:icon_sadangel2: Palestine Peace a dream?

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23-08-2009

Israel denies press credentials for the Swedish daily Aftonbladet amid a row over an article accusing Israeli troops of involvement in an organ theft scandal.

The newspaper published They plunder the organs of our sons last Tuesday, suggesting that the Israeli army kidnapped and killed young Palestinians to harvest their organs.

The article, authored by freelance journalist Donald Bostrom, sparked outrage among Israeli officials who immediately called on Sweden to condemn the report.

The Swedish Embassy in Tel Aviv called the report "appalling," but Sweden's Foreign Ministry refused to condemn it, saying the country has a "free press."

Now two journalists for the Scandinavian daily will have to wait for Israeli press credentials, CNN reported.

The reporter and cameraman from Aftonbladet were told Sunday when they applied for press accreditation that the process could take up to 90 days and that the newspaper's decision to run the organ harvesting article last week will be taken into consideration when the request is considered.

"We have no duty to supply them with press cards immediately; we have 90 days to decide about their status," said Danny Seaman, the head of Israel's press office.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the Swedish government to condemn the article.

“We're not asking the Swedish government for an apology, we're asking for their condemnation,” an official - speaking on condition of anonymity - quoted Netanyahu as saying.

SB/MD


Uncalled-for attempts by Israeli religious extremists to influence others shrink the entity's population as the secular flee the alleged ideological inroads.

The mass departures reduce the number of the Israeli residents of the occupied territories by 'thousands' each year, Russia Today said on Thursday, reporting on the increasing frictions between the two ends of the demographic spectrum.

"They are making rules every day. New rules and they want you to be like everybody else," said a formerly religious Jew Eyal Akerman.

The secular and non-orthodox comprise 84% of the 7-million-strong Israeli population currently residing in the occupied territories.

Secular segments of the population accuse the ultra-orthodox Jews, known as Haredis, of deliberately seeking residence in Jerusalem [al-Quds] and Tel Aviv where the non-religious prevail.

"We have been the majority here for 45 years. … I'm sorry, but we're not going to allow this to continue," an Israeli resident, David Shulman, was quoted by Los Angeles Times as saying earlier in the month.

The daily likened the apparent war of attrition by the extremists to the lead-up to the occupying regime's annexation of the West Bank.

Sabbaths regularly witness skirmishes between secular residents and the Haredis which lead to police intervention. In one case the residents confronted them as they started spreading their ideas to the local youths under the guise of celebrating religious occasions.

"The more extreme they've become, the more extreme the population is becoming," Shulman added.

The American-Israel Demographic Research Group's estimate showed that, enlarging rapidly, the ultra-Orthodox community was expected to grow from 16% of the population to 23% by 2025, the paper said.

Tensions are snowballing among the religious as well. The Russian agency aired pictures caught on camera in a Jerusalem synagogue where non-Haredi rabbi Mordechai Osher's extremist coreligionists battered, "handcuffed me and hit me until I bled." The attackers had reportedly started out to seize non-Haredi synagogues.

"I am surprised this is happening. The people will always act in a way they think is right so maybe I am not so surprised. I hope my experience is a lesson for people that behaving in this way is not the right choice," said Osher, who is to take the matter to court.

Rabbi Avraham Sutton, though, dismissed the idea of a religious conflict, and said, "In Israel, the secular, which is again an agenda directed by European and American interests, is to uproot the Jewish people from their heritage to dissociate the Jewish youth from any historical context."

HN/AKM


Former US presidential nominee Mike Huckabee says Israel is much better favored by the American evangelicals than by the American Jewish community.

"Maybe one of the hard things is to convince some of our Jewish friends that Evangelicals are the best friends they've got - because I think generally, that's the case," Huckabee said in the epilogue to a three-day visit to Israel.

"Evangelicals are so much more supportive of Israel than the American Jewish community," he added in an interview with the CBN News.

He said that the evangelical Christians were, unlike Jews, consistently supportive of the Israeli territorial assertions.

"I don't find that kind of dichotomy generally within the Evangelical community…. It's pretty adamant: There ought to be one city. It ought to be a Jewish state. And it ought to be secure."

Some evangelical churches fully support the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian lands and even consider the Israeli massacres in the West Bank and Jerusalem [al-Quds], which have been internationally denounced as ethnic cleansing, to be a biblical imperative.

