From New York Times, 5 December 2010, by ERIC LICHTBLAU and ERIC SCHMITT:
WASHINGTON — Nine years after the United States vowed to shut down the money pipeline that finances terrorism, senior Obama administration officials say they believe that many millions of dollars are flowing largely unimpeded to extremist groups worldwide, and they have grown frustrated by frequent resistance from allies in the Middle East, according to secret diplomatic dispatches.
The government cables, sent by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and senior State Department officials, catalog a list of methods that American officials suspect terrorist financiers are using, including a brazen bank robbery in Yemen last year, kidnappings for ransom, the harvesting of drug proceeds in Afghanistan and fund-raising at religious pilgrimages to Mecca, where millions of riyals or other forms of currency change hands.
While American officials have publicly been relatively upbeat about their progress in disrupting terrorist financing, the internal State Department cables, obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to several news organizations, offer a more pessimistic account, with blunt assessments of the threats to the United States from money flowing to militants affiliated with Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other groups.
A classified memo sent by Mrs. Clinton last December made it clear that residents of Saudi Arabia and its neighbors, all allies of the United States, are the chief financial supporters of many extremist activities. “It has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority,” the cable said, concluding that “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”
The dispatch and others offered similarly grim views about the United Arab Emirates (“a strategic gap” that terrorists can exploit), Qatar (“the worst in the region” on counterterrorism) and Kuwait (“a key transit point”).
The cable stressed the need to “generate the political will necessary” to block money to terrorist networks — groups that she said were “threatening stability in Pakistan and Afghanistan and targeting coalition soldiers.”
While President George W. Bush frequently vowed to cut off financing for militants and pledged to make financiers as culpable as terrorists who carried out plots, President Obama has been far less vocal on the issue publicly as he has sought to adopt a more conciliatory tone with Arab nations. But his administration has used many of the same covert diplomatic, intelligence and law enforcement tools as his predecessor and set up a special task force in the summer of 2009 to deal with the growing problem.
...In hundreds of cables focusing on terrorist financing, the problem takes on an air of intractability, as American officials speak of the seeming ease with which terrorists are able to move money, the low cost of carrying out deadly attacks, and the difficulty of stopping it. Interdictions are few, and resistance is frequent.
In Kuwait, for instance, American officials have voiced repeated concerns that Islamic charities — largely unregulated by the government there — are using philanthropic donations to finance terrorism abroad...
Saudi Arabia, a critical military and diplomatic ally, emerges in the cables as the most vexing of problems. Intelligence officials there have stepped up their spying on militants in neighboring Yemen, and they provided the tip that helped uncover the recent parcel bombs. But while the Saudis have made some progress, “terrorist funding emanating from Saudi Arabia remains a serious concern,” according to a cable in February. Mrs. Clinton’s memo two months earlier said Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiba and other groups “probably raise millions of dollars annually from Saudi sources, often during Hajj and Ramadan.” Officials said they believed that fund-raisers for extremist groups had often descended on the pilgrims to seek money for their causes...
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Argentina, Uruguay follow Brazil - recognize "Palestinian state"
From Ynet News, 6 December 2010, by AFP and Ali Waked:
Following Brazil's public recognition last week, neighboring state issues similar statement recognizing 'Palestine within borders defined in 1967.' Uruguay followed suit...
Argentina said Monday it recognized a "free and independent" Palestinian state, days after Brazil drew sharp criticism from US lawmakers for taking the same step.
...Also Monday, Uruguay made a similar statement. The step is part of efforts to reignite peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
US lawmakers have called Brazil's decision "severely misguided" and "regrettable."
Western countries have agreed that any definition of a Palestinian state required Israeli approval.
...The Palestinians have been working to persuade other countries to acknowledge their right to establish an independent state....
...Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said: "This is a very disappointing step which contributes nothing to furthering the peace process." He described the announcement as "a verbal gesture which goes against the Oslo Accords whereby a permanent solution can only be the result of negotiations." Palmor stressed that the gesture "encourages the Palestinians at the very time when they insist on avoiding negotiations."
Foreign Ministry officials have therefore started holding low-profiles talks with Latin American leaders, Ynet learned. "This is a meaningless paper, a virtual declaration. These declarations may look good in print but lack any understanding of the Middle Eastern reality," a ministry source said.
Following Brazil's public recognition last week, neighboring state issues similar statement recognizing 'Palestine within borders defined in 1967.' Uruguay followed suit...
Argentina said Monday it recognized a "free and independent" Palestinian state, days after Brazil drew sharp criticism from US lawmakers for taking the same step.
...Also Monday, Uruguay made a similar statement. The step is part of efforts to reignite peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.
US lawmakers have called Brazil's decision "severely misguided" and "regrettable."
Western countries have agreed that any definition of a Palestinian state required Israeli approval.
...The Palestinians have been working to persuade other countries to acknowledge their right to establish an independent state....
...Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said: "This is a very disappointing step which contributes nothing to furthering the peace process." He described the announcement as "a verbal gesture which goes against the Oslo Accords whereby a permanent solution can only be the result of negotiations." Palmor stressed that the gesture "encourages the Palestinians at the very time when they insist on avoiding negotiations."
Foreign Ministry officials have therefore started holding low-profiles talks with Latin American leaders, Ynet learned. "This is a meaningless paper, a virtual declaration. These declarations may look good in print but lack any understanding of the Middle Eastern reality," a ministry source said.
Israel police arrest four teens over huge inferno
From AFP, 7 December 2010:
BEIT OREN, Israel — Israeli police said on Monday they arrested four teenagers suspected of starting a blaze that swept through a forest and killed 42 people in the country's worst fire disaster.
"We have made four arrests -- two teenagers from the Druze village of Isfiya who were arrested on Saturday, and another two who were questioned on Sunday and released to house arrest," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, without saying where the second two were from.
The four were suspected of negligence that sparked the wildfire, he said, adding that the two teenagers from Isfiya were scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.
The fire in the Carmel hill range near the northern city of Haifa began on Thursday, killing 42 people before it was brought under control three days later after a massive international firefighting effort.
An initial investigation appears to show the blaze, the biggest in Israel's 62-year history, was started by accident by several teenagers who were having a picnic in the area, Rosenfeld said.
Light rain fell on Monday morning on the forests of Mount Carmel, dampening the ground, with meteorologists estimating there would be a total of 15 millimetres (0.6 inches) throughout the day.
The rain is some of the first the country has had this year, after a particularly dry summer and an unusually warm autumn. Last month saw the driest November in nearly 50 years.
Firefighters were still on the scene on Monday morning, working to ensure that the blaze, which consumed thousands of acres of forest, did not reignite.
Government officials cited by the Israeli media on Monday said the fire had caused damage estimated at two billion shekels (400 million euro, 533 million dollars).
In addition to those costs, Israel now plans to buy several firefighting planes, after scathing domestic criticism at the Jewish state's lack of an aerial firefighting capacity.
The country has just 1,500 firefighters and no firefighting planes, forcing it to rely on international assistance to put out the blaze.
The government has also announced plans to create a new body charged with overseeing the response to fires.
For the first time, the Israeli government has released emergency funding of 30 million euros to help residents who lost their homes in the fire.
"I don't want delays or bureaucracy. I want all the people who were evacuated to be able to return to their lives as soon as possible," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
BEIT OREN, Israel — Israeli police said on Monday they arrested four teenagers suspected of starting a blaze that swept through a forest and killed 42 people in the country's worst fire disaster.
"We have made four arrests -- two teenagers from the Druze village of Isfiya who were arrested on Saturday, and another two who were questioned on Sunday and released to house arrest," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told AFP, without saying where the second two were from.
The four were suspected of negligence that sparked the wildfire, he said, adding that the two teenagers from Isfiya were scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday.
The fire in the Carmel hill range near the northern city of Haifa began on Thursday, killing 42 people before it was brought under control three days later after a massive international firefighting effort.
