WarSclerotic

An end to the Syria pipe dream | Jerusalem Post – Blogs.

Netanyahu: I am determined to work with Obama to renew peace talks – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

PM expresses appreciation for Obama’s AIPAC speech, says he’s a partner to Obama’s wish to promote peace.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged Sunday to work alongside U.S. President Barack Obama to find a way to renew frozen peace talks with the Palestinians.

Responding to Obama’s efforts to ease tensions with Israel in a speech to the AIPAC pro-Israel lobby group, over policies on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict which the U.S. leader presented last week, Netanyahu issued a statement saying:

“I would like to express my appreciation of President Obama’s speech before the AIPAC conference,” he said. “I am a partner to President Obama’s wish to promote peace and I appreciate his efforts in the past and present to achieve this goal. I am determined to work with President Obama to find ways to renew peace talks.”

In his speech before AIPAC, Obama clarified Sunday his message from last Thursday’s Mideast speech, emphasizing his belief that negotiations should be based on 1967 borders with mutually agreed swaps, but not be identical to the lines which existed on June 4, 1967.

	Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, Friday, May 20, 2011.
	Photo by: AP

Obama stressed that a solution based on 1967 borders reflects a long-standing U.S. policy that has simply not been made public as of yet. He said his call for a future Palestine based on the 1967 borders with agreed upon land swaps was a public expression of what has long been acknowledged privately.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis May 22, 2011, 8:05 PM (GMT+02:00)

Barack Obama clarifies

US President Barack Obama corrected the harsh impression Israel gained from his May 19 Middle East speech in one of the most pro-Israeli addresses ever delivered by an American president. He explained to the 11,000 delegates at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee –AIPAC conference Sunday, May 22 that the final Israeli-Palestinian borders would differ from the 1967 lines because of the “mutually agreed swaps” he had also advocated.
Obama reverted to the guarantee President Bush gave Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004 against a return to the indefensible 1967 boundaries, adding that demographic changes on the ground and the interests of both sides made it unrealistic and were bound to be changed in negotiations.
The US president thus addressed the cardinal objection raised insistently by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu when they met at the White House Friday, May 20, although Netanyahu was accused by critics at home of overstating the case.  Netanyahu responded by saying he is determined to work with Obama on finding ways to renew peace talks and voiced deep appreciation for his efforts and speech.
Obama was also influenced by the heated criticism he encountered in the American media, which not only ignored the principles he set forth in his wider Middle East vision, but accused him of pandering to the Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas to lure him back to the table after two years.
In a speech aimed at pleasing his solidly pro-Israeli audience, Obama offered another key concession by clarifying his early comment: Last Thursday, he said the future Palestinian state would share borders with Jordan, Egypt and Israel, but did not refer to the security provisions demanded by Israel, such as a military presence on the Jordan River border. Sunday, the US President explained that the IDF withdrawal from the territory which would be assigned to the Palestinian state in peace negotiations would be graded to match the guaranteed ability of the new state and its security forces to prevent terror, arms smuggling and infiltration. Otherwise, Israel would stay on the West Bank.
debkafile‘s military sources stress this correction is vitally important because it comes close to Israel’s on security perception.
Obama stood by his original definition of a non-militarized rather than a demilitarized Palestinian state in view of the armed force needed to fight terror. He stressed that both states must enjoy the right to self-defense.
He also repeated his earlier assertion that the status quo is unsustainable for three reasons:

1.  The Palestinian population west of the Jordan River is increasing rapidly making it harder for Israel to remain a Jewish democratic state.

2.  Technological advances will jeopardize Israel’s presence on the West Bank. He was alluding to the pileup of long and short-range missiles in its enemies arsenals.
3.  A new Arab generation is shaping the region. Therefore, Israel cannot rely on any peace treaty with one or more Arab rulers. “The world is moving too fast and is too impatient,” said Obama.
At the same time, he offered Israel some important commitments:

The US will maintain Israel’s qualitative military edge and has an unbreakable commitment to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. He vowed to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and oppose any effort to “chip away at Israel’s legitimacy.”

Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with a party dedicated to its destruction, namely Hamas, he said. The US will stand up against any attempt to single out Israel at the UN or any international forum.
The Israeli prime minister addresses the AIPAC conference Monday.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard gets … JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

  TEHRAN – Iran’s military received a new ballistic missile system on Sunday, which it said demonstrated the country’s self-sufficiency in mass producing weaponry.

“The new surface-to-surface missiles, Qiyam (Resurrection) 1, were successfully tested and delivered to the armed forces today,” Iran’s Arabic-language state television channel Al Alam said.

