Activism

Palestinian Authority carries out mass arrests across West Bank, including journalists and opposition activists

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Palestinian Authority in the service of Israel

 
Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association considers the campaign of political arrests launched by the Palestinian Authority security apparatus in the occupied West Bank since Tuesday, September 9, 2012 to be deeply dangerous. Addameer has documented that the Preventive Security and General Intelligence are waging a campaign of arrests in several provinces in the West Bank and over 60 Palestinians, including released prisoners, writers and journalists, and youth activists, have been imprisoned.
 
Freedom Theatre co-founder Zakaria Zubeidi refuses to consume food and water or speak after a Palestinian Authority judge approved the extension of his detention without trial or charge.
 
Ramallah— Rumors have begun to fly in connection to the potential success of an international campaign enacted by local and international Palestinian activists against the Palestinian Authority’s imprisonment of Zakaria Zubeidi, co-founder of the Jenin Freedom Theater. It was until today believed that the world-renowned Freedom Theater was fated to soon bear witness to the death of its co-founder, who has been on hunger strike since Sunday 9 September against his indefinite incarceration in the PA administered Jericho prison without charge or trial. Zubeidi, a former leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, renounced armed resistance in 2006, choosing instead to combat the Israeli occupation through culture, theatre and art.
 
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The arrests of scores of Hamas members in the occupied West Bank are unrelated to increasing tensions with Fatah, a Palestinian Authority official said Thursday.  Security forces spokesman Adnan Dmeiri told Ma’an that the mass arrests a day earlier were approved through legal channels and not based on the detainees’ political views. ”The Hamas leadership is attempting to threaten Palestinian civil peace through its alliance with chaos, which is clear from Hamas’ statements in Gaza,” Dmeiri said. 
 
Qassem: PA arrest campaigns protect the occupation
Professor Abdul Sattar Qassem stated that PA political arrests against the Palestinian people in the West and Hamas members in particular, came as a protection of the Israeli occupation.
 

The prisoners Committee: re-arrest of liberated prisoners is a betrayal
The prisoners Committee for the National and Islamic Forces condemned the PA brutal arrest campaign in the West Bank against a large number of released prisoners from Israeli jails.

 
The security services in the occupied West Bank have detained more than 60 Palestinians with political backgrounds, including writers, journalists and activists, Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights (DAHR) said on Thursday. At least 35 of those held are former prisoners who served long sentences in Israeli jails; most are affiliated to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
 
On Tuesday, October 18, 2012, as Palestinian hunger strikers Samer al-Barq, Hassan Safadi and Ayman Sharawna struggle for their lives within Israeli prisons, the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank launched a campaign of arrests throughout the area, rounding up 60 political activists, including youth organizers, journalists, writers and former political prisoners. The arrest totalhas now risen to 114 and none of the detainees have been released. Act today to demand immediate freedom for the arrestees!

http://samidoun.ca/2012/09/take-action-demand-freedom-for-palestinians-arrested-by-the-pa/ 

Land Theft & Destruction / Ethnic Cleansing / Apartheid

The Israeli Occupation Authorities (IOA) handed, on Wednesday, demolition orders against two houses and a Palestinian shop in the town of Silwan, south of Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.

 
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli authorities issued orders on Wednesday to confiscate 60 dunams of land in Wadi Fukin village west of Bethlehem, local officials said. Ahmad Sukkar, head of the village council, told Ma’an that Israeli authorities issued confiscation orders for land belonging to local farmers Rashad Manasrah and Goma Yoused Assaf. The land areas set to be confiscated are planted with trees and vegetables, with farmers tending them daily.  Wadi Fukin is located next to Israel’s separation wall and is overlooked by Betar Ilit settlement.
 

Settlers Steal Palestinian Lands Near Bethlehem
A number of armed extremist Israeli settlers illegally confiscated, on Thursday, six Dunams of privately-owned Palestinian lands, south of Al-Khader, near the West Bank city of Bethlehem. 

