Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations take place under the radar
(JNS.org) Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations were held secretly on Tuesday in Jerusalem, AFP reported, citing Palestinian sources.
Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s special envoy, Yitzhak Molcho, reportedly met twice—first for two hours and later for one hour—with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas aide Mohammad Shtayyeh.
Israeli Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh wrote for the Gatestone Institute that the PA wants peace talks held secretively because its fears “the reactions of Palestinians and the Arab world.” Abbas and chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat Both Abbas and Erekat are “fully aware of the growing opposition among Palestinians and Arabs to the resumption of the peace talks with Israel under the terms of the U.S. Administration,” according to Toameh.
“That is why the two men do not want to be seen sitting in a room with any Israeli representative,” he wrote. “They know that any photo of Erekat and Livni shaking hands or sitting together would provide their enemies with additional ammunition.”
Toameh added that the anti-Israel culture that the PA has fostered among the Palestinian people also leads to a desire to keep Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiations away from media coverage.
“For many years, the Palestinian Authority has been supporting boycott campaigns against Israel, as well as organizations combating ‘normalization’ with Israelis,” Toameh wrote. “If Palestinian children are condemned for playing football with Israelis, why should it be acceptable for Erekat to be talking with Livni?”
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Hezbollah’s Syrian Civil War role condemned by Israel’s U.N. ambassador
(JNS.org) Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor condemned Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah over the group’s involvement in the Syrian civil war, saying at a U.N. Security Council discussion that the war’s atrocities have been made possible by the backing Syria receives from the Lebanese terror group.
“For months, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah denied Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian conflict,” Prosor said at the “Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict” U.N. discussion, Israel Hayom reported. “Today, the whole world knows that his guerrillas are openly battling their fellow Arab Muslims in Syria and threatening to tip the fragile sectarian balance.”
Prosor noted Nasrallah’s recent comment in which he “personally committed himself to fighting in Syria if necessary, saying, and I quote, ‘If the battle requires me to go … I will go.’”
“Nasrallah has proved that he has no regard for the lives that have been lost, for the people who have been forced to flee, or for the untold suffering of the Syrian people,” Prosor said.
“This same disregard for human life is clear in Lebanon, where Hezbollah’s arsenal has become larger than that of many NATO countries,” the Israeli ambassador added. “And Hezbollah sees fit to store these weapons in homes, schools, and hospitals. It would seem that the people of Lebanon are more valuable to Hezbollah as human shields than as human beings. Hezbollah is a ruthless terrorist group committing double war crimes by operating within civilian populations [and] directing attacks against civilian populations.”
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Jewish Agency places Ethiopia school that educated future Israeli immigrants in Gondar’s hands
(JNS.org) Jewish Agency for Israel Chairman Natan Sharansky handed Getnet Amare, the mayor of Gondar, Ethiopia, the keys to the school that had prepared thousands of Jewish Ethiopian children for their subsequent immigration to Israel through education in math, physics, computers and English.
In a ceremony on Monday, the Jewish Agency donated all the school buildings and equipment to the city. “Jews lived in Gondar for 2,500 years. However, their longing to return home never weakened,” Sharansky said at the ceremony marking the conclusion of the Jewish Agency-led Operation Wings of a Dove. Through the operation, launched in 2010, Israel absorbed more about 7,000 people in Ethiopia, the Falash Mura, whose ancestors were Jewish but were forced to convert to Christianity.
“For us it is very symbolic that the Jewish community here is leaving behind a place of study. It’s a promise we make all the countries from which Jews emigrate: that we will leave behind a school for their local community’s children,” Sharansky said.
The final flight of Ethiopian immigrants to Israel will arrive in the Jewish state on Aug. 28 with 400 immigrants.
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Turkey’s Recep Erdogan claims Jews involved in Egypt’s Morsi overthrow
(JNS.org) Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday accused Israel of being behind the July 3 military coup in Egypt, saying he had evidence of the Jewish state’s involvement in the overthrow of the country’s former Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi.
The Turkish prime minister said his evidence of the Israeli plot was a meeting between a “Jewish intellectual” and an Israeli justice minister in France, where the intellectual said the Muslim Brotherhood would lose power even if it were democratically elected, Israel Hayom reported.
Erdogan was a staunch supporter of the democratically elected Morsi, and has decried the Egyptian military since the Egyptian president’s ouster. Last Thursday, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Egypt for consultations amid the ongoing unrest, as pro-Brotherhood supporters clashed with the military.
Erdogan’s accusation of Israel “has single-handedly shown how even Islamist leaders embraced in the West as the most moderate harbor noxious anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories,” Michael Rubin wrote for Commentary magazine on Tuesday.
Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, said “Egyptians acting on their own accord and in their own interests” are responsible for the recent events in Egypt.
“To suggest Israel has fomented the unrest in Egypt is incitement of the first order, demagogic and dangerous,” Foxman said in a statement.
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