In boost for Hamas, top Arab diplomat visits Gaza

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Arab world’s top diplomat declared support Sunday for the people of blockaded Gaza in his first visit to the Palestinian territory since Hamas violently seized control of it three years ago.

The visit was latest sign that Israel’s deadly raid on a flotilla trying to break the blockade of Gaza has eased the diplomatic isolation of the Islamic militant group.

Israel, meanwhile, appeared to grow more isolated in the fallout over the May 31 raid as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak abruptly canceled plans Sunday to visit Paris.

Barak’s office said he canceled his trip while Israel forms a committee to investigate the raid. The statement denied that the decision was connected to attempts by pro-Palestinian groups to seek his arrest.

Israel said late Sunday it was setting up an inquiry headed by a judge, to be joined by two high-ranking foreign observers.

The government statement said the Israeli Cabinet would be asked to approve the “special independent public commission” on Monday. The chairman is to be Yaakov Turkel, a retired Israeli Supreme Court justice, the statement said. The two foreign observers are to be Lord William David Trimble of Ireland, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and retired Brig. Gen. Ken Watkin, the former chief military prosecutor in Canada.

The Obama administration and the U.N. have urged Israel to involve foreigners in the investigation, while Turkey and others have demanded an inquiry without Israeli involvement.

Washington’s ambassador to the U.N., Susan Rice, told Fox News on Sunday that while the United States believes Israel can conduct a “credible and impartial” investigation, an “international component” would “buttress its credibility in the eyes of the international community.”

Israeli defense officials said Barak called off his trip to Paris over concern about the unwanted attention his visit would attract. In particular, they pointed to the heavy media focus and difficult questions he would face as well as the heightened security arrangements the visit would require. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter with the media.

Activists have previously tried unsuccessfully to arrest Barak and other Israeli officials in Europe under the principle of universal jurisdiction.

In another development, several Turkish educators and officials pulled out of an international Holocaust education conference in Israel to protest the raid, organizers said. The raid, which resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish activists, has severely strained ties between former regional and military allies Turkey and Israel.

Arab League chief Amr Moussa’s visit to Gaza is part of an international push to end the three-year-old blockade that gained momentum after the naval raid.

“The siege must be lifted,” Moussa told reporters. “All the world is now standing with the people of Palestine and the people of Gaza.”

It was a significant declaration because many Arab countries have held the Iranian-backed Hamas at arms length, and Egypt, one of the Arab League’s most important members, has been Israel’s partner in keeping Gaza largely sealed.

Widespread outrage in the Arab and Muslim world over the raid has prompted Arab leaders to join the growing international demands for opening Gaza’s borders. In a first step, Egypt has eased the very limited travel at its Rafah crossing with Gaza.

Israel says the blockade is necessary to stop weapons reaching Hamas, but critics say it has failed to dent support for the Islamic militants and has left 1.5 million Gazans more deeply mired in poverty.

Moussa was the first senior Arab official to visit Gaza since the territory came under the control of Hamas, which much of the West considers a terrorist organization.

The head of the 22-member Arab League met Sunday with the top Hamas leader in Gaza, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, in a significant diplomatic boost for Hamas. The meeting took place in Haniyeh’s home in Gaza’s Shati refugee camp, and the men later walked around the neighborhood for 10 minutes.

“The acrimony between Gaza and the Arab nation ended today and forever,” said Bassem Naim, a Hamas Cabinet minister who greeted Moussa.

Moussa said Gaza reconstruction projects are ready, but there must be a “national unity approach” for them to be implemented, a reference to the split between Hamas in Gaza and Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank.

As part of the border blockade, Israel restricts imports to Gaza, only permitting a few dozen types of foods and medicines, while barring raw materials, including construction supplies. Virtually all exports are banned.

As a result, more than 70 percent of Gaza’s 3,900 factories and workshops stand idle or operate at minimal capacity, and tens of thousands have lost their jobs. U.N. officials say 80 percent of Gazans now receive some type of aid.