 

Al Walaja – A community soon to be surrounded by the Apartheid Wall
The village of Al Walaja in the Bethlehem governate will soon have its incredible beauty crushed by the surrounding Apartheid Wall. The Israeli occupation and restrictions have also negatively impacted the village population.

 
Move contravenes 2008 High Court ruling that conditioned closing of Ras Khamis crossing on the expansion of Shoafat refugee camp’s only other checkpoint.
 
The Palestinian Authority is confiscating privately-owned agricultural land in the West Bank to build industrial parks.

http://electronicintifada.net/content/leaked-documents-show-pa-outsourced-palestinian-land-and-rights-turkish-firm/11680?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+electronicIntifadaPalestine+%28Electronic+Intifada+%3A+Palestine+News%29 

 

Raed Salah: 200 Islamic waqf violated by the occupation in Jerusalem
Sheikh Raed Salah, the leader of the Islamic Movement in 1948 occupied Palestine, said that the Israeli occupation is trying to obliterate the Palestinian historical and religious heritage.

 

London: Singapore church and US TV held parties against Aqsa in Jerusalem
The Arab organization for human rights in Britain said a church in Singapore and a Christian TV channel in the US orgnized parties promoting for the building of the alleged Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

 

Hamas slams building of Israeli public toilets in Maghariba area
The Hamas Movement strongly denounced the Israeli occupation authority for building public toilets on part of the ruins of Al-Maghariba neighborhood near the Aqsa Mosque.

 
Palestinian Refugees
 

Syrian army raids Palestinian refugee camp
Pro-state media says camp for “terrorists” busted as dozens of people are killed by “explosion” in country’s northeast.

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — At least 18 Palestinians were killed Thursday and their bodies displayed publicly in Damascus, PLO officials in the capital’s largest refugee camp said.  The PLO office in Yarmouk said the Syrian regime “committed a massacre” against Palestinians in the camp. Bodies were found mutilated and charred, it said. PLO secretary-general Yasser Abed Rabbo denounced the killings. ”We reject any justification or allegations invoked by the Syrian regime army about this massacre which includes torture, killing, and assassination,”Abed Rabbo said. 
 
The Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) accused the Syrian government on Thursday of killing 18 Palestinians in a Damascus refugee camp. The Syrian government “committed a massacre”, said a statement from a PLO office at Damascus’ Yarmouk refugee camp. The PLO in Syria is affiliated with the Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank. “We reject any justification or allegations invoked by the Syrian regime army about this massacre which includes torture, killing, and assassination,” PLO secretary general Yasser Abdel Rabbo said.
 

“They shot my father in the head”: interview with survivor of Sabra and Shatila massacre, Moe Ali Nayel
A survivor of the 1982 Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon recounts the three days of horror in Beirut refugee camps.

 

On Friday 14th September 2012 demonstrators from the village of al-Masara gathered for their weekly demonstration against the occupation, where they were confronted by Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Situated approximately 13km southwest of Bethlehem, and close to the town of Beit Omar, Al-Masara is an agricultural village that faces great hardship due to the theft of the village’s land by Israeli settlers and the IOF; the expansion of the Apartheid Wall; and the village’s close proximity to the Gush Etzion settlement block.

 
American researcher uncovers recently declassified transcripts of conversations between Israeli and American officials during First Lebanon War.
 
Siege of Gaza
 
A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Mahmoud Ghozlan, has denied any intention to tighten the siege on the Gaza Strip. He made his statement in the context of discussions about the tunnels linking Gaza with Egypt, adding that the Brotherhood will neither be part of the blockade of Gaza nor a tool to strike against legitimate Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation.In an exclusive statement to Quds Press, Ghozlan explained that Egypt is working on replacing the tunnels with a full opening of the Rafah crossing, saying: “We want to allow everything that is needed to get through.” The head of the political bureau of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, and Gaza’s Prime Minister, Ismail Haniyeh, are visiting Cairo to discuss all the outstanding issues with the Egyptian government. “Solutions across all portfolios are possible,” said Mr Ghozlan. When asked if the “war” against the tunnels is part of the war against the resistance, Ghozlan said: “Never, we have nothing to do with this; the right to resist is guaranteed by international law, and every nation whose land has been occupied has the right to resist.” The people of Egypt will not hinder the Palestinians in this respect, he insisted.
 

