Category Archives: Obama administration

Forecasts of West Bank violence may well come true

Forecasts of West Bank violence may well come true
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, August 5, 2009

Last weekend the State of Israel discovered the “other” West Bank. With suspicious timing, almost all the Israeli media devoted broad coverage to the improvement in the living conditions of the Palestinians in the West Bank, the increased freedom of movement permitted by Israel, the law and order that have returned to Palestinian cities and the momentum of construction and development – the new malls, the shows, the cafes.

We hate to admit it, but the Palestinian Authority, as opposed to Israel, is keeping to the requirements of the road map and is operating against the “terror infrastructure.” In the past, one of the easiest tasks for a journalist in the territories was interviewing armed men. Today they cannot be found in the West Bank cities. The government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad disbanded Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, and the services subordinate to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas are fighting an all-out war against the armed men of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

It’s true that the West Bank has never been so quiet. But we must make no mistake; the situation remains fragile. In the opinion of many senior members of Fatah, in light of the dead end that characterizes the diplomatic contacts, the next explosion between Israel and the Palestinians is only a matter of time.

Although the PA has succeeded in improving the quality of life of West Bank residents, the Palestinians are still living under occupation. Although many of the checkpoints have been removed, there are enough surprise checkpoints and various obstacles that undermine freedom of movement; the Israel Defense Forces rarely operates in the Palestinian cities, but does so occasionally, and, above all, the PA and Fatah are forced to deal with their image as collaborators, without any diplomatic compensation from the Israeli side.

This time it probably won’t be an intifada-style popular uprising. The Palestinian public seems to be too tired for that. But from within Fatah there is a growing number of rebellious voices, calling to use weapons against the settlers and IDF soldiers.

Activists who were at the center of the last intifada and were pushed to the margins of the political arena are warning that turning the PA into the “Dayton Authority” (named after the U.S. security coordinator Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, who is helping to rehabilitate the Palestinian security forces) will not help Fatah to improve its status in the street. In the final analysis, they claim, the diplomatic crisis vis-a-vis Israel will lead to a renewal of terror attacks in the West Bankand to the formation of armed cells who will operate clandestinely.

The forecast of Hussam Khader, a leader of the Tanzim Fatah faction and one of the prominent figures in the last intifada, is even more pessimistic. He says the diplomatic freeze will lead to the removal of
the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank, the strengthening of the Islamic extremists, and within about a year, a violent conflict. “The residents will throw shoes at the PA. A day will come and they will be regarded like Lahoud’s men [a reference to the commander of the South Lebanon Army],” Khader says. “It’s possible that we are marching toward a situation in which there will be two separate Palestinian entities, in the West Bank and in Gaza, but Israel must help to prove that the situation in the West Bank is better.”

Such claims are being heard with increasing frequency on the backdrop of the sixth Fatah convention in Bethlehem, at which the leadership of the organization will be elected for the first time in 20 years. The candidates know that one surefire way to win the support of conference delegates is to speak in praise of the armed struggle. If the Israeli government continues to entrench itself in its position that there is no Palestinian partner, and that this is not the time to discuss a peace agreement, it is quite possible the forecasts of a violent outbreak will, in fact, come true.

Free marriage counseling
By Tom Friedman, New York Times, August 2, 2009

Here’s what Israelis need to understand: President Obama is not some outlier when it comes to Israel. His call for a settlements freeze reflects attitudes that have been building in America for a long time. For the last 40 years, a succession of Israeli governments has misled, manipulated or persuaded naïve U.S. presidents that since Israel was negotiating to give up significant territory, there was no need to fight over “insignificant” settlements on some territory. Behind this charade, Israeli settlers bit off more and more of the West Bank, creating a huge moral, security and economic burden for Israel and its friends.

As Bradley Burston, a columnist for Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, put it last week: “The settlement movement has cost Israel some $100 billion. … The double standard which for decades has favored settlers with inexpensive housing, heavily subsidized social services, and blind-eye building permits has long been accompanied by a kid-gloves approach regarding settler violence against Palestinians and their property. … Settlers and settlement planners have covertly bent and distorted zoning procedures, military directives, and government decrees in order to boost settlement, block Palestinian construction, agriculture, and access to employment, and effectively neutralize measures intended to foster Israeli-Palestinian peace progress.”