In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated to his Cabinet Sunday that Israel must maintain the blockade to prevent weapons and goods that could be used for military purposes from reaching Hamas. The Islamic group has fired thousands of rockets at Israel.

“The principle guiding our policy is clear — to prevent the entry of war materiel from entering Gaza and to allow the entry of humanitarian aid and non-contraband goods into the Gaza Strip,” Netanyahu said.

President Barack Obama said last week that the blockade in its current form is unsustainable.

\\ASSOCIATED PRESS

Schumer Says It ‘Makes Sense’ To ‘Strangle [Gaza] Economically’ Until It Votes The Way Israel Wants

This past Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) delivered a wide-ranging speech at an Orthodox Union event in Washington, D.C. The senator’s lecture touched on areas such as Iran’s nuclear program, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and several domestic policy issues.

During one point of his speech, Schumer turned his attention to the situation in Gaza. He told the audience that the “Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution,” and also that “they don’t believe in the Torah, in David.” He went on to say “you have to force them to say Israel is here to stay.”

New York’s senior senator explained that the current Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip — which is causing a humanitarian crisis there — is not only justified because it keeps weapons out of the Palestinian territory, but also because it shows the Palestinians living there that “when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement.” Summing up his feelings, Schumer emphasized the need to “to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go”:

SCHUMER: The Palestinian people still don’t believe in the Jewish state, in a two-state solution. More do than before, but a majority still do not. Their fundamental view is, the Europeans treated the Jews badly and gave them our land — this is Palestinian thinking [...] They don’t believe in the Torah, in David [...] You have to force them to say Israel is here to stay. The boycott of Gaza to me has another purpose — obviously the first purpose is to prevent Hamas from getting weapons by which they will use to hurt Israel — but the second is actually to show the Palestinians that when there’s some moderation and cooperation, they can have an economic advancement. When there’s total war against Israel, which Hamas wages, they’re going to get nowhere. And to me, since the Palestinians in Gaza elected Hamas, while certainly there should be humanitarian aid and people not starving to death, to strangle them economically until they see that’s not the way to go, makes sense.

Watch it:

Schumer is simply factually incorrect that the “majority” of Palestinians refuse to accept a two-state solution. Recent polling has found that 74 percent of the Palestinian population wants to see a two-state solution with an Israeli and Palestinian state side by side. It is also the position of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and there is evidence that Gaza’s Hamas rulers may be compelled to support such a solution as well.

As for the senator’s comments on economic strangulation making “sense” to produce better leadership in Gaza, they are as offensive as they are wrong. Schumer believes it is logical to economically harm the civilian population of Gaza — where 44 percent of the people under the age of 14 — for freely voting in an election the U.S. supported, then undermined, in order to change the territory’s government. The reality is that its leadership has only become further radicalized and entrenched as a result of the embargo. (HT: Mondoweiss)

\\THINKPROGRESS

Mystery deepens over band of Dubai assassins, Mossad eyed in plot

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates – Britons who were named as the suspected assassins of Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month have told U.K. media that their identities were stolen and they are now living in fear.

“I’m not exactly spy material,” one of the men, 54-year-old Michael Lawrence Barney said, explaining that he had undergone quadruple bypass surgery.

He and others spoke out as U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown, describing the British passport as “an important document,” promised a full investigation.

There is growing speculation that the Israeli spy agency, Mossad, may have been behind the Jan. 19 assassination, with Amir Oren, a military analyst for the Israeli daily Haaretz, calling for the ouster of Mossad director Meir Dagan.

Senior Israeli security officials not directly involved with the affair told the Associated Press that they were convinced it was a Mossad operation because of the motive and the use of Israeli identities.

However, Rafi Eitan, a former Cabinet minister and Mossad agent who took part in the capture of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, thought Israel’s foes were trying to “taint” it by using the identities of Israelis.

‘I’m being called a terrorist’
Britain’s Barney, like several of the suspects named by Dubai authorities, moved from Britain to live in Israel, initially working in a kibbutz in the 1970s.

