EDITOR: The Settlements Show is about to end! At Last

After a tense ten-day run of this less than popular Washington and Jerusalem run show, it seems that a happy end is in sight: Friendship is forever, love flourishes, and both Netanyahu and his Ambassador eat their words, but no change to policy. Love wins the day! A large fudge is being cooked and served to us all…

US and Israel push to end East Jerusalem building row: BBC

Sporadic rioting broke out in the West Bank on Wednesday
US and Israeli diplomats are trying to bridge divisions over Israeli building plans in occupied East Jerusalem, as clashes in the city have waned.
The Palestinians have pulled out of indirect talks because of the plan.
The US is awaiting Israel’s response to its request for gestures to reassure the Palestinians.
Clashes on Thursday between Palestinian stone-throwers and Israeli security forces have died down, but new violence began on Wednesday in the West Bank.
Overnight, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office welcomed comments by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dismissing claims that US-Israeli ties were in crisis.
‘Warm remarks’
She had accused Israel of “insulting” and “deeply negative” behaviour after the Israelis announced they had pushed forward plans for 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem during US Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to the region last week.
In her latest comment, she called the bond between the US and Israel “unshakeable”, but also urged Israel and the Palestinians to prove their commitment to peace.
Mr Netanyahu’s office said it appreciated her “warm remarks”, but added that Israel had already proved its commitment to peace “in both word and deed”.
Mr Netahyahu has apologised for the timing of the settlement announcement, but has stood by Israel’s policy on Jewish building in Jerusalem.
Also on Tuesday, Israel’s ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, denied comments widely quoted by Israeli media as saying that ties between the US and Israel were at their lowest point since 1975.
On Wednesday, movement restrictions on Palestinians, which had been in place for five days, were lifted as the previous days’ clashes died down in Jerusalem.
But violence broke out in the village of Beita in the northern West Bank, as at least 100 Palestinians threw stones at Israeli security forces, who responded with tear gas and rubber-coated bullets.
Clashes also took place at Qalandia checkpoint and Beit Anoun, near Hebron in the southern West Bank.
‘Days of rage’
In Tuesday’s unrest, the police said about 60 Palestinians had been arrested. Dozens of Palestinians and 15 police were injured, including one policeman who was shot in the hand.
The Islamist movement Hamas had called for a “day of rage” in defence of the Muslim holy site, the al-Aqsa mosque, in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Palestinians were angered over Jewish right wingers’ plans to enter the compound, which Jews call the Temple Mount, although police cancelled the event.
The reopening of a synagogue in the Jewish quarter of the Old City also increased tensions, as did five days of Israeli security restrictions limiting access to the al-Aqsa mosque to women and men over the age of 50.
Palestinians are also enraged over Israel’s continued building in East Jerusalem, where they want their future capital.
The international community considers East Jerusalem occupied territory. Building on occupied territory is illegal under international law.
Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Israeli-Arab war, and later annexed it in a move not recognised by the international community.

Peres: We want U.S. ties to return to positive state: Haaretz

President Shimon Peres called the United States “a true friend” on Wednesday and said that both Israel and the U.S. want to ease the recent tensions between the two nations.
“We have deep respect for [U.S.] parliamentary and executive institutions, led by President Obama,” Peres told a group of high school students in Holon. “We want these relations and are interested in returning them to their regular, positive state.”

Speaking about indirect talks with the Palestinians, Peres said such talks, while not ideal, are better than nothing.
“In my opinion, proximity talks can open the path to renewing the peace negotiations,” he said. “I can say, on this stage, to our Palestinian neighbors and to whoever is listening – Israel has already made a historic decision to establish two states for two peoples. An Arabic state named Palestine and a Jewish state named Israel. I do not believe or think it possible that there is any other solution.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden spoke on the phone Tuesday night in a bid to reduce friction between the U.S. and Israel over a plan to construct 1,600 new housing units in East Jerusalem.

The New York Times also said that the American administration had confirmed the conversation. The Prime Minister’s Bureau did not elaborate on the details of the conversation, which lasted until 2 A.M. Netanyahu’s advisers Yitzhak Molcho and Ron Dermer, along with Israeli envoy to the U.S. Michael Oren, were also present.
Israel’s announcement of plans to build 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem strained ties with the U.S., which has said it regarded last week’s decision – made public while Biden was in Israel – as an insult.

Netanyahu is expected to convene a meeting of seven senior cabinet ministers on Wednesday to discuss a response to demands raised by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that could help defuse the diplomatic row.
A U.S. State Department spokesman said Clinton and Netanyahu may speak by phone as early as Wednesday. Netanyahu is expected to deliver Israel’s official response to Clinton during that conversation.

Clinton’s demands include the cancellation of the Ramat Shlomo construction project in East Jerusalem, which was announced during U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to the region last week.
She also wants goodwill gestures toward the Palestinians and a public declaration by Netanyahu of his willingness to discuss the conflict’s core issues in the framework of peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
Israel’s response had been set to be the main focus of a meeting Wednesday of the forum of seven senior cabinet members, though that meeting will now not take place.
Clinton said Tuesday that Israel must prove it is committed to the Mideast peace process. But she brushed aside suggestions that relations with the main U.S. ally in the Mideast are in crisis over Israeli plans to build new Jewish housing in East Jerusalem.

She stressed that the United States remained committed to Israel’s security despite current tensions.

“We are engaged in very active consultations with the Israelis over steps that we think would demonstrate the requisite commitment to the process,” Clinton said. She had outlined her steps that Israel could take in a telephone call to Netanyahu on Friday.
State Department spokesman Philip J.Crowley on Tuesday also tried to downplay the tension, saying that no one in U.S. administration used the word “crisis” to describe the situation.

Also on Tuesday, Ambassador Oren said that he was misquoted in the media over the recent diplomatic row.

“Recent events do not – I repeat – do not represent the lowest point in the relations between Israel and the United States,” clarified Oren.
“Though we differ on certain issues, our discussions are being conducted in an atmosphere of cooperation as befitting long-standing relations between allies. I am confident that we will overcome these differences shortly.”
Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday issued a statement that read, “The government of Israel has proved its commitment to peace in the last year in words and in deeds.”

Still, in contrast to the tone of messages exchanged in recent days, the statement from Netanyahu’s office included praise of Clinton’s assertion that ties between Israel and the United States are unbreakable and that Washington remained committed to Israel’s security.
The statement also accused the Palestinians of failing to take steps toward launching negotiations with Israel while engaging in incitement in Jerusalem. “We are going above and beyond in an effort to resume negotiations without preconditions and the Palestinians are doing nothing,” said a senior aide to the prime minister. “This needs to be clear to the international community.”
Discussions between Netanyahu aides and White House officials continued Tuesday in an effort to ease tensions. The U.S. Mideast envoy, George Mitchell, canceled a visit to the region that was scheduled to begin on Tuesday.

Opportunity in a Fight With Israel: N Y Times

By MARK LANDLER, March 16, 2010

WASHINGTON — For President Obama, getting into a serious fight with Israel carries obvious domestic and foreign political risks. But it may offer the administration a payoff it sees as worthwhile: shoring up Mr. Obama’s credibility as a Middle East peacemaker by showing doubtful Israelis and Palestinians that he has the fortitude to push the two sides toward an agreement.

The risks at home were on display on Tuesday, as more than two dozen members of Congress, many of them Democrats, implored Mr. Obama to ease the tensions with the Israeli government after its announcement of a Jewish housing plan during a visit by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

The House Republican whip, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, called the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to complain that the administration had seized on a minor diplomatic contretemps to try to impose its views on a loyal friend. Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice presidential candidate, issued a statement urging the president to “push the reset button on our relations with our ally Israel.”

For all the angst coming from Capitol Hill, however, the Obama administration seemed generally unruffled. And there were tentative signs that it was taking steps to cool the temperature.
Mr. Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel spoke by telephone on Tuesday evening, an administration official said. It was not clear what the two men talked about; aides to Mr. Biden did not return calls.

And earlier on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reaffirmed the relationship between the United States and Israel, brushing aside talk of a crisis.
“Oh, I don’t buy that,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I’ve been around not that long, but a long time. We have an absolute commitment to Israel’s security. We have a close, unshakable bond between the United States and Israel and between the American and Israeli people.”