Hamas delegation and Egyptian intelligence chief discuss end of siege
Hamas delegation headed by Khalid Meshaal met on Tuesday minister Raafat Shehata, Egyptian intelligence chief, at the intelligence headquarters in Cairo, to discuss the latest developments.

 
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — An Israeli official said Thursday that military authorities have approved the entry of 100 million shekels from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip to assist with a liquidity crisis, amid a host of measures to facilitate the entry and exit of goods at Gaza crossings. The Gaza Strip is under an Israeli land and sea blockade, and its sole border crossing not controlled by Israel, Egypt’s Rafah terminal, is not equipped for the passage of goods.
 
Israeli Terrorism
 
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Two Palestinian men were killed Wednesday when Israeli military forces shelled the al-Janeneh neighborhood in eastern Gaza, officials said Thursday. Ashraf al-Qidra, spokesman of Gaza health ministry, told Ma’an that ambulances transferred the dead and injured to Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital in Rafah. Israeli military aircraft forces shelled a car and killed Ashraf Salah, 38, and Anees Abu al-Aynaen, 22, who worked in the security forces of the Hamas government, locals told Ma’an. 
 

Youth Injured By Army Fire In Hebron
Palestinian medical sources reported, Wednesday, that Israeli soldiers invaded the Al-Fawwar refugee camp, in Hebron, in the southern part of the West Bank, shot and injured one Palestinian youth and kidnapped another resident.

 

Army Attacks Protesters In Jerusalem
Israeli soldiers attacked, on Tuesday evening, dozens of protesters in the Shu’fat refugee camp, in occupied East Jerusalem and fired gas bombs and rubber-coated metal bullets at them; the army also fired a number of gas bombs into nearby homes.

 
On Monday 17, September, six Israeli settlers from the illegal settlement of Itamar attacked three members of the Benijaber family, who were walking home to the Palestinian village of Aqraba from their olive groves. Maher Hashem Mostafa Benijaber reported that he, his brother Omar and cousin Hafed were set upon by six men, three of whom were armed with semi-automatic rifles. The attack occurred just before 7 p.m., around 600 metres from their home. The settlers punched and kicked the three men, as well as beat them with rocks and sticks. They also tried to block the path back to the village so Maher and his family could not escape.
 

Settlers Invade Palestinian Home In Hebron, Attack Family Members
A group of armed extremist Israeli settlers of the Avraham Avino illegal Israeli settlement, invaded on Wednesday a Palestinian home in the southern West Bank city of Hebron, and attacked two family members including an eight years old child.

 
Worries over violence against churches in Israel
After a series of attacks by vandals on Christian holy sites in Israel, normally tight-lipped Roman Catholic officials are beginning to speak out, publicly appealing to authorities to take a stronger stand against the violence.

 
Israeli Illegal Arrests / Detentions
 
Soldiers Kidnap Four, Including Two Children, Near Qalqilia
Israeli soldiers invaded, on Thursday at dawn, Kufr Qaddoum village, east of the northern West Bank city of Qalqilia, broke into several homes and kidnapped four residents, including two children.

 
HEBRON (Ma’an) — Four Palestinians were arrested overnight Tuesday in the West Bank, Israel’s army and locals said. Israeli forces raided al-Fawwar refugee camp and arrested Ahmad Attiya Abu Wardeh, locals said. Soldiers fired tear gas at residents, injuring Alaa al-Balati, 17, who was transferred to a hospital in nearby Yatta. Abed Khalik al-Taraweh was detained in the Hebron village of Tuffuh village, witnesses said. An Israeli army spokeswoman said that one person was arrested in al-Fawwar, one in Tuffuh and two people in the Ramallah village of Mazraa al-Qibliya.

http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=521512 

Israeli Occupation Authorities (IOA) renewed the house arrest for the third time in a row of the journalist and human rights activist Abdel Latif Ghaith, 70, from the occupied city of Jerusalem.

