Petty and vengeful tyrants: Israel halts football stadium construction in West Bank

Palestinian football supporters at a match
Palestinians are keen football players and supporters

Israel has ordered construction work on an internationally financed football stadium being built for Palestinians in the occupied West Bank to be halted.

Palestinian municipal authorities in al-Bireh, near Ramallah, have been told they lack the correct permit to build.

This is because Israel has designated some of the plot for the planned stadium as under its exclusive control.

If Palestinian officials do not comply with the order, Israel could demolish the arena.

The stadium's development has been financed by the world football's governing body, Fifa, as well as France, Germany and Gulf states.

Palestinians have said that Israel's issuing of the stop-work order is unreasonable and politically motivated.

Israeli officials have said they are working with their Palestinian counterparts to resolve the issue.

World leaders to meet on Iran's failure to halt nuclear program:

Iran lashes out as Obama says punitive steps against Tehran will come soon

By William Branigin and Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, November 19, 2009; 11:39 AM

Iran lashed out Thursday against a new warning from President Obama of tougher sanctions over its nuclear program, dismissing such measures as out of date and threatening a resolute response to U.S. "deception and mischief."

The verbal clash came as the United States and five other world powers prepared to meet in Brussels on Friday to discuss what steps could be taken against Tehran for its refusal so far to accept a deal aimed a resolving a long-running dispute over its uranium enrichment program. Attending the meeting are representatives from the other four permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- Russia, China, Britain and France -- plus Germany, news agencies reported.

In a meeting with the negotiating group, known as the P5-plus-one, in Geneva on Oct. 1, Iran tentatively agreed to a deal under which it would send the bulk of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia and France for processing into medium-enriched uranium, which would be returned to Iran in a form that could be used to power a research reactor in Tehran that produces medical isotopes. The aim was to allay Western concerns by effectively stalling Iran's ability to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon, while meeting Iran's need to make isotopes for the treatment of cancer and other medical purposes.

Since then, however, hard-liners in Tehran have apparently stymied the deal, and Iran has raised various alternatives that the West considers unacceptable. Earlier this month, Iran demanded full delivery of reactor fuel before it would give up its low-enriched uranium and balked at further efforts to hold international talks on its nuclear program.

On Wednesday, Tehran announced that it would not send its uranium abroad for processing but wanted any swap to take place within Iran.

Iran came under international pressure after the disclosure in September that it was building a secret uranium-enrichment facility at an underground site near the Shiite Muslim holy city of Qom, in addition to a known enrichment plant at Natanz. A team of U.N. nuclear experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency
nspected the new site last month and came away with questions about whether other secret installations exist in the country, according to a confidential report made public Monday.

In a news conference in Seoul on Thursday as he was wrapping up an eight-day visit to Asia, Obama expressed frustration with Iran's response to the uranium-swap proposal, to which the other parties to the deal -- the United States, Russia and France -- have already agreed.

"Iran has taken weeks now and has not shown its willingness to say 'yes' to this proposal," Obama said in a joint appearance with the South Korean president. "We have seen on occasions that whether it's for internal political reasons or they are stuck in some of their own rhetoric, they are unable to get to 'yes.' "

As a result, Obama said, "we have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences." When Iran "fails to take advantage of these opportunities," he cautioned, "it is not making itself more secure; it is making itself less secure."

Obama added: "Our expectation is that over the next several weeks, we will be developing a package of potential steps that we could take that will indicate our seriousness to Iran. . . . I continue to hold out the prospect that they may decide to walk through this door. I hope they do. But what I am pleased about is the extraordinary international unity that we have seen."

In an apparent response to Obama in a speech in Tabriz, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted that Iran "is not pursuing aggression, does not have ill intentions and only wants to obtain . . . its bright future and its legal right" to a peaceful nuclear power program.

"Those who claim that they want to have constructive interaction must know that if a clear, fundamental and correct change is observed, and the Iranian nation sees that they have truly changed their attitude, have given up their aggressive and arrogant behavior, are respecting the right and dignity of the Iranian nation, and by returning the right and wealth of the nation they have honestly stretched a hand of friendship toward Iran, we will accept it," Ahmadinejad said.

Why is Iran always singled out for its nuclear program by the major powers and their Middle East control colony of Israel? Control of oil in the Middle East where Iraq and Iran sit on billions of barrels of oil necessary to run American and European nations. China too since it is economically tied to the prosperity of Western nations. Iran is strategically placed in the middle of a double region of huge oil deposits stretching from Uzbekistan to Saudi Arabia and the Western powers are deathly afraid of losing control over the region's oil deposits and refineries. Without oil, America and Europe would quickly fall apart because we are still so oil dependent, never having listened to Jimmy Carter's warnings as President about such dependency.

Israel capitalizes on this fear and adds its own fear of Muslims taking control of the region plus fear of Iranian/Syrian joing organization uniting Middle East Arab Muslim nations to counter to Israel's Army, the fifth largest army in the world as well as American and European invading armies.

These major powers are afraid of Muslim Iran and will create all sorts of reasons why Iran can't have nuclear power (or weapons) while these super powers can, while Israel can, a rogue state if ever there was one with a proven record of invading its' neighbors time and again, gets supported when push comes to shove in U.N. Resolution voting.

Instead of telling the world the truth, the super powers and Israel prefer to misdirect the world's attention away from their real reasons for fearing Iran--control of oil. It just doesn't sound ethically right, does it. Well, it isn't and it is leading us ever closer to a world war with Muslims. Instead of honest concern about Middle Eastern poverty and social justice, we get demonization of Muslims and especially Iranian Muslims, who, reacting to decades, centuries of European invaders and controllers, want what every nation wants, independence from foreign control in order to serve their own society's needs. It's what the American Revolution was about and yet America, since Truman and Zionists pushed for the establishment of the Jewish colony in Palestine, continually sides with King George.

Until we face the real reasons why we are in the Middle East fighting these wars with Middle Eastern nations, the control of their oil supplies, the same real reason we are in Afghanistan as well, we are going to be losing our wars with these people and of course all respect for American idealism. Please remember this about control of oil whenever you read about America or European or of other nations connected economically to these major power nations like China, which has it's own problems with Muslims, because there is a concerted propaganda effort to cover their real motives by demonizing Iran.

This is not meant to give Iran carte blanche approval because Iran and the Middle East must also recognize the failure of Islamic nations to keep up with the West, a fault they try to cover up by going backwards in time to the days when totalitarian religious beliefs were practiced and accepted, something impossible with the arrival of the worldwide Democracy movement. But until we are willing to deal with Muslim states as equals in world affairs instead of making war with them, we have only ourselves to blame when Muslims react and put forward their most militant advocates. War provokes war.

UN says hunger stunts some 200 million children

By ARIEL DAVID and MARIA CHENG (AP)

ROME — Nearly 200 million children in poor countries have stunted growth because of insufficient nutrition, according to a new report published by UNICEF Wednesday before a three-day international summit on the problem of world hunger.

The head of a U.N. food agency called on the world to join him in a day of fasting ahead of the summit to highlight the plight of 1 billion hungry people.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, said he hoped the fast would encourage action by world leaders who will take part in the meeting at his agency's headquarters starting Monday.

The U.N. Children's Fund published a report saying that nearly 200 million children under five in poor countries were stunted by a lack of nutrients in their food.

More than 90 percent of those children live in Africa and Asia, and more than a third of all deaths in that age group are linked to undernutrition, according to UNICEF.

While progress has been made in Asia — rates of stunted growth dropped from 44 percent in 1990 to 30 percent last year — there has been little success in Africa. There, the rate of stunted growth was about 38 percent in 1990. Last year, the rate was about 34 percent.

South Asia is a particular hotspot for the problem, with just Afghanistan, Nepal, India, Bangladesh and Pakistan accounting for 83 million hungry children under five.

"Unless attention is paid to addressing the causes of child and maternal undernutrition today, the costs will be considerably higher tomorrow," said UNICEF executive director Ann M. Veneman in a statement.

Diouf said he would begin a 24-hour fast on Saturday morning. The agency also launched an online petition against world hunger through a Web page featuring a video with Diouf counting from one to six to remind visitors that every six seconds a child dies from hunger.

The U.N. children's agency called for more strategies like vitamin A supplementation and breast-feeding to be rolled out more widely. That could cut the death rate in kids by up to 15 percent, UNICEF said.

Not everyone agreed.

"It is unrealistic to believe malnutrition can be addressed by any topdown U.N. scheme," said Philip Stevens, of International Policy Network, a London-based think tank. "The progress UNICEF's report points to in improving nutrition is almost certainly a result of economic growth, not U.N. strategies."

The Rome-based FAO announced earlier this year that hunger now affects a record 1.02 billion globally, or one in six people, with the financial meltdown, high food prices, drought and war blamed.

The agency hopes its World Summit on Food Security, with Pope Benedict XVI and some 60 heads of state so far expected to attend, will endorse a new strategy to combat hunger, focusing on increased investment in agricultural development for poor countries.

The long-term increase in the number of hungry is largely tied to reduced aid and private investments earmarked for agriculture since the mid-1980s, according to FAO.

Countries like Brazil, Nigeria and Vietnam that have invested in their small farmers and rural poor are bucking the hunger trend, FAO chief Diouf told the news conference.

They are among 31 countries that have reached or are on track to meet the goal set by world leaders nine years ago to cut the number of hungry people in half by 2015, he said.

"Eradicating hunger is no pipe dream," Diouf said. "The battle against hunger can be won."

FAO says global food output will have to increase by 70 percent to feed a projected population of 9.1 billion in 2050.

To achieve that, poor countries will need $44 billion in annual agricultural aid, compared with the current $7.9 billion, to increase access to irrigation systems, modern machinery, seeds and fertilizer as well as build roads and train farmers.

Agriculture investment from the private sector is also considered vital, and FAO is hosting a two-day forum in Milan starting Thursday with executives and business representatives to discuss how to coordinate such efforts.

Lack of top leaders hobbled UN Hunger summit: Diouf

(AFP) – 1 hour ago

ROME — The absence of leaders from the world's wealthiest states undermined the UN Hunger Summit, reducing it to a "technical" forum, the head of the UN food agency said Wednesday.

"If we don't have the leaders with authority over all the dossiers, who can coordinate the action... we sidestep the problem, we reduce the issue to its purely technical dimension," Jacques Diouf told a closing news conference.

The plight of the world's billion hungry people "has an economic, social, financial and I would say even cultural dimension," said the head of the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Some 60 heads of state and government attended the three-day summit, but Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was the only leader of a Group of Eight nation to appear.

The summit came under fire for failing to generate pledges of new funding for agriculture, or including specific targets or timelines in its final declaration.

"The facts are that we need 44 billion dollars (nearly 30 billion euros) a year... and we have seen that in the world 1.34 trillion dollars a year is spent on arms, we've seen on the news it has been possible to mobilise trillions of dollars (to address the financial) crisis," Diouf said.

"I'm just thinking if it has been possible to mobilise (those funds), there's a possibility also to give some more focus on the priority constituted by one billion hungry people in the world," he said.

At the summit's closing session earlier Wednesday, the FAO boss said: "I am convinced that together we can eradicate world hunger, but in order to do so we must move from words to actions."

The humanitarian group Oxfam gave the summit a mark of two out of 10.

"One single meeting can not solve world hunger," said spokesman Gawain Kripke, "but we were expecting much more. The result does not match the problem of a billion hungry people. The near-total absence of leaders from rich countries sent out a bad message at the start of the summit".

