EDITOR: To understand what is in store for Palestinians, read below. This monster is the creature created by ALL Israeli governments, without exception.
Sheikh Jarrah Jews praise Baruch Goldstein on Purim: Ynet
(Video) Residents of east Jerusalem neighborhood celebrate holiday with songs of praise for Cave of Patriarchs massacre. Left-wing activists plan protest. To see the video use link above.
VIDEO – A video obtained by Ynet depicts Jewish residents of east Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood during their Purim celebrations singing songs of praise for Baruch Goldstein, a Jewish terrorist who murdered 29 Palestinians 16 years ago at the Cave of the Patriarchs.
Tensions in east Jerusalem have peaked recently over the building plans in Silwan.
The recent documented Purim festivities were reminiscent of scenes from Hebron. The residents adopted well-known childhood songs in order to praise the massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs carried out by Goldstein.
The video was filmed this past Monday, and shows residents singing and dancing next to their Arab neighbors: “Dr. Goldstein, there is none other like you in the world. Dr. Goldstein, we all love you… he aimed at terrorists’ heads, squeezed the trigger hard, and shot bullets, and shot, and shot.”
One of the leaders of the leftist campaign in the neighborhood, Assaf Sharon, described to Ynet: “The settlers are allowed to hold political activities and aggravating and offensive as could possibly be, and the neighborhood’s original residents, who are still a majority there, are not allowed to do a thing. We saw them enter a house, have a party, and play very loud music.”
Ynet asked the Jewish residents themselves for a response to the songs of praise for Goldstein, but they preferred not to respond.
Left-wing activists plan on holding a demonstration this upcoming Saturday night in protest of the events. “Such an event, which takes place under the watchful eye of the police, needs to make every citizen of Israel lose sleep. Such displays of violence on the part of the settlers are becoming more abundant.
“Therefore, it is important that people come and demand from the government and the Jerusalem municipality to stop the settlement enterprise in the east of the city, which is destroying the delicate fabric of life and is thwarting all possibility for a future peace accord,” said Sharon.
EDITOR: It takes one to know one…
While it is difficult to argue with the statement about Israel, for a Saudi politician to say this carries its humourous weight!
Saudi FM: Israel a religiously oriented culture: Ynet
Prince Saud al-Faisal tells New York Times about enlightened ‘liberal’ trends in his country, compared to ‘extreme’ conservative religious movement in Jewish state
WASHINGTON – Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, whose country is considered one of the most conservative Muslim states, believes his Saudi Arabia is “moving in the direction of a liberal society, while Israel is moving into a more religiously oriented culture.”
Faisal told the New York Times that while Saudi Arabia was moving forward, “what is happening in Israel is the opposite.”
Nationwide crackdown launched on stores selling items that are red or in any other way allude to banned celebrations of Western holiday
The interview was conducted by columnist Muareen Dowd, who arrived in Saudi Arabia for a 10-day visit to examine the improvement in the woman’s status.
Dowd noted in her column that Saudi Arabia was an absolute Muslim monarchy ruling over one of the most religiously and socially intolerant places on earth, and that the country Faisail deemed too “religiously determined” and regressive was the democracy of Israel.
“We are breaking away from the shackles of the past,” the prince said. “We are moving in the direction of a liberal society. What is happening in Israel is the opposite; you are moving into a more religiously oriented culture and into a more religiously determined politics and to a very extreme sense of nationhood,” which was coming “to a boiling point.”
Faisal linked the alleged religious radicalization in Israel with the difficulty to strike a peace agreement with the Palestinians and Arab countries, saying that “the religious institutions in Israel are stymieing every effort at peace.”
Asked about the situation of women in his country and extreme statements made by Muslim clerics, the prince said, “I think the trend for reform is set, and there is no looking back. Clerics who every now and then come with statements in the opposite direction are releasing frustration rather than believing that they can stop the trend and turn back the clock.”
EDITOR: The Show must go on!
