|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Gaza Raids Continue
More Jewish Settlements Coming Up
|
|
Palestinian mourners carry the bodies of people killed in Khan Yunis in the latest Israeli attacks.
|
Palestinian medics said five Palestinians were killed and two wounded in Israeli airstrikes in the southern Gaza Strip on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the illegitimate formation of the Zionist regime.
Palestinian witnesses said Israeli troops have been operating in the area of Khan Yunis since dawn, reported AP.
The army said the operation has included two air strikes.
The ongoing fighting has clouded Egyptian efforts to mediate a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas in Gaza.
The violence on Wednesday came hours before US President George W. Bush was slated to arrive in Israel for a three-day visit.
Peace Improbable
In the meantime, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday “reaching such a deal within the next eight months is improbable but it’s not impossible.“
Bush left the White House late Tuesday afternoon on a trip to Israel. He also will go to Saudi Arabia where he promised to press King Abdullah to increase oil production to ease soaring costs on consumers. Bush made a similar plea in January but it was ignored.
As Bush prepared to leave Washington, Senate Democrats introduced a resolution that would block $1.4 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia unless Riyadh agrees to increase its oil production by one million barrels per day.
The Democrats said they introduced the measure to coincide with Bush’s trip to send a message to Saudi Arabia that it should pump more oil to reduce the cost of gas for Americans.
“We are saying to the Saudis, if you aren’t helping us, why should we be helping you?“ said Democratic Senator Charles Schumer.
Jewish Settlements
Meanwhile, an Israeli official said that Housing and Construction Minister Zeev Boim will next week approve the construction of hundreds of Jewish settlements in the West Bank.
Roi Lachmanovitch, a spokesman for the Shas religious party, said that Boim will on Sunday approve construction in the Beitar Illit settlement and other areas.
Shas is a member of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s coalition, according to AP.
Lachmanovitch said Boim committed to the construction recently in a conversation with Shas leaders. Shas’ announcement Wednesday came hours before Bush was slated to arrive in the region to prod Israelies and the Palestinians to negotiate a peace deal.
The Palestinians demand in the talks that Israel stop building in areas they want for a future state.
Despite international calls on the Zionist regime to stop expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian lands, Israel is planning more housing units in Palestinian lands.
Hamas Delegation to Egypt Next Week
Hamas said it’s going to Egypt to discuss a Gaza Strip truce.
Ayman Taha, a spokesman for Hamas in Gaza, said Wednesday that Egyptian mediator Omar Suleiman has invited Hamas officials to hear Israel’s response to a proposed Egyptian truce deal. They’ll be in Egypt on Sunday, Taha said, AP reported.
Suleiman was in Israel this week to discuss the truce efforts.
He’s been trying for months to clinch a truce in Gaza.
Olmert Accomplice Questioned
In another development, Israeli police questioned US billionaire Sheldon Edelson as part of a widening inquiry into the latest graft scandal to embroil Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, AFP quoted an official as saying on Wednesday.
The real estate and casino tycoon was brought in for questioning on Tuesday after he entered the country to attend an international conference hosted by Israeli president Shimon Peres, the police official said.
A second US businessman, Daniel Abraham, who is also linked to a different probe against Olmert, was also questioned by police on Tuesday, he said.
Police are seeking to establish whether Olmert had given any favors in exchange for alleged illegal funds he received from US businessman and fundraiser Morris Talansky in the 13 years before he became premier in 2006.
Olmert has denied any wrongdoing and insists he will only step down if indicted.
Many Israeli officials including opposition lawmakers have called on Olmert to resign.
|
|
|
|
Palestinians to Darken Skies
When Bush addresses Israel’s parliament, thousands of black balloons will darken the skies as Palestinians mark the 60th anniversary of the Israeli occupation of their lands.
Bush is scheduled to address the Israeli parliament on Thursday, the day Palestinians commemorate the Naqba, or “catastrophe,“ of Israel’s illegitimate creation in 1948, AFP reported.
“To commemorate the Naqba, Palestinians will attempt to turn the skies over Beit-ul-Moqaddas black with 21,915 balloons--each balloon to mark each day of our dispossession,“ a statement from organizers said.
At the same time, a massive demonstration will be held in the West Bank’s political capital of Ramallah. “This will be the answer to Bush’s speech and the American positions which are hostile to our cause,“ said Omar Assaf, head of the organizing committee.
|
|
|
|
Bush Disappointed
With Iraq “Flawed Data“
President Bush said he was disappointed in “flawed intelligence“ before the Iraq war and was concerned that if a Democrat wins the presidency in November and withdrew troops prematurely it could “eventually lead to another attack on the United States.“
In an interview with ’Politico’ magazine and Yahoo News, Bush also said on Tuesday he gave up golf in 2003 out of respect for US soldiers killed in the war, which has now lasted more than five years, AP reported.
“I didn’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,“ he said. “I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.“
|
|
A US soldier stands in front of destroyed buildings in the Old City of Najaf.
|
Bush said he made his decision after the August 2003 bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.
A question submitted from the online audience asked Bush whether he felt he had been misled about Iraq as he made the decision to go to war.
