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

Israel shrugs off Mitchell's loan threat

Israeli officials on Sunday tried to downplay tensions looming with the United States after George Mitchell, the Obama administration's Middle East envoy, suggested in a PBS interview that the US could consider withholding support for loan guarantees for Israel.

Israel's finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, said on Sunday that Israel has "no indication that there is any intention to pressure us through the guarantees ... only a few months ago we reached an agreement with the US treasury and state departments on the extension of their guarantees." However, he also said that Israel could do without the guarantees, if necessary.

"We don't have to use those guarantees. We are doing very well without them," Mr. Steinitz said Sunday. He added in his comments that Israel late last year agreed with the US on the guarantees for 2010 and 2011, and no conditions were placed on Israel at that time.

Israeli Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar also addressed Mr. Mitchell's remark at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's weekly cabinet meeting on Sunday, saying that Israel would act in its own interests and not according to external pressures.

"The American administration knows that those who are holding up the negotiations are the Palestinians," said Sa'ar. "Israel made many concessions while the Palestinians didn't do a thing."

From the Israeli point of view, Netanyahu's offer of a ten-month freeze in settlement construction back in November was a peace-making gesture that has not been met by Palestinian willingness to come back to the negotiating table.

But from the Palestinian viewpoint, President Mahmoud Abbas is finally "standing up" to Western pressure to return to negotiations by insisting on a full moratorium on building of Israeli settlements, including in East Jerusalem.

The Palestinians see the eastern half of the city – under Jordanian control until 1967 -- as their future capital, but Israel annexed the territory and does not consider East Jerusalem neighborhoods as settlements.

US backing for Israel's loan guarantees has been a hot issue in the past, most pointedly in the early 1990s when the administration of George H. W. Bush faced a head-on collision with the Likud premier, Yitzhak Shamir, who refused to curtail settlement building in the West Bank.

Ultimately, the Bush administration decided it would subtract equivalent amounts of money from the $10 billion in loan guarantees for every dollar Israel spent building settlements in the occupied territories. The outcome of the spat was a low-point in US-Israel relations.

"Theoretically of course, the withdrawal of loan guarantees could be an act of pressure, but Israel doesn’t really need loan guarantees," says Peter Medding, an expert on US-Israel relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. "But if they try to do it, as they did very unsuccessfully in the early 1990s, it would have to come from the White House. I don't think it's Obama's style, and I don't think it fits the circumstances.

If anything, they've been trying to persuade Abbas to come to the party, and are still waiting for him. "

More at CSM

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

Why Abbas Does Not Want To Resume Peace Talks

by Khaled Abu Toameh
The leaders of the Palestinian Authority have reached the conclusion that, under the current circumstances, it would be a waste of time to return to the negotiating table with Israel.

They are convinced that the only way to get anything is by rallying pressure from the international community against Israel.

It is for this reason that representatives of the Palestinians have been negotiating with the Europeans and Americans about the peace process -- not with Israel.

The Palestinian leadership in Ramallah is negotiating about the peace process, but with the foreign ministers of France, Sweden, Norway, Germany and the UK and not with Israel. Almost every step this leadership takes is fully coordinated in advance with Western diplomats and their governments.

They believe that at present Israel is more isolated than ever in the international arena, particularly in light of the UN’s Gaza War report, the “Goldstone Report.”

The Palestinian leadership has chosen to confront Israel in the international arena, and not at the negotiating table. Abbas’s strategy is to further isolate Israel in the world through boycotts and anti-Israel resolutions at the UN and other international forums.

They see growing support for Palestinians in many European capitals, and are convinced that this will eventually be translated into heavy pressure on Israel.

This is why he is prepared to wait and wait. He believes that the longer he waits, the more Israel will come under pressure.

Palestinian leaders see that the UN and almost all European governments have entirely endorsed the Palestinian narrative in the Israeli-Arab conflict Palestinian, namely that Israel must withdraw to the pre-1967 borders, including half of Jerusalem, and allow the establishment of a Fatah-controlled state in these territories.

