An Ethiopian Journal

Benyamin Netanyahu has been asked to form a government in Israel.

He lists Iran as the biggest threat to Israel. His tough stand on Hamas might also complicate peace negotiations with Palestinians.

Al Jazeera’s Clayton Swisher reports on why the US may find it difficult brokering Middle East peace with Netanyahu as the Israeli PM.

BBC News – October 16 2008
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7673335.stm

Relatives of the first fatality denied he was involved in petrol-bombing settlers

Palestinian medical workers say Israeli troops have shot dead a Palestinian man in a confrontation near the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The army said he was in a group of three people in Kufr Malik village, one of whom was carrying a firebomb.

Another Palestinian man died overnight after being critically wounded in a clash near a Jewish settlement.

The shooting happened during a protest about another killing on Tuesday of a teenager – also an alleged firebomber.

In the latest incident, Aziz Beerat, 20, was killed when Israeli soldiers in a jeep opened fire in Kufr Malik village, north-east of Ramallah, Palestinian emergency services said.

Another man was in a serious condition in hospital after being shot in the back.

The Israeli military said troops saw the silhouettes of three Palestinians preparing to throw petrol bombs and that the men ignored an order to surrender.

The three deaths were the first from Israeli military action in the West Bank for several weeks, prompting a Palestinian official to protest against what he described as an escalation.

“It looks as if the Israeli army has received instructions to carry out an escalation in the Palestinian territories,” said negotiator Saeb Erekat, in comments reported by AFP news agency.

The army says there has been wave of firebombings around the Ramallah area and it has been stepping up efforts to stop them.

Firebomb denial

On Wednesday, 21-year-old Muhammad Rahami was fatally wounded during a protest near Jalazun refugee camp. Israeli police said Palestinians had thrown rocks at an army post.

The protest followed the funeral of Abdul Qadir Zeit, 17, killed by troops late on Tuesday near the Beit-El settlement, which is adjacent to Jalazun, deep in the West Bank beyond the barrier Israel is building in and around the territory. The army said he had been carrying a petrol bomb.

A BBC correspondent who visited Jalazun reported that local residents said the teenager was killed while walking alone on a road that passes the settlement on the way to the camp.

They said youths do sometimes throw rocks at passing cars belonging to Israeli settlers, but Abdul Qadir Zeit had never participated. They also denied that any firebombs had been thrown in recent days.

Correspondents say tension between Israeli settlers and local Palestinians have peaked in recent days, with each side complaining of violent attacks by the other.

Israel has settled about 450,000 of its citizens in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since it occupied the areas in 1967.

Settlements, which are heavily guarded by the Israeli army, are considered illegal under international law, though Israel disputes this.

By Donald Macintyre in Awarta, West Bank
Friday, 10 October 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/jews-protect-palestinians-in-harvest-of-hate-956706.html

Hellela Siew helps Jamal Otman Koarik pick olives near the intensely hostile Itamar Jewish settlement

In the shade of the trees where they have been picking olives all morning, in this wadi, south-east of Nablus, a Palestinian farmer, Jamal Otman Koarik, and two of his daughters share a lunch of home-baked bread, zatar, oil, courgettes and salad with three visitors. It’s a bucolic scene that could have happened any time in the past century. But what makes it notable in 2008 is that the guests who have been helping Mr Koarik pick the olives are Israeli Jews: a rabbi, an anthropologist and a youth worker, Hellela Siew.

Born in Tel Aviv, Ms Siew served in the army, took a university degree, then a teacher’s diploma. Thirty-six years ago, she took the tough decision to emigrate to London, telling her parents: “I won’t come back until there’s peace.” Ms Siew, who is now 64, remains an Israeli citizen but now lives with her British husband in Hebden Bridge. She has kept to her word, except that each autumn she comes back to stay in her hometown with her relatives and spends each day of the two-month harvest season picking olives on Palestinian farmland in the West Bank.

And Ms Siew does that for a purpose. Up on the ridge above us, you can see the red roofs of Itamar, a notably hard-line Jewish settlement, and she is here to help protect the Palestinian farmers from the threat of settler violence which has so often scarred the olive harvests.

Last year, she was in a group in the South Hebron Hills confronted by settlers who fired shots from a pistol and an M16 assault rifle, despite the presence of the army and police. “Then one of the soldiers said, ‘Look, one of them is coming down with a jug of water for you’. The settler emptied the jug over me. It was full of human shit.”

