Archive for Mid-East News

Erekat defends Hamas’ right to run in Palestinian elections

In interview on Army Radio, chief PLO negotiator says of Palestinian elections, “we use ballots not bullets…everyone has a right to run.”

By JPOST.COM STAFF

 

“Hamas and Fatah have differences in opinion,” Chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat said Sunday morning, but stressed that “everyone has a right to run.”

Saeb Erekat

“We are a democracy” he told Army Radio, emphasizing that “whoever wins, wins.” This does not mean that Hamas would be “taking over” the West Bank, however, adding, “We don’t use bullets, we use ballots.”
When probed over whether Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal is expected to run in the Palestinian presidential elections, Erekat said he has not announced a decision.

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Arab cartoonists bash Israel, the U.S. & fellow Arab Countries

Arab caricaturists never held back criticism for the Jewish state.

Assault on Gaza returned Israel to media’s center stage after Arab spring stole its spotlight.

By Roi Kais

 

Political cartoonists across the Arab world have never spared criticism for Israel, but the armed conflict in the Gaza Strip this past November has spurred them to step up the satirical reproach of the Jewish state.

קריקטורה בזמן עמוד ענן. ישראל אוכלת את הפלסטינים במזלג אמריקני ובסכין שעליה כתוב "השתיקה הערבית"

Cartoon published during Gaza hostilities. Caption on knife: Arab silence

Operation Pillar of Defense has regained Israel its traditional spot in the caricature arena, after it lost the center stage to the Arab Spring,” one prominent cartoonist, who asked to remain anonymous, told Ynet. Continue Reading »

U.S. plans to stop release of convicted Lebanese terrorist who killed Israeli & U.S. diplomats

George Ibrahim Abdallah, granted release from imprisonment by French appeals court for  the 1982 murders of an Israeli diplomat & the U.S. military attaché in Paris, as well as the attempted murder of the U.S. Consul General in Strasbourg in 1984.

By Reuters

 

 

The United States objected on Friday to a French court’s planned release of a Lebanese leftist militant, saying he may still be a threat a quarter century after he was convicted of killing an American and an Israeli diplomat.

A file picture taken on July 3, 1986 shows former Lebanese militiaman George Ibrahim Abdallah

A file picture taken on July 3, 1986 shows former Lebanese militiaman George Ibrahim Abdallah during his trial in Lyon, central-eastern France.

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Palestinian Shot Dead While Trying to Infiltrate Into Israel

21 year-old Palestinian Arab shot to death by IDF forces south of Hevron as he was trying to sneak into Israel. 

By Elad Benari

 

A 21-year-old Palestinian Authority Arab was shot to death by IDF forces south of Hevron on Saturday night, as he was trying to infiltrate into Israel through the border fence.

PA security forces march in Hevron

PA security forces march in Hevron
AFP Photo

An initial investigation has found that the Arab was shot and wounded in the lower part of his body. He was taken to the Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheva, where he died of his wounds.

“A Palestinian attempted to infiltrate Israel through the security fence,” an IDF spokesman told AFP. Continue Reading »

What meaning is behind Abbas’ new tone?

Given the regional dangers that are on the horizon, any political arrangement with the Palestinians in the future must have a much stronger security component than what Olmert or Barak may have considered in the past.

By Dore Gold

 

Mahmoud Abbas delivered a speech on Jan. 4, on the anniversary of the founding of Fatah, that may have marked a turning point in the relations between the Palestinian Authority president and the State of Israel. Using extremist rhetoric that he has not adopted before, Abbas spoke about the need of the Palestinians “to renew an oath to the heroic martyrs and to walk in their path.”

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Court bars State from evicting Palestinian from illegal E-1 settlement

High Court issues temporary injunction to prevent police from ejecting Palestinian protesters from illegal E-1 settlement

Elior Levy

 

The High Court of Justice has issued a temporary injunction barring the State from removing an outpost erected by Palestinians in the West Bank as long as there isn’t an emergency warranting an evacuation.

200 פלסטינים ופעילי סולידריות הגיעו ל-E1 (צילום: אוהד צויגנברג)

‘Day without violence.’ Palestinians at camp – Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg

Government officials were expected to petition the court on Saturday evening to void the injunction. In the meantime, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the routes leading up to the outpost to be closed to traffic, rendering the area a closed military zone. Continue Reading »

Abbas’s Goals & Hamas’s are Identical

Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister says a PLO state must never come into existence.

By Gil Ronen

 

Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon ruled out on Saturday the establishment of a “Palestinian” state next to Israel.

In a live interview panel in the Southern Sharon regional authority, Yaalon explained that it makes no difference what the “Palestinian” entity calls itself. “It can call itself the Palestinian empire for all I care,” he said. “The goals of the Authority’s head, Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas), are identical to those of Hamas.

“I began voting for Likud when I was still wearing a uniform, when I was Head of Military Intelligence, after I gained extensive familiarity with the Oslo Agreement,” Yaalon revealed. Continue Reading »

British Munitions Survey Reports Iran Fuels African Conflicts

 

The New York Times reports: British arms researchers surveying ammunition in Africa find trail implicating the Islamic Republic

By Ynetnews

 

A British team of arms-trafficking researchers surveying ammunition used by government forces and civilian militias over recent years in conflicts plaguing Kenya, Uganda, the Ivory Coast and what is now South Sudan, has been able to link them to Iran, the New York Times reported Saturday.