They see increased anti-Israel sentiments in the West and are encouraged that Israel will not be able to tolerate hostility, isolation and boycott for a long time.

Abbas believes that the international community is negotiating with Israel on behalf of the Palestinians. He is fully convinced that only increased pressure on Israel, and not negotiations, will bring about a full withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders.

And since the whole world, with the possible exception of the US Administration, “is on our side,” why bother return to the negotiating table with Israel?

The belief among the Palestinian leadership is that it is only a matter of time before Israel succumbs to the growing international pressure.

By negotiating with Abbas and his government, the Western governments are, in fact, keeping the Palestinians from resuming peace talks with Israel. Instead of negotiating with Abbas, these governments should be urging him to return to the negotiations with Israel as soon as possible and before it is too late.

But for now Abbas does not seem to be in a rush; this is why those who believe that real peace talks could be “revived” in the near future are living under an illusion. Abbas has set out his demands and conditions in a clear and straight manner and he is waiting for the international community to help him achieve all his goals.

If Abbas wants to prove his claim that Israel “does not want peace,” then he should return to the negotiating table tomorrow morning and show the world which party is to blame for the stalemate.

Hudson New York

Why is Abbas stonewalling?

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

Hardly a day passes when Mahmoud Abbas does not reiterate his refusal to return to the negotiating table with Israel unless certain conditions are fulfilled. This has been Abbas's position since US President Barack Obama entered office earlier this year.

By setting conditions for resuming the peace talks, Abbas appears to have climbed a very high tree - one that he finds too difficult to climb down from.

Abbas and his top aides point the finger of blame at Obama. They point out that almost immediately after he entered the White House, he demanded from Israel a freeze of settlement construction.

In an interview published this week in the London-based Asharq al-Awsat, Abbas explained that he could not afford a situation in which Obama appears more Palestinian than the Palestinians.

"Obama laid down the condition of halting the settlements completely," he noted. "What was I supposed to say to him? Should I say this is too much?"

Responding to criticism that he had never made such a demand before Obama was elected, Abbas said, "Halting the settlements is the second article of the road map and it's something I want. At the end they blame me, and they say that the condition of halting settlement construction was not on offer during the negotiations with former prime minister Ehud Olmert. Bear in mind that at every meeting with Olmert, the issue of the settlements was discussed."

ABBAS SEEMS to be more worried about his credibility than the construction in the settlements. In the past year, his standing among his constituents was severely undermined because of his policy of zigzagging.

First, Abbas told the Palestinians that he would never meet with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu unless he recognized the two-state solution and halted all settlement construction in the West Bank. However, under pressure from Obama,Abbas was forced to sit with Netanyahu at UN headquarters in New York.

Second, Abbas's failure to back a resolution endorsing the Goldstone report on Operation Cast Lead drew strong condemnations from many Palestinians, including some belonging to his Fatah faction. As the outcry in the PA territories and the Arab and Islamic countries intensified,Abbas rescinded his decision and decided to back the resolution that was brought before the UN Human Rights Council. But as far as his critics and enemies are concerned, it was too little and too late.

Third, Abbas's frequent threats to resign or not run in a new election are no longer taken seriously, not even by some of his top advisers. As one aide put it, "Abbas has threatened to resign at least 40 times in the past few months alone."

Abbas's empty threats and zigzagging have hurt his reputation so badly that now he's being forced to play tough with Israel and the US. To demonstrate this uncompromising approach, Abbas most recently came up with a new condition for resuming the talks: That Israel and the international community recognize beforehand the 1967 boundaries as the official and final borders of the future Palestinian state.

Abbas's aides in Ramallah say that he needs a "major concession" from Israel before he returns to the negotiations. "President Abbas does not want to repeat the mistakes of the past," explained one aide. "If he succumbs and resumes the talks with Israel unconditionally, our people will throw him out."

