WarSclerotic

Hamas: Abbas is fabricating stories to defame us in Egypt | The Times of Israel.

‘We initially thought Mossad was behind the smear campaign,’ Hamas official tells Al-Jazeera

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas heads a Palestinian cabinet meeting in the West Bank city of Ramallah July 28, 2013 (photo credit: Issam Rimawi/Flash90)

As Hamas struggles to recuperate from the ouster of its ally Mohammed Morsi in Egypt, the Palestinian Islamic party on Monday accused rival movement Fatah of inciting the Egyptian public against it by fabricating news intended for the Egyptian media.

In a press statement issued Monday on its official website, Hamas claimed it has obtained documents indicating that Fatah had established a special committee tasked with fabricating news meant to demonize Hamas and incite the Egyptian public against it.

The documents, Hamas claimed, expose “the conspiracy led by Fatah to demonize and defame Hamas and the Palestinian resistance.”

Hamas official Salah Bardawil told Al-Jazeera on Monday that the secret committee was headed by PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah official Tayeb Abdel Rahim.

Al-Jazeera displayed an image of a signed letter ostensibly sent from Fatah’s media department to Abdel Rahim on July 24, requesting that PA security agencies concoct documents linking Hamas to the killing of 16 Egyptian soldiers in Sinai last August, ahead of Abbas’ trip to Egypt.

“Hamas had thought the Israeli Mossad or certain countries were behind the campaign, but was surprised to discover that President Mahmoud Abbas is behind it,” Bardawil told Al-Jazeera, claiming the allegations against Hamas amounted to incitement to kill Palestinians and “annihilate” Hamas.

On Friday, Egypt’s official news agency reported that Morsi had been arrested for 15 days and was being investigated over contacts with Hamas, which allegedly helped in his escape from prison in 2011. This was the first official statement tying Hamas to the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, though reports to that effect have been circulated by Egypt’s independent press for months prior.

Abbas flew to Cairo on Monday along with a high-ranking Palestinian delegation for talks with the new Egyptian government. The Palestinian officials met with Interim President Adly Mansour, his deputy for international relations Mohamed ElBaradei and Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy.

But Hamas claimed in its statement that Abbas was visiting Egypt only to “incite” the public against it and convince the leadership in Cairo to officially accuse Hamas of killing 16 Egyptian soldiers in Sinai last year, “which is completely false and fabricated.”

Hamas had been at pains to deny its involvement in fanning the flames of Egypt’s unrest, accusations that only increased in Egyptian media since the ouster of Mohammed Morsi on July 3.

Expressing Hamas’ defensive panic, spokesman Osama Hamdan on Monday claimed that the accusations leveled at Hamas were part of a “hostile conspiracy” aimed at “the entire region, and at the resistance project first and foremost.”

Arguing that Hamas had colluded with the Muslim Brotherhood was bizarre, Hamdan added, given “the perfect harmony between Egypt’s new political standpoint and the allegations of the Israeli occupation.”

Saving the Arab Levant | James Zogby.

Anyone who cares about the Arab World has to be profoundly shaken by the unraveling that is taking place across the Levant. Reviewing events unfolding from Iraq in the East to Lebanon in the West can give one the distinct feeling that the region is on a path leading to self-destruction. What, if anything, can be done to reverse course?

Syria is committing suicide — tearing itself asunder in a civil war that, with the support and prodding of outside forces, has increasingly become an exercise in sectarian blood-letting. American combat forces may have left Iraq, but the country has not found a way to make peace with itself. Daily terrorist bombings are killing scores of civilians, while a dysfunctional sectarian government appears to be focused more on prosecuting and persecuting its opponents, than providing for the needs of its people.