 Photo: AFP

According to the findings, the ammunition bore no “headstamps” – a numeric or logo markings used in the arms industry to indicate the location and year of a cartridge’s manufacture –suggesting its producers hoped to avoid detection. Continue Reading »

Hamas Reports: 885 Palestinians killed in Syrian conflict

Lebanon’s ‘Daily Star’ reports that 20,000 Palestinian refugees from Syria fled to Lebanon.

By JPOST.COM STAFF

 

Eight hundred and eighty-five Palestinians have been killed in Syria since the uprising against President Bashar Assad erupted nearly two years ago, Lebanon’s Daily Star, citing a Hamas spokesman, reported Friday.

A Palestinian refugee camp in Syria [file photo]

A Palestinian refugee camp in Syria – Photo: Khaled Al Hariri/Reuters

According to the report, based on Hamas figures, a further 20,500 Palestinian refugees from Syria remain trapped in Lebanon, including at least 3,500 who fled last month following a fierce outbreak of violence in the Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus.

Syria hosts an estimated half a million Palestinian refugees, and both Assad’s government and the mainly Sunni Muslim rebels have enlisted and armed Palestinians as the uprising has developed into a civil war.

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Gazan Shot Dead Near Border Fence

A male Palestinian Authority Arab shot dead by IDF troops after damaging the Gaza border fence.

By Elad Benari, Canada

 

A Palestinian Authority Arab man was shot dead by IDF troops in northern Gaza on Friday, medics told the Bethlehem-based Ma’an news agency.

Gaza health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qidra told Ma’an that Anwar Muhammad al-Mamlouk, 22, was killed by Israeli fire. He said another man was seriously wounded and taken to the a local hospital by paramedics.

In response to the reports, the IDF told Channel 10 News, “In the afternoon, dozens of Palestinians gathered near the security fence in northern Gaza. Continue Reading »

This is not the Jihad that’s written in the Koran

There are no “terrorists” in the language of peace, only falsely educated, ignorant people. This is important, because it becomes harder to teach such a person; the more he is called a terrorist the more he becomes to believe he really is one.

By Aylin Kocaman

 

There is no killing in the jihad in the Koran. There is no raining bombs down in the jihad in the Koran. There are no suicide bombers or cowardly attacks on the innocent. There is no hatred or cursing people in the jihad in the Koran. The children of the Prophet Abraham (pbuh), of the Prophet Jacob (pbuh) and the Prophet Moses (pbuh) are not accursed in the jihad in the Koran. Continue Reading »

Do UK taxpayers know they fund anti-Israel groups?

The UK allocates taxpayer funds to groups which hope to build a Palestinian state not alongside Israel but in place of it, which ignore the campaign of terror against Israeli civilians that demonizes Israel through absurd accusations of “apartheid” & “ethnic cleansing”.

By Alex Ryvchin

 

The British Government is recklessly allocating taxpayer funds to group which hope to build a Palestinian state, not alongside Israel, but in place of it.

When the British taxpayer-funded Hebron Rehabilitation Committee issued a statement in August describing a terror attack by Islamic Jihad as a “heroic operation”, it should have been met with a very swift and severe response from the British Government, and a review of the Foreign Office’s funding practices. Continue Reading »

Is European diplomacy in the service of our enemies?

Original Thinking: It is prudent to quote Winston Churchill, who castigated the British political leadership with the words, “You had the choice of choosing war or dishonor. You chose dishonor, and you got war.”

By BARRY SHAW

 

What has Israel experienced from Europe recently as it was assaulted by Palestinian terror and diplomacy? How do we define the attitude, words and deeds of European Union ministers and diplomats? What they have done and said can only be interpreted as closed-mind diplomacy in the service of our enemy.

The European Parliament building in Strasbourg
Look how events unfolded. Although most condemned the Hamas missile attacks against Israel, they failed to follow their condemnation with any punitive measures against a Palestinian terror regime that is guilty of multiple international crimes ranging from terrorism, war crimes, crimes against humanity, incitement to murder and anti-Semitism, to name but a few.
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1st Sign of Anarchy: Fatah Gunmen Form New Opposition Organization

In response to PA’s weapons confiscation drive, renegade Palestinians in Balata refugee camp announce establishment of ‘army of free fighters’ 

By Elior Levy

 

A group of Fatah gunmen from the Balata refugee in Nablus camp have announced the establishment of “the army of free fighters” on Wednesday.

החמושים במחנה בלאטה

Gunmen in Balata refugee camp

The group members celebrated the occasion by holding a march at the camp during which they fired in the air.

Palestinian security forces have been engaged in a large-scale mission to confiscate illegal weapons in the Jenin and Balata refugee camps in recent months.

The raids often involved fire exchanges with the gunmen, some of whom are former members of Fatah’s military wing the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. Continue Reading »

As Hamas & Fatah reconcile, Netanyahu vows never to cede more land

PM scorns Abbas for meeting with “terrorists trying to annihilate Israel,” and asserts Iran & their proxy Hamas, would seize any territory Israel evacuates.

By JPOST.COM STAFF, KHALED ABU TOAMEH

 

As rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas met in Cairo to discuss reconciliation on Wednesday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he would not cede any more land to the Palestinians.

BibiEarlier this month, Netanyahu indicated that he believed Hamas could overthrow the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

PA President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal were expected to meet in Cairo on Wednesday to discuss ending a long-running dispute between their rival political factions, Fatah and Hamas.

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