For the 359th time (I didn’t really count…) the ‘peace negotiations’ are to start. This is good news for the media, politicians, and T Shirt manufacturers. For the rest of us, especially for the Palestinians, this is really bad news; Israel always used ‘peace talk’ to further its settlements at high speed. Not a single US President could resist the Photo Call round, but there again, Obama already has his Nobel Peace Prize, so what does he care?
Mideast peace talks could begin as early as Sunday: Haaretz
Indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority may begin as early as Sunday, Haaretz had learned. U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell will land in Israel on Saturday night, and the American administration is hoping the sides will declare the beginning of indirect talks the following morning, ahead of the arrival of U.S. Vice President Joe Biden on Monday.
The foreign ministers of the Arab League announced in Cairo Wednesday they were supporting the American initiative for indirect negotiations, qualifying their support with a four-month deadline. They said no progress will be possible without a complete settlement freeze.
The announcement came after heavy American, Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi pressure was put on the Palestinians and on other members of the League. The pressure also resulted in the Palestinians’ withdrawing a much tougher and reserved statement about the negotiations than the one eventually released. The Arab League decision was not unanimous and was strongly contested by Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem, who went as far as to interrupt when Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, was reading out the statement, to say the decision on entering negotiations rested ultimately with the PA.
The foreign ministers set a four-month deadline for the first phase of indirect negotiations after which the Arab League will assess the progress of the talks and decide whether to offer further support.
The foreign ministers said their decision was a last effort to promote peace through negotiations and was meant to allow the American administration an opportunity to facilitate the process. “Despite the lack of conviction in the seriousness of the Israeli side, the committee sees that it would give the indirect talks the chance as a last attempt and to facilitate the U.S. role,” the statement read.
Moussa stressed that even indirect negotiations are doomed to failure if Israeli measures such as settlement construction continue. He warned that if indirect talks fail to yield results, the Arabs will call for an emergency United Nations Security Council meeting to address the Arab-Israeli conflict and would ask Washington not to use its veto.
The Americans proposed the indirect talks as a way to allow the process to move forward without PA President Mahmoud Abbas’ losing face by being seen as giving up on his demand for a complete settlement freeze. Abbas had also sought the Arab League’s support to preempt Palestinian criticism of the move.
Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said Wednesday in Gaza that he calls on the Arab League to review its decision.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu commented Wednesday in a Knesset speech that “it seems the conditions for proximity talks are ripening.” He said: “All said and done, the world understands that this government is striving for negotiations. It has made some difficult steps to further these negotiations. It said things and did things,” he said.
The prime minister also slammed the Palestinians for refusing “without justification and no reason whatsoever to reenter negotiations.”
Netanyahu said: “I’ve said before that although you normally need two to tango, in this case you might need three. These negotiations may require some going back and forth, but Israel is not and never was an obstacle to negotiations.”
American Vice President Joe Biden is expected to arrive here on Monday, and the American administration is keen to have the announcement of indirect negotiations before he lands, so he can congratulate the sides and present the talks as an American achievement.
Special envoy Mitchell will mediate the talks, which will be the first formal negotiations after a 15-month hiatus, since before Netanyahu took office. These will also be the first Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to take place under the Obama administration.
Negotiations have been at a standstill as Abbas refused to enter talks so long as any construction takes place in any settlement, including East Jerusalem.
At this stage, negotiations will focus on border issues, with the hope that if these can be resolved, the issue of settlement construction will be next on the agenda, followed by the core issues of the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees.
Move to change law on ‘political’ arrest warrants postponed until after election: The Guardian
Jack Straw says rather than legislating now the government is ‘going to seek views on the proposals we are minded to make’
The delay is likely to provoke strong criticism from the Israeli government, which has been pressing for swift action to change the law since their former foreign minister, Tzipin Livni, was forced to cancel a trip to London earlier this year.
Moves to close a loophole in the law that has led to war crimes arrest warrants being issued against high profile politicians including a former Israeli foreign minister have been postponed until after the general election, the Ministry of Justice announced today.
The justice secretary, Jack Straw, said the government recognised that it was a controversial issue as it involved the long-standing right of private prosecution.
