CAIRO — Thousands of Islamist supporters of President Mohamed Morsi gathered in Cairo on Friday afternoon as Egypt’s highest religious authority warned of the possibility of “civil war” after days of escalating tensions and episodes of deadly violence.
The warning from the religious authority, Al Azhar, the seat of Sunni scholarship in Egypt, came on the eve of mass protests organized by a coalition of Mr. Morsi’s opponents, calling on the president to step down. Mr. Morsi’s supporters have called for counterprotests, leading to fears of violent clashes between the two camps.
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s largest Islamist party, said that several of its supporters were killed during attacks on its headquarters and on mosques over the last three days. Early Friday, at least one person died in Zagazig, Mr. Morsi’s hometown, according to the Freedom and Justice Party, the Muslim Brotherhood’s political wing.
In comments carried by state news media, a senior scholar at Al-Azhar, Hassan el-Shafei, blamed “ignorant people” for some of the attacks and said that the country needed to be alert “in order for us not to be dragged into a civil war that does not differentiate between supporters and opposition.”
On Friday afternoon, a few thousand Islamists gathered outside the Rabaa al-Adawiya Mosque in Cairo, as the imam urged Muslims to choose peace over violence. Nearby, vendors sold plastic hard hats. Men who bought them said they wanted protection from the blistering sun, but also from rocks, in anticipation of clashes with anti-Morsi protesters.
Some carried long plastic tubes as clubs, one brought a golf club and another a wooden rolling pin — all for self-defense, the men said.
The start of the protests came a day after Mr. Morsi moved aggressively to preserve order and confront his opponents, deploying the army near government ministries and the Suez Canal, starting legal proceedings against several judges and purging critics from a state-appointed body that helps regulate the airwaves.
Though many had hoped that Mr. Morsi would move to defuse calls for mass protests against him this weekend, he instead wielded the might of the state to project power. His message to those challenging his authority was to either work through the political structures that have emerged since the country’s revolution in 2011, or have no say in how the state is run.
“One year is enough!” Mr. Morsi said repeatedly in a televised speech on Wednesday night, threatening to purge holdovers from the clique of former President Hosni Mubarak. He also offered no major concessions to those calling for his ouster, dismissing them as antidemocratic.
“This is the message he is sending, a threat pretty much that his tolerance and patience for so-called subversive acts and extra-constitutional activities will no longer stand,” said Yasser el-Shimy, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. “If you would rather work outside the system, we are going to come after you.”
Mr. Morsi’s decision to shrug off the opposition and forge ahead comes at a time when bitter polarization over the direction of the country threatens to unleash a new wave of unrest.
In his speech, Mr. Morsi went after several individuals he said had broken laws and undermined the state. Action against some of them came swiftly, with government figures appointed by Mr. Morsi moving against them within 24 hours. On Thursday, an accountability body inside the justice ministry opened corruption investigations against a number of judges Mr. Morsi had accused of participating in rigging elections. Gehad El-Haddad, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, the movement that propelled Mr. Morsi to power, said in an online commentary that 32 judges were under investigation.
The prosecutor on Thursday also slapped a travel ban on Mohammed Amin, the owner of a satellite TV channel that has often been critical of Mr. Morsi since the president accused him of tax evasion. The prosecutor said Mr. Amin was under investigation on allegations he owes more than $60 million in taxes.
“He’s a tax evader — let him pay,” Mr. Morsi said. “He unleashes his channel against us.”
Egypt’s minister of investment on Thursday also purged representatives of three private satellites stations — including Mr. Amin’s — from the board of the Free Media Zone, a state-run body that helps regulate the airwaves.
Mr. Morsi had accused another station owner, Ahmed Bahgat, of owing more than $400,000 to an Egyptian bank.
Mr. Haddad said that Thursday’s moves showed that Mr. Morsi was committed to pursuing his agenda more forcefully.
“What happened today is no more than a fraction of what has been requested from the president since the day of his appointment,” Mr. Haddad said. “These are the basic demands of the revolution, to cleanse the old regime elements from their strongholds in the state.”
Mr. Haddad also said the president had offered no concession to those calling for his ouster because they were working outside the political process, and they most likely would have ignored anything Mr. Morsi offered.
He said he expected Mr. Morsi to work more closely with groups that have proved their popularity at the polls, like the ultraconservative Nour party.
“Most of the Islamist camp thinks the president has been too lenient with the opposition and has failed to deliver on his political promises,” Mr. Haddad said. “And I think he is picking up the pace.”
Planning for the competing protests this weekend continued on Thursday, with the opposition saying its plans had not changed.
“Dr. Morsi’s speech has only increased our insistence on calling for an early presidential election in order to achieve the revolution’s goals, the foremost of which is social justice,” Mohamed ElBaradei, a leader in the opposition’s National Salvation Front, said Thursday at a news conference.
Reflecting fears that the protests could turn violent, the Egyptian Army has been deploying tanks and soldiers near government ministries, at the central bank and at the entrances to some Cairo neighborhoods. It has also enhanced security in cities along the Suez Canal.
