:icon_sadangel2: Palestine Peace a dream?

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Obama administration that Tel Aviv “reserves itself operational freedom” on Iran, according to an aide.

The premier during his recent visit to Washington "clarified that Israel reserves itself operational freedom, and several of the most senior figures in the Obama administration said 'of course'," Netanyahu's national security advisor Uzi Arad told Israel Army Radio.

The remarks came a day after CIA Director Leon Panetta said that Tel Aviv knows that launching a military attack on Iran would mean "big trouble".

The CIA director acknowledged that he had recently visited Israel to warn its leaders against staging an attack on Iran.

"The Israelis are obviously concerned about Iran and focused on it. But [Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu] understands that if Israel goes it alone, it will mean big trouble. He knows that for the sake of Israeli security, they have to work together with others," Panetta said.

Arad, however, claimed that the US acknowledged that “it would not necessarily receive forewarning of an Israeli strike against Tehran's nuclear facilities.”

He explained that even in the past “Israel did not update the United States regarding military operations.”

Netanyahu, after his meeting with Barack Obama, declared that he had "reached a great understanding on Iran" with the US president.

Israel -- the sole possessor of a nuclear arsenal in the Middle East -- accuses Iran of making efforts to develop atomic bombs, maintaining that a "nuclear Iran" is the prime existential threat to its security.

Iran, which conducts a low-level enrichment program, is signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to install surveillance cameras at its facilities and to conduct nuclear inspections.

Source: Press TV

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France slams Premier Benjamin Netanyahu for referring to Jerusalem [al-Quds] as the future capital of Israel, saying such remarks undermine the peace process.

Foreign ministry spokesman Frederic Desagneaux said Israel's insistence on categorically ruling out any Palestinian claim on the holy city, "prejudices the final status agreement," AFP reported.

"In France's eyes, Jerusalem should, within the framework of a negotiated peace deal, become the capital of two states," he added.

Israel captured east al-Quds in the 1967 Six-Day War and expropriated 6,000 acres (2,430 hectares), or over one third of the area, which was privately owned by Palestinians. It then started housing the Jewish settlers in illegal settlements which presently accommodate 285,000.

"Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours," Netanyahu had said on Thursday during talks with US President Barack Obama in Washington.

The non-conciliatory position has attracted criticism from the international community including Washington -- Tel Aviv's oldest and staunchest ally.

HN/MMN

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Tel Aviv illegally dumps hazardous waste in the Palestinian West Bank, gifting cancer, sterility and mental disorders to the local population.

In an exclusive interview with Press TV, Deputy Director of the Palestinian environmental authority Jamil Mtoor confirmed that Israel cuts disposal costs by discarding its waste on Palestinian territory at the expense of the population.

"For several years, Israeli companies have been dumping solid and hazardous waste in different West Bank villages," Mtoor said.

"They have been using the Palestinian land in a village called Shoukba near Ramallah to dump x-ray films, releasing carcinogens into the environment, and this has left many people with asthma-related illnesses," he explained.

Witnesses report that Israeli companies have also buried the carcasses of thousands of chickens infected with the avian flu virus in Nablus, to the north of the West Bank.

The Palestinian Authority has arrested a number of Palestinians for cooperating with Israeli dumping companies, taking legal action against them.

Another bone of contention is the Israeli nuclear reactor of Dimona, which lies just a couple of kilometers away from al-Khalil (Hebron) to the south of the West Bank.

Israel launched its nuclear activities in the late 1950s with the construction of the Dimona reactor and has attracted a torrent of criticism for developing the sole nuclear arsenal of the Middle East with support from the US.

The residents of several small villages that surround al-Khalil have found areas in the soil which have been sealed with cement. Studies show the radioactivity level in these areas to be very high.

Flies, mosquitoes and many kinds of insects do not exist in the vicinity; only the hardiest of plants survive there.

Around 415 cancer cases and hundreds of abnormal births were reported between the years 1995-2007.

Source: Press TV

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that he will make no concessions on Jerusalem (al-Quds) -- a key area claimed by the Palestinians.

"Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours," Netanyahu said Thursday after a visit to the United States where President Barack Obama opposed Israeli efforts to stonewall the formation of a Palestinian state.

Directly addressing the US administration -- plagued by the influence of Israeli lobby groups on American politics --, Netanyahu took Obama to task for suggesting that the Israeli-annexed city should be returned to the Palestinians.