’Misled’ is a strong word,“ he said. “Not only had our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was.“
“Do I think somebody lied to me? No, I don’t. I think it was just, you know, they analyzed the situation and came up with the wrong conclusion,“ he added.
He acknowledged concerns about leaving the unfinished Iraq war to a Democratic successor. Both Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have said they will bring troops home if elected.
Bush said his “doomsday scenario of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States.“
Five Iraqi soldiers Killed
At least five Iraqi soldiers Tuesday in a roadside bomb attack in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, the interior minister said.
The bombing in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province came as Iraqi-led security operations tried to drive Al-Qaeda elements out of the provincial capital, Mosul, Iraqi Interior Minister Jawad Al-Bulani told CNN.
Iraqi and US forces Saturday launched a long-expected offensive against suspected Al-Qaeda fighters operating in northern Iraq.
Iraqi defense officials said their forces detained nearly 200 suspects in raids Monday, UPI reported.
In another incident, clashes between security forces and gunmen killed six people and wounded 28 in Baghdad overnight, Iraqi police said on Wednesday.
The clashes put further strain on a weekend agreement to halt nearly two months of fighting in the capital, Reuters reported.
Police said gunmen fought US and Iraqi forces in the east Baghdad. Five people were killed and 22 wounded overnight, police said, without giving details on the casualties.
|
|
|
|
Arab Mediators Bid
To Defuse Lebanon Conflict
A high-level Arab League delegation started a mediation mission in Beirut on Wednesday to try to pull Lebanon back from the brink of a new civil war.
The delegation tried to defuse tension between the governing coalition and opposition, Reuters reported.
Arab foreign ministers had agreed to send the mission, to be led by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabr Al-Thani and Arab League chief Amr Moussa, after Hezbollah briefly took control of the Muslim part of Beirut before handing it over to the army last week.
The broader political dispute revolves around how to share power in cabinet and a new parliamentary election law. The 18-month-long conflict -- a standoff between cabinet and opposition forces-- has left Lebanon without a president since November.
Nabih Berri, who is speaker of parliament and also a prominent opposition leader, said the government must annul two decisions it took against Hezbollah last week and which triggered the group’s partial takeover of Beirut.
A least 65 people have been killed in the sectarian violence across Lebanon between government and opposition supporters, the worst sectarian fighting since the 1975-1990 civil war, a security official said on Wednesday, AFP reported.
|
|
|
|
|
Turkey Bid
Queen Elizabeth II, in a meeting with Turkish President Abdullah Gul, has voiced Britain’s support for Turkey’s troubled bid to join the European Union.
Jordan Court Verdict
Jordan’s military court has convicted three men for plotting to kill US President George W. Bush during a 2006 visit to the kingdom and sentenced them to 15 years in jail.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Israel Underwriting Darfur Rebels
|
|
Armed Sudanese secret service policemen man a checkpoint with a traffic policeman in KhartoumÕs twin city Omdurman.
|
Sudanese President Omar Al-Bashir has accused a Darfur rebel leader who recently staged an attack near the country’s capital of receiving money from Israel to topple Sudan’s Islamic regime.
The Sudanese president has made his accusations at a rally orchestrated by the state Wednesday, where thousands of citizens waved flags and chanted slogans against rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim, AP reported.
Arab leaders often accuse their adversaries of having links to Israel to discredit them.
Ibrahim, the head of Darfur’s Justice and Equality Movement, stunned the Sudanese government with his attack Saturday on the city of Omdurman, located next to the capital Khartoum.
The government has said that the surprise assault claimed the lives of more than 200 people.
Khartoum Rebel Attack Condemned
The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday strongly condemned the rebel attack near Khartoum, warning against any retaliation and urging Sudan and Chad to implement a recent peace deal to suppress armed groups operating along their border.
A statement approved by the 15 council members and read at a formal meeting stressed to engage fully and constructively in the political process, AP reported.
Most Sudanese were shocked by the assault on the capital over the weekend by rebels from the Justice and Equality Movement, which is based in conflict-wracked Darfur, hundreds of kilometers to the west.
Sudan’s Defense Minister General Abdul Rahim Mohammed Hussein told parliament on Tuesday that more than 200 people were killed in the fighting in Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman and at least two-thirds of the 180 vehicles involved in the assault were destroyed, according to the official SUNA news agency.
In its statement, the attacks of May 10 perpetrated by the Justice and Equality Movement against the Sudanese government in Omdurman and urges all parties to cease violence immediately, respect their obligations under international humanitarian law and commit to a peaceful resolution of all outstanding issues.
Council members called on Sudan and Chad to implement their commitments under a peace deal signed in Dakar, Senegal on March 13 by Sudan’s President Omar Al-Bashir and Chad’s President Idriss Deby.
The agreement calls for both countries to rein in armed groups operating along their shared border where both governments have claimed rebels are backed by the other. It commits the two nations to implement past accords that have so far failed to help end violence in the area.
Thousands of people on Wednesday demonstrated in Khartoum at a government-organized “victory“ rally to denounce Darfur rebels who staged a daring attack on the capital as agents of Israel.
