Israel approves steps to rein in settler violence

Netanyahu speaks during a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem December 11, 2011.


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday approved steps to crack down on violent ultra-nationalist Jewish settlers after a rampage at a West Bank military base and torching of a mosque’s facade stirred public outrage.

Radical settlers are bent on foiling government efforts to shut down unauthorised outposts they have set up in occupied West Bank territory where Palestinians seek a state, although Israel has continued to expand larger official settlements.

Among the measures approved by Netanyahu were administrative detention of suspects, trials of some suspects in military rather than civil courts, and ejection from the West Bank of settlers suspected of inciting violence.

Israeli former president begins jail term for rape

Moshe Katsav: “The truth will come out.”

Former Israeli president Moshe Katsav today began serving a seven-year prison term for rape, professing his innocence and saying he was being “buried alive”.

The case has captivated the country for more than five years and marked the first time a former Israeli head of state has been jailed. Officials say it proves no one is above the law.

Netanyahu calls for tougher sanctions on Iran

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Wednesday for stronger sanctions on Iran than those imposed this week by the United States, Britain and Canada to try to curb its nuclear ambitions.

Israel’s Barak dismisses talk of attacking Iran

Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak arrives to the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem on April 3, 2011


Defence Minister Ehud Barak today played down speculation that Israel intended to strike Iranian nuclear facilities, saying it had not decided to embark on any military operation.

“War is not a picnic. We want a picnic. We don’t want a war,” Barak told Israel Radio ahead of the release this week of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s nuclear activity.

“(Israel) had not yet decided to embark on any operation,” he said, dismissing Israeli media speculation that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had chosen that option. ― Reuters

Sarkozy told Obama he is fed up with Israeli PM

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy.


French President Nicolas Sarkozy told President Barack Obama last week he was fed up with dealing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and considered him a liar.

Sarkozy made the comment during a private conversation with Obama during a G20 summit in the French riviera town of Cannes last week and the remarks were overheard by a small number of journalists but not initially reported.

“I cannot bear Netanyahu, he’s a liar,” Sarkozy told Obama during a frank exchange where the US president took him to task for backing a Palestinian request for membership of the UN cultural heritage agency UNESCO.



A Reuters reporter was among the journalists present and can confirm the veracity of the comments, which were relayed by a French internet outlet today.

Obama said he had to deal regularly with Netanyahu even if Sarkozy was fed up with the Israeli leader, according to the translation of a French interpreter during their Cannes exchange.

In their quest for statehood recognition, the Palestinians have requested membership of the over-arching United Nations system, in addition to its Paris-based UNESCO subsidiary.

France voted in favour of a UNESCO request that succeeded but said last week it would abstain in any vote on membership of the over-arching UN system, which Washington has vowed to veto. Paris and Washington are urging renewed peace talks between the Palestinians and Israelis.

US cuts UNESCO funding after Palestinian vote

David Killion, center, permanent delegate of the United States to UNESCO, reacts as delegates vote on Palestinian membership to the UN cultural agency in Paris

Israeli leaders test nuclear bunker in defence drill

Israeli leaders holed up in a new underground nuclear bunker today as part of annual nationwide manoeuvres to prepare for a possible missile war with Iran, Syria and their Lebanese and Palestinian guerrilla allies.

Officials said it was the first time that the security cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, had tested the bunker, dug deep in the western Jerusalem foothills over the past decade and dubbed the “Nation’s Tunnel” by local media.

Israel has held increasingly sweeping civil defence drills since the 2006 Lebanon war, during which Hezbollah guerrillas fired thousands of short-range rockets at its northern towns. There have been similar salvoes from Hamas and other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip to the south, and Israeli officials say a future war could also involve non-conventional missile strikes by Syria and Iran.



“It is certainly an extreme scenario,” Homefront Defence Minister Matan Vilnai said today’s exercise, dubbed “Turning Point 5”, which envisaged heavy shelling and thousands of dead and wounded on several Israeli fronts.

