WarSclerotic

Report: Israel increases number of prisoners to be freed before talks start | JPost | Israel News.

( My gut feeling is that this otherwise inexplicable capitulation on the part of Netanyahu to unacceptable demands of the PA means only one thing.  The attack on Iran is happening VERY soon.  Bear in mind, I’ve always been wrong in the past on this issue.  – JW )

Please check the comments on this post.

Israel has decided to raise the number of prisoners that it will release from 82 to 104 as a condition for the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table Israel Radio reported on Saturday.

Israel increased the number of people to be freed after the Palestinians threatened that they would not return to the opening meeting of talks that is scheduled to take place next week in Washington according to the report that cited a source with knowledge of the negotiations.

Some of the prisoners to be released were Israeli prisoners that in the past Israel had refused to free, according to the source.

The decision to release Israeli prisoners as goodwill gestures to the Palestinians contravenes Israeli policy not to allow the Palestinian Authority to intervene in Israeli-Arab affairs, the report stressed.

Ami Palmor, head of the pardons department of the Justice Ministry told the Knesset Interior and Environment Committee last week, that the 82 prisoners Israel intended to release were all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza who were sentenced for their crimes before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

It was revealed in the Knesset briefing that all of the prisoners to be released had blood on their hands and were serving life sentences.

Abbas says Israel to make prisoner announcement

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said “happy news” about the Palestinian prisoners would be announced Sunday, Israel Radio reported quoting the Xinhua News Agency.

“You should follow the Israeli media tomorrow, because there will be happy  announcements with regard to the prisoners,” Abbas said at a press conference in Ramallah on Saturday.

Abbas confirmed that the peace talks would be officially resumed on Tuesday and that former US ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk was chosen by the White House as the US representative to the talks.

To those Palestinians opposed to the resumption of talks he said, “There were also those who were opposed to the move to seek UN recognition and as at it turned out that opposition was unfounded.”  Abbas was referring  to the Palestinian Authority’s 2012 decision to seek non-member observer status at the UN.

Ben Hartman contributed to this report.

Up to 100 Muslim Brotherhood protesters reported killed in Cairo rally.

Scenes at the Muslim Brotherhood rally in Cairo

The Moslem Brotherhood claimed up to 100 dead and 1,000 injured by live fire early Saturday, July 27 as their supporters rallied around Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Nasser City.  These figures are confirmed by medical sources. Earlier, Interior Minister Mohammed Ibrahim vowed to end the sit-in at the mosque calling for the reinstatement of ousted president Mohamed Morsi and restore order to Cairo streets after the two massive rival demonstrations Friday night. The military claim millions rallied in support of the army in Tahrir Square.  Eilat residents woke up Saturday morning to the sound of unexplained explosions from Sinai.

debkafile reported Friday night:

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators filled Cairo’s streets and squares Friday, July 26 in rival rallies shortly after deposed president Mohamed Morsi was formally charged and detained for 15 days. Tahrir Square was packed with crowds responding to Defense Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah El-Sisi’s call for a mandate to support the military fight on “terrorists.” Another huge crowd of Morsi supporters packed the streets around the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque in Nasser City.
Instead of directing their ire at the overthrown Muslim Brotherhood, the pro-military demonstrators shouted “Bye Bye America!” as huge placards waved over their heads depicting as a threesome Gen. El-Sisi, Vladimir Putin and Gemal Abdel Nasser, who ruled Egypt in the 60s in close alliance with the Soviet Union.
Their rivals in a separate part of Cairo chanted “Sisi out! Morsi is president! Down with the army!”
In Alexandria, five people were killed in clashes between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and opponents.

The anti-American banners represented a message: No matter if President Barack Obama denies the Egyptian people US support because of the military’s steps against the Muslim Brotherhood, Cairo has an option in Moscow.

Reports began appearing Friday morning on the social networks including Facebook from sources close to Putin that Moscow is considering supplying Egypt with advanced fighter bombers to replace the F-16 planes, whose delivery Obama suspended Wednesday, July 24. This was a gesture to show the US President’s displeasure over Gen El-Sisi’s rejection of the demand to release the ousted president and integrate the Muslim Brotherhood in the interim government.
The military gave the Muslim Brotherhood an ultimatum to endorse the new situation by Friday. The Brotherhood, whose supporters have maintained a sit-in in Nasser City for 20 days, did not respond.

The military accordingly gave the screw another turn.

A Cairo investigating judge Friday ordered deposed president Morsi detained for 15 days pending investigation into charges of plotting with the Palestinian Hamas to orchestrate a jailbreak during the 2011 revolution and conniving with Hamas in killing police officers and soldiers.