Speaking of dysfunction — Lebanon, reeling from the pressure emanating from Syria next door, is once again teetering on the brink of civil conflict. Meanwhile, the conflicts raging around Jordan are having a destabilizing impact with that country receiving yet another massive influx of refugees — its fourth in the past six decades. And poor dismembered Palestine and its dispersed people are suffering from new and old tragedies. Palestinian refugees from Syria have flooded into Lebanon’s already congested and impoverished camps creating new tensions. Despite the news that another “peace process” might be underway, the Palestinians in the occupied territories see what remains of their lands being chewed up by settlement construction and a barrier wall that snakes deep into the West Bank, while Gaza continues to be strangled by a cruel blockade.

It was back in 2002 that then British Foreign Minister Jack Straw noted that many of the “problems we [the United Kingdom] are dealing with [in the Middle East] are a consequence of our colonial past.” Straw was referring to what he called his country’s “not entirely honorable past” — its betrayal of the Arabs in the post-World War I period and its imposition of the Sykes-Picot Agreement on the region.

Straw was right. By denying Arab aspirations to establish a unitary state in the Levant; by carving the region up into British and French spheres of influence and imposing their colonial authority and regimes of their choosing in each of these newly created “states;” by pitting sect against sect and paving the way for the loss of Palestine — the British and French laid the groundwork for many of the problems the Levant is confronting today.

One might be tempted to ask what the Levant might look like had US President Woodrow Wilson been able to win the day and secure the “right of self-determination” for the Arabs who had just come out from under the Ottoman yoke? And what if the world had paid heed to the findings of the Wilson-authorized King-Crane Commission survey and granted the Arabs the unitary state they so overwhelmingly desired?

We can indulge in such speculation, but, in the real world, politics is a function not of “what if” but “what is.” And so despite Straw’s lament, the way forward is to be found not in looking back at what might have been, but in an honest assessment of what can be done to address current realities.

During the past century, there were many attempts by Arabs living in the Levant to redress their aggrieved history. Refusing to succumb to the efforts of outsiders who sought to exploit their religious diversity, in an effort to “divide and conquer,” they developed “Arab” nationalism — fostering an identity that would transcend both religious sect and the mini-states that had been the legacy of Sykes-Picot. It remains a tragedy that this Arab identity movement was exploited by military regimes who manipulated its emotive power to support their rule. In the end, the idea of “Arabism” became discredited, not on its merits, but because of the brutal regimes that had embraced it.

Another approach was found by those who accepted the new reality of Sykes-Picot created sub-national identities. These stressed, for example, the uniqueness of being “Lebanese” or the differences between being “Palestinian” or “Jordanian.” It was important to note that even within these state-based nationalisms, religious divisions were transcended.

What I have always found to be among the most intriguing results in the polling we have done during the past decade is the persistence of an Arab identity and a sense of a common destiny among the people of the Levant. While sectarian wars raged in Iraq, or while Lebanon’s political system remained grounded in a system of sect-privilege, the principal identity of most Iraqis and Lebanese remained not their sect, but being both “Arab” and “Lebanese” or “Iraqi.” And when we asked the publics in all of the countries of the Levant why what happened to Palestinians, Syrians or Iraqis was important to them, the most common response was “because they are Arabs like me.”

It is for this reason that I cannot accept that it is inevitable that the Levant drown in the blood of sectarian conflict. Nor can I imagine that the people of the region desire their fate to be a checkerboard of “cleansed” sectarian cantons. It makes no sense that Iran or the Muslim Brotherhood should be driving the Levant’s agenda when the region’s people, despite their religious diversity, express an attachment to their common bonds born of history, culture and blood-ties.

Egyptians have demonstrated their rejection of religious sect-based government. Syrians are now waging an anti-sectarian rebellion within their rebellion against the regime. And polls show that Palestinians in Gaza, despite having voted for Hamas in 2006, are now rejecting this movement’s divisive rule.

