PCHR - Palestijnse militaire rechtbank veroordeelt 'collaborateur' ter dood

Een Palestijnse veiligheidsofficier die het Israëlische leger geholpen heeft om 4 terroristen uit te schakelen, is door de militaire rechtbank van de PA ter dood veroordeeld.

 

Dat klinkt bizar. De PA heeft geen leger, dus wat moeten ze überhaupt met een militaire rechtbank?

 

De PA wordt geacht het Palestijnse terrorisme te bestrijden, en krijgt daartoe geld en wapens van de internationale gemeenschap. Ze horen daartoe ook met Israël samen te werken - pardon, te 'collaboreren', en beklagen zich als het IDF zelf de Palestijnse gebieden intrekt om terroristen op te pakken zonder overleg met hen.

 

Het IDF heeft dan ook weinig vertrouwen in de Palestijnse veiligheidsdiensten. De leden daarvan collaboreren soms liever met de terroristen dan met het IDF.

 

Zelfs het PCHR vindt dat collaborateurs bestraft moeten worden:
"Affirms that the prosecution of collaborators is a right and duty of the PNA since these collaborators are an occupation tool participating in the implementation of war crimes against Palestinian civilians."

 

Deze Palestijnse burgers waren wel terroristen.

 

 

Wouter

___________

 

PCHR
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Press Release
Ref: 38/2008
Date: 28 April 2008
Time: 11:30 GMT

 

Palestinian Military Court Sentences Emad Sa'ed to Death
PCHR Calls upon President Abbas to reject the Ruling, and Calls for Abolishing the Death Penalty in Palestinian Law

 

 

PCHR is extremely concerned over the passing of a death sentence against Emad Mahmoud Sa'ed Sa'ed (25 from Yatta) by the High Military Court of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) that convened in the Governmental Compound "Muqata'a" in Hebron this morning. The Court sentenced Sa'ed to death by firing squad for treason and collaborating with the Israeli occupation. The Centre calls upon President Mahmoud Abbas not to sign this cruel and inhumane sentence, and to stop its implementation.

At approximately 10:00 on Monday, 28 April 2008, the High Military Court convened with Lt. Colonel Ahmad Abu Dayya as Chief Judge and Major Muman Fanoun and Captain Fadi Hejazi as panel judges. The Chief Military Prosecutor Major Issa Amr and Military Prosecutor First Lt. Hani El-Hieh prosecuted the case. At the end of the session, the Court sentenced Emad Mahmoud Sa'ed Sa'ed (25) to death by firing squad for treason and collaborating with the Israeli occupation.

The decision stated, "It was proven to the Court the guilt of the suspect Emad Sa'ed, who is a security officer, of the crime of treason and collaboration with the Israeli occupation as part of a network headed by his uncle in the Yatta area. The defendant provided information to his father. And this information, according to the defendant's testimony, led to the martyrdom of 4 persons wanted to the occupation forces, the demolition of a house, and the arrest of a number of wanted persons. The Court based its decision on Article 131 of the Palestinian Military Penal Code for the Year 1979, and decided unanimously to sentence Sgt. Emad Sa'ed to death by firing squad." The defendant was arrested on 7 August 2007 by the Palestinian Military Intelligence.

 

It is noted that this is the second death sentence issued by this Court in less than a month. The High Military Court convened in Jenin on 6 April sentenced Tha'er Mahmoud Husni Ermeilat (23) from Thanaba east of Tulkarm to death by firing squad. He was convicted of murdering Ala Ayesh Mubarak (20) from Tulkarm refugee camp on 22 October 2006.

 

PCHR is extremely concerned over the continued utilization of the death penalty in the PNA, and:

 

- Calls upon the PNA to announce a moratorium on the use of this form of punishment that violates international human rights standards, especially the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (1966), and the UN Convention against Torture (1984).

- Calls upon President Mahmoud Abbas not to sign this cruel and inhumane sentence, and to stop its implementation.

- Affirms that the prosecution of collaborators is a right and duty of the PNA since these collaborators are an occupation tool participating in the implementation of war crimes against Palestinian civilians. However, this does not necessitate the implementation of the death penalty.

- Points that abolishing the death penalty does imply leniency towards dangerous criminals, who must be subjected to deterring punishment while preserving our humanity.

- Affirms the unconstitutionality of the Palestinian Military Penal Code for the Year 1979 since it was not passed by the PNA and was not submitted to the PLC for approval.

- Calls upon the PNA to review all legislation relative to the death penalty, especially the Law No. 74 for the Year 1936 effective in the Gaza Strip and the Jordanian Penal Code No. 16 for the Year 1960 effective in the West Bank. The Centre calls for passing a unified penal code that conforms with international human rights standards, especially those pertaining to the death penalty.

 

Public Document
**************************************
For more information please call PCHR office in Gaza, Gaza Strip, on +972 82824776 - 2825893
PCHR, 29 Omer El Mukhtar St., El Remal, PO Box 1328 Gaza, Gaza Strip.
E-mail: pchr@pchrgaza.org, Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org
-----------------------------------
If you got this forwarded and you want to subscribe, send mail to
request@pchrgaza.org
and write "subscribe" in the subject line.

 

3 Palestijnen ontsnapt uit gevangenis Jericho

Dit is niet de eerste keer en een reden voor Israëls wantrouwen naar de Palestijnse Autoriteit.

 

Volgens het ene bericht waren de 3 ontsnapte gevangenen lid van de Volksverzetscomité's uit Gaza, volgens het andere waren ze van Fatah en uit de Westoever.

 

Twee zouden 'politieke' gevangenen zijn (maar wel van een gewapende brigade?) en één zat op criminele gronden vast.

 

 

Wouter
----------------

3 wanted Palestinians escape from Palestinian prison in Jericho

Ali Waked - YNET
Published: 04.28.08, 11:33
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3536755,00.html


Three wanted members of the Salah al-Din Brigades, the Popular Resistance Committees' military wing, have escaped from the Palestinian Authority prison in the West Bank city of Jericho.

The three were arrested over their activities against Israel. Palestinian security forces are searching the area.

--------------------------------------------

Three Palestinian escape Occupied West Bank jail

 

By Agence France Presse (AFP)
Daily Star (Lebanon)

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

 

JERICHO: Three Palestinians, including two members of an armed group mostly confined to the Gaza Strip, escaped from an Occupied West Bank prison overnight, Palestinian security officials said on Monday. Two of the men, Nidal Awdi Malash and Mohammed Yusef Sobh, were members of the Gaza-based Popular Resistance Committees (PRC), according to a security official who asked to remain anonymous. The third man, Hani Ezzat Halawa, was being held on criminal charges, the official added. Jericho police chief Qaid Khaled Abu Kamel confirmed the three had escaped but refused to provide details about their identities. "People escape from prisons all over the world. We are investigating," he said. - AFP

--------------------------------------------

Apr 28, 2008 12:41 | Updated Apr 28, 2008 13:28
Three Palestinian prisoners escape from PA jail in Jericho
By JPOST.COM STAFF


Three Palestinian convicts escaped Monday morning from a PA-controlled prison in the West Bank city of Jericho, the Palestinian Ma'an news agency reported.

The three are Fatah members Hani Halawe from Nablus, Nidal Malash from Bethlehem and Mahmoud Sabah from Jenin. Malash and Sabah are political prisoners.

The commander of Palestinian security forces in Jenin told Ma'an that his forces were searching for the fugitives.

According to assessments, the three escaped to protest their living conditions.

There were reports that a fourth prisoner may have also escaped in the jailbreak.

--------------------------------------------

Three prisoners escape from PA prison in Jericho
Date: 28 / 04 / 2008  Time:  12:51   
Ma'an News
 
Jericho – Ma'an – Three prisoners escaped from a Palestinian Authority prison in the West Bank city of Jericho on Monday, Palestinian security sources said.

The sources identified the escapees as Hani Halawa from the city of Nablus, who was detained on criminal charges, Nida Malash from Bethlehem, imprisoned on political charges, and Mahmoud Mustafa from Jenin, also a political prisoner.

A commander in the Palestinian national security forces in Jericho told Ma'an's reporter that the security services are combing the area searching for the escapees.

 

Hoe premier Olmert met fallout van Syrische kernreactor omgaat

Een interessante link tussen de onthullingen in de VS over de nucleaire reactor die Syrië met hulp van Noord-Korea bouwde en die in september door Israël werd gebombardeerd, en de recente overtures van Olmert richting Damascus. Het aanbod dat Olmert zou hebben gedaan om de Golan terug te geven aan Syrië blijft vaag en duister, maar het bombarderen van de Syrische reactor was een heldere statement, en de beste zet die Olmert tijdens zijn verder nogal desastreuze regeerperiode heeft gedaan...

 

Wouter

___________

Jerusalem Post / Updated Apr 27, 2008 9:55

 

Analyze This: How PM is handling Tibnah fallout

 

By CALEV BEN-DAVID
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870497113&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

 

If a picture is truly worth a thousand words, then the photograph presented to the US Congress on Thursday showing the head of the Syrian nuclear commission standing next to the director of North Korea's Yongbyon reactor ably sums up the following explication of roughly that length.

