Netanyahu: Israel seeks lasting peace with Arabs By Haaretz Service

 

Incoming Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on Tuesday that under his leadership, Israel would continue to work toward a comprehensive peace with the Arab and Muslim world.

"We will not let anyone question our right to exist," he told lawmakers gathered at the Knesset in Jerusalem for the swearing-in of the new coalition. "Israel can`t afford to treat statements against it light-heartedly."

In his address, Netanyahu called radical Islam and the Iranian regime major threats to regional security, but praised Islamic culture as "great and rich, with many branches in our people's history which has known periods which flourished for Arabs and Jews who lived together and created together."

He said that blocking the Iranian nuclear program was in the interest of both Israel and the Muslim world, adding that he hoped the region could work together "to block terrorism in every direction and fight it until the end."

"Israel has always, and today more than ever, strives to reach full peace with the entire Arab and Muslim world, and today that yearning is supported by a joint interest of Israel and the Arab states against the fanatical obstacle that threatens us all," he said.

Netanyahu did not explicitly endorse an independent Palestinian state while declaring his commitment to peace, but said: "We do not wish to rule another people. We do not want to rule the Palestinians... Under the permanent status agreement, the Palestinians will have all the authority necessary to rule themselves."

He also warned the Palestinian Authority that it must do its part to fight terror if it is serious about peace.

"I say to the Palestinian leadership that if you really want peace we can achieve peace," Netanyahu told a Knesset session interrupted by heckling from Arab and left-wing lawmakers.

He offered negotiations on "three parallel tracks, economic, security and diplomatic" with the Palestinian Authority.

Netanyahu also pledged to do whatever it takes to free abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, who has been in Palestinian captivity since he was abducted in a 2006 cross-border raid from the Gaza Strip.

The incoming premier promised that his government would "work to bolster national security and achieve personal security for Israel's citizens... maintain the Jewish character of the state and Jewish tradition, and also respect the religions and traditions of the country's ethnic communities."

Netanyahu thanked outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert for his "devoted service" to the state, and promised to engage in peace talks with "sincerity and a clear mind."

Following his address, Netanyahu began to name the 30 new ministers and deputy ministers appointed to serve in the new government coalition, set to be voted in at the end of the ceremony.

Olmert delivered his final speech as premier just before Netanyahu's address, urging the new coalition to follow in his government's path and make the peace process a central focus of the coming term.

"Our avid peace efforts were acknowledged by the international community," he said. In particular, the outgoing prime minister called on Netanyahu to continue on the Syria track, a process which Olmert jumpstarted during his term.


"As I step down from the premiership, I am not the least bit resentful," Olmert said, adding that he was proud of his own government's achievements.

Olmert's tenure as prime minister was heavily criticized throughout, with two wars and a dozen investigations into his alleged corruption.

During his address, the outgoing prime minister defended his government's decision to carry out the 2006 war in Lebanon and the recent operation in the Gaza Strip.

The Israel Defense Forces is "most moral army in the world," Olmert declared, adding that this was evident by Israel's actions during its offensive on the Gaza Strip earlier this year.

He also defended the government's decision to carry out the 2006 Second Lebanon War against Hezbollah militants, despite widespread criticism of the state's handling of that war.

"The outcomes of Second Lebanon War, in long run, are positive," Olmert said, adding that the war "changed strategic balance along the border in our favor."

Opposition leader Tzipi Livni, who lost out on the opportunity to form the new government despite her Kadima party's slim win in the February elections, took the podium to deliver the third address at the government swearing in.

She began her speech by wishing the new government success, but quickly added that could not wish success to a coalition deal that would "not benefit the state at all."

She then vowed that under her leadership, the opposition would act responsibly to bring the public's faith back to the Knesset.

Mar. 26, 2009  Editorial  , THE JERUSALEM POST

[ Islamic extremists make clear their goals.  Why not believe them?]

If you follow the trail of arms from Iran - through Somalia, Sudan and Egypt to the Gaza Strip - you come to a fork in the road. One direction leads to the conclusion that Teheran's smuggling of weapons to Hamas for its fight against Israel is but a facet of the greater Islamist confrontation with Western civilization; the other to the determination that there is no war of civilizations, and that Iran and Hamas are ripe for inclusion in the international community.

YESTERDAY, CBS News reported that in January, Israeli aircraft bombed an Iranian arms convoy in Sudan bound for Hamas during Operation Cast Lead. The attack took place northwest of Port Sudan. All the casualties were Sudanese, Eritreans and Ethiopians and all the trucks were destroyed. They were presumably thought to be carrying rockets that would extend Hamas's range to Tel Aviv, making the mission worth the risk.

• The arms start off in Iran, which sees itself at war with Israel on every continent, using all available means and proxies. Teheran orchestrated the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina in 1992, and the Buenos Aires Jewish Community Center in 1994. Iranian instructors taught Hizbullah the art of truck-bombing, which claimed hundreds of Israeli lives in Lebanon.

