government of Israel would be required to present its own demands for reparations for the Jews of Arab countries.

MK Zev says his proposal is anchored in both a United Nations resolution and the U.S. Congress.

“The Jews from Arab countries are defined as refugees by the United Nations,” he emphasized.

“It’s not something we made up, but rather a U.N. definition. In addition, the American Congress itself resolved, in 2008, that the rights of these Jewish refugees must be recognized in the course of the negotiations.”

The resolution, passed by the House of Representatives in April 2008, recognized Jewish refugees from Arab countries who were forced to flee their homes in the aftermath of the creation of the State of Israel.

It requires U.S. officials involved in any Middle East peace negotiations that deal with the Arab refugees to "also include a similarly explicit reference to the resolution of the issue of Jewish refugees from Arab countries."

One Congressional co-sponsor said at the time that “it’s not just the Arabs and Palestinians in the Middle East, but also Jewish people who themselves were dispossessed of their possessions and their homes, and were victims of terrorist acts.”

Another said there were more Jewish refugees than Palestinian refugees, and “their forced exile from Arab lands must not be omitted from public discussion on the peace process."

Read more at INN

Is a Palestinian State even Possible?

By Sultan Knish

Last week Obama phoned Abbas, the chairman of the PLO terrorist organization and of the US taxpayer subsidized Palestinian Authority, which is run by the PLO.

Obama's first phone call to a foreign leader after taking office had been to Abbas, and his latest phone call was meant to reassure the terrorist leader that despite the complete lack of progress, he was still committed to creating a Palestinian state.

There is of course no question that the United States is deeply committed to creating a Palestinian state. The United States has provided billions to the PLO's Palestinian Authority through USAID alone, and billions more through various other channels, including the UNRWA and a collection of other agencies.

The first Bush Administration forced Israel to negotiate directly with the PLO. The Clinton Administration created the Palestinian Authority inside Israel, armed and trained its terrorist militias and funded them from top to bottom. Four Presidents have made creating a Palestinian state a major priority of their administrations. More so than freeing Tibet or creating a country for any particular group, not counting the Clinton Administration's war on behalf of a Muslim Kosovar Albanian state, who rewarded us with slave trafficking, terrorism and burning down every church they could find.

The question now however is whether a Palestinian state is even possible?

For one thing there is no longer a single Palestinian state, but two states, one run by Hamas in Gaza, and a second run by Abbas in the West Bank, despite the fact that his term in office legally ended around the time Obama was sworn in. The Obama Administration nevertheless continues to fund Abbas, even though under the rules that the US helped set up, he has no right to hold office without an election.

For another thing, both the West Bank and Gaza are run by dueling militias composed of PLO and Hamas terrorists.

Iran and Syria fund the Hamas militias, while the US and the EU fund the PLO militias.

While Iran is more open about simply calling them terrorists, the US State Department calls them "police" and provides them with weapons and training.

The militias work for whichever faction or sub-faction is paying them at the moment. In between they do "odd jobs" such as drug dealing, kidnapping and the old protection racket-- a major reason why all the plans for outside investment in the PA quickly collapsed into nothing.

As of last year, the PA requested 7 billion dollars to "overhaul" its security forces to a mere 50,000 men at a rate of 23 "police" for each thousand Palestinian Arabs. That is 6 times the ratio of the NYPD.

Since Oslo, the numbers have fluctuated from 40,000 to 80,000 under 14 separate police forces, which are individually loyal to different sub-factions within the PLO. And with all that "security", there is no actual law or order to be found. That is because "Palestinian Police" was how the various PLO affiliated terrorist militias were rebranded by the Clinton Administration.

Most continued to operate as terrorists carrying out attacks against Israel. The rest function as the private police of various officials within the Palestinian Authority. And much as the State Department might like to pretend otherwise, all the PA police forces are not loyal to any laws, but only to those officials who pay them and give them orders.

There is no constitutional rule of law within the PA. There isn't even a legally elected head of the Palestinian Authority. There isn't even a single government ruling over Gaza and the West Bank.

There is no economy. As much as 25 to 50 percent of the Palestinian adult male population is employed by the Palestinian Authority, which is its own biggest employer with as many as 200,000 people out of a population of barely 2 million in the West Bank.

