Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Fistfight between opponents, supporters of Assad - in Ramallah

A fight erupted between two competing rallies in Ramallah this evening, as supporters and opponents of the Assad regime came to blows.

A pro-Assad demonstration, with dozens of participants, went through Ramallah with the theme of supporting him in the face of "arrogance."

The demo was interrupted by youths who were upset at the participants carrying posters and banners praising Bashir Assad.

Now the Gaza bakeries are going to shut down

Even though some fuel somehow managed to make its way into Gaza, the problem is not over - and now the bakers are warning that they may shut down.

Abdel Nasser, president of an association of bakery owners in Gaza, says that the severe shortage of fuel may result in some of the bakeries in the sector closing in the next few days.

He said the crisis began almost two months ago since Egypt started cracking down on smuggled fuel. The quantities of diesel fuel going through the tunnels are limited and not sufficient, and bakery owners have been forced to use their own fuel which is now running out.

He added that some bakeries were forced to purchase diesel fuel on the black market.

Or, as GazaBYO tweeted,

Gaza bakeries may stop working due to the fuel crisis. So #NoElectricity #NoFuel #NoWater and Now #NoBread. #WelcomeToGaza

Fisking Leila Hilal in The Atlantic (David G)

This was part of David G.'s daily Middle East Media Sampler:

The Atlantic once was a highly thought of publication. Now seemingly anyone can write for it with no requirement of being truthful. Leila Hilal wrote Israeli Leader Wrongly Blames UN and Arab States for Palestinian Refugees and claims:

Ayalon is a former Israeli ambassador to the United States and currently a Knesset member representing Yisrael Beitenieu, an ultra-nationalist party that advocates the transfer of Palestinian citizens of Israel as part of a political settlement. An avid user of social media -- recognized by Foreign Policy in their who's who of 100 Tweeters in 2011 -- he maintains a personal website in Hebrew and English, including links to his widely viewed and frequently reposted Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube accounts. The refugee video alone garnered 37,000 hits within the first two weeks of its release, and currently has over 140,000 views. Ayalon reportedly plans to promote the clips, available in eight languages, globally for use in regular school curricula. The deputy foreign minister has particularly strong appeal among some Christian evangelicals and conservative members of U.S. Congress, with whom he and his party have long cultivated ties and to whom much of his communications appears geared. In short, his effort to influence the narrative on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can have consequences.

To call Yisrael Beiteinu an ultra-nationalist party "that advocates transfer of Palestinian citizens of Israel," is deceptive. In its own website, the party describes its policy like this:

The responsibility for primarily Arab areas such as Umm Al-Fahm and the “triangle” will be transferred to the Palestinian Authority. In parallel, Israel will officially annex Jewish areas in Judea and Samaria. Israel is our home; Palestine is theirs.

That is unclear, however the Jewish Virtual Library explains further:

Yisrael Beiteinu is in favor of a peace settlement with the Palestinians but advocates replacing the land-for-peace approach with a mutual exchange of territories and populations under the principle of peace for peace, land for land. The party's manifesto states that "The end result [of a peace settlement with the Palestinians] must not be a state and a half for Palestinians and half a state for the Jews… It would be unjustifiable to create a Palestinian state that would exclude Jews while Israel became a bi-national state with an Arab minority of more than 20 percent of its citizens." The party states that Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel.

In other words, both Jews and Arabs who find themselves on the wrong side of the border will be transferred. Only half of that equation is objectionable to Hilal. Of course as we saw at Yamit and Gaza, Israel has transferred Jews in the name of peace.

I suppose there's a little truth in this argument:

In criticizing UNRWA, Ayalon ignores the fact that the agency is not mandated to find solutions for Palestinian refugees. UNRWA's authority, given to it by the UN General Assembly, is limited to providing humanitarian and development assistance. It is true that UNRWA has delivered this assistance for multiple decades, but it is precisely because of UNRWA's role that the refugees have been able to achieve varied degrees of normalization pending a political resolution of their rights. It is for this reason that the Israeli government annually supports the renewal of the agency's mandate at the UN and has opposed the cutting of aid to its general fund.
In the video, Ayalon implicitly portrays UNRWA as a resource drain compared to UNHCR -- again ignoring their differences. As a direct service provider for millions of beneficiaries, UNRWA needs staff and money to fulfill its internationally mandated role. UNHCR, on the other hand, typically contracts out service provision for refugees or negotiates socio-economic access with hosting governments. (Frequently unsuccessful in this endeavor, many refugees under UNHCR's authority face extremely dire circumstances, exacerbating protracted conflicts.)