If anyone was wondering how it is that two such significant developments concerning Syria should break at exactly the same time - the latest revelations about the Israeli attack last September on a alleged Syrian nuclear facility being built with North Korean aid and the recent exchange of messages between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Syrian President Bashar Assad in which the former supposedly agreed to return the Golan to Damascus in a peace deal - the sight of these particular Syrian and North Korean officials grinning like idiots into the camera lens offers up a very compelling explanation.

Of course, there were other close-up photographs taken of the Syrian reactor at Tibnah presented to Congress that serve as even more damning evidence that the Koreans were helping Damascus build a reactor that was shortly to go on-line - but none as embarrassingly personal as that shot. Just as eye-opening as the content of the photos, if not more so, is the fact that they were reportedly supplied, or even taken, by an Israeli agent at the facility.

If authentic - and despite Syrian denials, there is little reason to doubt it given the other evidence presented by the CIA to Congress last week - these photos are part of one of most impressive intelligence coups pulled off by Israel against Syria since the Eli Cohen affair of the 1960s. Coming soon after the Damascus assassination in February of Hizbullah operations chief Imad Mughniyeh, their presentation in public represents tremendous international embarrassment for the Assad regime. Heads will surely roll in Damascus, maybe literally, if they haven't already.

No wonder Israeli sources have been saying for weeks the Olmert government preferred that Congress not hold this hearing, fearing that the exposure of this material might so rattle Damascus it could push it into a some kind of retaliatory military venture against Israel.

Perhaps it also sheds light on recent developments in the Israeli-Syrian relationship, in particular the exchange of messages between Olmert and Assad via the Turkish government, in which the prime minister supposedly signaled to his Syrian counterpart his willingness for a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Having that bit of information also leak out to the media last week conveniently provides Assad with at least some of the face-saving and media distraction he surely wanted right now to counter the news out of Washington.

This is not to say that Jerusalem's Golan offer was either insincere, or only a cynical ploy to reduce tensions with Syria at a time when they might have reached a breaking point. After all, it is reasonable to assume that Olmert would be willing to go at least as far as his coalition partner, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, did in the then-Labor prime minister's own negotiations with the Syrians over the Golan eight years ago. Maybe even a tiny drop further - meaning Syrian access to Lake Kinneret, given the right overall formula.

There are, though, several reasons why Olmert could make such an offer at this time, secure in the knowledge that it is unlikely to lead to an actual agreement that would be politically problematic for him to implement any time soon.

One, the conditions placed on that offer - that Syria break its ties to Hamas and Hizbullah, and move out of Iran's orbit - are probably too difficult for Assad to swallow at this juncture. And two, moving forward on the Israel-Syria axis will likely have to wait for the Bush administration, angry at Damascus for reasons related to Iraq, to vacate the White House early next year.

Nor can Olmert realistically expect any Golan deal to find sufficient support within his own government, or even in his own Kadima Party. Indeed, perhaps anticipating negative public reaction to the disclosure of his Damascus exchange, the PM conveniently arranged a nice little Pessah vacation on the Golan just when this news broke, in case anyone was worrying he might be in too much of a rush to give it back to the Syrians.

It is that kind of nice little PR touch that once again demonstrates what a politician-to-his-very-bones Olmert is. But the presentation made in Washington on Thursday proves something else, too. Whatever other mistakes this prime minister has made, it is clear he was absolutely right in ordering a strike on the Tibnah facility last autumn despite the tremendous risks this entailed.

The evidence presented in Washington makes it clear this reactor was in the very latest stages of development and posed a very imminent threat in the form of the enriched plutonium it could have produced to power nuclear weapons.

What's more, according to US sources Olmert went ahead and did so despite hesitations in Washington over whether diplomatic pressures should first be brought to bear on Damascus. How anyone in the Bush administration can possibly believe that after the Iraq WMDs fiasco it could credibly make a case against the Syrian nuclear program that would get any international support is almost beyond comprehension.

One only has to look at the laughably absurd reaction this weekend by International Atomic Energy Agency head Mohamed ElBaradei - in which he chose not to criticize Syria for violating the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty it had signed, but instead took aim at Israel for "undermining the due process of verification"(!) - to understand that Jerusalem had no choice but to act fast and on its own.

And act Olmert did. Even many who criticized Menachem Begin back in 1981 when he ordered the strike on Saddam Hussein's Osirak reactor now concede in retrospect that he made the right decision. So it should now be, at least in this country, regarding this much-maligned (and not unjustifiably so) prime minister, who in giving the green light for September's operation made a heroic contribution to the security of this country, and of the region. In recent weeks he has shown himself equally adept at conducting damage control regarding this critical matter. While fallout from Tibnah will undoubtedly continue to drift our way in the coming weeks and months, in the coming years we should all sleep more soundly knowing that somewhere out there in the Syrian hinterlands, Damascus's nuclear dreams lay buried for the time being under the desert sands.

 

Calev@jpost.com

Dry Bones:Golan Promise

Dat Israël de héle Golan hoogvlakte aan Syrië zou 'teruggeven' lijkt moeilijk denkbaar. Behalve dat het een aantrekkelijk vakantiegebied is voor veel Israëli's, is het tevens zeer strategisch gelegen, met het Meer van Galilea/Tiberias/Kinneret - Israëls voornaamste zoetwaterbron - aan haar voeten en uitkijkend op noord-Israël.

 

De grenzen hier werden in 1920 pas getrokken tussen de Britse en Franse mandaatgebieden, waarna de Britten in 1923 nog een stuk Golan aan Frans Syrië overdroegen. Tijdens Israëls Onafhankelijkheidsoorlog van 1948/1949 veroverde Syrië er nog een stukje bij, waarmee het toegang tot het meer kreeg. In 1967 werd de hoogvlakte door Israël ingenomen en in 1981 geannexeerd. Een smal strookje (waaronder de ruines van Quneitra) was na de Yom Kippoer Oorlog aan Syrië teruggegeven in 1974.

 

Barak bood tijdens vredesbesprekingen in 1999/2000 aan de hele Golan terug te geven, behalve het smalle strookje langs het meer dat Syrië in 1948 had veroverd. Hierop zouden de onderhandelingen zijn stukgelopen. Olmert doet er goed aan niet meer te bieden dan Barak, althans totdat de Syriërs in Finnen veranderen (met Sint Juttemis dus)....

 

 

Wouter

______________________________

Golan Promise (1981)

With all the talk about Israel giving the Golan Heights back to Syria "in exchange for peace" I decided to search the Dry Bones archives for cartoons about the Golan and about Israeli "concessions for peace".

I was shocked to discover a fact that everyone (your faithful servant included) has forgotten. Following the 1973 Egyptian Yom Kippur War surprise attack on Israel, the Israelis pushed the Egyptian invading force out of Sinai.

In the ensuing "search for peace", America put heavy pressure on Israel to withdraw from the Egyptian Oil fields in Sinai.

What I (in 2008), and apparently President Ronald Reagan (in 1981) forgot was that Israel had received something tangible from the Americans in return for the unilateral withdrawal from the oil fields:

"the tangible benefit for Israel from its agreement to a unilateral withdrawal from the Egyptian oil fields was a presidential letter from President Ford concerning the vital importance of Israel holding on to the Golan Heights, which Israel had taken from Syria in 1967 following 19 years of Syrian shelling on Israel's northern communities from the towering Golan Heights, and Syria's incessant attacks from the Golan on the Sea of the Galilee – Israel's only fresh water resource, from where Israel's National Water Carrier pumps water to the whole country." -more

In the letter, Gerald Ford, 38th President of the U.S. gave an assurance that

"The U.S. will support the position that an overall settlement with Syria in the framework of a peace agreement must assure Israel's security from attack from the Golan Heights. The U.S. further supports the position that a just and lasting peace, which remains our objective, must be acceptable to both sides. The U.S. has not developed a final position on the borders. Should it do so it will give great weight to Israel's position that any peace agreement with Syria must be predicated on Israel remaining on the Golan Heights." -more

-Dry Bones- Israel's Political Comic Strip Since 1973

Zeven Palestijnse doden bij gevecht tussen Israël en terroristen

Twee verschillende berichten over hetzelfde tragische voorval. Wie heeft er gelijk?

Duidelijk is in elk geval dat het de terroristen zijn die de burgerbevolking in gevaar brengen door vanuit dicht bevolkt gebied aanvallen op Israël uit te voeren, zich er te verschuilen en er explosieven op te slaan.

 

Wouter

-------------------

IDF SPOKESPERSON'S ANNOUNCEMENT

During IDF operation this morning in northern Gaza, the IDF targeted from the air two Palestinian gunmen who were approaching the soldiers while carrying large bags on their backs. A big explosion erupted on the scene, following the attack against the two, indicating the presence of bombs and explosives in the gunmen's bags. As a result of this big explosion, extensive damage was caused to a house that was near the gunmen and uninvolved civilians were hit. The IDF Spokesperson wishes to stress that the responsibility for the injuring and killing of uninvolved civilians lies with the terrorist organization Hamas, which operates within civilian population, using them as human shields and risking their lives by keeping bombs and explosives near them.