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

The face of Israeli fascism: 'Shot With My Hands In The Air'

1-Feature: Shot With My Hands In The Air
http://www.bilin-ffj.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=214&Itemid=1

Submitted by: Jody.McIntyre
16.11.09

http://www.ctrlaltshift.co.uk/article/feature-shot-my-hands-air


Earlier this year, Khamis Fathe Abu Rahmah, aged 27, was shot in the head with a high-velocity tear gas canister whilst participating in a non-violent demonstration at the wall in Bil'in, a Palestinian village. It was the same weapon the Israeli Occupation Forces would use to murder his close friend Bassem Abu Rahme, in the same village, just a few months later. Jody McIntyre spoke to Khamis to hear about his experiences:

Tell me about the time you were injured at the Wall?

On Friday 23rd January 2009, I went to participate in our weekly non-violent demonstration against the Wall. The Israeli soldiers immediately started throwing a huge amount of tear gas, so we were making our way back towards the village. The soldiers followed us in two jeeps, and started to shoot more gas at us. I was standing alone in the field, and my friend Bassem was crouched behind a rock nearby. They shot one tear gas canister at me, so I put my arms in the air to show that I was unarmed and clearly posing no threat. Then the soldiers shot me again – this time, the high-velocity canister hit me directly in the head.

I don't remember anything after that, but later I saw photos and videos of blood pouring from my head, my face in a blank expression... like I was dying, and people rushing to help me. To begin with, only Bassem and his brother Ahmed were there to support me; Ahmed was holding a wrapped up flag against my head, desperately trying to stem the flow of blood, and Bassem was holding my hand and calling for more people to help, shouting that someone had been injured and that it was urgent. I only know all this from the video footage... I can't remember anything after I was shot.

There was no ambulance, so some guys from the village carried me to someone's car. The whole time this was happening the Israeli soldiers, including the one who had shot me, just stood and watched. One Israeli activist went up to the Wall to tell them what had happened, but they didn't seem to care. After I had been driven away, the soldiers proceeded to shoot live ammunition at the villagers who were still out in the fields.

I was in a coma for 12 days, and after that had to go into hospital every day for a month. I had forgotten where I came from, what had happened, or who anyone was... including myself. The tear gas canister had smashed my skull and the blood from the injury had seeped into my brain and clotted, causing a paralysation of my left arm. That needed four months of injury to heal, and still isn't fully mobile.

Did the incident change the way you act at the demonstrations? Will you ever stop going?

No, I will never stop participating in our demonstrations at the Wall. We are non-violent, and it is our right to protest against the illegal confiscation of our land.

How have the recent military night incursions into the village, conducted by the Israeli Occupation Forces, affected your family?
They have invaded our home around six times, sometimes even in the day, when they claimed that they had seen kids coming from our house to damage the Wall. They once told my mother that they wanted to destroy our house because it's where all the problems come from... it's just because we live so close to the Wall.

What do you think about the international volunteers who come to stay in Bil'in?

They are very good people, coming from other countries to help us here in the village. They often stay with me in my house during the night raids, and go to confront the soldiers, often suffering beatings and injuries as a result. We eat and talk together, and often become good friends. Sometimes they are deported from the country, just for helping people...

What is your hope for the future?

I want to be normal, like I was before the injury. Now, my head is always aching and I have to take medicine all the time. I often feel dizzy, I'm always forgetting things, and I have to sleep a lot.

If you saw the soldier who shot you, what would you do?

I really don't know... maybe I'd ask him why he shot me when I had my hands in the air?

Do you think the people of Bil'in will ever get their land back?

Inshallah, God willing, we hope we will return to our land one day.

Words: Jody McIntyre. Ctrl.Alt.Shift writer Jody is reporting directly from Palestine.
Photos: Courtesy of Haitham al Katib, of Khamis, just after he was shot.

2-Helping Emad : Helping Emad Burnat to sow his crops in the shadow of the Apartheid Wall
http://www.bilin-ffj.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=213&Itemid=1

Today, all the internationals in beleaguered Bil'in mustered at 7.30AM to help Emad Burnat - video chronicler of the frequent and violent terror raids of the IOF into his village - sow his crops, as he is now largely incapitated due to the serious life threatening injuries he sustained a year ago when the brakes of a tractor he was driving failed on a steep encline close to the Apartheid Wall: Emad's life was almost certainly saved by the commendable insistence of the IOF medic who attended the scene to ambulance him to a Tel Aviv hospital rather than one in Ramallah, the task at hand was the clearance of the stones and weeds on his land to faciliate the sowing of diverse fruits and vegetables to sustain his family. In the afternoon, his brother Iyad and wife and the affable son of Israeli MK Dov Khenin, Edo, showed to assist in the stone clearing where shortly afterwards we downed tools to quiten our sharp hunger at a generous picnic provided by Emad on the concrete cap of a deep reservoir to water his growing crops and then head back to the international house tired but well pleased.

Thank you for you continued support,

Iyad Burnat- Head of Popular Commitee in Bilin
co-founder of Friends of Freedom and Justice - Bilin

Email- bel3in@yahoo.com

www.bilin-ffj.org

US 'dismay' at Israel over Gilo plan

Guardian.uk

The White House yesterday expressed exasperation with Israel over a plan to build 900 new houses on the West Bank at a time when Barack Obama is trying to broker a Middle East peace agreement.

Although Obama is mainly focused on a tour of south-east Asia, the White House took time out to express disappointment over approval of the new houses at Gilo, a controversial settlement on the outskirts of east Jerusalem.

It is politically risky for Israel to snub Obama so publicly. The White House has been pressing Israel for at least a week not to take this course of action. The White House spokesman, Robert Gibbs, said it was "dismayed" by the decision. "At a time when we are working to relaunch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed," he said.

Obama brought together the Israeli leader, Binyamin Netanyahu, and his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, in New York in September but failed to secure the restart of negotiations. Abbas said he would not enter negotiations while Israel continued to build settlements on the West Bank. The Jerusalem municipal planning committee approved the Gilo expansion yesterday.

The Palestinians denounced the move as a provocation. Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said: "We condemn this in the strongest possible terms. It shows that it is meaningless to resume negotiations when this goes on."

Since the failure to secure a resumption of talks in September, Obama, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Middle East special envoy George Mitchell have been working to close the gap between the two sides.

The Palestinians want a complete freeze on settlement construction first while Netanyahu has offered a temporary freeze, excluding 2,500 houses he insists are already in the pipeline. The Gilo expansion is in addition to those.

Jerusalem and settlements are key sticking points in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Israel captured east Jerusalem in 1967. It insists that east Jerusalem is part of Israel and rejects efforts to restrict building there. Palestinians consider the Jewish neighbourhoods there to be settlements.

In a statement, Netanyahu's office defended the plan. "This concerns a routine procedure of the district planning commission," it said. "The neighbourhood of Gilo is an integral part of Jerusalem."

Although the Obama administration has been more critical of Israel than the Bush administration and has expressed disapproval of settlement expansion in the West Bank, a reprimand such as yesterday's is still relatively rare.

The US state department expressed its disapproval yesterday and the White House could have chosen to leave it at that but opted instead to join the criticism.

Gibbs, reflecting White House unhappiness, said: "Neither party should engage in efforts or take actions that could unilaterally pre-empt, or appear to pre-empt, negotiations.

"The US also objects to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes. Our position is clear: the status of Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the parties."

Although Gilo is on the Palestinian side of the 1967 Green Line, the border before that year's war, Israel claims it is not on the West Bank so is not a settlement.

The Palestinians want east Jerusalem as their capital.

On Friday, Gibbs had expressed regret over reports of the new construction, saying Obama did not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion.

Britain also criticised the plan yesterday. The Foreign Office said: "The foreign secretary has been very clear that a credible deal involves Jerusalem as a shared capital. Expanding settlements on occupied land in east Jerusalem makes that deal much harder. So this decision on Gilo is wrong and we oppose it."

War-torn nations 'most corrupt'

Iraqi woman nurses her daughter suffering from cholera
Corruption can take money away from hospitals in places like Iraq, says TI

War-torn nations remain the world's most corrupt, Transparency International (TI) has said.

Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia are the lowest-ranked countries in TI's annual global survey. They were all at the bottom of the list last year as well.

"When essential institutions are weak or non-existent, corruption spirals out of control," TI said.

New Zealand was the least corrupt, with last year's winner Denmark as runner-up and Singapore third.

Worldwide Corruption 2005 - 2009



2005 - Countries are rated on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 indicates a highly corrupt country and 10 would show a very low level of corruption.

2006 - Transparency International has been publishing corruption rankings since 1995. The number of countries included has risen from 41 to 180.

2007 - The darker colour a country is, the greater the amount of perceived corruption. Europe, North America and Oceania are the least corrupt.

2008 - The UK darkened slightly in 2008, largely as a result of the investigation into BAE Systems' activities in Saudi Arabia.

2009 - Transparency International uses estimates of the size and frequency of bribes as well as survey evidence and expert assessments.

It said this was a result of "political stability, long established conflict of interest regulations and solid, functioning public institutions".

The issue of corruption in Afghanistan is particularly pressing. Widespread fraud marred the country's last elections, while the US is still debating whether to increase troop levels.

The UK ranked 17th, down one place from last year. The US also fell one place to 19th.

The organisation said tackling public sector corruption was even more pressing now, as governments worldwide had spent huge amounts of public money bailing out banks and public institutions.

"At a time when massive stimulus packages, fast-track disbursements of public funds and attempts to secure peace are being implemented around the world, it is essential to identify where corruption blocks good governance and accountability," TI said.

TI also welcomed action by the OECD and G20 group of richest nations to tackle tax havens and other places where corrupt government officials often harbour their money.

"Corrupt money must not find a safe haven," it said. "The OECD's work in this area is welcome, but there must be more bilateral treaties on information exchange to fully end the secrecy regime."

British Govt slams Israel over new homes in east Jerusalem

(AFP) – 1 hour ago

LONDON — Government condemned Tuesday Israel's green light for hundreds of new housing units to be built in annexed east Jerusalem, saying it made a peace deal more difficult.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband "has been very clear that a credible deal involves Jerusalem as a shared capital," said a spokeswoman, after Israel's interior ministry approved the construction of 900 new units in Gilo.

"Expanding settlements on occupied land in East Jerusalem makes that deal much harder. So this decision is wrong and we oppose it," added the Foreign Office spokeswoman.

Gilo is one of a dozen Israeli settlements in mostly Arab east Jerusalem. The Israeli interior ministry said the project still faced review.

But the approval is likely to further hamper the United States' so-far futile efforts to get Israelis and Palestinians back to the peace table, amid deep disagreements over the thorny issue of settlements.

The Palestinians demand that Israel freeze all settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, including in annexed east Jerusalem, before resuming talks.

Israel has so far offered only a temporary and limited ease in building.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

Israel approves 900 settler homes

Settlement of Gilo (file)
The Israeli government considers Gilo an integral part of Jerusalem

The Israeli interior ministry has approved planning applications for 900 new housing units at a Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem.

The planning and construction committee authorised the expansion of Gilo, which is built on land captured in 1967 and annexed to the Jerusalem municipality.

The project still faces review and the public will be able to make objections.

Settlements on occupied territory are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

Israeli media reported earlier that the government had rejected a request from Washington to freeze the construction work at Gilo.

US President Barack Obama's Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, is said to have made the request to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a meeting in London on Monday.

"Netanyahu is showing again that he is spoiling any chance to start negotiations by continuing to create new provocations in Jerusalem."
Hagit Ofran
Peace Now

Mr Netanyahu replied that the project did not require government approval and that Gilo was "an integral part of Jerusalem", according to Israel Army Radio.

His spokesman, Mark Regev, declined to comment on the reports, but repeated Israel's refusal to include areas annexed to Jerusalem as part of any accommodation of Mr Obama's call for "restraint" in settlement construction.