He has been held at an unknown location since the coup.
These charges carry potential death sentences.

They relate to the attack by armed men who on Aug. 5, 2012 killed 16 Egyptian border policemen in their camp in northern Sinai near Rafah. The prosecution claims to have evidence that the raid was plotted by Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to depict the Egyptian military as a spent force. That attack kicked off the current armed Salafist mutiny against Egyptian military and police targets in Sinai

The other charge relates to the raid on Wadi Natroun prison at the tail end of the 2011 uprising against Hosni Mubarak, which broke out of jail thousands of inmates including Morsi and other Muslim Brotherhood leaders.
According to debkafile’s intelligence sources, the jailbreak was executed by special networks of Hizballah and Hamas which had been planted in Cairo and Suez Canal cities for subversion and terrorism.
The radical Hamas, offspring and ally of the Egyptian Brotherhood, is now solidly in the military regime’s sights as a hostile entity.

The military takeover of power in July 3 is gaining the aspect of a neo-Nasserist revolution. Many Egyptians are beginning to turn to Moscow in search of their country’s primary world ally rather than Washington. They have taken note that Putin has shown himself to be the foe of the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria as well as Egypt.

Four dead in Alexandria clashes as turmoil rages across Egypt | JPost | Israel News.

Iran Is Said to Want Direct Talks With U.S. on Nuclear Program – NYTimes.com.

Pool photo by Jason Reed

Secretary of State John Kerry meeting with Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq, center, in Baghdad in March.

By MICHAEL R. GORDON

Published: July 26, 2013

Israel Hayom | Increasing number of Israeli Arabs signing up for national service.

Get ready for containment.

( Thankfully, Obama’s not the last word on this subject… – JW )

Yesterday I noted that Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey generated for the Senate the sort of document (complete with a parade of horribles) that one delivers to a president who has long since decided he wants to do nothing.

(As an aside, if new national security adviser Susan Rice really is in favor of a bolder Syria policy, she got blindsided by Dempsey, who made it infinitely more difficult to act decisively. Maybe she, like President Obama, is just about talk and no policy action.) We are quite simply ceding Syria to Bashar al-Assad/Iran/Russia/Hezbollah, literally without a fight.

But Dempsey’s reasoning goes beyond Syria, suggesting the rationale that will lead to a containment policy for a nuclear-armed Iran. He writes:

We have learned from the past 10 years, however, that it is not enough to simply alter the balance of military power without careful consideration of what is necessary in order to preserve a functioning state. We must anticipate and be prepared for the unintended consequences of our action. Should the regime’ s institutions collapse in the absence of a viable opposition, we could inadvertently empower extremists or unleash the very chemical weapons we seek to control.

I know that the decision to use force is not one that any of us takes lightly. It is no less than an act of war. As we weigh our options, we should be able to conclude with some confidence that the use of force will move us toward the intended outcome. We must also understand risk-not just to our forces , but to our other global responsibilities. This is especially critical as we lose readiness due to budget cuts and fiscal uncertainty. Some options may not be feasible in time or cost without compromising our security elsewhere. Once we take action, we should be prepared for what comes next. Deeper involvement is hard to avoid. We should also act in accordance with the law, and to the extent possible, in concert with our allies and partners to share the burden and solidify the outcome.

This is the “Iraq or nothing” false choice that anti-interventionists use to prevent concrete action by the United States.  If we act, maybe Iran will strike back and involve us in a greater regional war, the thinking goes. So then we simply accede to Iranian domination of Syria and of the region.

When it comes to Iran itself, the argument will escalate. How can we contemplate military action against Iran when it might retaliate or strike Israel, which will strike back? You see how it goes. Unmentioned in this type of analysis are the costs of inaction (100,000 dead; an emboldened Iran; the collapse of Jordan; new threats to Israel from Hezbollah, etc.). This is a formula for retreat and appeasement since the cost of acting or the potential for things going wrong is always worse than a blank column where the cost of paralysis should go.

Even worse, understand what Dempsey is saying here about our defense capabilities. He justifies not acting in part because “as we lose readiness due to budget cuts and fiscal uncertainty,” we shouldn’t be taking on new responsibilities. President Obama decimates our national security budget, in turn leaving us no choice but inaction. A Capitol Hill Republican plugged into defense budgeting issues says bluntly: “For the first time, the U.S. military is saying, ‘Look, there are things that we can’t do.’ We’ve had freedom of movement and operations since the ’92 Gulf War, and now Obama has so badly managed the military we can’t even sustain a no-fly zone over a third-rate military with crumbling air defenses.”