Security officials said that weapons had been distributed to the police, and that those being held at local police stations had been transferred to central prisons, apparently to make room for those detained in any unrest.
The American Embassy in Cairo has repeatedly warned American citizens of the potential for violence and will be closed on Sunday, normally the first day of the Egyptian workweek.
Mr. Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party and the Muslim Brotherhood that founded it took steps to ensure their own security.
The Brotherhood has recently reinforced his Cairo headquarters with thick metal doors, and Mr. Haddad, its spokesman, said the group had hired private security guards to protect its offices.
Protesters have ransacked the group’s offices in the past and sometimes clashed with Brotherhood members. Egypt’s interior minister said recently that the police did not have the resources to protect the offices of all political parties.
KUWAIT — Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday that progress toward a Middle East peace agreement needed to be made before September, as he headed for a fifth trip to the region amid increasing talk of a possible breakthrough that could return Israeli and Palestinian leaders to the negotiating table after years of stalemate.
Mr. Kerry stressed that he was not setting a firm deadline for resuming peace talks, but repeated his argument that time was an enemy of his push for a comprehensive agreement and stressed the importance of making headway before the United Nations General Assembly resumes its debate over the Middle East in September.
“Long before September we need to be showing some kind of progress in some way because I don’t think we have the luxury of that kind of time,” he said in a joint news conference with his Kuwaiti counterpart.
“Time is the enemy of a peace process,” Mr. Kerry said. “The passage of time allows a vacuum to be filled by people who don’t want things to happen.”
After three months of intensive effort by Mr. Kerry, anticipation has been building in Jerusalem and the West Bank that this time, he would bring with him a concrete proposal that might move the ball. Israeli news reports over the last two days have suggested new flexibility by President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as both sides grow more worried about being blamed if Mr. Kerry’s push fails to show progress. But while experts on the peace process see growing momentum around Washington’s initiative, they cautioned that getting the parties back to the table was only a first step.
“Kerry is not giving up,” Gershon Baskin, co-chairman of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information, said in an interview. “The question is where does it go after that, because each side is going to confront their own political public inside their own camps, and they’re going to face difficulties moving forward.”
Mr. Kerry acknowledged the uphill battle but described Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Abbas as skilled politicians who understood that the stakes in resolving the conflict were "bigger than any one day or one moment," and "certainly more important to their countries than some of their current political challenges may make it seem.”
“I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t have a belief that this is possible,” Mr. Kerry added. “But this is difficult.”
Kuwait was the fourth stop on Mr. Kerry’s eight-nation trip, which is mainly devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the crisis in Syria.
As a senator, Mr. Kerry voted against the resolution in 1990 that authorized force to evict Iraqi forces from Kuwait. But that debate appeared to have been long forgotten as he had a lengthy meeting with the Kuwaiti emir, Sabah al-Ahmed al-Jaber al-Sabah, and other senior officials.
Kuwait’s foreign minister, Sheikh Sabah Khalid al-Hamad al-Sabah, reiterated his country’s interest in transferring two Kuwaiti prisoners in the American prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to Kuwaiti custody, adding that Kuwait was willing to provide guarantees that they would brought before a domestic court. Mr. Kerry said that President Obama wanted to close the Guantánamo facility and the White House would study the Kuwait request.
Mr. Kerry’s next stop is Jordan, where he is scheduled to have three days of meetings with Israeli, Jordanian and Palestinian officials.
The Palestinians have repeatedly set and extended deadlines for Mr. Kerry’s efforts, with a threat that they would leverage the observer-state status they won in the United Nations last fall to seek to prosecute claims against Israel in the International Criminal Court. The Israelis have quietly agreed not to begin new settlement projects in the West Bank while Mr. Kerry tries to reignite talks, though they have allowed already-approved housing units to advance toward constructions.
Israeli news reports this week have laid out a variety of scenarios for a breakthrough. One said the chief Israeli and Palestinian negotiators would meet under American auspices in Amman next week, something Mr. Kerry denied in his news conference. Another said Mr. Abbas had agreed to enter direct talks with Mr. Netanyahu for a limited time, dropping his demand that Israel first accept the pre-1967 borders with minor adjustments as the starting point. A third said Israel would release 120 Palestinians who have been in Israeli prisons for more than 20 years as Ramadan begins July 8.
Palestinian leaders denied the reports, saying they were Israeli “spin” and “trial balloons.”
“These are just speculations,” Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, said Tuesday."Let’s wait for Kerry to come and then we can talk.”
Mr. Abbas repeated on Wednesday his frequent statement that he would return to talks if Israel accepted the 1967 borders. Mr. Netanyahu, for his part, said Tuesday that talks must be sustained, not time-limited, and that Israel was not simply trying to check a box “to show that we’ve begun negotiations.”
“Our goal is to persist in the negotiations, to engage in them consistently over a serious period of time in order to try to grapple with all the issues, and come to an agreement that resolves the fundamental issues in the conflict,” Mr. Netanyahu said. “This will require time, determination and a systematic approach.”