"Prime Minister Netanyahu... is willing to adopt the policy of the greatest possible restraint concerning growth in the West Bank, but this applies to the West Bank," he told the Reuters news agency. "Jerusalem is Israel's capital and will remain as such."

The US has pressed for a resumption of peace talks, which were suspended last year, but the Palestinian Authority has demanded that all settlement construction is halted before it will again attend.

'Not ready for peace'

The BBC's Tim Franks in Jerusalem says Tuesday's announcement represents by far the largest batch of planning approvals for building on occupied territory since Mr Netanyahu became prime minister.

The 900 housing units, which will be built in the form of 4-5 bedroom apartments, will account for a significant expansion of Gilo. The interior ministry said construction work would be unlikely to start for another three or four years once the plans gained final authorisation.

A spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said the planning approval was "yet another step that shows and proves Israel is not ready for peace".

"This step will ruin every single attempt - European or American - to preserve the peace process," Nabil Abu Rudeineh said.

Israel's Peace Now movement, which opposes Jewish settlement activity, said Mr Netanyahu was "showing again that he is spoiling any chance to start negotiations by continuing to create new provocations in Jerusalem".

"This development is intended to torpedo progress that is taking place between US and Palestinians and Israelis on renewing the talks," said Peace Now's Hagit Ofran.

The UK Foreign Office also said it opposed the decision on Gilo.

"A credible [peace] deal involves Jerusalem as a shared capital. Expanding settlements on occupied land in East Jerusalem makes that deal much harder," a statement said.

Nearly 500,000 Jews live in more than 100 settlements built on occupied territory in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

[Jewish] U.S. Senators in Israel Say No to U.N. Resolution on Palestinian Statehood

Updated November 16, 2009
by FOXNews.com

Any United Nations resolution calling for unilateral statehood for Palestinians would be "dead on arrival," Democratic Sen. Ted Kaufman of Delaware said Monday while visiting Jerusalem. ny United Nations resolution calling for unilateral statehood for Palestinians would be "dead on arrival," Democratic Sen. Ted Kaufman of Delaware said Monday while visiting Jerusalem.

Speaking during a press conference at the Saban Forum on Monday, Kaufman, who was joined by Sen. Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., said any effort to present a U.N. resolution that would eliminate Israel's role in the two-state solution is a "waste of time."

Lieberman said the U.S. will likely veto any resolution presented to the United Nations that unilaterally declares a Palestinian state. He added that the only way to resolve the long-standing dispute between the Israelis and Palestinians is through bilateral negotiations.

"I hope and presume that the United States would veto such a move if it ever came to the Security Council," said Lieberman.

The Palestinians officially asked the European Union on Monday to back a move to have the U.N. Security Council recognize an independent Palestinian state without Israeli consent.

The idea of seeking U.N. intervention has been gaining steam in the Arab world as the impasse in peacemaking drags on. The Palestinians seek a state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem.

"We will seek the support of all members of the international community," Saeb Erekat, a top adviser to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, told reporters in Ramallah. Besides the EU, the Palestinian Authority also plans to seek U.S. approval, Erekat said.

Erekat accused Israel of spending nearly two decades trying to "impose facts on ground by stealing Palestinian lands and build settlements and barriers aiming to finish off the two-state project."

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu warned Palestinians that declaring a state without concluding a peace agreement would lead to Israeli counter-measures that could include annexation of more of the occupied West Bank.

U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly reaffirmed U.S. support for a Palestinian state, but prefers one that "arises as a result of a process between two parties."

"The thing we have to do is get the two parties to sit down and that is what we're putting all our efforts behind," Kelly told reporters during a news conference Monday. He said Mideast envoy George Mitchell was in London Monday trying to get talks back on track.

Fox News' Reena Ninan and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Elected Jewish members are acting like 5th Columnists who's primary loyalty is not to their own country but to the Jewish state of Israel. Why do we tolerate this blatant attack on the Separation of Church and State when it comes to Jewish elected officials? We pay a huge price for our support of the rogue state of Israel, not only in money with Israel always getting the biggest share of American aid monies but also in worldwide condemnation of American support for the illegal occupation of Palestinian territory by Israelis. What is behind this uncritical support for Israel no matter how many U.N. violations Israel tallies up over the years? Money is what stops our government from treating Israel as the international lawbreaker that it is. Jewish interests control America's money system and Jewish interests control America's foreign policy as the two professors from Yale and the University of Chicago exposed in their well-read position paper on the undue influence of Zionists over U.S. foreign policy. We are held hostage to Jewish financial interests. How long are we going to be suckered into making America the moral pariah that Israel is today?

Israel's Big Dog barks: U.S. "would veto" Palestinian state move: Senators

Mon Nov 16, 2009 12:28pm EST
By Douglas Hamilton

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States would veto a Palestinian declaration of statehood in the United Nations Security Council, U.S. senators visiting Israel said Monday.

They said the threat by Palestinian officials to take the issue to a United Nations resolution was a waste of time and would go nowhere. They urged Arab states to stop it. "It would be D.O.A. - dead on arrival," Democratic Party Senator Ted Kaufman (DE) told a news conference in Jerusalem. "It's a waste of time."

Senator Joseph Lieberman (CT), an independent, said "an essentially unilateral" declaration of statehood was the one thing that would not move the stalled peace process forward.

"I hope and presume that the United States would veto such a move if it ever came to the Security Council," Lieberman said. The only way to end the Middle East conflict was an agreement reached through bilateral negotiations, he added.

The Palestinians should "give the new government of Israel an opportunity at the negotiating table," he said.

Without setting a timeframe, Palestinian officials Sunday said the Palestinian leadership planned to go to the U.N. in an effort to secure international support for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

They said the move was born of frustration at the lack of progress in peace talks, stalled for a year with no sign of any end to the deadlock over Palestinian demands that Israel freeze building of settlements on occupied land in the West Bank.

STICK TO NEGOTIATIONS

Israel reacted quickly, warning that a negotiated peace agreement was the only solution to the conflict, while declaring a state without it would lead to Israeli counter-measures that could include annexation of more West Bank territory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was "no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and any unilateral path will only unravel the framework of agreements between us and will only bring unilateral steps from Israel's side."

Monday, however, Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said moves were already under way to seek a decision from the U.N. Security Council to recognize the Palestinian state.

He said Israel had for 18 years continued to "impose facts on ground by stealing Palestinian lands and build settlements and barriers aiming to finish off the two-state project."

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham (SC) said a "unilateral" declaration by the Palestinians "would take a desperate situation and make it more chaotic."

"Now is the time for the Arab leadership of this world to step forward and urge the President of the Palestinian Authority to sit down with this new government and see where it goes," Graham said.

(Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Hamas to Palestinians: End occupation before declaring state

By Haaretz Service
Last update - 14:19 16/11/2009

Hamas on Monday rejected a Palestinian Authority suggestion to seek international support for unilaterally declaring a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, saying true independence required the complete cessation of Israeli occupation.

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Sunday that frustrated Palestinians had decided to turn to the United Nations Security Council after 18 years of on-again, off-again negotiations with Israel.

Hamas responded to the suggestion by pointing out that a unilateral declaration of statehood had already been made by late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1988.

If it had to be done again, Hamas spokesman Salah Bardweel said on Monday, "why not declare a Palestinian state from the sea [Mediterranean] to the river [of Jordan]" rather than in the West Bank and Gaza only.

The declaration proposed by Erekat would have no meaning and was merely an attempt by the rival Palestinian camp of President Mahmoud Abbas to pretend it had an alternative to faltering peace negotiations, other than armed struggle, said Bardweel.

"This move is not a meaningful declaration. It simply aims at escaping the benefits of resistance against the occupation," he said. "Instead of threatening to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state to be established in the air, we should work on liberating the occupied territories and end the current internal [Palestinian] division."

Declaring a state "in the air on 20 per cent of the Palestinian land, which would be rejected by the world," was not the solution, he argued. Rather, Palestinians should focus on their own "ability to liberate the land."

Labor: We'll quit coalition if settlements annexed

Industry and Trade Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer (Labor) said Monday that his center-left party would pull out of the government if it carried through with right-wing calls to annex more West Bank settlements in response to a unilateral Palestinian declaration of independence.

"The Labor party cannot continued to sit in this government if it decides to annex settlements," said Ben Eliezer. Negotiating with the Palestinians is the only viable option, he said, dismissing both Israeli and Palestinian threats for unilateral moves.

"In my opinion this whole thing about annexation is just words. I think the Palestinian threat also is just words. A ping-pong of declarations will get us nowhere, the only way forward is to bring the sides together for negotiations," he told Army Radio.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded to Erekat's suggestion by saying that Israel would make unilateral moves of its own should the Palestinians make good on its threat. He did not elaborate on what that might mean.

National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau and Transportation Minister Yisrael Katz backed up the prime minister's call by detailing what they believed such unilateral motions would mean:

"We must be clear and tell them that, if that's the route they choose to take, any unilateral declaration on their part will be countered by declaring our sovereignty on all 'C' Areas," Landau said, referring to those which, according to the Oslo Accord, are in full Israeli civilian and military control.

"I think it is an outrage," Landau added of the possibility of a unilateral declaration of independence.

"We've been seeing a series of Palestinian attempts in various area and this is one of them. It is a hostile proposition, one surely meant to erode any chances of continuing negotiations," Landau said.

Environment Minister Gilad Erdan told Army Radio: "If the Palestinians take such a unilateral line, Israel should also consider ... passing a law to annex some of the settlements."

Other options of sanctions were also available, he said. "Everything is open ... it could begin at stopping the transfer of money that the Israeli government currently transfers to the Palestinian Authority," he told the radio, referring to tax payments Israel collects on the Authority's behalf under interim peace deals.

Erdan said Israel might also consider tightening recently loosened travel restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank.

On Sunday, Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said that the declaration of a Palestinian state would be a mere formality once the institutions of a Palestinian state are created.

Speaking at a joint press conference with U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman in Ramallah organized by the Saban Forum, Fayyad said it is important to create institutions that are functioning, committed to the Palestinian people and free of corruption.

"I know some people are concerned that this is unilateral," Fayyad said, referring to his development plan. "But it seems to me that it is unilateral in a healthy sense of self-development."

Fayyad said building national institutions is an important step in preparation for the establishment of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital.

The Rogue State threatens Palestinians in retaliation: Israel could annex more of West Bank - minister

Mon Nov 16, 2009 6:43am EST
By Ori Lewis

JERUSALEM, Nov 16 (Reuters) - Israel warned the Palestinians on Monday that declaring a state without concluding a peace agreement would lead to Israeli counter-measures that could include annexation of more of the occupied West Bank.

"If the Palestinians take such a unilateral line, Israel should also consider ... passing a law to annex some of the settlements," Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel Radio.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, speaking to reporters, declined to specify what action Israel might take.

But he said: "It is clear any such step by the Palestinians would not pass without an Israeli response."

Without setting a timeframe, Palestinian officials said on Sunday the Palestinians planned to go to the U.N. Security Council in an effort to secure international support for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Palestinians attributed the move to frustration at the lack of progress in peace talks, which have been stalled for a year. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said negotiations cannot resume until Israel halts settlement expansion.

Diplomats deferred comment, saying it was not immediately obvious by what means the Palestinians might pursue a declaration of statehood, or how international law might apply.

Recent examples suggest they might take the same route as Israel's founders in 1947 and simply seek U.N. support for a resolution calling for statehood, which is what East Timor did to become the first new state of the 21st century in 2002.

Or they might declare independence without going to the U.N. as Kosovo did when it became the world's newest state in 2008, knowing it could not win Security Council endorsement because of a threatened Russian veto, but would receive quick recognition by most NATO and European Union governments.

NETANYAHU WARNING

The Palestinian remarks on possible unilateral steps prompted a warning from Netanyahu. He said in a speech on Sunday only peace talks with Israel would secure a Palestinian state.

