Obama eases Israeli anger on Mideast peace vision

President Barack Obama takes the stage to deliver remarks to delegates at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference in Washington, May 22, 2011.

President Barack Obama yesterday eased Israeli anger over his new Middle East peace proposals when he made clear that the Jewish state would likely be able to negotiate keeping some settlements in any final deal with the Palestinians.

Obama repeated his view that long-stalled peace talks should start on the basis of the Israel’s 1967 borders, an assertion that had infuriated Israeli leaders, exposed a rift between the two allies and raised further doubts about peace prospects.

PLO says no talks until Israel halts settlements

The Palestinian leadership said on Saturday negotiations with Israel would not resume until it halted settlement building.

US-backed peace talks, launched a month ago in Washington, were plunged into crisis this week by the end of a 10-month Israeli moratorium on new settlement building in the West Bank. Israel has said it will not extend the freeze.

“The leadership confirms that the resumption of talks requires tangible steps, the first of them a freeze on settlements,” senior Palestine Liberation Official (PLO) Yasser Abed Rabbo said after a meeting in Ramallah.

“The Palestinian leadership holds Israel responsible for obstructing the negotiations,” he said, reading from a statement issued after the meeting.

In our world Islamic sympathizers are called terrorists

US envoy to try to salvage Mideast peace talks

Washington's special Mideast envoy is to pressure Israeli and Palestinian leaders to keep peace talks from collapsing just weeks after they began.

George Mitchell's mission follows Israel's decision to resume settlement construction in the West Bank after a 10-month freeze. The move has thrown the talks into disarray.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has threatened to walk out of the negotiations if Israel doesn't renew the moratorium.

The U.S. is disappointed over Israel's refusal to relent and has dispatched Mitchell to try to bridge the gaps. Mitchell is expected to arrive on Tuesday.

Abbas has said he will decide whether to quit the talks after consulting senior Arab officials next week. That gives U.S. mediators time to try to broker a compromise..

A Jewish settler boy looks at earth-moving equipment working at a construction site in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel, Monday, Sept. 27, 2010. Senior Palestinian official Yasser Abed Rabbo said Monday that President Mahmoud Abbas remains ready to walk out on Mideast peace talks if Israel resumes construction in its West Bank settlements now that building restrictions have expired.

Israeli Settlement Slowdown to End at Midnight - Unfrozen settlements put peace on ice

Obama to urge support for Middle East peace at UN

US President Barack Obama is to make a plea at the United Nations today for international support for the Middle East peace process, urging world leaders to make sure “this time is different” from previous failed efforts.

Obama (picture) is to urge opponents of Israel and the Palestinians to look beyond decades of mistrust and bloodshed and to resist pessimism in support of talks between the parties aimed at creating a Palestinian state living alongside Israel in peace and security.

Israeli commando attack on Gaza-bound aid flotilla judged unlawful and violated human rights, rule UN panel

An attack by Israeli commandos on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla in May was unlawful and resulted in violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, a panel of international experts said on Wednesday.


The three experts, nominated by the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the Israeli attack in which nine pro-Palestinian activists - eight Turks and one Turkish-American - were killed, also said that Israel's blockade of Gaza had caused a humanitarian crisis and was unlawful.



The experts - judges from Britain and Trinidad and a Malaysian human rights campaigner - said in a report that the Israeli military's action had used disproportionate force and 'totally unnecessary and incredible violence' in intercepting the flotilla.

'Unacceptable level of brutality': The UN report said the Israeli military's action had used disproportionate force and 'totally unnecessary and incredible violence' in intercepting the flotilla.

Israel PM sees deal possible in year

Israel PM sees deal possible in year

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told visiting US congressmen he thinks it could be possible to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians in a year despite huge differences, his spokesman said.

Netanyahu (picture, second from left) told the visiting delegation that he “believes it possible, through such direct and contiguous negotiations, held without breaks or delays, to achieve a peace agreement within a year,” spokesman Nir Hefez said on Monday.

Obama 'Cautiously Hopeful' About Mideast Talks - Israeli, Palestinian Leaders Look for Common Ground - Palestinians, Israelis Relaunch Talks

Mubarak urges Netanyahu to act on peace chance

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak urged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday to make good on his vow to forge peace with the Palestinians and reiterated a plea for Israel to halt settlement activity.

On the eve of Thursday's first direct Israeli-Palestinian talks in 20 months in Washington, Mubarak said the Israelis should "seize the current opportunity" and "not let it slip through your fingers."

He was speaking at a press conference at the White House to launch the negotiations alongside US President Barack Obama, Netanyahu, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas and King Abdullah II of Jordan.


 
Mubarak urged Netanyahu to make good on his vow to forge peace with the Palestinians

Israel rabbi says Abbas, Palestinians should die

An influential Israeli rabbi has said God should strike the Palestinians and their leader with a plague, calling for their death in a fiery sermon before Middle East peace talks set to begin next week.

“Abu Mazen and all these evil people should perish from this earth,” Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual head of the religious Shas party in Israel’s government, said in a sermon late on Saturday, using Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s popular name.

A Palestinian throws a stone at Israeli soldiers during clashes near the West Bank city of Ramallah October 9, 2009.

Israel’s Netanyahu sees difficult talks ahead

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said today reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians would be “difficult but possible”, acknowledging there was scepticism talks will succeed when they resume next month.

In his first remarks to reporters since Israel and the Palestinians accepted on Friday an invitation by the United States and other powers to restart direct talks, Netanyahu said:

“We want to surprise all the critics and sceptics. But to do that, we need a true partner on the Palestinian side.

“I know there is deep scepticism. After 17 years have passed since the Oslo process, it’s possible to understand why this scepticism exists,” he said at the start of Israel’s weekly cabinet meeting.