An initial investigation appears to show the blaze, the biggest in Israel's 62-year history, was started by accident by several teenagers who were having a picnic in the area, Rosenfeld said.
Light rain fell on Monday morning on the forests of Mount Carmel, dampening the ground, with meteorologists estimating there would be a total of 15 millimetres (0.6 inches) throughout the day.
The rain is some of the first the country has had this year, after a particularly dry summer and an unusually warm autumn. Last month saw the driest November in nearly 50 years.
Firefighters were still on the scene on Monday morning, working to ensure that the blaze, which consumed thousands of acres of forest, did not reignite.
Government officials cited by the Israeli media on Monday said the fire had caused damage estimated at two billion shekels (400 million euro, 533 million dollars).
In addition to those costs, Israel now plans to buy several firefighting planes, after scathing domestic criticism at the Jewish state's lack of an aerial firefighting capacity.
The country has just 1,500 firefighters and no firefighting planes, forcing it to rely on international assistance to put out the blaze.
The government has also announced plans to create a new body charged with overseeing the response to fires.
For the first time, the Israeli government has released emergency funding of 30 million euros to help residents who lost their homes in the fire.
"I don't want delays or bureaucracy. I want all the people who were evacuated to be able to return to their lives as soon as possible," Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Monday, December 06, 2010
The prospects for a Palestinian state have rarely been more grim
From Tablet Magazine, Dec 2, 2010, by Benny Morris, professor of history at Ben-Gurion University:
In recent years, starting with the Israeli handover of West Bank cities and the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s, the Palestinians, ever-so-slowly and inefficiently, have built pre-state institutions of governance—most recently and competently under the leadership of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
During the past few years alone, Western observers have noted substantial improvements in Palestinian taxation, infrastructure, and economic development, and in the functioning of the (American- and European-trained) security services. Indeed, under Fayyad, the West Bank is flourishing economically (around 9 percent annual growth, according to the International Monetary Fund, even if the gains are fragile) and is a largely peaceful place, with residents even paying traffic tickets, and militants of Hamas and other organizations largely inactive, with some jailed in periodic round-ups.
At the same time, Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip in 2007 from the Palestinian National Authority, in the process throwing PA officers off of tall buildings and knee-capping others, has also demonstrated an ability to rule, in an orderly if brutal fashion.
A series of question marks hangs over these recent improvements in the governance of the West Bank:
***
Which brings us to the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiating impasse...a basic, strategic impasse which, unfortunately, is far more cogent and telling than the ongoing “negotiations,” which are unlikely to lead to a peace treaty or even a “framework” agreement for a future peace accord.
This unlikelihood stems from a set of obstacles that I see as insurmountable, given current political-ideological mindsets.
The first [obstacle] ...is that Palestinian political elites, of both the so-called “secular” and Islamist varieties, are dead set against partitioning the Land of Israel/Palestine with the Jews. They regard all of Palestine as their patrimony and believe that it will eventually be theirs. ...They do not want a permanent two-state solution, with a Palestinian Arab state co-existing alongside a (larger) Jewish state; they will not compromise on this core belief and do not believe, on moral or practical grounds, that they should.
This basic Palestinian rejectionism, amounting to a Weltanschauung, is routinely ignored or denied by most Western commentators and officials. To grant it means to admit that the Israeli-Arab conflict has no resolution apart from the complete victory of one side or the other (with the corollary of expulsion, or annihilation, by one side of the other)—which leaves leaders like President Barack Obama with nowhere realistic to go with regard to the conflict.
Philosophically, acceptance of the rock-like unpliability of this reality is extremely problematic ...our age, it may turn out, resembles the classic age of appeasement, the 1930s, when the Western democracies (and the Soviet Union) were ranged against, but preferred not to confront, Nazi Germany and its allies, Fascist Italy, and expansionist Japan. During that decade, Hitler’s inexorable martial, racist, and uncompromising mindset was misread by Western leaders, officials, and intellectuals—and for much the same reasons. Living in unideological societies, they could not fathom the minds and politics of their ideologically driven antagonists. The leaders and intellectuals of the Western democracies, educated and suffused with liberal and relativist values, by and large were unable to comprehend the essential “otherness” of Hitler and ended up fighting him, to the finish, after negotiation and compromise had proved useless.
***
Another problem for Westerners is that ...Hamas, which may represent the majority of the Palestinian people and certainly has the unflinching support of some 40 percent of them, speaks clearly. It openly repudiates a two-state solution.
Hamas leaders...occasionally express a tactical readiness for a long-term truce under terms that they know are unacceptable to any Jewish Israelis (complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders and acceptance of the refugees’ “Right of Return”), but their strategic message is clear, echoing the Roman statesman Cato the Elder: “Israel must be destroyed.”
The secular Palestinian leadership looks to a similar historical denouement but is more flexible on the tactics and pacing. They express a readiness for a two-state solution but envision such an outcome as intermediate and temporary. They speak of two states, a Palestinian Arab West Bank-Gaza-East Jerusalem state and another state whose population is Jewish and Arab and which they believe will eventually become majority-Arab within a generation or two through Arab procreation (Palestinian Arab birth-rates are roughly twice those of Israeli Jews) and the “return” of Palestinians with refugee status. This is why Fatah’s leaders, led by Palestine National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, flatly reject the Clintonian formula of “two states for two peoples” and refuse to recognize the “other” state, Israel, as a “Jewish state.” They hope that this “other” state will also, in time, be “Arabized,” thus setting the stage for the eventual merger of the two temporary states into one Palestinian Arab-majority state between the River and the Sea.
The Palestinian national movement, since its inception in the 1920s, has sought to establish a unitary Arab state in all of Palestine as defined by the British Mandate: the territory lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, stretching southward to the Gulf of Aqaba.
...Since the early 1990s, the PLO—at least in its overtures toward and contacts with Western governments—has identified its goal as establishing a Palestinian state in those territories captured by Israel in 1967: the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
Yet the Palestinian national movement failed to prepare their people and movement for statehood. In contrast with their Zionist rivals, the Palestinians, during the years of Ottoman rule (ending in 1917 and 1918) and the subsequent British Mandate (1917 or 1918 to 1948), failed to set up representative or substantive political parties, or to establish a competent, public-service-oriented leadership cadre, institutions of self-government, and a national militia that could carry their people toward statehood when the moment ripened.
This reinforced the image of a national movement bent only or mainly on destruction of the “other” rather than seeking self-realization.
***
The key to understanding Fatah objectives today lies in its leaders’ stance on resolving the refugee problem. Contrary to what many Western commentators and analysts have chosen to believe, the Palestinian stress on the importance of the refugees is not a tactical matter—a way to gain further leverage in negotiations.
The Palestinian leadership is unanimous and resolute in insisting that the problem’s solution lies in the “Right of Return”: Israel, and the world, must accept the principle of repatriation and eventually facilitate repatriation. The idea that the refugees must return to their homes has been the ethos, the be-all and end-all of Palestinian politics and policy, since 1948. No Palestinian leader can or will ever abandon this principle, on pain of assassination, and none has.
...And this represents the second insurmountable obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace. The United Nations has on its rolls 4.7 million Palestinian refugees; the PLO claims that there are 7.5 million ...The vast majority of the ...“refugees”—say nine-tenths of them—are the children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren of the originally displaced 700,000. And more than half of them live in Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinian demand that Israel accept a mass refugee return means that, if implemented, Israel, with its 6 million Jewish and 1.5 million Arab citizens, would instantly or over a short time, become an Arab-majority state.
Paradoxically, the Palestinian demand for Israeli acceptance and implementation of the “Right of Return” is universally endorsed by Arab leaders—including those, like President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah II of Jordan, whose countries have peace treaties with Israel. No Arab leader has ever publicly disavowed the “Right of Return” or castigated the Palestinian insistence on it as contrary to the interests of peace. ...even the Saudi plan proposes that the solution to the Palestinian refugee problem be based on U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194, of December 1948, which the Arabs interpret as unequivocally endorsing the “Right of Return.”