“We assume that our enemies would not dare to operate this way, given our deterrent power,” he told Army Radio.

Reputed to have the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal, Israel bombed an Iraqi reactor in 1981 under what it called a policy of denying foes the means to threaten its destruction.

Israel launched a similar sortie against Syria in 2007 but its veiled threats to tackle Iran’s remote and fortified uranium enrichment sites have often been dismissed as bluster given the tactical challenges involved. World powers say they prefer a negotiated resolution with Iran, which denies seeking the bomb. Disclosures of the Jerusalem bunker’s existence prompted some Israelis to question whether their country, which has also been developing an elaborate ballistic missile shield, was taking a more passive approach to potential nuclear threats.

Officials say that providing Israeli leaders with a secret haven from which to respond to attacks would in itself discourage, or at least contain, any future war.

“Israel finally has a proper place to function during emergencies,” Vilnai said.

Obama eases Israeli anger on Mideast peace vision

President Barack Obama takes the stage to deliver remarks to delegates at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference in Washington, May 22, 2011.

President Barack Obama yesterday eased Israeli anger over his new Middle East peace proposals when he made clear that the Jewish state would likely be able to negotiate keeping some settlements in any final deal with the Palestinians.

Obama repeated his view that long-stalled peace talks should start on the basis of the Israel’s 1967 borders, an assertion that had infuriated Israeli leaders, exposed a rift between the two allies and raised further doubts about peace prospects.



But Obama’s speech to Washington’s most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group yesterday seemed to soothe some tensions over Obama’s endorsement three days earlier of a longstanding Palestinian demand on the borders of their future state.

Obama stressed that he expected the two sides to eventually reach an accord that included land swaps that would take into account the “new demographic realities on the ground,” signalling that Israel should be allowed to keep some Jewish settlements built on occupied land.

The speech to Israel’s staunchest US supporters followed a testy encounter at the White House on Friday. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stunned his hosts by warning Obama against seeking peace “based on illusions” as he vowed Israel would never pull back to old borders he regarded as “indefensible”.

But the right-wing Israeli leader quickly expressed his appreciation for Obama’s remarks yesterday, saying in a statement, “I am determined to work together with President Obama to find ways to resume the peace negotiations.”

It could still take some time, however, for Obama and Netanyahu to overcome the latest strains in an already-fraught relationship that some analysts say is just as much a hindrance to reviving the moribund peace process as policy differences.

Netanyahu resisted offering any concessions in his Oval Office talks on Friday.

Obama’s speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) also served as a reminder his peace formula could cost him support among Jewish and pro-Israel voters and donors as he runs for re-election in 2012. Some prospective Republican presidential challengers have already accused him of betraying Israel, Washington’s closest ally in the region.

ACKNOWLEDGES DIFFERENCES

“Even while we may at times disagree, as friends sometimes will, the bonds between the United States and Israel are unbreakable, and the commitment of the United States to the security of Israel is ironclad,” Obama said to loud applause.

But Obama sometimes met stony silence from the AIPAC audience and at one point drew a smattering of boos.

Israeli officials were pleased, however, to hear Obama again reject a Palestinian plan to seek UN. recognition of statehood in September and condemn a recent reconciliation deal between the Palestinian Authority and Hamas Islamists. But he also pressed Israel to “make the hard choices” for peace.

An aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said: “We appreciate President Obama’s stated position regarding a state on the 1967 borders, it is a step in the right direction.”

Yesterday, Obama reiterated the “principles” he outlined on Thursday in a speech on Middle East upheaval, but introduced new phrasing that assuaged some of Netanyahu’s concerns.

At issue is Obama’s embrace of a long-sought goal by the Palestinians: that the state they seek in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip should largely be drawn along lines that existed before the 1967 war in which Israel captured those territories and East Jerusalem.

The proposal would call for negotiated land swaps for Israel to retain some large settlements in the West Bank.