 

-------------------

Associated Press/ April 28, 2008

Israeli strike kills 7 Palestinians

 

By IBRAHIM BARZAK
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jD4YSkDPlclqd9dHvg2f0Ij18zEgD90AR9KG1

 

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — An Israeli tank shell slammed into a tiny Gaza Strip home Monday during a skirmish with gunmen, killing a Palestinian woman and four of her children as they prepared to sit down for breakfast, officials and relatives said.

The new violence threatened to hobble Egyptian attempts to bring a cease-fire to the area.

A militant and an unidentified man were also killed in fighting in Beit Hanoun, a northern Gaza border town Palestinian militants frequently use to fire rockets and mortars at southern Israel.

Palestinian medics identified the dead children as sisters Rudina and Hana Abu Meatak, ages 6 and 3; and their brothers 4-year-old Saleh and 15-month-old Mousad. Their mother, Miyasar, was in her late 30s. Her two older children were critically wounded in the strike, the officials said.

The Israeli military said forces entered the town early Monday after gunmen approached a border patrol. During ensuing clashes between gunmen and Israeli forces, tank shells were fired, and one struck the Abu Meatak home.

The force of the blast scattered clothes and other household items outside the two-room home. A single white children's shoe, flattened by the explosion, lay on the ground near a blue pair of shorts covered in sand. A green baby chair also sat outside, one end bent by the force of the blast.

A large crowd of people gathered outside, milling about as rescue crews cleaned up the debris and washed away bloodstains in the sand.

"What a black day. They killed my family," said Ahmad Abu Meatak, father of the children, wailing outside the local hospital where the bodies were taken. Abu Meatak, dressed in a traditional Arab white robe and headcovering, said he was on his way to a nearby market to shop when the tank shell hit.

Beit Hanoun farmer Omar Abdel Nabi said he was driving his tractor in a nearby field when two or three explosions shook the ground.

"People were screaming that a tank shell landed in the next street," he told The Associated Press. "I carried two people covered in blood out of a house."

The children were taken to a local hospital morgue, where family members stood over the bodies, wailing and flailing their hands in the air.

"I feel sick. I want to throw up the blood that is boiling inside me, into the face of the occupation," said Ibrahim Abu Meatak, the children's 24-year-old half-brother. He said Miyasar Meatak was fixing breakfast for the family when the tank shell struck.

Israeli officials said they were investigating the incident, but made clear that they held Gaza's Hamas rulers responsible for the bloodshed. Israel says Hamas permits militants to carry out attacks from residential areas, putting civilians at risk when Israel strikes back.

"We see Hamas as responsible for everything that happens there, for all injuries," Defense Minister Ehud Barak said during a tour of an Israeli weapons factory. "The army is acting, and will continue to act, against Hamas, including inside the Gaza Strip. Hamas is also responsible, by way of its activity within the civilian population, for part of the casualties among uninvolved civilians."

The Israeli army frequently operates in the Gaza Strip against Palestinian militants, who have fired thousands of rockets into southern Israel since the Hamas militant group took control of Gaza last June. Militants claimed to have fired rockets at Israel before the Abu Meatak house was hit.

In recent weeks, militants have also tried to infiltrate the border at least four times.

Despite the sporadic clashes and border attacks, Hamas has indicated it is willing to accept a cease-fire with Israel, mediated by Egypt. But Monday's violence may throw fragile cease-fire efforts into disarray.

Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of Hamas-ruled Gaza, accused Israel of striving "to ruin any regional and international efforts to end the siege and halt aggression."

Gunmen fired rockets at a crossing Israel shares with the Gaza Strip shortly after the tank shell strike. And a Hamas-allied militant group warned revenge. "The blood of the children will not be spilled in vain," said Abu Mujahed of the Popular Resistance Committees.

Despite the threat, he said the group would send a delegation to Egypt on Monday to discuss the current truce offer.

Last week, Hamas said it is ready for a six-month truce. Israel has dismissed the offer, saying Hamas wants to use the lull to rearm after sustaining heavy losses in recent fighting. Officials also say Hamas must control smaller armed groups, like the PRC and Islamic Jihad.

While battling Hamas in Gaza, Israel has been conducting peace talks with the rival Palestinian government of President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank. Hamas is not a party to those talks.

Abbas condemned the Gaza shelling, saying it would make peace negotiations with Israel even more difficult. "We emphasize the need to achieve calm and keep our people away from the agony of war and destruction," Abbas said.

The sides hope to reach a peace deal by the end of the year, though Abbas complained after a trip to the White House last week that he was growing pessimistic about the lack of progress in negotiations.

Early Monday, the Israeli army lifted its closure of Palestinian territories, imposed for 10 days over the Jewish Passover holiday.

Israel routinely bars Palestinians from entering during Jewish holidays, seen them as a time of high risk of militant attacks.

 

 

Hosted by Google
Copyright © 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Noord-Koreanen mogelijk omgekomen in september bij Israëlische luchtaanval Syrië

De ontkenning van Syrië dat het om een nuclaire installatie ging wordt steeds ongeloofwaardiger.
De vraag is natuurlijk wel hoe Japan weet dat die Noord-Koreanen zijn omgekomen.

Het is allemaal hoogst geheimzinnig, wat niet zo vreemd is als het een geheime nucleaire installatie betrof.

 

Ratna

-----------

Reuters / April 28, 2008
 

N.Koreans may have died in Israel raid in Syria: NHK

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/28/AR2008042800240.html

 

TOKYO (Reuters) - Ten North Koreans helping build a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria may have died in an Israeli air raid last September, Japanese public broadcaster NHK said on Monday, citing South Korean intelligence officials.

The report follows the release of photographs by the United States last week of what it said was a Syrian nuclear reactor capable of producing plutonium built with North Korean help.

Israel destroyed the suspected reactor in a September 6 air strike.

NHK said the dead included officials of the North Korea's communist party unit that exports weapons and military technology and members of the North Korean military unit which made nuclear facilities in the country.

Two or three North Koreans survived the air strike but it is not clear what happened to them afterwards, NHK reported.

Syria has denied the U.S. charge as "a fantasy."

Pyongyang has been reluctant to discuss any transfer of nuclear technology to other countries, notably Syria, as well as to account for its suspected pursuit of uranium enrichment.

(Reporting by Yoko Kubota)

Nieuwe aanval Hezbollah op Israël is kwestie van tijd

Hezbollah maakt zich op voor een nieuwe ronde tegen Israël, onder het toeziend oog van de VN troepenmacht in Zuid-Libanon. Je kunt je afvragen waarom die troepenmacht er überhaupt zit, en waarom zoveel landen deze klucht meespelen en er geld aan uitgeven.

In verschillende incidenten met gewapende Hezbollah strijders is men ze snel uit de weg gegaan, en zweeg men over het gebeurde, in de hoop dat het niet uit zou komen. Als alleen Israël het zegt, wordt het immers toch niet geloofd of serieus genomen, zo weet men bij UNIFIL ook. Wanneer er een nieuwe oorlog uitbreekt, en Libanon wederom wordt gebombardeerd, dan is het duidelijk wie daaraan schuldig is en ter verantwoording moet worden geroepen. 

Ratna

-----------

Haaretz / Last update - 10:37 27/04/2008

 

Report: Hezbollah man says new attack on Israel is question of 'when, not if'

 

By Haaretz Service
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/978292.html

 

Two years after the Second Lebanon War, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah organization has bolstered its recruitment efforts at an unprecedented rate in preparation for a fresh war with Israel, The Guardian reported Sunday.

The report quoted an unnamed Hezbollah fighter as saying: "It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah [Hezbollah chief] commands us" to attack.

According to the report, the Islamist group has of late been sending "hundreds, if not thousands" of recruits to training camps in Lebanon, Syria and Iran in ancticipation of conflict with Israel.

"The villages in the south are empty of men," an international official was quoted as saying. "They are all gone, training in Bekaa, Syria and Iran."

Israel and the Hezbollah fought a 34-day war in the summer of 2006, sparked by the militant group's cross-border raid and abduction of two Israel Defense Forces reservists.

During the conflict, Hezbollah launched some 4,000 rockets at northern Israel and was said to have thousands more in its reserves. The numbers of casualties on both sides have been disputed, particularly in terms of the Islamist group's loss of manpower.

Meanwhile, the UN reported last month that Hezbollah is rearming and has an arsenal including 10,000 long-range rockets and 20,000 short-range rockets in southern Lebanon.

A resurgence of Hezbollah fighters has been encountered recently in southern Lebanon, despite an international ban on the Islamist group's presence in the contentious area.

Hezbollah militants warded off members of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) last month when the peacekeepers discovered a truck carrying weapons and ammunition belonging to the Lebanon-based guerilla group.

The incident was the first time that UNIFIL forces were confronted by armed Hezbollah men south of Lebanon's Litani River, an area which Security Council resolution 1701 prohibits Hezbollah from entering.

Israel has expressed dissatisfaction with the way resolution is being implemented, particularly in the way Hezbollah has been permitted to reinforce its position south of the Litani and to continue smuggling weapons from Syria and Iran.