To these formidable obstacles to peace-making—the unchanging Arab desire for what amounts to Israel’s disappearance and consistent advocacy of the demographic means by which this can be achieved—one may add the hardly routine challenges of
...even if, by some miracle, Abbas and Netanyahu were to reach a framework agreement or even a detailed peace treaty (a departure into the realm of total fantasy) with Abbas accepting the Jewishness of the “other” state and waiving the “Right of Return,” and Netanyahu conceding Arab sovereignty over the bulk of Jerusalem’s Old City, including the Temple Mount, such an agreement would fail to stick and would never be implemented.
Abbas might sign off on “an end to the conflict” and “no more demands”—and most likely be assassinated by Arab extremists in consequence—but a majority of Palestinians, and certainly a large minority of them, would continue the struggle, rendering the agreement no more than a wind-blown piece of paper.
Hamas, which won the 2006 Palestinian general elections, would denounce the signers as traitors and continue the fight for all of Palestine, as would many in Abbas’ own Fatah party. The agreement would not end the conflict. Nor would it deter or obstruct future, continuing Palestinian claims.
***
In short, a Palestinian state will not arise out of the current round of negotiations.
But it might emerge some time after their failure—and on the model of Hamas’ Gaza “republic.”
Put simply, if faced with continuing Palestinian unwillingness to sign an end-of-conflict agreement...Netanyahu or his successor—may opt for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the bulk of the West Bank (and, perhaps, parts of East Jerusalem).
...But a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem ...uprooting tens of thousands of Israeli settlers from the hill-country of Judea and Samaria, east of the Security Fence, would, in terms of Israeli politics, be a major national trauma. The right would fight it tooth and nail, perhaps to the point of largescale bloodshed....
Alternatively, the IDF and the Israeli police could in theory unilaterally withdraw to the Security Fence while leaving a minority of the settlers in situ (the majority, in the border hugging settlement blocs, such as the Etzion Bloc, would remain on the “Israeli” side of the Security Fence, which runs more or less along the old Israel-West Bank divide, and leaves only some 7 percent of the West Bank in Israeli hands). But Arab attacks on the remaining settlers, their homes or transport, would most likely trigger Israeli re-entry into the evacuated areas.
Viewed militarily, a unilateral pullback to the Security Fence would pose a major strategic problem. Hamas as likely as not would try to take over the West Bank: How could Israel prevent this without physically re-entering the territory?
And, even without a Hamas takeover, Arab control of the territory could result in continuous rocketing by Hamas and perhaps by Fatah itself. The scene would be reminiscent of that which followed Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip, but with this difference: Where Hamas since 2005 has rocketed small border towns and villages, short-range rocketry from the West Bank would doubtless hit Israel’s main population centers, such as West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, rendering life in central Israel untenable. Moreover, how would Israel ensure that foreign troops—Iranian, for example—would not be invited by the Palestinian government, the present one or a future Islamist regime, into the West Bank, strategically threatening the Jewish state?
What remains, in the absence of a basic change of Palestinian mindset, is a bleak picture. No viable peace agreement is remotely in prospect. Neither is the emergence of a full-fledged Palestinian state. A unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank is so problematic as to be virtually unimplementable. Yet continued Israeli rule over the territory and its people, obnoxious to most Israelis and to the rest of the world, raises the prospect of a bi-national state or an apartheid state, both of which most Jews regard as anathema. That, unfortunately, is where we’re at.
In recent years, starting with the Israeli handover of West Bank cities and the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian Authority in the mid-1990s, the Palestinians, ever-so-slowly and inefficiently, have built pre-state institutions of governance—most recently and competently under the leadership of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad.
During the past few years alone, Western observers have noted substantial improvements in Palestinian taxation, infrastructure, and economic development, and in the functioning of the (American- and European-trained) security services. Indeed, under Fayyad, the West Bank is flourishing economically (around 9 percent annual growth, according to the International Monetary Fund, even if the gains are fragile) and is a largely peaceful place, with residents even paying traffic tickets, and militants of Hamas and other organizations largely inactive, with some jailed in periodic round-ups.
At the same time, Hamas, which took over the Gaza Strip in 2007 from the Palestinian National Authority, in the process throwing PA officers off of tall buildings and knee-capping others, has also demonstrated an ability to rule, in an orderly if brutal fashion.
A series of question marks hangs over these recent improvements in the governance of the West Bank:
- How deep do they run?
- And can they outlast Western financial aid and political backing and the overriding guardianship of Israeli bayonets?
- Will the American- and European-trained security forces, in crisis, hold their own against Hamas or fade away, like the Western-trained Iraqi and Afghani forces have when left to perform independent of their American and British instructors?
***
Which brings us to the current Israeli-Palestinian negotiating impasse...a basic, strategic impasse which, unfortunately, is far more cogent and telling than the ongoing “negotiations,” which are unlikely to lead to a peace treaty or even a “framework” agreement for a future peace accord.
This unlikelihood stems from a set of obstacles that I see as insurmountable, given current political-ideological mindsets.
The first [obstacle] ...is that Palestinian political elites, of both the so-called “secular” and Islamist varieties, are dead set against partitioning the Land of Israel/Palestine with the Jews. They regard all of Palestine as their patrimony and believe that it will eventually be theirs. ...They do not want a permanent two-state solution, with a Palestinian Arab state co-existing alongside a (larger) Jewish state; they will not compromise on this core belief and do not believe, on moral or practical grounds, that they should.
This basic Palestinian rejectionism, amounting to a Weltanschauung, is routinely ignored or denied by most Western commentators and officials. To grant it means to admit that the Israeli-Arab conflict has no resolution apart from the complete victory of one side or the other (with the corollary of expulsion, or annihilation, by one side of the other)—which leaves leaders like President Barack Obama with nowhere realistic to go with regard to the conflict.
Philosophically, acceptance of the rock-like unpliability of this reality is extremely problematic ...our age, it may turn out, resembles the classic age of appeasement, the 1930s, when the Western democracies (and the Soviet Union) were ranged against, but preferred not to confront, Nazi Germany and its allies, Fascist Italy, and expansionist Japan. During that decade, Hitler’s inexorable martial, racist, and uncompromising mindset was misread by Western leaders, officials, and intellectuals—and for much the same reasons. Living in unideological societies, they could not fathom the minds and politics of their ideologically driven antagonists. The leaders and intellectuals of the Western democracies, educated and suffused with liberal and relativist values, by and large were unable to comprehend the essential “otherness” of Hitler and ended up fighting him, to the finish, after negotiation and compromise had proved useless.
***
Another problem for Westerners is that ...Hamas, which may represent the majority of the Palestinian people and certainly has the unflinching support of some 40 percent of them, speaks clearly. It openly repudiates a two-state solution.
Hamas leaders...occasionally express a tactical readiness for a long-term truce under terms that they know are unacceptable to any Jewish Israelis (complete Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders and acceptance of the refugees’ “Right of Return”), but their strategic message is clear, echoing the Roman statesman Cato the Elder: “Israel must be destroyed.”
The secular Palestinian leadership looks to a similar historical denouement but is more flexible on the tactics and pacing. They express a readiness for a two-state solution but envision such an outcome as intermediate and temporary. They speak of two states, a Palestinian Arab West Bank-Gaza-East Jerusalem state and another state whose population is Jewish and Arab and which they believe will eventually become majority-Arab within a generation or two through Arab procreation (Palestinian Arab birth-rates are roughly twice those of Israeli Jews) and the “return” of Palestinians with refugee status. This is why Fatah’s leaders, led by Palestine National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, flatly reject the Clintonian formula of “two states for two peoples” and refuse to recognize the “other” state, Israel, as a “Jewish state.” They hope that this “other” state will also, in time, be “Arabized,” thus setting the stage for the eventual merger of the two temporary states into one Palestinian Arab-majority state between the River and the Sea.
The Palestinian national movement, since its inception in the 1920s, has sought to establish a unitary Arab state in all of Palestine as defined by the British Mandate: the territory lying between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, stretching southward to the Gulf of Aqaba.
