 Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has said he will not seek re-election at presidential elections he has called for January and that he is not ready to debate the issue. "I have told our brethren in the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organisation] ... that I have no desire to run in the forthcoming election," Abbas said on Thursday in a speech broadcast live from his headquarters in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "This decision is not a kind of compromise or a manoeuvre." The 74-year-old leader who replaced Yasser Arafat five years ago as the Palestinian president said: "We're at cross roads. We have made lots of sacrifices in order to be able to have a right to a state. "Since the Oslo agreements in 1993, all these agreements are based on land and on peace and an end to Israel occupation of 1967. "We've pledged with Israel to reach a two-state solution but month after month we've seen nothing but complacency and procrastination."
Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh, reporting from Ramallah, said Abbas's decision would have "serious implications on Palestinian politics [and] also the prospect of peace and stability in the region".
She said reactions were pouring in from followers of Abbas's Fatah movement.
"They're beginning to speak ... and we understand they're planning to march to the president's office and express their support," our correspondent said. Read more here,,, Source: Al Jazeera (English)
 by Ali Waked Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that despite an announcement by his authority that Palestinian elections would be held in January, he still believed a truce with Hamas was possible. Speaking before members of the PLO council in Ramallah, he said the announcement was not a tactical move, and that "our hand is still extended towards an inter-Palestinian truce".
 Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas met Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi on Wednesday in the capital Rome, at his office in Palazzo Chigi.
The meeting was part of a bid to help restart peace talks in the Middle East and amid calls for his resignation by Palestinian politicians.
Italian foreign minister Franco Frattini was also present at the meeting between Abbas and Berlusconi.
Before meeting the premier however, Abbas (photo) held an hour-long talk with Italian president Giorgio Napolitano in his Quirinal Hill office and then inaugurated the Palestinian Authority's new headquarters in Rome.
Rome's mayor Gianni Alemanno was also present at the inauguration and said he hoped that the two-state solution could be realised to bring peace to the region.
"We are absolutely convinced that the concept of 'two peoples-two states' is the key for a just and long-lasting peace in the Mediterranean.
"The decision to inaugurate the new headquarters for our Palestinian friends to use, shows our strong conviction," said Alemanno, who also urged Israel to stop its Jewish settlement construction.
"It is key that Israel does every effort possible to indefinitely stop the settlements in the West Bank," said Alemanno.
Meanwhile on Thursday, Abbas will meet Pope Benedict XVI in a private audience.
Abbas has been under fire in Ramallah for his decision to delay a vote on the United Nations-backed war crimes report on Gaza, or the so-called Goldstone report.
The report said Gaza's ruling Islamist party Hamas and the Israeli army both committed war crimes during the deadly three-week Israeli offensive in late December last year and early January.
Reports say Abbas gave in to pressure from the United States to withdraw a motion from the UN Human Rights Council to take action on the report by judge Richard Goldstone.
Some politicians from the Palestine Liberation Organisation have apologised to the Palestinian public for the delay, while others have called for the resignation of Abbas and the dissolution of the Palestinian National Authority government.
The leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine has demanded an apology for the "sin" of deferring the vote of the report, Palestinian news agency Maan said.