Most evangelicals in the US voted for the pastor and former Arkansas Governor during his 2008 Republican presidential candidacy. Fifty five percent of the American population is reported to be Evangelical Christians

During his visit to Israel, Huckabee reiterated his longtime Zionist affiliations by asserting that Jerusalem had to be the eternal united capital of Israel.

HN/MB/AKM

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24-08-2009

The Swedish author of a controversial article accusing the Israeli Army of harvesting organs from wounded or killed Palestinians says he has received several death threats.

Freelance journalist Donald Bostrom who published the article in the Swedish daily Aftonbladet has raised Israel's ire.

Bostrom, who spoke to CNN from Stockholm, said he had received several death threats about the article.

"I have an e-mail here… 'The Nazis should die and you will be next; we will meet you outside, you will be the next news very soon. Meet you outside'," Bostrom said.

Bostrom said he wrote the article in reaction to a recently discovered crime syndicate in New Jersey, which was involved in organ smuggling.

He said the purpose of his opinion article was to call for an investigation into numerous claims in the 1990s that such activity was going on.

The report has sparked outrage among Israeli officials who have been calling on Stockholm to condemn the article.

Although the Swedish Embassy in Tel Aviv called the report "as shocking and appalling to us Swedes, as it is to Israeli citizens", Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt refused to condemn the report, saying a free press is an integral part of his country's democracy.

SB/MD

[I]Donald Bostrom offers clarification on his article They plunder the organs of our sons, which caused controversy in Israel for claiming that Israeli soldiers kidnap Palestinians to steal their organs.

In an interview with Press TV the Swedish freelance journalist said that his article was based on his observations and claims of the Palestinian families who lost their loved ones in 1992, during the first Palestinian uprising.

"The article is not accusing the (Israeli) army of snatching organs. The Palestinian families, the Palestine mothers, say that they think or they are sure that 'someone' took organs from their young men," Bostrom told Press TV on Monday.

The article published last week in Aftonbladet, Sweden's largest circulation daily, suggests the Israeli army kidnapped and killed young Palestinians to harvest their organs. It sheds light on the case of Bilal Ahmed Ghanem, a 19-year-old Palestinian man, who was shot dead in 1992 by Israeli forces in the West Bank village of Imatin.

Bostrom, who witnessed the man's killing, said Ghanem's body was abducted following the shooting and was returned at midnight -- during an imposed curfew -- several days later by the Israeli military with a cut from the stomach to the neck that had been stitched up.

Bilal's brother, who was 15-years-old at the time, recounts the shooting incident. "A number of (Israeli) soldiers ambushed (the Palestinians) and opened fire. The fist shot hit (Bilal) in the chest, the second in the leg. We believe that he was still alive after sustaining the two bullet wounds."

The mother, Sadija, told Aftonbladet that Israeli troopers could have arrested him, but instead they decided to kill him.

According to the family, the Israeli army demanded NIS 5,000 (about USD 1,300) to return the body.

"It was the middle of the night. The soldiers caused an electrical power outage in the entire village. Bilal was returned in a black bag; he had no teeth. The body was stitched from the neck all the way down to the abdomen," the Swedish newspaper quoted the mother as saying.

When Bilal's family asked what had happened to the body, the soldiers told them that it had undergone an autopsy in Tel Aviv. The family, however, claims Bilal's organs had been stolen.

Bostrom argued that an autopsy would be required if the cause of death was not apparent, while in this case it was clear that Bilal was shot dead.

After that incident, at least 20 Palestinian families told Bostrom that they suspected the Israeli military had taken the organs of their sons after they had been killed by Israeli forces and their bodies had been taken away.

They plunder the organs of our sons has enraged Israeli officials, with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman saying on Thursday that Stockholm's refusal to take a stand reminded him of Swedish behavior during World War II.

"It is a shame that the Swedish Foreign Ministry does not get involved when speaking about blood libels against Jews, something that is reminiscent of Sweden's position during World War II when it also did not intervene," Lieberman said in a sharply worded statement.

This is while Bostrom told Press TV that he first raised the issue in his 2001 book titled Inshallah: The conflict between Israel and Palestine. He said that at the time there was no reaction from the Israeli government.

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25-08-2009

Israeli troops have killed one Palestinian and injured two others in the north sector of Gaza in yet another violation of a truce signed after Israel's 22-day war on the strip.

Israeli forces opened fire on the three young men in the al-Atatra neighborhood, in the town of Beit Lahia on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip on Monday.

One of the wounded Palestinians later died in an Israeli clinic from excessive blood loss, medical sources told Press TV, adding that none of the three youths was known to be a member of any Palestinian faction.