That's one PA employee to 10 Palestinian Arab men, women and children. It means that with 42 percent of the population under 14, virtually every Palestinian Arab family has a member who is officially employed by the Palestinian Authority. Some more than one.

And guess who pays for all this? The Palestinian Authority has never been self-supporting, it could not survive for 5 seconds without money from the United States and the European Union.

The billions of dollars pumped into the PA's coffers go down the line to various officials and their families, as well as the terrorist militias who keep them in power. Often the money has a way of vanishing, as it did in 1997 when the PA reported that 40 percent of its budget just went "missing". The PA employment racket is not simply a bureaucratic blank check though. Jobs are given in exchange for support.

The "employees" may not ever actually show up for work, but they are expected to use their tribal and family influence to back the PA leadership. And the remainder of that money goes to the tens of thousands of terrorists officially described as the police. Read more here ...

Source: Sultan Knish
H/T: gramfan

32 Arab Children Killed Working in Smuggling Tunnels

No fewer than 32 children have been killed over the past three years while working in Gaza arms smuggling tunnels, according to a new report released in the Palestinian Authority.

The report, prepared by an organization called the Palestinian National Society for Democracy and Law, was released on Saturday.

It deals with the child abuse perpetrated on child laborers in the tunnels used to smuggle weapons, arms and other items from Egypt into Gaza.

The report attempts to shift some of the blame to Israel, emphasizing that it examined the period since mid-2006 when Israel “imposed a blockade” on Gaza and “restricted entry of goods.” It does not mention that Egypt, too, has imposed a similar blockade on Gaza.

Chinese news outlet Xinhua reports that the study also focused on child labor. It revealed that children under the age of 18 work for 12 hours a day in the tunnels, and that some of the children take a painkiller called Tramadol, as well as energy-giving drugs.

A total of 117 Arabs have been killed in the tunnels during the three years, mostly from cave-ins.

The cave-ins are generally blamed on Israeli air raids, Egyptian detonation of tunnel-openings in the Egyptian-governed Sinai desert, and “natural circumstances.”

Source: INN

Abbas's big bluff

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

Mahmoud Abbas's decision to hold new presidential and parliamentary elections at the beginning of next year is seen by some of his aides as one of the strangest moves he has made since he was elected to succeed Yasser Arafat five years ago.

These aides are now trying to persuade Abbas to find an honorable way to come down from the high tree he climbed when he issued a "presidential decree" a few weeks ago calling for a vote on January 24. One aide in Ramallah said that Abbas was "actually digging his own grave" by insisting on holding the elections before reaching an agreement with Hamas.

The Islamic movement has already made it clear that it won't participate in the elections. Moreover, Hamas has declared that it won't allow the vote to take place in the Gaza Strip and would punish any Palestinian there who is involved in the electoral process.

Hamas's decision means that the elections, when and if they are held, would be confined to the West Bank, where Abbas is partially in control, and perhaps some areas in Jerusalem that are under Israeli sovereignty.

Abbas's opponents can then argue that since the election was not held in the Gaza Strip, he does not represent the entire Palestinian people. As Hamas legislator Salah Bardaweel explained: "Abbas will then become the mayor or governor of the West Bank."

As such, maintaining the status quo would be the best option for Abbas. Under the current circumstances, Abbas can always argue that he represents a majority of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip who voted for him in the 2005 presidential election.

If Gaza is excluded from the planned elections, Abbas or whoever replaces him as head of Fatah will never be seen as a legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. This means that the new Palestinian leader would not have a mandate to negotiate or sign a peace agreement with Israel because he was not elected by a majority of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

ABBAS'S DECISION to call the new elections came after the Egyptians failed to reach an agreement between Hamas and Fatah on ending their power struggle. The two rival parties were supposed to sign an Egyptian-brokered "reconciliation" accord in Cairo last month.

But the signing ceremony was called off indefinitely after Hamas announced that it would not reach any deal with a "traitor" like Abbas.

Read more here,,,,

Source: JPost

Clinton: US wants Israel settlement halt 'forever'

US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton defended the US stance toward Israeli settlement building to worried Arab allies on Wednesday, saying Washington does not accept the legitimacy of the West Bank enclaves and wants to see their construction halted "forever."

