US cuts UNESCO funding after Palestinian vote

David Killion, center, permanent delegate of the United States to UNESCO, reacts as delegates vote on Palestinian membership to the UN cultural agency in Paris

UNESCO gives Palestinians full membership

The United Nations’ cultural agency decided today to give the Palestinians full membership of the body, a vote that will boost their bid for recognition as a state at the United Nations.

UNESCO is the first UN agency the Palestinians have joined as a full member since President Mahmoud Abbas applied for full membership of the United Nations on September 23.

The United States, Canada, Germany and Holland voted against Palestinian membership. Brazil, Russia, China, India, South Africa and France voted in favour. Britain and Italy abstained.

Washington is likely to cut funding to UNESCO over the vote.

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.

Obama wants Palestine to join United Nations - Obama to UN: Economy Saved From Depression

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.

Iran’s Ahmadinejad calls on Palestinians to fight on

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged Palestinians to keep up their armed struggle against Israel a day after Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to continue talks on a US-backed peace deal.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who hosted in Washington the first session of talks between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, voiced confidence that this latest attempt to bring peace to the region could succeed where so many others have failed.

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.

Power cuts cast shadow over boiling Ramadan in Gaza

Some locals blame it on internal Palestinian politics, others try to blame it on Israel. Whatever the reason, constant electricity outages during a summer heat wave are driving people to distraction in Gaza.

Residents in the coastal enclave, which is run by the Islamist Hamas group, have been losing their electricity for up to 16 hours a day during the holy month of Ramadan, ruining festive family gatherings and jeopardising businesses.

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.”