"There is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and any unilateral path will only unravel the framework of agreements between us and will only bring unilateral steps from Israel's side," Netanyahu said.

Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the aim of the initiative was not to declare statehood but was meant to preserve the two-state option and to formalise international support for the nation the Palestinians want to establish.

"Heading to the Security Council to issue a resolution recognising an independent Palestinian state ... differs entirely from a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. The PLO is not proposing the option of declaring a state unilaterally," Erekat said in a statement.

Erdan, in the radio interview, discussed other sanctions open to Israel, which captured the West Bank in a 1967 war and annexed some of the territory along with Arab East Jerusalem.

"Everything is open ... it could begin at stopping the transfer of money that the Israeli government currently transfers to the Palestinian Authority," he said, referring to tax payments Israel collects on the Authority's behalf under interim peace deals.

Erdan said Israel might also consider tightening recently loosened travel restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank.

(Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Douglas Hamilton and Tom Perry in Ramallah, Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

Jerusalem artists go underground

Underground festival begins at Damascus Gate
Festival goers were first given numbers and split into several groups by guides

Jerusalem has played host to a two-day arts festival with a difference as part of Palestinian attempts to celebrate the city's year of being Capital of Arab Culture. The BBC Arabic Service correspondent in the city, Ahmad Budeiri, joined the audience.

A group of about 100 specially invited guests gathered at Jerusalem's Damascus Gate for the evening's programme to begin.

The area is heavily guarded by Israeli security forces, lying on a crucial junction between the city's Arab and Jewish areas. But though the police have already intervened to prevent several Capital of Arab Culture events this year, on this occasion they did not, or could not.

First we were divided up into several sub-groups and then led into the winding alleyways of the Old City.
\
I feel we have gone back in time, singing here rather than in a modern theatre or concert hall
Vocalist Omar Abu Nejmeh

My party arrived at an old stone house with a small courtyard, where three musicians were waiting to entertain us with a mixture of traditional Palestinian songs and some 20th Century classics from the popular Arab repertoire.

The al-Quds (Jerusalem) Underground Project was under way.

"We have tried to perform at public venues in Jerusalem, but the Israeli authorities always denied permission," said drummer Ahmad Hdeib.

But he added they would never stop trying to "send our voice to the world" from the Old City.

Vocalist Omar Abu Nejmeh admitted it was not an easy choice to become a Palestinian artist living in Jerusalem, but this unique occasion was one of its compensations.

"I feel we have gone back in time, singing in such an old house, rather than a modern theatre or concert hall," he said.

The reason for these precautions is that many events marking the Arab League and Unesco-backed City of Arab Culture year are sponsored by the Palestinian Authority, and anything involving the PA in Jerusalem is banned by the Israeli authorities. The east of the city has been occupied by Israel since 1967.

Most of the 2009 events have taken place outside the city, in nearby Ramallah or other Palestinian towns in the West Bank.

But there was little objection the Israeli authorities could raise to these performances, in six venues that were all private houses or businesses, arranged without PA involvement and mainly advertised by word of mouth.

Beneath the surface

But the Jerusalem Underground Festival is nevertheless a response to Israel's suppression of Capital of Arab Culture events, with venues kept secret from the police in case they disrupted the shows.

The surface is politics, history and religion, but under that there are people and reality.
Merlijn Twaalfhoven

With some of Old Jerusalem's alleyways not having amenities like streetlights, sometimes the audiences was led around in near total darkness with only the screens of their mobile phones lighting the way.

The project was the idea of Dutch composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven who worked for several months to arrange it.

"The idea is to look beneath the surface of Jerusalem since the surface is politics, history and religion, but under that there are people and reality, and we seek the truth about their lives and their daily routine," he said.

After the first concert, our group was taken to another house to watch a short play about discord in family life.

The play had been scheduled to be staged at East Jerusalem's only theatre, but one of the actors told me after his performance that Israel's Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch was working to close the theatre down for carrying out "illegal activities".



Further stops took us to a traditional bakery and someone's house that had been turned into a lending library, a much-needed resource because Palestinians do not have a municipal library of their own in Jerusalem. In the fragrant setting of the bakery, we heard poems by the Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish read by the artist/activist Majed Almani.

Almani told his audience - including a few customers who had come to buy bread and stayed to listen - how he had to come to this very bakery as a boy, and how he had helped the baker and played with his children.

Contact not conflict

The organisers insisted the "underground" organisation was no gimmick, but articulated the need to fight the suppression of Palestinian identity by the Israeli authorities in Jerusalem, where cultural activity has become part of the political conflict.

"Jerusalem Underground creates an intimate setting where personal confessions and little everyday things of life can be told," says Mr Twaalfhoven.

"Our message is not conflict and segregation, but contact and curiosity. Visitors make real contact with the place and the character of the performance.

"For them, each performance is a little piece of the puzzle that is Jerusalem; small but very intense and clear".

After the shows ended, the audience dispersed having successfully avoided any interference by the Israeli police.

The artists, meanwhile, pledged they would continue to perform in Jerusalem, even if it had to be in secret locations.

Palestinians to seek U.N. support for state

Sun Nov 15, 2009 12:17pm EST
By Tom Perry

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - The Palestinians plan to take their quest for independence to the U.N. Security Council, aiming to secure international support for a state, Palestinian officials said Sunday.

Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator, said there was no time frame for the diplomatic initiative to secure backing for the state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "When we are ready, we will go," he told Reuters.

Palestinians attributed the move to frustration at the lack of progress in peace negotiations with Israel which have been stalled for a year.

Despite months of diplomacy, the United States has failed to broker a resumption of talks between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Abbas has stuck by his demand for a total halt to Israeli settlement construction in the occupied West Bank before any return to peace talks. He has resisted recent U.S. pressure to resume negotiations right away.

Head of the Western-backed Palestinian Authority, Abbas aims to establish a state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in a 1967 war.

Mohammed Dahlan, a senior official in Abbas's Fatah faction, told reporters that the diplomatic initiative had been agreed by the Palestine Liberation Organization executive which Abbas chairs. "We are now leading a diplomatic battle," he said.

TESTING INTERNATIONAL INTENTIONS

The initiative would be "a real test of the intentions of the international community," he said. "If the American administration does not agree, that will be another setback."

The United States, which had called for a freeze of Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank, eased the pressure in September by calling only for "restraint," in a change of policy that frustrated the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership.

In the event of failure at the Security Council, where the United States wields veto power, Dahlan said other options included a unilateral declaration of statehood and "popular, comprehensive resistance against settlement and the occupation."

He did not spell out what that might entail. In the past two decades, the Palestinians have twice launched uprisings in the occupied territories.

A senior Israeli minister speaking before Sunday's weekly Israeli cabinet meeting in Jerusalem said unilateral moves by the Palestinians would harm peace efforts.

"Any unilateral statement that will be made by the Palestinians will not move the Israeli side forward in order to achieve peace," Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who in June set a goal of establishing the institutions of a state within two years, said it was time for the international community to take responsibility for "the mission of ending the occupation." "This is the responsibility of the international community and when we talk about that and international law, of course we are talking about the United Nations," he said at a news conference in Ramallah.

(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Eli Berlzon in Jerusalem; editing by Robin Pomeroy)

China blocks unregistered church service again

By CARA ANNA (AP) – 3 hours ago

BEIJING — Followers of an unapproved church in Beijing were again forced by the government to find a new place to worship Sunday, a move one analyst suggested would be a test for President Barack Obama on religious freedom during his first visit to the country.


A police vehicles is parked along a roadside as they monitor people entering a public park in Beijing Sunday, Nov. 15, 2009. On Sunday, police blocked members of the now-homeless Shouwang church from meeting again at a park where they have been holding services since Nov. 1, and hundreds of them ended up at a performance hall elsewhere in the city. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Worship in China, governed by the officially atheist Communist Party, is allowed only in state-approved churches, but millions of people belong to unregistered churches that often face official harassment.

Sunday's banishment was the latest for the Shouwang church, one of the largest underground churches in China with about 800 members. It was forced to hold services in a park earlier this month after being kicked out of a rented indoor area. Photos and a video posted on the church's Web site, which was later blocked, showed hundreds of members gathered, holding snow-flecked umbrellas and Bibles.

On Sunday, police blocked church members again from meeting at the park, and hundreds ended up at a performance hall elsewhere in the city.

District police referred questions to the Beijing public security bureau, where calls rang unanswered Sunday. Calls to the State Religious Affairs Bureau also went unanswered.

Another well-known underground church in Shanghai, Wanbang, also has been told to close.

Harassing the two prominent unregistered churches is likely to intimidate other smaller churches. Members of the Beijing church said Sunday they have never experienced such harassment from authorities before.

Obama, who was to arrive in Shanghai later Sunday, will be closely watched during his visit for signs he will speak out on human rights, including religious freedom. Leaders of churches like Shouwang said if Obama doesn't speak up, the Chinese government will crack down even more.

"Sometimes before a major U.S. visit, Chinese authorities show goodwill and release someone. But this time, it's the opposite," said Yang Fenggang, director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University. "I tend to think this is a test case."

Activists and others in China say the U.S. may not want to risk angering China when it needs cooperation on issues such as climate change and the financial crisis.

"I think so far President Obama has been the worst president in terms of dealing with China's human rights issue," said Fan Yafeng, an outspoken leader of another unregistered, or "house," church in Beijing.

He said the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences fired him Nov. 3 as a research fellow at its Institute of Legal Studies for political reasons, including his church activities.

"Human rights lawyers and house churches are two of the most important powers in China's civil society, but the president hasn't made any gesture to help them," Fan said.

Obama touched briefly on human rights and China in a major Asia policy speech in Japan on Saturday, but he did not mention specific issues.

The Obama administration's stance has worried many since February, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. would not let human rights concerns interfere with cooperation with Beijing on global crises.

"The Obama administration's total silence on this issue was seen as a green light and certainly emboldens the Chinese government's resolve to carry out this sweep without worrying about international consequences," Bob Fu, founder of the U.S.-based Christian group China Aid Association, said in an e-mail Saturday.

Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Obama urges Burma to free Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi at Inya Lake Hotel after meeting US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell on 4 November 2009
Aung San Suu Kyi has lodged an appeal to be released

US President Barack Obama has urged Burma's prime minister to release the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Mr Obama delivered the message as he met leaders of the Asean grouping of south-east Asian nations in Singapore.

White House press secretary said Mr Obama raised the issue "directly" with General Thein Sein.

Ms Suu Kyi's house arrest was extended in August beyond the elections planned for next year. She has spent 14 years in detention in the past two decades.

Lawyers for Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel peace prize laureate, have lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court against her extended house arrest.

The Apec summit brings together leaders of the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean), which includes Burma.

Cautious engagement

Before the closed talks in a hotel room, Mr Obama and the Asean leaders stood in a line on a stage, crossing their arms to shake hands with the leader on either side.

Gen Thein Sein was not close to Mr Obama - a direct meeting would have marked the first time in 43 years a US president had met a Burmese leader.

But the fact that a US president has sat down at the same table with a member of the Burmese military government is a clear sign that America is serious about wanting to re-engage with the region, says the BBC's Rachel Harvey in Singapore.

US presidents have previously refused to hold meetings with Asean when Burmese leaders were present.

"The president was just - as you know - in the scheduled meeting with the 10 Asean nations, and brought up in the meeting the... release of Aung San Suu Kyi by Burma. So, he brought that up directly with that government," Mr Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs said.

A joint statement released after the US-Asean talks, welcomed Mr Obama's policy of engagement with Burma and "underscored the importance of national reconciliation" there, but did not mention Aung San Suu Kyi.