Still, she said an Israeli offer to restrain - but not halt - construction represents "positive movement forward" toward resuming Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

Clinton met for an hour with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak during a hastily arranged stopover in the Egyptian capital to soothe Arab concerns that Washington is backing off demands for an Israeli settlement halt.

The fears were sparked on Saturday when Clinton, with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu at her side in Jerusalem, praised his government's offer as unprecedented.

She has since tried to clarify the remarks, saying that the Israeli offer does not got far enough.

Still, she has indicated that the Palestinians should resume negotiations with Israel without a full settlement halt as they demand.

On Wednesday, Clinton insisted "our policy on settlement has not changed."

"We do not accept the legitimacy of settlement activity. Ending all settlement activity current and future would be preferable," she told reporters after talks with Mubarak.

Of the Israeli offer, she said, "It is not what we would prefer because we would like to see everything ended forever."

"But it is something that I think shows at least a positive movement forward toward final status issues being addressed," she said.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is sticking to his refusal to resume negotiations until Israel stops building settlements. He rejected the Israeli plan to complete 3,000 housing units in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, and to continue to construct public buildings and other construction in east Jerusalem - a territory Palestinians hope will be their future capital.

After Arab criticism of her comments in Jerusalem on the Israeli plan, Clinton delayed her return to Washington after attending an international conference in Marrakech, Morocco, and flew instead to Cairo.

Read more here,,,,

Source: JPost

"Delivering" the West Bank

by Khaled Abu Toameh

Even if Israel were to freeze all construction in the West Bank settlements, this would not mean that peace would prevail in the Middle East the following day.

Those who think that Palestinians would take to the streets to express their joy over such a move are living on a different planet and have a short memory.

In the summer of 2005, when Israel destroyed all settlements in the Gaza Strip and evicted more than 8,000 Jews from their homes, not a single Palestinian welcomed the Israeli pullout.

Neither Fatah nor Hamas saw the Israeli withdrawal as a goodwill gesture that could pave the way for making peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

On the contrary, many Palestinians interpreted the withdrawal as a sign of weakness, attributing to the wave of suicide bombings and rocket attacks against Israel. Now the Palestinian Authority is saying that it won’t return to the negotiating table unless Israel halts all construction in the settlements.

The Palestinian Authority is trying to create the impression that had it not been for the continued construction, peace would have come to the region a long time ago.

This argument, of course, is untrue -- otherwise, peace would have prevailed after Israel destroyed the settlements in the Gaza Strip.

And was there peace between Jews and Arabs before the settlements started popping up after 1967? The Palestinian Authority’s entire approach toward the issue of settlements has been characterized by hypocrisy from the beginning.

If the issue of the settlements were so important, as the Palestinian leadership claims, why didn’t Yasser Arafat and his advisors sign the Oslo Accords more than fifteen years ago without demanding that Israel first halt construction of new homes in the settlements?

And why didn’t Arafat back then insist that Israel freeze all settlement construction as a precondition for talking to Prime Ministers Yitzhak Rabin, Shimon Peres, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ariel Sharon while the bulldozers were working? Why, also, did Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, continue the peace talks with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni without demanding any freeze in settlement construction?

It is interesting that Abbas finally discovered the “threat” of the settlements only after US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton started putting pressure on Israel about the continued construction.

Only after Obama and Clinton made a big issue out of the settlements did Abbas come up with his new demand: that Israel freeze all settlement construction as a precondition for resuming the peace process.

Read more here,,,,

Source: Hudson New York

British police to tackle UK-funded torturers on the West Bank

Tom Gross

The Mail on Sunday (which is the Sunday sister paper of Britain’s Daily Mail) reports that:

The British government is sending police and intelligence officers to the West Bank to try to stop a wave of brutal torture by Palestinian security forces funded by UK taxpayers. Their mission is to set up and train a new “internal affairs” department with sweeping powers to investigate abuse and bring torturers to justice.

On Saturday a senior official from the Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank and its security agencies, admitted that torture, beatings and extra-judicial killings have been rife for the past two years, with hundreds of torture allegations and at least four murders in custody, the most recent in August.

