Abbas: ‘All options are open’ if peace talks fail
(JNS.org) Amid the push by Secretary of State John Kerry towards restarting negotiations, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas was quoted in an interview with the Jordanian daily Al Ra’i as saying that if there is no progress in peace talks, “all options are open.”
“If there is no agreement to push peace forward, all options are open,” Abbas said without going into specifics, according to a Times of Israel translation.
The comments by Abbas are the first since U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s announcement last week that peace talks would resume after being on hiatus for nearly three years.
In the interview, Abbas also praised his decision to seek unilateral recognition as a non-member observer state at the United Nations last November.
After U.S.-led peace talks failed in 2000, a nearly five-year-long Palestinian uprising known as the Second Intifada began shortly thereafter.
*
Palestinian officials say preconditions to restarting peace talks remain
(JNS.org) Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a spokesman for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, said that the Palestinians are maintaining their preconditions to starting peace talks with Israel.
Despite U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s announcement last Friday that an agreement that “establishes a basis for resuming direct final status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis” had been reached, Abu Rudeineh said Sunday that the Palestinian preconditions to talks—that Israel both make its pre-1967 lines the baseline for negotiations and halt construction beyond those lines—remain, Israel Hayom reported.
Senior Fatah official Nabil Shaath echoed Abu Rudeineh’s comments.
“Returning back to negotiations depends on two steps we asked the American side to agree on,” Shaath told Ma’an News Agency, without identifying what those steps are.
“We will not go back to negotiations unless we get what we asked for,” Shaath said.
The first phase of negotiations, for which a specific date has not yet been set, will take place in Washington, DC, and involve Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy Yitzhak Molcho, and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.
*
Hezbollah ‘military wing’ placed on EU terrorist list
(JNS.org) After resisting the requests of Israel and the United States for more than a year after the Burgas bus bombing for which Hezbollah has been implicated as the perpetrator, the 28-member European Union (EU) has agreed to place the “military wing” of the Lebanese group on the EU’s list of terrorist organizations, Reuters reported.
The move will freeze assets Hezbollah may hold within the EU, but falls short of blacklisting the entire organization of Hezbollah as one entity. The EU’s designation means the body still considers the parliamentary faction of Hezbollah, which was not blacklisted, to be a separate political wing and not part of a terrorist organization.
“The EU action is a significant step forward in recognizing the true nature of Hezbollah,” American Jewish Committee (AJC) Executive Director David Harris said. “While AJC, like the U.S., Canadian and Dutch governments, considers Hezbollah a single organization, we applaud this decision and the spotlight it shines on Hezbollah terrorist activity.”
Blacklisting Hezbollah’s military wing required unanimous approval among the EU’s members, but nations such as Austria, the Czech Republic and Ireland had up to this point refused to back a British proposal to do so.
Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetlin Yovchev last week offered his country’s latest affirmation that Hezbollah was behind the attack that killed five Israelis and their Bulgarian bus driver on July 18, 2012, at Burgas Airport. On the one-year anniversary of the attack, Yovchev said there are “clear signs that say Hezbollah is behind the Burgas bombing,” adding that Bulgaria’s new Socialist government, since taking office in late May, has received more information implicating Hezbollah in the attack.
Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livini said, “After years of deliberations and going back and forth on the matter, the argument that Hezbollah was a political movement and their attempt to whitewash their terrorist activity has failed.”
In light of the move to blacklist Hezbollah, EU governments are likely to pledge continued dialogue with all political groups in Lebanon, Reuters reported.
“A few member states wanted to be reassured that such a decision [to blacklist Hezbollah’s military wing] will not in any way jeopardize political dialogue,” said a senior EU official.
*
Netanyahu says peace deal, if reached, will be sent to national referendum
(JNS.org) If peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians reach fruition, the results will be brought to a national referendum vote among Israelis for ratification, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday at his weekly cabinet meeting.
“I believe that this is crucial; I don’t believe that decisions such as these can be taken—if a deal is reached—with one coalition or another, but rather this thing needs to be brought to the nation to decide,” Netanyahu said, according to Israel Hayom.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who has visited Israel and the Palestinian territories six times in fourth months, announced Friday that an agreement that “establishes a basis for resuming direct final status negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis” had been reached.
*
White House correspondent who said Jews should ‘get the hell out of Palestine’ dies at 9
(JNS.org) Former White House correspondent Helen Thomas, who in a 2010 interview said Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine,” died Saturday at 92.
Thomas also told rabbilive.com in the 2010 interview that Jews should “go home, to Poland and Germany, America and everywhere else.” She later said, “I deeply regret the comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon.”
The aftermath of Thomas’s anti-Israel remarks prompted her to retire, a move President Barack Obama called “the right decision.” Thomas had reported on every U.S. president from John F. Kennedy to Obama.
*
Israel Hayom is Israel’s most widely read newspaper for fourth year in a row
(JNS.org) Israel Hayom is the leading daily newspaper in Israel for the fourth year in a row, according to a semi-annual survey issued Sunday. The survey revealed that Israel Hayom is maintaining its lead over all of Israel’s daily newspapers for a fourth year.
The semi-annual survey, conducted by the Target Group Index, compiles the exposure rates of nearly all media outlets in Israel. According to the survey, over the last year the exposure rate of the daily edition of Israel Hayom stood at 38.4 percent, up from 38.1 percent in June 2012.
JNS.org is the exclusive distributor for the English-language content of Israel Hayom.
*
Bidding for Schindler’s physical list starts at $3 million on eBay
(Israel Hayom/Exclusive to JNS.org) The original physical list compiled by German industrialist Oskar Schindler, who saved 801 Jews from being transferred to the Auschwitz death camp by employing them in his factory during World War II, was put up for public auction on eBay on Friday. The starting price for the list is $3 million.
The document, printed in 1945 and consisting of 14 pages, is one of four rare copies of Schindler’s list. Director Steven Spielberg used one of the copies during production of his Oscar-winning 1993 film, “Schindler’s List.”
The current owners purchased it from the nephew of Yitzhak Stern, Schindler’s accountant who typed each list, and whose family held on to the document in Israel throughout the years. The document is authenticated by the nephew’s signature and note of declaration.
California collectors Gary Zimet and Eric Gazin said they hope to sell the list for $5 million.
“We decided to sell the list on eBay because it has over 100 million worldwide members, and this is a global story,” Gazin told The New York Post.
*
Preceding provided by JNS.org