"The general elections to be held in Myanmar in 2010 must be conducted in a free, fair, inclusive and transparent manner in order to be credible to the international community," the statement said.

Aung San Suu Kyi's party won Burma's last elections in 1990 but the military never allowed her to take power.

Observers believe Burma's authorities want to keep the pro-democracy leader in detention until after polls scheduled for next year.

The Obama administration has said it favours cautious diplomatic engagement, with sanctions against the regime remaining in place until real progress on democratic change is made.

Rights group: Israel 'personally attacking' us over Gaza report

Last update - 10:42 14/11/2009
By Haaretz Service

Human Rights Watch has accused Israel of launching an "organized campaign" of lies and misinformation against it in the wake of the organization's support of the Goldstone report, British newspaper the Guardian reported Friday.

The Goldstone report claims Israel and Hamas both committed war crimes during the winter conflict in Gaza, but levels harsher criticism toward Israel.

"I really hesitate to use words like conspiracy, but there is a feeling that there is an organized campaign, and we're seeing from different places what would appear to be co-ordinated attacks...from some of the language and arguments used it would seem as if there has been discussion," Iain Levine, Human Rights Watch's program director, told the Guardian.

"We are having to spend a lot of time repudiating the lies, the falsehoods, the misinformation."

Human Rights Watch told the Guardian that the campaign to discredit it includes allegations that its reports on Israel are written by "anti-Israel ideologues" and that it has attempted to raised funds in Saudi Arabia by highlighting its criticism of Israel.

The group also said that it sees the campaign as part of the government's pledge over the summer to combat what it called "biased" human rights groups.

Levine told the Guardian he believes the criticism waged against Human Rights Watch is an attempt on Israel's part to distract attention from discussion of the Goldstone report. Richard Goldstone, who compiled the report that has since been endorsed by the United Nations Human Rights Coucil, is a former Human Rights Watch board member.

Human Rights Watch said that the criticism has come from right-wing blogs, but also from Israeli non-profit groups, such as NGO Monitor in Jerusalem, which is funded by U.S. donors and includes Elie Wiesel on its advisory board.

Wiesel and others published a letter in the Guardian calling attention to an op-ed written in the New York Times by Human Rights Watch founder Robert Bernstein, which accused the group of disproportionate criticism of Israel.

"Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields," he wrote.

However, levine told the Guardian that Bernstein published his opinion piece only after the group's board rejected his call for a change in direction.

Palestinians denied access to water

Palestinian farmers in the West Bank, or "water pirates" as Israeli occupation forces prefer to call them, are siphoning off drinking water pipes in an effort to secure water to irrigate their farmland.

Water is an increasingly disputed resource between Israel and the Palestinians.

A World Bank report has accused Israel of using four times more water than Palestinians from the so-called Mountain Aquifer that bridges Israel and the territory and runs along the West Bank.

Israel disputes that claim and says the Palestinians are jeopardising the resource through illegal use.

Palestinians argue they are being denied access in order to force them off their land.

This exclusive report from Al Jazeera shows Israeli occupation forces dismantling a farmer's water pipes in the agricultural village of al-Baqa.

Badran Jaber, a Palestinian farmer, told Al Jazeera: "We were surprised by a large group of soldiers and settlers who surrounded the entire area. We asked them: 'why are you doing this and what do you want?' They refused to speak to us.

"Men who came with the soldiers stormed the field and pulled out all the irrigation pipes, destroying the crops."

Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland reports on how Israeli rules blight the lives of many Palestinians.

Nader al-Khateeb, the director of Friends of the Earth in the Middle East, told Al Jazeera: "We are under occupation and everything is restricted by Israeli procedures.

"This policy is not a new policy, there are lots of examples of Israel trying to force Palestinians to leave their land so settlements can expand easily.

"This is an organised Israeli policy designed to prevent the development of the Palestinian economy - knowing that agriculture is a major sector within the economy."

Dire situation

Amnesty International, said in a report released last month, Israel is denying Palestinians adequate access to clean, safe water while allowing almost unlimited supplies to Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank.


Israel's war on Gaza early this year left
water reservoirs severely damaged [AFP]

Israel's daily water consumption per capita is four times higher than the 70 litre per person consumed in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to the report entitled: Troubled waters - Palestinians denied fair access to water.

"Swimming pools, well-watered lawns and large irrigated farms in Israeli settlements ... stand in stark contrast next to Palestinian villages whose inhabitants struggle even to meet their domestic water needs," the human rights group said.

Israel's water authority called the report "biased and incorrect, at the very least" and said that while there is a water gap, it is not nearly as big as presented by Amnesty.

The Amnesty report said Israel uses more than 80 per cent of water drawn from the aquifer and while Israel has other water sources, the aquifer is the West Bank's only supply of water.

"Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank"

In the Gaza Strip, several repair works were under way to improve sanitation before the Israeli blockade was imposed in 2007.

But the projects have been on hold under the siege, as Israel is preventing repair materials from coming into the Strip.

Adding to an already dire situation, Israel's war on Gaza early this year left water reservoirs, wells, sewage networks and pumping stations severely damaged.

Amnesty said between 180,000 and 200,000 Palestinians in West Bank rural communities have no access to running water, while taps in other areas often run dry.

"Israel allows the Palestinians access to only a fraction of the shared water resources, which lie mostly in the occupied West Bank", Donatella Rovera, an Amnesty researcher, said.

From Mazim's journal: [HumanRights] The smell of misery and the feeling of hope

I have not been to Beirut since I was five years old (but I do remember some things of it) and I was a bit nervous since much has happened in the decades since. Lebanon and Palestine together with Jordan and Syria have always been connected; only after the British and French decided to divide us and give part of the land to European Jews to replace the natives that we became separated and disconnected (and sometimes querreling). I was invited as a representative of the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem for a conference on water rights in the Jordan River basin [1]. Our Lebanese hosts treated us like family: extremely gracious and hospitable. I was also anxious to visit the refugee camps in Lebanon and meet with activists (Lebanese and Palestinian) who I knew via the internet. I had written extensively on refugees and even reviewed a book on the massacre of Sabra and Shatila [2]. (I was told that camps in the north and in the south need a special army permission to enter.). I met with some refugees from Mar Elias and other camps in Lebanon and on Monday visited the Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts [3] which serves Lebanese and Palestinian youth from marginalized communities. An old friend (Raja Mattar) from Jafa who runs Palestine Student Aid arranged for a young Palestinian to take me to on an early morning trip to Sabra and Shatila. We met in front of the grandiose Crown Plaza hotel in the opulent AlHamra Street and the cab takes us to the edge of the camp and as we try to enter, the traffic snarls (the roads are really not designed for two way traffic). So we leave the cab stuck in the traffic and walk. I need to walk. We pass by a marketplace were the marginalized do their shopping (Lebanese and Palestinian). The market has everything from vegetables to used (and rather dirty looking) cloths and shoes to pieces of pipes, to books. Each of these things is laid out separately with their owners trying to sell their products to people who are just as poor as they are. Most of these stalls are not stalls at all but rather a sheet of plastic or even newspapers on which they had spread the "goods" they are trying to peddle. From what I observed, some of them would happily sell you all the contents of their area for less than $20. I have of course been to marketplaces in poor areas but this was a bit different. The appearance is of a busy market place where things are bought and sold for very inexpensive prices (usually less than a dollar which here equals 1500 Lebanese liras). But as we move through the "market place". But it is not a noisy place; the vendors were not calling out like they do in Bethlehem. There was little of the sounds of buying and selling of haggling of jokes. It was a subdued affair that puzzled me. Perhaps more merchants than customers I thought. Maybe it was not the peak time of shopping. It is as if it was a museum where visitors move around and look in silence at paintings occasionally asking in hushed subdued voices about something that intrigues them. As we get closer to the camp, the smell really becomes stronger. It is hard to describe it, a mixture of sewage and decaying trash, a pungent odor that perhaps is the opposite of fresh air, a staleness that and suffocating harshness that makes me wonder if I am hallucinating. But then we make a turn into the camp and nothing prepared me for this. I have been to over 30 refugee camps in Jordan and the West Bank and I did expect the refugee camps in Lebanon to be worse. I have read a lot and even seen pictures and some videos but still I was shocked by what I saw, what I smelled, what I heard and what I felt. The words I write cannot do justice to this. As I was videotaping and I was hoping to move my camera up to videotape the jumble of hundreds of crisscrossed wires overhead (home made infrastructure to bring electricity and phone service to those who could make the right connections (figuratively and literally), I hear a women's voice addressing me. "Shoo bitsawwer" (what are you photographing)? The first thing that occurs to me is that she will complain about my photographing (that happens in conservative societies) and I mumble something about coming from Bethlehem and touring the camp and she starts to tell me about the clinic doctor. I am a bit confused. She says there is one doctor and hundreds of patients. And that she could not get the doctor in the UNRWA clinic to see her daughter. It was then that I noticed the girl shyly hiding behind her mother. I make stupid useless words since I really don't know what to say as her daughter tells her to move on. I go back to videotaping the wires and the political posters and the people. Children are everywhere and they like my camera. I note no toys around, no bicycles, no balls, no squeaky ducks or stuffed animals. A couple of the kids have found things that they considered toys: a stick, a rubber band, a segment of a plastic pipe. Some have even connected these things to make things with no use. I videotape some of them and rewind and show them their smiley faces. I smile and speak to them feeling like I do with my own family. But my mind is tortured. I fight back the tears as I pan my camera from their smiley faces to the open sewers that are running right next to them. This is their playgrounds I think. Most of them have never been outside of this camp. This is all they know. A man tells the kids to leave us alone.


A woman at a window on the second floor beats an old rug to get rid of the dust. My "guide" Waseem warns me about puddles or obstacles in the narrow alleys (there must a better word to describe a meter wide dirt opening between dense dwellings in impoverished areas, maybe masarib in Arabic?). Waseem is from Nahr El Bared, a camp that was essentially completely destroyed by shelling as the Lebanese army fought a group of extremists. The camp is still not reconstructed so his family lives at the edge of camp in temporary dwellings. Anyway, we go back to taking in the sounds, smell, feel, and sight of this camp. Too many emotions run over me and not one of them uplifting. We pass by the UNRWA clinic and I see lots of Palestinian mothers going in with their children. Right next to it, there are some workers using a jackhammer to dig the street. The kids jumping around and over the open hole in the ground (yes with sewage) almost seemed like they were mocking the work. My first analytic thought comes to mind: this is not a place to try to fix anything at the margins, it should all be changed, and these people need to go back to their villages from where they were ethnically cleansed. But then I feel strangely guilty for thinking something I have thought of a million times before and have worked hard on. The guilt is maybe due to the fact that here and now, I actually can do very, very little. The hopeless tangle of wires, pipes, shaky dwellings seemed not to be of help to thousands living here. But now it seemed that the infrastructure has its own life and that the people are not its friend but its foe and I am now trapped with them although for a short time. I remember a horror movie I saw as a kid and simply think that before my father died, I should have asked him if at age 5 when we visited Beirut, did we visit the refugee camp and if not why not. Time is an enemy and we have other commitments. We make our way to go to the edge of the camp where there is a memorial for the 1982 massacre. The memorial is in a fenced yard) behind another street that was remade into an open marketplace. It seems slightly busier than the other marketplace. In front of the entrance they are selling watches, cloths, and shoes but inside the only inhabitants are a group of chickens (strangely of a fancy breed). The memorial is neglected, empty and quite except for the muffled sounds from the street. There are banners that seem to be old and fading. Here the camp smell I described earlier is replaced by another smell, the smell of death mixed with chicken feathers. Or maybe I am hallucinating since it is actually relatively clean place. Maybe I am now totally crazy. Waseem seems even more subdued here. He finally points to another banner and simply says, "this is to commemorate other Israeli massacres." I take short clips of video and I remember merely walking out and not looking back. Waseem tells me not to video on the street outside the camp because of presence of military people and the Kuwaiti embassy (that is heavily fortified). But I had not intended to do that anyway. We walk in silence. Later in the taxi, away from it all, I start to ask him about himself: he just graduated an electrical engineer. No jobs for people like him from the camps. Nothing to do. He refuses to let me pay for the cab either way. I go back to my hotel room and only then I cry. I cry for these refugees abandoned by an uncaring world, I cry for all the other things I heard and felt on this trip, and I cry for our injured humanity. In visiting the American University of Beirut (where so many Palestinians studied including my uncle who died young at age 27 after finishing his PhD), there is a McDonalds hamburger joint right in front of the University. A day later in Jordan being driven by my friend Zuhair to his house, we pass by Jordan University and I see another Macdonald also in front of the University. I complain about this globalization (especially of Zionist-run Starbucks and other franchises that aid ethnic cleansing and hurts our causes). Zuhair reminds me that there are so many people who collaborate in the rape of Palestine and so many people who just stand there and watch. There are really few activists like the ones I met in Beirut. But we reminisce that good people (Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinians, and Internationals) make a difference in society every day. It has always been like that. The institute that invited us (Ibrahim Abd-ElAl Institute) represent the memory of such a person and the attendees represent such people): individuals who do not put personal interest ahead of people interests, individuals who care and who act on this caring. Those are the people who give us hope for a better future where we all work together against apathy and against the evil that keeps us apart.