No UNRWA is not mandated to find solutions for Palestinian refugees, it is, however, designed to perpetuate them. As Asaf Romirowsky and Jonathan Spyer observed in 2007:

Instead, UNRWA finds a hundred and one ways to perpetuate Palestinian dependency. The interests of the refugees and UNRWA are fatally intertwined; UNRWA is staffed mainly by local Palestinians — more than 23,000 of them — with only about 100 international United Nations professionals. Tellingly, while the U.N. High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) avoid employing locals who are also recipients of agency services, UNRWA does not make this distinction. Terrorism does not exclude one from being a part of UNRWA. In fact, quite the opposite is true: UNRWA-overseen hospitals and clinics routinely employ members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Employing Palestinians for decade after decade and providing them with subsistence-level food aid and rudimentary education are a far cry from giving them usable skills and a positive attitude about creating their own independent economy and viable civic institutions.

More recently, Daniel Pipes added:

These changes had dramatic results. In contrast to all other refugee populations, which diminish in number as people settle down or die, the Palestine refugee population has grown over time. UNRWA acknowledges this bizarre phenomenon: "When the Agency started working in 1950, it was responding to the needs of about 750,000 Palestine refugees. Today, 5 million Palestine refugees are eligible for UNRWA services." Further, according to James G. Lindsay, a former UNRWA general counsel, under UNRWA's definition, that 5 million figure represents only half of those potentially eligible for Palestine refugee status.
In other words, rather than diminish 5-fold over six decades, UNRWA has the population of refugees increase almost 7-fold. That number could grow faster yet due to the growing sentiment that female refugees should also pass on their refugee status. Even when, in about 40 years, the last actual refugee from mandatory Palestine dies, pseudo-refugees will continue to proliferate. Thus is the "Palestine refugee" status set to swell indefinitely. Put differently, as Steven J. Rosen of the Middle East Forum notes, "given UNRWA's standards, eventually all humans will be Palestine refugees."

Hilal also writes:

Ayalon's claim that Arab states deny refugees basic rights as demographic warfare against the Jewish state is also out of context. All Arab refugee-hosting countries endorsed the Arab Peace Initiative (API) in 2002 and again in 2007. The API contains an implicit compromise proposal to implement the right of return in a manner sensitive to Israel's demographic interests following Israeli recognition of international principles. As political landscapes shift in the Middle East, so may Arab foreign policies. Ayalon, however, relies on archaic public statements from former pan-Arabist Egyptian President Gamel Abdel Nasser and long-passed UNRWA commissioners. Rather than quoting Arab leaders in 1969 or UN officials from the 1950s, Israeli officials should be honest about where the political conflict on the refugee question lies today.

Hilal apparently realizes the weakness of her argument when she writes that the Arab Peace Initiative contains "an implicit compromise" with Israel. There is nothing explicit about the API except for Israel's obligations. In short it is a recipe for the Arab League to keep changing its demands of Israel in return for ill defined promises. Furthermore, anyone who reads MEMRI knows that the official anti-Israel vitriol of the Arab world is not a thing of the past.

Finally we get to the most offensive part of Hilal's argument:

This leads to the other major assertion advanced in the clip equating Jewish and Palestinian refugees. In 2008, American historian Michael Fischbach published a ground-breaking study on Jewish Property Claims against Arab Governments. Fischbach mined American, Israeli, and British archives to understand the circumstances surrounding the movement of 800,000 Jews from Arab countries across the Middle East and North Africa over a 20-year period following Israel's establishment. His research revealed that Jews left Arab countries for a variety of reasons, with many leaving behind valuable assets that in some cases were seized by Arab governments. Ayalon reminds us of these claims but wrongly suggests that they fit within the rubric of Palestinian-Israeli relations. Jewish property claims should be resolved as a matter of priority, but bi-laterally with responsible Arab governments and according to the same universal norms applicable to Palestinians.