UNIFIL houdt info over Hezbollah achter voor Veiligheidsraad

Het is helaas niet de eerste keer dat een internationale troepenmacht niet effectief is en de VN zich niet aan afspraken houdt tegenover Israël. De VN kent een lange geschiedenis van eenzijdige acties, stellingnames en beleid tegen Israël en ten voordele van haar vijanden. Het is dan ook niet vreemd dat Israël op zijn beurt weinig vertrouwen meer heeft in de VN. Toch geldt zij als het hoogste en meest geëigende lichaam om bij conflicten te bemiddelen, en ook wat betreft de problemen in Gaza wordt de VN soms als deel van een oplossing genoemd. Maar dan moet wel van een echt neutrale positie sprake zijn, van een krachtig mandaat en een instantie die bereid is de troepenmacht aan haar mandaat te houden. Misschien kan de Veiligheidsraad UNIFIL tot de orde roepen en een koerswijziging afdwingen, maar dit lijkt vooralsnog wishful thinking.

Ratna

--------

Israel: UNIFIL hiding info about Hezbollah from Security Council

By Barak Ravid, Haaretz Correspondent

Last update - 08:16 28/04/2008
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/978382.html

 

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) is intentionally concealing information about Hezbollah activities south of the Litani River in Lebanon to avoid conflict with the group, senior sources in Jerusalem have said. In the last six months there have been at least four cases in which UNIFIL soldiers identified armed Hezbollah operatives, but did nothing and did not submit full reports on the incidents to the UN Security Council.

The Israel Defense Forces and the Foreign Ministry are reportedly very angry about UNIFIL's actions in recent months, especially about the fact that its commander, Major General Claudio Graziano, is said to be leniently interpreting his mission, as assigned by Security Council Resolution 1701, passed at the end of the Second Lebanon War.

Senior IDF officials said recently behind closed doors that Graziano is "presenting half-truths so as to avoid embarrassment and conflict with Hezbollah," and that Resolution 1701 has been increasingly eroded in recent months.

A senior government source in Jerusalem said that, "There is an attempt by various factors in the UN to mislead the Security Council and whitewash everything having to do with the strengthening of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon." The source also said, "The policy of cover-ups and whitewashing will not last long and, hopefully, now that the concealing of information has been revealed, things will change."

Israeli anger reached boiling point over a week ago after the release of a new report by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with regard to another Lebanon-related Security Council resolution, 1559. The report briefly mentioned an incident at the beginning of March in which UNIFIL soldiers encountered unidentified armed men, and included no additional details. Officials in Israel, familiar with the incident, reportedly were aware that the Security Council had not been apprised of numerous details of the incident.

A day after the release of the report, Haaretz revealed that the incident described in the report had actually been a clash between UNIFIL and armed Hezbollah activists. The latter, driving a truck full of explosives, threatened the Italian UNIFIL battalion with weapons. Instead of using force as required by their mandate, the UN soldiers abandoned the site. A diplomatic source at the UN told Haaretz that senior officials in UNIFIL and in the UN Secretariat brought heavy pressure to bear to have the incident erased from the report or at least to blur it.

When the incident was made public, UNIFIL was forced to admit that it had indeed occurred and to request Lebanon's assistance in investigating it. UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmina Bouziane said that during the incident, which took place near the city of Tyre in southern Lebanon, five armed men had threatened UNIFIL troops. Bouziane said the identity of the armed men was uncertain.

A day later, a second report was transmitted to the Security Council on the matter, this time including all the details. However, the report stated that this was the first incident of its kind. According to a security source in Israel, this was a misrepresentation; he said that in fact there had been many similar incidents in the past. A response from UNIFIL with regard to Israel's claims was unobtainable.

Qassam veroorzaakt brand in Sderot

Ashkelon Mayor Roni Mahatzri said Friday, "While the prime minister and the ministers are celebrating, vacationing and having fun, the south's residents are worried – and some of them even entered the bomb shelters this morning.

 

Terwijl de hele wereld weer eens moord en brand schreeuwt over een humanitaire crisis in Gaza, vanwege een door Hamas veroorzaakt brandstoftekort, krijgen de inwoners van Sderot, Ashkelon en in de buurt liggende gemeenschappen hun dagelijkse portie raketten. En terwijl Israëlische legeroperaties, gericht op het bestrijden van de terrroristen, uitgebreid in de media komen en alom worden veroordeeld, maken alleen een paar Zionistische clubjes zich kwaad over de dagelijkse rakettenregen vanuit de Gazastrook op Israël met als doel zoveel mogelijk burgers te treffen.

 

 

Ratna

----------

Ynetnews /April 27, 2008
Qassam causes fire in Sderot

Two rockets fired from northern Gaza land in Sderot Sunday afternoon. One rocket hits local cemetery, another lands near house, sets fire to gas tanks. Earlier Sunday rocket lands in kibbutz south of Ashkelon

by Shmulik Hadad
Latest Update: 04.27.08, 15:33
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3536239,00.html

 

A Qassam rocket fired from northern Gaza landed at the Sderot cemetery Sunday afternoon. Another rocket landed near a house in town, causing substantial damage to the building. Gas tanks nearby caught fire as a result of the rocket's explosion.

Fortunately, the house's residents were not there at the time of the attack.

A rocket fired from northern Gaza earlier Sunday landed near the local garage in a kibbutz south of Ashkelon. No injuries or damage were reported in the attack.

On Saturday, a Qassam rocket landed in an open field in the Sdot Negev Regional Council, causing no injuries or damage.

  Four rockets were fired at Ashkelon on Friday morning, one of then landing in the city's southern cemetery. Dozens of graves were damaged.

  The al-Quds Brigades, the Islamic Jihad's military wing, claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, as well as for a shooting attack which left two Israeli guards dead in an industrial zone in the Sharon region.

  Ashkelon Mayor Roni Mahatzri said Friday, "While the prime minister and the ministers are celebrating, vacationing and having fun, the south's residents are worried – and some of them even entered the bomb shelters this morning.

"It's about time that the Israeli government allows the south's residents to vacation as well, rather than spend the holiday in shelters, constantly worrying about the rocket fire. I call on the government to resign in light of the rockets fired at the area."

Ze'ev Trachtman contributed to this report

First Published: 04.27.08, 09:18

------------------------------------

*** Balanced Middle East News ***
MidEastweb http://www.mideastweb.org
Subscribe - mail to mewnews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

MewBkd - Background & analysis -
mail to Mewbkd-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

News Letter -  our commentary -
mail to mideastweb-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

Hervorming Palestijnse veiligheidsdiensten komt nauwelijks van de grond

"The security reform is a victim of the Israeli army's success. Israelis have got used to a life virtually free of suicide bombers. There is no way they can expect the same effectiveness from the PA forces. But those forces cannot build up to the same level unless Israel gives them leeway to do so. As so often in the Israeli-Palestinian puzzle, it is a case of chicken and egg."

 

 

Dit klinkt alsof een 'life virtually free of suicide bombers' een soort van luxe is die je niet altijd kunt verwachten, in plaats van een vanzelfsprekend recht op leven. Als de PA de Israëli's geen leven vrij van aanslagen kan garanderen, zullen zij moeten leven met operaties van het Israëlische leger. De Palestijnse politie en veiligheidsdiensten kunnen natuurlijk met het Israëlische leger samenwerken, maar worden dan door de eigen bevolking als 'collaborateurs' gezien.

 

Bovendien, en dat is het echte probleem, staan veel leden van de Palestijnse politie en veiligheidsdiensten achter het 'gewapende verzet' tegen Israël, waar zij zelf voor een deel ook aan mee hebben gedaan in het verleden. Op het moment dat men de plegers daarvan zou beschouwen als terroristen, niet als martelaren, als verraders en niet helden, als zij die Palestijnse rechten verkwanselen, in plaats van ze standvastig te verdedigen, is er een kans dat men het terrorisme tegen Israël effectief kan bestrijden, en het vertrouwen van Israël kan winnen.

 

 

Ratna

-----------
 

The Palestinian territories
Chickens and eggs

Apr 24th 2008 | RAMALLAH
From The Economist print edition
http://www.economist.com/world/africa/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11090104

 

Reform of the Palestinian security forces can barely get off the ground


THIS month Israel agreed to let the Palestinian Authority (PA) open 20 police stations in the West Bank. For the first time since the Palestinians' violent second intifada (uprising) began eight years ago, they will be in rural areas, where Israel, not the PA, is in charge of security. Last month Israel also gave the PA permission to deploy 620 special-forces troops in the northern West Bank city of Jenin, home to some of the most diehard Palestinian militants.

It is all part of a $5.4 billion plan meant to speed the arrival of a Palestinian state. Israel is negotiating a "framework agreement" (no longer a fully-fledged peace deal, as planned last autumn) with the PA's president, Mahmoud Abbas. But it has always insisted that Mr Abbas must first show that his security forces can take the place of the Israeli army in fighting Palestinian gunmen.