 Al Jazeera understands that the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) is to defer its endorsement of the UN Goldstone report on the Gaza war. Al Jazeera's Mike Hanna, reporting from Geneva where the UN Human Rights Council is to meet on Friday, said the decision not to endorse the report condemning Israel's conduct in the three-week war was surprising and a major about turn. The Palestinian Authority had endorsed the Goldstone report when it was released last month, and on Tuesday the Palestinian representative speaking as an observer at the council had said the report "was a professional, unbiased report and related to facts that could not be denied". A draft resolution is still expected to be introduced at council on Friday by a number of countries on behalf of the Palestinians – who do not have the power to do so - but it remains to be seen how the sponsors respond to the PLO's move. In the debate of the draft on Tuesday the wording of the resolution was contested principally by the US, the EU and France, and Israeli media reported that the decision to defer the endorsement follows pressure from Washington. On Thursday, Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said any action to endorse the report would strike a fatal blow to the stalled so-called peace process between Israelis and the Palestinians. PLO sources told Al Jazeera's Nour Odeh in Ramallah in the West Bank, that there were plans to push for a postponement on the endorsement of the Goldstone report to March, pending a legal review of the findings. One main reservation the Palestinians have is that the report endorsed the Israeli war on Gaza early this year as a legitimate act of self-defence and not an act of aggression, our correspondent said. Another concern is the accusations against Hamas and other Palestinian factions of having possibly committed war crimes by launching rockets against the civilian population in Israel. Endorsing the report would mean endorsing the justification for the Israeli war and the war crimes allegations against Hamas. The Palestinian side sees these as having legal ramifications which could hamper national efforts to form a unity government with Hamas. Egypt said on Thursday that it would invite rival Palestinian factions Fatah - which forms the bulk of the PLO - and Hamas to Cairo in late October for a final round of talks that it believes will result in a signed reconciliation agreement. Hamas, which governs the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, which leads a separate, Western-backed government in the West Bank, have been bitterly divided since internal fighting more than two years ago. Egypt has been trying for months to broker such a deal, and Hamas's exiled leader, Khaled Mashaal, said this week that his group had agreed to the reconciliation proposal. Source: Al Jazeera (English) 
 September 1 Invited guests include three Cabinet secretaries, numerous diplomats, five members of Congress including the lone Muslim, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, and chief of the Palestine Liberation Organization mission. Here is the list of invited guests, as provided by the White House: Cabinet: Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr., and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. Deputy Cabinet secretaries: Commerce Deputy Secretary Dennis Hightower and Education Deputy Secretary Adam Miller. Congress: Reps. Andre Carson (D-Ind.), John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), Rush D. Holt (D-N.J.) and Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.). Diplomats: Ambassador Prince Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al Hussein of Jordan; Ambassador Adel A.M. Al Jubeir of Saudi Arabia; Ambassador Husain Haqqani of Pakistan; Ambassador Erlan A. Idrissov of Kazakhstan; Ambassador His Excellency Said ... ... Tayeb Jawad of Afghanistan; Ambassador Aziz Mekouar of Morocco; Ambassador Peter N.R.O. Ogego of Kenya. Also, Ambassador Roble Olhaye of D’jibouti; Ambassador Michael Oren of Israel; Ambassador Sudjadnan Parnohadiningrat of Indonesia; Ambassador Klaus Scharioth of Germany; Ambassador Meera Shankar of India; Ambassador Nabi Sensoy of Turkey; Ambassador Sir Nigel Elton Sheinwald of Britain; Ambassador Sameh Hassan Shoukry of Egypt; Ambassador Samir Shakir Mahmood Sumaida’ie of Iraq; and Ambassador Pierre Nicolas Vimont of France. Read more here,,,, Source: LA Times H/T JihadWatch
 The PLO Mission to the United States is located in downtown Washington, D.C., less than two miles from the White House. This is a scary reality, given the terrorist nature of the organization. Indeed, the U.S. government describes the PLO, or Palestine Liberation Organization, as a terrorist group, and the State Department has named important parts of the PLO to its foreign terrorist list. Yet it is this same U.S. government that has kept and continues to keep this mission intact. Who will finally have the common sense and will to shut the mission down? In December 1987, President Ronald Reagan signed into law the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1987. The act unequivocally called the PLO — an umbrella group for several violent entities — a “terrorist organization” and made it “unlawful” for the PLO to “establish or maintain” an office inside the United States. Citing various fanatical actions carried out by the group, including “the murders of dozens of American citizens abroad,” the act stated: [T]he Congress determines that the PLO and its affiliates are a terrorist organization and a threat to the interests of the United States, its allies, and to international law and should not benefit from operating in the United States. What the Congress and President Reagan fought to create, future U.S. presidents would seek to undo — circumventing the act by issuing waivers allowing for the maintaining of a PLO mission in the United States and for the American funding of the PLO. Every six months, beginning in 1994, U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama issued such waivers, using the excuse that they were “important to the national security interests of the United States.” Read more ...Source: PJMBill Clinton
George W. Bush
Barack Obama
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Time reporter blames Israel and the West for Muslim intolerance.  Pope Benedict’s visit to Israel this week has increased media attention on the plight of Christians in the Middle East and their declining numbers. But while the visit should serve as an opportunity for an honest look at Christian flight, one reporter blamed Israel and the West instead.In an article describing Christian apprehensions over Pope Benedict’s visit, Time magazine’s Andrew Lee Butters calls the presence of Christians in the region “a reminder of the multi-sectarian and tolerant history of Arab and Islamic culture.” However, this tolerance is threatened, he writes, “from the rise of religious extremism.” At this point, one would assume Butters would delve into largely overlooked issues such as
But instead, Butters points his finger in the opposite direction: “Clash-of-civilizations pundits and Western leaders like the Pope often ignore how the West helped spark such intolerance, especially through its one-sided support of Israel.”