Funny, earlier, when it suited her, Hilal acknowledged the "archaic public statements" of Arab leaders, but she ignores it in this case:

On May 16, 1948, a New York Times Headline read “Jews in Grave Danger in all Muslim Lands: Nine Hundred Thousand in Africa and Asia face wrath of their foes.“ The story reported of a law drafted by the Arab League Political Committee “which was intended to govern the legal status of Jewish residents of Arab League countries. Their bank accounts would be frozen and used to finance resistance to 'Zionist ambitions in Palestine.' Jews believed to be active Zionists would be interned and their assets confiscated.“ Pogroms and persecutions, and grave fears for their future, regularly preceded the mass expulsions and exoduses of the Jews, whose ancestors had inhabited these regions from time immemorial. Beginning in 1948, more than 650,000 Jews left their homes in the Arab world to become refugees, and were eventually integrated into Israel, even as the country was being threatened with annihilation by neighboring Arab League states. Since their belongings were confiscated as the price of leaving from their repressive homelands, they arrived in Israel penniless, but they were welcomed and quickly absorbed into Israeli society. Approximately 300,000 more Jews found refuge, and a new homeland, in Europe and the Americas.

In a sense, then, Hilal ignores the Nakba. The Jewish one. If her misstatements and misdirections were not enough, she leaves us with one last one:

Ayalon argues in his video that the Palestinian refugees were encouraged to flee by Arab countries, who refused to accept the Jewish state. Though this view is still advanced by Israeli officials, it conflicts with mainstream Israeli understandings. According to a new study from Hebrew University profiled by Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar, "virtually all newspaper articles and research studies from the end of the 1980s to 2004", as well as all history textbooks authorized by the Israel's Ministry of Education since 2000, acknowledge that Palestinian refugees were subject to forcible expulsion. As Eldar noted, "It's a rejection of the [...] narrative that 'there was no expulsion in 1948.'"

This is not a mainstream view. It is the fashionable view of the anti-Israel left.

In order to set the record straight, Efraim Karsh wrote Palestine Betrayed, reviewed here:

Karsh sets the record straight by drawing on Western, United Nations, Israeli, and Soviet documents declassified over the last decade, providing the correct context often missing in the selective focus of the "new historians" and altogether absent in the Palestinian narrative. His detailed examination of the historical records reveals that Israel's establishment was not the main cause of the Palestinian refugee problem and the hardships that the population has faced thereafter. Instead, it was the result of actions taken by the Palestinian Arabs and their leaders.
Anger instigated by Arab leaders is the foremost recurring theme in Palestine Betrayed, and Karsh holds the mufti of Jerusalem, Hajj Amin Husseini, responsible for the deterioration of neighborly relations between the Arabs and Jews during the Mandate period, and for the eventual "collapse and dispersion of Palestinian Arab society."

Hajj Amin, known for his pan-Arab ambitions, "viewed the Palestinians not as a distinct people deserving statehood but as an integral part of a single Arab nation"—with himself as leader, and clean of Jews. To this end, Hajj Amin, an admirer and supporter of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany, launched a campaign to demolish the Jewish national revival by enraging his constituents with all the anti-Jewish rhetoric he could find, from verses in the Quran to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Given the sloppiness of Hilal's article, one wonders what the standards of the Atlantic are now. Or if it has any.

I would add that UNRWA did in fact work towards resettling refugees, not just giving them aid. The W or UNRWA stands for "Works" and UNRWA's mandate was to create works programs so that refugees could support themselves and (implicitly) eventually integrate into their host countries. While it was not explicit in its mandate, the words "resettlement" were used often in early UN resolutions and documents regarding the refugees.

For example, UNGA Resolution 393 from 1950, entitled "Assistance to Palestine Refugees":

The General Assembly,
Recalling its resolution 302 (IV) of 8 December 1949,
Having examined the report 2/ of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, and the report 3/ of the Secretary-General concerning United Nations Relief for Palestine Refugees,

4. Considers that, without prejudice to the provisions of paragraph 11 of General Assembly resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948, the reintegration of the refugees into the economic life of the Near East, either by repatriation or resettlement, is essential in preparation for the time when international assistance is no longer available, and for the realization of conditions of peace and stability in the area;
5. Instructs the Agency to establish a reintegration fund which shall be utilized for projects requested by any government in the Near East and approved by the Agency for the permanent re-establishment of refugees and their removal from relief;

All this was obvious in early UN documents. Only at the end of the 1950s did UNRWA give up on the idea of re-integration and turn itself into a wholly anti-Israel organization. UNRWA teachers taught generations of Palestinian Arabs that "return" was the only acceptable option. This was documented in a monograph that noted that in Lebanon in the late 1950s:

Children in the physical education classes at the UNRWA schools exercised to the chant of a-w-d-a (return)

A UNRWA principal in 1961 described his school's curriculum to journalist Martha Gellhorn:

In our school, we teach the children from their first year about their country and how it was stolen from them. I tell my son of seven. You will see: one day a man of eighty and a child so high, all, all will go home with arms in their hands and take back their country by force.