That is asking a lot. The PA has never had full control of the West Bank, many security people are ex-militants, and the armed "resistance" to Israel is popular. Besides, reform of the PA's security forces has a long and tangled history.

The dozen-odd forces, each loyal to individual commanders and politicians, were the divide-and-rule method by which the late Yasser Arafat, Mr Abbas's predecessor, held on to power. Both men have used them as patronage and to soak up unemployment, letting them swell to around 85,000-strong, far beyond the 30,000 limit envisaged in the Oslo peace accords of the 1990s. Foreign donors tried in vain to make Arafat slim them down. During the intifada, Israel destroyed most of their buildings and facilities.

After Arafat's death in 2004, security reform returned to the agenda, but was dropped again after the Islamist Hamas movement defeated Mr Abbas's party, Fatah, in parliamentary elections in 2006. A Hamas-Fatah power struggle broke out. American-led attempts to undermine Hamas by equipping and training the PA forces, which remained mostly loyal to Fatah, exacerbated the conflict, until Hamas defeated Fatah in the Gaza Strip last June. After that, donors shifted their attention back to the West Bank and, in an attempt to entrench Mr Abbas's authority there, have revived the reform plans.

An American team led by Lieutenant-General Keith Dayton and an EU police mission have both expanded their training programmes, while various foreign special forces, one from as far away as Moscow, are providing anti-terrorist instruction. But the approach is beset with flaws.

A detailed plan presented last autumn by General Dayton sets sensible long-term goals: to unify, shrink and spruce up the security forces, and replace their political loyalties with obedience to whoever runs the PA. It includes establishing new chains of command, replacing equipment, rebuilding bases, creating bodies to monitor performance, and so on. But it is impossibly ambitious. Of the $5.4 billion price tag - for the first three years alone, not including salaries and pensions - just $230m was raised for security at a grand PA pledging conference in Paris in December, when donors were unexpectedly generous in their pledges overall. This will not go far; currently, one foreign official estimates, even the PA's prison space meets only around a tenth of its needs.

Moreover, there is a conflict among Mr Abbas's own cadres between technocratic reformists like his prime minister, Salam Fayyad, and Fatah stalwarts. Shy of confrontation at the best of times, Mr Abbas does not want to antagonise Fatah people by weakening their influence on the security forces, and Mr Fayyad cannot push reforms through without his backing. Apart from one initial round of firings, he has not been able to trim the bloated payroll.

Finally, Israel has stymied the PA's own efforts. As in Jenin this month, earlier this year it allowed the PA to station troops in the city of Nablus. They cleaned up criminal gangs and enforced an amnesty, agreed with Israel, in which militants loyal to Fatah surrendered their weapons. They got results; Israeli officials were quietly impressed. But they hold sway only during the day; the Israeli army continues to make deadly nightly incursions against other armed groups, such as Islamic Jihad. It is conducting similar raids in Jenin, occasionally even against amnestied men.

Meanwhile, Israel's raids on fighters in Gaza, which kill a lot of civilians too, add to the tension in the West Bank. This week there have been hints that Egyptian attempts to broker a ceasefire in Gaza may at last bear fruit. But when such truces have been reached in the past, Gazan groups have soon abandoned them, citing Israel's continuing raids in the West Bank.

All this "casts a lack of credibility on the PA," says Shami Shami, a Fatah legislator from the Jenin refugee camp. Israeli officials say they cannot risk letting a potential suicide bomber get through, but some PA officials are convinced Israel is deliberately sabotaging the PA's efforts. It is certainly reluctant to surrender any responsibility to it. The green light for the new police stations and deployment in Jenin came only after a lot of American pressure on Israel to give Mr Abbas a chance to prove himself.

The security reform is a victim of the Israeli army's success. Israelis have got used to a life virtually free of suicide bombers. There is no way they can expect the same effectiveness from the PA forces. But those forces cannot build up to the same level unless Israel gives them leeway to do so. As so often in the Israeli-Palestinian puzzle, it is a case of chicken and egg.

------------------------------------

*** Balanced Middle East News ***
MidEastweb http://www.mideastweb.org
Subscribe - mail to mewnews-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

MewBkd - Background & analysis -
mail to Mewbkd-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

News Letter -  our commentary -
mail to mideastweb-subscribe@yahoogroups.com

 

Hamas belooft door Israël geleverde brandstof door te laten

Niet alleen een staking, maar de actieve preventie door Hamas van de distributie van door Israël geleverde brandstof heeft geleid tot de 'humanitaire crisis' in de Gazastrook. Bovendien heeft Hamas brandstof gestolen die aan ziekenhuizen zou worden geleverd. Het doden van Israëli's gaat voor Hamas immers boven het genezen van Palestijnen.

 

Zowel de hieronder genoemde staking als bovengenoemde Hamas praktijken waren voor de media niet vermeldenswaard. 

 

Ratna

----------

Sunday, April 27, 2008 - The Jerusalem Post

 

Hamas pledges to work to distribute fuel supplied by Israel

 

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
GAZA CITY
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870505095&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

 

A Hamas official said Sunday that his government is moving to persuade Gaza gas station owners to distribute fuel supplied by Israel.

The official, Taher Nunu, said Egypt has been urging the Islamic Hamas to intervene in the gas station owners' strike that has left Gaza without fuel for cars and other vehicles. Last week UN food aid was stopped because there was no fuel for UN vehicles.

Israel insists there are large quantities of fuel sitting at the border depot, and charges Hamas with creating an artificial crisis.

Speaking after a Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Nunu said Hamas accepted a request from Egypt and will try to end the month-long gas station strike.

IDF verwijdert road blocks rond Nablus

Nablus en Jenin zijn beide bolwerken van terroristische organisaties, dus is het niet zo vreemd dat je niet vrijelijk tussen beide steden kunt reizen. Waarschijnlijk onder zware druk van de VS en tegen het advies van het defensie establishment, heeft Israël nu een belangrijke roadblock tussen beide steden weggehaald. Het feit dat tienduizenden onschuldige Palestijnen nu makkelijker kunnen reizen is zeker een groot goed; laten zij, en de PA er dan ook zorg voor dragen dat de angsten van defensiespecialisten geen realiteit worden en deze bewegingsvrijheid niet door terrroisten misbruikt zal worden.

 

De afgelopen maand zijn al 60 roadblocks verwijderd, en volgens sommigen is daardoor het aantal schietincidenten en andere gewelddadigheden op de Westoever al duidelijk toegenomen. Ook in het verleden heeft de verwijdering van roadblocks geleid tot hernieuwde aanslagen. De redenering dat juist Israëlische concessies de terroristen de wind uit de zeilen nemen en de kans op aanslagen dus verkleinen is een fabeltje gebleken. Juist de strenge restricties van de afgelopen jaren hebben de Israëli's veiligheid gebracht en het aantal aanslagen van meerdere per week tot enkele per jaar teruggebracht.

 

 

Ratna

------------------

IDF lifts siege imposed on Nablus

 

After more than a year, roadblock near Asira a-Shamaliya opens; move expected to ease passage of Palestinians. IDF fears rise in activity in most terror-oriented city in West Bank

 

Hanan Greenberg Published: 04.28.08, 14:21 / Israel News
www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3536853,00.html

 

The IDF was expected Monday afternoon to open the roadblocks near the village of Asira a-Shamaliya, east of the West Bank city of Nablus, to Palestinian movement, thus removing the siege imposed on the city considered as the main producer of terror in the West Bank.

The opening of the roadblock - after more than a year - is an additional step within the framework of easing of restrictions imposed on the Palestinian population in the West Bank, decided upon by Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

 

Gesture

The opening of "Roadblock 804" is considered the most significant step to date within the framework of the Israeli gestures to the Palestinians.

The movement of tens of thousands of Palestinians from Nablus to Jenin to the villages and in the opposite direction will now be made possible. This constitutes a considerable improvement in the population's conditions, allowing civilians to enter the city and its many institutions, but maye constitute a problem for the security community in terms of the passage of terrorists.

As a result of the defense minister's instruction to open the roadblock, which until now was opened only for humanitarian reasons, the IDF prepared estimates of the situation which included an analysis of the warnings apparent in the region.

The IDF will focus on intelligence information, however the operational activities in Nablus will continue - and a re-closing of the roadblock is possible.

Since the beginning of the month a total of 60 roadblocks were removed throughout the West Bank, however to date, only at less significant passageways. Also under the framework of the ease of restrictions is the issuing of crossing permits to Palestinian businesspeople.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat recenty slammed Israel, saying that PR was the only issue at hand: "The closure has turned into a method. The West Bank is turning into one big prison, like the Gaza Strip."

In a conversation with Ynet, security forces emphasized that "the IDF will continue fighting against terror infrastructures."

Even at the beginning of the roadblock-removal process, security forces said that these steps would make things easier for the terror organizations and their operatives.

While visiting the Hebron region a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that this ease of restrictions on the Palestinians are a way to build trust with the pragmatic elements among them, and that this is of great importance.