For years, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the pro-Israel lobby, rather than urging Israel to halt this corrosive process, used their influence to mindlessly protect Israel from U.S. pressure on this issue and to dissuade American officials and diplomats from speaking out against settlements. Everyone in Washington knows this, and a lot of people — people who care about Israel — are sick of it. [continued…]

Israel targets human rights groups
By Jonathan Cook, The National, August 3, 2009

In a bid to staunch the flow of damaging evidence of war crimes committed during Israel’s winter assault on Gaza, the Israeli government has launched a campaign to clamp down on human rights groups, both in Israel and abroad.

It has begun by targeting one of the world’s leading rights organisations, the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), as well as a local group of dissident army veterans, Breaking the Silence, which last month published the testimonies of 26 combat soldiers who served in Gaza.

Additionally, according to the Israeli media, the government is planning a “much more aggressive stance” towards human rights groups working to help the Palestinians. [continued…]

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In release of journalists, both Clintons had key roles

In release of journalists, both Clintons had key roles
By Mark Landler and Peter Baker, New York Times, August 5, 2009

Former President Bill Clinton left North Korea on Wednesday morning after a dramatic 20-hour visit, in which he won the freedom of two American journalists, opened a diplomatic channel to North Korea’s reclusive government and dined with the North’s ailing leader, Kim Jong-il.

Mr. Clinton departed from Pyongyang, the capital, around 8:30 a.m. local time, along with the journalists, Laura Ling, 32, and Euna Lee, 36, on a private jet bound for Los Angeles, according to a statement from the former president’s office.

The North Korean government, which in June sentenced the women to 12 years of hard labor for illegally entering North Korean territory, announced hours earlier that it had pardoned the women after Mr. Clinton apologized to Mr. Kim for their actions, according to the North Korean state media. [continued…]

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Ethnic cleansing in occupied Jerusalem

‘I am homeless’ ‘This is a Jewish country’ (voices from the evictions in E. Jerusalem)
By Joseph Dana and Mairav Zonszein, Mondoweiss, August 3, 2009

After receiving eviction notices last May, three Palestinian families constituting 53 people, including 20 children, were forcibly removed from their homes under High Court order at dawn yesterday, August 2.

The Hanouns, the Rawis and the al-Ghawis, all families who fled their homes in West Jerusalem and became refugees during the 1948 War, have been living in their houses since 1956, when Jordan reached an agreement with UNRWA to resettle them. They are now living on the streets, homeless.

Just a week ago they were living inside their home and now there are Jewish settlers inside, exhibiting not the least bit of remorse for the homeless family just outside. The Hanoun family’s furniture was seized by Israeli forces and they are now responsible for paying the storage and mover fees. Meanwhile, the Jewish settlers are living with round-the-clock security, not allowing anyone near. At one house, the police actually had the nerve to tell us not to film too close, as we should respect the privacy of the new residents. [continued…]

Israeli settlements: Obama should know better
By Mairav Zonszein, The Nation, July 31, 2009

Early in the morning on July 7, an excited crowd of more than 100 gathered in Ben-Gurion International Airport to greet 232 new Jewish immigrants to Israel who arrived from North America on an El Al charter flight organized and funded by Nefesh B’Nefesh (which means “Soul in Soul” in Hebrew). The airport’s old and defunct Terminal 1 has been transformed into a celebratory arrival hall for new immigrants brought by the nonprofit organization, which was founded in 2001 with the aim of revitalizing immigration to Israel from North America and Britain.

Recently considered by the Jewish Agency to be serious competition when it comes to immigration, NBN is now recognized as the official operator of North American immigration to Israel. After some years of animosity and tension between the two groups, the Jewish Agency, along with the Israeli government, signed a contract with NBN last September that not only grants formal recognition to NBN but also guarantees that the government and the Jewish Agency will each fund a third of NBN’s $12 million annual budget. The remaining third comes from private donors. It is noteworthy, given the fact that Israeli taxpayer money goes toward this enterprise, that so few Israelis have heard of it. [continued…]

Israeli law ‘violates sovereignty’
Al Jazeera, August 2, 2009

An Israeli judge has ruled that Israel has authority over a disputed area in the Ayalon Valley, a move that could allow the confiscation of Palestinian land bordering the occupied West bank.