Several Israeli experts on the peace process said that both sides were maneuvering publicly and privately to avoid being blamed for a failure to revive talks.
Mr. Abbas “can’t be backed into a corner again and have people say the Palestinians are the naysayers,” said Mr. Baskin, a veteran negotiator who remains in close contact with the Palestinian leadership. “By saying we’re going in for a limited time to evaluate the seriousness of Israel will be enough for him to explain it to the Palestinian public.”
But Mr. Baskin was one of several analysts who expressed doubt that a new, publicly heralded round of talks would yield much, given the deep divisions and pressures each leader faces in his own political house.
“Almost everybody who’s been professionally involved in the peace process does not believe that a permanent status agreement is possible at this time,” cautioned Dore Gold, a former Israeli negotiator and aide to Mr. Netanyahu who is now president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. “What is needed is a new paradigm in order to make this work, but there’s no indication that any new ideas are surfacing.”
Michael R. Gordon reported from Kuwait, and Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem.
Date:
Wednesday, June 26, 2013
by Steven Emerson and John Rossomando IPT News June 26, 2013
Radical Egyptian cleric Yusuf Qaradawi is considered so radical that the United States banshim from entering the country.
Qaradawi, considered the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood movement, has called for the killing of Jews andAmericans.
That history makes the June 13 White House meeting with Sheik Abdullah Bin Bayyahall the more inexplicable. Bin Bayyah is vice president of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a group founded by and headed by Qaradawi. The IUMS has a long history of supporting Hamas –a top Hamas leader is an IUMS member – and of calling for Israel's destruction.
Bin Bayyah's website claims that he met June 13 with senior Obama administration officials at the White House.
Nonetheless, it was the Obama administration which sought the meeting with Bin Bayyah, his website's account said.
"We asked for this meeting to learn from you and we need to be looking for new mechanisms to communicate with you and the Association of Muslim Scholars (another name used for the IUMS)," Gayle Smith, senior director of the National Security Council, reportedly said.
Bin Bayyah's June 13 account placed other senior officials in the meeting, including:Rashad Hussain, the U.S. special envoy to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), National Security Adviser Tom Donilon and White House spokeswomanJennifer Palmieri. But the account was later changed to delete the reference to Donilon's presence at the meeting.
Smith also thanked Bin Bayyah for "his efforts to bring more understanding amongst humanity" during the meeting, the Bin Bayyah account said.
The White House did not respond to repeated requests for comments between June 14 and Tuesday.
Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah posted this photo of his June 13 White House meeting.
Bin Bayyah lobbied the White House to "take urgent action" to help Syrian rebels. "We demand Washington take a greater role in [Syria]," Bin Bayyah told Al-Jazeera. President Obama laterannounced plansto arm Syrian rebels.
In granting Bin Bayyah a visa, White House officials ignored his radical statements as well as his close connection to Qaradawi. The IUMS's hostility toward Israel, and its support of terrorists, is well documented. Bin Bayyah falls comfortably in line with that view.
For example, in a 2011 statement on his Arabic-language website, he criticized the West for placing Palestinian terrorist groups such as Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and others in the same category as al-Qaida:
"[P]lacing the Palestinian resistance, which defends internationally recognized rights, on an equal footing with intercontinental terrorist organizations (al-Qaida) is not based on any moral principle and would be detrimental to the cause of the fight against terrorism and mix the cards and raises questions to the world conscience and serves terrorists."
The IUMS welcomed Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh as a member in February 2012. The "Union will spare nothing in the service of the Palestinian people, praising the jihad of the Palestinian people with the leadership of the Hamas movement for resistance," Haniyeh's induction certificate said.
A 2004 fatwa, issued while Bin Bayyah was an IUMS board member, sanctioned "resistance," meaning attacks on American troops in Iraq as a duty on every able Muslim in and outside Iraq."
Badawi's radical views fit in well with the IUMS, which has issued numerous statements against peace with Israel, calling for the "liberation of Palestine" from Jewish control. Each statement has been unyielding in calling on Muslims to destroy Israel and in forbidding them from making peace with the Jewish state.
After a board of trustees meeting in December, the IUMS issued a communiquecalling on Hamas and Fatah to reconcile in the name of "the core Palestinian values (including the right of return and resistance until the liberation of Palestine and its capital Jerusalem) … Meanwhile, the union calls on the scholars of the nation to continue their religious role in enlightening the local and international public concerning the dangers that this Judaization policy in Jerusalem poses for the historic unity of the Palestinian territories which is religiously impermissible to give up one inch of it."
Sheikh Abdullah Bin Bayyah, circled in red, is shown at the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) board meeting in Doha, Qatar in December. The trustees issued a concluding statement at the meeting calling for Israel's destruction and the return of Palestinians exiled after the Israeli War of Independence in 1948. (Photo:IUMS)
A photo on the group's website shows Bin Bayyah was present at the meeting.
In 2009, it issued a fatwa forbidding any normalization of relations with Israel. It came on the 42ndanniversary of the Six-Day War, and Israel's capturing of the Temple Mount.