"The new US administration informs us with intolerable ease that we have to give up Jerusalem," Netanyahu said at a state ceremony at Ammunition Hill in East al-Quds to mark Jerusalem Day.

"With all due respect, the US president sees the American interest and does not know that Jerusalem is not a territorial issue, but a much deeper one… the hope of two thousand years/the land of Zion and Jerusalem," he said.

Netanyahu's remarks have caused considerable consternation among Palestinians who see the city as the capital of their future state.

Dozens of Palestinians rallied on Thursday in an attempt to denounce the Israeli claim to the holy city.

The United States has long supported Israel by vetoing UN Security Council resolutions against Tel Aviv, blocking all world efforts to end the nearly-60-year-old conflict over the city.

In the face of its currently marred image, however, the US has attempted to distance itself from the Israeli quest for a solely Jewish Israel but has managed to do little to confront the Zionist land grab and the ongoing aggression against the native population.

Israel captured east al-Quds in the 1967 Six-Day War and expropriated 6,000 acres (2,430 hectares), or over one third of the area, which was privately owned by Palestinians.

Tel Aviv then constructed thousands of places for Jewish settlers to live in the city. More than 285,000 Israelis currently live in the buildings -- considered by the international community as illegally constructed.

The government of Netanyahu has so far refused to endorse the two-state solution or to freeze Israeli settlement expansion work in the West Bank and has continued the imposition of a nearly-two-year-old blockade on the Palestinian Gaza Strip.

HRF/JG/AA

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Israeli police have dismantled an illegal Jewish outpost in the West Bank in an apparent goodwill gesture to the Obama administration with which Tel Aviv has a rift.

A combination of police and military personnel destroyed the illegal hilltop settlement at Maoz Esther on Thursday. No arrests were made.

The encampment was home to around four families who used to live in a number of concrete structures and several temporary shacks.

The destruction of the tiny Maoz Esther output -- constructed in the year 2005 by residents of a nearby settlement -- followed the removal of another small West Bank outpost nearly two months ago.

The move came just three days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited the United States and conferred with US President Barack Obama. At their White House meeting on Monday, Obama told Netanyahu that illegal settlement expansions "have to be stopped."

Washington regards Israeli settlements as a hurdle in the way of comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian peace. The settlements are erected on occupied lands that the Palestinians claim for a future state.

Under the 2002 Roadmap for Peace plan brokered by the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia, Israel has to 'dismantle settlement outposts erected since 2001 and also freeze all settlement activity.'

MP/AA

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The Israeli army has arrested at least 26 Palestinians as part of its notorious kidnapping campaign in the West Bank city of Qal-qiliya.

Two Israeli soldiers and a Palestinian policeman were wounded during the incursion into Qal-qiliya early on Thursday.

Palestinians residing in the West Bank fall victim to Tel Aviv's overnight operations on a regular basis despite a valid security between Israel and the Palestinian National Authority.

According to the agreement the PA is in charge of security of the West Bank and Israeli servicemembers have no authority in the region.

A Palestinian specialist on detainees' affairs says Israel has kidnapped close to 2,400 Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza since the start 2009.

More than 11,500 Palestinians -- including women and children -- imprisoned by Israel are suffering under harsh conditions in detention facilities.

MSH/MMN

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Senior Israeli officials have rejected the US-backed two-state solution shortly after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returned home from a visit to Washington.

"This idea of two states for two peoples is a stupid and childish solution to a very complex problem," senior aides to Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, were quoted by Ynet as saying on Wednesday.

They made it clear that Israel would continue building settlements, despite US President Barack Obama's opposition.

The daily quoted another top advisor as terming the idea of two states as "juvenile."

Earlier, Israel National Security Advisor, Uzi Arad, had cast doubt on the plan in Washington. "If this is about give and take, then what is the Palestinian side ready to give? You can't expect Israel alone to answer the Palestinians' demands time and again."

"The demands to stop construction hinge on the Palestinians fulfilling their obligations," another senior Israeli official said, adding that settlements would continue in Jerusalem (al-Quds) in any final agreement.

The government of Netanyahu has so far refused to endorse the two-state solution and to freeze the settlement expansion work in the West Bank.

RZS/SME/RE

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NEW YORK: The health situation of Palestinian refugees in Gaza strip is deteriorating due to Israel's blockade of crossings into the area, a
United Nations agency has warned.