Obama chided those who he said had “misrepresented” his position, a slap at Netanyahu, who had seized on the notion that he was being asked to return to 1967 lines while ignoring the president’s stipulation there would be land exchanges.

“By definition, it means that the parties themselves — Israelis and Palestinians — will negotiate a border that is different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967. That’s what mutually agreed upon swaps means,” Obama said.

“It allows the parties themselves to account for the changes that have taken place over the last forty-four years... to take account of those changes including the new demographic realities on the ground.”

IN LINE WITH BUSH PROMISES

Obama’s new wording was more in line with guarantees by former President George W. Bush in 2004 saying it was “unrealistic” for Israel to return to old borders and suggesting it may keep settlement blocs under any peace pact.

A senior US official insisted however, that even though “people are trying to suggest that he felt he had to clarify something he said on Thursday, he did no such thing.”

Despite that, Obama’s stress on 1967 borders put the United States formally on record as endorsing the old boundaries as a starting point, something it had only embraced privately.

Obama’s aim was to draw Palestinians back to the table and head off their UN statehood drive, but the Palestinians signalled they would not be deterred. Obama, leaving on a European tour later on Sunday, planned to try to convince European leaders not to support a unilateral statehood bid.

US-brokered talks collapsed late last year when Netanyahu refused to extend a moratorium on settlement building in the West Bank and the Palestinians walked away.

Netanyahu is expected to be feted when he addresses AIPAC today and then speaks to the US Congress tomorrow where he will have a chance to rally support for his stance.

While Obama won the Jewish vote overwhelmingly in 2008, some prominent Jewish Americans were rethinking their support for his re-election after this week’s events.

Some Israelis have never felt entirely comfortable with Obama, unnerved by his early attempts to reach out to Iran and his support for Arab revolutions that have unsettled Israel.

Iran naval ships enter Suez Canal, says official

An Iranian naval ship travels through the Suez Canal near Ismailia, some 120km north of Cairo February 22, 2011. Two Iranian naval ships entered the Suez Canal today and were heading toward the Mediterranean, a canal official said, a move certain to anger Israel.


Two Iranian ships entered the Suez Canal today and were heading towards the Mediterranean, a canal official said.

“They entered the canal at 5.45am,” the official said. No other details were immediately available.

Israel had said it takes a “grave view” of the passage of the ships – the first Iranian naval vessels to go through the canal since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.




Egypt’s ruling military council, facing its first diplomatic headache since taking power on February 11, has approved the vessels’ passage through the canal, a vital global trading route and major source of revenues for the Egyptian authorities.

The vessels include a frigate and a supply ship.

The decision was a difficult one for Egypt’s interim government. Cairo is an ally of the United States, has a peace treaty with Israel, and its relations with Iran have been strained for more than three decades.

Last week, the prospect of the Suez crossing was described by Israel’s far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, as a provocation by Iran.

US vetoes UN draft condemning Israeli settlements

Obama’s decision drew praise from pro-Israel groups

The United States yesterday vetoed a draft UN Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements on Palestinian land after the Palestinians refused a compromise offer from Washington.

The US move was welcomed by American pro-Israel groups, some of which have previously criticised US President Barack Obama’s administration for what they see as its record of lukewarm support for Israel.

The other 14 Security Council members voted in favour of the draft resolution. But the United States, as one of the five permanent council members with the power to block any action by the Security Council, voted against it and struck it down.



US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told council members that the veto “should not be misunderstood to mean we support settlement activity.” The US position is that continued Israeli settlements lack legitimacy, she said.

But Rice said the draft “risks hardening the position of both sides” and reiterated the US view that settlements and other contentious issues should be resolved in direct Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations.

The resolution described the settlements as “illegal” and urged the Jewish state to “immediately and completely” halt all settlement activities. Diplomats said the views contained in the resolution, which would have been legally binding had it passed, are generally supported by the Obama administration.

However, they said, the United States refuses to allow the Security Council to intervene with binding resolutions on issues it feels belongs to direct peace talks.