According to one of his advisers, Abbas has reached the conclusion that there's nothing to talk about with the Netanyahu government, especially when ministers like Avigdor Lieberman, Moshe Ya'alon and Bennie Begin are among the prime minister's inner circle. To support his argument that there's no peace partner inIsrael, Abbas shows visitors a copy of an article written by journalist Gideon Levy in Haaretz, entitled: "Netanyahu should admit Israel doesn't want peace."

Abbas also appears to be very disappointed with the Obama administration, on which he was pinning high hopes in the beginning. The Palestinian leadership in Ramallah was seriously hoping that Obama would forceIsrael not only to freeze settlement construction, but to pull back to the pre-1967 borders, including the entire eastern part of Jerusalem. But now Abbas and his officials are accusing Obama of "caving in to pressure from the Jewish lobby" by endorsing Netanyahu's stance. In this regard, the PA officials say, Obama has shown that his policy toward the Middle East is almost the same as that of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

Abbas is now hoping that the Europeans will counterbalance the US "bias" in favor of Israel by supporting the Palestinian leadership's demands. As one official put it, "The Americans can be on Israel's side, while the Europeans will be on our side. Let's turn it into a conflict between the Europeans and Americans."

It's hard to predict Abbas's next move as the man has been anything but consistent in his statements.

Yet the question that many Palestinians have been asking themselves is not whether the talks withIsrael would be resumed or not, but if there's anything left to negotiate about.

And a growing number of Palestinians have long been wondering whether the man who is often referred to as the "governor of the West Bank," and whose term in office expired about a year ago, really has a mandate to negotiate on their behalf.

JPost

Peace possible within six months: Mahmoud Abbas

PALESTINIAN leader Mahmoud Abbas has declared that a final-status agreement between Israelis and Palestinians can be completed within six months if Israel freezes all construction in Jewish settlements and in East Jerusalem.

In the most optimistic timeframe given by any key player in the Middle East in recent times, Mr Abbas said he had put a fresh proposal to Israel's Defence Minster, Ehud Barak.

Mr Abbas made the comments in a wide-ranging interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Israel has announced a 10-month freeze on new construction in the West Bank but Palestinians say it is inadequate because it fails to include Arab-dominated East Jerusalem and allows for at least another 3000 new houses and public buildings to be built.

The Abbas comments suggest that East Jerusalem -- the most sensitive issue of all as both Israelis and Palestinians want Jerusalem as their capital -- is the major obstacle to new peace talks.

"I suggested to him (Mr Barak) three weeks ago that Israel freeze all construction in the settlements for six months, including East Jerusalem," Mr Abbas said.

"But I demanded that construction stop . . . during this time, we can get back to the table and even complete talks on a final-status agreement. I have yet to receive an answer.

"They tell me I had not previously demanded a construction freeze in the settlements. True, in 1993 we didn't do so, but then there were no agreements about a freeze. Now there is the road map."

The road map was an agreement brokered in 2003 by the Middle East Quartet -- the UN, US, Russia and the European Union -- and backed by former US president George W. Bush. With the aim of a formal agreement by 2005 leading to a two-state solution, Israel agreed to halt all settlement activity and gradually withdraw from the West Bank while Palestinians agreed to cease all terrorist activities and incitement to violence against Israel and to improve security in the West Bank.

"So come and see what we did," Mr Abbas said in the interview. "The security situation throughout the West Bank is excellent. But what steps have you (Israel) taken so far?

"You have not met a single clause in the road map. You removed a few roadblocks and there are still 640. Every day there are arrests, house demolitions. I don't understand why. We have security co-ordination, so why do this?"

Mark Regev, the spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told The Australian yesterday that in a speech Mr Abbas gave in Arabic yesterday to a Palestinian conference, he included preconditions that he did not include in the interview.

"What is of concern to us is that yesterday in the speech in Arabic, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) placed more reasons why we can't start negotiations," Mr Regev said.

"Up until now, he was talking about a settlement freeze. Now he is adding (a return to) 1967 borders. It's like we have to accept the outcome of negotiations before negotiations start. We are concerned that they are trying to avoid negotiations.

"The reason we haven't been negotiating is the Palestinians have been placing new preconditions on talks."