Mrs. Clinton did keep up the pressure on Mr. Netanyahu to demonstrate that he was committed to negotiations with the Palestinians.
A senior administration official said the harsh rebuke of Mr. Netanyahu, delivered in a phone call last week by Mrs. Clinton, was important “to demonstrate we mean what we say when we enter these talks.” The announcement of a housing plan, the official said, undermined trust just as the United States was trying to open indirect talks between the Israelis and Palestinians.

“We felt we had to call that out,” he said, on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.
On the Israeli side, there were also efforts to calm the waters. Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Michael B. Oren, who had been widely quoted as saying that relations between Israel and the United States were facing a historic crisis, issued a statement saying he had been “flagrantly misquoted.”

“I am confident that we will overcome these differences shortly,” he said.

Taking a tough line with Israel helps the administration counter a perception that it folded last summer when Mr. Netanyahu rebuffed Mr. Obama’s demand that Israel freeze all construction of Jewish settlements. When Mr. Netanyahu countered with an offer of a 10-month partial freeze on the construction on the West Bank, Mrs. Clinton praised the offer as “unprecedented.”
That soured the Palestinians and left much of the Arab world wondering whether Mr. Obama would ever deliver on the promise in his speech in Cairo of a new approach to the Muslim world. American officials worried that this credibility gap could hinder their campaign to rally support from Persian Gulf countries for new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program.
“For the nine months after the Cairo speech, people were saying, ‘Where’s the beef?’ ” said David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official who writes about foreign policy. “So far, engagement hasn’t worked anywhere. This might give them a chance to revitalize engagement.”

But Mr. Rothkopf, like others, sees as many risks as rewards. The harshness of the American response to Mr. Netanyahu, he said, could call into question the ability of the United States to manage its relationship with Israel. “The administration’s prestige in the region is damaged by its inability to manage the one relationship they are supposed to be able to manage,” he said.

Other analysts said the United States should not use a specific grievance over housing units to press a broad range of extremely difficult issues with Israel.
“I don’t think this issue should be like a Christmas tree, where you hang all these other ornaments on it,” said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The whole episode should end where it began: you had a problem with those units, so you figure out how to fix it.”

But even some of Israel’s staunchest supporters in Congress said the dispute might focus minds on the larger prize. “It’s a moment for the Obama administration to say to our Israeli partners and our Palestinian partners, ‘We need to see peace,’ ” said Representative Gary L. Ackerman, Democrat of New York. “It’s a never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste moment, and this is a mini-crisis, if even that.”

That message was echoed by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of the military’s Central Command, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the lack of progress in the Middle East was a large challenge to American interests.
“The conflict foments anti-American sentiment due to a perception of U.S. favoritism toward Israel,” he said.

Continue reading March 17, 2010

EDITOR: Breaking News

`Day Of Rage` Clashes In Jerusalem: Kibush Magazine

Clashes in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Issawiya on Tuesday (photo Reuters)
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Palestinians mounted violent protests in a `day of rage` in Jerusalem on Tuesday and a U.S.-Israeli crisis over a Jewish settlement project deepened with the cancellation of a U.S. peace envoy`s visit.
Dozens of rock-throwing Palestinians clashed with police in several locations in East Jerusalem, which Israel captured in a 1967 war along with the West Bank. Police responded with teargas and rubber bullets.
Medical officials said at least 40 Palestinians were treated in East Jerusalem hospitals. Police said two policemen were hurt.
The violence was another challenge to U.S. efforts to revive Middle East peace talks after Israel angered Palestinians and touched off a dispute with Washington by announcing plans to build 1,600 homes for Jews in a part of the occupied West Bank it annexed to Jerusalem.

U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell cancelled plans to return to the region on Tuesday after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he would not curb such construction, opposed by the United States, in and around East Jerusalem.
`There is an explosive situation. There are Netanyahu`s policies, which are tantamount to pouring oil on fire,` said Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.
Hamas, an Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip, said in a statement that Palestinians should `regard Tuesday as a day of rage against the occupation`s (Israel`s) procedures in Jerusalem against al-Aqsa mosque.`
Hamas leaders made particular mention of the renovation of the Hurva synagogue, in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem`s walled Old City, saying the restoration work was an Israeli plot to demolish al-Aqsa, some 400 metres (yards) away.
Israel has denied the allegation and the U.S. State Department, appealing for calm, voiced concern at what it described as Palestinian incitement and mischaracterisation of the renovation of the 18th century synagogue.

HOUSING PLAN
Citing biblical and historical links, Israel sees all of Jerusalem as its capital, a claim not recognised internationally. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Israel`s announcement, during a visit last week by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, of the Jewish housing plan in what Israel describes as a Jerusalem neighbourhood embarrassed the White House.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who had just agreed to start indirect talks with Israel, demanded the project be scrapped first.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in unusually blunt remarks, called Israel`s actions an insult. Netanyahu voiced regret at the timing of the move but made no move to cancel the plan. Israel said construction was several years away.
Clinton telephoned Netanyahu on Friday to convey unspecified demands about the housing project as well as about demonstrating commitment to the U.S.-mediated peace talks, the State Department said, without elaborating.
U.S. officials said they were still waiting for Israel`s formal response. Israeli media reports said Clinton had asked for the settlement plan to be scrapped and for Israel to agree to discuss core statehood issues with the Palestinians.
Palestinians say Jewish settlements will deny them a viable state. Washington has urged both sides not to make moves that could prejudge the outcome of peace talks.

Violence flares in Jerusalem after Hamas declares ‘day of rage’: Haaretz

Israeli ‘ethnic cleansing’ making outbreak of third intifada inevitable, Arab leaders warn.
Dozens of Palestinians clashed with Israeli police in East Jerusalem on Tuesday after Hamas declared a “day of rage” to protest Israel’s consecration of an ancient synagogue in the city one day earlier.
Palestinians hurled stones at police and burned tires and trash bins in several areas of East Jerusalem, which Israel captured along with the West Bank during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Police responded with tear gas and fired rubber bullets, witnesses said. Some 40 Palestinians were treated at East Jerusalem hospitals for minor injuries, medical officials said.

Thirty-one people were arrested as dozens of youths hurled stones at Border Police officers in the Shoafat refugee camp and in the neighborhoods of Isawiyah, Abu Dis and Wadi Joz.
Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said police fired stun grenades to disperse dozens of protesters at one site. He said village elders helped end protests at another site.
Police also arrested an Israeli rightist who sought to enter the Temple Mount compound and was refused by security forces.
A police spokesman said some 3,000 officers were put on high alert after Hamas, an Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip and wields influence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, called for anti-Israel protests.

“We call on the Palestinian people to regard Tuesday as a day of rage against the occupation’s [Israel’s] procedures in Jerusalem against al-Aqsa mosque,” Hamas said in a statement.
Hamas and Palestinian officials affiliated with its rival Fatah movement have said the restoration work at the ancient Hurva synagogue in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s walled Old City endangered al-Aqsa, situated some 400 meters away.

Israel has denied the accusation but Arab MKs warned on Tuesday that Israeli policy could lead to a third Palestinian intifada, or uprising.
“The policies of the Netanyahu government are nothing less than ethnic cleansing and are a the strongest possible incitement to a third intifada,” said Hanin Zuabi, an Arab Knesset member.
“It seems the submissiveness of the official Palestinian and Arab response has given Israel the false impression that Palestinians will not fight for their liberty and their rights.”

Another MK, Jamal Zahalka, said: “Anyone who builds settlements in Jerusalem is digging a grave for peace,” while Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat likened Israel’s handling of the situation to “pouring oil on fire”.
An inauguration ceremony was held on Monday at the synagogue, which was blown up by Jordanian forces when they overran the Jewish Quarter in the 1948 Middle East war.
Sporadic violence has erupted in recent weeks in Jerusalem after Israel decided to include West Bank religious sites in a Jewish national heritage plan stoked Palestinian anger.