What the Levant needs today is a unified revolt against sectarian division and recognition of the futility of its self-destructive path. It can be done. I have seen the seeds of the way forward in the young Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian entrepreneurs — Muslim and Christian — working together to create innovative businesses in the Arab World’s “Silicon Valley” of Dubai. I have seen much the same in gatherings of Arab business leaders hosted by the World Economic Forum. It is their experience, and not that of their contemporaries, inspired by hate and armed with guns, that represents the most promising future for the Levant. The notion that this region’s people share common bonds and have a common destiny cannot be rejected because this idea had once been abused by brutal regimes. To borrow an American expression “one shouldn’t throw the baby out with the Ba’ath.” New life needs to be breathed into this region to save it before it drowns in its own blood. It can be done. The region can be saved, but it will take leaders with vision and a determination as strong that being demonstrated by those who appear hell-bent on destroying it.

Defense head: Reason for freeing prisoners will be revealed in future | The Times of Israel.

( Yalon is making it pretty clear that the release is for reasons other than the talks themselves.  Hhmmm…. Wonder what THAT could be. – JW )

Release of 104 long-term Palestinian inmates still must be okayed by president, court

An Israeli prison guard escorts Palestinian prisoners before their release from the Ofer Prison near the West Bank town of Ramallah, December 15, 2008 (photo credit: Kobi Gideon/Flash90)

Ministers who voted to release long-term Palestinian security prisoners on Sunday were forced to choose between  ”a bad decision and a worse decision,” Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Monday, as peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians kicked off.

The controversial move, approved after a stormy and lengthy cabinet session, will be carried out in stages and will still need to be cleared by the president and the court, should the release be appealed, Ynet news reported Monday.

Ya’alon said “the considerations that were taken into account” would one day be revealed, and added that security would be increased following the release of the 104 prisoners, many of whom were convicted for murders or terror attacks and have been in jail since before the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993. Ya’alon said security forces would respond with an increase in alertness.

Releasing the prisoners was a Palestinian precondition for peace talks, and while the decision was widely pilloried by politicians on the right and the Israeli public, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was for the “good of the country.”

The release will be in stages linked to continued progress in the talks, which are planned to last 6-9 months.

Justice Minister Tzipi Livni flew to Washington Monday to initiate the first round of renewed peace talks with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, under the auspices of US Secretary of State John Kerry. In conjunction with this, the first round of prisoners is expected to be released later this week.

For each batch, a list of prisoners to be released is to be prepared by the Justice Ministry and approved by Livni. As part of this process, the exact locations where each prisoner will be released will also be determined, which could be in the West Bank, Gaza or potentially abroad. 

After this, the list will be transferred to President Shimon Peres, who will officially sign off on their early release. After this step the list will be made public, allowing citizens to petition the High Court against the release of specific prisoners.

In 2011, the court struck down a petition by families of terror victims seeking to stop the release of some 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. Israel has carried out prisoner swaps several times in the past, usually amid public opposition.

The Prison Service will be tasked with preparing the prisoners, which involves in each case positive identification, medical tests and debriefing with prison officials. Each prisoner will reportedly be asked to sign an agreement that he will not return to terror activity once granted his freedom.

Once all the pre-release steps have been accomplished, each group of prisoners will be driven, under heavy security, to predetermined locations for their release, where they are likely to be greeted by enthusiastic crowds of Palestinians.

Ya’alon on prisoners’ release: We’ll pay a cost – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Day after cabinet votes to release 104 Palestinian prisoners as part of peace talks, defense minister says, ‘We had to choose between a bad decision and even worse one. We will pay a cost in terms of deterrence’

Yoav Zitun

Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon said Sunday that Israel will pay a cost in terms of deterrence following a decision to free 104 Palestinian prisoners as part of resuming peace talks. Talking to new IDF recruits at the military induction center, Ya’alon said;. “In the future the strategic considerations behind the decision will be revealed.”

He further noted, “We had to choose between a bad decision and an even worse one. It wasn’t an easy day. These are murderers and of course we’ll pay a cost in terms of deterrence.”

Addressing the peace process’ chances of success, he said: “A third intifada is not in the cards and neither were the threats of a political tsunami. I advise the prime minister and cabinet ministers not to take such threats into consideration. The Palestinians were the ones to walk out on negotiations in the past four years. We will not sacrifice anything connected to security during negotiations.”