Even before Israel's military offensive targeting Hamas militants on the tiny strip of land earlier this year, which killed over 1,400 people, the border closures had a grave impact on the health of Gazans and the ability of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to provide health services.

According to the UNRWA's latest health report, some 4,000 medical items per day on average could cross into Gaza before the conflict, whereas only 40 items are currently allowed to be imported daily.

UNRWA also reported that restrictions on building supplies have resulted in damaged health care centres being left in a state of disrepair and a scarcity of paper has led to difficulties in keeping medical records.

The report also voiced deep concern over the lack of adequate food to children, and said that on top of widespread unemployment, no petrol or diesel has been delivered to Gaza and only very limited amounts of cooking gas has made it into the Strip since November 2, causing anaemia in 30 per cent of children below 36 months of age and 50 per cent of pregnant women.

Guido Sabatinelli, UNRWA Director of Health, told reporters that the agency forecast a 25 per cent shortfall in its biennium budget for 2009-2010. Since needs were expanding, the agency said it would be obliged to suspend some of its services next year, including hospital closures.

Sabatinelli said that the UNRWA health budget was USD 80 million to provide for 4 million persons, or USD 20 per person per year, which is well below the recommendation by the World Health Organisation of USD 60 per person as an absolute minimum.
TOI

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Jerusalem will never again be divided, at a ceremony marking 42 years of annexation.

"United Jerusalem is Israel's capital. Jerusalem was always ours and will always be ours. It will never again be partitioned and divided," he said.

The US has always said Jerusalem's fate should be negotiated as part of a peace plan with the Palestinians.

Earlier, Israeli police demolished illegal settlements in the West Bank.

Mr Netanyahu spoke at a ceremony commemorating 42 years since Israel captured East Jerusalem.

Israel took the whole of Jerusalem in 1967 and extended the city's municipal boundaries, putting both East and West Jerusalem under its sovereignty and civil law.

The city's status remains disputed, with Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem considered illegal under international law.

Israeli settlers try to rebuild a demolished building in the West Bank
Israeli settlements in the West Bank are considered illegal

Palestinians are seeking to establish their capital in East Jerusalem under a two-state solution.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina said: "Such declarations [by Israel] defy the idea of a two-state solution."

On Thursday, a small illegal settler outpost camp of Maoz Ester in the occupied West Bank was destroyed by Israeli police. Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal under international law and widely considered a barrier to peace.

On returning from Washington, Mr Netanyahu had said that Israel was ready "to immediately begin" peace talks with the Palestinians and Syria.

But he insisted that any peace settlement "must find a solution to Israel's security needs".

At the talks on Monday, Mr Netanyahu was pressed by President Barack Obama over US plans on a two-state solution.

But the Israeli leader - who also came under pressure to rein in Israeli settlement-building - refrained from endorsing the idea.


BBC-News

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PARIS: France accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday of prejudicing the outcome of the Middle East peace process by declaring that Jerusalem would forever be Israel’s undivided capital.

“The declaration made by the Israeli prime minister yesterday in Jerusalem prejudices the final status agreement,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Frederic Desagneaux told reporters in Paris.

The international community does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the city’s status is a stumbling block in negotiations with Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state.

On Thursday, at a ceremony marking Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War, Netanyahu said: “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. It has always been, will remain so forever and will never be divided.”

Reacting to the speech, the French spokesman took the opportunity to restate Paris’ position on the future status of Jerusalem and to criticize Israel for allowing Jewish settlers to build on disputed land.

“In France’s eyes, Jerusalem should, within the framework of a negotiated peace deal, become the capital of two states,” he said, adding that President Nicolas Sarkozy had told Israeli lawmakers this in a speech last year.

“Actions such as the destruction of Palestinian homes or the transformation of Arab districts risk provoking an escalation in violence. They are unacceptable and contrary to international law,” Desagneaux said.

“In broad terms, France condemns the ongoing settlement, including in East Jerusalem. We reiterate the need for a freeze on colonization activities, including those linked to natural population growth,” he added.

War drills

In a separate development, Israel’s air force held a large-scale exercise simulating war on several fronts with enemies that include Iran, Israeli defense officials said yesterday.

The practice this week involved Israel’s entire air arm and was meant to prepare for an all-out war, including missile attacks aimed at Israeli cities, the officials said. It lasted four days, ending on Thursday.

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Source: Arab News