PA motsätter sig Hamas deltagande i fredsförhandlingar

De Palestinska myndigheterna är mycket oroade över västvärldens försök att få Hamas att bli en part i fredsförhandlingarna med Israel.
Hamas har ingen vision eller politisk program utan använder olika medel för att försöka störta de nuvarande myndigheterna (Fatah), säger Adnan Damiri, talesman för Fatahs säkerhetsstyrkor.

PA against attempts to persuade Hamas to join peace process

West Bank leadership concerned that US, EU may be reaching out to rival party: "Hamas has no vision or political program. They are using various methods to undermine the Palestinian Authority," spokesman says.

The Palestinian Authority said on Wednesday that it was worried about “attempts” by the US and EU to persuade Hamas to join the Middle East peace process.

Gaza och västbanken

Peter Hitchens har besökt Gaza och västbanken och skrivit en läsvärd artikel:

Lattes, beach barbecues (and dodging missiles) in the world's biggest prison camp
Peter Hitchens sätter in händelserna i ett lite större sammanhang, vilket är ganska ovanligt, och ger därmed läsarna en annorlunda bild av konflikten mellan Israel och araberna.
Några citat:

It is lunchtime in the world's biggest prison camp, and I am enjoying a rather good caffe latte in an elegant beachfront cafe. Later I will visit the sparkling new Gaza Mall, and then eat an excellent beef stroganoff in an elegant restaurant.

Perhaps it is callous of me to be so self-indulgent, but I think I at least deserve the coffee. I would be having a stiff drink instead, if only the ultra-Islamic regime hadn't banned alcohol with a harsh and heavy hand...

...Don't, please, accuse of me of complacency or denying the truth. I do not pretend to know everything about Gaza. I don't think it is a paradise, or remotely normal. But I do know for certain what I saw and heard.

There are dispiriting slums that should have been cleared decades ago, people living on the edge of subsistence. There is danger. And most of the people cannot get out.

But it is a lot more complicated, and a lot more interesting, than that. In fact, the true state of the Gaza Strip, and of the West Bank of the Jordan, is so full of paradoxes and surprises that most news coverage of the Middle East finds it easier to concentrate on the obvious, and leave out the awkward bits.

Which is why, in my view, politicians and public alike have been herded down a dead end that serves only propagandists and cynics, and leaves the people of this beautiful, important part of the world suffering needlessly.

For instance, our Prime Minister, David Cameron, recently fawned on his Islamist hosts in Turkey by stating Gaza was a 'prison camp'. This phrase is the official line of the well-funded Arab and Muslim lobby, who want to make sure Israel is seen by the world as a villainous oppressor...

But if you think Israel is the only problem, or that Israelis are the only oppressors hereabouts, think again. Realise, for a start, that Israel no longer rules Gaza. Its settlements are ruins.

No Israelis can be found inside its borders. And, before you say 'but Israel controls the Gaza border', look at a map. The strip's southern frontier – almost as hard to cross as the Israeli boundary – is with Egypt. And Cairo is as anxious as Israel to seal in the Muslim militants of Hamas.

Gaza was bombed on the day I arrived in retaliation for a series of rocket strikes on Israel, made by Arab militants. Those militants knew this would happen, but they launched their rockets anyway. Many Gazans hate them for this...

...Can anyone think of a siege in human history, from Syracuse to Leningrad, where the shops of the besieged city have been full of Snickers bars and Chinese motorbikes, and where European Union and other foreign aid projects pour streams of cash (often yours) into the pockets of thousands? Once again, the word conceals more than it reveals.

In Gaza's trapped, unequal society, a wealthy and influential few live in magnificent villas with sea views and their own generators to escape the endless power cuts.

Gaza also possesses a reasonably well-off middle class, who spend their cash in a shopping mall – sited in Treasure Street in Gaza City, round the corner from another street that is almost entirely given over to shops displaying washing machines and refrigerators.

Siege? Not exactly. What about Gaza's 'refugee camps'. The expression is misleading. Most of those who live in them are not refugees, but the children and grandchildren of those who fled Israel in the war of 1948.

All the other refugees from that era – in India and Pakistan, the Germans driven from Poland and the Czech lands, not to mention the Jews expelled from the Arab world – were long ago resettled.

Unbelievably, these people are still stuck in insanitary townships, hostages in a vast struggle kept going by politicians who claim to care about them. These places are not much different from the poorer urban districts of Cairo, about which nobody, in the Arab world or the West, has much to say.