This is the inevitable result of the president’s policies. By delay, unilateral disarmament, retrenchment in every venue (Iraq, Afghanistan), he has signaled to his own military and our foes that we shouldn’t even seriously think about acting whenever there are risks — and there are always risks. And yet Obama has stated over and over that Assad must go. He’s said a zillion times a nuclear-armed Iran is “unacceptable.” He’s drawn red lines. So how can his policies now depart from – in fact vitiate — his stated goals?

That is a question for the president and his senior advisers, who seem not to comprehend that words uttered by the president are meaningless unless followed by action. Obama has by his own actions (delay and disarmament primarily) and by his own appointments (yes men and/or grossly unqualified characters, such as Chuck Hagel) so limited our range of actions as to make inaction the only conceivable outcome. That is likely what he counted on all along; now it’s inevitable. And if inevitable in Syria, inaction will certainly be the outcome in Iran — unless of course, Israel takes its own security and that of the West more seriously than we do.

Two dead as clashes ensue between Morsi supporters, opponents in Egypt | JPost | Israel News.

( Kickoff…. – JW )

Deposed Egyptian President Morsi held for conspiring with Hamas, murder, kidnapping | JPost | Israel News.

( Arson, destruction of prison records and “collaboration with Hamas to undertake aggressive acts in the country, attacking police facilities, officers and soldiers. ”  What a guy! – JW )

Egypt braces for day of rival rallies – Middle East – Israel News | Haaretz

Gen. Abdel-Fattah El-Sissi’s call to take to the streets in large numbers on Friday to give him a popular mandate widely interpreted as a prelude to a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Supporter of Egypt’s ousted President Mohammed Morsi in front pictures of him in Nasr City, July 25, 2013. Photo by AP

Political allies of Egypt’s military lined up behind its call for huge rallies Friday to show support for the country’s top general, pushing toward a collision with Islamist opponents demanding the return of the nation’s ousted president.

But there was widespread uncertainty over the army’s intentions – and worry that the military is whipping up a dangerous populist fervor.

Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, who ousted Egypt’s elected president Mohammed Morsi on July 3, took many by surprise when he announced this week that he wanted people to take to the streets in large numbers on Friday to give him a popular mandate to take the necessary measures against “violence and terrorism.”

El-Sissi’s call was widely interpreted as a prelude to a crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group from which the ousted Morsi hails, and other Islamists who have been camped out for about a month at sit-ins in Cairo and elsewhere calling for Morsi’s reinstatement.

That has hiked fears of a violent confrontation. Islamists also plan pro-Morsi rallies on Friday, raising the possibility of street clashes, as has happened repeatedly in recent weeks.

Islamists on Thursday lashed out at the military, saying el-Sissi’s call signals a plan to crush what they insist are their peaceful protests. The spiritual leader of the Brotherhood, Mohammed Badie, hiked up his rhetoric against el-Sissi, saying ousting Morsi was a worse crime than if the general had destroyed the Kaaba, Islam’s holiest site – an attempt to fire up the religious fervor in the pro-Morsi camp ahead of Friday’s rallies.

On the other side, state TV and pro-military private networks were doing their part to back el-Sissi: They announced that the wildly popular mini-series shown during the current holy month of Ramadan will not be aired Friday to ensure that large numbers go out onto the streets. Some of them were airing patriotic songs.

Still unclear is what exactly el-Sissi meant by seeking a mandate against violence – and how far the military would go. The most explosive move would be if troops were to eventually try to clear major Islamist sit-ins. The largest has been outside Cairo’s Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, where crowds some nights have grown to tens of thousands.

A more limited move would be for troops to take tougher action against any sign of Morsi supporters engaged in violence. Some Islamist protesters have been seen with weapons – though their opponents have been as well, and each accuses the other of sparking clashes. Another possibility is that the military would detain Brotherhood and other Islamist leaders who already face arrest warrants.

On Thursday military spokesman Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said el-Sissi’s call was “not a threat to any specific political group.” He said the military respects peaceful protests.

But he said any violence or terrorism will be “dealt with decisively and with force” – signaling a likely tough approach on any sign of violence, which Islamists’ opponents have largely blamed on the pro-Morsi camp.

He said a national reconciliation conference and a system of transitional justice, called for by interim military-backed President Adly Mansour, are the only way out of Egypt’s current standoff.

The military dropped leaflets on Morsi supporters outside the Rabaah al-Adawiya Mosque, trying to reassure them about their safety.

“We are not against you so don’t be against us. Don’t raise your weapons in the face of your brothers, don’t destroy, don’t burn, and let us all be together against killing, violence and terrorism,” the leaflets said.