Asked about Mr Abbas's claim that he had put a proposal to Mr Barak and had not received any response, Mr Regev said: "Let's be fair: the 10-month cessation of new housing in the West Bank is unprecedented and has been called as such internationally.

"No Israeli government has ever gone so far.

"Internally in Israel, groups such as Peace Now have called it historic.

"Yet he (Mr Abbas) ignores it.

"It doesn't make sense to me."

The Australian

MIDEAST: ELECTIONS ONLY IF IN BOTH WEST BANK AND GAZA, ABBAS

BEIRUT - Palestinian National Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), said that there will be no parliamentary and presidential elections in the West Bank if Hamas does not accept holding a vote also in the Gaza Strip, a territory that they have controlled since 2007.

This was reported by the press in Beirut, according to which, at the end of his official two-day visit to Lebanon, Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), said: "if Hamas continues to refuse calling elections in Gaza, I will not allow them to be held in the West Bank."

Due to Hamas' refusal, the electoral commission advised postponing elections in the Palestinian Territories, initially set for January 24. Abbas, whose mandate as PNA President has already expired, underlined that his refusal to rerun "is not a political manoeuvre.

ANSAmed

The good life on the West Bank

In the Wall Street Journal, Tom Gross provides an eye-opening antidote to the usual boilerplate fantasies about Palestinian deprivation:

Wandering around downtown Nablus the shops and restaurants I saw were full. There were plenty of expensive cars on the streets. Indeed I counted considerably more BMWs and Mercedes than I've seen, for example, in downtown Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.

... The shops and restaurants were also full when I visited Hebron recently, and I was surprised to see villas comparable in size to those on the Cote d'Azur or Bel Air had sprung up on the hills around the city.

Life is even better in Ramallah, where it is difficult to get a table in a good restaurant.

New apartment buildings, banks, brokerage firms, luxury car dealerships and health clubs are to be seen. In Qalqilya, another West Bank city that was previously a hotbed of terrorists and bomb-makers, the first ever strawberry crop is being harvested in time to cash in on the lucrative Christmas markets in Europe.

Local Palestinian farmers have been trained by Israeli agriculture experts and Israel supplied them with irrigation equipment and pesticides.

A new Palestinian city, Ruwabi, is to be built soon north of Ramallah. Last month, the Jewish National Fund, an Israeli charity, helped plant 3,000 tree seedlings for a forested area the Palestinian planners say they would like to develop on the edge of the new city. Israeli experts are also helping the Palestinians plan public parks and other civic amenities.

...In June, the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl related how Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas had told him why he had turned down Ehud Olmert's offer last year to create a Palestinian state on 97% of the West Bank (with 3% of pre-1967 Israeli land being added to make up the shortfall).

‘In the West Bank we have a good reality,’ Abbas told Diehl. ‘The people are living a normal life,’ he added in a rare moment of candor to a Western journalist.

Nablus stock exchange head Ahmad Aweidah went further in explaining to me why there is no rush to declare statehood, saying ordinary Palestinians need the IDF to help protect them from Hamas, as their own security forces aren't ready to do so by themselves yet.

The truth is that an independent Palestine is now quietly being built, with Israeli assistance.

When might we read this in the British press or hear it on the BBC?

Melanie Phillips

Abbas to UN: Immediate action against Israel needed

The Palestinian observer at the UN, Riyad Mansour, urged the Security Council to take measures against Israel in light of what he called years of failed peace negotiations and a lack of Israeli willingness to advance a comprehensive peace agreement.

Speaking on behalf of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas Monday evening, Mansour told the General Assembly that the peace talks had been hindered by the "settlements, arrests (of Palestinians by the IDF) and Israeli attacks."

In his speech, the Palestinian envoy reiterated the claim that the IDF committed war crimes during its December-January offensive in Gaza.

He went on to criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government, saying it was "alienating" the Palestinians and withdrawing from "all of the commitments and agreements that we have reached with previous Israeli governments."

The UN is currently marking the historic date of November 29 1947, the day in which it approved the partition plan separating Israel into two states – Jewish and Arabic.