These are the people we created by backing Israel against Palestinians. Some Americans think our society is the best in the world because we get things done. But others can see that getting it done seems to often leave a bloody mess behind and a legacy of inhumane conditions that children are forced to absorb because their parents are not the right ethnic group.

Warhol artwork sells for $43.8m--"There is a great desire for great art"

200 One Dollar Bills
200 One Dollar Bills had a pre-sale estimate of $8m to $12m (£4.8m to £7.3m)

Andy Warhol artwork 200 One Dollar Bills has sold in New York for $43.8m (£26.5m) - the second highest auction price for a work by the pop artist.

The 1962 silk screen print, which shows 200 life-sized images of dollar bills, had a pre-sale estimate of $8m to $12m (£4.8m to £7.3m) at Sotheby's.

The contemporary sale fetched $134.4m (£81.3m) with 52 out of 54 lots sold.

Warhol's 1963 painting Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I) sold for a record $71.7m (£43.4m) in 2007.

New record

In Wednesday's sale, a Warhol self-portrait given by the artist to teenage secretary Cathy Naso at his New York studio The Factory in the 1960s fetched $6.1m (£3.7m).

Ms Naso, who kept the work hidden in a cupboard for more than 40 years, said she was overwhelmed by the price.

Bidding was very deep tonight. There is a great desire for great art - consumer behaviour has started to accelerate
Sotheby's head of contemporary art Tobias Meyer

Gray Numbers, by Jasper Johns, fetched $8.7m (£5.3m) while a new record was set for a Jean Dubuffet piece - his Trinite-Champs-Elysees sold for $6.1m (£3.7m).

Wednesday's auction exceeded the estimate by more than 50%.

Sotheby's head of contemporary art Tobias Meyer said that "after a year of not buying, collectors have started buying".

"Bidding was very deep tonight. There is a great desire for great art - consumer behaviour has started to accelerate."

But despite a recovery, the market remains unstable.

On Tuesday, Warhol's Tunafish Disaster, which was expected to make up to $8m (£4.7m), and Jean-Michel Basquiat's Brother's Sausage, which was expected to fetch $12m (£7m), failed to sell at Christie's in New York.

But the sale took a total of $74.1m (£44.2m), which auctioneers said was "reminiscent of 18 months ago" before the art market was hit by the downturn.

Pieces by Johns and Jeff Koons sold strongly in a competitive auction.

While Pop Art was selling in the galleries the truly new art of our generation could not be shown because of its identification with illegal drugs. So galleries wouldn't show psychedelic art and a whole American Art Movement went by unnoticed by the "art world". They were busy getting stoned on uppers and downers and selling pieces of shitty art work such as Andy's and the whole Pop Art Movement that was a rerun, a poorly done rerun of the old Dada art-works. Been there, done that but Pop Art is what history recorded as "our generation's art movement" when it wasn't at all--had nothing to do with the cultural revolution inspired by psychedelics.

Compare Warhol's cut-and-paste art with this representative of psychedelic art, the only art movement to be lost to history because of the same illegality that followed counterculture hippies everywhere they went such as Humboldt County.

Hezbollah dismisses Obama pledges

Hassan Nasrallah in his Martyrs' Day address
Hassan Nasrallah is regarded as an influential figure in Lebanon

The leader of Lebanon's mainly Shia movement Hezbollah says US President Barack Obama's promise to engage with Muslims has proved to be false.

Hassan Nasrallah said the US had shown its commitment to Israel by sending more military aid and backtracking on demands to stop West Bank settlements.

He said the Arab world could not depend on the US to solve its problems because the US was causing them.

In June, Mr Obama called for a "new beginning" between the US and Muslims.

Correspondents say that Mr Nasrallah's remarks were his strongest criticism yet of the US president.

'Dignity disregarded'

"A few months ago, when Barack Obama was elected as US president and a new American administration saw light, many had high hopes and believed that major changes will happen in favour of the Arab and Islamic world," said Mr Nasrallah, quoted by Hezbollah's al-Manar TV.

"However, the truth was quickly revealed and all these illusions quickly failed. The result was obviously a full US commitment to Israel's interest and security, disregarding the dignity and feelings of the Arab and Muslim people and governments."

He added: "We tell all those who asked us to give the Americans some time… it turned out that presenting a black president from the third world was a trick that ended faster than we expected."

Mr Nasrallah was speaking on Hezbollah's Martyrs' Day.

Earlier this week, the head of Israel's military said that Hezbollah now has rockets capable of reaching Israel's largest cities.

Maj Gen Gabi Ashkenazi's warning came days after Israel's navy seized a ship it said was carrying hundreds of tonnes of weapons destined for Hezbollah.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006 during which more than 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, were killed. Some 160 Israelis, most of whom were soldiers, also died.

Abbas: No talks if no settlement freeze

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH
Jerusalem Post
Nov 11, 2009 15:21
Updated Nov 12, 2009 2:44

The Palestinian Authority leadership on Wednesday marked the fifth anniversary of Yasser Arafat's death by emphasizing that it won't resume peace talks with Israel until all construction work in the settlements is halted.
PA President Mahmoud Abbas...


PA President Mahmoud Abbas speaks in Ramallah last Thursday.
Photo: AP [file]

PA officials also repeated the canard that Arafat had died after being poisoned by Israel.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas banned memorial ceremonies for Arafat that had been planned by Fatah.

"We can't return to the negotiations [with Israel] without a full cessation of settlement construction, including Jerusalem and natural growth," Abbas said in a speech at the Mukata "presidential" compound, the site of Arafat's tomb.

"We also want an urgent solution to the problem of the refugees. Our demands are not pre-conditions, because all what we are talking about is mentioned in the Road Map. But those who don't want peace are creating obstacles on the road to peace."

Abbas accused Israel of violating international laws, saying it was acting as a country that is above the law. The international community, he said, must force Israel to stop its transgressions, comply withinternational laws and end its occupation of Palestinian territories, including Jerusalem.

Abbas added that the Palestinians were the only party to fulfill its obligations under the terms of the Road Map.

"We don't want to regret having done so," he said. "We want everyone to know that we are committed to international laws."

He said that while the Palestinians have given peace a "precious opportunity," Israel was continuing to "steal land, Judaize Jerusalem, dig under the Aqsa Mosque and arrest our youth."

Abbas said that despite his refusal to return to the negotiating table at this phase, "peace remains our strategic option."

Abbas declared that the Palestinian "revolution" was the most difficult and longest and perhaps the last one.

"In the end, we will achieve our goals," he vowed. "In the end, we will see the light at the end of the tunnel. We won't lose hope and we won't allow desperation to infiltrate our souls."

The PA leader said that he was still interested in patching up his differences with Hamas.

"We want reconciliation and we want t reunite our people and homeland," he said. "Hamas exists and it will stay. Hamas came through elections and now we are offering Hamas elections once again."

Referring to his decision last week not to run for another term in a new election, Abbas said: "I don't want to talk again about my desire not to run in the election. But I want to say that there are other options that I will take in accordance with the developments."

Abbas said that a commission of inquiry was still looking into the causes of Arafat's "mysterious" death. The commission, he said, was continuing to collect evidence and assess what it has already gathered to reach the truth.

Abbas loyalists exploited the anniversary events to enlist support for the PA president. Senior PA officials who delivered speeches at various rallies in the West Bank hailed Abbas as a leader who has refused to succumb to US and Israeli pressure, especially with regards to the resumption of peace talks with Israel.

One of them, Nasser al-Qidweh, a nephew of Arafat, told the rally in Ramallah that all Palestinians "stood behind President Abbas and backed him."

He said that Abbas remained committed to the aspirations and rights of the Palestinians despite US and Israeli pressure.

Al-Qidweh, who also heads the commission of inquiry into Arafat's death, repeated the claim that his uncle had been poisoned to death.

"Israel bears the responsibility for the elimination of Yasser Arafat because it had besieged and isolated him," he continued. "Israel also took a decision to eliminate him and then carried it out. Arafat died of poison on the way to freedom and independence."

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas security forces arrested dozens of Fatah activists to prevent them from holding rallies to commemorate Arafat. Among those taken into custody were many of Fatah's senior officials in the Gaza Strip.

Fahmi Za'areer, a Fatah spokesman in the West Bank, strongly condemned the Hamas ban, noting that this was the third time that the movement had prevented Palestinians from marking the anniversary of Arafat's death.

Palestinians celebrate the Israelis "Berlin" Wall coming down

A group of Palestinians from the popular committees down a part of the Apartheid Wall separating occupied East Jerusaelm from the rest of the West Bank.

http://www.bilin-ffj.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=210&Itemid=1

On Monday 9 November a hundred Palestinians waving Palestinain flags and wearing florecent jackets saying "WE ARE GOING TO JERUSALEM" took down a peice of the concrete wall near the Kalandia airport.

The fallowing leaflet was distributed by a group of Palestinians who tore down the Wall near Jerusalem:

On 9 November 1989 the world witnessed the moment of the demolition of the Berlin Wall. Similarly, at this moment, twenty years later, a group of Palestinians have demolished part of the Apartheid Wall around Jerusalem. Jerusalem, that bleeds every day... Jerusalem who's children are homeless under the rain. These young boys and girls who were promised by the martyr president Yaser Arafat that they would raise the Palestinian flag on the churches and mosques of Jerusalem. Mosques and churches who's sanctity is defiled while we passively wait for salvation unaware that the responsibility lies with each and every one of us.

Rebuilding popular resistance is essential for Jerusalem and Palestine.

In this event we are calling for a return to the achievements of the popular uprising that began on 9 December 1987. This year, on 9 December, we are calling on people to move en masse towards Jerusalem.

We are calling for the formation of a unified national leadership to lead a mass popular uprising of which all the Palestinian people, groups and political factions are a part of. This popular uprising will be pro-active and innovative with a strategy to mobilize international support for the justice of our cause, as a way out of the current political impasse. We will use this support to create international pressure to end the occupation, and establish an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and to restore unity amongst our people, from the West Bank to Gaza.

