Silvan Shalom: PA talks are ‘a dead end'
By HERB KEINON AND DAVID HOROVITZ
07/05/2010 02:37
Vice Premier to ‘Post': Palestinians already functioning like state.
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations are doomed to hit a brick wall because no Palestinian leader will accept anything less than what Yasser Arafat rejected at Camp David 10 years ago, and no Jewish prime minister will offer anything more, Vice Premier and Regional Development Minister Silvan Shalom said Thursday in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.
"No matter what we do, I do not see a Palestinian leader who is willing to accept what Arafat rejected, and I don't see a Jewish prime minister who can give more than what Barak offered. Therefore, I see it as a dead end," he said.
At the same time, Shalom said he was in favor of the US-backed indirect talks because they may bring about a greater understanding between the sides.
"It is good that we are talking," he said. "I am in favor of talking."
But Shalom made clear it was important to have realistic expectations.
He characterized the US as Israel's "only friend in the world, who provides diplomatic, military and economic support." At the same time, he said, any attempt to impose a solution, by the US or any other player, won't work "because no one will accept it. Israel will certainly not accept it."
Shalom, who has refrained from granting extensive interviews since the 2009 elections, said that for all intents and purposes, the PA was already functioning like a de facto state.
"True, they don't have borders," he said, "but we also don't have borders."
Shalom said the proximity talks that US envoy George Mitchell was currently trying to launch were not even really proximity talks in the true sense of the word, but rather "bypass" talks. Proximity talks, he said, are when both sides sit in the same facility, "a hotel or Wye Plantation," and the mediator passes messages from room to room. Even though Jerusalem is only 25 minutes from Ramallah, Mitchell's current effort is not the same thing, he said.
According to Shalom, the focus of the current talks should be on economic projects, development of industrial areas, and joint projects in the spheres of electricity, sewage, water and infrastructure assistance. Likewise, he said, the talks should focus on increasing freedom of movement in the West Bank, through the lifting of roadblocks, and ways the Palestinians could fight terrorism and increase security.
Shalom said bluntly that he did not believe the Palestinians would ever recognize Israel as a Jewish state. But, he added, that is not the main barrier to an Israeli-Palestinian agreement. The central barrier to an agreement, he asserted, is "Arafat's legacy": By refusing a generous offer in 2000, Arafat set the bar so high for all Palestinian leaders after him that it will be impossible ever to get over it.
According to Shalom, at Camp David and then at Taba in 2001, then-prime minister Barak offered 97 percent of the territory to the Palestinians, with a one-on-one swap for the rest; Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount, and Israeli sovereignty under it; Palestinian control of three of the four quarters in Jerusalem's Old City; and an intake of some 100,000 Palestinian refugees.
Shalom said Abbas had proved through his failure to accept former prime minister Ehud Olmert's offer in 2008 - which he said was nearly as generous as Barak's - that he would never accept anything less, and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who Shalom said was grooming himself to replace Abbas, also couldn't accept anything less, especially since he did not have Abbas's Fatah or PLO bona fides.
If anything, said Shalom - breaking ranks with Israeli politicians who regularly praise Fayyad - the PA prime minister is turning more "nationalistic" in order to compensate for the fact that he is neither a Fatah nor PLO executive committee member and needs to gain street credibility to enhance his leadership challenge.
Shalom, who termed this week's decision by Israeli-Arab leaders to boycott settlement goods "scandalous," said Fayyad had set this problematic ball in motion.
"He lit a bonfire, threw the Israeli goods into the fire, established a special unit that goes to the grocery stores to take out the goods and levy fines - even though he knows that 25,000 Palestinians work in the settlements," he said. "Abbas can't lag behind, so he issued an order that forbids selling goods from the settlements. And then the communications minister came and issued an order against Israeli cellular phones - but that wasn't enough for Salam Fayyad."
Shalom said that while he had met Fayyad numerous times in the past, over the last year Fayyad had refused to meet with any Israeli officials.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Police Beat Rabbi at Shavei Shomron; 70 Rabbis Protest
by Gil Ronen
Seventy rabbis have signed a letter of protest over a violent incident Monday in which Yassam special police beat Rabbi Yehoshua Schmidt of Shavei Shomron, in Samaria. Another letter was sent by the Hesder Yeshiva Federation to the Ministry of Defense, demanding an investigation.
The rabbis' letter bore the heading: "Woe is Us, for the Shaming of the Torah."
"We cannot even begin to imagine that the emissaries of the government in the State of Israel would behave so wildly an brutally toward a rabbi and wise scholar," they protested. "We remember such acts only from dark regimes, haters of Israel, that have passed from this world."
Rabbi Schmidt, 43, heads the Hesder High Yeshiva in the community, and is also Rabbi of Shavei Shomron.
According to the rabbi's wife, Ofra, some 200 policemen arrived at the community Monday with bulldozers to demolish four structures that were being built, allegedly in contravention of the current freeze order on construction by Jews in Judea and Samaria. The bulldozers drove through the yeshiva compound, which adjoins some of the property that was razed. The rabbi instructed some twenty yeshiva students who were present not to confront the police.