The mullahs began courting Hamas in 1990, once they had determined that destroying Israel trumped any theological differences with the Sunni jihadists.

Today, Iran is heavily invested in Hamas - financially, diplomatically, militarily and politically.

• The weapons move to Somalia, a failed state and humanitarian basket case controlled by warlords who seek to surmount clan differences with radical Islam. Youthful Shabab extremists are their shock troops. The goal is a world caliphate, but for now they'd settle for Wahhabi control of Somalia. A moderate Islamist president sitting in Mogadishu is too weak to exert power; Muslim pirates rule the coastal waters.

• The next port of call: Sudan. Once Osama bin Laden's headquarters, Sudan is notorious for its genocide against non-Arabs in Darfur. The country has close ties with Iran, whose Revolutionary Guards are training its reconstituted army.

On March 4, the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese leader Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Since then al-Bashir has been to Cairo - twice - to strategize with President Hosni Mubarak. And he means to attend next week's Arab League Summit in Qatar. Beyond the backing he has in the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the African Union, Bashir's support is being spearheaded by Iran, Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Islamic Jihad. Iran's parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, called the arrest warrant an "insult directed at Muslims."

• Next port of call - Egypt. Every bullet shipped to Gaza by Iran traverses Egypt, either overland or via the Port of Damietta in a journey coordinated by Hamas in Damascus and Iran's Revolutionary Guard. By the time the shipments arrive at the smugglers' tunnels connecting the Sinai to Gaza, innumerable hands have facilitated them, and innumerable eyes looked the other way.

AMERICAN policy wonks who argue that Iran and Hamas are ripe for inclusion in the international community see taking that direction as "pragmatic." They've unearthed Hamas's "moderate" wing - and it's "open to compromise."

Not, granted, on the core issues of terrorism, honoring previous Palestinian commitments and Israel's right to exist. But Hamas would agree to a lengthy cease-fire. And it might allow Mahmoud Abbas to front for them. Further, say the wonks, with Hamas standing over his shoulder - who knows, Abbas might negotiate a peace deal! It would be brought to a Palestinian referendum, and Hamas would abide by the results.

But none of this will happen, the wonks warn, if the West remains hung up on what Hamas says it will do to Israel.

Similarly, when the US sits down Tuesday at The Hague, with Iran, to discuss Afghanistan, the wonks will likely argue that Teheran's attendance signals its underlying pragmatism - and that this pragmatism could be torpedoed by obsessing over Iranian threats to destroy Israel.

If the new Obama administration takes the easy road counseled by these wonks, willfully ignoring the implacable nature of Islamist extremism, it will have embarked on a journey of disastrous self-delusion.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1237727552931&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull
[ Back to the Article ]

HUDSON INSTITUTE, March 24, 2009

On Campus: The 'Pro-Palestinians' Are

More Are Pro-Hamas Than Pro-Palestinian

 Khaled Abu Toameh

During a recent visit to several university campuses in the U.S., I discovered that there is more sympathy for Hamas there than there is in Ramallah.

Listening to some students and professors on these campuses, for a moment I thought I was sitting opposite a Hamas spokesman or a would-be-suicide bomber.

I was told, for instance, that Israel has no right to exist, that Israel’s “apartheid system” is worse than the one that existed in South Africa and that Operation Cast Lead was launched only because Hamas was beginning to show signs that it was interested in making peace and not because of the rockets that the Islamic movement was launching at Israeli communities.

I was also told that top Fatah operative Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in prison for masterminding terror attacks against Israeli civilians, was thrown behind bars simply because he was trying to promote peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Furthermore, I was told that all the talk about financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority was “Zionist propaganda” and that Yasser Arafat had done wonderful things for his people, including the establishment of schools, hospitals and universities.

The good news is that these remarks were made only by a minority of people on the campuses who describe themselves as “pro-Palestinian,” although the overwhelming majority of them are not Palestinians or even Arabs or Muslims.

The bad news is that these groups of hard-line activists/thugs are trying to intimidate anyone who dares to say something that they don’t like to hear.

When the self-designated “pro-Palestinian” lobbyists are unable to challenge the facts presented by a speaker, they resort to verbal abuse..

On one campus, for example, I was condemned as an “idiot” because I said that a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas in the January 2006 election because they were fed up with financial corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

On another campus, I was dubbed as a “mouthpiece for the Zionists” because I said that Israel has a free media. There was another campus where someone told me that I was a ‘liar” because I said that Barghouti was sentenced to five life terms because of his role in terrorism.

And then there was the campus (in Chicago) where I was “greeted” with swastikas that were painted over posters promoting my talk. The perpetrators, of course, never showed up at my event because they would not be able to challenge someone who has been working in the field for nearly 30 years.