The decision, reported in the Israeli press on Sunday, goes against a previous agreement that all issues of sovereignty must be decided by both parties.

Unlike East Jerusalem or the Golan Heights, both considered internationally to be occupied territory, the area around Latrun, about 25km from Jerusalem, was never annexed by Israel. [continued…]

Poll: Half of Israelis feel those born elsewhere can’t be ‘true Israelis’
By Dana Weiler-Polak, Haaretz, August 3, 2009

About half of Israelis believe that in order to be a “true Israeli,” one has to have been born in Israel, so finds the Israel Democracy Institute in its annual Israeli Democracy Index, published Monday.

The report, which this year focused on the integration of Russian immigrants into Israeli society, tested the prevalent notion that the integration was smooth. The findings of the study, however, suggested otherwise. The study revealed that most Russian immigrants feel that they have no power to change their immediate reality, even 20 years after the immigration from the former Soviet Union began.

The democracy poll was conducted in March 2009, and included a random sample of adult Israelis. 1,191 people were polled in three different languages: Hebrew, Arabic and Russian. The margin of error is 2.8 percent.

The study found that the mood of the Russian immigrants is generally darker, the problems they face are tougher, and that their reactions are harsher than veteran Israelis’. The immigrant sector voices more concern over Israel’s security threats, is less connected to Israel, and fewer immigrants say that they would want their children to grow up in Israel.

The report found that 77 percent of Russian immigrants support promoting Arab migration from Israel, as opposed to 47 percent of native Jews who say they would support such a policy. 33 percent of the native Jews accept the existence of Arab political parties within the Knesset, while only 23 percent of the immigrants accept this fact. 27 percent of Israelis oppose the statement “a Jewish majority is necessary for fateful decisions for the country” ? in comparison with 38 percent who opposed the same statement in 2003. These figures indicate a growing support for the stripping of political rights from Israel’s Arab minority. [continued…]

Mission Accomplished: A Report on the VIVA PALESTINA USA Convoy mission to break the Israeli Siege of Gaza
By Jeff Warner, Mondoweiss, August 2, 2009

I was one of about 175 Americans who formed the VIVA PALESTINA USA Convoy that entered the Gaza Strip on Wednesday evening, July 15, 2009, carrying medical and other humanitarian aid. We entered the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing from Egypt with permission to stay 24 hours.

The 1.5 million people who live in the Gaza Strip have been under Israeli restrictions for over 15 years. Starting in the mid-1990s, Israel imposed restrictions on permits for Palestinian men to work in Israel. Coincident with the unilateral, non-negotiated Israeli withdrawal of settlers and its army in 2005, Israel started to restrict imports and exports. Israel tightened these restrictions in 2006 in response to Hamas winning a majority in the Palestinian Authority elections, and again in 2007 when Hamas won a mini-civil war that was initiated by Fatah and took exclusive control of the Gaza Strip. Restrictions of food, fuel, and medical supplies triggered a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip with the U.N. reporting a large fraction of the people, especially children, suffering from malnutrition. The cut-off of import and export of commercial goods led to destruction of the economy and massive unemployment. The situation was made much worse by the December 2008-January 2009 bombing by Israel that resulted in over 1,400 killed and many buildings destroyed, including government and civic buildings and housing for over 100,000 people. [continued…]

U.S. to push peace in Middle East media campaign
By Mark Landler, New York Times, August 3, 2009

In coming weeks, senior administration officials said, the White House will begin a public-relations campaign in Israel and Arab countries to better explain Mr. Obama’s plans for a comprehensive peace agreement involving Israel, the Palestinians and the Arab world.

The campaign, which will include interviews with Mr. Obama on Israeli and Arab television, amounts to a reframing of a policy that people inside and outside the administration say has become overly defined by the American pressure on Israel to halt settlement construction on the West Bank.