But while in Israel the date is celebratory, as it marks the end of the British mandate and the beginning of independent rule, the UN headquarters in New York and Geneva are holding ceremonies of mourning and solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Mansour added, "Israel's daily actions on the ground prove that it does not want to take one step towards a comprehensive agreement and is realizing its settlement scheme in the West Bank and Jerusalem in blatant violation of international law.

"Israeli is turning its back to a return to the negotiation table, which is aimed at achieving a just and comprehensive solution that will guarantee peace for all of the region's nations," he said.

"It's time that after all these years of negotiations, which did not yield any results, the international community, and particularly the Security Council, fulfill their obligations."

The Palestinian observer said the Security Council must take "immediate and determined measures that will reflect the position of the world's nations, who have repeatedly demanded a two-state solution and an end to the Israeli occupation, which began in 1967."

Mansour told the General Assembly Israel has intensified its efforts to "Judaize" Jerusalem, adding that this policy culminated with what he said were excavations under and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque and granting "Zealous Jews" permission to enter the holy site in the capital's Old City.

He said these acts may add a dangerous religious element to the conflict.

However, Mansour stressed that the Palestinians were committed to peace as a strategic choice.

YNet

Greg Sheridan: How Middle East peace wasn't given a chance: Ehud Olmert

IT was the moment the Palestinians might have had a state, with a capital in East Jerusalem. For a single moment, the dove of peace hovered hopefully over the Middle East.

On September 16 last year, the then Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, offered the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, the most far-reaching and comprehensive peace deal any Israeli prime minister has ever offered.

Mr Olmert recalls his pleas to Mr Abbas to accept the deal: "I said to him, do you want to keep floating forever - like an astronaut in space - or do you want a state? I told him he'd never get anything like this again from an Israeli leader for 50 years."

Mr Olmert, who as a rule avoids the media these days, has undertaken hours of discussion and interviews with The Weekend Australian and provided unprecedented detail of his peace offer to Mr Abbas.

The interviews took place amid growing tension over West Bank settlements. Palestinians appealed to the US yesterday to raise pressure on Israel, saying an Israeli plan to halt new construction in the West Bank was insincere.

Presidential adviser Yasser Abed Rabbo urged US envoy George Mitchell to bring about "a real peace process" that would halt all settlement construction.

Mr Olmert says such disputes could have been resolved with his deal. He recalls meeting Mr Abbas more than 35 times for "intense, serious" negotiations, in the two years leading up to the September 16 offer last year.

Mr Olmert says his offer to Mr Abbas included a Palestinian state occupying 94 per cent of the West Bank and all of Gaza. This would have allowed Israel to keep the major Jewish population areas in the settlements in the West Bank.

But in return he would have given the Palestinians an equal parcel of land from Israel proper in compensation. He offered Palestinian sovereignty over all the Arab areas of East Jerusalem, so that it could function as a capital for the new Palestinian state.

Dividing Jerusalem is an explosive issue in Israeli politics.

Mr Olmert recalls his own struggle to come to grips with his offer on Jerusalem: "This was a very sensitive, very painful, soul-searching process. While I firmly believed that historically and emotionally Jerusalem was always the capital of the Jewish people, I was ready that the city should be shared."

Perhaps Mr Olmert's most radical and audacious proposal was for an international administration of the sites in Jerusalem holy to Jews, Muslims and Christians. Mr Olmert proposed forming an area of "no sovereignty" to be administered jointly by Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the new Palestinian state, Israel and the US.

He offered to build a tunnel, under Palestinian control, between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Mr Olmert says every European leader, and senior Americans, who knew of the plan acknowledged it as the most far-reaching and extensive peace offer Israel has made.

Mr Olmert still regards Mr Abbas as a peace partner for Israel.

"I think he's genuine in his desire to achieve a Palestinian state and he recognises the right of Israel to exist," he says.