What struck me more than anything else was the fact that many of the people I met on the campuses supported Hamas and believed that it had the right to “resist the occupation” even if that meant blowing up children and women on a bus in downtown Jerusalem.

I never imagined that I would need police protection while speaking at a university in the U.S. I have been on many Palestinian campuses in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and I cannot recall one case where I felt intimidated or where someone shouted abuse at me.

Ironically, many of the Arabs and Muslims I met on the campuses were much more understanding and even welcomed my “even-handed analysis” of the Israeli-Arab conflict. After all, the views I voiced were not much different than those made by the leaderships both in Israel and the Palestinian Authority. These views include support for the two-state solution and the idea of coexistence between Jews and Arabs in this part of the world.

The so-called pro-Palestinian “junta” on the campuses has nothing to offer other than hatred and de-legitimization of Israel. If these folks really cared about the Palestinians, they would be campaigning for good government and for the promotion of values of democracy and freedom in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Their hatred for Israel and what it stands for has blinded them to a point where they no longer care about the real interests of the Palestinians, namely the need to end the anarchy and lawlessness, and to dismantle all the armed gangs that are responsible for the death of hundreds of innocent Palestinians over the past few years.

The majority of these activists openly admit that they have never visited Israel or the Palestinian territories. They don’t know -and don’t want to know - that Jews and Arabs here are still doing business together and studying together and meeting with each other on a daily basis because they are destined to live together in this part of the world. They don’t want to hear that despite all the problems life continues and that ordinary Arab and Jewish parents who wake up in the morning just want to send their children to school and go to work before returning home safely and happily.

What is happening on the U.S. campuses is not about supporting the Palestinians as much as it is about promoting hatred for the Jewish state. It is not really about ending the “occupation” as much as it is about ending the existence of Israel.

Many of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas officials I talk to in the context of my work as a journalist sound much more pragmatic than most of the anti-Israel, “pro-Palestinian” folks on the campuses.

Over the past 15 years, much has been written and said about the fact that Palestinian school textbooks don’t promote peace and coexistence and that the Palestinian media often publishes anti-Israel material.

While this may be true, there is no ignoring the fact that the anti-Israel campaign on U.S. campuses is not less dangerous. What is happening on these campuses is not in the frame of freedom of speech. Instead, it is the freedom to disseminate hatred and violence. As such, we should not be surprised if the next generation of jihadists comes not from the Gaza Strip or the mountains and mosques of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but from university campuses across the U.S.

Abbas's government urges Europe to shun Hamas

Mon Mar 23, 2009 9:55pm IST

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Reuters) - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Western-backed government warned European states on Monday against easing a boycott of Hamas Islamists, saying it could put unity talks at risk.

Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said he relayed that message last week to European leaders during talks in Brussels.

Egyptian efforts to reconcile Abbas's secular Fatah faction, which holds sway in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, have so far been unsuccessful.

The talks, held in Cairo, were adjourned last week without agreement on the shape or agenda of a proposed unity government that would oversee the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip after Israel's offensive, as well as prepare for new elections.

Negotiations are expected to resume but big differences remain, including over demands by Fatah that Hamas agree to abide by interim peace agreements signed with Israel. Hamas has refused to make such a commitment.

The Islamist group, which beat Fatah in a 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election, is shunned by the United States and the European Union as a "terrorist" organisation for refusing to renounce violence, recognise Israel and abide by interim agreements.

But some European states have limited contacts with the group and hold out the possibility of further engagement if the group, which seized control of the Gaza Strip in 2007 after routing Abbas's forces there, softens its stance on Israel.

Malki said European overtures could undermine the unity talks by giving Hamas the impression that "the international community, and especially the European Union, is ready to change its position towards Hamas", whether the group agrees to abide by interim agreements or not.

"There wouldn't be any harm if (European states) talked to Hamas after we reach a reconciliation agreement and after Hamas joins the parties committed to the agreements," Malki said.

" [A Palestinian leadership's] refusal to recognize the inalienable right of the Jewish people to self-determination anywhere between the Mediterranean and the Jordan signals Palestinian society's continuing to define our conflict in zero-sum terms."


Suleiman's 'wisdom' (Or, weaseling-in Hamas)
Mar. 19, 2009, THE JERUSALEM POST

While top Israeli emissaries were in Cairo seeking Gilad Schalit's freedom this week, their usual interlocutor, Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, was not. He was in Khartoum and Riyadh on Arab League business.

Suleiman then flew to Washington to see US Middle East envoy George Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He is hoping to convince the Obama administration to abandon the conditions set in January 2006, after Hamas beat Fatah in Palestinian elections, requiring Hamas to recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept past PLO commitments before the international community will deal with the Islamists.