It did not disclose the range of the missile, delivered to the aerospace wing of the elite Revolutionary Guards, but said it was designed to be less easily detected than older models.

“The mass production of the Qiyam missile, the first without stabilizer fins, shows the Islamic Republic of Iran’s self-sufficiency in producing various types of missiles,” Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi was quoted as saying by the semi-official Fars news agency.

Iran is at loggerheads with major powers over its nuclear work, which it says is peaceful and intended solely for generating electricity but which Washington and its allies fear is aimed at making nuclear bombs.

Israel sees the potential of a nuclear armed Iran — which refuses to recognize the Jewish state and supports Hamas and Hezbollah — as a major threat and both it and its ally Washington do not rule out military action to prevent such a scenario.

Iran has said it would respond to any attack by targeting US interests and Israel.

Ahamadinejad: West causing drought in Iran – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Iranian president says Europe uses special equipment to hoard rain, keep it from reaching Iran

Mahmoud Ahmadinejadis now accusing the West of tempering with the weather: The Iranian president said in a speech that the West is scheming to “cause drought in certain areas of the world, including Iran,” The Daily Telegraph reported Friday.

“According to reports on climate, whose accuracy has been verified, European countries are using special equipment to force clouds to dump” their water on their continent, he was quoted as saying. Iran has been suffering from draughts over the past few years.

Ahmadinejad referred in his speech to an essay published by an unnamed Western politician, who claimed that droughts are expected to befall the area stretching between Turkey and Iran, and to east Asia, in the next 30 years.

“The regions (referred to in) the article … include countries whose culture and civilizations frighten the West,” Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying.

According to the British paper, as soon as Ahmandinejad finished his claim at the inauguration of a dam in the city of Arak, it started to rain.

This was not the first time that the Iranian president blamed Western nations for various plots aiming to undermine the Islamic Republic’s Ayatollah regime, sabotage its economic and scientific growth, and disrupt its foreign relations and national unity.

SOBHANI: Israel’s Iran dilemma – Washington Times.

Two cultures had history of tolerance until the Islamic Revolution

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addresses members of Congress on Tuesday, he will get a rousing reception and – no doubt – a standing ovation if he suggests a military strike on Iran to destroy that country’s nuclear weapons facilities. Mr. Netanyahu rightly will point out that Iran is the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism, a supporter of Hamas and Hezbollah and a threat to the Jewish state.

Members of Congress would be well-advised to take stock of the history between Iran and the Jewish state before giving the Israeli prime minister a green light to attack Iran. This 2,500-year-old history suggests that the character of the regime in Tehran has had the most immediate influence on Israeli-Iranian relations: Secularists have welcomed ties to the Jewish state, whereas Islamists have opposed cultivation of closer ties to Israel.

One of the most difficult challenges facing Uri Lubrani, Israel’s envoy to Iran from 1973 to 1979, was to persuade the 120,000-plus Iranian Jews to leave their homeland and settle in Israel. The reason for their refusal was simple: Until the establishment of an Islamic republic in Iran, Jews had embraced Iranian culture and were major contributors to the country’s economic, cultural and political development.

To understand the unity between Jews and the Iranian culture, one must look back to the events of 2,500 years ago. The history of Jews and Persians begins with Cyrus the Great, then king of Persia. It was Cyrus, the liberator, who freed the Jews from their Babylonian captivity and allowed them to return home to rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. Those who remained settled in present-day Esfahan and Shiraz.

As long as there were shahs ruling Iran, Jews were welcome members of Iranian society, in keeping with the precedent set by Cyrus the Great. In 1958, David Ben Gurion sent a letter to the shah in which he mentioned Cyrus’ policy toward the Jews as the foundation of a strategic alliance between the two countries. The shah replied: “The memory of Cyrus’ policy regarding your people is precious to me and I strive to continue in the path set by this ancient tradition.”

That tradition of tolerance continued during Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Seventy-eight years have passed since the “Tehran Children” arrived in Israel when Iran facilitated the rescue of 780 children who cruelly had been separated from their parents. These children were snatched from the crematories of the Holocaust – whose existence is denied by leaders of the Islamic republic – in a unique rescue operation and made their long and tortuous way to Israel via Iran. In 1941, Iranian diplomat Abdol-Hossein Sardari, known as the “Schindler of Iran,” gave 500 blank Iranian passports to an acquaintance of his to be used by non-Iranian Jews in France.

During Israel’s formative years, the establishment of formal diplomatic ties with Tehran was motivated primarily by the human and ideological considerations of immigration. In 1948, Jews were being persecuted in Iraq, and Israeli agents, with the tacit approval of Iranian officials, used Iran as a transit point to relocate Iraqi Jews to Israel.