Ya’alon stressed there were many question marks surrounding the talks. “We will ask the other side whether they recognize Israel as the Jewish people’s nation state and whether a territorial compromise will end all claims.”

Addressing the turmoil in Egypt he said, “The Egyptian army is in the midst of an operation in Sinai and we wish them success. There is an actual war being waged in Sinai and we are monitoring the developments in coordination with Egypt.”

Meanwhile it has been reported that Israel is preparing to transfer food and gas to Gaza via the Kerem Shalom so as not to exacerbate the Strip’s economic state following the destruction of the majority of smuggling tunnels by the Egyptian army.

A senior defense source said, “There is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza. There is economic pressure following the destruction of the tunnels which still serve for the transfer of cheap fuel. Hamas has dealt with the two latest rocket attacks at Israel, and is trying to maintain calm.”

Discussing the issue of hardei draft, Ya’alon said that he decided to postpone the enlistment of 550 haredim from August to November “because we still need to pass the new draft bill in second and third readings.”

Syrian army and Hizballah capture Homs – opening way to Aleppo and decisive Assad victory.

Ravaged Homs falls to Assad’s forces

Three months after winning the strategic town of Al Qusayr, the combined Syrian and Hizballah armies have captured the historic Muslim Brotherhood city of Homs, 162 kilometers northeast of the capital Damascus. debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report that Sunday, July 28, jeeps with recoilless guns, pick-up trucks with anti air guns – all loaded with defeated rebel Farouq Brigades fighters were to be seen fleeing the city. As they fled, Syrian and Hizballah army tanks facing no resistance rolled into the center of Homs, the old city and the Khladiyeh district and hoisted images of President Bashar Assad.

The fall of Homs, which the rebels designated from the start of the uprising “capital of the revolution,” opens the way for Syrian-Hizballah forces to move north on Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

Aleppo’s capture would grant Assad a decisive victory in the civil war and confer on the Lebanese Shiite terrorist Hizballah for the first time the standing of an armed force with strategic capabilities, as well as giving the Iran-Syrian-Hizballah alliance a major boost.
Early Monday, Syrian ground-to-ground missiles were pounding rebel fortifications Aleppo to soften their resistance, while Syrian air force helicopters struck Kurdish PYG units ranged along the Syrian-Turkish border. Although the helicopters flew over the frontier, they did not run into any interference from the Turkish air force, its artillery emplacements or the NATO Patriot anti-missile batteries deployed there.

The Kurdish units were targeted to prevent them moving into Aleppo in defense of the city’s Kurdish quarters against the Syrian army-Hizballah advance.
After the fall of Homs and the fast approaching Syrian assault on Aleppo, Washington, Jerusalem and Ankara have run out of time for quibbling whether to step into the Syrian conflict. The critical decision facing them now is whether to save Aleppo from a savage Syrian army-Hizballah onslaught that will determine the final fate of the war, or continue to stand aside.

The various tactics outlined by top US soldier Gen. Martin Dempsey last week for US military intervention at a cost of $1 billion per day have been overtaken by events. The Obama administration must now decide very quickly whether Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers should be allowed to win the Syrian civil war or stopped at Aleppo.

US confirms: Peace talks to begin Monday – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Americans, Palestinians confirm talks to begin Monday. Livni, Molcho to meet Erekat, aide in State Department for first round of talks in bid to ‘develop procedural workplan’ for rest of negotiations. Israeli, Palestinian senior officials remain skeptical

Attila Somfalvi

The US has confirmed that peace negations between Israel and the Palestinians will begin Monday. Palestinians have also confirmed the reports. Both Palestinian and Israeli senior official sources, however, said there was little chance the talks would lead to meaningful results.

An Israeli source expressed little faith in the negotiations, saying: “The problematic issues are numerous. It’s hard to believe that any progress can come about, but one cannot ignore the opportunity and one must give the process a chance.”

State Department spokeswoman Jan Psaki said talks would begin Monday evening and continue Tuesday. “Secretary Kerry spoke with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and personally extended an invitation to send senior negotiating teams to Washington to formally resume direct final status negotiations,” a State Department announcement said.