Mr Olmert speculates that Mr Abbas didn't accept the deal because he felt he could not deliver the Palestinian commitment to it, or perhaps because he feared the outcome of approaching Israeli elections. But nor did Mr Abbas directly reject the deal. Instead he said he wanted to bring experts back with him the next day.

But the next day, the Palestinians' chief negotiator postponed the meeting.

"I never saw him again," Mr Olmert says.

The Australian

Cabinet approves 10-month West Bank settlement freeze

The security cabinet approved Wednesday evening Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's proposal to halt construction in the West Bank settlements for a period of 10 months.

Eleven ministers voted in favor of the plan, while Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau opposed the initiative, which was coordinated with the US in an effort to jumpstart the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai (Shas) and Housing and Construction Minister Ariel Atias were absent from the vote.

Shortly after the vote Netanyahu told a televised press conference at his Jerusalem office that the step was designed to "encourage resumption of peace talks with our Palestinian neighbors."

"It's not an easy step and we are taking it out of broad national considerations," he said, adding, "I hope that the Palestinians and the Arab world will be wise enough to take this opportunity to move forward in the path of peace," he said.

Netanyahu stressed that the settlement freeze would not be implemented in east Jerusalem.

"We do not put any restrictions on building in our sovereign capital," the prime minister said.

"Now is the time to begin negotiations, now is the time to move forward towards peace. Israel today has taken a far-reaching step toward peace; it is time for the Palestinians to do the same," he added.

"Israel's government has made an important step toward peace today, let us make peace together."

Netanyahu further told reporters, "As soon as the suspension period concludes, my government will resume the West Bank construction policy of previous governments."

"I have promised to allow our 300,000 brothers residing in the West Bank to continue to lead normal lives, and therefore construction that is already underway will not ne halted. We will continue to build synagogues, schools and kindergartens," he said.

Among those who backed the initiative were hardliners Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Ministers Moshe Yaalon and Benny Begin.

Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer (Labor) said after the vote, "It’s an important and historic decision, one of the most important decisions this government has made. The decision will leave the Palestinians with only one choice – join the political negotiations. They have no reason to stall anymore."

Earlier, a US official said the United States hopes Netanyahu's proposal can help revive Middle East talks,

"We're hoping this will in some way contribute to the resumption of negotiations" between the Israelis and Palestinians, the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Israel has been under heavy international pressure to halt its construction in settlements built on captured lands claimed by the Palestinians. Some 300,000 Israelis live in the West Bank, in addition to about 180,000 people living in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem.

Netanyahu earlier floated the idea of suspending construction in existing settlements. Wednesday's offer was the first time he has given a firm timeline for how long he is willing to stop the building.

Palestinians already rejected the move before the announcement because the freeze does not include construction in Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state. Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and annexed it soon after.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has demanded a total halt to settlement construction before peace talks can resume. On Wednesday, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said there was nothing new in Netanyahu's announcement, pointing to the 3,000 new housing units under construction in the West Bank.

"This is not a moratorium. Unfortunately, we hoped he would commit to a real settlement freeze so we can resume negotiations and he had a choice between settlements and peace and he chose settlements."

Palestinian presidential adviser Nabil Abu Rdeneh said the proposed freeze would be unacceptable if it didn't include east Jerusalem.

"Any Israeli offer that doesn't include Jerusalem will be rejected immediately," he said in a phone interview from Argentina, where he was traveling with President Abbas. "No Palestinian, no Arab can cross this line."

Netanyahu, a traditional ally of the settler movement, has argued that some construction should be permitted to allow for "natural growth" in their communities. His latest offer applies only to "new construction permits", meaning that some 3,000 homes already approved for construction would not be affected.

YNet

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

U.S. official: Obama 'obstacle to peace'

JERUSALEM – In defiance of President Obama's demands that Israel cease building in sections of Jerusalem and the West Bank, New York state assemblyman Dov Hikind laid the cornerstone for the second phase of a new Jewish construction project in the Nof Tzion neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem..

Together with Knesset Member Danny Danon, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party, Hikind spoke with reporters about the Jewish right to build in Israel's capital city.