 
Hunger Strikers 
 
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The Palestinian Authority prisoner affairs minister said Thursday detainee Samer al-Barq was to be released after 122 days of hunger strike. Issa Qaraqe said that al-Barq’s family agreed to his departure to Egypt. Al-Barq will be transferred to a hospital in Egypt for treatment, the minister said. Al-Barq was on his 122nd day of hunger strike as the announcement came. Two other detainees, Hassan Safadi and Ayman Sharawna, have refused food for over 80 days.
 

Ailing Detainee To Be Moved To Egypt
Palestinian Minster of Detainee, Issa Qaraqe’, reported Thursday that arrangements are being conducted to transfer ailing hunger striking detainee, Samer al-Barq, to Egypt after a sharp decline in his health condition at a-Ramla Israeli Prison Clinic.

 
Other Prisoner News
 

PPS Demands Release Of Wounded Detainee

The Palestinian Prisoners Society (PPS) demanded Israel to release Kamal Salah Al-Husseini who, on September 9, was taken prisoner by Israeli soldiers during clashes that took place in occupied East Jerusalem; he was shot and wounded by the army prior to his arrest.

 
A former Palestinian prisoner tried to set herself on fire in central Ramallah Thursday after she was denied entry to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’s headquarters. Abeer Odeh, 30, was released from an Israeli prison in 2011 after Hamas and Israel struck a widely-publicized deal that resulted in the exchange of hundreds of Palestinian captives for one Israeli prisoner. Israel has not fully honored its end of the agreement, having re-arrested many of the prisoners released, contravening the deal’s terms.
 
Israeli Racism and Discrimination
 
Army says Bat Ayin settlement security chief’s order exceeds his authority; Soldier in response: ‘It felt just like apartheid, or things that recall dark times and the Holocaust – that you allow someone entry to a specific place based only on his religion.’
 

Petition: Social services budgets discriminate against Arabs
Advocacy groups petition High Court for new social services budgeting system, claiming that current one favors Jewish towns over Arab ones.

 

Pro-Israel ads suggesting Muslims are ‘savage’ set to arrive in NY subways next week, Philip Weiss
Pam Geller’s repulsive “Savage” ads that have appeared on San Francisco buses are coming east. Matt Flegenheimer reports in the New York Times: New Yorkers will soon encounter another potentially inflammatory rendering of Islam: an advertisement in the transit system that reads, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man.”  It concludes with the words, “Support Israel. Defeat Jihad,” wedged between two Stars of David. After rejecting the ads initially, then losing a federal court ruling on First Amendment grounds, theMetropolitan Transportation Authority said on Tuesday that the ads were expected to appear next week at 10 subway stations… Muneer Awad of CAIR says it’s legal to be a bigot; but there will be an assertive response by Muslims to dispel these vicious characterizations. From CAIR: “Muneer Awad, the executive director of [CAIR-NY], said the ads were an attempt to ‘define Muslims’ through hate speech.”

 
Activism / BDS
 
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — The transport workers union on Thursday said it would return to strike action, as it was not satisfied with measures taken by the Palestinian Authority to allay the strikes and protest rallies that rocked the West Bank in recent weeks. Union director Nasser Younis told Ma’an that transport workers will strike on Monday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and all day Wednesday. Younis said he decided to relaunch strikes after meeting with the PA transport ministry, as their demands had only been met in part. 
 
Rachel Corrie was a U.S. citizen and a human rights defender committed to ending Israel’s illegal demolition of Palestinian homes. According to the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions,Israel has demolished an estimated 27,000 Palestinian structures in Occupied Palestinian Territory since 1967.
 