In the wake of all that's happened in the past three years, Suleiman has concluded that an ever-more entrenched Hamas needs to be accommodated if the Palestinians are to speak with one voice and function in the international arena. Several EU states already flirt with Hamas, discreetly. Russia and China do so openly.

Suleiman has come up with a work-around to overcome international insistence - or what's left of it - on what Hamas must do to join a Palestinian government. What if Hamas vaguely promises to "respect" previous PLO commitments rather than declare its outright acceptance of them? Instead of dwelling on who recognizes whom, and how, isn't it better to have Hamas and Fatah acting responsibly together?

FOR ISRAEL, however, who recognizes whom, and how, goes to the heart of the conflict - since the refusal to recognize the inalienable right of the Jewish people to self-determination anywhere between the Mediterranean and the Jordan signals Palestinian society's continuing to define our conflict in zero-sum terms. So if Suleiman's creative diplomacy ushers Hamas into a Palestinian government without it having to change its stripes, he will be undoing decades of painstaking steps Palestinians and Israelis have taken toward mutual recognition. That would put a question mark over the entire Oslo edifice, which has been preserved by successive Israeli governments.

Put differently: If the international community turns its back on the most elementary prerequisites for Palestinian-Israeli cooperation - mutual recognition, non-belligerency and adherence to past agreements - it will be tearing asunder the existing basis for relations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel.

ISRAEL HAS long made a "nuisance" of itself trying to elicit recognition from Palestinian leaders - the only way to establish that the conflict has moved onto a non-zero sum basis. And that recognition seemed forthcoming.

On December 7, 1988 Yasser Arafat declared in Stockholm: "The PNC accepted two states, a Palestinian state and a Jewish state, Israel. Is that clear enough?" And leading up to the September 1993 Oslo Accords, Fatah's central committee and the PLO's executive committee endorsed the deal in which the Palestinians recognized Israel.

Yet the extent to which Israelis may have been deluding themselves was blatantly exposed this week, when Fatah leader Muhammad Dahlan declared on Palestinian television: "I want to say for the thousandth time, in my own name and in the name of all of my fellow members of the Fatah movement: We do not demand that the Hamas movement recognize Israel. On the contrary, we demand of Hamas not to recognize Israel, because Fatah does not recognize Israel even today."

Actually, Palestinian moderates have been making this point time and again.

On October 3, 2006, Mahmoud Abbas told Al-Arabiya TV that he didn't expect Fatah, let alone Hamas, to recognize Israel. But a Palestinian government, qua government, had no choice but to "function opposite the Israelis on a daily basis," and it could hardly do so if its ministers didn't "recognize" their Israeli counterparts.

Thus Palestinian "moderates" have had no change of heart about Israel: It's just that Israel has leverage over the day-to-day lives of millions of Palestinians, who are also dependent on international hand-outs and diplomatic support. Realpolitik forces their governing authority - but not them - to "recognize" Israel. In other words, if one has cancer, la sama'ha Allah, doesn't one "recognize" that fact and seek palliatives pending a cure?

Israel's failure to insist that Fatah adhere to its commitments hasn't brought peace any closer, but blurred the distinction between moderates and extremists.

We're not sure which is more disheartening - Suleiman endeavoring to cover up Hamas rejectionism, or Fatah reveling in its own.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1237461629121&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Fatah official:Fatah never recognized Israel's right to exist

Dahlan to Hamas: Never recognize Israel

Mar. 17, 2009
Khaled Abu Toameh , THE JERUSALEM POST

Former Fatah security commander Muhammad Dahlan on Tuesday called on Hamas not to recognize Israel's right to exist, pointing out that Fatah had never recognized it.

This was the first time since the beginning of the peace process 15 years ago that a senior Fatah official has said that his faction does not recognize Israel's right to exist.

Dahlan's remarks were made in an interview with the Palestinian Authority's official Palestine TV station.

Dahlan, who has kept a low profile ever since the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, resurfaced during Operation Cast Lead. Since then, he has made several public appearances, the latest being last Friday when he was seen praying next to PA President Mahmoud Abbas in a Ramallah mosque.

Fatah officials said that Dahlan's return to the center stage is an indication of his desire to play a role in any post-Abbas administration. They said that Dahlan was recently appointed as a special adviser to Abbas.

Dahlan confirmed that he was "providing advice and ideas" to Abbas, especially regarding to the reconciliation talks with Hamas that were launched in Cairo last week.

Until Operation Cast Lead, Dahlan was rarely seen in public. His aides said that after the Hamas "coup," he and scores of top Fatah operatives moved to Egypt.

Hamas said it was forced to drive the Fatah men out of the Gaza Strip because they were preparing, with the help of the US, to stage a coup against the Hamas government.

In the interview, Dahlan was asked about reports that Fatah was demanding that Hamas recognize Israel's right to exist as a precondition for the establishment of a Palestinian "unity government." He called the reports "misleading" and said Hamas was "putting words in our mouths."