After authorities in Dubai published the list of 11 people wanted in connection with the killing of Mabhouh, he immediately looked for his passport and found it was still in his home.

“I can only think that someone has effectively stolen my identity and used it to carry out this attack. It’s terrifying,” Barney, a father of three, told the Daily Mail.

“I was shocked. My picture is being beamed around the world and I’m being called a terrorist.”

Another on the list, Stephen Daniel Hodes, 37, told the BBC, “I don’t know how they got my details, who took them. I’ve never been to Dubai ever. I don’t know who’s behind this. I am just scared, these are major forces.”

‘Like an espionage movie’
And Paul Keeley, 42, a builder who was born in Havering, Essex, England, but now lives on a kibbutz, told the Daily Telegraph: “I have not left Israel for two years and I certainly have not been to Dubai recently.

“I woke up this morning and suddenly my life is like an espionage movie. It is all very worrying but I know I have not done anything wrong.”

Dubai police this week released names, photos, and passport numbers of 11 members of an alleged hit-squad that killed Mabhouh in his luxury Dubai hotel room last month.

Dubai said all 11 carried European passports. But most of the identities appear to be stolen and at least seven matched up with real people in Israel who claim they are victims of identity theft.

Prime Minister Brown told London’s LBC Radio that a “full investigation” would be carried out.

“The evidence has got to be assembled about what has actually happened and how it happened and why it happened and it is necessary for us to accumulate that evidence before we can make statements,” he said.

Lawmaker Menzies Campbell, the former leader of the Liberal Democrats, the smallest of Britain’s three main parties, said that “if the Israeli government was party to behavior of this kind it would be a serious violation of trust between nations.”

And he added “the Israeli government has some explaining to do” and called for the ambassador to be summoned “in double-quick time.”

No proof
However Israel’s foreign minister said on Wednesday the use of the identities of foreign-born Israelis by the hit squad did not prove that Mossad had assassinated Mabhouh.

“There is no reason to think that it was the Israeli Mossad, and not some other intelligence service or country up to some mischief,” Avigdor Lieberman, asked about the operation and alleged passport subterfuge, told Army Radio.

Lieberman did not deny outright Israeli involvement in the killing of Hamas’ Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel last month, saying Israel has a “policy of ambiguity” on intelligence matters and there was no proof it was behind the assassination.

“I think Britain recognizes that Israel is a responsible country and that our security activity is conducted according to very clear, cautious and responsible rules of the game. Therefore we have no cause for concern,” he said.

Israeli lawmaker Yisrael Hasson, a former deputy commander of the Shin Bet internal security service, said he would ask to convene a meeting of the Israeli parliament’s powerful foreign affairs and defense committee to discuss the matter.

“No one should use someone’s identity without his permission or without his understanding in some way what it is being used for,” Hasson told Israel Radio.

Continue reading: MSNBC

Hamas condemns the Holocaust

We are not engaged in a religious conflict with Jews; this is a political struggle to free ourselves from occupation and oppression

As the Palestinian people prepare to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Nakba (“catastrophe”) – the dispossession and expulsion of most of our people from our land – those remaining in Palestine face escalating aggression, killings, imprisonment, ethnic cleansing and siege. But instead of support and solidarity from the western media, we face frequent attempts to defend the indefensible or turn fire on the Palestinians themselves.

One recent approach, which seems to be part of the wider attempt to isolate the elected Palestinian leadership, is to portray Hamas and the population of the Gaza strip as motivated by anti-Jewish sentiment, rather than a hostility to Zionist occupation and domination of our land. A recent front page article in the International Herald Tribune followed this line, as did an article for Cif about an item broadcast on the al-Aqsa satellite TV channnel about the Nazi Holocaust.

In fact, the al-Aqsa Channel is an independent media institution that often does not express the views of the Palestinian government headed by Ismail Haniyeh or of the Hamas movement. The channel regularly gives Palestinians of different convictions the chance to express views that are not shared by the Palestinian government or the Hamas movement. In the case of the opinion expressed on al-Aqsa TV by Amin Dabbur, it is his alone and he is solely responsible for it.