Limitations on access to Muslim prayers on Temple Mount will continue for the fifth day. Members of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee are set to hold a procession in the east of the city on Wednesday.
Galilee police set up roadblocks around Safed and Acre on Tuesday to prevent Israeli Arabs from northern towns and villages from traveling to Jerusalem to take part in the protests.

EDITOR: The only Military Democracy in the Middle East

So now the IOF has closed the villages for 5 MONTHS! This is an interesting and innovative way of controlling reality. Indeed, with the blockade of Gaza, and with those villages under ‘closure’, why not ‘close’ the whole of Palestine? Surely it would save trouble… Israel is losing any sense of reality, and is doing all it can to start the 3rd Intifada. The future is red, red with blood.

IDF declares West Bank protest villages a ‘closed military area’: Haaretz

By Amira Hass, Haaretz Correspondent
Police cite military edict restricting movement in Bil’in and and Na’alin until August.
The army has declared the West Bank villages of Bil’in and Na’alin a ‘closed military area’ until August 17, it emerged Monday.
In arresting a demonstrator on Friday, police cited a military edict closing off the two villages, where weekly protests against the barrier Israel is erecting around the West Bank have often turned violent.
Bil’in residents told Haaretz that late on Friday night dozens of soldiers, some of them masked, deployed throughout the village to post notices of the order, signed on February 17 by the chief of army Central Command, Gen. Avi Mizrahi.
The ruling, which will stay in force six months, applies to land that lies between the separation fence and built up areas in Bil’in.

In Na’alin, restrictions apparently cover the entire village, including residential areas.
For over five years the two villages have seen often violent, and twice fatal, clashes between activists and security forces during regular Friday demonstrations.
In the past year the IDF and the security service, Shin Bet, have tried a variety of tactics to end the protests, including mass arrests, night operations, restrictions on the movement of Israeli activists and the arrest of minors – prompting a military court to declare the measures inappropriate.
On Sunday a Bil’in activist, Iyad Burnat, was summoned for talks with Shin Bet officers, around an hour after sending out an emailed report of last week’s protests entitled “the third intifada [uprising] is knocking at the door”.

At the time of publication, the army had not yet responded to requests by Haaretz for information on the closures.

AL-HAQ PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 16 March 2010
On 12 January 2010 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared that Israel would never ‘cede control of united Jerusalem nor retreat to the 1967 borders’. Since this assertion by Netanyahu that Israel would never end its military occupation of East Jerusalem and return to the 1967 Green Line, Israeli military forces have gradually increased restrictions on Palestinian residents of occupied East Jerusalem. In recent days, there has been a sudden increase in closures and restrictions imposed most significantly in Sheikh Jarrah, Silwan, and the Old City of Jerusalem.

On 28 February Israeli military forces stormed the yards of Al-Aqsa Mosque, in the Old City of Jerusalem, firing rubber bullets and tear gas at worshippers holding a demonstration in the compound. In the weeks following the incident, tensions in the Old City have continued to rise with repeated clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem. It appears inevitable that clashes will intensify in the coming days as Jewish settlers re-open the Hurva Synagogue in the Old City’s Jewish Quarter on 15 March and as they attempt to lay the foundation stone for the Temple Mount on 16 March.

Since Thursday, 11 March, the Old City has been surrounded by Israeli military and police personnel who control the movement of Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, as well as Palestinian citizens of Israel, in and out of the gates. Israeli forces are denying entry to any Palestinian below the age of 50 who does not have an address within the Old City. In addition, Al-Aqsa mosque’s yards have been under restrictive closure since Friday 12 March, with Israeli forces preventing Palestinians under the age of 50 from praying there. Furthermore, three schools located within the Al-Aqsa compound have been affected by the closure, while the students of all the boys’ schools in the Old City are being denied access to their places of study.

As a Palestinian human rights organization, Al Haq finds it necessary to highlight the ongoing violations of human rights resulting from Israel’s discriminatory policies, and requests that action be taken by the international community to prevent Israeli violations of Palestinian rights. The right to manifest religion through worship, the right to education, and the right to freedom of movement are amongst the most basic of rights. Israel’s continuing discriminatory and unlawful policies and practices are successfully raising tensions in East Jerusalem, contributing to the manifold pressures on Palestinians to leave the city. These actions and policies are aimed towards, and effectively achieving, a gradual erosion of the Arabic and Palestinian characteristics of East Jerusalem. The vast majority of Palestinians living under the occupation are already denied any form of access to Jerusalem and its Holy Sites. What we are now witnessing is a further restriction on the rights of Palestinian residents of Jerusalem to move and live within their own city, and a significant assault on the Palestinians right to self-determination.

EDITOR: Act 3 scene 4 of the Settlement Show in Jerusalem

We apologise for having to face the readers with the continuation of this bad performance; Not the best show in town. however, signs are that this is nearing is end, at last. If Obama does not understand that he has done exactly what Israel wanted, and froze the talks they were against anyway, than this blog cannot help him. As the whole process was forced on Israel, that wants nothing more than the death and burial of the ‘peace process’, the result is unlikely to worry it unduly. All involved understand that as the Congressional elections get under way, Obama is in the pocket of the Israel Lobby, rather than the other way round. Now all they are fighting about is the ‘bad timing’ on the announcement, as pointed out by Moshe Arens in Haaretz, below.  He is, of course, right: for over four decades, the US and EU have done nothing, absoloutely nothing, to stop the illegal settlements being built; why do they have to worry about it now? It is clear that this is just a performance, and it will pass away.

U.S. envoy’s Israel trip on hold as diplomatic crisis deepens: Haaretz

George Mitchell delays regional visit pending Netanyahu’s reponse to U.S. demands.
A visit to Israel by U.S. special peace envoy George Mitchell was on hold on Tuesday pending an Israeli response to a series of American demands.
Mitchell had been due to leave Washington for Israel early on Monday but will delay his trip in a sign of the Obama administration’s growing anger at Israel’s refusal to stop building Jewish homes in east Jerusalem.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to draw a line under a crisis in Israeli-U.S. relations that erupted last week when Israel announced plans for 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, an orthodox Jewish suburb beyond the Green Line in the northeast of the city.

Israel would continue to build in Jerusalem, Netanyahu said on Monday.
“For the past 40 years, no Israeli government ever limited construction in the neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” he said.
Mitchell is thought to have delayed his travel plans until late Tuesday but may now cancel his visit to Israel altogether, instead flying straight to Moscow for talks with the ‘Quartet’ of Middle East peace mediators – the European Union, the United Nations, the United States and Russia.

“We want to make sure that we have the commitment from both sides that when he travels we can make progress,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said.
Late Monday night Israel’s foreign ministry was still in last ditch negotiations to dissuade Mitchell from calling off his trip.
“Mitchell is hesitant as he is not convinced that the timing of the visit, at a moment of high tension between Israel and the U.S., is genuinely conducive to advancing negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority,” a senior Israeli official told Haaretz.
According to a report in The Washington Post Tuesday, U.S. officials say that Mitchell’s visit will remain on hold until the White House receives an Israeli response to key demands.
Israel must reverse its approval for construction in Ramat Shlomo, make a “substantial gesture” towards the Palestinians and publicly declare that all of the “core issues” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the status of Jerusalem, be included in upcoming talks.

The three conditions, set by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a 43-minute telephone call to Netanyahu on Friday, have not been publicized by the U.S. – but Israel is expected to provide a formal answer on Tuesday, the Post reported.
Israeli officials told Haaretz on Tuesday that despite the growing diplomatic storm, Netanyahu had no plans to cancel a scheduled trip to Washington on Sunday, where he will address a meeting of pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC.
Ahead of the trip, Israeli diplomats were making concerted effort to arrange a “reconciliation” meeting between the prime minister and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who was angered when his arrival in Israel last week coincided with the government’s announcement of building expansion in Ramat Shlomo.

According to the Washington Post, American officials see a resolution to the current crisis as a test of Netanyahu’s commitment to ties with the U.S.
“We have to have guarantees that these kinds of things will not happen again,” a senior U.S. official told the paper, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“If he is unwilling to make that kind of commitment, it raises the question of how committed he is to negotiations – and it raises the question of how committed he is to the relationship between Israel and the United States.”