Dahlan added: "They say that Fatah has asked them to recognize Israel's right to exist and this is a big deception. For the one thousandth time, I want to reaffirm that we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist. Rather, we are asking Hamas not to do so because Fatah never recognized Israel's right to exist."

He explained that it was the PLO, and not Fatah, which recognized Israel's right to exist when the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993.

Fatah is the largest faction in the PLO. The second largest faction is the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

"We acknowledge that the PLO did recognize Israel's right to exist, but we are not bound by it as a resistance faction," he added.

Dahlan boasted that the PA under Yasser Arafat had killed more Palestinians suspected of collaboration with Israel than Hamas.

"I want to point out that the Palestinian Authority under Abu Ammar [Arafat's nom du guerre] targeted collaborators 10 times more than Hamas," he said. "We put many of them on trial and executed many others. But we did this in accordance with the law and not the Hamas way."

Dahlan revealed that Hamas had executed without trial a number of bodyguards who escorted Hamas Interior Minister Said Siam, who was killed in an IAF raid on his brother's house in Gaza City during Operation Cast Lead.

Dahlan expressed discontent over Fatah's failure to convene its long-awaited sixth general conference, ever since the last general conference meeting 20 years ago. The conference is supposed to pave the way for holding internal elections in Fatah - a move that is likely to see the rise of "young guard" Fatah members like Dahlan to key decision-making positions in the faction.

This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1237114855755&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

A senior Fatah leader, Muhammad Dahlan, admitted March 16, 2009 on Palestinian Authority television that Fatah - just like Hamas - still does not recognize Israel.

Furthermore, he said that the Palestinian Authority's apparent "recognition" is to make the PA "acceptable" to the international community, and therefore allow it to continue to receive international aid:


"I want to say for the thousandth time, in my own name and in the name of all of my fellow members of the Fatah movement: We do not demand that the Hamas movement recognize Israel. On the contrary, we demand of the Hamas movement not to recognize Israel, because the Fatah movement does not recognize Israel even today."


It is only the Palestinian Authority government, Dahlan insisted, that must "recognize" Israel - not out of conviction or sincerity, but in order to receive the needed help of the international community. This help would not come, says Dahlan, if the PA government did not "recognize" Israel.

The inherent contradiction between the Fatah, headed by "Chairman" Mahmoud Abbas, not recognizing Israel, and the Palestinian Authority, headed by "President" Mahmoud Abbas, "recognizing" Israel, was not challenged by the interviewer.

This is not merely Dahlan's opinion but apparently official PA ideology. It is nearly identical to the 2006 declaration made by Mahmoud Abbas himself that while PA ministers have to "recognize" Israeli ministers across a negotiating table, for functional purposes, this does not imply political recognition by Fatah of Israel:


"Hamas is not required to recognize Israel... It is not required of Hamas, or of Fatah, or of the Popular Front to recognize Israel."
-- From Palestinian Media Watch http://www.pmw.org.il

Olmert: This is our final offer to Hamas

After meeting with Shalit family, Olmert gives special address to nation to explain failure of talks aimed at releasing abducted soldier: 'Israel's government, as long as it is headed by me, will not agree to Hamas' dictations,' he says
Roni Sofer  Ynetnews   March 17, 2009

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert gave a special address to the nation on Tuesday evening, in which he elaborated on the failure of the negotiations aimed at securing kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit's release.

 

"We won't agree to the release of additional prisoners from Hamas' list beyond the hundreds we have agreed to release," he said, stressing that "we will not relay a new offer to Hamas."

 

The prime minister stressed that the cabinet ministers had chosen not to hold a detailed discussion on the matter due to its sensitivity.

 

He added, however, that "all ministers accepted the conclusions of the delegates (to the negotiations), that Hamas' current conditions prevent the possibility of completing the talks and returning Gilad Shalit home."

 

Olmert stressed that he would not give in to Hamas. "The Israeli government, as long as it is headed by me, will not agree to Hamas' dictations as presented to the negotiating team.

 

"The Israeli offers presented to the other side were generous and far-reaching and were meant to lead to Gilad's release. I approved these offers, whose practical meaning was to release hundreds of terrorists, including murderers of Israelis, in return for Shalit's possible release. These offers were rejected."

 

'Our red lines won't be crossed'

The prime minister said that he would not relay additional offers to Hamas' representatives and put the ball in their court. "We won’t agree to the release of additional prisoners from the Hamas list beyond the hundreds we agreed to release and informed them of," he said.

 

Shalit family watches PM's address (Photo: Orly Zeiler)

 

Olmert stated that he had made every effort to release the kidnapped soldier. "We have acted over the years tirelessly, in hidden, bold, unprecedented ways in order to return our children home. That's what we did to bring Gilad back, so far unsuccessfully."