Butters would be hard pressed to prove that Europe has been “one-sided” in its support for Israel. More importantly, however, Butters’ statement implies that Muslims are not responsible for their actions because the West backs Israel’s right to exist in peace with its neighbors. In fact, Butters goes even further, calling Israel’s creation “a disaster for Christians in the Middle East.”
Many of the Palestinian refugees who fled or were forced from their homes in 1948 — never to be allowed back — were Christians. The flood of Palestinian refugees into Lebanon helped spark a civil war between Muslims and Christians there. And the ongoing occupation of the West Bank is strangling the life out of those Christian communities that are left.
Blaming Israel for the civil war in Lebanon ignores the complex political arrangements in Lebanon at the time and the destabilizing effect of the PLO inside Lebanon’s borders. He also neglects to mention what might be strangling the life out of the 2,000 Christians living in Gaza. But Butters doesn’t stop there. He also holds Israel responsible for Muslim abuses of Christians in Egypt:
The ongoing Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories has also helped fuel the rise of Islamic extremism, especially in countries that have unpopular peace agreements with Israel. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, the main opposition to the American-backed Mubarak dictatorship, waged a small-scale terror campaign against both the government and the country's Coptic Christians during the 1990s.
According to Butters, therefore, the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t ultimately responsible for “small-scale terror” against the Christians it carries out. It’s really Israel’s presence in the Palestinian territories that is behind it all.  The BBC’s Tim Franks also covered the decline of Arab Christians in Bethlehem. In his article, Franks quoted several Palestinians who claim that Christians are leaving the city because of Israel’s security barrier. However, Franks also acknowledges that there could be another reason for the exodus. Privately, some Christians in Bethlehem say another factor sometimes motivates their decision to leave - concern about the rise of radical Islam - but they are unwilling to put such views on the record.
Indeed, Frank’s admission is consistent with finding from Justus Reid Weiner, who has researched the plight of Christians in the Palestinian territories extensively. According to Weiner, Arab Christians rarely speak about their situation in public: The human rights crimes against the Christian Arabs in the disputed territories are committed by Muslims. Yet many Palestinian Christian leaders accuse Israel of these crimes rather than the actual perpetrators. This motif has been adopted by a variety of Christian leaders in the Western world. Others who are aware of the human rights crimes choose to remain silent about them.
The media has an obligation to report the truth. Insist that reporters tell the whole story when they cover the plight of Christians in the Middle East.