It is rather surprising to us that so little attention, if any, is given by the western media to what is regularly broadcast or written in the Israeli media by politicians and writers demanding the total uprooting or “transfer” of the Palestinian people from their land.

The Israeli media and pro-Israel western press are full of views that deny or seek to excuse well-established facts of history including the Nakba of 1948 and the massacres perpetrated then by the Haganah, the Irgun and LEHI with the objective of forcing a mass dispossession of the Palestinians.

But it should be made clear that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian government in Gaza denies the Nazi Holocaust. The Holocaust was not only a crime against humanity but one of the most abhorrent crimes in modern history. We condemn it as we condemn every abuse of humanity and all forms of discrimination on the basis of religion, race, gender or nationality.

(Continue reading: The Guardian)

Carter: Hamas will accept Israel

Former US President Jimmy Carter has said that Hamas is prepared to accept the right of Israel to “live as a neighbour next door in peace”.

After meeting Hamas leaders last week in Syria, he said it was a problem the US and Israel would not meet the group.

His comments came as the Israeli army launched a formal investigation into the death of a Reuters cameraman killed in the Gaza Strip last week.

And two Palestinians died in Israeli air strikes in the territory.

Monday’s strikes killed one Palestinian in the southern city of Rafah and a Hamas militant at Beit Hanoun, a border town from where rockets are often fired at Israel.

‘Regressed’

Mr Carter, speaking in Jerusalem, said Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking had “regressed” since the US hosted Middle East talks in November at Annapolis.

 

Hamas indicated to us at least – I’m not guaranteeing their commitment – that if Israel is willing to have a mutual ceasefire and a renunciation of violence in Gaza and in the West Bank, they will accept it  Jimmy Carter

The former US president was criticised by the US and Israel for visiting the Syrian capital Damascus last week to meet exiled Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal.

But he defended his visit on Monday, telling Israel’s Council on Foreign Relations: “The problem is not that I met with Hamas in Syria. The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with someone who must be involved.”

Mr Carter said Hamas had reiterated its position that it would accept an Israeli state within its pre-1967 borders, living in peace with Israel, if such an agreement was approved by Palestinians.

(Continue reading: BBC News)

Carter: Hamas very important for peace

Former US president Jimmy Carter on Sunday defended his plan to meet with Hamas leaders for peace talks as he kicked off a trip to the Middle East, amid criticism from Washington and Israel.

Carter, who in his 2006 book likened Israeli policies to ‘a system of apartheid’, described the inclusion as ‘very important’ because it helps us hear the views of Hamas leaders.

“There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbors, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process,” he said in an interview with ABC, which was pre-recorded and aired on Sunday.

The former US president arrived in Israel on Sunday as part of a nine-day trip to the Middle East in order to study the situation for peace talks.

“We’ll be meeting with the Syrians, the Egyptians, the Jordanians, the Saudi Arabians, and with the whole gamut of people who might have to play a crucial role in any future peace agreement that involves the Middle East,” Carter said of his trip.

Carter is to be shunned in Israel by senior Israeli officials including premier Ehud Olmert, foreign minister Tzipi Livni and war minister Ehud Barak. Israeli officials have cited ‘scheduling problems’ as the reason.

But the main reason is apparently Carter’s reported plan to meet with Hamas political Chief Khalid Mashaal in Syria.

“I’ve not confirmed our itinerary yet for the Syrian visit, but it’s likely that I will be meeting with the Hamas leaders,” Carter said in the interview.

On Thursday, the US State Department had also advised Carter against meeting with Hamas officials.

 

Carter, who reportedly plans to meet exiled Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal in Syria, said he viewed Hamas’s inclusion in peace talks as “very important” and stressed he was not travelling as an official US negotiator.

“It’s very important that at least someone meet with the Hamas leaders to express their views, to ascertain what flexibility they have, to try to induce them to stop all attacks against innocent civilians in Israel and to cooperate with the Fatah as a group that unites the Palestinians,” Carter told ABC news.