 

He said that he plans to continue his efforts to release Shalit. "We'll talk to whomever we can. We won't cease our efforts. Throughout these years we held meetings on numerous channels – in different places in the world, in the region and in distant places – in order to create a route which would cause the efforts for Gilad's release to mature.

 

"We were assisted by different mediators, leaders and heads of states, as well as unofficial representatives. We didn’t spare any effort," he said.

 

The prime minister went on to point a finger to the Gaza Strip. "Unfortunately, we encountered a cruel, murderous and merciless body, lacking any basic human emotions, which was unwilling to accept the challenge.

 

"I would like to say here on behalf of the State of Israel and its government: We have red lines. We won't cross them. We are not a defeated nation, we are not a beaten country. A people which wishes to live and is surrounded by hostile countries, threatened by murderous terror organizations, cannot, is unwilling and will not give in to their dictations."

 

Olmert said he embraced the Shalit family and would continue the efforts to release Gilad. "We will continue the efforts to bring about Gilad Shalit's release these days as well."

 

He said that the Shalit family "knows that I am committed wholeheartedly to work with the entire government in order to bring Gilad back home. That's what I have done and that's what I will do," Olmert concluded.

 

Prisoners' conditions to be worsened?

In a special cabinet meeting convened Tuesday afternoon, the government appointed a special ministerial committee headed by Justice Minister Daniel Friedmann to examine ways to pressure Hamas, including forming regulations which would compare the conditions of Hamas prisoners jailed in Israel to those of Gilad Shalit.

 

The kidnapped soldier's family met with the prime minister at the end of the meeting. Gilad's father, Noam, sounded slightly optimistic, saying shortly afterwards, "Olmert has not given up."

 

All the defense officials who spoke during the cabinet meeting said that accepting Hamas' conditions would heavily damage the State of Israel, excluding IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

 

Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, Olmert's special emissary Ofer Dekel, Military Intelligence chief Amos Yadlin and other professionals stressed that holding the negotiations at the same time as the comprehensive public and media campaign damaged the Israeli side.

 

According to the defense officials, Hamas went back on agreements reached in the past and was convinced that due to the public pressure Israel would agree to release all 450 prisoners, although Israel only agreed to free 320 of them.

 

Basically, the Palestinians are still fighting the War of 1948

 

Commentator Yossi Klein Halevi, in a column in the Globe & Mail, notes  " [T]he continuing refusal of the Palestinian leadership, and much of the Arab leadership generally, to accept the legitimacy of a Jewish state in any borders.

 

 Not even moderate Palestinian leaders such as Mahmoud Abbas have told their people that the Jews are here to stay, that this land must be shared by two peoples.

 

Instead, the Palestinian media — of Fatah as well as Hamas — continues to tell its people that the Jews are thieves and usurpers, and that eventually the entirety of the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River will belong to them."

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090313.wessay0314/BNStory/specialComment/home

 

Yet how many people believe that:

 

(a) the Palestinian leadership is only posturing?

(b) the real issue in the conflict is the presence of Jewish settlements in the West Bank?

(c) Fatah, with its Al Aksa Martyr's Brigade, is ready to deliver peace?

(d)  the Palestinian people are prepared to accept peace with Israel?

(e) there is a real possibility that Hamas can change its positions?

 

And we can go on listing other improbable assumptions.

 

//Mark Finkelstein

March 18: Public meeting with Israel's Consul General to the Midwest

The Jewish Community Relations Commission of the Jewish Federation and Beth El Jacob Synagogue are honored to announce a public meeting with

 

                                               Consul General Orli Gil

                                               Head of Mission

                                               Israel Consulate to the Midwest,  Chicago

 

 

 

                                               Wednesday, March 18, 2009

 

                                                              7:00 pm

                                            

                                  at  Beth El Jacob Synagogue  954 Cummins Parkway in Des Moines

 

 

For further information, contact  jcrc@dmjfed.org

 

FW: Letter in today's Ames Tribune

http://www.amestrib.com/articles/2009/03/05/ames_tribune/opinion/letters_to_the_editor/doc49b00364b8fb1468017397.prt

Ames Tribune > Opinion

Israel doesn¹t need to be justified

Published: Thursday, March 5, 2009

Why do Irish, Brazilians, Moroccans or Germans need a homeland? Has a letter in The Tribune ever posed the question ³Why do Irish, Brazilians, Moroccans or Germans need a homeland?² Obviously not! Yet, a letter titled: ³Why do Jews need a homeland?² (R.K. Richards, Feb. 13) singles out the Jewish nation and Israel to justify its existence. Indeed, this very question reveals ignorance, bias, anti-Semitism, or a combination thereof.