 

 

Efrat Weiss contributed to this article

Hamas saboteert levering brandstof aan Gaza Strook

Niet alleen Israël, maar de Palestijnse Petroleum Authoritity, het Palestijnse Ministerie van Gezondheid en de UNRWA beschuldigen Hamas ervan brandstof achter te houden, brandstof bestemd voor de UNRWA voor eigen gebruik te confisceren en te verhinderen dat brandstof ziekenhuizen en hulporganisaties bereikt om zo een crisis te creëren. Palestijnse ooggetuigen bevestigen deze aantijgingen.

 

Is dit alles misschien EINDELIJK een keertje aanleiding voor een kritisch artikel of reportage???

 

Ratna

----------

Hamas disrupts fuel supplies to Gaza

 

Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST

Apr. 27, 2008
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870504767&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

 

Hamas militiamen in the Gaza Strip on Sunday attacked fuel trucks headed toward the Nahal Oz border crossing, forcing them to turn back, sources in the Palestinian Petroleum Authority said.

The fuel was supposed to go to the UN Relief and Works Agency [UNRWA] and hospitals in the Gaza Strip, the sources said.

"Dozens of Hamas militiamen hurled stones and opened fire at the trucks," the sources added. "The trucks were on their way to receive fuel supplied by Israel. The drivers were forced to turn back. Some of them had their windshields smashed."

The Palestinian Petroleum Authority reached an agreement with Israel over the weekend to receive 250,000 liters of fuel after UNRWA complained that it did not have enough fuel to distribute food aid to more than 500,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry also accused Hamas of blocking fuel supplies to hospitals and clinics in the Gaza Strip. The ministry said Hamas gunmen opened fire at a number of trucks that were trying to transfer fuel to the hospitals and clinics.

Eyewitnesses in Gaza City said that at least on four occasions over the past few weeks, Hamas militiamen confiscated trucks loaded with fuel shortly as they were on their way from Nahal Oz to the city.

They added that the fuel supplies were taken to Hamas-controlled security installations throughout the city.

"Hamas is taking the fuel for it the vehicles of is leaders and security forces," the eyewitnesses said. "Because of Hamas's actions, some hospitals have been forced to stop the work of ambulances and generators."

PA officials in Ramallah said Hamas's measures were aimed at creating a crisis in the Gaza Strip with the hope that the international community would intervene and force Israel to reopen the border crossings.

"As far as we know, there is enough fuel reaching the Gaza Strip," the officials said. "But Hamas's measures are aimed at creating a crisis. Hamas is either stealing or blocking most of the fuel supplies."

They pointed out that last week Hamas dispatched hundreds of its supporters to Nahal Oz to block the fuel supplies from Israel. Hamas claimed that the protest was organized by farmers and fishermen demanding an end to the blockade on the Gaza Strip.

The officials also noted that the shortage in fuel supplies has created a high-priced black market for individuals and institutions.

UNRWA workers admitted over the weekend that Hamas had prevented some fuel trucks from entering the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has also been exerting pressure on the Gaza Petrol Station Owners Association to close down their businesses so as to aggravate the crisis. Some of the station owners and workers said they were afraid to return to work after receiving death threats from Hamas militiamen and ordinary residents desperate to purchase gas and diesel for their vehicles.

Israëlische Arabier kandidaat voor burgemeesterschap Haifa

De beste kandidaat moet het natuurlijk worden, maar het zou gezond zijn als dat eens een Arabier is. Dat zal zeker de integratie en gelijkheid in Haifa bevorderen. De tegenstand van Hadash lijkt dan ook kortzichtig.

 

Wouter
________

Haaretz / Last update - 10:03 27/04/2008

Israeli Arab to run for mayor of Haifa for first time since 1948
By Jack Khoury, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/978294.html

 

Attorney Walid Hamis has announced that he is running for Haifa mayor, representing the first time an Arab candidate has run for the city's top post since 1948.

Hamis, who served as Haifa's deputy mayor at the beginning of Mayor Yona Yahav's term, quit after the Second Lebanon War broke out.

"Haifa's Arabs are not some candidate's vote reservoir. We want to be full partners in running the city," Hamis said.

Haifa's Arab voters have in the past tilted the balance in favor of Labor candidates - or whoever runs against the right. This was especially true in the last elections.

Opposition to Hamis's campaign has been led by the Arab communist party Hadash, who have stated that it violates agreements reached by left-wing parties in the city to run under a unified banner for leadership of the city.

Hamis has said that Hadash opposition stems from their internal political considerations

Syrische vredesbelofte waarschijnlijk PR stunt

Het huidige Syrië is zowat de meest onsympatieke staat in het Midden-Oosten, en het valt dan ook zwaar om enthousiasme op te brengen voor een teruggave aan dit land van de Golan hoogvlakte, die overigens al langer Israëlisch is dan ze voorheen Syrisch was.

Aantrekkelijker dan vrede tussen Israël en Syrië is echter nog een einde van de Syrische steun aan Hamas en Hezbollah, en zonder doorvoerland Syrië wordt het ook moeilijker voor Iran om Hezbollah te blijven steunen. Als Syrië dan tevens de Libanese soevereiniteit zou respecteren en zou stoppen met zijn antisemitische haatpropaganda, zou er na 60 jaar eindelijk vrede kunnen gloren aan Israëls noordgrens. Dit lijkt met het huidige Syrische regime allemaal niet waarschijnlijk.

 

Wouter
----------

Jerusalem Post / Updated Apr 25, 2008 17:56
Analysis: Assad's PR peace promise

 

By HERB KEINON
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870488254&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

 

Some would call it ironic that on the very day the US Congress was hearing damning testimony about Damascus's nuclear collusion with North Korea, Syrian President Bashar Assad confirmed Syrian press reports that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had declared a willingness to withdraw from the Golan Heights in exchange for peace.

Others would say this is less irony and more smart public relations on Assad's part, with the Syrian president trying to divert attention from the fallout expected to follow testimony about how close he has gotten to North Korea's dictator.

For if Syria is indeed interested in gaining the favor of the West, that task is going to be made much more difficult by virtue of evidence presented to Congress on Thursday that Assad was chumming up with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Messages that a possible peace agreement with Israel is dangling out there just waiting to be plucked off the tree, Assad seems to be figuring, may be one way to control the damage.

His confirmation of Olmert's message, moreover, is really not that hot of a news item, since three prime ministers - Yitzhak Rabin, Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak - have made clear to the Syrians since 1993 that Israel would be willing to withdraw from the Golan in exchange for peace.

Real "news" would be if the Syrian president had confirmed that in return he had passed on a message to Olmert that he was willing to end support for Hamas and close its offices in Damascus, stop backing Hizbullah and move Syria out of Iran's orbit. It is very doubtful that this is the message Syria's Foreign Minister Walid Moallem brought to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Thursday.

In evaluating Syria's moves and intentions, it is important to note that Damascus is insisting on public - not secret - negotiations, with the US playing a full and active role in the process.

Assad said so much in an interview published Thursday in Qatar's Al-Watan newspaper, saying direct negotiations needed a sponsor "and this can only be the United States."

Israel, however, prefers more discreet talks, and the difference is not just over tactics.

Syria wants the hullabaloo of the peace process more than the peace, hoping the process itself will help pave its way back into the good graces of the West. It wants credit for the process, even if nothing comes of it. Israel, for its part, is not interested in giving the Syrians a helping hand in gaining America's, or the West's, favor.

While Olmert's alleged message to Assad lacked real drama, he has - over the past year - changed his view regarding engaging the Syrians. While in the past he said that Israel would not engage Syria until Damascus stopped supporting Hamas and Hizbullah and moved out of Iran's orbit, he has recently said that it would be worth engaging Assad in the hope that this itself would entice them to take those steps.

This change of nuance is widely believed to have to do with the upcoming changes in the US administration. While President George W. Bush is adamantly opposed to engaging Syria, and Olmert last year did not want to go against Bush's policy on the matter, the current administration's days are numbered, and come January there may very well be a new administration that encourages such engagement.

While some analysts say nothing is lost in testing Assad's intentions, others argue that even if he wanted to, Syria is so much an Iranian client - so heavily dependent on Teheran - that it would prove impossible for Assad to break away from Ahmadinejad. Furthermore, this could cause him great difficulties with a segment of his party's small ruling class, whom he depends on, which is believed to have become addicted to the Iranian connection and very much opposed to any split with Teheran.

Kan Israël zich permiteren de Golan op te geven?

Van Creveld versimpelt de zaken met zijn opmerking dat Israel wel zonder de Golan kan omdat het 20 jaar zonder heeft geleefd. Hij vergeet even dat in die 20 jaar de kibboetsen en dorpen in het dal hetzelfde lot ondergingen als de inwoners van Sderot nu. Bovendien kan Israel er niet op rekenen dat de Arabische staten hun stommiteiten van 1967 zullen herhalen. Hun wapentuig, hun inlichtingen, hun commandostructuur en hun strategisch inzicht zijn (helaas) niet meer wat ze in 1967 waren. Met name het feit dat de Arabische staten tegenwoordig liever guerrillaorganisaties tegen Israel steunen en soms ook opzetten dan het in een klassieke oorlog aan te vallen doet af aan zijn argument dat in de moderne oorlogsvoering topografie niet meer van belang is. En ten slotte is zijn opmerking: "We should always assume, of course, that the IDF is a fighting machine, and not the cowardly bunch we saw over the summer of 2006," over de top en een belediging voor al die soldaten die in 2006 hun leven in de waagschaal stelden ondanks de slechte voorbereiding, gebrek aan uitrusting, tegenstrijdige bevelen en andere fouten van de militaire leiding en het politieke establishment.