The difference between UNRWA in 1950 and in 1960 is astonishing, and deserves its own study. But what was once a well-meaning refugee agency that did try to solve the refugee problem - including through resettlement - turned in only a few years into a hateful, inciting and bloated bureaucracy whose only purpose was to perpetuate and increase the refugee problem in perpetuity.

Egyptian cleric: Jews use soccer to distract Muslims

From MEMRI:

Following are excerpts from a religious program featuring Egyptian cleric Mahmoud Al-Masri, which aired on Al-Nas TV on February 7, 2012:

Mahmoud Al-Masri: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which were written in order to corrupt the Islamic people, included corruption by distracting Muslims through soccer. They use soccer to distract the Islamic peoples.

I always knew that Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was a Zionist!

Beyond the humor, though, is the interesting fact that some Muslims are so self-centered that even a century-old European anti-semitic forgery is considered an attack on Islam.

(h/t Michal)

PA accuses Hamas of politicizing Gaza fuel crisis

From Ma'an:

The chair of the Palestinian Authority energy authority Omar Kittana says the Hamas-run government in the Gaza Strip is politicizing the electricity crisis in an attempt to score political points.

Asked about accusations that he threatened employees at the energy authority in Gaza, Kittana said, “I refuse to comment on this as we have reached an impermissible point. I was afraid of politicization of this issue.

"We have been exerting efforts with the Egyptians for the sake of serving our people in the Gaza Strip, to provide them with electricity rather than serving the interests of any party."

He added that his department’s efforts were focused only on solving the electricity crisis regardless of any political considerations and bickering.

Kittana says he expects the crisis in Gaza to come to an end very soon, and he highlighted that a joint committee of Egyptians and Palestinians has been appointed to discuss the possible mechanisms for shipping fuel from Egypt to the strip.

A draft agreement has been put forward according to which Gaza’s power plant will receive fuel. Shipment will be from Suez “through official crossings.”

The only "official" crossings would be Kerem Shalom or a revamped commercial Rafah crossing that doesn't exist yet. I don't know how difficult it would be to transfer that amount of fuel through trucks every day at Rafah; my guess is that it would impact on civilian traffic through the crossing.

A Palestine Today article says that the fuel could be transferred either through Rafah or through Kerem Shalom.

Hamas had already rejected having the fuel go through Israel - something Egypt originally proposed - but there is really little choice at the moment.

Reading between the lines, it looks like Hamas caved and will allow the fuel to go through Israel.

A couple of hours after I wrote this, I see that Ma'an's article was revised to verify what I wrote:

Currently the only terminals designated for fuel are via Israel, but the Hamas government in Gaza has been bypassing them for over a year by pumping gas through tunnels from the Sinai. The draft agreement would resume transferring fuel through the Israeli crossings, which are more stable than the tunnels.

Iranian scientist's goal was "the annihilation of Israel": wife

From Iran's official FARS News, all but admitting that there is a nuclear weapons program:

The wife of Martyr Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Behdast, who was assassinated by Mossad agents in Tehran in January, reiterated on Tuesday that her husband sought the annihilation of the Zionist regime wholeheartedly.

"Mostafa's ultimate goal was the annihilation of Israel," Fatemeh Bolouri Kashani told FNA on Tuesday.

Bolouri Kashani also underlined that her spouse loved any resistance figure in his life who was willing to fight the Zionist regime and supported the rights of the oppressed Palestinian nation.

Iran's 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Behdast, a chemistry professor and a deputy director of commerce at Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was assassinated during the morning rush-hour in the capital early January. His driver was also killed in the terrorist attack.

Ahmadi-Roshan was officially the deputy director at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility.

So an Iranian nuclear scientist had a life goal of destroying Israel. He seemed to know quite well why he was enriching uranium, and he enthusiastically shared this information with his wife.

And Iran is proud enough to share this little tidbit on an official news site.

(h/t Andreas and others)

Azerbaijan terrorists were targeting Israeli ambassador (UPDATED)

A followup on yesterday's report on Iranian and Hezbollah terrorists caught in Azerbaijan:

Azerbaijan has arrested two men suspected of plotting to attack prominent foreigners in the former Soviet republic.