British detectives will also train the Palestinian police and Preventive Security forces in how to question suspects without torturing them. Britain spends £20 million a year funding the forces responsible for the abuse.

In the West Bank city of Nablus, Nasser al-Shaer, a former academic from Manchester University who was deputy prime minister in the short-lived Hamas Palestinian Authority government elected in 2006, said many of those released from detention in recent months were telling the same story – of torture, including beatings, being suspended from the ceiling, and electric shocks.

Now none of this is new. In spite of what the paper says, it has been continuing not just for the past two years, but since Yasser Arafat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and took over most of the West Bank in 1993. What is new is that a major newspaper (The Mail On Sunday is one of Britain’s highest circulation respected newspapers) is reporting on it.

Of course, the abuse of human rights and use of torture is even worse in other “moderate” Arab countries like Egypt and Jordan, and far worse in non-moderate countries like Syria (which yesterday the European Union eagerly signed an Association Agreement with).

Many Palestinians I know yearn for the days when Israel ruled the West Bank before Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah took over most of the Palestinian-populated territories.

Meanwhile, as Palestinian detainees are being tortured to death in Palestinian Authority jails, Palestinian prisoners (including convicted terrorists) in custody in Israel are studying for Israeli university degrees (at Israeli taxpayers’ expense) and also given cable TV, IPods and dental treatment – but international human rights groups instead criticize the treatment of prisoners in Israel, whose deputy foreign minister and former ambassador to Washington Danny Ayalon narrowly escaped being arrested in Britain for “war crimes” yesterday.

And the world community that routinely and harshly condemns Israel even when Israel hasn’t done anything wrong, has failed to condemn the Katyusha rocket fired from Lebanon which narrowly missed an Israeli town last night.

It is a strange world.

Source: National Review

PA Violating Water Accords as Israel Faces Crisis

The Water Authority rejects Amnesty International claims, to be released in a report on Tuesday, that Israelis whet their thirst at the expense of Palestinian Authority Arabs.

The Water Authority countered that PA Arabs continually violate Oslo Accords by illegally drilling for water and spilling untreated sewage.

“The Amnesty report is selective and incorrect, to make an understatement,” said spokesmen for Water Authority chairman Uri Shore.

Despite several claims by human rights organizations that Israel has taken water away from what is now the Palestinian Authority, the amount of water available to PA Arabs since the Six-Day War in 1967 actually has gone up while Israelis have suffered a whopping 70 percent drop in their resources.

“The amount of natural water, including underground aquifers, the amount of water available annually to every Israeli before 1967 was 500 cubic meters a year,” the Water Authority explained. “Today the figure is 149 cubic meters, while water available to PA Arabs actually has increased by 22 percent, from 87 cubic meters to 105 cubic meters a year per capita.”

It noted that the gap that exists “is not so great” to be termed a disaster.

At the same time, the PA is not treating sewage for agriculture, as agreed on with Israel in 1995 as part of the Oslo Accords.

NGO Monitor’s President Prof. Gerald Steinberg said, “Amnesty’s report manipulates the issue of water and ignores the complexities of history and law in order to again falsely portray Israel as a brutal regime.

The report adopts a painfully simplistic narrative which places blame solely on Israel, to the extent that the Palestinian leadership is absolved of responsibility for the agreements signed under the Oslo framework."

Israel’s water resources are near an all-time low, following four years of drought along with increasing water usage and a growing population. Higher water levies and conservation measures have cut water consumption by more than 20 percent this year.

Forecasters have cautiously predicted this winter will be wetter than usual, but it would take a modern miracle to replenish the country’s resources.

Scattered heavy rain fell in northern and eastern parts of the country on Monday as another heat wave hit the country. The amount of precipitation was impressive by falling a period of a few minutes but had little effect on Kinneret and underground aquifers.

Source: INN

Abbas Threatens to Quit, Obama Steps In

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has sent multiple messages to United States President Barack Obama threatening to quit, Channel 10 news reported Monday night.

Abbas blamed Israel and the U.S. for pushing him to desperation, saying negotiations with Israel were at a stand-still and Obama had “abandoned” him.