What confounded many, however, is why el-Sissi felt he needed a popular cover if he only intends to stop violence. As the military’s chief and defense minister, el-Sissi would have been within his rights to preserve security.

For some, even in the anti-Morsi camp, his call raised suspicion that the military will take extra-ordinary measures in a crackdown, highlighting worries over past abuses by troops. Some saw it as a sign el-Sissi was trying to gauge his appeal for a possible presidential run.

Mustafa Shawky, a leftist activist who was among the early voices that articulated the demands of the 2011 uprising that ousted autocrat Hosni Mubarak, spoke of being caught between worries about “military fascism” and “religious fascism” – referring to Islamist rule under Morsi.

While the military was needed to remove Morsi, he said, el-Sissi’s call for the rallies undermines the army’s stance that the ouster was not a coup.

“It is a mistake not to see the mandate he sought as one to kill,” Shawky told The Associated Press. The atmosphere of rallying behind the military against the Islamist could become “a cover for serious violations,” he warned.

April 6, an influential youth group that played a key role in the anti-Mubarak uprising, also expressed its surprise at el-Sissi’s call, saying the army doesn’t need a popular mandate to act against security threats. But it said the army should “eradicate all signs of arming and violence in a way governed by the law and without exceptional measures.”

Suspicion of the military’s intentions is rooted in the nearly 17 months during which it directly ruled the country after Mubarak’s ouster. Activists blame it for human rights violations, including the torture of detainees and trying civilians before military tribunals. A repeat of that, even on a small scale, is likely to inject tension into or unravel the uneasy alliance between liberal groups and the military.

The military has been the dominant force in Egypt’s politics since the 1952 coup that toppled the monarchy. It has since given Egypt all of its presidents except Morsi, the nation’s first freely elected leader, and wielded vast influence from behind the scenes.

Made up heavily of conscripts and with a history of four wars against Israel, the army also holds a strong base of support among Egyptians, many of whom see it as a pillar of the country’s identity.

El-Sissi has tapped into the strong pro-military sentiments and the deep frustration with Morsi’s one-year rule. The state media, always quick to revere the strongman of the day, has framed his call for rallies in glorious terms and raised its already high anti-Brotherhood rhetoric.

On Thursday, Tamarod – the youth group behind the wave of protests that led to the military coup against Morsi – urged Egyptians to participate in Friday’s demonstrations, as did the main anti-Morsi opposition grouping, the liberal National Salvation Front.

“Whoever wants to genuinely complete the revolution must be out in the squares and in all the provinces,” said Mahmoud Badr, spokesman for Tamarod.

Clashes have frequently erupted between pro-Morsi protesters and authorities or Morsi opponents. At the same time, attacks by Islamic militants in the Sinai Peninsula have surged. More than 180 people have been killed since Morsi’s fall.

On Thursday, two border guards – an officer and a soldier – were killed and three others wounded when suspected militants fired rockets at their checkpoint in the Sinai town of Sheikh Zuweyid town, a stronghold of radicals.

The Obama administration gave el-Sissi a major boost on the eve of the rallies.

It is planning to tell lawmakers Thursday that it won’t declare Morsi’s overthrow a coup, according to U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the plans with the press. That determination allows the United States to continue providing $1.5 billion in annual military and economic aid.

Still, ahead of Friday’s rallies, the White House said it was “concerned by any rhetoric that inflames tensions and could possible lead to violence” and urged Egyptian security forces to exercise “maximum restraint.”

Islamists, meanwhile, lashed out at the military as they geared up for their own rallies Friday.

A prominent pro-Brotherhood cleric, the Qatar-based Sheik Youssef el-Qaradawi, called on soldiers and officers in the military “not to listen to el-Sissi’s commands … Don’t kill your brother.”

In a speech aired on Al-Jazeera’s Egypt affiliate, he called el-Sissi’ message “an incitement to divide the Egyptian people” by labeling some as “terrorists.”

Badie, the spiritual leader of the Brotherhood, denounced el-Sissi as a “traitor” and urged him to repent.

“I swear by God that what el-Sissi did in Egypt is more criminal than if he had carried an axe and demolished the holy Kaaba stone by stone,” Badie said in a weekly speech. The Kaaba is the cube-shaped shrine in the Saudi city of Mecca that Muslims worldwide face in their daily prayers.

Israel willing to make ‘serious territorial concessions’ to secure Middle East peace – Telegraph.

Israel is willing to make “very serious territorial concessions” in order to achieve peace with the Palestinians, a hardline minister from the right-wing Likud party has said.