An Israeli army spokeswoman has confirmed the incident, saying that three rockets were fired into southern Israel following the shooting.

Since the end of the 22-day war, the Israeli army has launched several cross border attacks on Gaza, rolling its tanks and bulldozers into the impoverished enclave, opening fire on villagers' homes and flattening cultivated fields.

The deadly Israeli offensive into Gaza last December resulted in 1,500 Palestinian deaths and approximately 5,450 injuries. Most of the victims were civilians

The offensive also inflicted more than USD 1.6 billion of damage on Gaza's already-stricken economy.

FF/TG/DT

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The US and Israel have once again failed to end a public row over Tel Aviv's illegal settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem (al-Quds).

During a four-hour meeting with US President Barack Obama's special envoy to the Middle East in London on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again refused to heed international calls backed by the US for a complete end to the expansion of Jewish settlements on Palestinian land, considered the main obstacle to peace.

Netanyahu, who is on a four-day European tour, had earlier rejected Britain's demand for a halt to the illegal work, saying his government will not allow new settlements, but wants to continue building within existing ones to allow for "natural growth".

Palestinians have repeatedly said that they will resume peace negotiations only after Israel completely halts all settlement activity. Israel captured the West Bank and East Jerusalem -- where the Palestinians claim for the capital of their future state -- during the 1967 war.

The Guardian newspaper had earlier reported that Israel was close to an agreement on a partial settlement freeze in return for tougher international sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program and diplomatic relations with Arab countries.

Spokesmen for the two officials said that Netanyahu and US envoy George Mitchell made "good progress" during their discussions, agreeing that "meaningful" talks must start with Palestinians. No other details of their meeting have been revealed.

"The prime minister and George Mitchell agreed that there is a need to begin meaningful negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in order to move towards a regional peace agreement," said the Hebrew-language statement.

According to a statement released after the meeting, Israeli and US officials will meet again next week in Washington to pursue efforts to revive the long-stalled peace process.

HE/AA

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Israel's hawkish Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described illegal settlement construction as 'a territorial issue' and not a core problem.

During his Tuesday meeting with his British counterpart Gordon Brown in London, Netanyahu said the illegal settlement activity in the occupied West Bank should be resolved in negotiations with the Palestinians.

While the settlement construction is widely seen a major obstacle to the Middle East peace process, ultra rightist Netanyahu blamed the hindered Palestinian-Israeli talks on Palestine's refusal to recognize Israel. The settlements are not the cause of the Israeli-Arab conflict, but the result of it, he said.

The Israeli premier will to meet with US Mideast envoy George Mitchell early Wednesday in which they are expected to discuss Washington's call for a freeze on Israel's settlement construction.

Netanyahu has been resisting international calls for a halt to its settlement activity, arguing the hundreds of thousands of Jews settled down in the West bank now need more educational and housing space.

"This is very different from grabbing land. I made clear that we are not going to expropriate new land."

Netanyahu repeated Israel's claim on Jerusalem (al-Quds) 'as the sovereign capital of Israel', calling it 'the united capital of the Jewish people' for the last 3,000 years.

This would further strain peace negotiations with the Palestinians, who view Jerusalem as the capital city of a homeland they have been struggling for.

Netanyahu criticized the Palestinian Authority for its anti-Israeli rhetoric in its Bethlehem conference and additional conditions to negotiations, suggesting the Palestinian side lacked 'fortitude and leadership'.

Hundreds of people rallied in London in a show of protest to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands. The demonstrators shouted slogans like 'Netanyahu's a war criminal,' waving Palestinian flags, and signs that read: 'Stop the siege on Gaza,' 'Free Palestine,' and 'Stop Israel detonators'.

MRS/AKM

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An Israeli attack on a Palestinian tunnel in the Rafah area, in the southern part of the beleaguered Gaza Strip, has killed three brothers and injured at least eight others.

Dr. Muawiya Abu Hassanen, head of the Emergency Unit at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, reported that Mansour al-Battekhy, 30, and his brothers Wael, 26 and Ibrahim, 34, were all killed when the Israeli army shelled a tunnel on August 25.

Majdi al-Baba, the administrative director of Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, said that the rescue teams were still trying to locate residents believed to be trapped under the rubble.

In order to bring in vital supplies, including food and medicines, the 1.5 million residents of Gaza Strip depend on dangerous tunnels.

So far, 116 Palestinians have been killed and more than 510 injured in tunnels since Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on the Gaza Strip three years ago after Hamas came to power in a democratic election.