Ratna
----------

Jerusalem Post / Updated Apr 25, 2008 4:02
Analysis: Can Israel afford to live without the Golan?

 

By ABE SELIG
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870487717&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

 

Confirming reports in the Arab media that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would be willing to withdraw from the Golan Heights in return for peace, Syrian President Bashar Assad told the Qatari daily Al-Watan on Thursday that he had received such a message from the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan regarding the Israeli stance, in exchange for peace with Syria.

It has been known for years, ever since Israel captured the Golan in the Six Day War, that negotiations with Syria would hinge on the picturesque highland. But the Golan now is home to moshavim, kibbutzim, wineries and more than 20,000 Israeli citizens. It is also deemed to be of considerable strategic importance, and its control is a much-coveted regional asset.

While peace with Syria, in theory, might outweigh or even neutralize the strategic need for an Israeli presence in the Golan, what exactly would that peace look like? It could be argued that a shift in the region would cool the tensions of past months and years in the north.

Israel's demands include Syria's cutting all ties with terrorist groups including Palestinian organizations headquartered in Damascus. But one question, which remains to be answered, seems to be the central one: Can Israel afford to give up the Golan Heights?

"We lived here for years without it," says Prof. Martin van Creveld of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is Israel's most prominent military historian. He believes that retaining the Golan is not essential to Israel's survival.

"Under modern conditions, especially with the technological advances in the military, topography is less important than it used to be. With the advent of precision-guided munitions, you no longer need to be 'up there' to hit them 'down there,'" he says. "Technology has developed in such a way to favor the defender very much.

"We should always assume, of course, that the IDF is a fighting machine, and not the cowardly bunch we saw over the summer of 2006," Van Creveld continues. "If they are, everything is lost anyway."

He goes as far as to say that the IDF would have the advantage from below in fighting a Syrian army advancing from the Golan Heights.

"If I could think of a good way to commit suicide," he says, "it would be to command a Syrian tank division down from the Golan Heights."

However, others in the military establishment aren't worried about the Syrian army attacking.

"It's guerrilla warfare I'm concerned about," says former Military Intelligence chief Maj.-Gen. (ret.) Aharon Ze'evi Farkash. And he isn't necessarily referring to guerrillas sponsored by the Assad government.

"There are a lot of issues within Syria that need to be taken into consideration when discussing this option," Farkash says. "I'm not saying that I'm for or against [giving up the Golan], but I will say that Syria's internal politics play a large role."

Farkash believes that because Assad is a member of the minority Alawite sect, his control of Syria is shaky, as was the case for his father, whom he succeeded. Islamists within Syria would like to see him overthrown, and consider him, as an Alawite, unfit to rule.

"In the early 1980s, Hafez Assad led a military campaign against Sunni militants in Syria, killing tens of thousands of his own people," Farkash explains. "This situation was never completely resolved, and along with the global rise of al-Qaida in 2001 and 2002, Wahabism [an extremist form of Sunni Islam] from Saudi Arabia has been making its way into Syria. Assad could suddenly lose power to Wahabi extremists or other Sunni factions, especially if he makes peace with Israel."

With the Alawite-Shi'ite connection becoming closer, as is apparent from Syria's growing ties with Iran, a predominately Shi'ite nation, Farkash explains that Assad is considered by the Sunnis to be an infidel, as Sunni extremists loathe the Shi'ites as heretics and blasphemers.

"How much more so, if Assad were to reach out to Israel for a peace agreement?" Farkash asks. "He will only make peace if he knows that it doesn't endanger his control of Syria, and he can wait. After all, it was his father, not him, that lost the Golan in the first place."

But Van Creveld is less worried about Syria's internal troubles and more about Israel's external ones. "I know what the future will bring if we don't have an agreement with Syria," he says. "That is, sooner or later, but surely, a war. The question is if you prefer the dangers of peace to the dangers of war. I for one prefer peace."

Furthermore, Van Creveld sees peace negotiations as an opportunity to "hack off" the Iranian arm in Syria. "After all," he explains, "With the majority of Syria made up of Sunni Muslims, their relationship with Iran can be described at best as 'uncomfortable allies.'"

One thing is certain; the issue is a thorny one, with both a military and political dimension to consider, before even beginning to approach an Israeli public that won't be eager to give away a geographically strategic and beautiful spoil of the Six Day War, even if they do desire peace.

"I was always taught growing up here," says Van Creveld, "that peace is peace, and it's a good thing in itself."

'Hamas probeert onbemande vliegtuigjes met bommen te bouwen'

Egyptische kranten staan bepaald niet bekend om hun betrouwbaarheid, maar onwaarschijnlijk lijkt dit bericht niet. Zelfmoordterroristen komen Israël immers nauwelijks nog binnen, en de Qassam raketten richten maar beperkte schade aan.

______________________

 

'Hamas trying to make bomber drones'

 

JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST

Apr. 26, 2008
www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870494563&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

 

Hamas is trying to assemble bomb-carrying drones, Al-Aharam reported Saturday.

The Egyptian newspaper said that the revelation was made by Egyptian security forces during their interrogation of a Muslim Brotherhood terror cell.
The interrogators reportedly discovered that the operatives were working with Hamas on the project.

Al-Aharam said the security forces learned that as result of the cooperation between the two terror groups, know-how and equipment were acquired to assemble the unmanned planes and were transferred to the Gaza Strip.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said that the report was a "big lie". He told the Palestinian Information Center (PIC) that such a claim was consistent with the campaign led by Al-Aharam and numerous other newspapers against Hamas and the Palestinian people.

 

On April 10, An Israeli think tank issued a report issued claiming that since 2005's disengagement from the Gaza Strip, Hamas had forged a formidable military of 20,000 men.
Entitled 'Hamas's Military Buildup in the Gaza Strip,' the report said that the breach of Rafah crossing to Sinai in January allowed Hamas to acquire additional weapons.

 

On April 17, senior defense officials told The Jerusalem Post that Iran had stepped up its efforts to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip by using floatable devices that it drops near the waters off the Gaza coast to be picked up by Palestinian fisherman.
According to defense officials, Iran is now sending rockets and other advanced weaponry to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip by sea as well as via tunnels dug under the Philadelphi Corridor and connecting the Sinai Peninsula with Rafah.

 

Yaakov Katz contributed to this report

Lybische VN ambassadeur: "Gaza erger dan Nazi kampen"

Zin voor enige proportionaliteit is de meeste Arabische regimes vreemd. Het goede nieuws is dat de Westerse diplomaten uit protest de vergadering verlieten.

______________________

Fri., April 25, 2008 Haaretz

Libyan UN envoy: Gaza plight worse than Nazi camps

By Reuters
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/977935.html

A Libyan envoy to the UN, whose colleague had previously compared the situation in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust, said yesterday it was even worse than in Nazi concentration camps because of regular Israeli bomb attacks.

"It is more than what happened in the concentration camps," Libya's deputy permanent UN representative, Ibrahim Dabbashi, told reporters. "There is the bombing, daily bombing [by Israel] ... in Gaza. It was not in the concentration camps."

"It is worse than that," said Dabbashi, who holds the rank of ambassador.

Israel's UN Ambassador Dan Gillerman yesterday called Libya's statement comparing Gaza to the Nazi camps an outrage and a disgrace. He told a luncheon briefing sponsored by The Israel Project it was a "shame that a terrorist state sits on the Security Council."

"Libya's presence on the council will paralyze any peace efforts in Gaza and the West Bank," Gillerman added.

U.S. envoy Alejandro Wolff rejected the Libyan's statement. He was one of several Western envoys who walked out of a UN Security Council discussion on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after Dabbashi compared the situation in the Gaza Strip to the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany.

Wolff told reporters the remarks "reflect a degree of historical ignorance and moral insensitivity that is one of the large reasons this council has been unable to act on Middle East issues and why peace in the Middle East is so difficult."

The French, British, Belgian and Costa Rican envoys also left the council on Wednesday after Dabbashi made his remarks. Such protests against fellow Security Council members are rare, diplomats said.

On Wednesday, Western envoys to the United Nations walked out of a Security Council discussion after Libya's ambassador likened the plight of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to Nazi concentration camps.

"The Libyan ambassador [Giadalla Ettalhi] compared the situation in Gaza to the Nazi Holocaust," said a Western diplomat who was present at a council discussion on the Middle East. "Afterwards, the Western envoys stood up and left the room in protest."

Zuidafrikaanse nobelprijswinnares Nadine Gordimer onder druk van Israël boycot campagne

Israël-haters hebben nog niet zoveel succes geboekt met hun boycot campagnes. Hopelijk weerstaat Nadine Gordimer de druk...