Hikind, a Democrat, asserted banning Jews from building in neighborhoods was segregation. He expressed wonder that an African-American president would endorse such a policy in the 21st century.

Speaking with the media, Hikind blamed Obama for stalling the peace process. According to the assemblyman, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has latched onto Obama's calls for a settlement freeze as an excuse not to negotiate with Israel.

According to Hikind, a Jew cannot even build a bathroom in Jerusalem without international condemnation.

Israel recently announced the construction of several hundred housing units in Jerusalem's Gilo neighborhood to the chagrin of the American administration.

Danon told WND that Gilo, a neighborhood of 40,000 Jews within the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem, is completely within the Israeli consensus, stating that even Tzipi Livni, opposition leader of the Kadima party, was behind the expansion.

Hikind was in Israel leading a solidarity mission of 50 American Jews. During the past week the group met with leaders of Israel's settlement enterprise and national camp. The purpose of the mission was to strengthen Israeli sovereignty over the West Bank and Jerusalem by acquiring property in the disputed areas. Hikind himself expressed interest in buying an apartment in Nof Tzion.

A representative of the Ateret Kohanim organization, which reclaims Jewish land in Jerusalem, accompanied the group to Nof Tzion, explaining the history of the disputed areas.

The Americans were amazed to learn that such predominantly Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem as Silwan were historically Jewish. Silwan was a Yemenite Jewish community until it was evacuated and turned over to Arabs by the British, following Arab pogroms in the late 1930s.

During the cornerstone laying and subsequent press conference, a small group of demonstrators from the extremist Peace Now organization stood nearby calling for the division of Jerusalem. One demonstrator, a Jew from Britain, held a sign which stated, "Hikind – you're a shame to your party."

As Hikind attempted to leave, he was accosted by the demonstrator. The assemblyman gave the young man his telephone number, offering to take him out to dinner to speak about the issues in a less charged setting.

WND

'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

Hamas: Terrorism to Eliminate Israel is a 'Principle'

In an interview published Thursday in the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat, a Hamas spokesman said that the jihadist movement is loyal to "Palestinian principles" in its policy of terrorism against the Jews until Israel ceases to exist.

Palestinian Authority Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas claimed earlier this month that Hamas had agreed to the establishment of a Palestinian state within temporary borders.

Osama Hamdan, a Hamas spokesman in Lebanon and close associate of powerful Hamas political leader Khaled Mashaal, rejected the idea, however.

Hamas, Hamdan explained, has never agreed and will never agree to any recognition of Israel's legitimacy as a sovereign state. An agreement to temporary borders contradicts this position, as it would constitute acceptance of Jewish sovereignty over the pre-1967 borders of Israel, he added.

The Hamas plan is based on obtaining a Palestinian state by force of arms, Hamdan said, "not by way of agreements, a path that has failed."

In fact, the Hamas spokesman told Al-Hayat that negotiations between his movement and Abbas' Fatah group reached an impasse over acceptance of the Quartet's call for an end to Arab "resistance" operations; i.e., terrorism. The Quartet - the European Union, the United States, the United Nations and Russia - is involved in pushing for negotiations between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

Hamdan emphasized further that, in fact, it is Hamas that is remaining loyal to "basic Palestinian principles" in fighting against any agreements with Israel.

Meanwhile, President Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are formulating a new peace plan that calls for a demilitarized, temporary Palestinian state in half of Judea and Samaria.

While the PA has not accepted the plan, Hamdan claimed that PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad supports the idea of a temporary state. Fayyad, claimed Hamdan, has prepared a plan to declare a Palestinian state in 2011.

Saeb Erekat, a leading Palestinian Authority spokesman, said that the PA will not unilaterally declare independence. Rather, it will ask the United Nations Security Council to recognize the principle of "two states for two peoples" and affirm the right of the PA to sovereignty in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

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

Next, Locusts?

Can anything else possibly go wrong for the Obama administration's Middle East policy?

In the past ten days, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has twice reversed herself publicly on her attitude toward the Israeli settlements.

Palestinians have refused her direct request to rejoin peace talks with Israel, and Palestinian Authority president Abbas has said he will not run for reelection.