Israeli Ambassador Meron Reuben, opposing the resolution, urged the Palestinians to “return to negotiations without preconditions.” US-brokered peace talks collapsed last year after Israel refused to extend a moratorium on settlements.

The Palestinians say continued building flouts the internationally backed peace plan that will permit them to create a viable, contiguous state on the land after a treaty with Israel to end its occupation and 62 years of conflict.

Israel says this is an excuse for avoiding peace talks and a precondition never demanded before during 17 years of negotiation, which has so far produced no agreement.

World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder thanked Obama, saying his veto showed “America’s support for the rights of the Jewish state and for the Middle East peace process.” Other pro-Israel groups also praised Obama.

Obama’s offer to support a non-binding Security Council statement chiding Israel over the settlements instead of a binding resolution had been criticised by pro-Israel lobby groups and some members of the US Congress.

British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant, speaking on behalf of Britain, France and Germany, condemned Israeli settlements as “illegal under international law.”

He added that the European Union’s three biggest nations hope that an independent state of Palestine will join the United Nations as a new member state by September 2011.

Several European Union member states, including Portugal, Slovenia and Sweden, joined the long list of over 100 co-sponsors of the resolution.

The Palestinian Authority earlier yesterday decided to insist that the resolution be put to the council, and rejected the US compromise offer despite a telephone call from Obama to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday.

The permanent Palestinian observer to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, told the council after the vote that the US veto could send the wrong signal to Israel. “We fear ... that the message sent today may be one that further encourages Israeli intransigence and impunity,” he said.

Mansour declined to comment on media reports that Obama warned Abbas of repercussions if the Palestinians did not withdraw the draft resolution.

The decision to put it to a vote was made unanimously by the Palestine Liberation Organisation’s executive and the central committee of Abbas’s Fatah movement at a meeting in Ramallah yesterday to discuss Obama’s appeal to Abbas.

“The Palestinian leadership has decided to proceed to the UN Security Council, to pressure Israel to halt settlement activities. The decision was taken despite American pressure,” said Wasel Abu Yousef, a PLO executive member.

New York-based Human Rights Watch issued a statement saying the US veto undermined international law and suggested the Obama administration was being hypocritical.

“President Obama wants to tell the Arab world in his speeches that he opposes settlements, but he won’t let the Security Council tell Israel to stop them in a legally binding way,” said HRW’s Middle East director, Sarah Leah Whitson.

Prior to yesterday’s vote, 10 council resolutions had been vetoed by one or more of the five permanent members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — since 2000.

Of those, 10 were US vetoes, nine of them related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The last US vetoes were two in 2006, both related to Israel.

Iran says two warships to pass through Suez canal

-The Swiss franc jumped Thursday in New York trade on a report that Iran was planning to send two warships through the Suez Canal.



Iranian state TV said today two Iranian warships are due to pass through the strategic Suez Canal – an event that would mark the first such passage by the Islamic republic’s navy since Iran’s 1979 revolution.

A similar plan was announced yesterday but then cancelled.

However, English-language Press TV subsequently quoted an official as saying the deployment was back on.

“Two Iranian warships are to cross the Suez Canal. The vessels are on their way to the Suez Canal,” he said.

Egyptian authorities saw “nothing wrong” with the passage of the two warships through the canal, Press TV said.

“Iranian officials were in contact with officials in Cairo to secure the vessels passage,” it quoted an unnamed Iranian navy official as saying.

The passage could be a potential policy headache for Egypt’s new army rulers. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said after the first announcement that the move through the canal en route to Syria would be a “provocation”.

It would be the first time since Iran’s 1979 revolution that Iranian warships had passed through the canal. The revolution poisoned ties with Egypt, which signed a peace treaty with Israel that year.

The canal is a vital commercial and strategic waterway between Europe and the Middle East and Asia. It is also a major source of revenues for the Egyptian government.

