The Palestinian Authority has said indirect talks with Israel will be “very difficult” if more homes are built on occupied land as planned, says the PNN.

Israel announced the plan for 1,600 more homes in occupied East Jerusalem shortly before a peace process visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erakat said they had “demanded that the Americans help us revoke this order.”

The indirect talks were to be the first steps in resuming stalled peace talks.

Mr Erakat, speaking to the BBC, emphasised that “it is very difficult for us to engage in any negotiations unless the order [to build the homes] is revoked”.

President Mahmoud Abbas had notified the Arab League secretary-general Amr Moussa and Mr Biden of his difficulties with the talks and settlements, Mr Erakat said.

According to Mr Erakat: “He told Moussa, ‘I am waiting for [US Middle East envoy George] Mitchell to come back next week to give us the answer that the [settlements] decision has been cancelled’.”

Mr Biden has condemned the Israeli move as undermining trust.

Israel and the Palestinians had earlier agreed to hold indirect “proximity talks” in a bid to restart the peace process, which has been stalled for 17 months.

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Israel’s decision to approve new East Jerusalem houses effectively prevents any peace negotiations from taking place, the Palestinian Authority said on Tuesday, following an Interior Ministry statement released earlier authorizing 1,600 new housing units.

Earlier Tuesday, the Interior Ministry approved the building of 1,600 new housing units in Ramat Shlomo, with a ministry official saying the plan will expand the ultra-Orthodox East Jerusalem neighborhood to the east and to the south.

The statement, released by the Interior Ministry’s Jerusalem district planning committee, headed by Ruth Yosef, said that at least 30 percent of the units will be allocated to young couples.

Public facilities and spaces which were, the statement said, lacking in the existing parts of the neighborhood, are also to be added as part of the new plan, including a new central park.

Meir Margalit, Meretz’s representative to the Jerusalem city council, claimed that the statement was meant to disrupt a visit by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, saying that he had “no doubt that the timing isn’t coincidental,” calling the announcement Interior Minister “Eli Yishai’s answer to Netanyahu’s willingness to renew indirect peace talks with the Palestinians.”

“The fact that Eli Yishai couldn’t restrain himself for another two-three days until Biden left Israel means his intention was to slap the U.S. administration in the face,” Margalit said, adding that the announcement was “a provocation to the U.S. and to the prime minister.”

Minister Yishai failed to comment at the statement, but is expected to respond to the Prime Minister’s office request and release an official statement explaining the new decision.

Meanwhile, sources in the Interior Ministry have said that the timing of the statement was purely coincidental and unrelated to Biden’s state visit.

Read more here.

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The United States government has committed to playing a role in indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and promised that if the talks were to fail, the U.S. will assign blame and take action, according to a document sent by the U.S. to the Palestinian Authority, which Haaretz obtained on Friday.

The U.S. government sent the document to the Palestinians responding to their inquires regarding the U.S. initiative to launch indirect talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

“We expect both parties to act seriously and in good faith. If one side, in our judgment, is not living up to our expectations, we will make our concerns clear and we will act accordingly to overcome that obstacle,” it was written.

This commitment by the U.S. was a determining factor in the Palestinians’ and the Arab League’s decision to agree to the U.S. proposal on indirect talks.

The document also reveals that U.S. involvement will include “sharing messages between the parties and offering our own ideas and bridging proposals.”

The U.S. also emphasized that their main concern is establishing a Palestinian state.

“Our core remains a viable, independent and sovereign Palestinian State with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967,” the document read.

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The US ambassador to the EU has brushed aside speculation that the ascendance of China or confusion arising from the Lisbon Treaty have undermined the special relationship between the two sides.

Focusing on the EU’s importance in the areas of security and crisis-relief, the ambassador, William E. Kennard, told EUobserver in an interview: “Anytime anything dramatic happens in the world …the world looks to what the US and the EU are going to do.”