Abbas also mentioned the serious hit to his popularity caused by the delay of a United Nations vote on the Goldstone Report. The report accused Israel of war crimes in connection with the three-week Cast Lead counterterror offensive in Gaza.

Obama responded to the threats by calling Abbas and calming him, according to the report.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's spokesman said Monday night that Netanyahu could in no way be blamed for the standstill in Israel-PA talks.

“Netanyahu has taken a serious of steps aimed at renewing the peace process, as the American government well knows,” he said.

Unlike Netanyahu, Abbas and other PA leaders have taken an increasingly tough stance and added previously unheard-of preconditions to talks, he said.

"The prime minister calls on the Palestinians to renew negotiations immediately, without preconditions,” he concluded.

Coalition head Ze'ev Elkin said Abbas's reaction to Netanyahu was proof of the Israeli prime minister's success. “Apparently Abu Mazen [Abbas -ed.] had reason to prefer [Kadima head Tzipi] Livni to Netanyahu,” he said. Netanyahu “knows how to stand up for Israel's national interests and security,” he added.

"Abu Mazen needs to understand that Binyamin Netanyahu is the prime minister, and will be the prime minister for years to come,” Elkin said. “Netanyahu's government reflects the will of the decisive majority of the Israeli public.”

Source: INN

Fatah-Led PA Admits It Tortures Prisoners

The Palestinian Authority, led by the Fatah party, admitted to a British newspaper that its security forces commonly use torture on prisoners, as charged by the Hamas terrorist organization.

The PA is heavily funded by overseas contributions as well as taxes collected for it by the Israeli government.

“This is a shame on the Palestinian Authority,” Haitham Arar, head of the human rights department of the PA Interior Ministry, told the Mail.

She admitted that torture, beatings and extra-judicial murders have been common in the Abbas administration.

Britain is sending police and intelligence officers to the PA to help train a new department on how to question prisoners without torturing them.

Most of the victims are supporters of Hamas, which took over control of Gaza in violent clashes with Fatah forces two years, resulting in dozens of deaths.

The London newspaper said that many of the torture victims were too afraid to talk of their ordeal. It quoted one young man who disclosed he had been “assaulted with a high-voltage device with electrodes ‘like fingers.’”

Source: INN

Hamas opens police college in Gaza

Ali Waked

The Hamas movement announced Saturday the opening of a new police college in the Gaza Strip.

The new school is expected to take in 188 students who are currently members of existing security organizations as well as new students.

Hamas' Foreign Minister Fathi Hamed said the decision to open the college was taken "because of Arab states' refusal to accept students from the Strip."

"Just like we embarked on the Jihad project, our election victory, and the struggle against the siege, we believe that with God's help we'll be able to succeed with this college too," he said.

The establishment of the new college attests to the difficulties involved in bringing about genuine reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah.

Palestinian sources from both groups told Ynet that signing a reconciliation agreement is one thing, but implementing it on the ground is quite another matter.

"Our basic assumption is that the West Bank will continue to be under the exclusive control of the Palestinian Authority, while the Strip will remain under the exclusive control of Hamas," one source said.

Source: YNet

Official: Obama 'disgusted' with Israel

By Aaron Klein

Says president poised to press for withdrawal from strategic territory

JERUSALEM – U.S. officials in recent days expressed to the Palestinian Authority that President Obama's administration is "disgusted" with Israel, a top aide to PA President Mahmoud Abbas told WND in an interview.

Nimr Hamad said the White House was disgusted that Israel is refusing to halt all settlement activity as a precondition for re-starting talks with the PA over the creation of a Palestinian state.

"Settlement activity" refers to Jewish construction in the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem.

Hamad repeated that the term "disgusted" was used more than once in recent meetings with U.S. envoys to describe the administration's attitude toward Israel. Hamad did not name the U.S. envoys using the terminology.

George Mitchell, Obama's envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, just this week wrapped up a series of meetings with Israeli and Palestinian leaders over re-starting talks.

Senior PA sources told WND yesterday the Obama administration urged them to begin publicly pressuring Israel, starting in March, to immediately withdraw from key areas in the West Bank and peripheral eastern Jerusalem sections in which the Palestinians currently maintain administrative control.