“Therefore, rather than legislating now, we are going to seek views on the proposals we are minded to make,” said Straw in a written ministerial statement to MPs.
The Commons justice committee is also to consider the proposed change in the law. A closing date of 6 April has been set for the consultation, making a change in the law impossible before the general election is due to take place.
Justice officials confirm that the move will need primary legislation. The last date to table amendments to the current crime and security bill now going through the Commons has already passed.
The delay is likely to provoke strong criticism from the Israeli government, which has been pressing for swift action to change the law since their former foreign minister Tzipi Livni was forced to cancel a trip to London earlier this year.
“The problem is not hypothetical, as applications for an arrest warrant have been made, on at least two occasions successfully; and there is reason to believe that the risk of arrest may discourage prominent people, with whom HM government would wish to engage, from visiting this country,” said Straw.
Gordon Brown, writing in the Daily Telegraph this morning, said Britain risked having its standing in the world “compromised” by “tolerating such gestures”.
Under the proposals, the Crown Prosecution Service will take over responsibility for prosecuting war crimes and other violations of international law. Currently magistrates have to consider the case for an arrest warrant to be issued.
A warrant for Livni’s arrest was issued by a UK court in December last year after an action by pro-Palestinian campaigners angry at Israel’s assault on Gaza earlier that year. The move sparked furious complaints by the Israeli government.
Colin Powell, the former US secretary of state and a leading player in the Iraq war, has also reportedly expressed alarm about the prospect of arrest in Britain.
Brown wrote in the Telegraph: “As we have seen, there is now significant danger of such a provision being exploited by politically-motivated organisations or individuals who set out only to grab headlines knowing their case has no realistic chance of a successful prosecution.
“There is already growing reason to believe that some people are not prepared to travel to this country for fear that such a private arrest warrant – motivated purely by political gesture – might be sought against them.
“These are sometimes people representing countries and interests with which the UK must engage if we are not only to defend our national interest but maintain and extend an influence for good across the globe.
“Britain cannot afford to have its standing in the world compromised for the sake of tolerating such gestures.”
The PM said he wanted legislation putting jurisdiction for war crimes and similar offences under the CPS to be brought in “as soon as possible”.
“With this approach, I am confident that an amendment on better enforcement of existing legislation will serve to enhance Britain’s status in the eyes of international law, world opinion and history,” he said.
Brown added: “Britain will continue to take action to prosecute or extradite suspected war criminals – regardless of their status or power.”
Hamas: Abbas selling Palestinians illusions of peace with Israel: Haaretz
Hamas on Thursday called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to resign, accusing him of selling the Palestinians “illusions” by moving to resume peace talks with Israel.
Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq told Reuters Abbas lacked a negotiations sponsored by Washington, although the Arab League had given its approval.
The criticism of Abbas by a high-level member of the Islamist group is likely to complicate Arab efforts to mediate between Hamas and Abbas’s Fatah faction.
The schism has weakened the Palestinian cause, with Hamas ruling the Gaza Strip independently of the Palestinian Authority.
“Mahmoud Abbas has to step aside. The Palestinian people want a solid leadership that leads them to their national rights and not a leadership that offers compromise after compromise,” said Rishq, who is a member of Hamas’s politburo.
“Resuming these talks is selling illusions to the Palestinian people and playing with their emotions. Eighteen years of talks with Israel have achieved zero. What is there to expect from an extra four months?”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday Israel hoped to begin indirect negotiations with the Palestinians next week during a visit by George Mitchell, the U.S. Middle East envoy.
Palestinian officials said they wanted the U.S.-mediated talks to focus initially on defining the borders of a state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Rishq said Palestinians would not be closer to realising their aspirations for independence because Abbas had ruled out “resistance” as a tool of struggle with Israel.
“If we don’t have options, Israel will be tempted to mount more aggression and further refuse to give us any of our rights,” said Rishq, who lives in exile in Syria along with other members of the Hamas leadership.