Israel’s ex-president Moshe Katsav guilty of rape

Israel’s former President, Moshe Katsav, (centre) is seen inside the Tel Aviv District Court as the verdict on rape and other charges of sexual misconduct against him is handed down on December 30, 2010

Former Israeli President Moshe Katsav was found guilty of rape and other sex crimes yesterday, in what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called a sad day for the Jewish state.

Katsav, who could now face years in prison, had denied charges he twice raped an aide when he was a cabinet minister in the late 1990s, and molested or sexually harassed two other women who worked for him during his 2000-2007 term as president.

But a three-judge panel said his testimony had been “riddled with lies.”



“When a woman says no, she means no,” the panel said in its ruling.

Katsav was also convicted of obstructing justice, for trying to confer with one complainant about her testimony to police.

The ashen-faced 65-year-old had no comment for reporters as he was spirited out of Tel Aviv District Court by a scrum of relatives, attorneys and bodyguards.

One of his lawyers, Avigdor Feldman, criticised the unanimous verdict for ignoring “all of the doubts” about the women’s accounts and said Katsav planned to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court.

State Attorney Moshe Lador praised Israel’s legal system, saying that few countries would have prosecuted their head of state for such crimes. “Positions of power cannot grant immunity to criminals, however senior they may be,” he said.

“This is a sad day for the state of Israel and its residents,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party of which Katsav is a veteran member, said in a statement after the verdict.

“Today the court conveyed two clear-cut messages, that all are equal before the law and that every woman has exclusive rights to her body,” Netanyahu said.

Rape carries a minimum prison term of four years and a maximum of 16 years in Israel. Moshe Negbi, legal analyst for Israel Radio, told Reuters any sentences handed down to Katsav for the lesser charges would probably be served concurrently.

DISGRACE

Though the scandal had forced Katsav’s early retirement in disgrace, it had little impact on Israeli government functions, as the presidency is largely ceremonial.

But the allegations against the Iranian-born leader, whose rise from the slums once served as a shining example for disadvantaged Jewish immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, stirred deep emotions in Israel, where the elite has traditionally been of European descent.

The verdict was dubbed an “earthquake” by one Israeli newspaper and welcomed by women’s groups that have long complained of lax attitudes to sexual harassment in workplaces.

Katsav, who is religiously observant, had cast himself as the victim of extortion and an ethnically-motivated “witch hunt.” Relatives said he would campaign to clear his name.

“This trial, where the judges rule according to their feelings, is not in keeping the ethics of Israel,” Katsav’s son Boaz told reporters.

“God willing, the whole nation will know that dad, the eighth president of the State of Israel, is innocent.”

Out of concern for the complainants’ privacy, much of the trial had taken place behind closed doors. Some commentators predict Katsav, should he appeal, will argue that the Tel Aviv District Court proceedings were not transparent enough.

Katsav immigrated with his family to Israel in 1951. At the age of 24 he became the country’s youngest mayor and went on to hold a number of Likud cabinet posts.

Parliament elected him president in 2000 in a surprise victory over Shimon Peres, Israel’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning elder statesman. Peres succeeded Katsav as president, an appointment observers say has restored dignity to the post.

The eruption of the Katsav affair had amplified corruption scandals that brought down Israel’s then premier, Ehud Olmert.

Hosting Olmert in Moscow in late 2006, Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president at the time, quipped before TV cameras that Katsav “didn’t look like a guy who could be with 10 women.”

British ambassador in 1980 said Israel ready to use bomb

A British ambassador to Israel warned as early as 1980 that Israel would detonate a nuclear bomb in case of a new war with the Arabs, according to previously secret state documents released yesterday.

“If they (Israelis) are to be destroyed, they will go down fighting this time. They will be ready to use their atomic weapon,” ambassador John Robinson wrote in a cable to the Foreign Office on May 4, 1980.

Israel has never confirmed or denied having atom bombs under a policy of ambiguity to deter numerically superior foes.