“We have with the EU and its member states a shared history and a shared sense of values that we don’t have with any other large bloc of people,” he said. “The US and the EU collectively represent 800 million democratically-elected people, and so when issues arise, whether it’s of human rights violations or the need to bring stability to troubled parts of the world, whether it’s Afghanistan or Pakistan or the Middle East, the EU is our logical partner.”

The diplomat underlined President Barack Obama’s belief in multilateralism and progress in ties with China and Russia. But he indicated that the level of trust between the EU and US exceeds what it has with the emerging powers.

“We don’t share the same culture, history or values with Russia,” he said. “It’s a different category altogether.”

Mr Kennard arrived in Brussels in January at an awkward moment. The US at the Copenhagen climate summit in December clinched a last-minute deal on emissions with Brazil, South Africa, India and China, leaving the EU out of the room.

In February, the Spanish EU presidency learned via the media that President Obama planned to skip an upcoming summit. A US spokesman at the time said Washington did not know who was in charge in Europe following passage of the Lisbon Treaty. The European Parliament subsequently compounded unease by voting down a transatlantic pact on counter-terrorism, the so-called “Swift” agreement.

The US ambassador laid part of the responsibility for the summit debacle on Spain: “We had never committed to a summit and we had never told the Spanish government that we were coming to Madrid in May. I think there may have been an assumption that we were,” he said.

He also hinted that the meeting was a diplomatic nicety rather than a venue for pressing decisions. “All of our political leaders have incredible demands on their time, we have to be careful in deploying their time to make sure there are defined outcomes,” Mr Kennard said.

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One is tempted to look on the latest dramatic developments in Turkey and maintain that there is a serious democratization process underway. But this is Turkey and one has to leave room for doubt in order to get a correct fix on what is going on.

Neither should one take too seriously bleary-eyed Europeans who derive some kind of surreptitious pleasure from seeing the troubles of the Turkish military and the Kemalist camp. While they too believe that a process of democratization is underway, one has to take their often superficial views on Turkey with a serious pinch of salt.

The reason is that Europeans often dig into their bag of clichés concerning Turkey, and produce “overused” views even if these are out of touch with the Turkish reality.

One question that such Europeans have to answer is clearly embedded in the latest “Eurobarometer” poll on Turkey.

That poll shows that the Turkish military is still considered the most reliable institution in Turkey by 77 percent of Turks, while only 52 percent consider the government trustworthy. The same poll also indicates that 68 percent of Turks trust the judiciary, which thus is in second place in terms of the most trusted institutions in the country.

This poll was most probably conducted prior to the latest division that surfaced in the judiciary so it will be interesting to note what the next poll says on this. All of this returns us to a point that we have brought up time and again.

Turkey is too complex a country to be deciphered by means of clichés and preconceived notions. It is because of this that it is not certain whether Turkey is currently undergoing a historic process of democratization, or if it is in the throes of some kind of dissolution, given that the country, including the judiciary now, is seriously divided.

The latest “Balyoz” (Sledgehammer) Operation investigation is of course a valid one in essence. It is also a fact that the military has been unable to deny the existence of documents that caused this legal investigation to be initiated.

The military claims that those documents do not amount to a coup plan, but represent a certain scenario for a military contingency. But what serious contingency plan would incorporate items such as the bombing of mosques or the downing of one of Turkey’s own jets over the Aegean, the apparent aim in both cases being to discredit the government and justify a military takeover?

Such documents would be investigated in any country that claims to be a democracy based on the rule of law. However the way prosecutors have been acting in this case points to the fact that there is more than just a simple judicial procedure underway.

Read more here.

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Mahmoud al Mabhouh faced two previous assassination attempts in recent years, Hamas officials said yesterday.

They said the Hamas operative was poisoned last year and, earlier, was the target of a shooting in Lebanon.

Dubai Police released a hospital report yesterday showing that al Mabhouh was treated at Rashid Hospital in May last year.

The report said al Mabhouh was suffering from dizziness and was half-conscious when he was admitted, but had no fever. X-rays showed a lung infection. He was treated with antibiotics and released on May 10.