He made no mention of a potential stumbling block once the talks start in Washington on September 2 — the scheduled end some three weeks later of Israel’s 10-month limited moratorium on Jewish settlement building in the occupied West Bank.

Netanyahu attends a weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem

Israeli army on defensive after spate of scandals

Israeli police have cleared the military’s top brass of wrongdoing during a fierce internal promotion feud, but the case has badly dented the army’s image, and a slew of other scandals has added to its growing woes.

The military plays a central role in Israeli life and suggestions it is becoming dysfunctional has provoked an outcry.

The promotion saga, which has dominated the Israeli media this month, centred on allegations that a senior general had hired a publicist to smear his rivals in his battle to replace Israel’s outgoing chief of staff.

Police said yesterday the accusations were not true and said that a document at the heart of the affair was a fake.

An Israeli poses for a photograph near Palestinian detainees, which she then posted to her Facebook page

In sign of stability, Israel removes blast wall

A crane lifts part of the concrete barrier put up eight years ago to protect residents in Gilo.

In a sign of improved stability in the West Bank, Israel is removing concrete blast walls put up eight years ago to shield a settlement on Jerusalem’s outskirts from Palestinian gunfire and shells.

Israeli army engineers yesterday hoisted away sections of a 3m-high concrete wall in Gilo, a settlement on the southern edge of Jerusalem targeted from the nearby West Bank town of Beit Jala during a Palestinian uprising.

The uprising, or Intifada, erupted in 2000, after the collapse of peace talks and died out some five years later.

“This is the first time that we have moved such a structure from a neighbourhood that was directly hit by sniper fire and shells,” Lieutenant-Colonel Avital Liebovich, a military spokeswoman, said. Settlements such as Gilo, built on Israeli-occupied land the Palestinians seek for a state, were targeted regularly during the Intifada. Suicide bombers also struck within Israel itself.

Hamas and secular groups, oppose direct talks with Israel

Palestinean groundswell rising to not give in to the talks the Obama administration has been urging.

Palestinean groundswell rising to not give in to the talks the Obama administration has been urging.

Two secular Palestinian organisations joined Hamas yesterday in calling on President Mahmoud Abbas not to bow to US pressure to resume direct peace talks with Israel, which they described as dangerous.

“Insisting on direct talk throws a life line to Israel as its isolation deepens,” Hamas said in a statement issued jointly after a meeting in the Syrian capital with other Palestinian organisations that included Islamic Jihad.

“A return to direct talks serves the US and Zionist aim to liquidate the national rights of the Palestinian people,” the statement said.

The statement was read by Maher al-Taher, a senior official in the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that does not usually toe the Hamas line.

Israel wasn’t ready for flotilla fight, says general

Ashkenazi (front) testifies at a state-appointed inquiry into the Israeli naval raid on a Gaza aid flotilla, in Jerusalem, August 11, 2010.
Israeli troops were not ready for the violent resistance they met when they boarded a Gaza-bound aid ship and killed nine pro-Palestinian activists, the country’s top military officer said yesterday.

Speaking to an inquiry, Israeli Defence Forces Chief of Staff General Gabi Ashkenazi gave the most detailed explanation so far of what went wrong with the military plan in the May 31 raid, which sparked an international outcry.

IDF commandos failed to clear the decks with stun grenades they used, and rappelled from their helicopter straight into a brawl with men wielding iron bars and knives and were even met by gunfire, Ashkenazi said.

The raid quickly became “chaotic,” he said. “After the first soldier went down the rope there was no choice but to continue with the plan.”

Rockets hit Israel and Jordan resorts

Wreckage of cars damaged by a rocket attack is seen at a hotel area in the Jordan's Red Sea city of Aqaba, August 2, 2010.

Rockets from Egypt’s Sinai, where Islamist militants have operated in the past, hit Israel’s and Jordan’s Red Sea port resorts yesterday, killing a Jordanian civilian and injuring three others, Jordanian and Israeli police said.

A Jordanian interior ministry source said one of the four injured when a rocket exploded near a five-star hotel in Aqaba, later died from his injuries.

One killed and three injured after rockets fired into Israeli port of Eilat

Attack: Four people were injured after five rockets were fired at the Israeli Red Sea resort of Eilat this morning

One person has been killed and at least three people have been injured after several rockets were fired into Israel's southern port of Eilat this morning.

Five rockets are believed to have been fired from a location in Egypt during the attack.

Two of the missiles are believed to have overshot their targets and landed in the Red Sea, while another one struck the nearby Jordanian port of Aqaba.

Israel warns Hamas after rocket fire

Israel's prime minister has issued a stern warning to Gaza's Hamas rulers after weekend rocket attacks from the Palestinian territory on two Israeli communities.

The attacks caused damage but no injuries.

Benjamin Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that Israel holds the Islamic militant group Hamas responsible for the rare flare-up in violence. He said Israel would continue "to use all means" to protect its citizens.

No Palestinian group took responsibility for the attacks.

Israel responded with a series of airstrikes on militant targets in Gaza, including one that killed a senior commander of the Hamas military wing.

Israeli soldiers captured on YouTube doing the 'West Bank shuffle': Patrol dances during Muslim call to prayer

The six soldiers crouch down during an apparently routine patrol in the West Bank town of Hebron

Music maestro, please: Suddenly Kesha's track Tick Tock starts and the soldiers start their routine

Some Israeli soldiers may have to face the music for a viral video of them dancing on duty.

A video of the soldiers stopping a patrol in the West Bank to dance to American electro-pop singer Kesha's hit 'Tick Tock' has appeared YouTube.But Israeli TV stations picked it up and showed it repeatedly on Monday.