It is alleged they were aided by a third individual, an Iranian who had links with Iran’s intelligence.

It is reported he helped smuggle in weapons including sniper rifles, handguns and explosive devices.

Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry said the men’s targets included Israel’s ambassador.

Although Azerbaijan is a secular Muslim country its home to 9,000 Jews and has friendly ties with Israel and America.

In the past the Azeri authorities say they’ve prevented car bomb attacks near the Israeli, US and British embassies – all allegedly involving agents from neighbouring Iran.

So this was the fourth Iranian attempt to murder Israeli diplomats we know of in the past couple of weeks.

For its part, Iran has ramped up its own rhetoric against Azerbaijan, claiming that it is a haven for Mossad agents.

Meanwhile, new news from attempt #3 in Thailand:

The Iranian terrorists targeting Israeli facilities in Bangkok planned to use $27 portable radios to hide their explosives, ABC News reported Tuesday.

Airing exclusive photos of one of the bombs discovered, the network showed the inside of the radio, packed with tiny ball bearings and six magnets. According to explosive experts, the device's design indicates that the bomb was meant to be attached to the side of a vehicle.

According to the report, a surveillance photo of one of the suspects in the case, an Iranian national named Saeid Moradi, shows him holding a radio in each hand.

(h/t Yoel, Ian)

UPDATE: The Azerbaijan article and video above was actually from before the other three incidents. In fact, it foreshadowed them. Yesterday's arrest was a different set of terrorists.

From NZ Herald:

Piece by piece, the tools for an alleged Iranian-directed murder team were smuggled into Azerbaijan on the Caspian Sea. A sniper rifle with silencer. Pistols. Sixteen pieces of plastic explosives and detonators.

Finally came a dossier with photos, names and exacting details down to workplace drawings for Israeli targets in the capital of Azerbaijan.

Each step, according to authorities in Baku, was overseen by Iran's intelligence services for what could have been a stunning attack weeks before the suspected shadow war between Jerusalem and Tehran flared in Azerbaijan's neighbour Georgia and the megacities New Delhi and Bangkok.

The shadow war is picking up as concerns are growing over Iran's alleged weapons experiments.

The allegedly unravelled Baku plot in January, recounted through interviews and police records, has been largely overshadowed by this month's arrests and attacks that suggest Iranian payback after the slayings of at least five Iranian scientists in the past two years, all with some links to Tehran's nuclear programme.

But the Baku claims offer a wider portrait of Iran's alleged clandestine operations, and how they appear tailored to different locales.

In Bangkok, the three Iranian suspects in custody took advantage of Thailand's foreigner-friendly culture to party with bar girls while allegedly organising a bomb cache whose targets, police say, included the Israeli Embassy. In New Delhi, the wife of an Israeli diplomat and three others were wounded by attackers using magnetic bombs - the same tactic used to kill a senior nuclear official in Tehran last month in an attack that Iran claims was masterminded by Israel. The same day as the New Delhi blast, a similar "sticky bomb" was found on the car of a driver for the Israeli Embassy in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi.

(h/t/ CHA)

Meanwhile, Pakistanis have a US-Israeli-Indian conspiracy theory...

A straight news story in The Nation (Pakistan):

US, Israel, India responsible for killings in Balochistan

Foreign countries and agencies strongly opposed to the Gwadar Port and determined to drive a wedge between Pakistan and Iran are involved in terrorist activities in Balochistan, military sources say.

They told TheNation that Gwadar Port had the capacity to bring about economic prosperity in the impoverished Balochistan and this was precisely what the enemies could not tolerate.

Similarly, the sources said, the countries that did not like cooperation between Pakistan and Iran were out to employ all sorts of machinations to create differences between the two Islamic states. They patronise terrorist organisation Jundullah for activities inside Iran.

The United States, CIA, XE Services (the new name of erstwhile Blackwater), India and Israel, the sources said, were some of those involved in terrorist activities in Balochistan and are fanning secessionist tendencies among angry Balochis.

The interior ministry, the sources said, has failed to deport such elements from Balochistan, because of which the terrorist activities are still going on.

Terrorist activities and daily killings in Balochistan have created unrest among the people, providing some leaders with an opportunity to speak against the Federation. Some of them have also started talking of an independent Balochistan.