On their way back from the demolitions, she said, the destruction crews wanted to pass through the yeshiva grounds once again. This time, the rabbi parked his vehicle in a way that blocked the bulldozers' way and asked them not to pass through the yeshiva compound, which is private property.
Upon hearing this the police beat the rabbi, knocked him down and continued to beat him severely when he was on the ground. He did not require medical attention, she said, but expressed horror at the fact that Jewish police would beat a rabbi, even after being told that he was a rabbi. (IsraelNationalNews.com)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Turks Help Hamas Welcome Anti-Israel Ships
by Hillel Fendel
Turkish aid is instrumental in helping Hamas clean and prepare the Gaza port, in preparation for the arrival of the anti-Israel protest flotilla later this month.
Pro-PLO organizations in Europe that have aligned themselves with Hamas are planning a flotilla of aid to the Gaza Strip. The coordinators of what some call the "ship intifada" want to avoid confrontation with Egypt, but appear to be seeking a confrontation with the Israeli navy, backed by media and diplomatic campaigns.
This past January, a senior Hamas operative in Britain named Muhammad Sawalha, who was involved in launching the previous flotilla, said the next convoy will avoid the type of confrontation that occurred the previous time with Egypt, and that next time, "the confrontation will be directly with the Zionist enemy itself on the high seas."
Swiss MP Josef Zisyadis, one of several European MPs and UN personnel who will be on the ships, together with nearly 600 others, threatened that "if Israel tries to stop the ships, we will sue her in European courts."
The major organizations and personalities involved in organizing the flotilla are IHH, an Islamic-oriented human rights organization in Turkey; a European organization named The European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza; and the international "Free Gaza" organization that rails against the Israeli "blockade" of Gaza. In addition, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), based in Ramat HaSharon, Israel, states that pro-PLO activists from Sweden and Greece have purchased two ships for the flotilla, and Hamas supporters in Britain - including MP George Galloway - are also involved in organizing the upcoming flotilla and others.
Arutz-7's Haggai Huberman reports that Turkish elements are helping to clean and deepen the port, in preparing for the arrival of the ships. "Free Gaza" and IHH are coordinating among the various organizations that are taking part in the flotilla and accompanying propaganda campaign.
The ships plan to deliver building materials, medical equipment, school briefcases and even caravans - mobile homes without wheels - for the Hamas-run entity in Gaza.
One of the ships, from Malaysia, will be loaded in Ireland with items donated by citizens in Ireland, Scotland, Britain and elsewhere. It will leave Ireland next week, and will meet up with the other ships in the Mediterranean, from where they will continue on towards Gaza. (IsraelNationalNews.com)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Petition: Destroy the Two Most Illegal Arab Buildings
by Hillel Fendel
Efforts to have hundreds of illegal Arab homes razed in the Shiloach (Silwan) neighborhood, below the Old City of Jerusalem, are not succeeding - and instead, the legal authorities are demanding that the lone illegal Jewish building, six-story Beit Yehonatan, be demolished or sealed. Jewish land activists working on behalf of the building and its residents are now taking a different approach, and have zeroed in on two illegal Arab structures located near Beit Yehonatan and that have a very similar status.
Attorney Amir Fisher, who is submitting the petition to the Supreme Court on behalf of the Regavim association, says the city authorities have been waging criminal proceedings against the buildings' owner, Ahmed Sheikh, for years. Sheikh had been permitted to build only two stories in each building, as in the rest of the neighborhood, yet built them six and seven stories high, respectively.
Demolition orders were issued for the buildings as early as ten years ago, and Sheikh's appeals against them were all rejected - yet the buildings still stand. Four years ago, Sheikh was even sentenced to eight months in prison and fined more than two million shekels; he has so far escaped justice by leaving the country.
Despite the illegality of hundreds of buildings in the neighborhood, the city and judicial authorities, led by Jerusalem Legal Counsel Yossi Havilio and State Prosecutor Moshe Lador, are working to have Beit Yehonatan, specifically, sealed or razed. Just this past Tuesday, a petition by residents against the decision was rejected by the Jerusalem Magistrates Court.
Beit Yehonatan is named for Israeli citizen Jonathan Pollard, imprisoned for life in a U.S. jail.
Quoting Havilio Himself
Havilio has also gone strongly on record in the past against Ahmed Sheikh, and the current petition quotes him extensively: "The construction of these buildings is a most grave violation, blatantly mocking the law and court decisions… It is one of the most serious construction violations that I have encountered since becoming the city's legal counsel."
Regarding Beit Yehonatan, Havilio has said: "The State of Israel is a country of law, and as such court decisions must be executed. This simple and basic truth is weakened when such orders are not fulfilled. By accepting this failure, the fundamental rules of the regime and the strength of the democracy are harmed."