The United States, which over the past year has pushed unsuccessfully for a total construction freeze across the West Bank, including in east Jerusalem, has until now accepted unofficial assurances that Israel is restricting settlement building.
But following Israel’s latest declaration of plans to build in Ramat Shlomo, the U.S. changed tack, demanding that Netanyahu commit publicly to a building freeze in Jerusalem.
“He has to take a firm stand to prevent similar kinds of announcements that will have a negative effect on negotiations,” the official said.

Israel doesn’t need to grovel for U.S. forgiveness: Haaretz

By Moshe Arens
So sorry! Very sorry! Very, very sorry! We apologize! This will never happen again! The prime minister, cabinet members and senior bureaucrats repeated this over and over again last week in an attempt to set right what seemed to them to have been a major blunder, one they thought had spoiled what should have been a dramatic goodwill visit by the vice president of the United States, Joe Biden. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might have been humming “I’m just a soul whose intentions are good, Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood,” while he sat waiting for the arrival of Biden, who vented his anger over what he considered an insult by being deliberately late for dinner.

The government’s critics in the media had a field day. According to them the decision by the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee to approve plans for putting up additional houses in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, just as Biden was arriving in the country, was ruining relations between the United States and Israel and causing irreparable damage to strategic cooperation between the two countries. Listening to them, one might have thought that if some years from now historians try to determine why the U.S. administration did not take any effective action to prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, they will find that the responsibility lay on the shoulders of a minor Israeli civil servant who set the agenda of a local planning committee for that fateful day.

Since it was well known in Washington that the Netanyahu government had not frozen building activity in Jerusalem, and that therefore not only construction there was continuing but also the routine planning activities that precede construction, the blame was now being put on the “timing.” Presumably, if the planning committee had held its session a few days before Biden’s arrival there would not have been a problem. Or, had it met a few days after Biden’s departure and he left here under the impression that planning activities had been suspended in Jerusalem, only to find out differently on his arrival in Washington, there would have been nothing to get excited about.

“Timing” is important when investing in the stock market, but it is of little relevance here. There is no substitute for the truth when dealing with friends and allies. And the truth in this case is that while the Israeli government has frozen construction in Judea and Samaria for 10 months, there has been no such freeze in any part of Jerusalem, and certainly no holdup of planning procedures. There was no need for all this groveling by Israeli spokesmen. On the subject of Jerusalem, the government of Israel and the administration in Washington simply disagree.

Throughout the U.S.-Israeli relationship there have been disagreements on certain issues. They are inevitable, even among the best of friends. But generally, the disagreements have not been taken public, but have been discussed in confidential exchanges between representatives of the two governments. U.S. President Barack Obama, however, has taken a new approach, which he signaled at his speech last June in Cairo, where he publicly called on Israel to stop settlement activity.

The rationale of this approach was presumably to accelerate the negotiations between Israel and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. But what the Americans must be finding out to their chagrin is that this approach is actually making it more difficult, if not impossible, for Abbas to come to the negotiating table. Whereas in the past he negotiated with Israel while settlement activity continued, without setting prior conditions, Obama’s Cairo speech left Abbas no choice but to demand the cessation of settlement activity in Judea and Samaria as a condition for entering negotiations. After all, he cannot be less Palestinian than Obama.

Now, after the statements made by Biden in Israel, followed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s public rebuke of Netanyahu, he will demand the cessation of construction in Jerusalem, and possibly even the freezing of all planning activity regarding future construction as a condition for beginning negotiations with Israel. As the saying goes, “why make it difficult, when with a little effort you can make it impossible?” This is hardly the way to advance the peace process.

US-Israel relations: White House ‘will not shy away’ from pushing for talks: The Guardian

United States determined to persuade Israel into substantive peace talks with Palestinians, Obama administration source says
Palestinian boys play soccer in the Arab neighbourhood of east Jerusalem, where Netanyahu supports the building of 1,600 Jewish homes. Photograph: Ammar Awad/REUTERS

President Barack Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, are on a collision course today in a row described by a senior Israeli diplomat as the worst crisis between the two countries for more than three decades.

An Obama administration source told the Guardian that the White House and US state department are intent on pushing Israel into substantive peace talks with the Palestinians and will not shy away this time as they did when the last effort ended in embarrassing failure in September.

“No one gets anywhere by accusing each other. We are hoping to lay the foundations for negotiations,” the source said. In order to get negotiations under way, the US is demanding that Netanyahu cancel or freeze plans to build 1,600 planned Jewish homes in Palestinian East Jerusalem. But Netanyahu, speaking at a meeting of his own Likud party, showed no signs of backing down. “The building in Jerusalem, and in all other places, will continue in the same way as has been customary over the last 42 years,” he said.

The Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, in a weekend telephone call to other Israeli diplomats, expressed alarm about the extent of the confrontation.

The Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth quoted the normally cool Oren, an academic-turned diplomat, as saying: “Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975 … a crisis of historic proportions.”

Oren was called to the state department last week in a rare rebuke for a diplomat from a country the US normally regards as one of its strongest allies.

The crisis began last week when the US vice-president, Joe Biden, travelled to Israel in the hope of securing a start to the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But his hopes were dashed when Israel announced the new construction in East Jerusalem.

The Palestinian cabinet reiterated today that it will not enter into talks while such construction is planned.

The White House has steadily built up the heat on Israel over the last few days, with the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, berating Netanyahu in a 45-minute call on Friday and David Axelrod, the chief White House adviser, describing Israeli behaviour as an insult yesterday.

The US wants Israel not only to backtrack on the East Jerusalem building plans but to enter into talks with the Palestinians on substantive issues and not just talks about talks, as Israel wants. Washington also wants Israel to make gestures towards the Palestinians, such as releasing Palestinian prisoners and withdrawing more Israeli forces from Palestinian territory. The US special envoy to Israel and the Palestinian territories, the former senator George Mitchell, is to visit Israel this week in the hope of hearing that Israel will bow to at least some of the US demands.

Netanyahu is scheduled to address a meeting in Washington early next week of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), the powerful Israeli lobbying group. The US does not yet know whether he will attend in person or make a televised address.

The Israeli prime minister faces the problem of whether to offer the US a concession, such as a short freeze on house-building in East Jerusalem, a move that might lead to the break-up of his coalition government. Clinton will address the Aipac conference in person, a potentially dramatic occasion if she opts to repeat her calls for Netanyahu to back down.

Yesterday Aipac issued a statement critical of the Obama administration and today embarked on an intensive lobbying exercise to secure the backing of Jewish or strong Israeli-supporting members of Congress.

The more liberal Jewish lobbying organisation, J Street, said the US should use the crisis to push for peace talks. Its executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, said: “Too much time has already been lost in getting the two sides into negotiations. We must not lose further time allowing a single development, as objectionable as it may be, to derail progress.”

The US magazine Foreign Policy posted a report on its website yesterdaythat in January top US commanders briefed the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, that US failure to stop Israel continuing with settlement building on the West Bank damaged US relations with the Arab world. Judith Kipper, a Middle East specialist at the Washington-based Institute of World Affairs, said there had long been a divergence between the US and Israel over various issues and a recognition of this fact was overdue.

She did not expect the US to threaten to withhold financial or military aid or intelligence and that going public was sufficient as a big stick.

Paul Scham, an academic at Washington’s Middle East Institute, said: “What is interesting is that US has chosen to make a big deal of it. The reason for doing this is, it seems, to be ready to pull out some version of the peace offensive Obama has been promising for a year. Hopefully, it will not die down as it did last year.”

Israel rejects settlement halt: Al Jazeera TV

Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has rejected calls from the US to halt settlement plans in occupied East Jerusalem, saying plans for building new homes would go ahead.
In a speech to Israel’s parliament on Monday, Netanyahu said construction “will continue in Jerusalem as this has been the case for the past 42 years” in reference to the 1967 occupation of the mainly Arab territory.
He said that the plans would not hurt Palestinians, who have said peace negotiations cannot go ahead until the project is cancelled.