Supporters of a pro-Palestinian student group are suing Rutgers University, saying the university improperly froze funds raised to help break the Israeli blockade of Gaza. The suit also alleges that the money was frozen “under pressure” from Rutgers Hillel and the Anti-Defamation League. The suit seeks redress for all 250 attendees at a Nov. 4, 2010, event at the Busch Campus Center in Piscataway sponsored by BAKA: Students United for Middle Eastern. The event raised $3,345 in support of “US Boat to Gaza,” an organization that planned to join a 2011 naval protest of Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip. The suit contends that the university froze the funds after heeding complaints by Hillel and the ADL challenging the legality of the Gaza “flotilla” and the tax-exempt status of the intended recipients.

An Irish parliamentary committee on trade relations has come out in unanimous support of a ban on imports from illegal Israeli settlements, The Irish Times reported Wednesday. The committee is about to write to the deputy head of government and the Foreign Affairs Minister Eamonn Gilmore to call for the implementation of the national ban.
 

Israeli settlement products are illegal, says European Parliament’s second biggest group, Michael Deas
The Socialists and Democrats (S&D) grouping issued its statement in response to the narrow defeat of an effort to block a new EU-Israel trade pact.

 
Professional BDS in South Africa overpowers pro-Israel lobby, says former AIPAC man, Adri Nieuwhof
Former AIPAC lobbyist says that the South African boycott, divestment and sanctions movement is overpowering the pro-Israel lobby.

 
In March 2003, the United States invaded Iraq, with South Korea being among the countries to dispatch its own army there. The Palestine Peace and Solidarity (PPS) group was formed in South Korea as a result of the anti-war movement in the same year. The group focused its efforts on raising awareness of the Palestinian struggle under Israeli occupation, and the Korean companies profiting from the occupation, which was highlighted in a August 2012 report on “Korea’s complicity in Israel’s occupation, colonialism and apartheid.” The Palestine Monitor spoke with one of the PPS’ activists about the group, the role of BDS in South Korea, and their own experiences in occupied Palestine.
 
Political Developments / Other News
 
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — President Mahmoud Abbas has instructed officials to “look for a new president,” a Palestinian official told Saudi newspaper al-Watan. Abbas reportedly made the announcement at a meeting of faction leaders in Ramallah. ”You have 10 days until I come back from the United States, and you must look for a new president,” Abbas said, according to an official who was at the meeting. The official told al-Watan that Abbas was frustrated by the frozen peace process with Israel and the impasse in national reconciliation. The president is also angry over the slogans chanted during recent protests across the West Bank against the rising cost of living, the official said.
 
GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — Mahmoud Abbas has no intention to resign and will remain president until the next elections, senior Fatah official Jamal Muhassen said Thursday.  Abbas was elected in democratic elections and will leave his post in a democratic way, Muhassan told Ma’an. On Wednesday, the Saudi newspaper al-Watan reported that Abbas had told faction leaders to find a new president in 10 days at a meeting in Ramallah. ”You have 10 days until I come back from the United States, and you must look for a new president,” Abbas said, according to an official who was at the meeting. Abbas has threatened to resign several times before. His democratic mandate expired in 2009 but has remained president in the absence of elections.
 
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — A top PLO official said Thursday that the one-state solution was just one of several options for the Palestinians, not an inevitable outcome.  Ahmad Qurai told Ma’an that “the one-state solution is one of the options the PA has, and not the only one. We will not stop talking about it unless the two-state solution is adopted.” Qurai’s remarks in favor of one state a week earlier to Israeli media had drawn criticism from his Fatah party, which largely supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  Responding to that criticism, Qurai said the one-state solution was once considered possible. He said that in 1969, Fatah officials called for a secular and democratic state for all. 
 

Palestinians ‘face fiscal crisis’
The World Bank says there is a ‘serious fiscal crisis’ in the Palestinian territories, with a $400m (£246m) budget shortfall, and calls on donors to act.