...Since the early 1990s, the PLO—at least in its overtures toward and contacts with Western governments—has identified its goal as establishing a Palestinian state in those territories captured by Israel in 1967: the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.
Yet the Palestinian national movement failed to prepare their people and movement for statehood. In contrast with their Zionist rivals, the Palestinians, during the years of Ottoman rule (ending in 1917 and 1918) and the subsequent British Mandate (1917 or 1918 to 1948), failed to set up representative or substantive political parties, or to establish a competent, public-service-oriented leadership cadre, institutions of self-government, and a national militia that could carry their people toward statehood when the moment ripened.
This reinforced the image of a national movement bent only or mainly on destruction of the “other” rather than seeking self-realization.
***
The key to understanding Fatah objectives today lies in its leaders’ stance on resolving the refugee problem. Contrary to what many Western commentators and analysts have chosen to believe, the Palestinian stress on the importance of the refugees is not a tactical matter—a way to gain further leverage in negotiations.
The Palestinian leadership is unanimous and resolute in insisting that the problem’s solution lies in the “Right of Return”: Israel, and the world, must accept the principle of repatriation and eventually facilitate repatriation. The idea that the refugees must return to their homes has been the ethos, the be-all and end-all of Palestinian politics and policy, since 1948. No Palestinian leader can or will ever abandon this principle, on pain of assassination, and none has.
...And this represents the second insurmountable obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peace. The United Nations has on its rolls 4.7 million Palestinian refugees; the PLO claims that there are 7.5 million ...The vast majority of the ...“refugees”—say nine-tenths of them—are the children, grand-children, and great-grandchildren of the originally displaced 700,000. And more than half of them live in Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinian demand that Israel accept a mass refugee return means that, if implemented, Israel, with its 6 million Jewish and 1.5 million Arab citizens, would instantly or over a short time, become an Arab-majority state.
Paradoxically, the Palestinian demand for Israeli acceptance and implementation of the “Right of Return” is universally endorsed by Arab leaders—including those, like President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah II of Jordan, whose countries have peace treaties with Israel. No Arab leader has ever publicly disavowed the “Right of Return” or castigated the Palestinian insistence on it as contrary to the interests of peace. ...even the Saudi plan proposes that the solution to the Palestinian refugee problem be based on U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194, of December 1948, which the Arabs interpret as unequivocally endorsing the “Right of Return.”
To these formidable obstacles to peace-making—the unchanging Arab desire for what amounts to Israel’s disappearance and consistent advocacy of the demographic means by which this can be achieved—one may add the hardly routine challenges of
- differences over future Israeli-Palestinian borders,
- ...sovereignty over Jerusalem’s Old City and, in particular, its Temple Mount complex...
- the fate of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank
- ...demilitarization of a future Palestinian ...state...
...even if, by some miracle, Abbas and Netanyahu were to reach a framework agreement or even a detailed peace treaty (a departure into the realm of total fantasy) with Abbas accepting the Jewishness of the “other” state and waiving the “Right of Return,” and Netanyahu conceding Arab sovereignty over the bulk of Jerusalem’s Old City, including the Temple Mount, such an agreement would fail to stick and would never be implemented.
Abbas might sign off on “an end to the conflict” and “no more demands”—and most likely be assassinated by Arab extremists in consequence—but a majority of Palestinians, and certainly a large minority of them, would continue the struggle, rendering the agreement no more than a wind-blown piece of paper.
Hamas, which won the 2006 Palestinian general elections, would denounce the signers as traitors and continue the fight for all of Palestine, as would many in Abbas’ own Fatah party. The agreement would not end the conflict. Nor would it deter or obstruct future, continuing Palestinian claims.
***
In short, a Palestinian state will not arise out of the current round of negotiations.
But it might emerge some time after their failure—and on the model of Hamas’ Gaza “republic.”
Put simply, if faced with continuing Palestinian unwillingness to sign an end-of-conflict agreement...Netanyahu or his successor—may opt for a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the bulk of the West Bank (and, perhaps, parts of East Jerusalem).
...But a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and East Jerusalem ...uprooting tens of thousands of Israeli settlers from the hill-country of Judea and Samaria, east of the Security Fence, would, in terms of Israeli politics, be a major national trauma. The right would fight it tooth and nail, perhaps to the point of largescale bloodshed....
Alternatively, the IDF and the Israeli police could in theory unilaterally withdraw to the Security Fence while leaving a minority of the settlers in situ (the majority, in the border hugging settlement blocs, such as the Etzion Bloc, would remain on the “Israeli” side of the Security Fence, which runs more or less along the old Israel-West Bank divide, and leaves only some 7 percent of the West Bank in Israeli hands). But Arab attacks on the remaining settlers, their homes or transport, would most likely trigger Israeli re-entry into the evacuated areas.
Viewed militarily, a unilateral pullback to the Security Fence would pose a major strategic problem. Hamas as likely as not would try to take over the West Bank: How could Israel prevent this without physically re-entering the territory?
And, even without a Hamas takeover, Arab control of the territory could result in continuous rocketing by Hamas and perhaps by Fatah itself. The scene would be reminiscent of that which followed Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip, but with this difference: Where Hamas since 2005 has rocketed small border towns and villages, short-range rocketry from the West Bank would doubtless hit Israel’s main population centers, such as West Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, rendering life in central Israel untenable. Moreover, how would Israel ensure that foreign troops—Iranian, for example—would not be invited by the Palestinian government, the present one or a future Islamist regime, into the West Bank, strategically threatening the Jewish state?
What remains, in the absence of a basic change of Palestinian mindset, is a bleak picture. No viable peace agreement is remotely in prospect. Neither is the emergence of a full-fledged Palestinian state. A unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank is so problematic as to be virtually unimplementable. Yet continued Israeli rule over the territory and its people, obnoxious to most Israelis and to the rest of the world, raises the prospect of a bi-national state or an apartheid state, both of which most Jews regard as anathema. That, unfortunately, is where we’re at.
The flames are out, now come the recovery and recrimination
From JPost, 5 December 2010, by YAAKOV LAPPIN:
Carmel inferno finally defeated after four days, though emergency teams still on standby; forest will take 40 years to recover; state comptroller finalizes "grave" report on years of Fire and Rescue Service neglect.
Millions of Israelis breathed a collective sigh of relief on Sunday after firefighters from here and abroad succeeded in overcoming the worst fire disaster the country has known, which killed 41 people, destroyed at least 50,000 dunams of Carmel forestland, damaged 250 homes, and caused over NIS 200 million in damage, according to initial estimates.
A number of small fires remained active in the Mount Carmel region, and the fleet of international fire planes that proved decisive in putting an end to the fires on Sunday, including a Boeing 747 supertanker leased by the government from a US company, remained on standby as night fell.
Weather forecasters said rain would likely help put out the remaining fires overnight.
“From our point of view, the danger has passed for all the places that were evacuated,” fire official Boaz Rakia said.
The relief quickly gave way to mourning, as 24 fire casualties – 22 Prisons Service staff and two policemen – were buried on Sunday.
As smoke rose from the smoldering forests of the Carmel, public pressure on the government and anger mounted over decades of neglect of the Fire and Rescue Service.
State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss said he would soon publish a “grave” report on the shortcomings that led to the present state of the service. He was “only sorry” that warnings about the dangers that became evident in recent days had been disregarded by the authorities.
Magen David Adom officials said 33 people suffering from fire-related injuries were evacuated to hospitals during the four-day blaze.
Three of the injured – including Haifa police chief Asst.-Cmdr. Ahuva Tomer – were in critical condition, while three others were moderately hurt and the remainder lightly hurt.
Prof. Avi Pervolovski, a senior researcher at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Organization, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that it would take around 40 years for the Carmel forests to recover.
