Abbas sees no new intifada

Palestinians will not launch a new uprising against Israel despite their frustration at the deadlock in US-sponsored peace efforts, President Mahmoud Abbas said on Monday.

Israel has rejected US calls to freeze settlements in the West Bank, and Abbas - eyeing the internal challenge from Hamas - has refused to yield on this core demand and revive negotiations.

But Abbas made clear that Palestinians do not want to see a repeat of their 2000-2005 intifada, which was spearheaded by gunmen and suicide bombers and met a crushing Israeli military response.

"God forbid that we should come to a new intifada. The Palestinian people are not thinking about launching a new intifada," he told reporters during a visit to Argentina.

"The Palestinian people are only thinking about the road toward peace and negotiations and no other path. We will not go back to an intifada because we have suffered too much."

Abbas' visit comes a week after President Shimon Peres met with President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Buenos Aires and asked her to mediate in the Middle East peace process.

Fernandez and Abbas criticized Israel's announcement last week of plans to build 900 new homes in the settlements. Argentina's president also asked the United States to step up its involvement in the peace process.

"To build peace, besides finding common ground and respect for international law, we need to have the will for peace," Fernandez said. "I think this is a key element and that the United States sincerely can do more than what it's doing now regarding this."

During a visit to Brazil last week, Abbas and President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also condemned the Israeli settlements and demanded the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

YNet

'Fatah officials warn of third Palestinian intifada'

Fatah had made a strategic decision to declare a third intifada against Israel, movement officials told Nazereth-based newspaper Hadith Anas, citing the failed peace talks as the reason for their resolution.

The newspaper report quoted Fatah Central Committee members as saying that the movement wished to implement a decision made during its sixth convention, which assembled last August in the West Bank city of Bethlehem.

One of the movement's top officials interviewed by Hadith Anas said the third intifada will have a widespread popular base, adding, however, that unlike the previous popular struggle against Israel, which was sparked in September 2000, the movement will not endorse an armed struggle or the use of firearms.

"We want thousands of Palestinians to demonstrate daily near the settlements of the occupation, carrying out a human siege, and calling for the end of the occupation," one senior official said.


According to the report, Fatah chief and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to the resolution in principle, stipulating only that the struggle mustn't become a violent one.

Sources estimate that Abbas could prepare the conditions which would allow for such a move by stepping down as PA President as well as by declaring the dissolution of the PA by the end of the year.

Fatah officials had commented recently on the need to duplicate the weekly anti-separation fence rallies in the villages of Na'alin and Bil'in in locations across the West Bank, as well as turning some of those demonstrations against nearby settlements.

A senior member of an Arab-Israeli Knesset party, who maintains close ties with top Fatah and PA officials, said that anti-separation fence rallies could spark renewed popular resistance, if they continued to escalate as they did week ago near the Kalandia checkpoint.

The official said that PA sources have come to understand that unarmed popular resistance, centering on symbols of the West Bank occupation, could garner sympathy for the Palestinian cause in international circles as well as embarrassing the Israeli government.

"The first intifada gained significant diplomatic ground as far as the Palestinians are concerned since its symbol, a boy throwing rocks at a tank, made it impossible for Israel to claim it was defending itself against terror as it did in the second intifada, followings the city-center bombings," the official said.

Haaretz

City at the crossroads on road to peace

FOR all the talk of road maps and roads to peace, if ever harmony comes to the Middle East, it will need to travel along Highway 60 -- the road that winds north from Jerusalem towards the troubled Palestinian city of Nablus.

It is in Nablus, one of the oldest and most important cities on the West Bank, that so many of the tensions of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intersect.

A frail ceasefire exists between three Palestinian factions -- Hamas, Fatah and the Islamic Jihad -- while the Israeli Defence Forces stand at the main checkpoint into Nablus.

This city of about 200,000 people still has many problems but it has made great progress. During the worst of the second intifada, in 2002 and 2003, this was a war zone.

Palestinian youths clashed nightly with Israeli troops.

Nablus is rebuilding after the disaster of the intifada. These days, its youths seem more interested in turning up to An-Najah University than confronting Israeli soldiers.

During a tour for foreign journalists led by the Israeli non-government organisation Media Central this week, the centre of Nablus was thriving.