His comments come after Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, condemned the plans as “insulting” to peace efforts and reportedly called on Netanyahu to reverse the decision.
Israel’s announcement to build 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem came during a visit to the region by Joe Biden, the US vice-president, sparking a diplomatic row between the two countries.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz said Clinton, in a phone call with Netanyahu on Friday, asked him to make a “substantial gesture” towards Palestinians to help restart peace talks.
She called for an official declaration that talks would deal with core issues, including borders, the status of Jerusalem, refugees, and settlements, the paper reported.

Response requested
Clinton was also said to have requested an official response on whether Tuesday’s announcement was a “bureaucratic mistake, or a deliberate act, carried out for political reasons”.
Netanyahu has apologised for what he called the bad timing and ordered an investigation into how government officials unveiled the plans during Biden’s visit.
The announcement embarrassed Biden, who was visiting Israel in a bid to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.
Amid the dispute, officials said on Monday that George Mitchell, the US envoy to the Middle East, had delayed a planned visit to the region, during which he had been scheduled to meet Israel and Palestinian leaders separately.

Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, said the spat had brought relations to a 35-year low and had created a “crisis of historic proportions”.
A major pro-Israel US lobbying group also said that the stern US remarks were “of serious concern.”
“Aipac calls on the administration to take immediate steps to defuse the tension with the Jewish state,” the American Israel Public Affairs Committee said on Sunday.
Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington, said there are steps the US could take to pressure Israel over the settlement issue.
“There’s a lot of financial aid that the US gives Israel,” she said.
“One programme that the US has used in the past is reducing loan guarantees. The amount that the settlements cost Israel, that is the amount by which the US can reduce the loan guarantees to Israel.
“We’ve seen that in the 1990s and then again in 2003.”
Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, who is currently on her first official visit to the region, has joined the chorus of criticism of Israel’s settlement plans.

Indirect talks
Speaking in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, on Monday, Ashton said that the Israeli decision “endangers” indirect talks between the country and the Palestinians.
“Recent Israeli decisions to build new housing units in East Jerusalem have endangered and undermined the tentative agreement to begin proximity talks,” she said.

“The EU position on settlements is clear. Settlements are illegal, constitute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two state-solution impossible.”
Besides Ashton, Luiz Ignacio “Lula” da Silva, the Brazilian president, is also touring the region. He met Shimon Peres, his Israeli counterpart, on Monday, marking the start of a three-day visit.

Media reports suggest Lula is aiming to carve out a role for Brazil in mediating the peace process.

EDITOR: Polar Bears rise from Hibernation in this early spring…

The giant of corporate news, the NY Times, has risen from its long sleep on the Israeli front. It was marked by Thomas Friedman’s searing attack on Satyeday, when he described Netanyahu as a ‘drunk driver in Jerusalem’. Since then, the NY Times has taken the cadjel and stsrted reporting ptoperly, as if Israel was just another country; well, almost… the main problem was the timing, it is clear – Israel can go on building, as long as it does not rub the American nose in the dirt.

Israel Feeling Rising Anger From the U.S.: NY Times

WASHINGTON — An ill-timed municipal housing announcement in Jerusalem has mutated into one of the most serious conflicts between the United States and Israel in two decades, leaving a politically embarrassed Israeli government scrambling to respond to a tough list of demands by the Obama administration.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, right, listened to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, on Monday.
The Obama administration has put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a difficult political spot at home by insisting that the Israeli government halt a plan to build housing units in East Jerusalem. The administration also wants Mr. Netanyahu to commit to substantive negotiations with the Palestinians, after more than a year in which the peace process has been moribund.
With the administration’s special envoy, George J. Mitchell, suddenly delaying his planned trip to Israel, the administration was expecting a call from Mr. Netanyahu, after a tense exchange last week with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

On Monday, however, Mr. Netanyahu sounded a defiant note, telling the Israeli Parliament that construction of Jewish housing in Jerusalem was not a matter for negotiation.
He is struggling to balance an increasingly unhappy ally in Washington with the restive right wing of his coalition government.
The prospects for peace in the Middle East seemed murkier than ever, as a year’s worth of frustration on the part of President Obama and his aides seemed to boil over in its furious response to the housing announcement, which spoiled a visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“What happened to the vice president in Israel was unprecedented,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Where it goes from here depends on the Israelis.”
But the diplomatic standoff also has repercussions for the Obama administration. Its blunt criticism of Israel — delivered publicly by Mrs. Clinton in two television interviews on Friday and reiterated Sunday by Mr. Obama’s political adviser, David Axelrod — has set off a storm in Washington, with pro-Israel groups and several prominent lawmakers criticizing the administration for unfairly singling out a staunch American ally.

“Let’s cut the family fighting,” said Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut. “It’s unnecessary; it’s destructive of our shared national interest. It’s time to lower voices, to get over the family feud between the U.S. and Israel. It just doesn’t serve anybody’s interests but our enemies’.”
Relations between Israel and the United States have been uneasy ever since Mr. Obama took office with a plan to rekindle the peace process by coupling a demand for a full freeze in Jewish settlement construction with reciprocal confidence-building gestures by Arab countries.

Neither happened, and Mr. Obama, who is not as popular in Israel as he is elsewhere around the world, was forced last September to make do with Mr. Netanyahu’s offer of a 10-month partial moratorium on settlements in the West Bank. But the president was outraged by the announcement of 1,600 housing units in an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in East Jerusalem during Mr. Biden’s visit, administration officials said.
Mr. Obama was deeply involved in the strategy and planning for Mr. Biden’s visit and orchestrated the response from Mr. Biden and Mrs. Clinton after it went awry, these officials said.

The administration has used language intended to telegraph anger, defining the dispute not only in terms of the damage it could cause to the peace process but to the American relationship with Israel.
“That is a whole different order of magnitude of importance,” said Daniel Levy, a former peace negotiator who is senior fellow and head of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation, a research group.

The last time relations between the United States and Israel became this strained, analysts said, was when James A. Baker, then secretary of state, clashed with the Israeli government in the early 1990s, also over settlement policy. The United States ended up withholding loan guarantees from Israel for a time.
Mr. Netanyahu said the announcement of the housing development had surprised even him, and he apologized for its timing. But Mr. Obama feels that Mr. Netanyahu should have been in clearer control of the construction process and that he should have done what was needed to stop it, according to officials in Jerusalem and Washington.

There is a feeling among officials in Washington that the Netanyahu government does not fully grasp how angry Obama officials have grown. But there are signs that it is sinking in.
The Israeli ambassador in Washington, Michael B. Oren, used the word “crisis” about his country’s relations with Washington for the first time since taking up his job last year, in a telephone briefing to colleagues over the weekend, according to an Israeli official.
Still, American and Israeli officials also made clear that the core security issues binding the two countries were not in jeopardy, and that what was happening was closer to a married couple having a bad fight rather than seeking a divorce.

In the murky vocabulary of diplomacy, the scheduled talks due to start under American supervision are viewed by the Israelis mostly as “proximity” discussions, in other words procedural talks rather than substantive negotiations. But the Palestinians want the discussions to be as substantive as possible, an approach Mrs. Clinton demanded in her call to Mr. Netanyahu on Friday.
The Israeli leader has said he is open to direct negotiations with the Palestinians. But the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said in an interview in his Ramallah office that the Palestinians and Israelis had exhausted direct negotiations and that it was time for America to take a more direct role. “We have a trust level below zero between the two sides,” he said.

The settlement episode has enabled the administration to turn the tables on Mr. Netanyahu, some analysts say. But the question is whether it will be able to extract more concessions from him now.
“The heart of the matter is whether the proximity talks are going to be productive, in the sense of opening a corridor to direct negotiations that will lead to a peace agreement,” said Martin Indyk, a former American ambassador to Israel.

The timing of the dispute could not be more awkward for the administration, coming a week before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the most influential pro-Israel lobbying group, meets in Washington. Mr. Netanyahu and Mrs. Clinton are both scheduled to speak to the group, which has condemned the White House’s tough stance.
Mr. Biden may meet with Mr. Netanyahu while he is here, officials said. But there is no meeting planned between Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu because the president will be traveling in Indonesia and Australia, a conflict which one official joked suits the administration well right now. “This may not be the best time for a face-to-face,” he said.

Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Ethan Bronner from Jerusalem. Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington.