Insanity is apparently the hottest fashion in Pakistan.

I don't know if the paper is government-run; the article sure reads the way that Syria's SANA "news" agency articles sound.

(h/t Philtheman)

MB Sheikh Qaradawi calls for all Muslims to defend Al Aqsa from Jews

From the (pro-Hamas) Palestine Info site:

Head of the international union for Muslim scholars Sheikh Yousuf Al-Qaradawi called for Arab popular moves to protect the Aqsa Mosque and confront the Jewish attempts to defile it.

In a press release issued on Monday by Al-Quds international foundation, Sheikh Qaradawi stressed that the Aqsa Mosque is a red line and the Muslims would not stand idly if the Jews repeated their attacks on the Mosque.

He urged the Palestinians in their occupied land and the Arab peoples in neighboring countries, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, to rise up in defense of the Aqsa Mosque and liberate it from the Jewish occupation.

Here are the rules so you can understand the particular logic of Qaradawi and a billion of his coreligionists:

When Jews peacefully visit something considered a Muslim holy place, it is incitement, defilement and desecration and a reason to call for millions of people to violently protest.

But when Muslims destroy and co-opt Jewish holy places, it is the exercise of basic Muslim human rights.

See how neatly symmetric and fair that is?

The power crisis was created by Hamas (Times of Israel)

I wrote a blogpost at The Times of Israel about the Gaza power crisis.

This is mostly an experiment to see if I want to write for them, for another HuffPo-style blog/news aggregator, or stick with doing things here. Or a combination.

Tunisia heading towards a constitution based on Sharia

From Egypt Independent:

The third-largest party in Tunisia's constituent assembly, charged with writing a new constitution, proposed on Monday a draft document based on Islamic law which will likely alarm the country's secularists.

The moderate Islamist Ennahda party won a 40 percent share in the assembly, or 89 seats, in Tunisia's first election since the ouster of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali a year ago sparked the Arab Spring uprisings across the region.

The non-religious Conference for the Republic won 29 seats in the 217-seat assembly and Aridha Chaabia, or Popular List, came in third. Should the proposal win the support of more than 60 percent of parliamentarians, it would pass without a referendum.

Popular List said in a statement that its draft document "stipulates in its first article that Tunisia is a free, independent and sovereign country, Islam is its religion and the principal source of its legislation, Arabic is its language and its system is a republic."

"Using Islamic Sharia as a principal source of legislation will guarantee freedom, justice, social equality, consultation, human rights and the dignity of all its people, men and women."

The proposal is certain to inflame political tensions in Tunisia, where secularists already fear that the Ennahda-led government will slowly Islamize Tunisian law and society.

Ennahda has sought to assure secularists that it has no intention of enforcing Islamic rules, but it has struggled to control more conservative Islamists who have been outspoken in their demands that religion play a greater role in public life.

The Arab Spring is catapulting the Arab world into the seventh century.

Jordan looking to replace Egyptian gas with Iraq

From Egypt Independent:

Jordanian Prime Minister Awn al-Khasawneh said on Tuesday he plans to visit Iraq very soon to seek alternatives for Egyptian natural gas supplies, which have halted after several pipeline explosions.

Khasawneh told Jordan's independent Al-Ghad newspaper in an interview that Iraqi supplies are the only available alternative for Egyptian gas.

Jordan currently imports nearly 10,000 barrels of Iraqi oil on a daily basis, fulfilling 10 percent of its needs, while the other 90 percent is imported from Saudi Arabia. But the kingdom hopes to increase its imports to 30,000 barrels to make up for the halted Egyptian supplies.

Egyptian natural gas supplies to Jordan have halted since 5 February after a pipeline transferring gas to both Israel and Jordan was bombed for the 12th time since the breakout of Egypt’s January 2011 revolution against Hosni Mubarak’s regime.

The prime minister told Al-Ghad that Jordan needs to ration its gas consumption given the lack of alternatives available. He noted that the government is trying to boost its storage capacity and create space in its market for more than one primary supplier.

Jordan had relied on Egyptian gas to fulfill 80 percent of its electricity needs (6.8 million cubic meters a day), but now is forced to use diesel and fuel oil to meet power demands.

Between losing revenue from gas exports and from the drop in tourism, things aren't looking very good for Egypt.

Iranian TV reporter among supected terrorists arrested in Azerbaijan

From APA:

Azerbaijani Ministry of National Security disarmed the terrorist group of Iranian intelligence agency “Sepah” and “Hezbollah” in Azerbaijan.