History records the endless saga of shifting borders, population movements and the creation of new countries. Of the world¹s 195 countries, 112 were established after 1948, the year of Israel¹s founding. Israel¹s existence is a fact grounded in reality, and it does not need to be justified any more than the existence of Azerbaijan, Chad, Greece or the U.S.

Moreover, it was the Arab and Palestinian rejection in 1947 of U.N. Partition Resolution 181 followed by the attempt in 1948 of five Arab countries to obliterate Israel, which resulted in the flight of 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes. Many of those Palestinians were newcomers, recent arrivals from neighboring Arab countries.

In parallel, 850,000 Jews were expelled from, or fled, Arab countries in the wake of bloody pogroms. Most of those Jewish refugees settled in Israel, became productive citizens, and their descendants now comprise half of Israel¹s Jewish population, refuting the depiction of Israel as a European entity. Palestinian leaders and Arab countries, on the other hand, continue to classify the original Palestinian refugees and their descendents as refugees, all the while blaming Israel for this situation. For 60 years, they have refused to dismantle the refugee camps, maintaining them as a constant source of terrorists.

No established country is expected to ³justify² its existence. Nevertheless, replying to Richards¹ seemingly innocent question, why do Jews need their own homeland any more than Baptists, atheists, or left-handed people, serves an educational purpose.

Judaism consists of two major components: nationhood and religion. Judaism emerged 4,000 years ago in the form of the Hebrew nation residing in Canaan.. That new nation introduced a religious/philosophical revolution - ethical monotheism. From 1250 B.C. until 70 A.D., a span of 1320 years, this nation possessed a state in the Land of Israel, rendering the Jewish nation indigenous to that land. Following the Roman Empire¹s destruction of the country in 70 AD, accompanied by the slaying and expulsion of most of its population, Jews found themselves stripped of their homeland and state. Nevertheless, for the next 1,900 years, they continually maintained a community in Israel, while their Diaspora brethren were subjected to endless persecution, pogroms, expulsions, discrimination, forced conversions, and finally genocide - the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were systematically annihilated by Nazi Germany and its many willing European collaborators.  Fortunately, the feverish attempts by the foremost Palestinian leader, Hajj Amin Al Husseini, a Nazi collaborator, to extend the Jewish genocide to Palestine, were foiled by the termination of World War II.

Jews, as a nation, need a homeland for the same reasons that Greeks, French, or Brazilians need one, to protect their physical integrity and to nurture their unique culture. Israel is the only place where Jews can defend themselves without relying on the goodwill of others, which historically rarely existed. In fact, 80 percent of Israeli Jews do not consider themselves religious, but rather members of the Jewish nation and citizens of the State of Israel.

Israel¹s Law of Return is very similar to the present Greek law, which does not require an ancestor who held citizenship, or who was born in the ³homeland², requiring only some evidence of membership in the ethnic and religious community of the ancient Greek Diaspora. Other countries that provide immigration privileges to individuals with a measure of ethnic ties include Ireland, Japan, Turkey, Spain, Chile, and the United Kingdom.

In ³Why the Jews? The reasons for anti-Semitism², Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin write: ³The major difference between anti-Semites throughout Jewish history and today¹s anti-Zionists is only which component of Judaism each found the most intolerable: Medieval Christian anti-Semites found the Jews religious beliefs intolerable; today anti-Zionists loathe the Jews' national commitment.²

Ronata Dermansky

West Des Moines

Palestinian tractor driver shot while rampaging in central Jerusalem

March 5, 2009, 1:46 PM Israel time (GMT+02:00)

The Palestinian tractor hoisted a police van, injuring two police officers, in downtown Jerusalem at the corner of the Begin and Golomb highways in heavy traffic near the Malha shopping mall. As the tractor driver tried to toss the police van with his shovel onto a bus packed with schoolgirls, a passing taxi driver pulled a gun and shot him dead, cutting the rampage short before it claimed more victims on the jampacked highway.

This was the third time a Palestinian terrorist used a tractor to smash vehicles in downtown Jerusalem.

Iran’s Khamenei: Israel a ‘cancerous tumor’

March 4, 2009  JERUSALEM (JTA) -- Israel is a "cancerous tumor," Iran's spiritual leader, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said.

 

MARCH 4, 2009

Obama's Iran Crisis

It's arriving faster than he thinks.

As a Presidential candidate, Barack Obama called a nuclear Iran "a grave threat" and said "the world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon." But he also called for direct, high-level talks in the hopes that the mullahs could be persuaded to abandon their nuclear dreams.

We've never held out much hope for those talks, which would inevitably be complicated and protracted. Mr. Obama is already trying to lure Russian help on Iran by offering to trade away hard-earned missile defense sites in Eastern Europe. Russia's President claims to be unimpressed. And now it turns out that the rate at which Iran's nuclear programs are advancing may render even negotiations moot.