"All political, economic, and cultural dealings and all forms of normalization with the Zionist entity are considered to be a form of supporting and sustaining the occupier in its occupation of land and holy places," the fatwa said. "Moreover, such actions are considered a form of loyalty to the enemy, which is religiously prohibited; as Allah (Exalted and Glorified be He) says: 'And if any amongst you takes them as Awliya' (friends, protectors, helpers, etc.), then surely he is one of them.'(Al-Ma'idah 5: 51). In conclusion, we call on all Muslims, rulers and citizens, to undertake their role, and embark on rescuing Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Blessed Land and freeing them from the clutches of the Zionist occupation."
Just last month, an IUMS-affiliated Egyptian cleric blamed the United States and Israel for driving Egyptian opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government. Khaled Kholif invoked the anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as evidence of his argument, the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch reported.
"America and Israel are pleased with [the Egyptian opposition] movements, which are led by the brainless," Kholif said during an appearance on Egypt's Al-Hafez televisionflagged by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). "They have said so in The Protocols. Let me tell you exactly what they said in The Protocols: 'We will strive to undermine security in the lands of the Gentiles, through reckless revolutions, led by the brainless.' It says so in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, as translated by Khalifa Al-Tunisi.
"If you haven't read it," Kholif said of the Protocols, "you should."
Qaradawi and Bin Bayyah show a keen mutual admiration of each other in their writing. Bin Bayyah notably referred to Qaradawi as "a mountain upon whose peak there is light" and as "a great reformer" who "spreads knowledge and wisdom" in a 2008 article published by Boston cleric Suhaib Webb. Qaradawi returned the favor three days later: "The reality is that the more I have come closer to him and got to know him better, the more I have loved him…"
And like Qaradawi, Bin Bayyah claims Palestinian violence is acceptable under international law. Islamic law's approval is a given.
"He who adheres to international covenants can resist. The Palestinians. There are international conventions and there are international resolutions which give them rights but do not provide them with the means to obtain these rights. It is their right to resist," Bin Bayyah said during a 2010 Al-Jazeera broadcast. "So, that which says resistance, says kinds of resistance, including the use of weapons. So, international conventions do not stray too far from the interests Islamic Sharia oversees."
Bin Bayyah endorsed a push by Muslim intellectuals to get the United Nations to criminalize blasphemy against the Muslim prophet Muhammad and Islam, saying that it causes violence.
"To people of reason and understanding: We ask everyone to ponder the ramifications of provoking the feelings of over one billion people by a small party of people who desires not to seek peace nor fraternity between members of humanity," Bin Bayyah wrote in a post last fall. "This poses a threat to world peace with no tangible benefit realized. Is it not necessary in today's world for the United Nations to issue a resolution criminalizing the impingement of religious symbols? We request all religious and political authorities, as well as people of reason to join us in putting a stop to this futility that benefit no one."
Considering that this information is readily available on the Internet, it would not have been too difficult for White House officials to uncover that both Bin Bayyah and the IUMS support Palestinian terrorism and Israel's destruction. The White House visit also raises questions relative to the degree the Obama administration is willing to go to court the Muslim Brotherhood both at home and abroad.
Date:
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
By Anne Gearan, Published: June 24
Secretary of State John F. Kerry has been unable to win quick agreement for new peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, and as he returns to Israel this week, the sense of momentum surrounding his signature effort is fading.
Kerry had hoped to announce earlier this month that both sides were ready to return to the negotiating table after a lull lasting most of the past five years. He never set a firm deadline but had asked both sides in the spring to give him a couple of months to get talks going.
He will use his fifth visit to Israel as secretary this week to keep up the pressure, but he comes with little new traction.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is dragging his feet, resisting strong U.S. pressure to drop his conditions for new talks but fearing that he will be blamed if the effort fails. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed in principle, though others in his coalition government remain firmly opposed to talks or a separate Palestinian state.
“I think we should stop negotiating about the negotiations. I think we should just get on with it,” Netanyahu said in an interview last week with The Washington Post.
There were unconfirmed reports on Israel’s Channel 2 late Monday that Abbas had agreed to talks, but the Palestinian Authority did not indicate that its position had changed.
Tough path for Kerry
If Kerry cannot show progress soon, his leverage as a peace broker could wither. He has said that he will not wait forever or waste his time, but he is caught in a familiar Mideast cycle of litigating the terms of a negotiation before it begins — exactly what he said had killed past peace initiatives.
Israeli officials squarely blame Abbas for the delay, but U.S. officials are trying to show more patience.
Abbas would find his position undermined among the more hard-line members of his political coalition if he appeared to cave to U.S. and Israeli demands at the outset. It will not help eventual negotiations if Abbas enters them weak, U.S. officials said.
Although U.S. officials insist that it is not a snub, Kerry is not planning to go to Ramallah, the seat of the moderate Palestinian government in the West Bank, during his 11-day trip through eight countries. He plans to see Abbas in Jordan, where the longtime Palestinian leader has a home.