Livni, Kerry (Photo: Reuters)

“The Israelis will be represented by Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Yitzhak Molcho, and the Palestinians will be represented by Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat and Mohammad Shtayyeh. The (upcoming) meetings in Washington will serve as an opportunity to develop a procedural workplan for how the parties can proceed with the negotiations in the coming months,” the US stated.

According to the statement, Kerry “commended the courage shown by Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas,” with the US secretary of state saying: “Both leaders have demonstrated a willingness to make difficult decisions that have been instrumental in getting to this point. We are grateful for their leadership.”

Nabil Abu Rdaineh, a senior aide to Palestinian President Abbas who was in the Jordanian capital Amman, said Abbas has received the official invitation to come to the talks.

The Palestinian news agency, WAFA, quoted Abu Rdaineh as saying that the first meeting would aim to develop the procedural working plan for both sides to enable them make headway in talks in the coming months.

Talks to resume (Photo: Kobi Gideon, GPO)

Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, also welcomed the invitation as well as Israel’s decision to free prisoners and join talks: “We call on Israel to seize the opportunity… to put an end to decades of occupation and exile and to start a new stage of justice, freedom and peace for Israel, Palestine and the rest of the region.”

Destination: DC

However, as Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu‘s representative attorney Yitzhak Molcho prepared to take off for Washington for the beginning of talks, sources within the defense and political establishment warn of Palestinian reluctance to reach an agreement as well as the possibly devastating results that could come with the collapse of negotiations.

The short time for which Livni and Molcho are expected to stay in Washington is telling. The two are scheduled to return to Israel Wednesday after only two meetings with their Palestinian counterparts.

According to a source, the meetings will probably be held in the State Department, far from the cameras’ lenses and will probably deal with technical issues: Dates, locations, procedures, lines of communications, agendas, ways to prevent talks from falling apart.

An Israeli source said that the Palestinians want to begin talks with the issue of settlements and final border agreements, while Netanyahu wants to discuss security. The Palestinians also want to tie Netanyahu to a map, while he wants to secure Israeli control of the Jordan valley, but “there will be no empty concessions,” a source said.

“We are approaching this negotiation so as to discuss all the issues and resolve all the disagreements.”

According to the source, the prime minister “realizes that things have changed. As many of his predecessors did, he changed his perceptions. Today he approaches things differently from what he used to, so you can’t tell what he’ll do next.

“He used to say that he opposes the presence of an international force in the Jordan Valley, but no go figure. In the past he would never have agreed to a Palestinian state, now he’s talking about the demographic threat. When this is the situation, anything can happen.”

One of the major threats impeding the talks’ success is the issue of Gaza and the PA’s relations with Hamas, as well as the authority’s lack of sovereignty in Gaza, which is currently run by Hamas. Nonetheless, the source told Ynet that an “interim agreement could be the best thing at this point.”

The source further expressed doubt regarding Abbas’s willingness to make “hard decisions.”

According to the source, “He’s playing for time coming to talks. He is not capable of making decisions, nor does he want to do so. He was pushed into a corner by the Americans, so he’s coming to talks. If he could derail talks because of the prisoners issue – he would.”

Bereaved familes protest release (Photo: Gil Yochanan)

Earlier Sunday, the Israeli government cleared the way for the renewal of the talks by approving the release of 104 Palestinian prisoners. Palestinians have demanded that Israel release the prisoners, and that this group include Israeli-Arabs detained for security offenses.

As part of his efforts to convince ministers to support his proposal, the prime minister decided Thursday to defer the decision on the release of Arab-Israeli prisoners to a later date and only discuss the release of Palestinian prisoners. “Any decision on the release of Arab Israelis, if such a decision is reached, will be sent for reapproval by the government,” he stressed.

However, a senior Palestinian source spoke to Ynet and said that the Palestinians agreed to return to peace talks only after receive assurances from the Americans that the Israeli-Arab prisoners will also be released.

News agencies and Ynet correspondents contributed to this report