“There’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that, if Israel is ever going to find peace with justice concerning the relationship with their next-door neighbours, the Palestinians, that Hamas will have to be included in the process,” he said in the interview, which was pre-recorded and aired on Sunday.

Carter arrived in Israel Sunday and held talks with President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem before meeting the parents of an Israeli soldier who was abducted in June 2006 by Gaza militants and is being held by Hamas.

Israel and Hamas have been holding secret, indirect negotiations to secure the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit as part of a prisoner exchange deal.

Carter’s study mission that runs until April 21, will also take him to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, his Atlanta-based Carter Center said.

Media reports that Carter plans to hold talks with Meshaal in Damascus sparked a furore in the United States. Carter’s office would neither confirm nor deny the reports, and the former president has remained vague about the details.

Israel on Sunday urged the US ex-president not to meet Meshaal.

Hamas, which seized control of the Gaza Strip last June after routing Fatah forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, is considered a terrorist organisation by Israel, the United States and the European Union.

However, the 83-year-old Carter pointed out during the ABC interview that he was not travelling in any official capacity.

“I’m not going as a mediator or a negotiator,” he said. “I’ve been meeting with Hamas leaders for years.”

Carter said his most recent talks came after Hamas’s win in January 2006 elections. At that time, he said Hamas expressed willingness to declare a ceasefire in Gaza and the West Bank and allow Abbas to negotiate on behalf of all Palestinians.

“I intend to find out if these are their prevailing thoughts now,” he said.

“Carter is going to visit places we do not wish to associate ourselves with. He also never made an official request to meet Olmert,” a senior government official told AFP.

The US State Department on Thursday advised him against meeting Hamas because Washington supports Abbas in new peace talks with Israel and backs the Jewish state’s bid to isolate the Islamists.

Carter’s 2006 book “Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid” infuriated some Jewish and zionist groups who accused him of racism and anti-Semitism.

 

/press tv + afp

 

‘We’ll Have to Talk’

In spite of escalating violence, a growing chorus of Israelis have begun calling for negotiations with Hamas.

Kevin Peraino

When paramedic Yerach Tucker arrived at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem last Thursday night, gunshots were still cracking through the halls. As he inched closer to the front door, a stream of young men frantically poured out of the Jewish seminary, their shirts stained with blood. Tucker ducked behind a bus, waited for the shooting to stop, and then crept with his team through the front gates. Inside the school’s library, he found students lying slumped at their desks, heads collapsed over their books. “You couldn’t see the floor,” Tucker recalled. “It was covered in red.” Outside, news filtered through the growing crowd that militants in Gaza had celebrated the shooting with their own bursts of gunfire. “We bless the operation,” Hamas said in a statement. “It will not be the last.” Tucker looked on as an angry mob of ultra-Orthodox men broke into a roar and began to shout, “Death to the Arabs!”

With eight students dead and nine more wounded, the attack was Jerusalem’s worst in four years. Tucker, like most Israelis, says he hopes his military will hit back hard–even if it’s not clear whether the gunman, an Arab from East Jerusalem, was working on his own. Yet when it comes to longer-term policy toward the Islamists, the paramedic just sighs. “Hamas controls everything in Gaza–we can never finish them off,” he says. “They run the place. I don’t want to talk to terrorists, but what can you do? Eventually we’ll have to talk to them.” In the United States, the notion of face-to-face talks with Hamas, which the State Department classifies as a terrorist organization, has long been a political third rail. Yet in the Jewish state a growing chorus of security officials, academics and regular Israelis like Tucker have begun calling for negotiations with the Islamists. In a Haaretz-Dialog poll last month, 64 percent of Israelis said they supported direct talks; among those who belong to the country’s dovish Labor Party, 72 percent favor negotiations. Yet even among those surveyed from the hawkish Likud Party, almost half–48 percent–said they favor a face-to-face dialogue. Already in recent weeks, even as the two sides have traded some of the most ferocious bombardments in months, a number of nongovernmental channels have opened between Israelis and the Islamists.