Palestinians clash with police in East Jerusalem: BBC

Riots broke out in several areas
Palestinians have clashed with Israeli police in East Jerusalem amid increased tension over settlement building and the rededication of a synagogue.
Palestinians burned tyres and threw rocks and police fired stun grenades as rioting broke out in a number of areas.
The rioting follows Israel’s plan to build 1,600 new East Jerusalem homes, angering the US. Its Mid-East envoy, George Mitchell, has delayed his visit.
The reopening of a synagogue in the Old City also drew Palestinian protests.
The clashes broke out in a number of areas, including Qalandia, the Shu’fat refugee camp, Wadi al-Jouz, al-Eisaweyah, Silwan, Ras al-Amoud and near the al-Aqsa mosque.
The Israeli police said they had deployed 3,000 officers across the city.
‘Day of rage’
The clashes come amid a lingering US-Israel row over the settlement announcement.
The announcement came during Vice-President Joe Biden’s high-profile Middle East visit last week, aimed at trying to kick-start stalled peace talks.

The reopening of the Hurva synagogue angered Palestinians
The US says it is still awaiting a “formal” response from Israel to the row and has urged Israel to show it is committed to Middle East peace efforts.
Mr Mitchell, who was to leave for the region on Monday, has now delayed his departure.
The US Embassy in Israel has informed President Shimon Peres that Mr Mitchell will not be in Israel for the planned Tuesday afternoon meeting with Mr Peres.
Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has stood by Israel’s settlements policy, saying there can be “no curbs” on Jewish building in Jerusalem.
The BBC’s Paul Wood in Jerusalem says there seems to be an impasse – if Mr Netanyahu caves in and cancels the new settlements, the stability of his government may be in doubt; if he does not, it is hard to see how the peace talks can take place.
The reopening of the twice-destroyed Hurva synagogue close to the al-Aqsa mosque – Islam’s third holiest site – has also inflamed tension.
Hatem Abdel Qader, Jerusalem affairs spokesman for the Fatah movement of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said: “This synagogue will be a prelude to violence and religious fanaticism and extremism.”
Militant group Hamas had declared Tuesday a “day of rage” against the move.
Thousands of people turned out in Gaza on Tuesday to protest against the rededication of the synagogue, Agence France-Presse news agency reports.
Our correspondent says the call by some Palestinian officials for people to defend the Haram al-Sharif or Temple Mount, site of the al-Aqsa mosque, comes amid rumours of plans by Jewish extremists to take control of the area.

Palestinian unrest erupts in east Jerusalem: The Independent

Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Masked Palestinians have hurled rocks at Israeli police and burned tires in disputed east Jerusalem.
Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby says police fired stun grenades to disperse dozens of protesters at one site. He said village elders helped end protests at another site.

No injuries were reported.
Tensions are high in east Jerusalem, fueled in part by a feud between Israel and Washington over continued Israeli construction in the disputed sector of the holy city.
Police presence is high after Hamas militants called for a “day of rage” against Israel following its rededication of a synagogue in east Jerusalem.

‘Day of rage’: Riots in Jerusalem: YNet

Masked rioters torch tires, stone Border Guard officers in Shuafat, Isawiya neighborhoods; Three police, 11 rioters lightly wounded. Police set up roadblock on Route 6, inspect all buses traveling to capital; Arab bus from western Galilee turned back
The day dubbed “the day of rage” by Hamas and extremist Islamic groups opened with riots – both in the holy city and on the way to it. Hundreds of Arabs burned tires and hurled stones at Border Guard officers at several locations throughout the city Tuesday morning. At least three officers and 11 rioters were lightly injured, and eight were detained. Meanwhile, in the North, a bus full of Muslim passengers on their way to al-Aqsa Mosque was stopped and turned back. Police said the bus was inspected following tip-offs of possible plans to riot in Jerusalem.

Danger Signs
Arab MKs and members of the Higher Arab Monitoring Committee also arrived at the al-Aqsa Mosque Tuesday morning. “The Netanyahu government is dangerous and irresponsible, and is leading the region to a third intifada,” said MK Talab El-Sana (United Arab List – Ta’al).MK Ahmad Tibi told Ynet he was inside the mosque: “There is a renewed occupation of east Jerusalem and the al-Aqsa Mosque, gunshots can be heard in every direction.”
Dozens of masked rioters hurled stones at Border Guard officers near the Shuafat refugee camp in Jerusalem, and set fire to tires. The force dispersed the rioters using stun grenades. Two policemen were lightly injured and seven Palestinians were arrested.
In another incident, at the northern entrance to the Isawiya neighborhood in Jerusalem, masked protesters also burned tires and hurled stones at Border Guard officers. The rioters were calmed and dispersed by the village’s elders. Security forces also dispersed masked rioters hurling stones near the Temple Mount’s Majlis Gate.

In Abu Dis, some 50 Palestinians hurled stones at security forces. Police and Border Guard officers responded with teargas and stun grenades. One of the rioters was detained and taken in for questioning. Riots were also noted at the Qalandiya checkpoint.
Meanwhile, dozens of Palestinian youths threw stones in Maale Mota Gur in the Old City and near the wholesale market. Similar riots ensued in Wadi Joz and Silwan. In total, thousands of police officer were deployed throughout the city.

Buses to capital inspected
Meanwhile, at the Achihod junction in the western Galilee, police stopped a bus containing Arab Muslims who were making their way from Majdal Krum in the north, to Jerusalem. The Bus driver was forced to turn back. During an inspection of the bus, a 38-year-old passenger allegedly assaulted a Traffic Police officer and was detained.

Heavy traffic jams were felt on Highway 6 due to a police checkpoint set up to inspect buses traveling to al-Aqsa. Balad Chairman MK Jamal Zahalka, who was also on his way to Jerusalem in his private vehicle, told Ynet, “I suggest they stop with these checkpoints, which only create provocations.”
Police said that since Tuesday was considered a very sensitive day, and in light of information obtained on possible riots in Jerusalem by civilians arriving in buses, every bus on its way to the capital will be inspected. Police added that the decision was backed and approved by the attorney general.
Sources from the Islamic Movement’s northern branch said police stopped two buses. The movement’s spokesman, Attorney Zahi Nujeidat, told Ynet, “Those who are preventing worshippers from traveling to al-Aqsa are the ones who are fermenting the situation. It is natural that a Muslim would visit and pray at the al-Aqsa Mosque. Those that are preventing us from getting there will ultimately carry the blame for any possible scenario.”

On Monday, during the inauguration of the Hurva Synagogue in the Old City, more than 3,000 police and border guards gathered in the Temple Mount area. The event passed in tense calm.

Clashes break out in east Jerusalem: Al Jazeera TV

The “day of rage” follows the reopening of the Hurva synagogue for the first time in 62 years [AFP]
Palestinians have clashed with Israeli police in two areas of occupied east Jerusalem after the Hamas movement called for a “day of rage” over the reopening of a synagogue in the Old City.

Palestinians threw rocks at Israeli police who responded with stun grenades in the Shu-afat and Essawiyya neighbourhoods early on Tuesday.
At least 15 Palestinians were arrested by Israeli police.
About 3,000 police officers had been deployed in east Jerusalem and nearby villages after Hamas called for action in response to the reopening of the Hurva synagogue.

‘Extremely tense’

Al Jazeera’s Sherine Tadros, in Essawiyya, said: “Palestinian protesters have been hurling stones at the border guards and they have responded using stun grenades. It is an extremely tense standoff.
“Police want to patrol the situation using as little force as possible, they told us, but they are wearing full riot gear.
“From our vantage point we can only see about 20 Palestinian protesters, hurling stones, which they have been doing throughout the night and into the morning.
“It seems a few amount of protesters against a large amount of border guards.”

The synagogue, considered by some people to to be one of Judaism’s most sacred sites, reopened for the first time in 62 years a day earlier in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.
Khaled Meshaal, Hamas’ political chief who is exiled in Syria, warned against the reopening on Monday.
“We warn against this action by the Zionist enemy to rebuild and dedicate the Hurva synagogue. It signifies the destruction of the al-Aqsa mosque and the building of the temple,” he said at a meeting of Palestinian groups’ leaders.
He urged Palestinians in Jerusalem to “take serious measures to protect al-Aqsa mosque from destruction and Judaisation”.
Meshaal also said that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and occupied West Bank need to “launch a campaign to protect Jerusalem and Islamic and Christian holy sites there”.