Andrew Lee Butters
Time
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 By Jonathan Schanzer Rashid Khalidi, the former PLO spokesman-turned Columbia University professor, is convinced that Israel has constructed a "matrix of control" in the Middle East. Khalidi once cited books and articles to back up his skewed views of Middle East history. Now he cites obscure Internet claims of an "occupation settlement industrial complex." On April 1, Khalidi gave a one-hour phone briefing to Brit Tzedek v'Shalom (The Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace) - a leftist organization based in Chicago. While occasionally sounding balanced and insightful, he launched into short rants throughout the call. Notably, about eight minutes in, he began to froth about a "network of interests which is bound up with the maintenance of this matrix of control. The occupation settlement industrial complex - a network of companies that an Israeli Web site called 'whoprofits' put together." Based on this site, which published a disclaimer about the "accuracy, completeness, usefulness of any information and/or documents disclosed," along with input from radical leftists like Jeff Halper and Palestinian apologists like Amira Haas, Khalidi claimed there are "hundreds of companies, hi-tech companies, that keep the databases on which Israel manages... the four million Palestinians... The telephone databases to the security companies that manage the checkpoints to the companies that build the roads... the settler-only roads." And so on and so forth. Read more ...Source: Jerusalem PostRashid Khalidi
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 Khaled Abu Toameh is not your typical Palestinian journalist. He began his career at one of Yasser Arafat’s newspapers and today he writes for the Jerusalem Post. He has produced video for European TV stations, and even blogged for a while at Commentary Magazine in New York. It’s impossible to cram Toameh into a convenient ideological box, though that doesn't stop some people from trying. I met him briefly a few weeks ago on my trip to Israel sponsored by the American Jewish Committee when he gave a talk to me and my colleagues and answered some questions at the end. I’m reproducing the entire transcript here because I think he deserves a full hearing. Hamas, Fatah, Americans, Israelis, Europeans, Arab governments, American foreign correspondents – just about everybody involved in any way with the conflict comes under some well-deserved fire. There's something here for just about everybody to like and dislike, and I’m publishing what he said without quote-shopping or cherry-picking his words for convenience. Read more ...Source: Michael Totten
 Along with expressing solidarity with the Hamas casualties in Gaza, PLO and Fatah officials criticize Hamas for its contribution to the escalation that led to the Israeli attack. They blamed Hamas for not listening to PLO's call to prolong the tahdiah, for not preparing properly for the possibility that Israel would attack, and for combining its government functions with its resistance activity, which made it vulnerable to an attack on its institutions. Hamas, for its part, accused the PLO and Fatah of collaborating with Israel. The following are excerpts from statements and articles in the Palestinian media: Abu Mazen: We Told [Hamas] - "Don't End the Tahdiah"In his visit to Egypt, PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) placed the responsibility for the Israeli attack on Hamas, saying, "We called the leaders of Hamas, and told them both directly and directly, through Arab parties and non-Arab parties. We talked with them on the phone. We told them, 'Please, do not end the tahdiah.'" Nimr Hammad, an advisor to Mahmoud Abbas, said: "The one responsible for the massacres is Hamas, and not the Zionist entity, which in its own view reacted to the firing of Palestinian missiles. Hamas needs to stop treating the blood of Palestinians lightly. They should not give the Israelis a pretext." He called upon the leaders of Hamas to stop carrying out "operations which reflect recklessness, such as the firing of missiles." Read more ...Source: MEMRI
 From correspondents in Ramallah
November 24, 2008
PALESTINIAN leader Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of Palestine today by a key decision-making body of the PLO, amid tensions with rival Islamists, officials said.
The symbolic vote was taken at a meeting of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's 120-member Central Council, with a majority electing Mr Abbas to the post of "president of the State of Palestine", they said.
Mr Abbas is already president of the Palestinian Authority (PA) but his four-year term of office expires on January 8.
The move is expected to strengthen his standing with his rivals in the Islamist Hamas movement, who have threatened to stop recognising Mr Abbas's authority from January 9.
Mr Abbas is also chairman of the PLO, which is negotiating peace with Israel and head of the mainstream Fatah party.
Since June last year, Hamas has controlled the Gaza Strip after violent clashes which drove out Fatah from the impoverished territory.
The move has divided the Palestinians, with Mr Abbas's power practically confined only to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where his headquarters are located.
Earlier today, Mr Abbas threatened to call snap presidential and parliamentary elections in the New Year if there is no agreement with the Hamas to end the rift in Palestinian ranks.