That's a fair conclusion from the latest report by the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency. Among other disclosures, the IAEA found that Iran has produced more than 1,000 kilograms of low enriched uranium (LEU), enough for a single bomb's worth of uranium after further enrichment. The IAEA also found that Iran had underreported its stock of LEU by about 200 kilograms, which took the agency by surprise partly because it only checks Iran's stockpile once a year. This is the basis for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Michael Mullen's weekend acknowledgment that the U.S. believes Iran has enough fissile material to make a bomb.

Iran now possesses 5,600 centrifuges in which it can enrich uranium -- a 34-fold increase from 2006 -- and plans to add 45,000 more over five years. That will give Tehran an ability to make atomic bombs on an industrial scale. Iran has also announced that it plans to begin operating its Russian-built reactor at Bushehr sometime this spring. That reactor's purposes are ostensibly civilian, but it will eventually produce large quantities of spent fuel that can covertly be processed into weapons-usable plutonium.

That's not all. The IAEA says its inspectors have been denied access to a heavy water reactor in Arak, and that Iran has put a roof over the site "rendering impossible the continued use of satellite imagery to monitor further construction inside the reactor building." Most proliferation experts agree that the Arak reactor, scheduled for completion in 2011, can have no purpose other than to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

True to form, Iran continues to deny the IAEA access to other parts of its nuclear programs, including R&D facilities and uranium mines. "Regrettably," says the report, "as a result of the continued lack of cooperation by Iran in connection with the remaining issues which give rise to concerns about possible military dimensions of Iran's nuclear programme, the Agency has not made any substantive progress on these issues."

The report contains much more of this. It is the latest in a long line of reports that should have sounded alarms but instead have accustomed the world to conclude that a nuclear Iran is something we'll just have to live with. Well, not the entire world: Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned last week that "time is slipping through our fingers" when it comes to stopping Tehran. "What is needed," he added, "is a two-pronged course of action which includes ironclad, strenuous sanctions . . . and a readiness to consider options in the event that these sanctions do not succeed."

Nobody -- Mr. Obama least of all -- can doubt what Mr. Barak means by "options." Nor should the Administration doubt that an Israeli strike, however necessary and justified, could put the U.S. in the middle of a broader Middle East war. If Mr. Obama wants to avoid a security crisis in the first year of his watch, he will have to get serious about Iran now.

 

What keeps the Israeli-Palestinian conflict going?

What keeps the Israeli-Palestinian conflict going?

Adapted from an article by Barry Rubin, February 26, 2009

This conflict is not continuing because there is a dispute about the precise boundary line between Israel and a Palestinian state.

The conflict continues because the Palestinian leaders—all of them—are either unwilling or unable to accept Israel’s permanent existence, the end of the conflict, the abandonment of terrorism, and the settlement of Palestinian refugees in a Palestinian state.

Analyze the Fatah Central Committee's membership and the viewpoints expressed by the group’s top leaders. The number who can be called moderates ready to accept and implement a two-state solution stands at about 10 percent of them.

Are there [Palestinians] who voice a moderate two-state solution position and who advocate coexistence? Yes, there are some but they have no organization or power whatsoever [within Palestinian politics.] Moreover, they say so almost exclusively in English to Westerners and not to their own people. To express anything equivalent to Labor or Kadima, even Likud, positions is to risk your life.

-- Schools, mosques, media and other institutions controlled fully or partly by the PA daily preach that all Israel is Palestine, Israel is evil, and violence against it is good. Hardly the most minimal steps have been taken to prepare the Palestinian masses for peace. For example, no one dare suggest that a Palestinian nationalist movement might want to resettle Palestinian refugees in Palestine, not Israel; or that Israel and President Bill Clinton made a good offer in 2000 and it was a mistake to reject it. Or a dozen other points necessary as a basis for real peace.

-- Palestinian public opinion polls consistently show overwhelming support for hardline positions and for terrorism against Israeli civilians.

-- An unyielding historical narrative still predominates that the whole land between the Jordan River and the sea is and should be Arab Palestine.

-- Of course, Hamas governs about 40 percent of West Bank/Gaza Palestinians and opposes Israel’s existence explicitly. The PA and Fatah do not vigorously combat the Hamas world view, except perhaps for its idea of an Islamist state. -- On the contrary, Fatah and the PA put a higher priority on conciliation with Hamas rather than peace with Israel.
....

There’s nothing left or right wing about the above analysis. ... Equally, this analysis doesn’t mean Israel cannot work with the PA on such matters as stability, economic well-being for Palestinians, blocking terrorism, or keeping Hamas out of power on the West Bank.

[However,] as we learned in the 1990s with the peace process and more recently with disengagement, Israel’s actions—no matter how conciliatory and concessionary—cannot make peace when the other side is unwilling and unable to do so. It’s time for the rest of the world to learn this fact.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. Rubin's website is online
at http://www.gloria-center.org.