In a gesture to Kerry, Palestinians had shelved plans to do an end run around peace talks by seeking further international recognition at the United Nations and elsewhere. Abbas has said the moratorium on those plans would expire this month.
Israel, doing its part to give Kerry elbow room to get talks resumed, had observed an undeclared moratorium on housing expansions on Palestinian land until earlier this month, but it said recently that it would go ahead with plans to build more than 1,000 homes in two isolated West Bank settlements.
Abbas’s government warned Kerry recently not to pressure or hurry the Palestinian leader, while Netanyahu said Abbas may squander Kerry’s effort.
Kerry has repeatedly warned that this may be the last chance for a deal that gives the Palestinians a separate state. Former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, who came close to a deal in 2008, said the same thing during a recent visit to Washington.
“The secretary would not have returned as many times as he had if he didn’t think that there was an opportunity here,” State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said this month. “There have been positive comments from both sides about the openness to continuing the discussions, and we’ll see if we get to the point where both sides make the tough decisions to move back to the table.”
Although Kerry and President Obama have said that they will not present an “American plan” for peace, Kerry has been at work on something very close to that, said Arab and other officials familiar with his effort. The State Department has declined to give details.
‘It’s a border dispute’
Influential Arab leaders have urged Kerry to “define the end game first,” by establishing clear U.S. principles for the deal at the outset, and then settle borders quickly, a senior Arab diplomat said. That would require a strong U.S. hand in setting the terms for negotiations and keeping both sides at the table.
“We have always maintained that it’s a border dispute. You fix the border and you fix the dispute,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the message delivered in private to Kerry and other U.S. officials.
Palestinians claim the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip for their future state. All were captured by Israel in 1967.
The short-term U.S. goal is new peace talks without the baggage of “preconditions,” or requirements that either side must meet before discussions can begin.
The larger goal is a fast agreement — ideally, within a year or so — that draws permanent borders on the West Bank. The newly independent Palestinian state would have full international diplomatic recognition.
The agreement would establish separate areas of jurisdiction in Jerusalem, probably with international administration; resolve claims of Palestinian families that left homes in what is now Israel when the Jewish state was founded; and provide new security assurances to Israel. Those issues are well understood by both sides and have been the subject of past negotiations.
It is unclear how Kerry would address the split between Abbas’s moderate Fatah party and the militant Hamas faction that rules Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. The two Palestinian territories, which sit on opposite sides of Israel, were supposed to be linked by a road or tunnel under previous peace proposals. Neither Israel nor the United States will bargain with Hamas, so the Gaza leadership would not be included in new direct talks.
Arab states gave Kerry an early boost by reaffirming their offer for a comprehensive regional peace deal with Israel under its pre-1967 borders. The Arab League also sweetened the offer by saying publicly that those borders could be adjusted by mutually agreed land swaps.
Kerry has lobbied Abbas hard to return to talks without preconditions, but the Palestinian leader has insisted that he needs more assurances from the United States and Israel that the talks would begin in good faith. Although his public demands are broader, Abbas is chiefly seeking the release of Palestinian prisoners long held by Israel, officials familiar with the effort said.
Israel has considered a good-faith gesture beyond the unofficial building hiatus, but recent statements suggest that Netanyahu is hardening his position.
“Secretary Kerry is undertaking an effort to resume direct negotiations without preconditions,” Netanyahu said Thursday, during a meeting with the visiting European Union foreign policy chief. “That’s the right thing to do. Israel is ready to resume these talks without preconditions today, yesterday and tomorrow. I hope that President Abbas will do the same.”
After a briefing from Abbas on Kerry’s latest efforts, the Fatah party warned last week against “all forms of pressure” and hinted that it could resume efforts to seek international recognition outside of negotiations. That effort, strongly opposed by Israel, has been on hold while Kerry pursues talks.
The Palestinian Authority is likely to renew those international efforts at the annual U.N. General Assembly session in September if there is no agreement to begin negotiations by then.
Michele Dunne, a senior Mideast expert at the Atlantic Council, said Kerry is trying several gambits at once. He is pushing private-sector development to boost the West Bank’s struggling economy, dispatching retired Marine Gen. John R. Allen to explore possible security upgrades for Israel and pushing the Arab League peace plan as a template. Perhaps at least one will yield talks of some sort, Dunne said.
“Talks have a certain value for their own sake, but it is not at all clear whether talks would lead to a breakthrough under the current discouraging political conditions on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides,” she said.
Ruth Eglash and William Booth in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
Date:
Monday, June 24, 2013
(JTA) — Israel will not object to a planned 5 percent cut in the annual military aid package from the United States, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly said.
Under the sequester, the across-the-board cuts mandated by 2011 legislation, Washington is set to cut more than $150 million from the annual $3.1 billion package to Israel.
According to the Maariv daily, Netanyahu instructed Israeli officials in Washington not to ask the U.S. government for an exception from cuts.
“Israel did not seek an exception,” Maariv quoted Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to Washington, as saying. “We are willing to share in the burden.”