All of the estimated four to five million trees incinerated in the inferno will be replaced naturally, Pervolovski said, due to a fire-coping mechanism evolved by trees over millions of years, such as seeds that take flight during blazes and survive the flames, and underground branches that can also survive. But, he stressed, it will take decades for the forests to regain their natural heights.
“It will be a long time before the view we were used to in the Carmel will return,” Pervolovski said.
“Experts knew that this was the most likely area for a fire of this type,” he added.
At 5 p.m. on Sunday, police notified residents of the worst-hit area that they could return to their homes in Nir Etzion, Ein Hod, Ein Hud and Kibbutz Beit Oren.
Emergency officials said 250 homes suffered extensive damage, mostly in Ein Hod and Beit Oren. Live TV broadcasts carried images of shocked residents returning to Ein Hod and inspecting blackened homes.
The government has estimated that around 70 homes will have to be torn down and rebuilt, and allocated funds for mobile homes for displaced residents...
Carmel inferno finally defeated after four days, though emergency teams still on standby; forest will take 40 years to recover; state comptroller finalizes "grave" report on years of Fire and Rescue Service neglect.
Millions of Israelis breathed a collective sigh of relief on Sunday after firefighters from here and abroad succeeded in overcoming the worst fire disaster the country has known, which killed 41 people, destroyed at least 50,000 dunams of Carmel forestland, damaged 250 homes, and caused over NIS 200 million in damage, according to initial estimates.
A number of small fires remained active in the Mount Carmel region, and the fleet of international fire planes that proved decisive in putting an end to the fires on Sunday, including a Boeing 747 supertanker leased by the government from a US company, remained on standby as night fell.
Weather forecasters said rain would likely help put out the remaining fires overnight.
“From our point of view, the danger has passed for all the places that were evacuated,” fire official Boaz Rakia said.
The relief quickly gave way to mourning, as 24 fire casualties – 22 Prisons Service staff and two policemen – were buried on Sunday.
As smoke rose from the smoldering forests of the Carmel, public pressure on the government and anger mounted over decades of neglect of the Fire and Rescue Service.
State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss said he would soon publish a “grave” report on the shortcomings that led to the present state of the service. He was “only sorry” that warnings about the dangers that became evident in recent days had been disregarded by the authorities.
Magen David Adom officials said 33 people suffering from fire-related injuries were evacuated to hospitals during the four-day blaze.
Three of the injured – including Haifa police chief Asst.-Cmdr. Ahuva Tomer – were in critical condition, while three others were moderately hurt and the remainder lightly hurt.
Prof. Avi Pervolovski, a senior researcher at the Ministry of Agriculture’s Agricultural Research Organization, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday that it would take around 40 years for the Carmel forests to recover.
All of the estimated four to five million trees incinerated in the inferno will be replaced naturally, Pervolovski said, due to a fire-coping mechanism evolved by trees over millions of years, such as seeds that take flight during blazes and survive the flames, and underground branches that can also survive. But, he stressed, it will take decades for the forests to regain their natural heights.
“It will be a long time before the view we were used to in the Carmel will return,” Pervolovski said.
“Experts knew that this was the most likely area for a fire of this type,” he added.
At 5 p.m. on Sunday, police notified residents of the worst-hit area that they could return to their homes in Nir Etzion, Ein Hod, Ein Hud and Kibbutz Beit Oren.
Emergency officials said 250 homes suffered extensive damage, mostly in Ein Hod and Beit Oren. Live TV broadcasts carried images of shocked residents returning to Ein Hod and inspecting blackened homes.
The government has estimated that around 70 homes will have to be torn down and rebuilt, and allocated funds for mobile homes for displaced residents...
Obama’s Iran failure
From an Op-ed in Ynet News, 5 December 2010, by Shoula Romano Horing:
Unlike Arab leaders, American president fails to understand scope of Iranian threat
For the last two years President Obama has been obsessing with “engaging” the Muslim world while ignoring the “moderates” in the Islamic countries who have been imploring the US to stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.
For two years President Obama and his administration have fabricated a mythical argument that progress on the Israeli–Palestinian issue through the stopping of settlement construction will help get the “moderate” Arab nations in the region like Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf State, Egypt and Jordan on board in stopping Iran.
But the confidential documents from US embassies made public on WikiLeaks reveal that those countries have already been on board, by hounding and begging the Obama administration to take military action, including airstrikes and the use of ground forces, against the Iranians
Moreover, while Obama was wasting time and personally orchestrating public confrontations with Israel over the settlement issue and the creation of a Palestinian state, it seems that Arab Sunni leaders, in private communications with US officials, did not even mention the settlements or the Palestinian issue as their main urgent concern. As one Middle East expert from Cairo told the Los Angeles Times, the official stance in the Middle East led by Arab Sunni states has always been” that it is Iran and not Israel that poses the main threat to the region.”
According to WikiLeaks, Saudi Arabian King Abdullah urged the US to attack ”evil” Iran, saying that “it is necessary to cut the head of the snake.” King Hamad of Bahrain was quoted in 2009 as saying ”the Iranian nuclear program must be terminated by whatever means necessary. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.” Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed urged the US not to appease or engage Tehran, referring to it as an “existential threat” and stating that “Ahmadinejad is Hitler.”
Iran is not Soviet Union
It appears that Arab leaders agree with Prime Minster Netanyahu‘s assessment that Iran is the main threat to peace and stability in the Middle East and not the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and that economic sanctions may hurt Iran but military action is the only way to stop it.
It seems that Obama chooses to ignore the concerns about Iran from his friends, and feels compelled to occupy himself with sideshows like the Israeli-Palestinian issue and “settlements” because he does not understand the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran. Obama does not believe in a military solution because he believes it is possible to “contain” Iran as the US contained the Soviet Union. But he does not understand that contrary to the Communist leaders, Iranian leaders are not “rational “adversaries.
To understand Iran’s ambitions it is necessary to understand Iran’s religious ideology. The Iranian regime believes that the right religion for humanity is Islam and the right sect of Islam is Shiite and not Sunni. Iran’s ultimate aim is to establish global Islamic rule, a new Islamic empire, but this time under Shiite leadership.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated in the past his belief that amidst the chaos of a catastrophic war, the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, would make his prophesied Messianic return and establish new order where the whole world would convert to Shiite Islam. This belief lies at the heart of Iran’s ambition to spread its influence and acquire nuclear weapons and this is the reason such ambition is dangerous not only for Israel but for Sunni Arab countries, Europe and the world.
Acquiring nuclear capability would give Iranian leadership even more room for reckless and aggressive foreign policy.
The Sunni Arabs understand the Iranian Shiite ambitions for regional hegemony and the threat to their survival, even though Obama does not. The Israeli government should stop participating in the sideshows of Obama and refuse any requests for a settlement freeze or negotiations over a future Palestinian state until the Iranian threat is eliminated.
Unlike Arab leaders, American president fails to understand scope of Iranian threat
For the last two years President Obama has been obsessing with “engaging” the Muslim world while ignoring the “moderates” in the Islamic countries who have been imploring the US to stop Iran’s development of nuclear weapons.
For two years President Obama and his administration have fabricated a mythical argument that progress on the Israeli–Palestinian issue through the stopping of settlement construction will help get the “moderate” Arab nations in the region like Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf State, Egypt and Jordan on board in stopping Iran.
But the confidential documents from US embassies made public on WikiLeaks reveal that those countries have already been on board, by hounding and begging the Obama administration to take military action, including airstrikes and the use of ground forces, against the Iranians
Moreover, while Obama was wasting time and personally orchestrating public confrontations with Israel over the settlement issue and the creation of a Palestinian state, it seems that Arab Sunni leaders, in private communications with US officials, did not even mention the settlements or the Palestinian issue as their main urgent concern. As one Middle East expert from Cairo told the Los Angeles Times, the official stance in the Middle East led by Arab Sunni states has always been” that it is Iran and not Israel that poses the main threat to the region.”