Markets were doing well, building was going ahead and if the standard of cars -- four Mercedes in one block -- is anything to go by, at least some people were doing well.

It is impossible not to notice on the top of a mountain overlooking Nablus the palace of the wealthiest man in the West Bank, billionaire Munib al-Masri, whose company Padico owns the lion's share of the Palestinian Securities Exchange.

Cities such as Nablus, Jenin and Ramallah have become important beacons for two key players -- the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

The PA points to Nablus to argue that their more moderate positions -- which include doing business with Israel -- lead to economic benefits as opposed to Hamas's "armed resistance" model under which 1.5 million Gazans live in despair.

The Israelis point to Nablus to argue that for any peace to hold, Palestinians need to have a stake in economic benefits.

There are some bright spots, such as the first new cinema in Nablus in 22 years. Cinemas were closed during the first intifada, in 1987, as people stayed at home at night to avoid the fighting.

Cinema director Bashir al-Shakah says opening such a complex five years ago would have been impossible. "No one will invest money in a war zone," he says.

Attendances at the 175-seat cinema have been good and it has already hosted a film festival. Nudity is a no-no on screen but violence is permitted.

Shakah says since the cinema opened in June, Muslim women, dressed in hijabs, have come to see what it's like watching a film in public.

Many businesses, he says, closed during the second intifada. Whom do those people blame? "Both sides," he says.

Today, Nablus is improving but the recovery is tenuous.

Palestinian businessman Ahmad Aweidah wastes no words when asked the state of the Palestinian economy: "It's in tatters."

Aweidah, 38, runs the Palestinian Securities Exchange, which has more than $US7 billion in deposits and $US2bn in loans.

The stock exchange receives 15 per cent of its funds from foreign investors.

Aweidah is contemptuous of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's claim he is trying to bring peace by boosting the Palestinian economy.

"It's bull," he says. "It's just for media consumption.

"Netanyahu doesn't want to pay the price for peace. He's not interested in removing settlements, he's not interested in a two-state solution but he has to say something. What he actually believes in is that Palestinians should pick up and go to Jordan."

Aweidah says contrary to a professed desire to assist the Palestinian economy, Israel has introduced obstacles.

"If Israel wants to see economic development on the West Bank, why do they keep all those restrictions on the Palestinian economy and the Palestinian Authority to do business?

"If Israel is so interested in helping the Palestinian territories, why was the biggest direct investment into the Palestinian economy -- $US700 million for another phone system -- delayed for three years by Israelis?"

The theme of deliberate obstruction is echoed in another meeting with a deputy mayor of Nablus, academic Hafez Shaheen.

He says the world soccer federation, FIFA, has told Nablus it will pay the entire construction cost of a new football and sports stadium on the edge of the city.

But Shaheen says the site approved by FIFA is part of "Area C" of the West Bank, which means that under the Oslo accords it is under Israeli army control. Nablus has paid for the site to be levelled but Israel, he says, has refused to approve the soccer stadium.

"We are still under occupation," Shaheen says. "The Israeli army are only 10m from Nablus.

"I can't leave the country without their permission, I need their permission to dig a well, I need their permission to construct a football field."

But nor does Shaheen speak well of the Palestinian Authority.

PA security officers turned up to the council one day and took him away, detaining him for two days. They also took away two of his sons.

One son was held for months and still will not tell his father what happened in detention.

Somehow, through all of this, Nablus and the West Bank more broadly need to find peace in their own ranks before they can bring about a peace with Israel that will hold.

The Australian

Spot the difference

Shiraz Maher is a courageous British Muslim of moral integrity who supports Israel’s right to defend itself against annihilation.

In Standpoint magazine’s blog, he writes an extremely sharp article -- marking the fall of the Berlin wall -- which lists the many ‘security walls’ in the Muslim world but which are totally ignored in the frenzy over Israel’s separation fence:

Built in response to the Palestinian intifada which claimed more than 900 lives since September 2000, the fence has dramatically halted the number of terrorist attacks inside the country. Excuse the pun -- but from the wall-to-wall coverage it received you could be mistaken for thinking that Israel's decision to defend itself in this was unprecedented.

Yet, not only is this wrong but, ironically, a lot of the physical barriers currently in place are located in the ‘Muslim world’.