The planned cuts will likely affect Israel’s ability to purchase advanced F-35 stealth fighters, according to the report, 19 of which were supposed to be delivered in 2016.
Because of budgetary cuts in Washington, the Pentagon has slashed production of the F-35s, from 2,500 to 1,200 planes, thereby making each fighter more expensive.
The cuts are also expected to affect future joint military exercises between the two countries, Maariv reported.
Apparently unaffected is some $220 million President Obama has budgeted for the short-range Iron Dome missile defense system, which Israel claims successfully repelled more than 90 percent of rockets launched by Hamas in last November’s Gaza Strip war.
Appropriators in the U.S. House of Representatives have approved that sum, as well as an increase to $270 million of Obama’s $173 million request for missile defense cooperation programs separate from Iron Dome.
Less than a month after he was sworn in, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah on Thursday abruptly submitted his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas.
PA officials in Ramallah said Abbas would decide in the coming hours whether to accept the resignation.
Hamdallah, who until recently was president of An- Najah University in Nablus, offered his resignation even though Palestinians were still publishing advertisements in the media congratulating him and his new ministers.
A source close to Hamdallah said he submitted his letter of resignation to Hussein al- A’raj, director of the PA president’s bureau.
The source attributed the move to a power struggle between Hamdallah and his two deputies – Muhammad Mustafa and Ziad Abu Amr – who were appointed by Abbas.
“The prime minister feels that his deputies have been encroaching on his powers,” the source said.
After submitting his resignation Hamdallah left his office in Ramallah alone and drove in his private car to his home in the village of Anabta, east of Tulkarm.
A senior PA official told the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency that Hamdallah had not clashed with Abbas. The real dispute was between Hamdallah and his two deputies, the official said.
On Thursday evening, senior PA officials headed from Ramallah to Hamdallah’s home to persuade him to withdraw his resignation.
Another PA source said that Hamdallah, whom Abbas appointed on June 2, quickly found himself in the same situation as his predecessor Salam Fayyad.
“Hamdallah discovered that the Palestinian Authority president wants him to serve as a yes-man with no powers,” the source explained. “Abbas wanted a prime minister who would play no role and only carry out orders from the president’s office.”
Abbas’s decision to appoint two deputy prime ministers with expanded powers to the new government was the first sign of the PA president’s intention to curtail the powers of Hamdallah.
Some Palestinians pointed out that the real prime minister was Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Muhammad Mustafa, who also serves as the director of the PLO’s Palestine Investment Fund.
Mustafa was initially reported to be Abbas’s favored candidate to replace Fayyad. It remains unclear why Abbas finally preferred Hamdallah over Mustafa.
“Hamdallah quit because he was lacking any authority,” said Palestinian political analyst Hani al-Masri. “He discovered that he was just another employee with the rank of prime minister. He had two deputies who were in charge of the political and economic portfolios.”
Masri said the swift resignation was an indication of the deep crisis plaguing the PA’s political system.
Muhammad Dahlan, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and a former PA security commander, said he was not surprised by Hamdallah’s decision to resign.
Dahlan, often described as an arch-enemy of Abbas, said the resignation showed that the PA leadership in Ramallah was determined to “reproduce the same mistakes.”
Dahlan predicted that any new prime minister would also fail as long as Abbas refused to share powers with anyone.
Date:
Thursday, June 20, 2013
By MOHAMMED DARAGHMEH | Associated Press
RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) — The Palestinian president and his Fatah movement on Wednesday signaled a tough line on talks with Israel, casting new doubt on U.S. efforts to revive long-stalled negotiations.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is returning to the region next week, his fifth attempt this year to bridge wide gaps between the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the ground rules for talks.
Abbas has said he won't negotiate unless Israel stops building in settlements on war-won lands or accepts its 1967 lines — before the capture of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem in a Mideast war that year — as a starting point for border talks. The Palestinians claim all three areas for their future state.
Netanyahu has rejected the Palestinian demands, saying there should be no pre-conditions — though his predecessor conducted talks on the basis of the pre-1967 lines, and the international community views the settlements as illegal or illegitimate.
Abbas briefed Fatah leaders on Wednesday. In a statement after the meeting, Abbas adviser Nabil Abu Rdeneh said Fatah supports Abbas in his positions and "affirmed its rejection of the pressures on Abbas and the leadership," an apparent reference to the Kerry mission.
Both Abbas and Netanyahu are waiting for Kerry to present the proposed U.S. terms for renewing talks. It's not clear what they are and if Kerry will present them during his upcoming visit.
Abu Rdeneh's statement suggested that Kerry failed to persuade Netanyahu to relent on a settlement freeze or accept the pre-1967 frontier as a baseline, saying that Abbas is being pressured to return to talks on Israeli terms. The statement also suggested there was no agreement on the release of veteran Palestinian prisoners by Israel — floated in the past as a possible goodwill gesture to bring Abbas to the table.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor called on the Palestinians to return to the negotiating table immediately.
"It seems that the Palestinians still insist on reaching the last stage without bothering to go through chapter one, two and the rest," he said. "There are no shortcuts, and the only way to start negotiating is at the beginning, which means just start negotiating. It's as simple as that."