Holy sites

The walled Old City is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which makes the reopening of the synagogue controversial.Israeli officials have also limited access to al-Aqsa mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, for the fifth consecutive day for security reasons.
Palestinian men under the age of 50 have not been allowed to enter the mosque.
Al-Aqsa, Islam’s third holiest site, and the Hurva synagogue are about 700 metres apart.
The synagogue, first built in 1694, was first destroyed in 1721 and then demolished during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

The al-Aqsa site is revered by Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary), comprising al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. It is known to Jews as the Temple Mount.
An Israeli government decision to include two occupied West Bank religious sites in a Jewish national heritage plan has already angered Palestinians and raised tensions in recent weeks.
The announcement last week of Israeli plans for new settler homes near occupied East Jerusalem has also contributed to the unrest.

US/Israel ties under threat?: Al Jazeera TV

The new US administration has not shied away from criticising Israel’s illegal settlement expansion in the occupied Palestinian territorities.
And when Israel announced plans to build 1,600 new settler homes in East Jerusalem while Joe Biden, the US vice-president, was visiting the country last week as part of a Middle East peace inititative – the US was not happy.
A senior US official has called the timing of the announcement an “insult”.
And Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, had earlier told Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, that his government was putting “US ties at risk” by failing to take action towards renewed Middle East peace talks.
Although Netanyahu has apologised for the timing of the announcement, Israel is not showing any signs of stopping the settlement expansion and the US is not backing down from its tough criticism.

Al Jazeera’s John Terret reports.

Sleepless in Jerusalem and Gaza

12 Sleepless Gaza Jerusalem.mpg

13 Sleepless Gaza Jerusalem.mpg

13 b Film made by Ashira in episode 13, uploaded at request of viewers.mpg

14 Sleepless Gaza Jerusalem.mpg

15 Sleepless Gaza Jerusalem.mpg

A Matter of Timing: Wiping the Spit Off His Face: ICH

By Uri Avnery
It’s all a matter of timing. The Government of Israel has insulted the Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, one of the greatest “friends” of Israel (meaning: somebody totally subservient to AIPAC) and spat in the face of President Barack Obama. So what? It’s all a matter of timing.

If the government had announced the building of 1600 new housing units in East Jerusalem a day earlier, it would have been OK. If it had announced it three days later, it would have been wonderful. But doing it exactly when Joe Biden was about to have dinner with Bibi and Sarah’le – that was really bad timing.

The matter itself is not important. Another thousand housing units in East Jerusalem, or 10 thousand, or 100 thousand – what different does it make? The only thing that matters is the timing.

As the Frenchman said: It’s worse than criminal, it’s stupid.

THE WORD “stupid” also figured prominently this week, second only to “timing”.

Stupidity is an accepted phenomenon in politics. I would almost say: to succeed in politics, one needs a measure of stupidity. Voters don’t like politicians who are too intelligent. They make them feel inferior. A foolish politician, on the other hand, appears to be “one of the folks”.

History is full of acts of folly by politicians. Many books have been written about this. To my mind, the epitome of foolishness was achieved by the events that led to World War I, with its millions of victims, which broke out because of the accumulated stupidity of (in ascending order) Austrian, Russian, German, French and British politicians.

But even stupidity in politics has its limits. I have pondered this question for decades, and who knows, one day, when I grow up, I might write a doctoral thesis about it.

My thesis goes like this: In politics (as in other fields) foolish things happen regularly. But some of them are stopped in time, before they can lead to disaster, while others are not. It this accidental, or is there a rule?

My answer is: there certainly is a rule. It works like this: when somebody sets in motion an act of folly that runs counter to the spirit of the regime, it is stopped in its tracks. While it moves from one bureaucrat to another, somebody starts to wonder. Just a moment, this cannot be right! It is referred to higher authority, and soon enough somebody decides that it is a mistake.

On the other hand, when the act of folly is in line with the spirit of the regime, there are no brakes. When it moves from one bureaucrat to the next, it looks quite natural to both. No red light. No alarm bell. And so the folly rolls on to the bitter end.

I remember how this rule came to my mind the first time. In 1965, Habib Bourguiba, the president of Tunisia, took a bold step: he made a speech in the biggest refugee camp in Jericho, then under Jordanian rule, and called upon the Arabs to recognize Israel. This caused a huge scandal all over the Arab world.

Some time later, the correspondent of an Israeli paper reported that in a press conference at the UN headquarters, Bourguiba had called for the destruction of Israel. This sounded strange to me. I made inquiries, checked the protocol and found out that the opposite was true: the reporter had mistakenly turned a no into a yes.

How did this happen? If the journalist had erred in the opposite direction and reported, for example, that Gamal Abd-el-Nasser had called for the acceptance of Israel into the Arab League, the news would have been stopped at once. Every red light would have lit up. Someone would have called out: Hey, something strange here! Check again! But in the Bourguiba case nobody noticed the mistake, for what is more natural than an Arab leader calling for the destruction of Israel? No verification needed.

That’s what happened this week in Jerusalem. Every government official knows that the nationalist Prime Minister is pushing for the Judaization of East Jerusalem, that the extreme nationalist Minister of the Interior is even more eager, and that the super-nationalist Mayor of Jerusalem practically salivates when he imagines a Jewish quarter on the Temple Mount. So why should a bureaucrat postpone the confirmation of a new Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem? Just because of the visit of some American windbag?

Therefore, the timing is not important. It’s the matter itself that’s important.

DURING HIS last days in office, President Bill Clinton published a peace plan, in which he tried to make up for eight years of failure in this region and kowtowing to successive Israeli governments. The plan was comparatively reasonable, but included a ticking bomb.

About East Jerusalem, Clinton proposed that what is Jewish should be joined to the State of Israel and what is Arab should be joined to the state of Palestine. He assumed (rightly, I believe) that Yasser Arafat was ready for such a compromise, which would have joined some new Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to Israel. But Clinton was not wise enough to foresee the consequences of his proposal.

In practice, it was an open invitation to the Israeli government to speed up the establishment of new settlements in East Jerusalem, expecting them to become part of Israel. And indeed, since then successive Israeli governments have invested all available resources in this endeavor. Since money has no smell, every Jewish casino-owner in America and every Jewish brothel-keeper in Europe was invited to join the effort. The Biblical injunction – “Thou shalt not bring the hire of a whore, or the price of a dog, into the house of the Lord thy God, for any vow; for even both these are abomination unto the Lord thy God” (Deuteronomy 23:18) – was suspended for this holy cause.

Now the pace is speeded up even more. Because there is no more effective means of obstructing peace than building new settlements in East Jerusalem.

THAT IS clear to anyone who has dealings with this region. No peace without an independent Palestinian state, no Palestinian state without East Jerusalem. About this there is total unanimity among all Palestinians, from Fatah to Hamas, and between all Arabs, from Morocco to Iraq, and between all Muslims, from Nigeria to Iran.

There will be no peace without the Palestinian flag waving above the Haram al-Sharif, the holy shrines of Islam which we call the Temple Mount. That is an iron-clad rule. Arabs can compromise about the refugee problem, painful as it may be, and about the borders, also with much pain, and about security matters. But they cannot compromise about East Jerusalem becoming the capital of Palestine. All national and religious passions converge here.

Anyone who wants to wreck any chance for peace – it is here that he has to act. The settlers and their supporters, who know that any peace agreement would include the elimination of (at least) most settlements, have planned in the past (and probably are planning now) to blow up the mosques on the Temple Mount, hoping that this would cause a worldwide conflagration which would reduce to ashes the chances of peace once and for all. Less extreme people dream about the creeping ethnic cleansing of East Jerusalem by administrative chicanery, demolition of houses, denying means of livelihood and just making life in general miserable for Arabs. Moderate rightists just want to cover every empty square inch in East Jerusalem with Jewish neighborhoods. The aim is always the same.