"If the dialogue does not succeed, then at the start of next year we will issue a presidential decree calling parliamentary and presidential elections," Mr Abbas told the Central Council, which has the power to dissolve the PA.
But Hamas swiftly rejected his threat, saying he had no powers to dissolve the current parliament in which they won a large majority in the last elections in 2006.
Veteran Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who died four years ago, proclaimed symbolically the State of Palestine in 1988 and was declared its first president. Source: The Australian from Agence France-Presse
 By Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld In the welter of events following the catastrophe at the World Trade Center, few noticed that the first man arrested, Mohammed Salameh - the poor, unemployed illegal immigrant from an impoverished family - volunteered $5 million to bail himself out. Where did this money come from? Subsequently, the FBI identified more than $100,000 transferred from Europe to the bank accounts of Salameh and others. Is the same source responsible for funding the eight men arrested in Queens for allegedly planning to blow up tunnels and bridges and assassinate public officials? In 1992 Congress passed a law authored by Senator Grassley giving federal courts jurisdiction over civil suits filed against terrorist organizations by American victims. The law also requires the Treasury Department to report assets held in the United States by terrorist countries and organizations. Grassley's initiative was prompted by the common wisdom of "follow the money trail." But the Treasury Department did not comply with the law. Because Treasury has failed to implement Grassley's amendment, terrorists are able to raise funds and use them at will. The April report by Treasury listed the assets of the six countries on the terrorist list (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea, and Syria), but failed to report on assets of well-known terrorist organizations such as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO), the PLO, and the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS). Had Treasury fulfilled its obligation to look into these groups, perhaps the money supporting Salameh would have been detected in time to prevent the World Trade Center bombing. Read more ...Source: National ReviewH/T: Shariah Finance Watch
By Martin Kramer Was Rashid Khalidi a PLO "spokesman" or director of its press agency in Beirut back in 1982? I'll leave it to others to determine whether or not it matters (or matters enough) to the Khalidi-Obama connection. But I get riled up when people testify to Khalidi's bona fides without doing due diligence—especially when they specifically address Jewish audiences. Example: Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA). Read more ...Source: Snadbox
By Joseph Farah WASHINGTON – When Taysir Saada served as a trained assassin for Yasser Arafat's Fatah organization in the late 1960s, he admits he hated Christians. If he found a home belonging to followers of Jesus, he would sometimes throw a grenade inside and shoot it up with bursts of machine-gun fire. He has no idea how many people were killed and wounded in such attacks. Today a non-uniformed Saada, now known as Tass, patrols the dangerous Hamas-dominated streets of the Gaza Strip – no longer hunting down Christians or bearing arms; the Palestinian-American has traded in his automatic weapons and grenades for the Bible, humanitarian service and apologies to Arab Christians he once persecuted. His transition from Islamic terrorist to Christian missionary is recounted in a new book, " Once An Arafat Man: The True Story of How a PLO Sniper Found a New Life." Saada has returned to his roots, having been born in Gaza shortly after the 1948 war. Read more ...Source: WND
By Steve Brown BRANTFORD, Ontario - Once home to inventor Alexander Graham Bell and hockey great Wayne Gretzky, the small Canadian city of Brantford is now home to a terrorist - and the Canadian government might not do anything about it. Forty years ago, Mahmoud Mohammad Issa Mohammad, a former teacher, joined the terrorist group the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. On Dec. 26, 1968, Mohammad and another gunman launched an attack on an El Al airliner at Athens International Airport. The two ran up on the tarmac firing guns and, throwing grenades at the passenger jet, wounded a flight attendant as she opened an emergency exit and killed a 50-year-old passenger, Leon Shirdan. The gunmen were captured, tried and convicted in Greek court, and they were sentenced in 1970 to serve 17 years in prison. But they were released just months later after the PFLP hijacked an Olympic Airways flight and demanded their release as part of a hostage exchange. Read more ...Source: Fox NewsCanadian Government
Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award
By Aaron Klein JERUSALEM - A leading member of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah organization oversaw a delegation yesterday to visit recently freed Palestinian terrorist child-killer Samir Kuntar, calling the convicted murderer "beautiful," and a "pure and clean" hero. Palestinian Liberation Organization ambassador to Lebanon Abbas Zaki, a senior member of the Fatah Central Committee, yesterday led the delegation – which included other PLO and Fatah members – to visit Kuntar in Lebanon's Druze Mount village of Abayeh. Read more ...Source: WNDAbbas Zaki
Latest recipient of the Distinguished Islamofascist Award
 By Debbie Schlussel The Hoping foundation is a virulently anti-Israel charity, which funds programs throughout Gaza and Palestinian refugee camps, including Ein Al-Hilweh, Burj Al-Barajneh, and Nahr Al-Bared, which are hotbeds of Al-Qaeda and HAMAS activity. The Chair of its Board of Trustees is Karma Nabulsi, PLO representative from 1977-90 to the UN, Beirut, Tunis, and the UK, who wrote a column defending PFLP terrorist chief George Habash's hijackings as "an inspiration to secular democracy." The Hoping Foundation camouflages the programs as "art" and "creative writing," claiming they spread peace. But, in fact, the programs are administered by members of HAMAS. The Hoping Foundation joins UNRWA (the UN Refugee agency for Palestinians) in using HAMAS officials and supporters to help spread the hate. The Hoping Foundation website's description of who the Palestinians are is filled with anti-Israel disinformation and propaganda. The Foundation's site does not disclose the identities of its trustees, but they include Hugh Grant's girlfriend, Ms. Khan. In the Hoping Foundation's "Who Are the Palestinians?" we are told that: Palestinians . . . were forced to leave their homes in 1948 when Israel was created, and again in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Actually, none of them "were forced to leave." They chose to leave at the behest of neighboring Arab nations, who--during both wars--assured them that they would defeat Israel and the Palestinians could then return. The Palestinians made the wrong bet. And they lost. Tough. After decades, you'd think they'd want to better themselves--as did the million Jews who were kicked out of their homes and expelled from Arab lands. But, then, that would take away a political issue from all the Muslim and Arab nations who hate the Jews (and hate the Palestinians, too). Read more ...Source: Debbie SchlusselGwyneth Paltrow
Latest recipient of The Dhimmi Award
"Reclaim their property" should be construed as "reclaim their property or its monetary value"
Palestinian Authority representative in Lebanon Abbas Zaki gave an interview to NBN TV on April 9, 2008. Zaki, aka Sharif Mash'al, is a former Palestinian Legislative Council member for Hebron, former Fatah operations head, and current PLO Central Council member. He headed the PLO Lebanon Committee and the Palestine National Liberation Army's political commissariat, and was an opponent of the Oslo Accords. More ...Source: MEMRI
 Since the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was founded in June of 1994, the group has worked hard to conceal its true feelings about Hamas. That is, until now. Video footage taken at a Fort Lauderdale, Florida, rally against CAIR reveals its unabashed support for Hamas. If people had questions about CAIR's sympathies before, this should end all debate on the matter. In March of 1994, the future co-founder and Executive Director of CAIR, Nihad Awad, revealed himself as a supporter of Hamas. "After I researched the situation inside and outside Palestine, I am in support of the Hamas movement more than the PLO," he said. "I know that this movement as an Islamic movement has not been objectively reported in the United States..." When the declaration was made, Awad was the spokesman for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), the American propaganda wing of Hamas. However, since CAIR was established just a few months later, the organization has been extremely hesitant about making any such pronouncements about Hamas. Except for a statement at a November 2001 interfaith gathering by ex-CAIR-New York President Al-Haaj Ghazi Khankan, which he now says was a misquote, CAIR has been virtually silent. Read more ...Source: FrontPage Magazine
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Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has said he will not seek re-election at presidential elections he has called for January and that he is not ready to debate the issue. 
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