The U.S. State Department said Kerry would be in the Jordanian capital of Amman and Jerusalem from June 27-29 for talks on renewing negotiations.
Earlier Wednesday, international Mideast envoy Tony Blair said Kerry's mission may be the last chance for an Israeli-Palestinian deal.
He said that the "window of opportunity will be open for only a short period of time."
"We must go through it together," he said in a speech in Jerusalem. "If not, the window will close and could close forever. Time is not our friend. This is urgent. This is now. This is the time for statesmen, not politicians."
Later Wednesday, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton met Abbas, the latest of several foreign diplomats trying to persuade Abbas to resume negotiations.
Abbas aide Nabil Shaath said before that meeting that Abbas has told visitors, including the foreign ministers of New Zealand and Canada, that they should instead appeal to Israel to change its position.
Palestinian officials have said they nonetheless fear being blamed by the international community for a possible failure of Kerry's mission. In Wednesday's meeting, Fatah asked four leading members to devise a plan "to face the Israeli campaign to put the blame on us," Shaath said.
___
Associated Press writer Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, contributed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel will not accept Iranian uranium enrichment at any level.
"We cannot accept anything less than the total cessation of all enrichment of nuclear materials at all levels, removal from Iran of all enriched nuclear material, closure of Iran's illicit nuclear facilities," Netanyahu said during a meeting with Canadian Foreign Minister John Baird.
"Until Iran meets these demands, pressure must be stepped up and Iranian nuclear program must be stopped. Period."
Netanyahu warned against the new Iranian President Hasan Rowhani, saying that his strategy is to calm the international community while quietly advancing the nuclear program.
"He is the author of a document – you could call it talk and enrich - that is, talk and continue to enrich uranium. For nuclear weapons. He wrote this in the book. He said that by calming international community, Iran is able to steadily move forward in its nuclear weapons program. We cannot allow Iran to play this game. We cannot let Iran ride out the clock."
Netanyahu made the comments after several statements by the U.S. government and the European Union wishing to continue talks with Iran on its nuclear program. The talks between Iran and the six world powers stopped in April
Earlier Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Iran is willing to halt its 20 percent enrichment of uranium, which has been a key concession sought ininternational negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.
That is the highest level of enrichment acknowledged by Iran and one that experts say could be turned into warhead grade in a matter of months.
In an interview with the Kuwaiti news agency KUNA that was released by the Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, Lavrov said that "for the first time in many years" there are encouraging signs in international efforts to resolve the Iranian nuclear dispute.
He said Iran has confirmed that it is ready to halt production of uranium-enriched to 20 percent. He did not give details, but said the sextet of international negotiators should make "substantial reciprocal steps."
Meanwhile, on Monday the UN nuclear agency chief said Iran is making "steady progress" in expanding its nuclear program and international sanctions do not seem to be slowing it down.
Yukiya Amano's comments underlined the difficult challenges facing world powers in seeking to persuade the Islamic state to scale back nuclear activities they suspect could be used to make atomic bombs, a charge Tehran denies.
The surprise victory of moderate cleric Hasan Rowhani in Iran's presidential election last Friday has raised hopes for an easing of tension in the decade-old nuclear dispute.
Rowhani pledged on Monday to be more transparent about Tehran's atomic work in order to see sanctions lifted but he also said Iran was not ready to suspend its enrichment of uranium. "
Hamas has deployed a 600-man military force in the Gaza Strip that operates 24 hours a day in order to prevent rocket fire at Israel, a senior Arab source told The Times of Israel on Monday.
Since Egypt — with the election a year ago of President Mohammed Morsi – stepped up its involvement in Gaza and began to pressure Hamas to not allow rocket fire, the Islamic organization has diligently worked to keep the peace in Gaza, even when that came at the price of confrontations with smaller Islamic groups such as the extremist Salafists, the source said.
Thus, Hamas has established a special force to “safeguard public order” that numbers around 600 gunmen and operates mostly along the Gaza-Israeli border.
The past few months have seen a dramatic decline in the number of rockets fired at Israel as compared to a year ago, a trend that has been confirmed by Israeli security sources. According to Israeli figures, since the end of Operation Pillar of Defense in November, some 20 rockets or mortar shells have been fired into Israel, compared to about 150 over the same period last year.
At the same time, there has also been a drop in the number of weapons smuggled into the Gaza Strip, due to Egypt’s efforts in the Sinai Peninsula and the prevention of smuggling from Libya.
The Egyptians have fielded a relatively large force to fight terror cells operating in the Sinai and to prevent the smuggling of “game-changing” long-range missiles. Still, Israel claims that the Egyptian activity is insufficient to dismantle terrorist infrastructure in the peninsula, despite being a significant improvement over the days of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, who during his rule did not conduct major operations against terrorists in the Sinai.
Over the last few days, a delegation of senior Hamas officials has been holding consultations in Cairo, sponsored by the Egyptian government. According to Arab media reports, Morsi gave special permission to three Hamas men wanted by Egyptian security to join the proceedings.