_________________________________

 

 

Haaretz / Last update - 09:18 26/04/2008

Facing widespread pressure, Nadine Gordimer may pull out of Israel writers meet

By David B. Green, Haaretz Correspondent
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/978039.html

 

 

South African writer Nadine Gordimer may pull out of her appearance next month at Jerusalem's International Writers Festival in the face of a widespread campaign pressuring her to cancel.

The 84-year-old Gordimer, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize in Literature, is scheduled to make three appearances at the festival, which runs at Mishkenot Sha'ananim May 11-15.

Other writers slated to attend include Americans Nathan Englander, Jonathan Safran Foer and Russell Banks, as well as Israelis David Grossman and Amos Oz, the latter of whom is scheduled to share the stage with Gordimer on May 12.

"I am dealing with the issue now," Gordimer told Haaretz in a telephone conversation from her home in Johannesburg on Friday. She refused to comment further on the controversy, except to say she would soon make a public statement on her decision.

Gordimer has received dozens of appeals, many of them posted on-line, calling on her to join a cultural boycott of Israel.

Gordimer, who is Jewish, has long been identified with left-wing causes, including her longtime backing of the African National Congress dating back to the apartheid period, when the black liberation movement was outlawed. In 2001, she publicly urged her friend Susan Sontag not to come to Jerusalem, where the late American writer was to be honored with the Jerusalem Prize at the capital's biennial international book fair. Sontag did come in the end, and received the literary award in person.

Now it is Gordimer who is being pressed to stay away from Israel. For example an open letter earlier this month signed by British professors Hilary and Steven Rose, who have led the Jewish lobby in the U.K. campaigning for a boycott of Israeli academia, implored her not to "give the Israeli establishment, the Israeli press, the whole Israeli PR machine, the prize they want - your apparent condoning of their policies."

Yael Nahari, the director of the Jerusalem's International Writers Festival, told Haaretz that, following a request from Gordimer, she is trying to arrange for the South African writer to "meet the other side [Palestinians]," including students at al-Quds University in Jerusalem. Nahari was optimistic that Gordimer will go ahead with her planned appearance at the five-day meet. "I think she'll come," she said.

Volgens Israël zit Hamas achter brandstoftekorten UNRWA in Gaza Strook (Haaretz)

Zie ook het persbericht hier.

_____________________

Fri., April 25, 2008 Haaretz

Israel claims Hamas causing fake fuel shortage in Strip

 

By Yuval Azoulay and Avi Issacharoff
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/977937.html

 

 

Israel claims that Hamas is refusing to pump a large amount of fuel that is in storage tanks on the Palestinian side of the border in order to create a fabricated crisis and blame it on Israel.

A spokesman for the coordinator of the Israeli government's activities in the territories, Peter Lerner, said that the Palestinian side of the fuel depot at Nahal Oz contains about a million liters of fuel - 800,000 liters of diesel and another 200,000 or so liters of gasoline, but Hamas is preventing its distribution.

The head of the Coordination & Liaison Administration at the Erez crossing, Colonel Nir Press, yesterday accused the Hamas regime of sabotaging United Nations relief work in the Gaza Strip.

Press said that a fuel tanker that left Gaza yesterday headed for the Nahal Oz depot to pump fuel for UNRWA's use was halted by thousands of Palestinians who blocked one of the intersections en route to the depot.

UNRWA suspended food distribution to 650,000 refugees yesterday because of the fuel shortage for its vehicles.

At the beginning of this week, Israel supplied around a million liters of industrial-grade diesel fuel for operating the Gaza power plant. The Coordination & Liaison Administration said that the Palestinians pumped that fuel shipment.

According to Press, Israel has lately supplied large amounts of fuel to Gaza, but the Palestinians are not pumping it from the tankers on the Palestinian side of the depot at Nahal Oz. Because of this, Press charged, fuel that is supposed to also to serve UNRWA in its humanitarian efforts in the Strip is not reaching its destination.

"The Palestinian have not been pumping out the fuel throughout the past month, and they are not taking care of meeting civilian humanitarian needs. Hamas thereby creates shortage, hardship and crisis," Press said.

However, UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said, regarding the claim that Hamas is preventing fuel distribution, that his organization is out of fuel for their cars. "We are very careful not to blame anyone. Israel controls the Strip and can find ways to get us the fuel we need," he said.

German news agency DPA quoted Gaza Strip residents yesterday as saying that Hamas officials have taken fuel for their own purposes and given it to high-ranking officials, government employees and its own students, but has not distributed the remainder to the population at large.

Is Israël echt zo beroerd? (Yair Lapid)

Afgezien van dat eindeloze gedoe met de Arabieren, loopt het in Israël best goed, vindt Yair Lapid.

 

--------------

Ynetnews / April 26, 2008 

Is Israel really that bad?

Yair Lapid has a few questions for Israelis who think that things are so bad around here

by Yair Lapid
Published: 04.26.08, 15:14
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3536046,00.html

If the state of education is so bad here, academia is in a freefall, and the brain-drain is in full force, how do you explain the fact that our high-tech sector is so successful, that the number of scientific publications is the highest in the world per capita (just like the number of patents,) and that we invented the disk-on-key and cell phone text messages?

If we don't care about anything anymore and have no interest in what's happening in the country, how do you explain the fact that Rabin Square gets filled up by protestors five times a year, that the evening newscasts are the most watched TV shows, and that most arguments around here are about politics?

If the public lost its faith in the IDF, our mutual responsibility is fading, and the number of draft-dodgers is skyrocketing, how do you explain the fact that all of us are so preoccupied with the fate of our captives, and that the round of recruitment that enlisted to the IDF immediately after the Second Lebanon War broke an all-time record after 70.8% of new recruits asked to join combat units?

If government corruption is everywhere and the law is a joke, how do you explain the fact that the son of a former prime minister is in jail, the former Labor minister was recently convicted over a bribe, and that our prime minister is constantly under investigation?

If our press has became silly like in America, yellow like in England, and irresponsible like in Italy, how do you explain the fact that newspapers last week cast aside all our supermodels to make room for publishing a chapter from David Grossman's new book?

If the economy is collapsing, the concern for the poor is constantly declining, and the Treasury has been taken over by a gang of neo-conservatives who do whatever they feel like, how do you explain the fact that the number of poor Israelis has declined for the second year in a row, that the Wisconsin Plan appears to be a success story, and that not even one person has died of hunger in the history of our country?

If every ultra-Orthodox family has 10 children and more people are becoming religious, how do you explain the fact that the ultra-Orthodox have remained 8% of the population, exactly as they were when Israel was established?

Life expectancy high, unemployment low

If the Russian immigrants are failing to integrate, prefer to live in their own ghettos, read Russian newspapers, watch Russian television, and shop at their own shops, how do you explain the fact that all of them learned Hebrew, that their children are joining the IDF en masse, that about 80% of them own their apartment (a higher percentage than the general population), and that they show no intention of returning to Moscow?

If our youths are violent and detached, drink too much alcohol, and only care about going to clubs and stabbing each other, how do you explain the fact that close to 250,000 children are members of youth groups, and that tens of thousands choose to embark on a year of social service or join groups that help the needy?

If our immigration police is facing collapse because of the burden, the Agriculture Ministry brings here masses of Thai workers, every elderly Israeli has a Filipino nurse, and thousands of Palestinians come here to work every day, how do you explain the fact that unemployment in the first quarter of the year dropped to 6.5%, a 15-year low?

If our healthcare system is collapsing, our doctors are leaving, and extra health insurance coverage costs a fortune, how do you explain the fact that our per capita national expenditure dedicated to healthcare is only 7.8% of our GDP, roughly half of what it is in the US, and only two thirds of what it is in Germany and France? And how do you explain the fact that life expectancy here is higher than in all the abovementioned countries?

If President Bush is the best friend Israel ever had, Italy's Berlusconi declares that he is warmly pro-Zionist, France's Sarkozy decided to include Holocaust studies at every school in the country, Germany's Angela Merkel ended the support for the Palestinian Authority and visited the Knesset to tell us how much she loves us, and Tony Blair appointed himself as a peace ambassador, how do you explain the fact that we feel like everyone hates us?

If our personal safety is declining, crime is skyrocketing, and we no longer can leave the house for fear that someone will rob us, how do you explain the fact that in a particularly broad national poll 81% of Israelis said that they are satisfied with their neighborhood and 75% said that "they feel safe when they walk alone on the street at night?"

If girls here have bad taste in clothing, every third girl gets a piercing in her belly button, half of them are tattooed like an Irish sailor, and the sweat wipes off their makeup three minutes after they leave the house, how do you explain the fact that every tourist who arrives here immediately declares that Israeli women are the most beautiful in the world?

If we have turned into a bunch of uncultured barbarians who yell on the street, swear, show contempt to academia and the arts, and only watch television, how do you explain the fact that we are number one in the world when it comes to museums per capita, number two in the world when it comes to reading books, that the percentage of Israelis who go to the theater (41%) is double the percentage of those who go to soccer games, and that one of four Israelis attended a classical music performance this year?

If we suffer so much, a plane ticket on sale is only $240, and Canada is happy to let us in, how do you explain the fact that we're still here?