 

World Bank Grants P.A. $14.3 Million
The World Bank stated Wednesday that its transferred on September 12 the amount of $14.3 Million to the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, as part of a plan of the Investment Fund to help the P.A resolve its crisis and to help it build its devastated economy.

 

Palestinians Aim for ‘Nonmember State’ Status at U.N., JODI RUDOREN
Palestinians are returning to the General Assembly next week seeking largely symbolic “nonmember state” status, lamenting a “lost year” of no peace talks, expanding Israeli settlements and deteriorating economic conditions.

 
The Palestinian Authority will ask the United Nations to upgrade their status in the world body by year’s end, enabling them to pursue Israel through international courts, a senior Palestinian official said on Thursday. The request to become a non-member “observer state” rather than just an “observer entity”, would give the Palestinians the same UN rank as the Vatican, enhancing their legal rights at a time when peace negotiations with Israel have hit a wall.
 
BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Saudi Arabia supports President Mahmoud Abbas’ bid to seek recognition of a non-member state in the United Nations, a senior Fatah official said Thursday. Nabil Shaath met Saudi crown prince Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud during a recent trip to the Gulf country to recruit support for the initiative, a statement from his office said. Shaath was in Saudi with a Fatah delegation including Maj. Gen. Jabril Rajoub, Muhammad Shtayyeh and members of the party’s central committee. The statement said those officials discussed the international community’s stance on the UN initiative and recent Palestinian developments.  The delegation also met with the secretary-general Ehsan Din Ihsanoglu of the Organization of Islamic Conference who expressed his full support for the UN bid.
 
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas has formally protested a decision by Egypt’s prime minister to receive Hamas leader Ismail Haniya, a Palestinian official said on Wednesday. ”The Palestinian leadership and president Abbas are conducting contacts with the Egyptian leadership over the meeting between Egyptian Prime Minister Hisham Qandil and Hamas leader Ismail Haniya,” Saleh Raafat told the official Voice of Palestine radio station. Haniya, who serves as prime minister at the head of Hamas’s government in the Gaza Strip, met with Qandil in Cairo on Monday evening.
 
P.A To Reopen Embassy In Kuwait
Palestinian Foreign Minister, Riyadh Al-Maliki, stated Wednesday that the Palestinians embassy will be reopening its office in Kuwait for the first time since 22 years, and that the new ambassador will be submitting his papers to the Kuwaiti government next month.

 
NABLUS (Ma’an) — Palestinian Authority security forces arrested three armed Israeli soldiers in the northern West Bank city of Nablus on Thursday, officials said.  Police pulled over a red, Israeli-plated vehicle driving in central Nablus and discovered the soldiers, security sources told Ma’an. Weapons were also found in the vehicle.  The soldiers were taken to a police station in Nablus and were expected to be transferred to the Israeli side after coordination with a liaison office. 
 

Palestinians condemn Romney Mideast peace comment
A senior Palestinian official says Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is undermining hopes for peace and democracy in the Middle East.

 

Mideast Comments Could Complication a Romney Administration
Mitt Romney’s views on the Middle East and Iran may have already been well known, but comments of his that were captured on video at a fund-raiser could bring difficulties if he wins the presidency.

 

Barak meets Rahm Emanuel to discuss US-Israel ties
Defense minister meets former White House chief of staff in bid to smooth over discord between Washington, Jerusalem.

 

Pro-Israeli lobby group in U.S. thanks Obama for ‘steadfast’ support
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee thanked U.S. President Barack Obama and other elected leaders for “steadfast” support for the Jewish state, an Israeli newspaper reported on Wednesday.

 

Bill Knapp
“The last known American consultant to work on a Netanyahu campaign, in 2009, was actually culled from deep on the Obama bench — Bill Knapp, a member of the Obama national media team in 2008. Josh Isay, another Obama consultant, also worked on Netanyahu’s last campaign.”