Egyptian security forces, including 24 senior officers, have been deployed around the Intercontinental Hotel in Cairo where the Hamas delegation is staying, fearing demonstrations by secular activists who oppose Hamas due to reports that the Islamic group has attempted to intervene in Egyptian politics and has been involved in attacks on Egyptian soil, the Palestinian Ma’an news agency reported.
Meanwhile, Cairo has apparently deployed a considerable military force in the Sinai Peninsula, especially around Rafah, el-Arish and Sheikh Zuweid, in anticipation of potential demonstrations and riots on June 30,the date chosen by the “National Salvation Front,” the umbrella opposition group, to stage massive nationwide protests.
Date:
Monday, June 17, 2013
Applications of pro-Israel groups for tax-exempt status are routinely routed to an antiterrorism unit within the Internal Revenue Service for additional screening, according to the testimony of a Cincinnati-based IRS agent.
Asked whether Jewish or pro-Israel applications are treated differently from other applications, Gary Muthert told House Oversight Committee investigators that they are considered “specialty cases” and that “probably” all are sent to an IRS unit that examines groups for potential terrorist ties.
Muthert, who served as an application screener before transferring to the agency’s antiterrorism unit, was interviewed in connection with the committee’s investigation into the IRS’s discrimination against conservative groups. As a screener, Muthert flagged tea-party applications and passed them along to specialists for further scrutiny.
sked by investigators whether “all pro-Israel applicants went to the terrorism unit,” Muthert responded, “Probably . . . foreign activity, pro-Israel — if it is any type of foreign activity, it will go to the antiterrorism area.” Screeners like Muthert must consult the list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, the Treasury Department office that enforces economic and trade sanctions, and “the terrorist list . . . because a lot of organizations will create charities to funnel the money to terrorist countries.” In further questioning, Muthert was more categorical, saying that pro-Israel groups get “not so much additional scrutiny, just more procedures.”
“More review?” an investigator asked.
“Clearly, correct,” Muthert responded.
The IRS’s practices as described by Muthert touch on a political debate that has been raging in the United States and Israel since 2009. That’s when Washington Post columnist David Ignatius noted that opponents of Israeli settlements were fighting against tax exemption for groups that raise charitable contributions for organizations that support Israeli settlements. “Critics of Israeli settlements question why American taxpayers are supporting indirectly, through the exempt contributions, a process that the government condemns,” Ignatius wrote.
On March 27, 2009, the day after Ignatius’s article appeared, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a spate of administrative complaints with the Treasury Department and the IRS, alleging that pro-Israel groups raising funds for settlements in the West Bank were supporting “illegal and terrorist activities abroad.” Later that year, in October, the ADC said that it was waging an ongoing legal campaign against the IRS for what the ADC regarded as violations of the tax code by some pro-Israel groups.
The following year, in 2010, a New York Timesreport observed that “donations to the settler movement stand out because of the centrality of the settlement issue in the current [American-Israeli] talks and the fact that Washington has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid in the settlements.” The article quoted State Department officials complaining about the American dollars flowing to Israeli settlers. “It’s a problem,” a senior State Department official told the Times. The implication was that it may be wrong to grant tax-exempt status to groups devoted to causes that undermine administration policy. Relying on information in the Times article, the left-leaning advocacy group J Street called on the Treasury Department to investigate whether pro-Israel organizations collecting tax-deductible gifts for schools, synagogues, and recreation centers in the West Bank had broken the law by supporting certain Israeli settlements.
Throughout this debate, whether pro-Israel groups have been receiving additional scrutiny from the IRS has remained unclear. But in 2010, after the pro-Israel organization Z Street applied for tax-exempt status, the IRS sent it requests for further information. Z Street sued the IRS in October 2010, claiming it was targeted merely for being connected to Israel. According to court documents, an IRS official told the group that its application was delayed because it was assigned to a “special unit” to determine “whether the organization’s activities contradict the Administration’s public policies.”
Certainly, charities based in the United States have funneled money to Israeli charities that are controlled by terrorist groups in Israel. But those charities have not been of a pro-Israel bent. The most-high profile case is that of the Holy Land Foundation, the Texas-based charity whose employees were indicted in 2004 for using the group as a front to provide material support to Hamas.
The policy that the applications of pro-Israel groups be examined by the IRS’s antiterrorism unit was instituted “probably years ago,” according to Muthert in his testimony. That testimony leaves unclear whether the news coverage in 2009 and 2010 prompted the scrutiny to which groups like Z Street say they have been subjected, or whether every nonprofit group whose application indicates it may engage in foreign activity, regardless of the country, is put under the microscope.
According to Muthert, it’s the latter, and he denies that pro-Israel applications are treated differently from those of other groups that claim they plan to engage with foreign countries. “It has to do with money laundering and things, because a lot of organizations will create charities to funnel the money to terrorist countries,” he explained. “So it is not so much Israel. It is just foreign countries.”
— Eliana Johnson is media editor of National Review Online.
