Khaled Abu Toameh: How Jerusalem's Arabs Act Against Their Own Interests
Today, many Arabs in Jerusalem are not afraid to declare openly that they prefer to live under Israeli rule, and not under that of the Palestinian Authority or Hamas. The problem remains, however, that the overwhelming majority is still afraid of the radicals.A new type of settlement
What is needed is a strong Arab leadership that would not hesitate to stand up to the radicals and question their goals. Such a leadership would have to make it clear that there should be a complete separation between the political issues and the day-to-day affairs of Jerusalem's Arab population.
Until such leaders emerge, the Arabs in Jerusalem will, by boycotting the municipal elections, unfortunately continue to act against their own interests.
Privately Palestinian leaders in Mr Abbas’s orbit have toyed with admitting that, even if there is a deal with Israel, the refugees and their offspring will never return en masse to their old homes in Israel. With only 60,000 alive (8% of those who fled in 1948), there may soon be almost none left for the Israelis to allow home.Palestinian Suspects Admit to Brutal Murder of IDF Reserve Colonel
But leaving them put will do nothing to lessen the trouble they cause. Almost 70% of West Bank refugees already live outside camps. The refugee department of the Palestine Liberation Organisation, an umbrella group, is hoping Western countries will pay for decent new housing elsewhere. “We should settle the hills above Nablus with [Palestinian] refugees, not [Jewish] settlers,” says Said Salameh, the department’s head. A UN “beautification project”, installing swimming pools in Roman ruins and demolishing houses to create town squares, has raised spirits in some of the West Bank’s southern camps. So has a Qatari-funded housing project for refugees in Bethlehem. After 65 years of squalor, almost any new homes would be better.
The Shin Bet, Israel’s security service, has arrested two Arabs for the murder of IDF Col. (res.) Sraya Ofer. The attack occurred in the Jordan Valley early this past Friday morning.Netanyahu to Cabinet: ‘We Have Witnessed an Increase in Terrorist Actions in Recent Weeks’
The two men, Uda Farid Taleb, aged 18, and Bashir Ahmed Uda Haruv, aged 21, both from a village near Hebron, admitted they committed the murder, and implicated others during the investigation.
Addressing the discovery of a tunnel running from the Gaza Strip into Israel, the existence of which the IDF laid blame for on Hamas, Netanyahu said “an aggressive policy against terrorism, including preventive action, intelligence, initiated action, responsive action and, of course, Operation Pillar of Defense” has “led to the fact that this year has been the quietest in over a decade.”PA celebrates release of terrorist who killed French tourist
“However,” he continued, “we have witnessed an increase in terrorist actions in recent weeks.”
Khaled Asakra was one of the 26 prisoners who were released in the first group. Asakra was serving a life sentence for the murder of a 64 year-old French tourist, Annie Ley, whom he stabbed and killed in 1991.Former PA PM rejects Jewish gold medallion discovered near Western Wall
PA Minister of Prisoners' Affairs Issa Karake visited terrorist Asakra upon his release and presented him with an honorary plaque, which bears the PA symbol.
The day after the release of the terrorist who murdered a French citizen, the French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius signed an agreement with PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah granting a total of "24 million Euros" in aid from France to the PA. "€9,000,000 are direct aid to the Palestinian treasury," the official PA daily reported.
An underground walk toward Gaza
Edelstein revealed that the IDF had spotted the tunnel from the very beginning of its creation and that through a process requiring “the sort of determination I wish I could detail,” had charted its path and exposed it.It keeps tunneling, but Hamas doesn’t want escalation… yet
Calling the terrorists’ plans “ingenious,” Edelstein said that Hamas had used 500 tons of Israeli-supplied cement to build the tunnel, that there were others like it, and that their construction, crossing into Israeli territory, constituted “an extreme violation of the ceasefire,” which, he contended, Hamas had requested after Operation Pillar of Defense in November.
Yet make no mistake: Hamas has no interest in initiating a confrontation with Israel. Not right now, that is. On Sunday evening, Hamas’s Gaza Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh hinted that the Strip’s Islamist rulers are not interested in escalation. In a speech to the graduates of a Gaza police officers’ course, Haniyeh said his forces are also concerned about Egypt’s security, and will guard the border with Sinai. The Hamas prime minister knows that the unequivocal Egyptian demand from his organization and from Haniyeh himself is to avoid any military conflict with Israel, otherwise the Egyptians themselves will act against Hamas.IDF blames Hamas for ‘terror tunnel’ from Gaza to Israel
Still, it is not clear how long Hamas will continue to maintain the quiet against Israel.
Maj. Gen. Shlomo Turgeman, the Southern Command head, said the tunnel, “a violation of our sovereignty,” had been built using around 500 tons of cement that “Israel allowed in [to Gaza] for civilian well-being.” He warned that if Hamas used such a tunnel to carry out a terror attack against Israel, the Israeli response would “leave Gaza looking very different.”Hamas: Israel Trying to 'Justify the Blockade'
The tunnel, which began in Abbasan al-Saghira, a farming village near Khan Yunis, was described by officials as being 18 meters deep and 1,700 meters long. Officials estimate it took around a year to construct.