 
Israel, the Middle East’s only nuclear power, will not attend a conference on creating a region free of nuclear weapons scheduled to take place in Finland, the head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) has said. The snub comes as a blow to Finland, which earlier this year sent representatives to Israel in a bid to convince the Jewish state to attend the meeting. Arab states also attempted to placate Israel so that it would attend by refraining from criticizing explicitly over its nuclear arsenal. Arab states, headed by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have long called for Israel to disarm its nuclear weapons, said to number at roughly 200 warheads.
 

Israeli strike on Iran may wreck Arab treaties: U.S. officials
Egypt and Jordan could annul their peace treaties with Israel if it carries out a preemptive strike against Iran, US officials have warned the Jewish state, an Israeli newspaper reported Thursday. Quoting a high-level Israeli official, Yediot Aharonot said Washington had warned the Jewish state that Arab leaders would not be able to control an angry public backlash if Israel were to mount an attack on Iran. The newspaper said the US official pointed to the violent response in several Middle Eastern countries to a film insulting Islam, saying: “Today the Arab leaders do not control their peoples, the streets control the leaders. “An Israeli strike is just what the Iranians need. The entire Arab and Muslim street will take to the streets to demonstrate,” the official said.

 

Palestinians not worried by Israel-Iran war
While neighboring Israel nervously braces for the possibility of war with arch-enemy Iran, Palestinians are greeting the crisis with a yawn.

 

Israel military holds largest snap drill in years
The Israeli military on Wednesday conducted its largest snap drill in years as tensions with Iran over its nuclear program rise and civil war in neighboring Syria rages.

 

Israel’s Maariv paper sold to hardline publisher
One of Israel’s main daily newspapers has been sold, placing the future of its 2,000 employees in jeopardy.

 
Analysis / Op-ed
 

Palestinians need a one-state solution, Ghada Karmi

Palestinian autonomy is an illusion. A plan B involving a struggle for equal rights would expose the reality of occupation by Israel. It is one year this week since the Palestinians applied for UN membership. President Mahmoud Abbas’s impassioned plea to the UN’s General Assembly for support of the We Palestinian case on 23 September 2011 won him much praise, even from his detractors. But it came to nothing, and no further Palestinian application for UN membership was made. Now, however, the statehood issue is back on the Palestinian agenda.
 
Palestinian cause is victim of Arab revolts, says David Miliband, Ian Black
Former foreign secretary expresses alarm at fading prospects for two-state solution to Middle East conflict. The prospects for a two-state solution to the bitter conflict in the Middle East are being undermined by “facts on the ground” created by Israel, Palestinian divisions and the continuing “convulsions” of the Arab spring, the former British foreign secretary David Miliband is warning. Miliband, speaking on Thursday, is the latest high-profile international figure to express alarm at the rapidly fading prospects for the creation of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel – for decades the only solution that has seemed either possible or practicable.

 
From the New York Times site today, here’s a photo of Palestinian youth in Shuafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem protesting the anti-Islam film. The Times identifies the photograph as one from “Israel.” A friend has left this comment on the Times site: Your headline mentions “Israel” and yet the only photo that seems related is an image from Shuafat refugee camp, which is in East Jerusalem, which is considered occupied Palestinian territory under international law. Though Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, no other government has recognized that move as legitimate. A news organization of your stature should be aware of these nuances, no matter how complicated the politics of the region may be. I suggest that you correct the headline.
 

Justice for Vittorio in Gaza, but Israeli impunity continues, Shahd Abusalama
My reflections on the verdict of Vik’s murderers which came as we were commemorating the 30th anniversary of Sabra and Shatila.