The numbers are a reflection of the Israeli public’s growing frustration at what they see as a failing Gaza policy. Since the Islamists won power in parliamentary elections two years ago, Israel and the United States have enforced a punishing embargo on the coastal strip, hoping support for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his moderate West Bank allies could help turn public opinion against Hamas. Yet the Islamists have survived and learned to effectively play the spoiler, sabotaging Abbas’s peace talks with a few well-placed attacks. Israeli military raids into Gaza have similarly backfired. After Israeli troops killed more than 50 Palestinian civilians in Gaza operations last week, international public opinion turned sharply critical. “Hamas is not going to disappear,” says Shlomo Brom, a former Israeli military chief of strategic planning. “They’re not Al Qaeda; they’re a national political movement.” Brom, who favors indirect negotiations with Hamas, says he believes a dialogue could help moderate the Islamists. Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told NEWSWEEK last year that his organization would also be open to direct talks, as long as there are no preconditions.

Yet the fragility of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s governing coalition makes any high-profile contacts unlikely. Yaron Ezrahi, a political scientist at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University who supports direct negotiations, says that there’s “a huge gap” between current Israeli policymakers and public opinion on the issue. Part of the problem is that Olmert, whose approval ratings are hovering in the single digits, depends on the support of right-wing parties like the Sephardic Orthodox Shas bloc to stay in power.

Rather than direct talks, the government has quietly blessed Egyptian efforts to arrange a ceasefire between the two sides. Abbas, too, is conflicted. He has refused to discuss a unity deal with Hamas, arguing that the Islamists took over Gaza illegally last June and must submit to his authority first. Any deal that excludes his Palestinian Authority may weaken Abbas’s standing among Palestinians, and his ability to continue longterm peace talks with the Israelis.

Even if Israel did choose to hold direct talks, there are a number of practical obstacles. The Hamas takeover of Gaza last June has sharply divided the Islamists, fracturing the organization into a number of independent power bases. “When you talk to Hamas you don’t have one address,” says a former Israeli intelligence operative who has held direct talks with the Islamists in the past, and requested anonymity before describing the sensitive talks. “You have to deal with several figures in order to achieve approval for anything.”

Israel has long held quiet, behind-the-scenes talks with key Hamas figures. The Jewish state still provides the vast majority of the West Bank’s electricity; after Hamas began winning local elections three years ago, Israeli officials sometimes had no choice but to talk with Islamic municipal officials over practical issues like utilities. Mohammad Ghayyada, the Hamas-affiliated mayor of the West Bank town of Nahalin, says that just last month he traveled to Israel to meet with electric-company officials after a blackout darkened his town. Israeli intelligence agencies have also long held talks with Hamas leaders in Israeli jails; since the Islamists seized power in Gaza last year, Israel has arrested more than 2,000 Hamas activists in the West Bank, according to the organization’s spokesman, Yazid Khader. Last summer, Ofer Dekel, a former officer in the Shin Bet intelligence agency responsible for the hunt for captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, traveled to Israel’s Haderim prison to meet with a group of jailed senior Hamas officials.

Still, Shalit’s case highlights the difficulties of any such talks. After indirect negotiations through Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman went nowhere, Shalit’s father, Noam, spoke several times by phone about the case with Gaza-based Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad. Those conversations have since stopped, but several months ago the senior Shalit retained a team of French lawyers to reach out to Hamas. One of them, Emmanuel Altit, told NEWSWEEK that he has made contact by phone with a number of Hamas factions in Gaza, including the hard-liners, and is trying to travel to Gaza to hold face-to-face talks. (The Israeli government, so far, has refused to issue Altit a permit.) “I really don’t care much about the politics,” says Noam Shalit. “My only interest is to resolve the issue of my son and bring him home. From my point of view, direct negotiations are the most effective. The two parties need to sit together. Hamas controls Gaza whether we like it or not.”

//newsweek//