...One – which I feel all of us should be aware of – is the plight of Christian Arabs under the rule of the Palestinian Authority. More than once I heard them say: 'Life was better for us under Israeli rule.'

One young man, lamenting the refusal of the Muslim-dominated courts to help him in a property dispute with squatters, burst out: 'We are so alone! All of us Christians feel so lonely in this country.'

This conversation took place about a mile from the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, where tourists are given the impression that the Christian religion is respected. Not really.

I was told, in whispers, of the unprintable desecration of this shrine by Palestinian gunmen when they seized the church in 2002 – 'world opinion' was exclusively directed against Israel. I will not name the people who told me these things.

I have also decided not to name another leading Christian Arab who told me of how his efforts to maintain Christian culture in the West Bank had met with official thuggery and intimidation.

My guide and host reckons there are 30,000 Christians in the three neighbouring municipalities of Bethlehem, Beit-Sahour and Beit- Jala. Soon there will be far fewer.

He has found out that 2,000 emigrated between 2001 and 2004, a process which has not stopped. What is most infuriating about this is that many Christians in Britain are fed propaganda blaming this on the Israelis.

Arabs can oppress each other, without any help from outside. Because the Palestinian cause is a favourite among Western Leftists, they prefer not to notice that it is largely an aggressive Islamic cause.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1319157/Gaza-Strip-Lattes-beach-bbqs-dodging-missiles-worlds-biggest-prison-camp.html#ixzz13ZxhN6IA

Vackert

För att fira Israels 60-års dag 2008 spelades denna video in. Den har nu setts av över 1 miljon på YouTube. Vackert!

British Chief Rabbi's song gets million hits on YouTube

A special video recording of ‘Oseh Shalom’ by Britain’s Chief Rabbi, recorded to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel, has just seen one million hits on YouTube.

The recording features the Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks with soloist chazzans Jonny Rugel, Shimon Craimer and Rabbi Lionel Rosenfeld along with the Shabbaton Choir as well as children from the Moriah Jewish Day School in London.

Palestinsk media

Några exempel från palestinsk media levererade av Palestinian Media Watch:

PA cartoon: "Palestine" replacing Israel comes before education

The idea of a "Palestine" that replaces Israel is more important to Palestinian children than education. That was the message of a cartoon in the official PA daily newspaper last week. A second message in the cartoon was that Palestinian youth are prepared to use violence.The cartoon shows a teacher teaching a Palestinian child the letters of the alphabet. However, the text in the child's mind shows that he visualizes the map of "Palestine" replacing all of Israel before he starts learning the alphabet. The cartoon also carries a message of violence, as the child's pencil is shaped as a slingshot with a stone next to it.

Palestinian Media Watch has documented that during the five years of the Palestinian terror campaign, from 2000 - 2005, the Palestinian Authority used all the communication channels it controlled to actively encourage children to participate in the violence.Click here to view PA TV clip from 2001 telling children to throw away their toys and pick up stones.

Terrorists who killed 6 lauded as "heroes" in clip shown seven times in three days on PA TV
A clip broadcast seven times in three days on PA TV labeled Palestinian terrorists as "heroes" for having murdered six Israelis in two terror attacks. PA TV showed the clip to coincide with the anniversary celebrations of the Palestinian Arab Front (formerly Arab Liberation Front), the organization that carried out the attacks in 1975 and 1980.

Fayyad's advisorlibels and demonizes Israel

On the same day as the official Palestinian Authority daily newspaper ran a positive front-page story about a solidarity visit by Israelis to condemn last week's arson attack at a mosque near Bethlehem [see PMW bulletin], the office of PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad used the incident as an opportunity to libel and demonize Israel.