 
Deferring to Netanyahu, GARY LEUPP
Last Saturday on CBS’s “Meet the Press” (the longest-running series on U.S. television, dating back to 1947) veteran journalist David Gregory interviewed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu during “a special hour” on the theme of “Turmoil in the Middle East.” The show was mostly devoted to the global outrage sparked by the deliberately incendiary “movie” produced by the Egyptian-American Islamophobe Nakoula Bassely Nakoula, in particular the torching of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and death of four U.S. diplomats. But the segment featuring Netanyahu focused on the manifest difference between the Israeli leader and the U.S. president on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program.

 

Has David Miliband Changed His Spots?, Stuart Littlewood
Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) has been providing vital help to vulnerable Palestinian communities ever since the Sabra and Shatila massacre 30 years ago. Eyebrows therefore shot up when MAP announced that former foreign secretary David Miliband will be speaking at its Annual Gala Fundraising Dinner tomorrow (Thursday) held in the posh Sheraton Park Lane Hotel. It seems he’ll be talking about his visit to the West Bank and Gaza. Miliband will be forever remembered as the British foreign secretary who shamelessly groveled to Israel’s gangsters for forgiveness for their running the risk of arrest if they set foot in London.

 

Justice for All: Alexander Cockburn, Palestine, and US Media, Alison Weir
Longtime journalist Alexander Cockburn passed away on July 21st, an enormous loss. Cockburn was a brilliant, witty, and courageous opponent of falsehoods and injustice. He stood on the side of the oppressed, the weak, and the victimized – even those victims that many writers and human rights defenders chose to ignore. With his scathing intellect, engaging talent, far ranging knowledge, and quick humor, the Oxford-educated Cockburn could have become a celebrated, wealthy journalist – the kind whose lucrative articles are consistently published in top journals, whose best-selling books are reviewed widely throughout the media, and whose commentary is in demand by the top television and radio news programs.

 

Dispute over wine festival in Be’er Sheva mosque: ‘Muslim rage’ or Israeli hypocrisy?
Controversy erupted after local Arab residents complained that the Salut Wine and Beer Festival would be held on the grounds of a mosque-turned-museum. The public outcry from the festival-goers reveals both a fear of the ‘re-Islamification of Be’er Sheva,’ as well as a liberal approach that takes for granted the ways in which the state religion affects the daily lives of its non-Jewish citizens.
http://972mag.com/dispute-over-wine-festival-in-beer-sheva-mosque-muslim-rage-or-israeli-hypocrisy/56075/

Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s persistent claims that he is not meddling in the upcoming U.S. elections, a TV commercial that will air on select Florida networks on Thursday stars the Israeli leader. Released by Politico one day ahead of its scheduled broadcast, the ad features a bit from the prime minister’s recent speech, in which he criticizes the U.S. government for failing to establish sufficient “red lines” on Iran’s nuclear program.
 

The ‘Pro-Israel’ Network Behind the Innocence Video, Justin Raimondo
If someone had planned to upend US foreign policy — to utterly destroy the very basis [.pdf] of all our diplomats (and military personnel) have been working to achieve in the Middle East and throughout the Muslim world — they couldn’t have done a better job of it than whoever put together Innocence of Muslims.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/09/18/the-pro-israel-network-behind-the-innocence-video/ 

www.TheHeadlines.Org

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What can one say but it beggars belief.

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Stir up a hornets nest and someone will get stung.
Raise Palestinian anger to the boiling point, then say see, look, look what they have done.

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Jodi Rudoren writes in the NYT sept 20th 2012 on the PA’s United Nations non member observer state status “appeasing the Americans, the Palestinians do not plan to press for a vote before November 6th 2012, instead they will only begin drafting the resolution” Abbas should know the US will not be appeased, very strange that Abbas wanted to isolate and embarrass the US last year in the Security Council by having them use their veto, last year they were guaranteed failure but pressed ahead, this year they are guaranteed success yet they falter, what’s with these people?

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It is very sad to see what has become of the PLO.

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Most of the Palestinians I met there don’t make excuses for the PA. They hate the PA, know it’s essentially a Vichy sort of government, but have to deal with them. Today’s action is just what you’d expect from the PA.

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