Iran’s concern for the safety and welfare of the Jews continued until the shah left Iran. The fall of the shah in 1979 caused widespread despair among Iran’s Jewish community. A congratulatory kiss between Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat in 1979 turned out to be a kiss of death for a number of prominent members of Iran’s ancient Jewish community and the harbinger of difficult times for Iranian Jews.

The late Khomeini’s attitude toward Jews had evolved into complete antipathy by the time he toppled the shah. In May 1963, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt sent an agent named Col. Abdul Hamid Sarraj to Qom to deliver $150,000 to Khomeini for anti-government riots. Prior to this date, Khomeini had referred to the shah as a “Zoroastrian fire-worshipper.” But after Nasser’s cultivation of this hard-line cleric, Khomeini would refer to the shah as “an agent of Zionism.”

Khomeini made his position on Jews clear in all his writings: “From the very beginning, the historical movement of Islam has had to contend with the Jews, for it was they who first established anti-Islamic propaganda … they are wretched people who wish to establish Jewish domination throughout the world.”

It should therefore come as no surprise that the heirs to Khomeini’s legacy call for wiping Israel off the map. They invoke a nuclear-armed Iran as the “beginning of the end of the Zionist state.”

While Mr. Netanyahu is right about the existential threat to Israel of a nuclear-armed Iran, he is wrong about advocating a military option. History suggests that the option of a secular Iran should be the focus of U.S.-Israeli dialogue on Iran. Helping secularists in Iran gain control of their country is the best guarantor of Israel’s security dilemma.

S. Rob Sobhani is author of “The Pragmatic Entente: Israeli-Iranian Relations 1948-1978” (Greenwood Press, 1989).

Iran arrests 30 people it says s… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

  TEHRAN – Iran has arrested 30 people it said were spying for the United States, official media reported on Saturday.

“The Intelligence Ministry’s active and pious forces, in their ardent confrontations with the agents of the CIA … arrested 30 people who were spies for America,” state television’s lunchtime news announced.

According to the semi-official Fars news agency, the suspects had passed information to US officials at embassies and consulates in third countries, including Malaysia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

It said Iran had identified 42 US intelligence officers in such countries, saying: “they engage in collection of information regarding Iran’s nuclear, aerospace defense and bio-technology fields,” among other areas of interest.

Spying in Iran can carry the death penalty.

Diplomatic cables published by the WikiLeaks website showed the United States operated information-gathering desks on Iran in neighboring countries where diplomats would seek to glean intelligence from travelling Iranians.

The announcement of the arrests comes two days after US President Barack Obama made a speech on the Middle East, reiterating Washington’s view that Tehran sponsors terrorism and is seeking nuclear weapons, charges Iran denies.

SYRIA TOLL RISES TO 44, AS ASSAD CONTINUES KILLING CAMPAIGN.

Al Arabiya

Saturday, 21 May 2011

demonstrator sets fire to a picture of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad during a demonstration outside the Syrian consulate in Istanbul. (File photo)

Security forces killed at least 44 people during pro-democracy protests, which swept Syria on Friday and early Saturday, with most of the casualties in the western province of Idlib and the central city of Homs. President Bashar al-Assad of Syria seems to be showing no signs of relenting in his campaign to crush protesters.

The continued killings raise the question of what President Barack Obama of the United States will do, if anything, to deal with the deepening humanitarian crisis in Syrian.

“Syrian authorities are continuing to use excessive force and live ammunition to face popular protests in various regions throughout the country,” said Ammar Qurabi, head of the National Organization for Human Rights, who was reached by telephone by Agence-France Presse.

Mr. Qurabi said 26 people were killed in the province of Idlib and 13 in Homs. Two people were also killed in the eastern town of Deir Ezzor, one in Daraya, a suburb of the capital Damascus, one in the coastal city of Latakia (from where the Assad clan hails) and one in central Hama.

Syria has banned foreign journalists and prevented local reporters from covering trouble spots, making it nearly impossible to independently verify witness accounts.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in Britain, said on Friday that at least 831 civilians had been killed since the uprising against autocratic rule erupted in the southern city of Deraa nine weeks ago. It said at least 10,000 people had been arrested, including hundreds across Syria on Friday.

Syrian authorities blame most of the violence on armed groups, backed by Islamists and outside powers, who they say have killed more than 120 soldiers and police. They have recently suggested they believe the protests have peaked.

The United States, which has condemned the crackdown as barbaric, imposed targeted sanctions against Mr. Assad this week. President Obama said on Thursday that he should “lead that transition or get out of the way.”