Israeli Jews Becoming More Divisive
Yaron, as we shall call him, is a secular, left-wing, Jewish resident of Beit-ul-Moqaddas in his mid-30sÑdestined to be a member of Israel’s elite. But in about ten years’ time, he says, he might well leave. “By about 2025, Arabs and religious Jews are going to be a majority, people like us will be a minorityÑand ten years from now is about when all the other people like us are going to start realizing it.“
He fears that the religious will gradually force the rest to accept more of their restrictions, such as bans on Sabbath trading and the sale of non-kosher food. The rising cost of supporting ultra-Orthodox yeshivas and unemployed Arabs will push up taxes. The conflict with the Palestinians will grind on. Inter- and intra-ethnic conflicts will intensify. And the secular Jewish elite will trickle abroad, leaving the economy in the dumps.
Meanwhile, birth rates among both Arabs and haredim have dropped, particularly in the past few years. There is much argument over whether the abolition in 2003 of child benefits that favored larger families played a part in this. Studies by Sergio Della Pergola, a demographer at the Hebrew University in Beit-ul-Moqaddas, and colleagues suggest that the availability of things like flexible working hours for mothers, mortgages and child care affect people’s family planning much more than do benefit payments. Whatever the reasons, although by 2020 secular Jews are likely to make up only half the population, as Yaron fears, the share of the haredim--who might wish to limit his secular freedoms--will still be just 8%.
Second, haredi men are not unemployable; although they are barred from most jobs, supposedly because their spiritual education ill prepares them to work in the real world they have had no trouble reaching the top tiers of the private sector. Israel’s richest man, Lev Leviev, is a haredi businessman. And third, there are now many employment schemes that take account of religious restrictions, such as women-only software companies and paralegal firms.
The Israeli society is fragmented in other ways too. Besides Arab-Israelis, who have always lived mostly separately, the post-Soviet and Ethiopian immigrants have not been absorbed as seamlessly as earlier waves. They hold on to their language and culture and often clump together in their own neighborhoods. Russian-language radio advertises visiting Russian pop stars and adult circumcision services.
Ethiopian teenagers make hip-hop and African roots music. Around 4% of Israelis are immigrants or their children who were given citizenship because they had a Jewish relative, but who are not technically Jewish themselves.
These even include home-grown anti-Semites, alienated youth whom the press, with a touch of sensationalism, has labeled “neo-Nazis“.
Yet like Yaron, Mr Rubinstein still worries about the secular-religious divide. Thanks both to the growing religious population and the widening wealth gap, Shas, a right-wing, Populist Party with a reputation as the champion of the poor, has been broadening its appeal beyond its traditional base of ultra-Orthodox Mizrahi voters. It is using its weight in the current coalition to demand more benefits for religious Jews and to obstruct the peace talks with the Palestinians.
But their gradual integration into Israeli society has made some haredim more nationalist. A few of the more extreme younger settlers have adopted a sort of hybrid identity known as hardali. If in future the settlers manage to enlist broader support among the ultra-Orthodox, letting go of the occupied territories will become even harder. And the longer the conflict with the Palestinians stays unsolved, the more it will alienate a group of Israelis known as the “other fifth“.
The Economist
Pakistan Party Leaders to Confer
A spokesman for Pakistan’s ruling party said its leader will meet with aides to discuss whether to accept Cabinet resignations from its key coalition partner.
Nine ministers from the party of ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif submitted their resignations this week after failed coalition talks on restoring judges fired by President Pervez Musharraf, AP reported.
But the prime minister has not accepted the resignations, saying he wanted to confer with Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the larger coalition party.
Spokesman Farhatullah Babar said that in meetings set for Wednesday, Zardari will discuss the resignations and why talks with Sharif failed.
3 Killed in Ingushetia Clash
Paramilitary police have killed a suspected anti-government rebel and his wife in the restive southern Russian region of Ingushetia, the local prosecutor’s office said Wednesday.
A gunbattle began late Tuesday when police surrounded a house in the town of Nazran and the cornered rebel suspect allegedly shot dead the owner. Security forces then shot the rebel and his wife, who had been living in the house’s cellar, according to a prosecutor’s office statement, AFP reported.
The suspect “offered armed resistance,“ the statement said.
Ingushetia, which neighbors Chechnya, frequently sees clashes between insurgents and Russian security forces.
The local population share close ethnic ties and the Sunni branch of Islam with the Chechen people. However, the Ingush did not recognize Chechnya’s post-Soviet independence movement and were largely spared two devastating wars there.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
FRIDAY, MAY 16
Pakistan Party Leaders
To Confer
A spokesman for Pakistan’s ruling party said its leader will meet with aides to discuss whether to accept Cabinet resignations from its key coalition partner.
Nine ministers from the party of ex-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif submitted their resignations this week after failed coalition talks on restoring judges fired by President Pervez Musharraf, AP reported.
But the prime minister has not accepted the resignations, saying he wanted to confer with Asif Ali Zardari, the leader of the larger coalition party.
Spokesman Farhatullah Babar said that in meetings set for Wednesday, Zardari will discuss the resignations and why talks with Sharif failed.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