The sources specified that as a confidence-building measure toward the PA, Israel will be asked by the Obama administration to hand over security control to territories designated in the 1993 Oslo Accords as Area B – referring to cities administered by the PA but largely controlled by Israeli security. The specific section of the Oslo Accords regarding control of Area B was finalized in 1995.

Separately, a top PA source, speaking on condition his name be withheld, told WND two weeks ago the Obama administration largely has adopted the positions of the PA to create a Palestinian state within two years based on the 1967 borders, meaning Israel would retreat from most of the West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem.

The official said Obama also accepted the PA position that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations begin where they left off under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who went further than previous Israeli leaders in his concessions to the Palestinians.

Olmert reportedly offered the PA not only 95 percent of the West Bank and peripheral eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods but also other territories never before offered by any Israeli leader, including parts of the Israeli Negev desert bordering Gaza as well as sections of the Jordan Valley.

The official claimed the Obama administration will still support the announcement of a Palestinian state within two years.

Source: WND

Update: UN agrees to 'Goldstone session'

The UN Human Rights Council will hold a special session in Geneva, as requested by the Palestinian Authority, in which the Goldstone report is expected to be addressed, Al Jazeera has learnt.

The session will begin on Thursday and is expected to last into the following day.

The request by the Palestinian Authority (PA) is co-sponsored by the 18 member states of the human rights council.

Those members are: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bolivia, China, Cuba, Djibouti, Egypt, Gabon, Indonesia, Jordan, Mauritius, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Senegal.

The meeting will be the 12th special session of the council, following the Security Council's open debate on the Middle East expected in New York on Wednesday.

The Palestinians have pressed for a vote on the report at the UN Human Rights Council, effectively a policy reverse by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, whose government had earlier agreed to delay the vote for six months.

That decision, apparently made under US pressure, sparked sharp criticism and protests across Palestinian society.

Should a vote takes place by the council, the matter could be referred to higher UN bodies that could, in theory, push for a war-crimes prosecution.

The news of the UN special session comes a day after Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, lashed out against the Goldstone report, which criticises Israel for deliberately targeting civilians during its war on Gaza earlier this year.

He called the report, compiled by a team led by Richard Goldstone, a South African judge, a "distorted report, written by this distorted committee".

"This report encourages terrorism and threatens peace," he said, and announced that he would never allow any of the country's leaders or soldiers to be put on trial for war crimes.

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Source: Al Jazeera (English)

Palestinian memo says hopes in Obama 'evaporated'

The United States reiterated on Tuesday that all Quartet demands must remain in place for dealing with any Palestinian national unity government that might be formed, amid reports the sides had reached some level of understanding.

The Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia have demanded that Hamas renounce violence, recognize Israel and respect past agreements, moves that are anathema to the Islamist group.

"We certainly favor an effective Palestinian government, and we are certainly supportive of a reconciliation process," State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley said of national unity talks between Fatah and Hamas being brokered by Egypt.

"That said, we have particular terms, you know, laid out by the Quartet. You know, Palestinian unity must be guided, you know, in support of a government committed to nonviolence, recognition of Israel and acceptance of previous agreements and obligations."

The US also said its commitment to the Palestinians "remains strong," as did its objections to Israeli settlement activity, following the publication of a Fatah memo saying hope in President Barack Obama had been lost.

"All hopes placed in the new US administration and President Obama have evaporated," the document said. Obama "couldn't withstand the pressure of the Zionist lobby, which led to a retreat from his previous positions on halting settlement construction and defining an agenda for the negotiations and peace."

"Our commitment to the Palestinian people remains strong," a State Department official responded, adding that American opposition to settlements remained in place: "We continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements."

The Fatah memo accused the US of failing to set a clear agenda for a new round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

The State Department official stressed, though, that "our priority remains the resumption of negotiations in an atmosphere conducive to success," and furthermore that "it is past time to talk about starting negotiations - it is time to move forward."

However, along with the circulation of the memo, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, Fatah chairman and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas declared that he wouldn't resume peace talks with Israel before there was a total freeze on settlement activity, including in Jerusalem.

Israel had no formal response to the Fatah memo, or to Abbas's comments on not resuming negotiations without a freeze.

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Source: JPost