According to WikiLeaks, Saudi Arabian King Abdullah urged the US to attack ”evil” Iran, saying that “it is necessary to cut the head of the snake.” King Hamad of Bahrain was quoted in 2009 as saying ”the Iranian nuclear program must be terminated by whatever means necessary. The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.” Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed urged the US not to appease or engage Tehran, referring to it as an “existential threat” and stating that “Ahmadinejad is Hitler.”
Iran is not Soviet Union
It appears that Arab leaders agree with Prime Minster Netanyahu‘s assessment that Iran is the main threat to peace and stability in the Middle East and not the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and that economic sanctions may hurt Iran but military action is the only way to stop it.
It seems that Obama chooses to ignore the concerns about Iran from his friends, and feels compelled to occupy himself with sideshows like the Israeli-Palestinian issue and “settlements” because he does not understand the dangers of a nuclear armed Iran. Obama does not believe in a military solution because he believes it is possible to “contain” Iran as the US contained the Soviet Union. But he does not understand that contrary to the Communist leaders, Iranian leaders are not “rational “adversaries.
To understand Iran’s ambitions it is necessary to understand Iran’s religious ideology. The Iranian regime believes that the right religion for humanity is Islam and the right sect of Islam is Shiite and not Sunni. Iran’s ultimate aim is to establish global Islamic rule, a new Islamic empire, but this time under Shiite leadership.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated in the past his belief that amidst the chaos of a catastrophic war, the 12th Imam, the Mahdi, would make his prophesied Messianic return and establish new order where the whole world would convert to Shiite Islam. This belief lies at the heart of Iran’s ambition to spread its influence and acquire nuclear weapons and this is the reason such ambition is dangerous not only for Israel but for Sunni Arab countries, Europe and the world.
Acquiring nuclear capability would give Iranian leadership even more room for reckless and aggressive foreign policy.
The Sunni Arabs understand the Iranian Shiite ambitions for regional hegemony and the threat to their survival, even though Obama does not. The Israeli government should stop participating in the sideshows of Obama and refuse any requests for a settlement freeze or negotiations over a future Palestinian state until the Iranian threat is eliminated.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Wildfire in Israel: Firefighters face 'wall of flames'
From Ynet News, 4 December 2010*:
Forces fighting wildfire near Hai-Bar nature reserve on Mount Carmel receive reinforcement after running out of water. 'The flames are 15-20 meters high,' their commander reports. Fire and rescue commissioner: It'll take a day or two to contain fire
Firefighters on Saturday night continued their efforts to contain a wildfire on Israel's Mount Carmel, which has claimed the lives of 41 people since it broke out on Thursday morning. The forces were aided throughout the day by firefighting aircraftsent from many countries across the world.
"At this point we have reached the best situation since the fire began," said Israel Fire and Rescue Commissioner Shimon Romach. "We are still not talking about controlling the fire.
It will take us a day or two and then we'll still have the final extinguishing work, so there is a lot of work ahead."
Live: Ynet's Yoav Zitun and Roee Idan with firefighters
The wildfire has so far burnt some 50,000 dunam (12,300 acres) of land. The firefighting operations continued Saturday night in the Hai-Bar animal and nature reserve near Haifa and west of Haifa University. Fire was also raging near a garbage site in the village of Usfiya and in the western part of Dalyat al-Carmel.
Four firefighting teams operating in the Hai-Bar area ran out of water on Saturday evening and were forced to pull back before getting reinforcement. "The fire is 15-20 meters (50-65 feet) high – a wall of flames," their commander reported.
"We are fighting fire from three directions," he said. An Israel Air Force unmanned aerial vehicle was reporting of the flame's progress to an Israel Defense Forces officer stationed in the area with the firefighters, who continued to request more and more water.
Israel on fire - NASA satellite image (Photo: AP)
Boaz Rakia of the firefighting services reported earlier of "several areas where the fire is raging". He said that "fires are still erupting from time to time, for example in the Ein Hod and Nir Etzion areas. The fire died down there during the day, but there are still places where it hasn't been completely extinguished. A sudden gust of wind could ignite the fire again. Our people are in those places to provide a response."
Some of the residents of Ein Hod and Nir Etzion chose to remain in their communities despite a police evacuation order, and are patrolling the houses in a bid to prevent plunder.
Internal security minister 'not optimistic'
Hezy Levy, a spokesman for Haifa's firefighting services, expressed cautious optimism on Saturday evening, saying that "the battle will be relaunched tomorrow with renewed forces. Some 400 firefighters are expected to arrive from their homes all freshened up, and the aerial activity will resume as well."
Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, on the other hand, said during a press briefing at the command post at Haifa University that he remains "not optimistic".
"My working assumption is that it will take a few more days. The fleet of planes which will join us tomorrow will provide real aid. You must remember that we hardly engage in fire extinguishing at night."
Carmel forest before fire (Photo: Dafna Meroz)
IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi spoke of more than 25 different aircraft which had arrived from various countries. "The weather forecast for tonight is slightly better," he said. "The massive operation of hundreds of tons of water being thrown every hour and dozens of tons of material are eventually leading to the desired income. We'll defeat this fire. It will take a day or two more, and we will then draw the conclusions."
Meanwhile, the police have arrested a 16-year-old boy and his 14-year-old brother from the Druze village of Usfiya on suspicion of negligence which started the major fire. The two suspects' mother claimed that her sons were in school when the fire broke out and expressed her hope that they would be released from custody soon.
"At this stage we are talking about negligence and nothing more," said Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen. "There have been several cases of arson in the northern district and we have appointed a special investigation team."
*Ahiya Raved, Yoav Zitun, Adi Sardas and Roni Sofer contributed to this report
Forces fighting wildfire near Hai-Bar nature reserve on Mount Carmel receive reinforcement after running out of water. 'The flames are 15-20 meters high,' their commander reports. Fire and rescue commissioner: It'll take a day or two to contain fire
Firefighters on Saturday night continued their efforts to contain a wildfire on Israel's Mount Carmel, which has claimed the lives of 41 people since it broke out on Thursday morning. The forces were aided throughout the day by firefighting aircraftsent from many countries across the world.
"At this point we have reached the best situation since the fire began," said Israel Fire and Rescue Commissioner Shimon Romach. "We are still not talking about controlling the fire.
It will take us a day or two and then we'll still have the final extinguishing work, so there is a lot of work ahead."
Live: Ynet's Yoav Zitun and Roee Idan with firefighters
The wildfire has so far burnt some 50,000 dunam (12,300 acres) of land. The firefighting operations continued Saturday night in the Hai-Bar animal and nature reserve near Haifa and west of Haifa University. Fire was also raging near a garbage site in the village of Usfiya and in the western part of Dalyat al-Carmel.
Four firefighting teams operating in the Hai-Bar area ran out of water on Saturday evening and were forced to pull back before getting reinforcement. "The fire is 15-20 meters (50-65 feet) high – a wall of flames," their commander reported.
"We are fighting fire from three directions," he said. An Israel Air Force unmanned aerial vehicle was reporting of the flame's progress to an Israel Defense Forces officer stationed in the area with the firefighters, who continued to request more and more water.
Israel on fire - NASA satellite image (Photo: AP)
Boaz Rakia of the firefighting services reported earlier of "several areas where the fire is raging". He said that "fires are still erupting from time to time, for example in the Ein Hod and Nir Etzion areas. The fire died down there during the day, but there are still places where it hasn't been completely extinguished. A sudden gust of wind could ignite the fire again. Our people are in those places to provide a response."
Some of the residents of Ein Hod and Nir Etzion chose to remain in their communities despite a police evacuation order, and are patrolling the houses in a bid to prevent plunder.
Internal security minister 'not optimistic'
Hezy Levy, a spokesman for Haifa's firefighting services, expressed cautious optimism on Saturday evening, saying that "the battle will be relaunched tomorrow with renewed forces. Some 400 firefighters are expected to arrive from their homes all freshened up, and the aerial activity will resume as well."
Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, on the other hand, said during a press briefing at the command post at Haifa University that he remains "not optimistic".