PM Fayyad's national affairs advisor accused Israel of being behind the arson attack, and added that the arson "represents part of a policy of state terror, which the Zionist apartheid state is carrying out against the Palestinians."The following is the full reaction from the office of PM Fayyad:
"Advisor to the Prime Minister [Fayyad] on national affairs, Minister Omar Hilmi Al-Ghoul: 'Herds of settlers throughout the Palestinian territories and the occupation army complement each other as regards the crimes and the new provocative violations, which are targeting our people, its places of worship, its property, its land and its interests. This is done with the aim of stirring up emotions and arousing the Palestinian residents to respond to the unceasing racist Israeli offensive, aimed at igniting a fire on the Palestinian front, so that the eyes of the world will turn away from the Israeli violations...'. In a press release, the advisor to the Prime Minister added that what happened in Beit Fajar was not incidental, but rather represents part of a policy of state terror, which the Zionist apartheid state is carrying out against the Palestinians."
[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 6, 2010

Det utlovade landet och löftets folk enligt katolskt biskopsmöte

Jerusalem Post rapporterar från mötet som de katolska biskoparna från Mellanöstern hållit i Rom den senaste veckan: Vatican synod calls for end to Israel’s ‘occupation’
Några citat från mötet:
"Den Heliga Skriften kan inte användas för att försvara judarnas återvändande till Israel..."
"Vi kristna kan inte tala om "Det utlovade landet" som en exklusiv rätt för ett priviligerat judiskt folk. Löftet upphävdes av Kristus. Det finns inte längre något utvalt folk - alla män och kvinnor av alla nationaliteter har nu blivit det utvalda folket."
"Även om Israels statsöverhuvud är judisk så är framtiden grundad på demokrati. De palestinska flyktingarna kommer småningom att återvända och detta problem måste lösas."(Monsignor Cyril Salim Bustros)

Mordechay Lewy, Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See, told The Jerusalem Post that Bustros, in saying that Jesus nullified God’s covenant with the Jewish people, was “returning to successionist theology, contradicting Second Vatican Council teaching and Pope Benedict himself – who has welcomed the return of Jews to their ancient homeland.”
“Also,” added the ambassador, “by inviting all Palestinian refugees to return and denying Israel’s right to define itself a Jewish state – the only such in the world – he is regressing to hard-line positions that deny Israel’s right to exist.
”During the meeting, several bishops blamed the Israeli- Palestinian conflict for spurring the flight of Christians from the Middle East – a position echoed in their final paper. While the bishops condemned terrorism and anti-Semitism, they laid much of the blame for the conflict squarely on Israel.

Ayalon: 'Vatican Synod is a forum for Arab propaganda'
Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon slammed the Vatican synod after bishops called for an end to the "occupation," in a statement released on Sunday.
In reaction to the Vatican's criticism, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said: "We express our disappointment that this important Synod has become a forum for political attacks on Israel in the best history of Arab propaganda. The Synod was hijacked by an anti-Israel majority.""We are especially appalled at the language used by Archbishop [Cyrille Salim] Bustros during his press conference," Ayalon remarked, referring to the archbishop whose committee drafted the statement. "We call on the Vatican to distant themselves from Archbishop Boutros' comments which are a libel against the Jewish People and the State of Israel and should not be construed as the Vatican's official position. These outrageous comments should not cast a shadow over the important relationship between the Vatican, the State of Israel and the Jewish People."A Foreign Ministry spokesman criticized the bishops' statement that Israel shouldn't use the Bible to justify "injustices" against the Palestinians."This has never been a policy of any government in Israel so this position sounds particularly hollow," Yigal Palmor said Sunday. "Let he who has never sinned cast the fist stone."Palmor also said Israel is the only Mideast country whose Christian population is growing, and called on Christians not to flee the region. "Israel views their presence in the Middle East as a blessing and regrets their decline in Arab countries," he said.According to statistics he provided, there were some 151,700 Christians in Israel last year, compared with 132,000 in 1999 and 107,000 two decades ago.

The Middle East synod: Politics slipped back in
Analysis: The Palestinian-Israeli conflict played prominently on the sidelines of the Vatican’s two-week conference.

The pope must speak up (Jerusalem Post 25.10)

"In the name of radical Islamic-inspired nationalism, Mideast Christians of all denominations, including Catholics, have faced devastating persecution for their religious convictions. From the Gaza Strip and Egypt to Iraq to Turkey, Christians have been murdered, had their churches burned to the ground and their holy books destroyed, and have been demoted to secondclass citizens exposed to libels and exploitation by Muslim neighbors.

Ostensibly with the purpose of addressing these injustices and stemming the tide of a dwindling Christian population in the Mideast, Pope Benedict XVI convened a special Vatican Synod in Rome, composed of about 200 bishops mostly from Muslim countries. Yet these bishops hijacked the synod and issued a statement Saturday that all but ignored the plight of Catholics living in Muslim lands while singling out Israel’s “occupation” for special castigation."