These include Saudi v Yemen:

Yet, parts of the Saudi barrier stand inside the demilitarised zone, violating the 2000 agreement and infuriating Yemen... A prominent leader of the Wayilah tribe which occupies the disputed area explains: ‘The barrier has hindered grazing and free movement by many tribesmen. The tribesmen have the right to be free, but the barrier is taking away their freedom’,

Iran v Pakistan:

The opposition leader of Balochistan's Provincial Assembly, Kachkol Ali, has bitterly opposed the wall saying his people were never consulted about it and that it cuts off families from one another

and Morocco v Sarhawi separatists:

Much of the wall is lined with barbed wire and landmines, which is something it shares in common with parts of the Pakistan-Indian border (particularly in Kashmir).

Maher comments:

I’m hoping to join the next occupation of lecture theatres at universities around the country to protest against this insufferable outrage.

I can hear it now: ‘Viva, Viva, Balochistina!’... Ultimately, my point is the same as the one I made earlier in the year when the Gaza conflict took place: where is the ‘fairness' and ‘consistency' that Islamists and their leftist cheerleaders continually complain about? And why this one-track obsession with everything Israeli?

Cue Steve Bell’s offensive cartoon in the Guardian which drew an analogy between the Berlin Wall and – you guessed it. The ever-more invaluable CiF Watch has spotted an intriguing congruence between this Guardian cartoon and another which made an identical point -- and which was published in the neo-Nazi Stormfront.

A propos, CiF Watch has also conducted an enterprising poll to see whether readers could distinguish between the enlightened comments published on Comment is free and Stormfront. Actually, the style of writing and language makes the distinction quite clear, but even so the point remains.

A game for all the family to play to while away these long winter evenings, as we all wait for Iran to get its genocide bomb.

Source: Melanie Phillips

Islamist MP threatens Israelis

Cairo - An Egyptian Islamist MP called on Sunday for the storming of Israeli embassies around the world if Israelis entered Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound.

Subhi Saleh, an MP affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest but banned opposition group, said Israeli embassies "in every country" should be stormed if Israelis enter the site.

"Embassies have diplomatic immunity but our holy places have divine immunity, so if they enter Al-Aqsa let us enter their embassies," he said during a heated meeting of his parliamentary bloc.

Tensions over the compound turned violent on September 27 when Palestinians hurled rocks at a group of visitors whom they suspected of being rightwing Jewish extremists.

Home to the Western Wall of the Second Temple, it is Judaism's holiest site and Islam's third most sacred.

Amid the tensions, Israel a week ago denied access to the site to non-Muslim visitors and to Muslim males under the age of 50. But it re-opened the compound on Sunday.

In September 2000, the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada, erupted after Ariel Sharon, a rightwing politician who went on to become Israel's prime minister, visited the site.

Source: News24

Rally Supporting Hezbollah and Destruction of Israel Held in DC

The Investigative Project on Terrorism reports that a rally was held in Washington, D.C. on September 18 featuring supporters of Hezbollah and speakers that called for destroying Israel.

The rally was in celebration of Al-Quds Day, a holiday established by Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran’s current theocratic government.

The event was organized by a member of Fairfax County’s Department of Planning and Zoning named Faheem Darab, and individuals in front of the stage were seen carrying the flag of the Hezbollah terrorist group and an Israeli flag with a swastika on it.

“…we cannot get away from the fact that the solution begins with the complete destruction, the annihilation, and the utter dismemberment of the State of Israel,” the report quoted one of the speakers, Afeef Khan, as saying.

Also present was a rapper from the Viva Palestina USA organization that spoke in support of the wing of Hamas that carries out terrorism.

“And I promise there will be another intifada. You think our children are scared to be martyrs?” he said.

Other speakers included Reverend Graylan Hagler, who called on the audience to help “dismantle the State of Israel” and Mauri Saalakhan, who praised Ayatollah Khomeini.

Source: World Threats

Abbas: I Don't Support Armed Resistance Against Israel

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said that he does not support the military intifada or armed resistance against Israel.

He said that the intifada has destroyed the Palestinian people and the Palestinian infrastructure.

Source: Al-Hayat, London, September 25, 2008
H/T: MEMRI