Thank you for you continued support,

Iyad Burnat- Head of Popular Commitee in Bilin
co-founder of Friends of Freedom and Justice - Bilin

Email- bel3in@yahoo.com

www.bilin-ffj.org

'US attitude to Israel may be changing' ...read how Separation of Church and State doesn't apply to Jewish office-holders in Washington

Nov 9, 2009 2:55 |
Updated Nov 9, 2009 4:43

By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER,
JPOST CORRESPONDENT IN WASHINGTON

A leading Republican congressman warned that the climate toward Israel on Capitol Hill could be changing, ahead of his address to a major Jewish conference Sunday.
Prime Minister Binyamin...

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu lands in Washington DC, Sunday.
Photo: GPO

"The possibility is there," US House of Representatives Minority Whip Eric Cantor told The Jerusalem Post, speaking about the prospect that Congress's support for Israel could be ebbing.

"There have been incidences of late that do indicate that we have challenges on that front, and I'm very committed to doing everything I can to make sure that Congress remains Israel's strongest ally in the quest for what it needs in terms of its security."

Cantor, who spoke to the Post before addressing the Jewish Federations of North America's annual General Assembly, did not specify the nature of the incidents, but he did raise questions about the White House's approach to Israel and the wider Middle East.
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"I have a lot of concerns about what I have seen lately, about the continued desire to try to engage with Iran and about pressure being applied to Israel in terms of concessions in the name of peace," said Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House and its only Jewish Republican.

"Israel is a pillar in our national security strategy and we ought to be emphasizing every bit of our commitment to Israel right now as it faces an existential threat," he said.

Cantor later spoke at the opening session of the convention, which was meant to feature an address by US President Barack Obama on Tuesday. But Obama pulled out late Saturday to attend the planned memorial service for the 13 victims slain by gunman Nidal Malik Hassan at Fort Hood in Texas.

Conference organizers said White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel would address the gathering in Obama's place. A small group of Jewish leaders are also due to meet with Obama at the White House.

Though many of the 3,000 registered attendants expressed dismay that the president wouldn't be attending the event, they accepted his decision to travel to Fort Hood.

Several also expressed interest in hearing from Emmanuel, a key figure in the administration who has been intimately involved in crafting and executing much of Obama's agenda.

"There's a disappointment, but we clearly understand. It's unfortunate," said Michael Gelman, chairman of the executive board of the Jewish Federations.

"We may even get more from Rahm Emmanuel than from the president" in terms of policy specifics, Gelman added.

He expects that the crowd would be enthusiastic to hear Emmanuel, even if he had big shoes to fill, saying, "I think he'll be received very well. He's probably the No. 1 adviser to the president."

Others, though, pointed to reported tension between Emmanuel and the Netanyahu government, seeing the chief of staff as a key factor in the differences between the two countries.

"I think this is going to be a tough crowd for Rahm Emmanuel, who's rumored to be one of Israel's toughest critics within the White House," said one Washington Jewish leader at the conference. "There's a lot of pressure on Rahm Emmanuel at this event to explain how a nice Jewish boy became White House chief of staff and sends his kids to a Jewish school while advising his president on a speech in Cairo that put tremendous pressure on Israel."

At the same time, a long anticipated meeting between Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, in town to address the GA on Monday, is scheduled to take place later that day, the White House confirmed late Sunday.

Netanyahu is also scheduled to meet with members of Congress before traveling on to France.

Netanyahu's spokesman Nir Hefetz said the prime minister was always happy to talk face-to-face with Obama, but was not concerned that no such conversation had been formally announced even as he was within hours of landing in the US.

This trip was planned independent of an expectation that such a meeting would occur, Hefetz told Israel Radio, in an interview he conducted on the plane.

"If the trip's objective had been to meet with the president of the United States, then such a meeting would have been secured in advance of the trip," Hefetz said. "The prime minister decided to travel to Washington to address the second largest Jewish community in the world after Israel, the American Jewish community."

He wanted to update them on Israel's diplomatic situation, including the fallout from the Goldstone Commission's report, which accused Israel of war crimes, and the growing threat from Iran.

Israeli officials are in daily contact with the White House and the State Department, said Hefetz. He added that Netanyahu held consultations with his advisers in his home until close to midnight on Saturday.

He noted that both Obama and Netanyahu were relatively new to their offices and that it took time to build a strong personal relationship. The wider relationship between Israel and the United States remains strong and is not dependent on one person or the other, Hefetz said.

Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.

Legal row over Gaza report intensifies

Richard Goldstone visits Gaza in June 2009
Mr Goldstone's report is seeking accountability

By Barbara Plett
BBC UN correspondent

The United Nations-backed report on the Gaza war has triggered major controversy since it was released nearly two months ago.

The lengthy document - named after its main author, the respected international jurist Richard Goldstone - details what it says is evidence of war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers and Palestinian fighters.

It calls on the UN to trigger a process of accountability that could end up in international criminal tribunals.

But the chances of concrete UN action are slim. A resolution that endorses the report, adopted this week by the General Assembly, is non-binding.

And diplomats from all parts of the political spectrum are expecting little if anything from the Security Council - the only UN body with powers of enforcement - as all five of the permanent representatives that wield a veto oppose council involvement.

Unconventional warfare

So why the fuss? Israel especially has launched an intense lobbying campaign against the report, which was most critical about the Israeli military.

Palestinians and human rights groups say 1,400 Gazans were killed in the conflict, although Israel puts the figure at 1,166. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, died.

UN backs Gaza war crimes report

The Israelis argue they were acting in self-defence against years of rocket attacks by the militant Islamist movement Hamas, and took as much care for civilians as possible while fighting a non-conventional force embedded in the population.

They are particularly outraged with the assertion that Israel's offensive was a "deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorise a civilian population", a conclusion Israeli officials have denounced as completely "removed from reality".

That Mr Goldstone has authored the report amplifies their concern.

"It's given a new credibility to what we call the Israel-bashing movement in the UN," says Lt Col David Benjamin, who served as a legal adviser to the Israeli military during the Gaza war.

"He is one of the major figures in international criminal justice today, and the fact that he has put his signature to the report is very significant."

"I don't think this report is going to go away even if it doesn't go through the Security Council.

"I'm positive that there will be all sorts of efforts to get this into the international criminal court or encourage various individual states to exercise universal jurisdiction against Israelis."

Universal jurisdiction

That is the heart of the matter. Mr Goldstone recommends that the Security Council refer both parties to the International Criminal Court if they fail to conduct credible and independent investigations of the war-crimes charges.


The very mention of the fact that this could end up in the international court at the end of the road creates that extra pressure for domestic investigation

In doing so he invokes a growing body of international law that has the Israelis worried.

The past two decades have seen the emergence of UN-backed war-crimes tribunals and the International Criminal Court.

Parallel to that has been the development of "universal jurisdiction", where individual governments take it upon themselves to look into charges of war crimes or crimes against humanity committed elsewhere.

"I think all these changes have been very important, and they send signals which simply didn't exist even a decade ago, that if you commit these kinds of crimes, there can be consequences," says Steve Crawshaw of Human Rights Watch.

The Palestinians, although ordered by the report and the UN resolution to conduct their own investigations into charges of war crimes, are determined to use this system to hold Israel to account.

"The process started some time ago and is intensifying now with the Goldstone Report over the question of accountability and fighting against impunity," says the Palestinian representative to the UN, Riyad Mansour.

"If the Security Council continues to drag its feet and refuses to shoulder its responsibility, we have options, many options, and there is no limit to where we can go on this quest of accountability."

Already there have been attempts to arrest Israeli military officers visiting Britain, leading to what Israel's David Benjamin calls a "de facto travel ban".

Impact

Lt Col Benjamin insists this is part of a political struggle with no legal merit, what he calls "law-fare" rather than warfare, but does not dismiss the potential impact.

"To adopt the Goldstone report would have very dramatic consequences," he says, "not only for us, but also for any democratic country fighting… a terrorist army with substantial military force but hiding in a civilian population."

Lt Col Benjamin says the same problem could arise in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places.

That may have been a consideration for the US and some Nato countries which either voted against the UN resolution or abstained.

Publicly they expressed concerns that the report was unfairly weighted against Israel, although many supported its call for independent investigations on both sides.

That may be the most important result of the process so far, says Mr Crawshaw.

"The very mention of the fact that this could end up in the international court at the end of the road… creates that extra pressure for domestic investigation."

Either way, human rights groups say, the report and its international profile have reinforced growing efforts to tackle the issues of impunity and lack of accountability for war crimes.

Stop seeking compromise with Israel: Hamas leader

Fri Nov 6, 2009 6:55pm EST
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis



DAMASCUS (Reuters) - Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday to stop seeking compromise with Israel but offered him an olive branch, saying Palestinians must end their divisions.

Sounding conciliatory after raising the political ante against Abbas following his call for national elections last month, Meshaal said the Islamist group Hamas "stretches its hand" to Abbas's Fatah faction to end divisions between the two sides undermining the Palestinian cause.

"Courage dictates that we, as leaders of the Palestinians, be frank with our people and evaluate what compromise has brought us, decide together to suspend or freeze the political settlement process and pursue our real national options," Meshaal told a rally in the Syrian capital.

He said compromise with Israel, starting with the 1993 Oslo Accords, had failed to stop Israeli settlement expansion and brought Palestinians no closer to establishing an independent state in the land Israel has occupied since the 1967 Middle East War.

Abbas suspended talks with Israel during the Israeli invasion of Gaza in December and U.S. efforts to re-start them have since failed. Hamas has opposed the talks and rejected Western demands to recognize Israel, renounce armed struggle and accept existing interim peace deals.

"Any leader who insists on the right of return for the Palestinian refugees and on restoring the land, even to the 1967 borders ... must know that the way to do this is not through negotiations or betting on the Americans but through holy struggle, resistance and national unity," Meshaal said.

NATIONAL PROJECT

"Our hand is stretched out to reconcile with our brothers in Fatah and the Palestinian presidency to achieve our national project," he said, but did not make any new proposals for reconciliation after Hamas rejected an Egypt-mediated deal.

Hamas won a Palestinian parliamentary election in 2006, defeating the once-dominant, more secular Fatah, and won a brief civil war the following year in the Gaza Strip against Fatah.

Abbas then sacked the Hamas government and appointed his own administration in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

The factional violence has been deadly and hundreds of Palestinians have been arrested in crackdowns by the two groups against their rivals' supporters, intensifying mutual acrimony.

The United States refuses to talk to Hamas, considering the group a terrorist organization.

Abbas last month called for new Palestinian presidential and parliamentary elections in January, opposed by Hamas, and announced on Thursday that he did not want to seek re-election.

Meshaal, who lives in exile in Syria, said Abbas's decision not to run, caused "some embarrassment" to the United States, the main Western backer of Abbas and Israel's chief ally.

Hamas said Meshaal this week met delegates from the Council for the National Interest, an independent U.S. group advocating what it calls a more even handed U.S. policy in the Middle East. The delegation included Jack Matlock, a former American ambassador to Moscow. It was the first time Hamas announced meeting the group, which had visited Syria in the past.

(Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

UN backs Gaza war crimes report

Richard Goldstone visits Gaza in June 2009
Judge Goldstone visited Gaza during his inquiry into war crime claims

The UN General Assembly has voted in favour of a resolution calling for independent inquiries by Israel and the Palestinians into war crime claims.

After a two-day debate on a report by former war crimes prosecutor Richard Goldstone, there were 114 votes in favour, 18 opposed and 44 abstentions.

The report condemns the conduct of both sides last December and January, after Israel launched an offensive in Gaza.

The Palestinians backed the report but Israel said it did not promote peace.

Mr Goldstone's report concluded that Israel had "committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity" by using disproportionate force, deliberately targeting civilians, using Palestinians as human shields and destroying civilian infrastructure during its Gaza offensive.