APA reports quoting AZTV that the terrorist group was established for the purpose of committing a terror act against the foreign citizens by using weapons, explosives and explosive devices.

The group members gathered material reconnaissance materials. They illegally acquired many weapons, ammunitions, explosives and explosive devices and began preparations to commit a terror act.

A group of persons were detained in Azerbaijan over the last several days. Member of Nardaran Sanhedrin Karbalai Natig Karimov told APA that the majority of detained as a result of operative measures taken by the National Security Ministry and law-enforcement bodes were the residents of Baku villages, especially Nardaran. They are accused of establishing armed unit, illegal keeping of weapon, betrayal of motherland and drug trafficking.

Karimov said that they knew the names of 20 detainees.

Karimov said that his brother Niyazi Karimov, Chairman of Public Union “National and Moral Values” Mehdi Mammadov, Abulfaz Bunyadov, Anar Bayramli, who is presented as a correspondent of “Fars” news agency and Iran’s “Sahar” TV channel in Azerbaijan, “Sahar” TV channel’s driver Ramil Dadashov, nephew of Balagardash Dadashov, who was accused of preparing terror act in Azerbaijan and declared wanted, Ali Mammadov.

It is unclear if these arrests are related to the bombings and attempted bombings last week in New Delhi, Georgia and Thailand.

More from JPost.

(h/t Yoel)

Video of the famous baker, Khader Adnan

Khader Adnan is just a baker and a poster child for human rights. Why would anyone think he has anything to do with terrorism?

By the way, he was referred to as a "mujahid" (jihadist) on the Islamic Jihad Al Quds Brigades website as well as one of the leaders of Islamic Jihad in the West Bank - this year.

No word about Kashgari, Saudi tweeter who faces death

A couple of columnists are trying to keep the Hamza Kashgari story alive, but it is hard - because he has effectively disappeared in Saudi prison.

Peter Worthington in the Toronto Sun:

The world’s media isn’t paying a lot of attention to a Saudi Arabian journalist facing death for blasphemy for his inconsequential musings on Twitter.

When Kashgiri’s tweets appeared in the Saudi daily al-Bilad, reportedly King Abdullah was furious and ordered that Kashgiri be arrested “for crossing red lines and denigrating religious beliefs in God and His Prophet.”

The newspaper announced he’d been fired a month earlier — whew, get out of the line of fire, eh!

Most Islamic scholars (and certainly those in Saudi Arabia) are said to agree that apostates must be executed, and that the law cannot be overturned since Muhammad himself had ordered the penalty.

Now that he’s back in Saudi Arabia, Kashgiri has vanished from view. An unperson, with brave individuals like Farzana Hassan willing to risk extremist retribution for defending him.

Richard Cohen in WaPo:

The Kashgari affair shows a Saudi underbelly that is just plain revolting. There is nothing romantic about beheadings, and there is nothing romantic about religious zealotry. The kingdom, in fact, was founded by marrying the House of Saud with the zealous and intemperate Ikhwan, a fierce Bedouin tribal army. The alliance enabled Ibn Saud to conquer much of the Arabian Peninsula. It has been an absolute and extremely conservative monarchy ever since. Its state religion is the severe Wahhabi strand of Islam.

I am aware of the king’s role as custodian of the holy places, and I am aware of his political need to mollify the country’s powerful and totally medieval religious establishment. But Saudi Arabia cannot remain under the thumb of an extremely reactionary religious establishment that in some sense is as powerful as the royal family. It’s hard to attract — or keep — first-class talent in what, after all, is a very weird place. Women are not permitted to drive, and the chance remark, if it is deemed heretical, can result in draconian punishment.

A life is on the line. I asked the Saudi embassy in Washington the status and the whereabouts of Kashgari and was told to put my request in writing — an e-mail. That was late last week, and I have heard nothing. So keep your eye on Hamza Kashgari — in some ways the future of Saudi Arabia, in all ways merely a terrified human being.

There are no updates in Saudi media about him, and they mostly ignored him to begin with so as not to expose their countrymen to the terrible things he tweeted (and also not to accidentally be considered as if they are spreading his apostasy.)

If any person whose life is in danger should be the talk of Twitter, it should be a symbol of free speech like Hamza Kashgari, not a leader of a terror group like Khader Adnan.