Robinson’s message, published under a rule that allows official British papers to be released after 30 years, voiced concern that US-hosted negotiations would not lead to a comprehensive agreement on the Middle East conflict.

“As long as there is no agreement on the West Bank and Jerusalem which satisfies the Palestinians, they will be driven increasingly to extremism; moderate governments in the area and Western interest will be increasingly threatened; opportunities for Soviet influence and intervention will increase; and so will the danger of a new war,” the cable said.

PLO says no talks until Israel halts settlements

The Palestinian leadership said on Saturday negotiations with Israel would not resume until it halted settlement building.

US-backed peace talks, launched a month ago in Washington, were plunged into crisis this week by the end of a 10-month Israeli moratorium on new settlement building in the West Bank. Israel has said it will not extend the freeze.

“The leadership confirms that the resumption of talks requires tangible steps, the first of them a freeze on settlements,” senior Palestine Liberation Official (PLO) Yasser Abed Rabbo said after a meeting in Ramallah.

“The Palestinian leadership holds Israel responsible for obstructing the negotiations,” he said, reading from a statement issued after the meeting.

Palestinians say the growth of the settlements, on land Israel has occupied since 1967, will render impossible the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip — the stated goal of the peace talks.
Some 500,000 Jews have settled on territory where the Palestinians aim to establish their state with East Jerusalem as its capital. To Israel, the West Bank is “Judea and Samaria” — where the Jews trace their biblical past.
Benjamin Netanyahu, whose coalition government is dominated by pro-settlement parties including his own Likud, has said he will not extend the construction moratorium, which has been in place for 10 months and expired on Monday.
An official quoted Netanyahu on Friday as saying it had not been easy to freeze construction for the past 10 months and that he had lived up to his commitments to the Palestinians, the United States and the international community.
“Now I expect the Palestinians to show some flexibility,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying. “Everyone knows that measured and restrained building in Judaea and Samaria (the West Bank) in the coming year will have no influence on the peace map.”
US President Barack Obama has invested major political capital in a bid for a Middle East settlement within a year.
US envoy George Mitchell shuttled between Mahmoud Abbas and Netanyahu for two days this week. The sides agreed to keep talking via Mitchell, the way they had communicated before the launch of the direct talks.
“So far, efforts have reached a dead end,” Nabil Abu Rdainah, spokesman for Abbas, said on his way out of the PLO meeting. Abbas had informed Mitchell of the Palestinian position during their meeting on Friday, he said.
“There will be no negotiations in the shadow of continued settlement,” Abu Rdainah said. “All the while Israel is not convinced that the political process be based on international law and justice, matters will remain in a state of paralysis for a long time.”

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US envoy to try to salvage Mideast peace talks

Washington's special Mideast envoy is to pressure Israeli and Palestinian leaders to keep peace talks from collapsing just weeks after they began.

George Mitchell's mission follows Israel's decision to resume settlement construction in the West Bank after a 10-month freeze. The move has thrown the talks into disarray.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to walk out of the negotiations if Israel doesn't renew the moratorium.

The U.S. is disappointed over Israel's refusal to relent and has dispatched Mitchell to try to bridge the gaps. Mitchell is expected to arrive on Tuesday.

Abbas has said he will decide whether to quit the talks after consulting senior Arab officials next week. That gives U.S. mediators time to try to broker a compromise..

A Jewish settler boy looks at earth-moving equipment working at a construction site in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel, Monday, Sept. 27, 2010. Senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo said Monday that President Mahmoud Abbas remains ready to walk out on Mideast peace talks if Israel resumes construction in its West Bank settlements now that building restrictions have expired.

 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, second right, arrives for a meeting with Jewish representatives living in France in Paris Sunday, Sept. 26, 2010. Abbas will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday. 

 

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, left, attends a meeting with Jewish representatives living in France in Paris Sunday, Sept. 26, 2010. Abbas will meet French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday.

Israeli Settlement Slowdown to End at Midnight - Unfrozen settlements put peace on ice