Despite the rejection of all of Sheikh's appeals, and despite his escape abroad, and despite the city's stand, the buildings still stand, the Regavim suit declares, and therefore they must immediately be torn down.
Regavim deals with the public and legal aspects of keeping national lands in Jewish hands. (IsraelNationalNews.com)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Obama reaffirms US support for Israel's nuclear ambiguity
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report May 6, 2010, 5:26 PM (GMT+02:00)
Israel's nuclear center at Dimona
US president Barack Obama reaffirmed his administration's commitment to supporting Israel's policy of
nuclear ambiguity, whereby its possession of nuclear weapons is neither confirmed nor denied. debkafile's Washington sources report that President Obama repeated this pledge in a 20-minute telephone call to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu Monday, May 3, almost a year after he gave it the first time during Netanyahu's visit to the White House on May 18, 2009.
High-ranking American sources told debkafile that Obama needed to reassure Israel his commitment on this score was solid and unchanged for four reasons:
1. Because of administration steps on the Middle East taken this week prior to and during the UN conference on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Wednesday, May 5, the five Security Council permanent members vowed to work together towards a nuclear-free Middle East. Two days earlier, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the conference that the United States "is prepared to support practical measures towards the objective of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction."
2. There was talk in the corridors of the conference, some published by Egyptian sources, that the US and Egypt were formulating a joint Middle East nuclear policy for bringing about the dismantling of Israel's nuclear stockpiles.
3. It became clear to the White House that if Netanyahu got the notion that President Obama was retreating from his nuclear commitment to Israel, he could forget about progress in the Middle East proximity talks which his special envoy George Mitchell is working hard to jump-start this week.
4. And if that commitment were to be withdrawn, the entire Middle East would conclude that the Obama administration had also retreated from its "unshakable" pledge to support Israel's security.
A few hours after the Obama-Netanyahu conversation, former US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton said Tuesday that American-Egyptian cooperation on the Middle East nuclear issue was aimed squarely at Israel. His exact words were: "There is only one country that resolution is targeted at and that is Israel."
Therefore, the Israeli prime minister had needed to hear from the president in person that his year-old pledge was still valid and that the joint American-Egyptian effort for nuclear-free Middle East had a single target, Iran and its nuclear program.
According to debkafile's sources, that effort is led by Gary Seymour, WMD coordinator at the National Security Council, and Nabil Fahmy, for many years the Egyptian Ambassador to the United States. He is currently the dean of public administration at the American University in Cairo and head of the Center for Studies on Nonproliferation in the Middle East.
Our Middle East sources confirmed that Fahmy is the live wire of Egyptian policy in these areas.
Obama further promised Netanyahu that any US deal with Egypt or any other country on the nuclear issue would stipulate that Israel would not be called on to alter its nuclear stance until such time as a comprehensive Middle East peace is attained between Israel and its neighbors and all countries of the region dispose of their conventional and WMD arsenals.
Our sources in Jerusalem say that, even though Prime Minister Netanyahu welcomed President Obama's assurances and thanked him, there is still great unease in Israel's ruling circles over the very fact that the administration is actually discussing Israel's nuclear issues with Egypt
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Top US newspaper urges Obama to back off Israel
In its Wednesday editorial, The Washington Post urged US President Barack Obama to back off Israel, and recognize that overt pressure is not going to get the peace process anywhere, especially when dealign with a democracy that will just replace its own government if things get too hairy.
"The Obama administration should recognize that blunt pressure on Israel won't produce a Middle East deal," read the editorial. "Instead, the administration needs to methodically press both sides to negotiate seriously."
The newspaper noted that Obama is currently backing Arab demands that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu can never accept without being removed from office, meaning Obama is actually making it impossible for the peace process to move forward at present.
The editorial singled out the Obama Administration's hostile reaction to a routine building announcement in Jerusalem that happened to coincide with Vice President Joe Biden's visit to the city in March.
"President Obama chose to escalate what could have been a blip into a public quarrel, in the apparent hope of extracting a series of concessions from Netanyahu," a move which only served to further distance Obama from the Israeli voting public.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Israeli VP: No to land-for-terror
Israeli Vice Premier and Minister for Strategic Affairs Moshe Yaalon on Wednesday insisted that Israel will be approaching renewed US-hosted peace negotiations from the position that it will no longer trade land for terrorism.
Speaking at a memorial ceremony for a slain soldier in a Jewish community in Samaria, Yaalon said that contrary to what the international community says, "It's not because of the settlements in Judea and Samaria that there is no peace, but rather because of the Arab refusal from the dawn of Zionism - and this is true of Fatah and Hamas - to recognize the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people."
Yaalon said the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains ready to immediate restart direct peace talks with the Palestinians without preconditions, but that unlike in the past, those talks must give equal weight to Israeli demands and concerns.
Since taking office, Netanyahu has insisted that the Palestinians finally honor their commitment to recognize Israel as the Jewish state. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly balked at the demand, while eliciting no public reaction from Washington.