“The decision to go back to the talks gives the Israeli enemy the cover to continue settlements. There will not be anything left to negotiate on,” he added.
Abbas has balked at direct talks with Israel until it stops settlement construction totally. He called Netanyahu’s announcement in November of a limited moratorium insufficient.
Rishq did not rule out Hamas agreeing to talks with Israel if they were conducted according to terms that would realize what he described as Palestinian rights.
But he said there was a “U.S.-Israeli veto” that Abbas was following to prevent reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.
Hamas has ruled Gaza since it won a brief civil war in 2007 against supporters of Western-backed Abbas’s more secular Fatah faction. Egyptian efforts to bring about agreement between the two sides foundered.
The movement had said it could live peacefully alongside Israel if Israel withdrew from all Palestinian land it occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War, although Hamas’s 1988 founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel and for restoring all of British mandate Palestine.
Signs of life in the peace process: The Independent
The Middle East peace process is a peculiar beast. It lumbers along, mostly at a snail’s pace, at times juddering to a halt and even sliding into reverse. Many doubt its viability. Some feel it has outlived its time; still others treat it as mythical. Yet every now and again it defies all the doom-watchers to evince real signs of life. This is one of those times.
Just when even inveterate optimists were turning sceptical about the feasibility of the two-state solution that – it has been assumed – will underpin any lasting agreement, there is movement. Arab League foreign ministers, meeting in Cairo this week, have given their backing to the resumption of talks between Israelis and Palestinians after a hiatus of more than a year. The Arab League decision gives President Mahmoud Abbas the political cover he had sought to return to the negotiating table, a year after the Israeli assasult on Gaza.
It would be going too far to hail the resumption of the peace process proper. The talks will be only indirect, with US mediators shuttling between the two sides. They will also be temporary, for a trial period of four months. But this is a face-saving formula that allows Mr Abbas to reopen channels of communication, even though Israel has not acceded to the Palestinians’ main condition for doing so: a total freeze on the settlements. The Israeli Prime Minister announced a 10-month halt to new construction in the West Bank in November – which was more than Benjamin Netanyahu had been expected to offer – but the Palestinians had insisted that all building, not just new building, should cease.
There have been signs, too, of slight movement on the other block to a serious revival of the peace process: the division between Hamas-ruled Gaza and the Fatah-ruled West Bank. The first meetings between officials took place last month under Egyptian mediation, and any lessening of hostility will undermine Israel’s complaint – that it has no one to negotiate with. While there is no prospect of a real rapprochement between the Palestinian sides very soon, any hint of flexibility is progress. With this, and the imminent start of indirect talks with Israel, it is premature to declare the peace process dead.
Hebron Women Take On Netanyahu: The Only Democracy?
March 4th, 2010, International Indymedia.
On March 3rd, over a hundred Palestinian women marched Hebron’s streets to resist Ibrahim’s mosque becoming an Israeli Heritage Site. The Women’s Empowerment Project gathered women from Hebron to march from Hebron’s Municipality Office down to the mosque. The exclusively female crowd chanted and held banners while peacefully, but decisively, demonstrating. At the checkpoint, the women had to wait for approximately 20 minutes before being allowed entrance into the mosque. An overall elated atmosphere affirmed this was a powerful demonstration, illuminating the power of women, and empowering other women to take resistance out on the streets.
On 21 February 2010, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu announced the Israeli government’s intention to designate the Ibrahimi Mosque in Al-Khalil (Hebron) an Israeli Heritage Site. The shrine, located in the ancient city of Hebron, is considered to be sacred by Muslims, Jews and Christians. It is believed to be the burial place for three Biblical couples: Abraham and Sara, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah.
Netanyahu’s statement has caused increased tension in Hebron. The Palestinian population fears that this entails a “Judaization of the Ibrahimi mosque” with restricted access to the Mosque for Muslims. In the past ten days several demonstrations and clashes between the Palestinian population of Al-Khalil/Hebron and the Israeli army have taken place. In contrast to these previous demonstrations, today’s march was not met with Israeli army violence, nor were there any arrests made.