Här kan man höra lite undervisning om Löftets folk: Löftets folk - Sven Reichmann

Varför förhandlar palestinierna inte?

Palestinierna vägrar igen förhandla med Israel. Tydligen anser de att det är mera fördelaktigt för dem att inte för tillfället föra några förhandlingar.

Det rapporteras att palestinierna överväger att försöka få FN att erkänna en palestinsk stat och därmed få en egen stat utan att förhandla och komma överens med Israel.Detta kunde betyda att palestinierna får en stat vid sidan av Israel men konflikten skulle fortsätta och bland annat kraven på att de palestinska flyktingarna skall få "återvända" till Israel skulle finnas kvar.

Här finns två länkar till artiklar som behandlar detta ämne:

Palestinians may ask UN to recognize state in ’67 borders
Salim Zanoun, chairman of the Palestine National Council, the PLO’s parliament- in-exile, said over the weekend that it was “impossible” for the Palestinians to recognize Israel as a Jewish state because that would jeopardize the right of return for Palestinian refugees to their original homes inside Israel and threaten the status of Israel’s Arab minority.

“The Palestinians have given all [of] what they have for the sake of peace,” Zanoun said. “But we won’t give up our basic national rights, first and foremost the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital on all the territories occupied in 1967 and the return of the refugees to their homes.

“It’s impossible to recognize Israel as a Jewish state because we want to preserve the right of return for those Palestinians who were forcibly expelled from their homes and lands,” Zanoun said. “We also want to protect the rights of the Arab Palestinians living in the territories that were occupied in 1948 and who are facing a conspiracy by the racist, extremist Israeli government.”


Does the PA fulfill the criteria for an independent state?
According to the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, which is now part of customary law and therefore binding on all countries, a state must possess a permanent population, a defined territory, a government and a capacity to enter into relationships with other states.

Furthermore, the convention states that “the political existence of the state is independent of recognition by other states.”

Upprop till Finlands regering

Om du reagerade på nyheten att organisationen ICAHD hade samlat ihop ett par hundra namteckningar för ett upprop som krävde att Finland stoppar vapenhandeln med Israel kan du nu delta i en nanminsamling som tar avstånd från ovannämnda upprop.
Följande text kan undertecknas på http://www.petitiononline.com/Suomi123/petition.html


Vi undertecknade anser den finska ICAHD (Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions)-organisationens petition för att upphöra med vapenhandel med Israel vara både orimlig och grundlös. Vi delar president Tarja Halonens och utrikesminister Stubbs uppfattning enligt vilken Finlands vapenhandel med Israel är liten och följer strikt EU:s principer. Till exempel Israels andel av försvarsmaterialimporten är endast 3.6 procent, och Israel hör inte heller till de länder för vilka vapenexportförbud gäller. ICAHD har specialiserat sig på att svartmåla Israel. Till exempel år 2009 inbjöd denna organisations finska avdelning Norman Finkelstein till Finland. Till och med enligt Wikipedias uppgifter har Finkelstein "blivit känd för allmänheten på grund av sina antisionistiska åsikter". Finkelstein har för vana att jämföra Israel med Nazi-Tyskland, vilket uppfyller den definition på antisemitism som formulerats år 2005 av EU:s dåvarande centrum mot rasism, EUMC. Enligt denna definition är nämligen "jämförelser mellan dagens israeliska politik och nazisternas politik" ett "exempel på hur antisemitismen manifesterar sig i förhållande till staten Israel, när man tar hänsyn till den vidare kontexten". Inget annat land med vilket Finland har idkat vapenhandel har fått lika synlig och negativ uppmärksamhet, inte ens fastän i fråga varande land skulle ha dödat tusentals civila (t.ex. Kina, Ryssland, USA) under de senaste decennierna. Därför kan ovan nämnda petition inte enbart bero på moralisk indignation över Israels handlingar i självförsvar. Sålunda kvarstår endast en förklaring till nämnda petition: den torde representera - kanske till och med underskrivarna ovetandes - en strävan att göra Israel till "nationernas jude", hela världens syndabock. En sådan strävan återspeglar den urgamla antisemitism som ligger djupt i den europeiska kulturen och som idag finner sin politiskt korrekta form i antisionismen. Vi hoppas att den politiska ledningen i Finland inte hemfaller till att fatta beslut som baserar sig på fördomsdriven påtryckning.

Underteckna uppropet här!