Mr Koarik, the olive farmer, says he has no difficulty distinguishing between the settlers who fired on and burnt out his tractor during the harvest six years ago and the Jews who come to help him. “I welcome them here like they are my family,” the 40-year-old says. Looking up at the settlement, Ms Siew tries to explain, as a lifelong opponent of the occupation, why she comes each year. “When there was the big demonstration against the Iraq war in England people carried banners saying ‘Not in my name’. I’m trying to do something against what is being done in my name.”

Ms Siew was brought here by the Israeli group Rabbis for Human Rights, led by Rabbi Arik Ascherman who has led a never-ending campaign to persuade the army and police to enforce the Palestinian olive growers’ right to farm their land despite the settlers’ attempts to stop them. RHR has made a special effort this year to maximise its volunteer numbers because of the growing incidence of settler violence against Palestinians in the past few months.

Rabbi Ascherman says that apart from one notably ugly and violent confrontation with aggressive settlers in Hebron last week, the harvest has been relatively quiet. But it has only just begun. And while the army insists that it will “strive” to ensure as normal a harvest as possible, Rabbi Ascherman is considering returning to the Supreme Court because of restrictions he says the military is still imposing on the farmers even in areas opened up under a 2006 order made by the Court.

Asked why he and his volunteers make this often risky mission each year, the US-born rabbi says “if we really believe” the Biblical text that all human beings are made in God’s image, “we have got to put our money where our mouth is and be here in an active way to defend human rights”. And he also cites the “dialogue of the olive groves” in which Israelis and Palestinians who “have to live and die here together” have “no choice but to communicate” if they also work together. “I think this is not only the just and right and Jewish thing to do, but it’s the self-interested thing to do. We are going to survive.”

If Israel has nothing to hide, they shouldn’t boycott this summit! The truth is obvious: Stop the illegal occupation of Palestine. Zionism is racism! fix it.

Al-Jazeera – Riz Khan – Anti-Racism summit row – 24 Sep 08

On Riz Khan, live from New York City, we debate the Durban II world conference set up to fight racism and racial discrimination.

We will speak with Hillel Neuer, the executive director of UN Watch, who argues that the current preparatory meetings for Durban II ignore key issues in Africa in favour of chastising Israel.

Israel and the US pulled out of Durban I, claiming it was anti-semitic, and Neuer believes that the only way to avert a similar disaster at Durban II (to be held in Geneva, Switzerland, in April 2009) is for the EU to threaten a boycott.

Joining the programme from London, Islamic Human Rights Commission Chair Massoud Shadjareh argues that Durban II should move forward as planned and that putting the issue of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is necessary if racism is to be truly addressed.

By Carolynne Wheeler in Jerusalem
05 Oct 2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/3139652/Israel-expected-to-bomb-Iran-French-foreign-minister-says.html

The French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner has said Israel is expected to launch a military strike on Iran before it acquires a nuclear bomb, and urged the Jewish state to hold back in favour of sanctions. 

“I know that some people in Israel and in the army are preparing a military solution or not a solution but a military attack. I don’t know. This is not according to my opinion the solution,” Mr Kouchner told the Israeli daily Ha’aretz in an interview published Sunday, adding that he did not believe Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon would give it any “immunity” from attack.

“First, because you will eat them before. And this is the danger. Because Israel has always said that it will not wait for the bomb to be ready. I think that they [the Iranians] know. Everybody knows,” he said.

The newspaper’s print edition quoted Kouchner as saying that Israel would “eat” Iran, but in a written statement the foreign minister said he had used the word “hit,” and that he regretted any “phonetic confusion”.

Mr Kouchner said French officials believe Iran would be able to produce one bomb within two to four years, though Israeli estimates have suggested the programme is more advanced, and said further talks and sanctions were still the preferred option.

“Iran with an atomic bomb is unacceptable at all,” Mr Kouchner said. “Is the alternative to bomb first? I think not.”

Mr Kouchner’s statement follows last week’s UN Security Council’s resolution demanding an end to Tehran’s efforts at uranium enrichment, suspected to be a clandestine weapons programme though Iran maintains it is to create fuel for peaceful purposes.

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, also acknowledged last week that in six years of investigations in Iran his agency has never been able to rule out such a programme.

Though Iran has rejected the UN resolutions, its envoy to the IAEA has suggested it might be willing to end uranium enrichment if it were guaranteed an international supply of nuclear fuel.

The French foreign minister met with Palestinian officials and is to meet today with the outgoing Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, and his likely successor, foreign minister and ruling Kadima party chairwoman Tzipi Livni.

Following warnings that a peace deal is not expected this year, he has called for the two sides to achieve a breakthrough in talks by year’s end to show the US-backed process relaunched at Annapolis, Maryland has not failed.