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Thread: :icon_sadangel2: Palestine Peace a dream?

  1. #1011
    Israeli lawmaker Mohammad Barakeh has backed organ harvest allegations against Tel Aviv over its practice of keeping the dead bodies of slain Palestinians.

    "We have the right to question the reasons why Israel is keeping the bodies of martyrs and what secret they seek to preserve," the chairman of far-left Hadash party said in Nablus on Tuesday.

    "Is it that the bodies were mutilated? My answer is yes until proven otherwise. Is it that their bodies have been stolen? My answer is yes, until proven otherwise," he added.

    The outrageous scandal was laid bare last month by Sweden's best-seller tabloid, Aftonbladet, which printed an article on how the Israeli army kidnapped Palestinian youths and returned their bodies mutilated a few days later.

    The revelation infuriated Israeli officials and prompted them to ask the Swedish government to condemn the article and its author, a demand Sweden flatly rejected.

    Speaking at a conference, Barakeh called on Israel to return bodies of Palestinians buried in the occupied territories, and said why Tel Aviv continues to hold the bodies while "there is no worse way to punish a man and his family than with his death."

    "The burden of proof falls on Israel, and as long as it refuses to say what the status of the bodies is or return them, it is hiding something awful," he warned.

    The Palestinian Authority officials have demanded that Israel return the bodies of the Palestinians it killed.

    They said "the world must be careful regarding what Israel does," describing Tel Aviv's efforts to hide bodies of Palestinian victims as aimed at distorting evidence of its crimes, including organs trafficking.

    According to Palestinian human rights organizations, Israel is holding 275 bodies which it refuses to return to their families.

    MRS/AKM

  2. #1012
    Israel pushes ahead with plans to build hundreds of homes in East Jerusalem, despite warnings that the move could threaten stalled peace talks with Palestinians.

    After an almost year-long hold over pricing disputes with contractors, Israel's Lands Administration on Wednesday published tenders for the construction of 486 apartments in Pisgat Zeev in the Arab majority East Jerusalem (al-Quds).

    The reopening of tenders comes on the heels of Tel Aviv's Monday announcement, allowing for the construction of over 450 new housing units in the occupied West Bank.

    The authorization came as part of a plan by Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu's administration for a burst in settlement construction before considering a long-demanded freeze on settlement activity.

    The international community considers Israeli settlements in all of the West Bank including East Jerusalem to be illegal and a major obstacle on the way to permanent peace in the Middle East.

    The Palestinian Authority has ruled out any peace talks with Tel Aviv, until the Israeli side proves its commitment to a complete halt to settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territories.

    Some 500,000 Israelis live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while 2,500 more housing units are currently under construction.

    MRS/AKM

  3. #1013
    The United States may pick Israel over Eastern Europe as the deployment location for the partial installation of its controversial global missile defense shield.

    The likelihood was raised in an article in the major Israeli daily, The Jerusalem Post Monday citing concordant comments by ranking Israeli officials.

    The American plans for the shield, devised under former president George W. Bush, use potential missile threats 'from Iran and North Korea' as a pretext for positioning interceptor missiles in Poland and a tracking radar in the Czech Republic.

    Russia denounces the move as more of a security threat than a precaution refuting the anti-Iranian argument. It has also threatened to respond by installing the potent Iskander-M missile systems in Kaliningrad, an exclave near Poland.

    The daily said Washington was likely to install the components in Israel to allay Moscow's concerns.

    It also quoted a 'senior Israeli defense official' as saying that the likelihood was "being discussed in unofficial channels" for the US to equip Israel with the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System.

    The US military is slated to ship the highly-dependable defensive gear to Israel for the October joint exercises with the Israeli Air Force (IAF).

    Though rating the possibility as 'strong', the officials noted that "the United States has not made an official request to deploy the systems here."

    The US has already installed a powerful missile defense radar in the southern Israeli Negev desert to 'enhance and extend' Tel Aviv's missile deterrence capabilities.

    Meanwhile, Washington has stated that it was rethinking the Eastern European deployment.

    The US and Russian heads of state are set to canvass the issue later in the month during the annual opening of the United Nation's General Assembly.

    Late last month, The New York Times quoted the US administration officials as saying that President Barack Obama would consult with his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev about alternative deployment areas at the UN meeting.