U.S.-Israel relations are in a state of frozen mistrust. The New York Times and Washington Post, among others, are calling Obama's policy a complete failure--in news stories as well as editorials. The only thing missing is a plague of locusts.

The policy is indeed a complete failure.

In ten months the administration has managed to offend and demoralize Israelis and Palestinians, lose the support of Arab governments, and reduce previously excellent relations with the government of Israel to levels unmatched since the James Baker days.

Meanwhile, George Mitchell's trips to the region are increasingly reminiscent of the Colin Powell visits in 2002 and 2003--producing little but embarrassment. The Israeli "100 percent settlement freeze" and the Arab outreach to Israel, early goals of the Obama team, are now forgotten, as is an early resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

These disasters are mostly the product of an ignorant and belligerent attitude toward Israel and especially its prime minister. The ignorance was most evident in the administration's view that a total construction freeze could be imposed not only in every settlement but in Jerusalem itself.

But the U.S. policy was worse: We demanded a freeze that would apply to construction by Jews, but not by Arabs; could any Israeli leader be expected to support such a position?

One does not need to be a member of the Knesset to understand that such a freeze was impossible for Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition as it would have been for any Israeli prime minister--but apparently this fact was beyond the understanding of Mitchell, Rahm Emanuel, and all the other "experts" on the Obama team.

The belligerence toward Netanyahu has been evident all along, but is best shown by the refusal to tell Israel's prime minister whether or not the president will see him this coming week when Netanyahu (like the president) addresses the United Jewish Communities annual general assembly in Washington.

The Israelis gave the White House weeks of notice that Netanyahu had agreed to speak, would be in town, and hoped to see Obama. The White House reaction has been to keep him twisting in the wind, with news stories several days before his arrival saying the president had not decided yet whether to see Netanyahu.

Think of it: Our closest ally in the region, critical issues at stake (from Iran's nuclear program and the recent Israeli seizure of an Iranian arms shipment meant for Hezbollah to Abbas's announcement), yet the Israelis get no answer.

Obama and his "experts" may think they are reminding Netanyahu who is boss, but they are in fact reminding all of us why Israelis no longer trust Obama--and making closer cooperation between the two governments that much harder.

Read more here,,,,

Source: Weekly Standard

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

Mashaal: Hamas stretches hand to Fatah

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday to stop seeking compromise with Israel but offered him an olive branch, saying Palestinians must end their divisions.

Sounding conciliatory after raising the political ante against Abbas following his call for national elections last month, Mashaal said the Islamist group Hamas "stretches its hand" to Abbas' Fatah faction to end divisions between the two sides undermining the Palestinian cause.

"Courage dictates that we, as leaders of the Palestinians, be frank with our people and evaluate what compromise has brought us, decide together to suspend or freeze the political settlement process and pursue our real national options," Mashaal told a rally in the Syrian capital.

He said compromise with Israel, starting with the 1993 Oslo Accords, had failed to stop Israeli settlement expansion and brought Palestinians no closer to establishing an independent state in the land Israel has occupied since the 1967 war.

Abbas suspended talks with Israel during the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December and US efforts to re-start them have since failed. Hamas has opposed the talks and rejected Western demands to recognize Israel, renounce armed struggle and accept existing interim peace deals.

"Any leader who insists on the right of return for the Palestinian refugees and on restoring the land, even to the 1967 borders ... must know that the way to do this is not through negotiations or betting on the Americans but through holy struggle, resistance and national unity," Mashaal said.

"Our hand is stretched out to reconcile with our brothers in Fatah and the Palestinian presidency to achieve our national project," he said, but did not make any new proposals for reconciliation after Hamas rejected an Egypt-mediated deal.

Hamas won a Palestinian parliamentary election in 2006, defeating the once-dominant, more secular Fatah, and won a brief civil war the following year in the Gaza Strip against Fatah.

Abbas then sacked the Hamas government and appointed his own administration in the West Bank.

Read more here,,,,

Source: YNet