These figures do not include those killed in Israeli bombardments of the tunnels.

Meanwhile, on the same day, the Israeli military kidnapped five Palestinian civilians during a morning incursion targeting a number of communities in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinian sources said that troops kidnapped three men from Qabalan village in the northern West Bank, one from Jenin, also in the northern West Bank, in addition to one man from Ramallah, in the central West Bank.

As usual, Israeli army radio announced that the arrested men were taken to military detention camps for questioning and that they are on what the military calls its "Wanted List."

FTP/ZAP/HGL

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US military experts have presented a detailed plan to Egyptian security officials and donated high-tech equipment to uncover tunnels.

US officials told their Egyptian counterparts that Congress has approved the allocation of $50 million to secure the 13.5-km (8.4-mile) long border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip.

They added that the Congress-supported plan is sponsoring the installation of US-donated high-tech devices to prevent smuggling on the border.

US officials visited the Rafah border area, where the meeting was held, and inspected the tunnels that were uncovered and blown up by Egypt. Over 300 tunnels have so far been uncovered.

The officials also observed the ongoing installation of surveillance cameras and monitoring systems along the border and thanked Egypt for its efforts to destroy the tunnels on its border with Gaza.

The donated equipment can detect underground tunnels and can also detect any underground movement even if it is far away.

As a result of the crippling land, sea, and air blockade of the Gaza Strip imposed by Israel and Egypt following the democratic victory of Hamas in Palestinian elections, Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants have had to rely on 'illicit' and perilous tunnels as the sole means of obtaining essential supplies such as food and medicines.

FTP/ZAP/HGL

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An Israeli institute, which is planning to detonate 80 tons of explosives in the Negev desert, says the test is part of a study into airwaves and earthquake effects.

The Geophysical Institute of Israel (GII) announced on August 25 that the test, simulating a 3-degree earthquake on the Richter scale, will be carried out today in a controlled underground explosion.

The explosion is part of experiments on seismographical systems. European and Mediterranean countries will be monitoring the tests to examine certain effects of earthquakes.

The explosion will be conducted at a military base in the southern Negev, the Arabs48 news website reported.

Israel has performed similar experiments before - in 2004 with 35 tons and in June 2005 with 20 tons of explosives - both in the southern Negev.

The experiment, financed by the US Defense Department, is a joint project with the University of Hawaii and is part of a scientific project intended to improve seismological and acoustic readings in Israel and its environs, up to a 1,000 km (621 mile) radius.


FTP/ZAP/HGL

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British police have heightened security outside the premiers' office as hundreds of demonstrators protested the Israeli prime minister's visit to the country.

Hundreds of people attended the demonstration on Tuesday to protest the Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands as UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown held a meeting with his Israeli counterpart, Benjamin Netanyahu in London.

The rally began about 30 minutes prior to Netanyahu's arrival at Brown's office on Tuesday, Ynet reported.

The demonstrators were protesting 'the occupation,' waving Palestinian flags, and signs reading 'Stop the siege on Gaza,' 'Free Palestine,' and 'Stop Israel detonators' and hollered slogans like "Netanyahu's a war criminal."

Based on the report, at some point, several demonstrators tried breaching the secured perimeter outside Brown's office, but were stopped by British police.

Netanyahu arrived in London on Monday for two days of meetings with Brown and US Mideast mediator George Mitchell.

After the meeting the two premiers attended a press conference during which Brown said the demand to halt settlement construction remains in place.

Netanyahu however said Jerusalem "is not a settlement. It is the sovereign capital of the State of Israel. We have been building in Jerusalem for 3,000 years."

The status of Jerusalem has been among the thorny issues in the stalled peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, with the Israelis claiming the city as their "eternal, undivided capital"-- a position not recognized by the international community.

SB/MD

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Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayad says the authority will create a de facto Palestinian state without waiting for the result of peace talks with Israel.

Fayad said during a press conference in Ramallah on Tuesday that the PA government is determined to build state institutions within two years, Ynet reported.

"The Palestinian government is struggling determinedly against a hostile occupation regime ... in order to establish a de facto state apparatus within the next two years," he said.

The prime minister also called on Palestinians to be "united and steadfast in their determination to remain on their homeland, end the occupation and achieve their freedom and independence."

"The world should also know that we are not prepared to continue living under a brutal occupation and siege that flouts not only the law, but also the principles of natural justice and human decency," he concluded.

SB/MD