Hamas accused Israel on Sunday of "exaggerating things", after it was made public that IDF soldiers recently discovered a tunnel, built by Gaza terrorists, that led from Gaza to a nearby Israeli community. The 20-meter deep tunnel was lined with the concrete slabs that Israel, giving in to international pressure, had allowed into Gaza to enable the building of schools and other civilian structures.Assad: Loss of chemical weapons is blow to Syria's morale, political standing
By talking about the discovery of a tunnel, Israel was "trying to justify the blockade and the continuous aggression on the Gaza Strip," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said, according to the BBC.
Syrian President Bashar Assad told a number of guests gathered in his palace in Damascus recently that his country’s loss of chemical weapons resulted in a blow to its morale and political position.Key Syrian Rebel Group Turns Down Peace Talks
“There is no doubt that the loss of chemical weapons has resulted in a loss of morale and a political loss for Syria. Since 2003, Syria has demanded that the countries in the region dismantle their WMDs, and the chemical weapons were meant to be a bargaining chip in Syria’s hands in exchange for Israel dismantling its nuclear arsenal,” Lebanese Hezbollah identified newspaper Al-Akhbar reported Monday Assad as saying.
Syrian National Council says it won't attend peace talks in Geneva because the world has "left the murderer unpunished."Red Cross workers kidnapped in Syria
A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Damascus said seven of the group’s workers were kidnapped in northern Syria.Palestinians in Syria 'Eating Cats and Dogs'
Saleh Dabbakeh said gunmen abducted the team near the town of Saraqeb in Idlib province around 11:30 a.m. Sunday.
He said six of the people kidnapped are ICRC staff workers and one is a volunteer from the Syrian Red Crescent.
In his Friday sermon, an imam at the Palestinian Al-Yarmouk camp south of Damascus gave local residents permission to eat dead cats and dogs. The camp has been under siege for three months, the humanitarian situation there has severely deteriorated and the supply of food has not been steady, reports Shalom Toronto.50 Syria Militants Could Return to Wage Jihad in UK, Claims Intelligence Source
Up to 50 British jihadists may have returned to the UK to plan terrorist attacks, after receiving weapons training and combat experience in the Syrian civil war.JPost Editorial: Unity against Iran
A security source told the Sunday Times that MI5 was tracking a number of individuals who are believed to have fought for al-Qaida-linked jihadist groups against the forces of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.
"Extremists go there and come back enthused and with added skills. Others go there and make contacts which they otherwise may not have made," said the source.
How will the P5+1 react? Inevitably, pressure will build to compromise with the Iranians. Arguments will be made in favor of accepting Iran’s proposals and counterarguments will be made against. In the process, a real danger exists that the coalition organized against Iran’s nuclear weapons program will fall apart.Iranian sentenced in Azerbaijan for plot on Israeli Embassy
That must not be allowed to happen. Western nations must stay united against Iran’s push for nuclear weapons capability.
Sanctions are close to achieving the desired result of forcing Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons program peacefully. They must be allowed to run their course. And a new round of sanctions should be prepared now, in case Iran offers less than the minimum required to set the Islamic Republic on the path to a full dismantling of its nuclear weapons program.
An Iranian citizen was sentenced to 15 years in jail in Azerbaijan for planning an attack on the Israeli Embassy in Baku.Morsi’s family says he will not compromise with military
Bahram Feyzi, who was arrested in March and accused of being an Iranian spy along with drug possession, was sentenced on Friday in the Baku Court on Grave Crimes, the French news agency AFP reported.
“The president will not retreat, or negotiate or accept compromises especially after all the martyrs, the wounded, the arrested and missing,” his family said in a statement, published on the Muslim Brotherhood’s website.US citizen found dead in Egyptian cell
“No matter how much they try to keep him away, the president will not retreat from a return to the democratic path, even if his soul is the price of this democratic path,” the family said in the statement.
An American imprisoned in Egypt was found hanged in his cell Sunday in the city of Ismailiya. Egyptian officials believe that James Henry, 55, committed suicide, AFP reported. His body was found by authorities at noon.Egypt detains 14 for “homosexual acts” at medical centre
Henry had been detained for violating a curfew in the northern Sinai Peninsula, on the road to the city of Rafah from el-Arish. The curfew, enforced in 14 governorates, was in place nightly from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m.
Henry told Egyptian security forces at the time of his arrest that he was headed to the Gaza Strip.
An Egyptian prosecutor ordered on Saturday that fourteen suspects be detained for four days pending investigations into allegations that they committed “homosexual acts” inside a medical centre in the neighborhood of al-Marg in Cairo.