“We’re at a crucial moment now,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel and peace negotiator in the Clinton administration. “There are only so many visits George Mitchell can make.” [continued…]

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In Afghanistan, U.S. may shift strategy

In Afghanistan, U.S. may shift strategy
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Washington Post, July 31, 2009

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan is preparing a new strategy that calls for major changes in the way U.S. and other NATO troops there operate, a vast increase in the size of Afghan security forces and an intensified military effort to root out corruption among local government officials, according to several people familiar with the contents of an assessment report that outlines his approach to the war.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who took charge of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan last month, appears inclined to request an increase in American troops to implement the new strategy, which aims to use more unconventional methods to combat the growing Taliban insurgency, according to members of an advisory group he convened to work on the assessment. Such a request could receive a chilly reception at the White House, where some members of President Obama’s national security team have expressed reluctance about authorizing any more deployments.

Senior military officials said McChrystal is waiting for a recommendation from a team of military planners in Kabul before reaching a final decision on a troop request. Several members of the advisory group, who spoke about the issue of force levels on the condition of anonymity, said that they think more U.S. troops are needed but that it was not clear how large an increase McChrystal would seek. [continued…]

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The case for a tactical pause with Iran

Make them wait
By Trita Parsi, Foreign Policy, July 30, 2009

The Obama administration should avoid repeating the key mistake of the Bush administration, for which Iran was solely viewed through the prism of its nuclear program. Delaying nuclear talks a few months won’t make a dramatic difference to Iran’s nuclear program. It could, however, determine which Iran America and the region will be dealing with for the next few decades — one in which democratic elements strengthen over time, or one where the will of the people grows increasingly irrelevant to Iran’s decision-makers.

Moreover, even nuclear talks would have a negligible impact on the election dispute, Iran currently is not in a position to negotiate. Some in Washington believe that the paralysis in Tehran has weakened Iran and made it more prone to compromise. But rather than delivering more, Iran’s government currently couldn’t deliver anything at all. The infighting has simply incapacitated Iranian decision makers. [continued…]

Showdown between Khamenei and IRGC?
By Muhammad Sahimi, Tehran Bureau, July 28, 2009

Two important developments over the past few days suggest that a possible confrontation may be under way between Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei, and the high command of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).

One development was the order issued by Ayatollah Khamenei overruling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s appointment of Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei as his First Vice President (Iran’s president has eight vice presidents). The second was the firing of ultra hardliner Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejehei, the Minister of Intelligence.

A reliable source in Tehran told the author that both episodes were meant to be signals by the IRGC’s high command to Ayatollah Khamenei that they were in control, and that he should toe the line — their line. According to the source, Ayatollah’s Khamenei’s order to fire Mashaei was delivered to the Voice and Visage (VaV) of the Islamic Republic (Iran’s national radio and television network) on the day Mashaei was appointed by Ahmadinejad. The VaV was asked to announce the order on national television and radio, but Ezzatollah Zarghami, the director of VaV and a former officer in the IRGC, refused to do so. [continued…]

Iran will rise above the ashes
By Amir Soltani Sheikholeslami and Rita Nakashima Brock, Boston Globe, July 30, 2009

In his 1998 speech to the American people, Iran’s reformist president, Muhammad Khatami, said he prayed that “at the close of the 20th century, people would . . . begin a new century of humanity, understanding and durable peace, so that all humanity would enjoy the blessings of life.’’

Khatami’s address marked a stunning departure from the anti-Americanism that had fueled the Iranian revolution. A scholar of The Enlightenment, he praised Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,’’ which “reflects the virtuous and human side of this American civilization. In [Tocqueville’s] view, the significance of this civilization is in the fact that liberty found religion as a cradle for its growth, and religion found protection of liberty as its divine calling. Therefore, liberty and faith never clashed.’’

By insisting on the compatibility of religion and liberty in America, Khatami laid a philosophical foundation for bridging the political divide between Iran and the United States. He did not vilify the United States as the “Great Satan.’’ Instead he held the United States as a model for emulation – a democratic civilization whose success reflected the ingenious combination of the principles of religion and the virtues of liberty. [continued…]

Tehran combines clemency and toughness
By Robert F Worth and Nazila Fathi, New York Times, July 30, 2009

The Iranian authorities sent a mixed message of clemency and firmness on Wednesday, saying that more detainees arrested in the post-election crackdown would soon be freed, but also that 20 protesters charged with serious crimes would be put on trial, starting this weekend.