“We always lived with the possibility that al Mabhouh could be killed at any time due to the sensitivity of his job,” said Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Lebanon and a relative of al Mabhouh. Another senior Hamas official said there had been at least two previous attempts on al Mabhouh’s life, one in Lebanon by shooting, the other in Dubai by poisoning.

Khalid Arif, a Fatah official, said there had been many assassinations over the years that had not drawn international attention.

He applauded the efforts of Dubai Police to bring al Mabhouh’s killers to justice.

“This time around, they underestimated the UAE and picked the wrong country to kill their target in,” Mr Arif said.

Meanwhile, The Australian reports that the Australian government yesterday warned Israel its standing as a friend would be jeopardised if it were found to have condoned the suspected theft of three Australian citizens’ identities by its Mossad spy agency to carry out a political assassination.

As Kevin Rudd demanded answers over Israel’s role in the growing international scandal – and ASIO and the Australian Federal Police launched investigations – it was revealed that Australia had previously warned Israel not to use fake Australian passports for intelligence operations.

Read more here.

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In a move that appears to be a celebration of the 16th anniversary of the massacre of 29 worshippers by the terrorist Baruch Goldstein, the Israeli government has proclaimed that the Ibrahimi Mosque in Khalil (Hebron) and Masjid Bilal ibn Rabah (mosque) in Bethlehem are “Jewish Heritage sites”.

Goldstein, an American-born Israeli settler who served as a medic in the military, opened fire on worshippers at a mosque in Hebron on February 25, 1994, killing 29 and wounding more than 150, before being subdued and beaten to death.

The announcement by the government of Binyamin Netanyahu, though not surprising, is the latest in a series of Israeli attacks on Islamic historical and religious sites in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.

It is consistent with the Israelis’ long-standing ambition to dispose of all non-Jewish religious symbols and presence in Palestine.

While the Israeli government was announcing the annexation of the Islamic sites, dozens of settlers attempted to storm into Jericho on the pretext that they were visiting an ancient synagogue.

Under the Gaza-Jericho Agreement of May 1994, Israel agreed to dissolve its civil administration and “transferred its powers and responsibilities to the Palestinian Authority”.

In his first reaction to the annexation of the Ibrahimi Mosque, Amr Moussa, the Secretary General of the Arab League, said: “This proves that Israel is not interested in peace and negotiations.”

The question is: when was Israel ever interested in such? When has it ever recognised the rights of the Palestinians? Israel’s founding fathers made no secret of the fact that they wanted all of historic Palestine, but without the Palestinians and all that is associated with their history.

Hence, David Ben Gurion recorded in his memoirs, The Revolt: “The partition of the Homeland [Israel] is illegal. It will never be recognised. The signature by institutions and individuals of the partition agreement is invalid. It will not bind the Jewish people. Jerusalem was and will for ever be our capital. Eretz Israel will be restored to the people of Israel. All of it. And forever.”

Everything that has happened in Palestine since 1948, and in Jerusalem and Hebron in particular over the past year, can be explained in the context of this statement.

Those who ignore it, not least the Arab and Muslim leadership, do so at their peril.

That having been said, the timing of these latest provocations against the Ibrahimi Mosque has not gone unnoticed.

The Israeli moves come at a time of huge embarrassment for the European patrons of the Zionist project, who saw their passports, among them diplomatic documents, being used illegally to carry out the murder of a Palestinian figure in Dubai, a “moderate” and thus by definition a friendly country.

Read more here.

Dubai has identified 15 new suspects in the assassination last month of a Hamas official, and 10 of those suspects share the names of Israelis who hold dual citizenship, Haaretz has learned.

Dubai police said Wednesday the total number of people believed involved in the death stands at 26.

Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed last month in his hotel room in what Dubai police have said they are near certain was a hit by Israel’s Mossad spy agency. Police said the killers travelled to the Gulf Arab emirate using European passports.