Despite strong words from the White House, the West has so far taken only small steps to isolate Mr. Assad when compared with its bombing campaign against Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi, also accused of killing protesters.

The two-month uprising has posed the gravest challenge to Mr. Assad’s 11-year rule. He has lifted a 48-year state of emergency and granted citizenship to stateless Kurds, but also sent tanks to several cities to suppress the protests.

Western powers, fearing instability across the Middle East if Syria undergoes an upheaval, made only muted criticisms of Mr. Assad’s actions at first, but then stepped up their condemnation and imposed sanctions on leading Syrian figures.

Damascus condemned the sanctions, saying they targeted the Syrian people and served Israel’s interests.

“The sanctions have not and will not affect Syria’s independent will,” an official source was quoted as saying on state television on Thursday.

On Friday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez expressed support for his ally Mr. Assad, saying on Twitter: “I have spoken with the Syrian president, our brother Bashar, a few minutes ago. Syria is the victim of a fascist attack. God help Syria!!”

Mr. Chavez has said he suspects the US government is covertly trying to destabilize Mr. Assad’s government.

(Sara Ghasemilee, an editor at Al Arabiya English, can be reached at: sara.ghasemilee@mbc.net)

Turkish president pressures Hamas to recog… JPost – Middle East.

Photo by: REUTERS

By JPOST.COM STAFF 
05/21/2011 10:47

In ‘Wall Street Journal’ interview Gul welcomes Obama’s reference to 67 borders, recalls telling Mashaal “you have to be rational.”

  Turkish President Abdullah Gul on Friday said that he had pressed Hamas to recognize Israel‘s right to exist.

During an interview with The Wall Street Journal a day after US President Barack Obama delivered his major speech on the Middle East, the Turkish president welcomed Obama’s reference to creating a Palestinian state based on pre-1967 borders as “a very important step.”

“The fact that there was a reference to the borders of 1967 was a very important step in itself,” Gul said.

Gul said during the interview from his office at the presidential palace in Ankara that he had already advised Hamas to recognize Israel. He recalled in particular a 2006 meeting with Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Ankara, when he said he told Mashaal, “you have to be rational” about recognizing Israel’s right to exist.

The Turkish president said he Hamas to recognize Israel at the same time that Israel recognizes a Palestinian state. Hamas’s charter calls for replacing Israel with a Palestinian state in its entirety, and while Hamas leaders have spoken of a two-state solution in the past, it has been as a temporary measure, Gul said during the interview.

Gul highlighted that Israel was right to put its security first—but that this must be done effectively. Israel needs to understand the meaning of the democratic uprisings in the Arab world, namely that new elected governments would no longer be allowed by their voters to tolerate “humiliating” Israeli policies, Gul stressed during the interview.

“Israel shouldn’t focus on tactical issues. They have to look at the strategic side,” Gul told The Wall Street Journal.

The Turkish president said  Obama “has a point” when he said in his speech that Israel couldn’t be expected to negotiate with a body that doesn’t recognize Israel’s right to exist.

‘PA to go ahead with state recogn… JPost – Diplomacy & Politics.

  The Palestinians will move ahead with their quest to win UN recognition of a state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, Senior Fatah member Nabil Shaath said late Friday.

Shaath made the comments after Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu met with US President Barack Obama and flatly rejected any return to the 1967 lines, the basis – along with agreed land swaps – for a deal with the Palestinians as laid out in Obama’s speech Thursday.

However, Shaath said that “we will escalate our diplomatic efforts to get the recognition of the Palestinian state.”

Shaath noted that Obama didn’t threaten a veto. “We still hope that he will not do so, and that he will not stand in our way to freedom and independence, which he called for for all the Arab nations,” he said.

Earlier on Friday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on the United States to put pressure on Netanyahu with regards to the peace process.

Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh said, “the US administration has to put a stop to Netanyahu’s blatant refusal to enter into a real peace process and a permanent one based on the two-state solution,” official Palestinian Authority news agency WAFA reported.

Addressing Netanyahu’s rejection of ’67 borders, Abu Redeineh said, “These statements are an official declaration that he is not ready for true peace based on justice and international resolutions.”

Regarding the prime minister’s statement following the Obama meeting about refugees, Abu Redeineh said the issue should be settled in negotiations, not in press statements.

The Abbas spokesman also rejected foreign criticism of the recent Fatah-Hamas unity deal, which has been criticized by Israel and the West, who classify Hamas as a terrorist organization. The Palestinian government, he said, is “an independent government that has nothing to do with Fatah or Hamas and its program is that of President Mahmoud Abbas.”

“What Netanyahu is saying are excuses to avoid sitting at the negotiating table,” he added.