    HN/MB

  4. #1014
    The UN Secretary General has denounced Israel's plan for building new settlements as "contrary to international law", calling on Tel Aviv to stop all settlement activities.

    In a statement issued on Wednesday to denounce the Israeli approval of the construction of 455 new houses in the West Bank, Ban Ki-moon called on the regime "to stop all settlement activity, including natural growth, and dismantle all outposts erected since March 2001 in the occupied Palestinian territory."

    "Such actions and all settlement activity are contrary to international law and the roadmap," the statement said.

    Under the 2003 Middle East peace roadmap, Israel is committed to halt the expansion of Jewish settlements in territories occupied in the 1967 war.

    Tel Aviv, however, has refused to fulfill its commitment, saying it continues the settlement work to meet natural growth.

    "The Secretary-General urges Israel to respond positively to the important efforts under way to create the conditions for effective Israeli-Palestinian negotiations and reiterates his call on Israel to stop all settlement activity, including natural growth, and dismantle all outposts erected since March 2001 in the occupied Palestinian territory," it added.

    Israel's recent approval of settlement construction came in apparent defiance of international calls for a freeze in the activity.

    The decision also sparked outrage among the Palestinians, who had conditioned any further talks with Israel on a complete freeze in the construction work.

    SB/SME/RE

  5. #1015
    Israel's High Court has ordered the demolition of what it terms as "illegal constructions" built by the Palestinians in the occupied West Bank.

    On Wednesday, the court ruled that the government should implement the demolition orders issued against two Palestinian houses near the villages of Sauya and Yatma in the West Bank, The Jerusalem Post reported.

    The ruling was made in response to a petition filed by Regavim, which describes itself as a movement whose aim is "to protect national lands and properties."

    Regavim's lawyer said the organization has decided to file more petitions against what he called "Palestinian illegal outpost" in the West Bank.

    SB/SME/RE

  6. #1016
    Spain has voiced its support for an independent Palestinian statehood on the 1967 borders, as Israel pushes ahead with its settlement plans in East Jerusalem.

    Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos said on Wednesday that the world cannot wait another 18 years to see peace in the Middle East.

    The top diplomat was referring to the first official Palestinian-Israeli peace talks launched in Madrid in 1991, attended by Israel, Palestine, Syria, Jordan and Egypt.

    The Madrid talks sought out interim self-government arrangements for Palestinians, to be followed by permanent status negotiations.

    However after nearly two decades of on and off peace talks held in different parts of the world, the Israeli-Palestinian issue remains unresolved.

    "We should see a Palestinian statehood established on the borders of 1967," Moratinos told reporters during a joint press conference with chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in Ramallah.

    Moratinos also stressed that Spain and the European Union 'will continue to exert every effort possible to achieve Palestinian aspirations of statehood'.

    The development comes as Israel is pushing ahead with its plans to build hundreds of homes in East Jerusalem, despite warnings that the move could threaten stalled peace talks with Palestinians.

    The international community considers Israeli settlements in the whole West Bank including East Jerusalem to be illegal and a major obstacle on the way to permanent peace in the Middle East.

    The Israelis refuse to back down, claiming that the city is their 'eternal, undivided capital'.

    FF/AKM

  7. #1017
    Benjamin Netanyahu accepted the principle of withdrawing from the Golan Heights in return for peace with Syria in 1998 during his first stint as premier, an Israeli daily has revealed.

    "Israel will withdraw from the Syrian land taken in 1967, in accordance with Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which established the right of all states to secure and recognized borders in the 'land for peace' formula," read a copy of the document published by the Yediot Aharonot daily.

    The withdrawal will be 'to a commonly agreed border based on the line of June 4, 1967', it said.

    The document was drawn up by US businessman Ron Lauder to summarize the positions reached by Israel during its indirect talks with Syria in which he served as a go-between. Lauder presented it to then US president Bill Clinton in 1999, after Netanyahu left office.

    Israeli hawkish Prime Minister Netanyahu, who was sworn in for his second term as prime minister on March 31, has always denied that he agreed to fully withdraw from the Golan Heights in the talks held during his first tenure from 1996 to 1999.

    In May 2009, Netanyahu declared that Tel Aviv would never return the occupied Golan Heights to Syria.

    "Remaining on the Golan will ensure Israel has a strategic advantage in cases of military conflict with Syria", he said.