Time and again, the report inverts Israel's unprecedented extensive efforts to save civilian lives as proof that any civilian casualties were therefore deliberate
Gabriela Shalev, Israeli Permanent Representative to the UN

It also found there was evidence that Palestinian militant groups including Hamas, which controls Gaza, had committed war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity, in their repeated rocket and mortars attacks on southern Israel.

The report demanded that unless the parties to the Gaza war investigated the allegations of war crimes within six months, the cases should be referred to the International Criminal Court.

Palestinians and rights groups say more than 1,400 Gazans died in the 22-day conflict, but Israel puts the figure at 1,166. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians, were killed.

'Realisation of justice'

The General Assembly draft resolution was introduced by Arab states and the Non-Aligned Movement, which represents 118 nations.

It called for independent investigations of alleged war crimes to be set up by both the Palestinian Authority and Israel within three months.

The resolution also asks Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to report to the General Assembly within three months on implementation "with a view to considering further action, if necessary, by the relevant United Nations organs and bodies", and to send the report to the Security Council.


Israeli air strike in Rafah, Gaza, on 13 January 2009
The report accuses Israel of using "disproportionate force" in Gaza

UN seeks close Gaza scrutiny

General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding - unlike Security Council resolutions. However, correspondents say the Security Council is unlikely to take any action if the case is ever referred to it.

Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian UN observer, backed the resolution but also insisted that Israel's "aggressions and crimes" could not be equated "with actions committed in response by the Palestinian side".

"We are determined to follow up this report and its recommendations in all relevant international forums, including the Security Council and the International Criminal Court, until the realisation of justice," he said.

Israel's permanent representative, Gabriela Shalev, warned that the report and the debate did "not promote peace - they damage any effort to revitalise negotiations in our region".

"Time and again, the report inverts Israel's unprecedented extensive efforts to save civilian lives as proof that any civilian casualties were therefore deliberate," she told the Assembly.

The US, as a key ally of Israel, was one of a small number of countries expected to vote against the resolution.

For the EU, Sweden's UN envoy Anders Liden urged Israel and the Palestinians to "launch appropriate, credible and independent investigations into possible violations".

He described the report as "serious" and said the EU was "committed to assessing it seriously".

Inquiries criticised

The UN debate also comes as an Israeli human rights organisation criticised investigations being carried out by the Israeli military.

B'tselem said 13 of 23 military police investigations under way were based on information it and two other rights organisations had gathered.

Three of the cases concerned civilians allegedly killed while holding white flags, and four were cases where Gazans were said to have been used as human shields.

B'tselem said the investigations were not sufficient because they "only relate to isolated incidents in which a suspicion exists that soldiers breached military orders".

"To date, not one investigation has been opened regarding Israel's policy during the operation, on matters such as the selection of targets, the open-fire orders given to soldiers, the legality of the weapons used, the balance between injury to civilians and military advantage, and so forth," it said.

Palestinian President Says He Won’t Seek Re-election

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, during a televised speech in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday.

By ETHAN BRONNER and MARK LANDLER
Published: November 5, 2009

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, warned Thursday that he would not seek re-election in the January elections he called, the latest sign that the Obama administration’s drive to broker Middle East peace talks has fallen into disarray.

The Lede: Palestinian Leader Say He Will Retire

There is no immediate prospect of Mr. Abbas’ stepping aside, but his announcement, coming immediately after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s visit to revive talks between Israel and the Palestinians, illustrated the rising tensions over the Obama administration’s failure to produce an Israeli settlement freeze or any concessions from Arab leaders.

Mrs. Clinton’s visit to the region, which she characterized as a success, sowed anger and confusion among Palestinians and other Arabs after she praised as “unprecedented” Israel’s compromise offer to slow down, but not stop, construction of settlements.

In a televised speech from his headquarters in Ramallah, Mr. Abbas, who replaced Yasir Arafat five years ago as president of the Palestinian Authority, said, “I have told my brethren in the P.L.O. that I have no desire to run in the forthcoming election.” He had spoken with the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization earlier in the day.

Mr. Abbas, considered a moderate, pro-Western leader, had called elections for January, but few expect them to take place then, if at all, because they require reconciliation between Mr. Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas, which rules in Gaza. Hamas said it would prohibit the voting from taking place in Gaza without reconciliation. Until such an election, Mr. Abbas remains in office.

It was nonetheless clear that Israeli-Palestinian talks would not resume any time soon despite intensive American diplomacy. A top aide to Mr. Abbas said a large part of the “despondency and frustration” felt by Mr. Abbas and the entire Palestinian leadership was due to President Obama’s unrealized promises to the region. He said he feared that without a stop to settlements, Islamist rivals in Hamas could triumph and violence could break out.

“There was high expectation when he arrived on the scene,” the aide, Nabil Shaath, who heads the Fatah party’s foreign affairs department, said of Mr. Obama at a briefing. “He said he would work to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that it would play a major role in improving the American and Western relationship with the Muslim world. Now there is a total retreat, which has destroyed trust instead of building trust.”

Mr. Shaath added that if the United States vetoed sending a United Nations report critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Security Council, “It really is like telling the Palestinians to go back to violence.”

The United Nations General Assembly was debating that report on Thursday, and the administration, backed by a House resolution, does not want it sent to the Security Council. The result of a committee headed by the South African jurist Sir Richard Goldstone, the report accuses both Israel and Hamas of possible war crimes in their war last January, which killed some 1,200 people, nearly all of them Palestinians.

The less Mr. Abbas can show he has obtained from Israel and the United States, the likelier it is that Palestinian voters will turn to Hamas, which calls for the destruction of Israel and enjoys extensive support from Iran.

In his comments, Mr. Abbas said, “This is not to bargain or maneuver.” But some of his aides saw his announcement as a high-stakes gamble to persuade Mr. Obama to announce a full peace plan aimed at ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and creating a Palestinian state.

For all the frustration that the Palestinians and others have over the current Israeli government’s policies — continuing settlement building on land the Palestinians want for their state, refusal to discuss the status of Jerusalem or final borders, or the return of Palestinian refugees to their original homes — Israel is facing a deeply divided Palestinian leadership incapable of agreeing to any deal just now.

The Israelis say that the way forward is threefold and that the tracks should occur simultaneously: Palestinian institution building, economic development in the West Bank and political dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinians say they will not start negotiations anew but want to renew them from where they left off with former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. Mr. Olmert apparently offered more than 90 percent of the West Bank and some international or shared rule over Jerusalem. The current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has made it clear that Israel would wish to hold on to much more land for security purposes and that Jerusalem is off the table.

“I think he’s reached the conclusion that he’s reached a dead end,” said Qaddoura Fares, another Fatah leader, on Israel Radio, speaking of Mr. Abbas.

Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator, said Wednesday at a news conference that perhaps Palestinians should abandon the two-state approach and work toward one shared state with the Jews, something a vast majority of Israelis oppose.

He said Mr. Abbas should maybe “tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities the two-state solution is no longer an option.”

In his 30-minute speech on Thursday, Mr. Abbas, who has not groomed a successor or young guard, addressed Israelis directly, saying, “Peace is more important than any political achievement or any government party or coalition if the results push the region toward disaster or the unknown.”

He added, “We were surprised by the United States’ closing its eyes to the Israeli position.” He said achieving a peaceful, two-state solution remained possible but that Israel had to change its policies.

Mr. Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeineh, said after the speech that the “American administration must force Israel to respect international legitimacy.”

Ethan Bronner reported from Ramallah, and Mark Landler from Washington.

Official: 'Fatah will not replace Abbas'

Nov 5, 2009 15:31 | Updated Nov 5, 2009 20:24
By JPOST.COM STAFF

If Palestinian Authority President Abbas were to withdraw from the upcoming presidential elections, the continued existence of the Palestinian Authority would become unnecessary, a senior Fatah official was quoted by Israel Radio as saying on Thursday evening.

Fatah does not intend to put forward a candidate to replace Abbas, whose departure would signify the collapse of the peace process at the hands of Israel, the official was quoted as saying.

Abbas told Fatah officials on Wednesday night that he would not run for office in the 2010 presidential elections, later conveying the same message to the PLO Central Committee.

PA spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh stated in a BBC interview on Wednesday that Abbas was seriously considering withdrawing his candidacy from the upcoming presidential elections due to lack of progress on the diplomatic front, citing the frozen peace process with Israel and failed Palestinian reconciliation efforts.

Officials close to Abbas said Wednesday that there was no diplomatic horizon at this point. They warned that if the two-state solution were not pushed forward, the Palestinians would work for a solution based on a bi-national state.

Another Fatah source said that Abbas was "broken," but clarified that Fatah did not yet have a feasible candidate with which to replace him.
Palestinian President Mahmoud...


Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas chairs a meeting of the Fatah Central Committee in Ramallah on Thursday.
Photo: AP

Throughout the day, many Palestinian officials reportedly visited Abbas at the Muqata, advising him on the matter and urging him to reconsider his decision. Slogans and jingles such as "We are renewing our oath to you, Abbas" and "Allah is with you" were aired on Palestinian national television.

The Fatah Central Committee announced on Thursday that it opposed Abbas's threat of resignation. The PLO Central Committee later released a statement according to which it had "unanimously rejected" the decision.

PLO Central Committee chairman and Abbas adviser Yasser Abed Rabbo said following the meeting that Abbas did not represent the Fatah movement alone, but also all other Palestinian movements united under umbrella organization PLO.

Rabbo stated that the committee would make every effort to convince the Palestinian Authority's current president to run for office once again in January 2010, adding that although elections would be held in any case, Abbas's candidacy was vital at this point in Palestinian history.

The Palestinian Authority leadership headed by Abbas must be strong in the face of pressure and push the peace process forward, concluded Rabbo.

On Thursday, both Rabbo and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad reiterated that the international community must work toward a construction freeze in both the settlements and Jerusalem on the way to a two-state solution.

Abbas has threatened in the past not to run, and it was not immediately clear whether this was a final decision. The presidents of Egypt and Israel, the king of Jordan and Israel's defense minister all phoned the Palestinian leader on Thursday, urging him to change his mind, aides said.

The two aides said Abbas would announce his decision in a speech later Thursday. They spoke on condition of anonymity because Abbas has not officially declared his intentions.

AP contributed to this report.

Obama to Native Americans: "You will not be forgotten"

Thu Nov 5, 2009 1:19pm EST
By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama told Native American leaders on Thursday, "You will not be forgotten" and promised to end U.S. government neglect and broken promises toward Indian tribes.

Obama, who drew high Native Americans support in last year's presidential election, fulfilled a campaign pledge by bringing representatives of hundreds of federally recognized Native American tribes to Washington to air their grievances with senior administration officials.

Acknowledging a historically troubled relationship, Obama pledged to work with tribal leaders to address healthcare, crime, development, education and environmental problems.

"Few have been more marginalized and ignored by Washington for as long as Native Americans, our first Americans," Obama said. "I'm absolutely committed to moving forward with you and forging a new and better future together.

"You will not be forgotten as long as I'm in this White House," he told a cheering crowd of more than 500 at the Department of the Interior.

Most in the audience were in business attire; a few wore traditional headdresses, embroidered vests and hair feathers.

A tribal leader from Wisconsin gave Obama the Indian name "He Who Cares," and a man who rose wearing a war bonnet told the president he wanted to him to have it.

Several speakers, in a question-and-answer session, thanked Obama for trying to restore trust but urged him to do more.

Obama drew on his own narrative, noting he was born to a teenage mother and a father who left when he was 2 years old.

"I understand what it means to be an outsider," he said.

Noting that some reservations had 80 percent unemployment and that a quarter of Native Americans lived in poverty, Obama signed a presidential memorandum in front of the crowd instructing cabinet members to outline within 90 days how they will improve relations with Indian tribes.

He said the document would reactivate a Clinton-era order that the Bush administration had mostly ignored.

(Editing by Alan Elsner)