There were also new arrests, including those of two prominent reformists, Saeed Shariati and Shayesteh Amiri, opposition Web sites reported. Separately, an “underground network providing foreign media outlets with photos and footage of the post-election unrest” has been identified and its members arrested, the state-run Press TV reported, citing security forces.

The report said that the network was made up of “pro-reform extremists” and that at least two members had confessed to providing images of the unrest to Western news media in an effort to “stage a regime change” in Iran. The Iranian leadership has blamed foreign media for riots and rallies after the disputed June 12 presidential election. [continued…]

Iran security forces retreat as huge numbers of mourners gather at cemetery
By Borzou Daragahi and Ramin Mostaghim, Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2009

Thousands and possibly tens of thousands of mourners, many of them black-clad young women carrying roses, overwhelmed security forces today at Tehran’s largest cemetery to gather around the grave of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young woman whose videotaped shooting at a June 20 demonstration stunned the world.

Amateur video apparently taken at Behesht Zahra cemetery and quickly uploaded to the Internet shows a sea of mourners moving through the cemetery chanting slogans. “Death to the dictator,” chanted those in one long procession, kicking up a storm of dust as they walked. “Neda is not dead. This government is dead.” [continued…]

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It’s time for the US to declare victory and go home

It’s time for the US to declare victory and go home
By Col. Timothy R. Reese, New York Times, July 30, 2009

As the old saying goes, “guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.” Since the signing of the 2009 Security Agreement, we are guests in Iraq, and after six years in Iraq, we now smell bad to the Iraqi nose. Today the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are good enough to keep the Government of Iraq (GOI) from being overthrown by the actions of Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the Baathists, and the Shia violent extremists that might have toppled it a year or two ago. Iraq may well collapse into chaos of other causes, but we have made the ISF strong enough for the internal security mission. Perhaps it is one of those infamous paradoxes of counterinsurgency that while the ISF is not good in any objective sense, it is good enough for Iraq in 2009. Despite this foreboding disclaimer about an unstable future for Iraq, the United States has achieved our objectives in Iraq. Prime Minister (PM) Maliki hailed June 30th as a “great victory,” implying the victory was over the US. Leaving aside his childish chest pounding, he was more right than he knew. We too ought to declare victory and bring our combat forces home. Due to our tendency to look after the tactical details and miss the proverbial forest for the trees, this critically important strategic realization is in danger of being missed. [continued…]

Iraqi raid poses problem for U.S.
By Ernesto Londoño, Washington Post, July 30, 2009

Violent clashes continued for a second day Wednesday between Iraqi troops and members of an Iranian opposition group whose camp the Iraqis stormed Tuesday, presenting the first major dilemma for the U.S. government since Iraq proclaimed its sovereignty a month ago.

At least eight Iranians have been killed and 400 wounded since Tuesday, when hundreds of Iraqi police and soldiers in riot gear plowed into Camp Ashraf, northeast of Baghdad, using Humvees donated by the U.S. military, according to group leaders and Abdul Nasir al-Mahdawi, the governor of Diyala province.

Camp residents described the day’s events as a massacre and the aftermath as a tense stalemate. [continued…]

Iraq in throes of environmental catastrophe, experts say
By Liz Sly, Los Angeles Times, July 30, 2009

You wake up in the morning to find your nostrils clogged. Houses and trees have vanished beneath a choking brown smog. A hot wind blasts fine particles through doors and windows, coating everything in sight and imparting an eerie orange glow.

Dust storms are a routine experience in Iraq, but lately they’ve become a whole lot more common.

“Now it seems we have dust storms nearly every day,” said Raed Hussein, 31, an antiques dealer who had to rush his 5-year-old son to a hospital during a recent squall because the boy couldn’t breathe. “We suffer from lack of electricity, we suffer from explosions, and now we are suffering even more because of this terrible dust.

“It must be a punishment from God,” he added, offering a view widely held among Iraqis seeking to explain their apocalyptic weather of late. “I think God is angry with the deeds of the Iraqi people.”