Dubai authorities had earlier named 11 suspects, who they said travelled on fraudulent British, Irish, French and German passports to kill Mabhouh. Six were Britons living in Israel who deny involvement and say their identities were stolen.

“Dubai investigators are not ruling out the possibility of involvement of other people in the murder,” the statement said.

The suspected killers’ use of passports from countries including Britain and France has drawn criticism from the European Union that diplomats said was aimed at Israel. Some of governments involved have summoned their Israeli ambassadors.

“Friendly nations who have been assisting in this investigation have indicated to the police in Dubai that the passports were issued in an illegal and fraudulent manner,” the Dubai government statement said.

It said that pictures on the passports did not correspond to their original owners.

In a statement on Monday that European diplomats said was intended as a rebuke to Israel, EU foreign ministers said that the assassination was “profoundly disturbing.”

Read more here.

Turkish police have searched the homes of two retired military generals and detained more than a dozen former and current military commanders for alleged links to the “Balyoz” (Sledgehammer) Operation.

The total of detainees nationwide was reported to be 48. Several high-ranking retired military officials have been taken into custody in this new wave of detainments related to the Ergenekon investigation into a suspected gang called Ergenekon alleged to have sought to topple the ruling government.

According to reports, the new round of detentions may be linked to the Balyoz plot, therefore possibly merging Balyoz and Ergenekon.

Balyoz is an alleged military coup plan against the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, written in 2003. According to Taraf, the military planned for drastic measures to cause unrest in the country in order to remove the AKP from power. Those measures included bombing two major mosques in Istanbul, an assault on a military museum by people disguised as fundamentalists and the raising of tension with Greece through the usual dogfights between the fighter planes of the two countries over the Aegean Sea. The allegations even include shooting down a Turkish plane and blaming it on Greece.

The reason for the detainments was still unclear early Monday evening, but private channel NTV reported that the detainees allegedly had the same signatures as those found on documents related to the Balyoz operation.

The retired generals taken into custody include former top Navy Cmdr. Özden Örnek, former top Air Force Cmdr. İbrahim Fırtına, former 1st Army commander Ergin Saygun, former South Seas Navy Cmdr. Lütfi Sancar, and generals Ayhan Poyraz, Engin Alan, Ümit Özcan, Ayhan Taş and Özer Karabulut.

Another 10 colonels were also reportedly detained in the same operation. So far detentions have taken place in Istanbul, Ankara, Bursa and İzmir. All of the detainees are expected to be brought to Istanbul. Seven detained officials, including İbrahim Fırtına, were brought to Istanbul from Ankara on a 1:30 p.m. flight and taken to the Istanbul Security Directorate from Sabiha Gökçen Airport.

Read more here.

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Wanted by Dubai Police? Image via Wikipedia

Interpol has issued red notices for the 11 suspects in the murder of the senior Hamas leader, Mahmoud al Mabhouh, on January 19, with Dubai’s police chief confirming that the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad was involved.

Lt Gen Dahi Khalfan Tamim told The National that Interpol issued the notices for the suspects, who have been identified as being behind the killing. “The red notices were issued with the names and features, based on evidence we provided, the notices were issued based on evidence we provided to the Interpol,”said Gen Tamim.

The suspects identified by Dubai Police were six British, three Irish, one German and one French. However, since the revealing of the identities the government of these countries had said that the passports are fake or bore fake identities.

Gen Tamim also confirmed for the first time that their investigations indicate that Mossad were behind al Mabhouh’s murder.

“Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of al Mabhouh. It is 99 per cent, if not 100 per cent that Mossad is standing behind the murder,” said Gen Tamim.

The evidence that Dubai Police have shows a clear link between the suspects and people with a close connection to Israel, according to Gen Tamim. However, he did not disclose what the evidences were.

Earlier Gen Tamim had said if it is proven that Mossad is responsible for the killing of al Mabhouh “Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will be the first to be wanted for justice as he would have been the one who signed the decision to kill [Mahmoud] al Mabhouh in Dubai’ and that an arrest warrant will be issued against him.

Read more here.

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