"My working assumption is that it will take a few more days. The fleet of planes which will join us tomorrow will provide real aid. You must remember that we hardly engage in fire extinguishing at night."
Carmel forest before fire (Photo: Dafna Meroz)
IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi spoke of more than 25 different aircraft which had arrived from various countries. "The weather forecast for tonight is slightly better," he said. "The massive operation of hundreds of tons of water being thrown every hour and dozens of tons of material are eventually leading to the desired income. We'll defeat this fire. It will take a day or two more, and we will then draw the conclusions."
Meanwhile, the police have arrested a 16-year-old boy and his 14-year-old brother from the Druze village of Usfiya on suspicion of negligence which started the major fire. The two suspects' mother claimed that her sons were in school when the fire broke out and expressed her hope that they would be released from custody soon.
"At this stage we are talking about negligence and nothing more," said Police Commissioner Dudi Cohen. "There have been several cases of arson in the northern district and we have appointed a special investigation team."
*Ahiya Raved, Yoav Zitun, Adi Sardas and Roni Sofer contributed to this report
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Fires in Israel Rage
From a TIP press release, Dec. 3, 2010:
- 42 dead - toll expected to rise
- Turkey, Egypt and Jordan among those sending aid
- Massive Russian firefighting plane on the way
“We are talking about one of the worst disasters in the country's history. This is hard day for the entire nation,”Egypt, Jordan and Turkey were quick to offer help to the Jewish state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and thanked him for his country’s help.
said Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman.
"We very much appreciate this mobilization and I am certain that it will be an opening toward improving relations between our two countries, Turkey and Israel," Netanyahu said. It was his first conversation with the Turkish leader since the flotilla incident soured relations between the traditional allies earlier this year."
With several people listed in critical condition and others reported missing, the death toll was expected to rise.
Emergency services evacuated more than 15,000 people from their homes as flames swept through at least 5,000 acres of woodland. Police arrested two people, residents of a Druze village, on suspicion of setting fires. The Jerusalem Post said they were detained after being seen hurling Molotov cocktails in a forest on a Carmel mountain hilltop.
Israelis watched helplessly as their homes were destroyed by flames hundreds of feet high. Firefighters said one village was burnt to the ground.
The IDF sent soldiers and equipment, including helicopters, bulldozers, medics and army units to combat the blaze. More help came from Greece, Bulgaria which sent 100 firefighters, Spain, Azerbaijan, Romania Russia, Cyprus, France and Britain. The United States also offered aid. Israel is better known for sending its own rescue teams and medical personnel to other countries to help in their disaster-relief efforts.
"The Russians are sending and we are waiting for the biggest firefighting plane in the world... an Antonov with huge firefighting capacity," Lieberman told Israel Radio.
One of the main country's highways was closed as trees smoldered and smoke billowed toward the Mediterranean coastline and flames closed in on a hotel and a spa south of the city."The size of the fire is huge, the wind is very strong and there is a problem accessing the mountains and valleys," said Yoram Levi, a spokesman for Israel's fire and rescue service. "We don't have big aircraft that can carry a large amount of water. It is not enough for a large-scale fire."
“As rescuers and firefighters continue in their work, the United States is acting to help our Israeli friends respond to the disaster,” U.S. President Barak Obama said at a candle-lighting ceremony on Thursday marking the Jewish Chanukah holiday.
Jewish organizations in the U.S. and beyond have launched campaigns to help the victims. The Jewish National Fund, which planted a large percentage of Israel’s forests, called for public support.
American firefighters are on alert to join the operation. The Israel Emergency Volunteers Project will coordinate any call up for the volunteers who have been fully trained under the auspices of the EVP.
The Israeli cabinet met on Friday to discuss the crisis with questions being asked about Israel’s preparedness for such disasters.
Friday, December 03, 2010
At least 40 dead on fire-engulfed bus in North Israel
From JPOST.COM, 12 December 2010, by YAAKOV LAPPIN:
Fire-fighting crews, planes attempt to control fire in brush-covered Carmel area amidst heavy winds; over 6,000 dunams burned; Damon Prison, University of Haifa evacuated.
The majority of the 40 people burned to death in a bus caught up in the Carmel forest fires were prison wardens en route to the Damon prison.
The wardens were meant to assist in the evacuation of some 500 prisoners from the facility, situated near Kibbutz Beit Oren, when their vehicle became engulfed in fast moving flames which had spread to the narrow mountain road linking Atlit to Kibbutz Bet Oren.
A firefighter spokesman said the fire had traveled 1500 meters in less than three minutes, adding, "the bus had no chance. They tried to escape but were burned alive. It was a horrific scene."
The spokesman added at the fire was very far from the road on which the bus was travelling when it first set off towards the prison, but had spread far faster than expected.
Shimon Romach. Fire and Rescue Commissioner, added that the firefighting operation would be limited to ground forces after sunset, since fire planes cannot be used at night. "I don't think we will get control of this tonight," he added.
Thousands of dunam have gone up in flames in the Carmel forest between Haifa University and Ussafiya, and it remains unclear how the incident will end at this stage
Police described the incident as a "major disaster. Many of the dead are from the security forces, and include civilians. The fire is continuing to spread and is endangering many areas....
Fire-fighting crews, planes attempt to control fire in brush-covered Carmel area amidst heavy winds; over 6,000 dunams burned; Damon Prison, University of Haifa evacuated.
The majority of the 40 people burned to death in a bus caught up in the Carmel forest fires were prison wardens en route to the Damon prison.
The wardens were meant to assist in the evacuation of some 500 prisoners from the facility, situated near Kibbutz Beit Oren, when their vehicle became engulfed in fast moving flames which had spread to the narrow mountain road linking Atlit to Kibbutz Bet Oren.
A firefighter spokesman said the fire had traveled 1500 meters in less than three minutes, adding, "the bus had no chance. They tried to escape but were burned alive. It was a horrific scene."
The spokesman added at the fire was very far from the road on which the bus was travelling when it first set off towards the prison, but had spread far faster than expected.
Shimon Romach. Fire and Rescue Commissioner, added that the firefighting operation would be limited to ground forces after sunset, since fire planes cannot be used at night. "I don't think we will get control of this tonight," he added.
Thousands of dunam have gone up in flames in the Carmel forest between Haifa University and Ussafiya, and it remains unclear how the incident will end at this stage
Police described the incident as a "major disaster. Many of the dead are from the security forces, and include civilians. The fire is continuing to spread and is endangering many areas....
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Fatah declares refusal to recognize Israel as Jewish state
From JPost, 27 Nov 2010, by KHALED ABU TOAMEH:
The statement said that the Fatah council was categorically opposed to proposals for a land swap between Israel and the Palestinians...
The Fatah leaders said they supported Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s policies, especially with regards to the peace process with Israel. “The council salutes President Mahmoud Abbas for adhering to the basic rights, first and foremost the right of return for Palestinian refugees,” the statement said. “Also, the council salutes President Abbas for standing up against pressure aimed at resuming the peace talks without achieving the demands of the Palestinians.”
...Abbas ...also ruled out the possibility of returning to the negotiating table without a full cessation of construction in settlements and east Jerusalem.
...An Israeli government official on Saturday night called on the Palestinians to resume direct negotiations without any preconditions. ...
The Fatah Revolutionary Council concluded its fifth convention in Ramallah over the weekend by declaring its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
...“The council affirms its rejection of the so-called Jewish state or any other formula that could achieve this goal,” said a statement issued by the council...The statement said that the Fatah council was categorically opposed to proposals for a land swap between Israel and the Palestinians...
The Fatah leaders said they supported Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s policies, especially with regards to the peace process with Israel. “The council salutes President Mahmoud Abbas for adhering to the basic rights, first and foremost the right of return for Palestinian refugees,” the statement said. “Also, the council salutes President Abbas for standing up against pressure aimed at resuming the peace talks without achieving the demands of the Palestinians.”
...Abbas ...also ruled out the possibility of returning to the negotiating table without a full cessation of construction in settlements and east Jerusalem.