The reality is probably scarier. Iraq is in the throes of what some officials are calling an environmental catastrophe, and the increased frequency of dust storms is only the most visible manifestation. [continued…]

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Clinton moved to halt disclosure of CIA torture evidence, court told

Clinton moved to halt disclosure of CIA torture evidence, court told
By Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, July 29, 2009

Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, personally intervened to suppress evidence of CIA collusion in the torture of a British resident, the high court heard today.

The dramatic turn emerged as lawyers for Binyam Mohamed, the UK resident abused in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Morocco and Guantánamo Bay, joined by lawyers for the Guardian and other media groups, asked the court to order the disclosure of CIA material.

It consists of a seven-paragraph summary of what the CIA knew, and what it told MI5 and MI6, about the treatment of Mohamed. Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones, the judges hearing the case, have said that the summary contains nothing that could possibly be described as “highly sensitive classified US intelligence”. [continued…]

Incongruities in NC terrorism case
By Jeff Stein, CQ, July 29, 2009

The feds have been hyping their domestic terrorism cases for several years now, and the arrest of seven North Carolina men this week appears to be no exception.

The headliners in the case, of course, are ordinary folks Daniel Patrick Boyd and his two sons, who prosecutors say led three lives: good family men, likeable neighbors and secret terrorists. [continued…]

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Obama faces court test over detainee

Obama faces court test over detainee
By William Glaberson, New York Times, July 29, 2009

The fate of one of the youngest detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison is emerging as a major test of whether the courts or the president has the final authority over when prisoners there are released.

After a federal judge said earlier this month that the government’s case for holding the detainee, Mohammed Jawad, was “riddled with holes,” the Obama administration conceded defeat and agreed that Mr. Jawad would no longer be considered a military detainee. But the administration said it would still hold him at the prison in Cuba for possible prosecution in the United States.

On Tuesday, Mr. Jawad’s lawyers attacked that position, arguing that the government had given up any authority to hold him. “Enough is enough,” the lawyers said in legal papers that urged the judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle, to send him back to Afghanistan, which has requested his return. [continued…]

Arrests in terror case bewilder associates
By Campbell Robertson, New York Times, July 29, 2009

Daniel Boyd was a man of rare conviction for these parts.

Rare because he and his family were Muslims in this quiet rural subdivision where the denominations generally run from Baptist to Presbyterian. But also rare for his intensity.

“How many Christians you see standing in the yard praying five times a day?” asked Jeremy Kuhn, 20, who lives across the street. “They just believed more than anyone else.”

But to the disbelief of Mr. Kuhn, the federal authorities say Mr. Boyd and two of his sons took their convictions beyond religious faith and into terrorism. They were among seven men charged on Monday with supporting violent jihad movements in countries including Israel, Jordan, Kosovo and Pakistan. An eighth man was still being sought, said a spokeswoman for federal prosecutors in Raleigh, about 20 miles north of here.

The men are charged with stockpiling automatic weapons and traveling abroad numerous times to participate in jihadist movements. There is no indication in the indictment that they were planning attacks in the United States, though prosecutors said they had practiced military tactics this summer in a rural county close to Virginia. [continued…]

Britain’s own Guantánamo
By David Vine, The Guardian, July 28, 2009

Piece by piece, the truth is finally coming out about Britain’s own Guantánamo Bay – Diego Garcia. Today the human rights lawyers group Reprieve began a legal case on behalf of Saad Iqbal Madni, who they say was transited through the UK-controlled Indian Ocean island as part of the CIA’s secret rendition programme.

Madni, whom Reprieve says was tortured in Egypt, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay after his stopover in Diego Garcia, has been released in Pakistan where – according to Clive Stafford Smith, the Reprieve director – he is “effectively crippled by his torture”.

For more than six years following the declaration of a war on terror in 2001, British and US officials adamantly rejected the existence of a rendition facility or secret CIA prison on the island, the site of a major British-American military base since the 1970s and long off-limits to civilians, reporters, and investigators. Dismissing reports about detainees on the atoll as “totally without foundation”, Britain’s then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, asserted: “United States authorities have repeatedly assured us that no detainees have at any time passed in transit through Diego Garcia or its territorial waters or have disembarked there.”