    Israel seized the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed the Syrian territory in 1981, a move never recognized by the international community.

    Israel and Syria have held four rounds of Turkish-mediated indirect talks since last May, without significant progress. The indirect talks were formally suspended during the three-week Israeli offensive on the blockaded Gaza Strip.

    Syria wants the return of all of the Golan Heights, saying that the strategic region will always belong to Syria and that Israel's departure from Golan is the only way to peace.

    MSH/AKM

  8. #1018
    Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office has admitted that it had misled the public about his day-long disappearance from public view earlier this week.

    The premier's office did not deny media reports that the Israeli premier had stolen away to Russia aboard a private plane on Monday to discuss Moscow's arms sales to Iran and Syria.

    "The prime minister was busy with a confidential and classified activity," Netanyahu's office said in a statement on Thursday.

    "Having had the best intentions, his military attache... acted to defend that activity and did this through an announcement to the media" that said he had spent the day at a security facility in Israel, his office added.

    Russian authorities have said that the Israeli premier had met neither his counterpart Vladimir Putin nor President Dmitry Medvedev, but did not explicitly deny the trip itself.

    Israeli and US officials have strongly urged Russia not to supply the S-300 anti-aircraft missiles to the Islamic Republic and the issue has been the subject of intense diplomatic wrangling for years.

    Last month, the Israeli President Shimon Peres said that Russia promised to review a decision to sell Iran the 'game changing' missiles.

    Some Western countries claim that the Iranian government has military objectives in its nuclear enrichment program.

    Tehran, however, says its nuclear program is aimed at the civilian applications of the technology and called for the removal of all weapons of mass destruction across the globe.

    HRF/AKM

  9. #1019
    Saeb Erekat says Gaza Strip remains an irrefutable part of an independent Palestinian statehood and there would be no such state without the blockaded coastal territory.

    In an interview with Voice of Palestine radio on Thursday, the Palestinian Authority's chief negotiator emphasized that the Fatah-ruled West Bank and Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip must be politically reunited in order to establish a Palestinian state.

    “There cannot be a Palestinian state without the Gaza Strip,” he said. "If the Palestinians don't help themselves and end their split, no one will help them."

    He added, “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holds the sword of division in his hands.”

    The senior Palestinian official went on to note that the ongoing division between the two major Palestinian factions place jeopardizes Palestinian interest and dims the prospect for a Palestinian statehood.

    The opponent Palestinian factions, Hamas and Fatah, have long been wrangling with each other over substantial discords which have caused real bottlenecks to mend fences and repair the internal Palestinian divisions.

    Ever since Hamas won an outright majority in 2006 Palestinian legislative elections, the two factions have pursued bitter rivalry featuring sporadic fighting and tit-for-tat arrests. Mutual hostility boiled over in the summer of 2007, when Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip from the western-backed Fatah faction.

    Since then, Hamas has governed the Gaza Strip, while Fatah has continued to control the West Bank from Ramallah. Further complicating the situation, Israel and Egypt - with the Palestinian Authority's blessings - have both sealed their borders with the Gaza Strip, effectively cutting off the coastal enclave from the rest of the world.

    MP/MB

  10. #1020
    An Israeli gunman has shot and wounded two Palestinians in East Jerusalem, where Tel Aviv continues to expand its settlement activity despite international opposition.

    The 20-year-old man produced a pistol on Friday and shot a 13-year-old boy and a 40-year-old man from Silwan, a mostly Palestinian neighborhood.

    The shooter later told the police that he had been attacked by a group of six Palestinians who pelted him with stones and that he opened fire in self defense, Haaretz reported.

    Police said the two victims, who were injured in the legs, were taken to the nearby Makassed hospital for treatment.

    The incident sparked outrage among Palestinians who protested the shooting by throwing stones at police and some Israeli homes in Silwan.

    Tensions between the Palestinians and the Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem (al-Quds) have escalated since Israeli authorities ordered the removal of two Palestinian families from their homes.

    Tel Aviv has also stepped up its threats to demolish other houses it claims to have been built without permits. Israel occupied East Jerusalem during the 1967 six-day war and illegally annexed it later.

    The Israeli regime has so far failed in persuading the international community to recognize Jerusalem as its 'eternal and indivisible' capital, and all foreign embassies remain within Tel Aviv.

    MRS/MD

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