...An Israeli government official on Saturday night called on the Palestinians to resume direct negotiations without any preconditions. ...
“I would ask the Palestinians the following question: If the Jewish state is fundamentally illegitimate in your eyes, what sort of peace are you offering us?”
“It is clear that their refusal to recognize the Jewish state’s legitimacy is the true obstacle to peace and reconciliation...” ...
UN Goldstone Committee Head Resigns
From an Eye-on-the-UN Press Release, December 1, 2010 by Anne Bayefsky:
Christian Tomuschat, who headed a UN committee charged with implementing the Goldstone Report, has reportedly resigned.
He had been appointed by UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay.
Tomuschat’s credentials were questioned earlier this year, in a July 14th, 2010 article by Anne Bayefsky.
Tomuschat’s resignation is the second blow to the credibility of the UN’s efforts to implement the Goldstone report. Following Bayefsky’s July article, the UN secretariat official whom Pillay had assigned to coordinate the Tomuschat committee’s activities, Ahmed Motala, was removed from the case.
In July, Bayefsky pointed out that Tomuschat and the other two members of his committee were tainted by their close affiliation with an NGO which had been deeply involved with the Human Rights Council’s campaign to vilify Israel.
Bayefsky’s article also revealed that the UN staffer Motala appointed to work with Tomuschat doubled as an anti-Israel blogger. In the midst of the Gaza war he had written that Israel targeted Palestinian civilians in order to impress voters. The Tomuschat committee staffer wrote “What better way to gain the support of the Israeli electorate than to…kill innocent civilians”
On July 15 Jerusalem Post correspondent, Benjamin Wienthal, revealed prior statements by Tomuschat that indicated deep prejudices on the very issues he had been assigned to tackle. Wienthal reported in the Weekly Standard and the Jerusalem Post that in 2007 Tomuschat told a German newspaper that Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin was “as ruthless as the attacks of terrorists.” Later in July, Wienthal reported that Tomuschat had once provided legal advice to Yasser Arafat’s PLO.
Last month, UN Watch reported on further examples of Tomuschat bias.
Tomuschat’s resignation ought to further undermine the credibility of the report he submitted to the Council in September. In his report Tomuschat repeated the odious claim that Israel engaged in “violence against civilians as part of a deliberate policy.” Tomuschat’s report went on to criticize Israel’s legal system for failing to mount a witch hunt for “officials at the highest levels.”
Referring to a Hamas internal “investigation,” in which Hamas exonerated itself from all wrongdoing, Tomuschat’s team could only conclude that it “is not in a position to ascertain the veracity of any of these assertions.”
Following that report, the Human Rights Council reappointed Tomuschat and his other two committee members, Param Cumaraswamy and Mary Davis. They have been charged with producing yet another report by next March.
Unfortunately, many other UN authority figures, selected precisely because of their history of anti-Israel and anti-Western bias, remain.
For further information see EYEontheUN’s list of current UN authorities.
Christian Tomuschat, who headed a UN committee charged with implementing the Goldstone Report, has reportedly resigned.
He had been appointed by UN High Commissioner Navi Pillay.
Tomuschat’s credentials were questioned earlier this year, in a July 14th, 2010 article by Anne Bayefsky.
Tomuschat’s resignation is the second blow to the credibility of the UN’s efforts to implement the Goldstone report. Following Bayefsky’s July article, the UN secretariat official whom Pillay had assigned to coordinate the Tomuschat committee’s activities, Ahmed Motala, was removed from the case.
In July, Bayefsky pointed out that Tomuschat and the other two members of his committee were tainted by their close affiliation with an NGO which had been deeply involved with the Human Rights Council’s campaign to vilify Israel.
Bayefsky’s article also revealed that the UN staffer Motala appointed to work with Tomuschat doubled as an anti-Israel blogger. In the midst of the Gaza war he had written that Israel targeted Palestinian civilians in order to impress voters. The Tomuschat committee staffer wrote “What better way to gain the support of the Israeli electorate than to…kill innocent civilians”
On July 15 Jerusalem Post correspondent, Benjamin Wienthal, revealed prior statements by Tomuschat that indicated deep prejudices on the very issues he had been assigned to tackle. Wienthal reported in the Weekly Standard and the Jerusalem Post that in 2007 Tomuschat told a German newspaper that Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Sheikh Yassin was “as ruthless as the attacks of terrorists.” Later in July, Wienthal reported that Tomuschat had once provided legal advice to Yasser Arafat’s PLO.
Last month, UN Watch reported on further examples of Tomuschat bias.
Tomuschat’s resignation ought to further undermine the credibility of the report he submitted to the Council in September. In his report Tomuschat repeated the odious claim that Israel engaged in “violence against civilians as part of a deliberate policy.” Tomuschat’s report went on to criticize Israel’s legal system for failing to mount a witch hunt for “officials at the highest levels.”
Referring to a Hamas internal “investigation,” in which Hamas exonerated itself from all wrongdoing, Tomuschat’s team could only conclude that it “is not in a position to ascertain the veracity of any of these assertions.”
Following that report, the Human Rights Council reappointed Tomuschat and his other two committee members, Param Cumaraswamy and Mary Davis. They have been charged with producing yet another report by next March.
Unfortunately, many other UN authority figures, selected precisely because of their history of anti-Israel and anti-Western bias, remain.
For further information see EYEontheUN’s list of current UN authorities.
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Arab states' concerns about Iran's nuclear program are revealled
From Washington Post, Monday, November 29, 2010; by Janine Zacharia:
TEL AVIV - Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu expressed hope Monday that U.S. diplomatic cables revealing that several Arab states share his country's concern about Iran's nuclear weapons program could build momentum for tougher international action against the effort.
"More and more states, governments and leaders in the Middle East and the wider region and the world believe [Iran] is the fundamental threat," Netanyahu said, referring to disclosures in cables released by the Web site WikiLeaks. According to the cables, some leaders, including Saudi King Abdullah, have advocated using military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program.
"There's a gap between what they say privately and publicly," Netanyahu said at an annual gathering of the Tel Aviv Journalists' Association. Regional leaders read publicly from one "script" that says the "greatest threat is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Netanyahu said. "But in reality, leaders understand that this narrative is bankrupt...."
...The leaked documents show that "the entire world, not just Israel, is panicked over the Iranian nuclear program," wrote Sever Plocker, a commentator for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.
The leak, he said, "strengthens the main message" of the United States and Israel that "Iran poses the greatest clear and present danger to the stability of the world, and the world has to act to remove this malignant tumor."
...Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and an adviser to Netanyahu on Israeli-U.S. relations, said the notion that the United States could not take tougher action on Iran without first moving forward on the Israeli-Palestinian front was undermined by the WikiLeaks disclosures...
TEL AVIV - Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu expressed hope Monday that U.S. diplomatic cables revealing that several Arab states share his country's concern about Iran's nuclear weapons program could build momentum for tougher international action against the effort.
"More and more states, governments and leaders in the Middle East and the wider region and the world believe [Iran] is the fundamental threat," Netanyahu said, referring to disclosures in cables released by the Web site WikiLeaks. According to the cables, some leaders, including Saudi King Abdullah, have advocated using military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program.
"There's a gap between what they say privately and publicly," Netanyahu said at an annual gathering of the Tel Aviv Journalists' Association. Regional leaders read publicly from one "script" that says the "greatest threat is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," Netanyahu said. "But in reality, leaders understand that this narrative is bankrupt...."
...The leaked documents show that "the entire world, not just Israel, is panicked over the Iranian nuclear program," wrote Sever Plocker, a commentator for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.
The leak, he said, "strengthens the main message" of the United States and Israel that "Iran poses the greatest clear and present danger to the stability of the world, and the world has to act to remove this malignant tumor."
...Zalman Shoval, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and an adviser to Netanyahu on Israeli-U.S. relations, said the notion that the United States could not take tougher action on Iran without first moving forward on the Israeli-Palestinian front was undermined by the WikiLeaks disclosures...
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