THIS REALITY is, of course, well known to Obama and his advisors. In the beginning they believed, in their innocence, that they could sweet talk Netanyahu and Co. into stopping the building activity to facilitate the start of negotiations for the two-state solution. Very soon they learned that this was impossible without exerting massive pressure – and they were not prepared to do that.

After putting up a short and pitiful struggle, Obama gave in. He agreed to the deception of a “settlement freeze” in the West Bank. Now building is going on there with great enthusiasm, and the settlers are satisfied. They have completely stopped their demonstrations.

In Jerusalem there was not even a farcical attempt – Netanyahu just told Obama that he would go on building there (“as in Tel Aviv”), and Obama bowed his head. When Israeli officials announced a grandiose plan for building in “Ramat Shlomo” this week, they did not violate any undertaking. Only the matter of “timing” remained.

FOR JOE BIDEN, it was a matter of honor. For Mahmoud Abbas, it is a matter of survival.

Under intense pressure from the Americans and their agents, the rulers of the Arab countries, Abbas was obliged to agree to negotiations with the Netanyahu government – though only “proximity talks”, a euphemism for “distance talks”.

Clearly, nothing will come out of these talks except more humiliation for the Palestinians. Quite simply: anyone building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank is announcing in advance that there is no chance for an agreement. After all, no sane Israeli would invest billions in a territory he intends to turn over to the Palestinian state. A person who is eating a pizza is not negotiating about it in good faith.

Even at this late stage, Abbas and his people still hope that something good will come out of all this: the US will acknowledge that they are right and exert, at long last, real pressure on Israel to implement the two-state solution.

But Biden and Obama did not give much cause for hope. They wiped the spit off their faces and smiled politely.

As the saying goes: when you spit in the face of a weakling, he pretends that it is raining. Does this apply to the president of the most powerful country in the world?

Israel’s new war on Islamic sites: Al Jazeera online

By Daud Abdullah
In a move that appears to be a celebration of the 16th anniversary of the massacre of 29 worshippers by the terrorist Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli government has proclaimed that the Ibrahimi Mosque in Khalil (Hebron) and Masjid Bilal ibn Rabah (mosque) in Bethlehem are “Jewish Heritage sites”.
Goldstein, an American-born Israeli settler who served as a medic in the military, opened fire on worshippers at a mosque in Hebron on February 25, 1994, killing 29 and wounding more than 150, before being subdued and beaten to death.
The announcement by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, though not surprising, is the latest in a series of Israeli attacks on Islamic historical and religious sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

It is consistent with the Israelis’ long-standing ambition to dispose of all non-Jewish religious symbols and presence in Palestine.
While the Israeli government was announcing the annexation of the Islamic sites, dozens of settlers attempted to storm into Jericho on the pretext that they were visiting an ancient synagogue.
Under the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of May 1994, Israel agreed to dissolve its civil administration and “transferred its powers and responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority”.

Israel disinterested in peace
In his first reaction to the annexation of the Ibrahimi Mosque, Amr Moussa, the secretary-general of the Arab League, said: “This proves that Israel is not interested in peace and negotiations.”
The question is: when was Israel ever interested in such? When has it ever recognised the rights of the Palestinians? Israel’s founding fathers made no secret of the fact that they wanted all of historic Palestine, but without the Palestinians and all that is associated with their history.

Hence, Menachem Begin, the late Israeli prime minister, recorded in his memoirs, The Revolt: “The partition of the Homeland [Israel] is illegal. It will never be recognised. The signature by institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever.”
Everything that has happened in Palestine since 1948, and in Jerusalem and Hebron in particular over the past year, can be explained in the context of this statement.

Those who ignore it, not least the Arab and Muslim leadership, do so at their peril.

That having been said, the timing of these latest provocations against the Ibrahimi Mosque has not gone unnoticed.
The Israeli moves come at a time of huge embarrassment for the European patrons of the Zionist project, who saw their passports, among them diplomatic documents, being used illegally to carry out the murder of a Palestinian figure in Dubai, a “moderate” and thus by definition a friendly country.

Crude distraction?
Is Israel trying to divert global attention from the Mabhouh assassination? [AFP]
In as much as the announcement of the new “heritage sites” coincides with the anniversary of the Goldstein massacre, it has been pointedly described as a crude distraction away from the issue of the criminal responsibility for the Dubai murder and the discomfort it has caused many in Europe.
Observers have rightly noted that while the European Union maintains its proscription of Hamas as a “terrorist organisation”, they are yet to produce any evidence that the organisation has carried out a single military operation outside Occupied Palestine.

This is in stark contrast to the Israeli government, which threatens, attacks and occupies the lands of neighbouring countries, and assassinates its opponents in other sovereign nations.
Nevertheless, Israel continues to receive the patronage and support of the European Union.
If nothing else, the Zionists have surely perfected the art of gradualism, taking Palestinian territory inch by inch and brick by brick. Thus, when the Israeli government partitioned the Ibrahimi Mosque in 1994 and took two-thirds of it for Jews, it was safe to assume that was not the end of the affair.

PA surrender
While many Palestinians hold the occupation authorities responsible for the escalating tensions and damage to the mosque, they are embittered equally with the Palestinian Authority (PA) for having surrendered the area adjoining the second most important mosque in all of historic Palestine, as part of the “Hebron Protocol” of 1996.
Today, the security agencies loyal to US General Keith Dayton, the US security coordinator between Israel and the Palestinians, and the PA prevent young people living in Hebron from going to the Ibrahimi Mosque to defend it against Jewish settlers.

With the greatest sense of foreboding they point out that today it is the Ibrahimi Mosque but tomorrow it could be Al Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest mosque in Islam, which is under serious threat.
Salih al-Razim, the imam of the Ibrahimi Mosque, recalls that during the last five years the occupation authorities have prevented systematically the call to prayer in the mosque, particularly the daily maghrib (sunset) prayer, and all prayers on Saturdays.
Typically, the occupiers’’claim that the mosque was being annexed because it was in a state of disrepair is disingenuous because they themselves have deliberately obstructed more than 90% of maintenance efforts by the mosque authorities. In effect, theirs is only a device to intervene and seize control of the mosque.

“Second Temple”
Since the Palestinians have maintained the Ibrahimi Mosque for more than one thousand years there is nothing preventing them from doing so today apart from the occupation authorities.
Meanwhile, in April 2009 the same authorities took a huge stone from the Khatouniyah Palace and embedded it in the square in front of the Knesset, claiming that this was a stone from the “Second Temple”.
Fakhri Abu Diyab, a member of the Council for the Defence of Real Estate in Silwan, reported that the Israeli operation was monitored and documented even though some of it took place in the early hours of the morning.
Several months later, in late December 2009, the Al-Aqsa Foundation for Endowment and Heritage reported the theft of archaeological artifacts of historical importance from the Umayyad palaces in Al-Khatouniyah.

The stones in question were transported to the Ma’ale Adumim colony-settlement where some were off-loaded in a dump; other items were taken to warehouses run by the Israeli antiquities department in the Rockefeller Museum, ironically the former Palestine Archaeological Museum.
It is believed that the Islamic relics will be given cosmetic treatment and then reappear, miraculously, as “Jewish” relics. We know this because it’s not the first time that this has been done.

Mosque destruction
Scores of mosques were destroyed across Palestine in 1948 (as reported inter alia in Haaretz on July 6, 2009) and in the succeeding years as part of the deliberate policy to obliterate the Islamic identity of the country. Many were converted into museums, night clubs and restaurants.
The Great Mosque (Jaame’a al-Kabir) in Bir al-Saba’a (Beersheba) was used as a detention centre and subsequently as a court before it was abandoned.

The Afula Mosque was converted into a synagogue and Al-Qaysayrieh Mosque became a restaurant.
None of these acts will give legitimacy to the claims of the Zionist Occupation. The presence of the Palestinian population in Hebron and Jerusalem represent the greatest obstacle to the process of annexation and Judaisation.
This latest outrage could well signal the beginning of a new phase in the conflict – one that has the potential to resonate well beyond Palestine.

Daud Abdullah is the director of the Middle East Monitor- an independent media research institution founded in the United Kingdom to foster a fair and accurate coverage in the Western media of Middle Eastern issues and in particular the Palestine Question.