However, allegations kept accumulating. [continued…]

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Syria key to regional power shift

Syria key to regional power shift
By Mark Levine, Al Jazeera, July 28, 2009

It is hard not to feel like it is déjà vu all over again.

A US Middle East peace envoy travels to Damascus and then to Israel in an effort to jump start Israel-Syrian negotiations over a land for peace deal involving the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed in 1967.

At the same time progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front seems stymied and the US remains reluctant to impose a final solution on the two parties.

The push towards Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations fits a familiar pattern in the larger Middle East peace process, one that returns to the first years of the Oslo peace process in the mid-1990s. [continued…]

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Anti-American Israeli demonstrator: “At some point, Israel will survive and America will fall”

Yitzhak Rabin’s killers target Obama
By Max Blumenthal, July 28, 2009

In October 1995, Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu appeared before thousands of right-wing demonstrators in Jerusalem’s Zion Square to deliver a stinging denunciation of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo Accords he had signed two years earlier. “Death to Rabin! Nazis! Judenrat!” the demonstrators chanted. Many waved signs depicting Rabin dressed in Nazi regalia.

Concerned that Netanyahu would inflame an already dangerous climate, Israeli Housing Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer warned the hyper-ambitious politician, “You’d better restrain your people. Otherwise it will end in murder. They tried to kill me just now… Your people are mad. If someone is murdered, the blood will be on your hands… The settlers have gone crazy, and someone will be murdered here, if not today, then in another week or another month!”

Netanyahu ignored Ben-Eliezer, striding to the podium to chants of “Bibi! Bibi! Bibi!” and an eerily prescient introduction as Israel’s “next prime minister.”

One month later, Rabin was assassinated by Yigal Amir, a right-wing radical and student at Bar-Ilan University, the ideological training ground of Israel’s religious-nationalist front. Rabin’s wife, Leah, refused to forgive Netanyahu, insisting he was at least as responsible for her husband’s murder as the extremist who pulled the trigger. [continued…]

Israeli anthem kits in Arab schools
By Jonathan Cook, The National, July 26, 2009

A leading Arab educator in Israel has described the decision of Gideon Saar, the education minister, to require schools to study the Israeli national anthem as “a kind of attempted rape” of the country’s one-in-four Arab pupils. […]

Mr Saar’s initiative is widely seen among Israel’s 1.3 million Arab citizens as a further indication of the rising nationalistic tide sweeping policymakers. [continued…]

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Associating with anyone from the West is dangerous

Associating with anyone from the West is dangerous
By Laleh Azadi, Middle East Online, July 27, 2009

Associating with anyone from the West is dangerous. In these times, those abroad play a delicate but vital role. Their assistance in disseminating information from Iran is crucial but any form of intervention, be it military (the bombing of nuclear facilities) or economic (increased sanctions), is only incredibly destructive. Each threat of military aggression or proposed negotiation deadline makes “green” efforts more difficult. And increased economic sanction deteriorates our lives and safety. Some think the two recent airplane crashes may have been affected by our country’s lack of access to parts and planes.

This is our movement. We appreciate and continue to ask for global solidarity but this struggle is for Iranians. I believe that Nobel Peace Price laureate Shireen Ebadi’s statements echo the wider sentiments of the Iranian people. While speaking in Germany, she stated: “I am against economic sanctions and military interventions… Diplomatic ties must not be severed, instead the embassies could be downgraded to consulates. This would not harm the Iranian people, but it would illustrate the government’s isolation.” Keeping the table open with no conditions and encouraging dialogue with all factions in Iran is vital. However, it must be done extremely carefully so as not to provide any means of leverage for Ahmadinejad. [continued…]

Strong words from Iran’s opposition
By Robert F Worth and Nazila Fathi, New York Times, July 28, 2009

The Iranian opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi spoke out more strongly than ever before on Monday against the arrests and killings of protesters, hours before Iran’s supreme leader ordered the closing of a “nonstandard” prison apparently in an effort to deflect rising criticism over the issue.

“How can it be that the leaders of our country do not cry out and shed tears about these tragedies?” Mr. Moussavi said, in comments to a teachers’ association that were posted on his Web site. “Can they not see it, feel it? These things are blackening our country, blackening all our hearts. If we remain silent, it will destroy us all and take us to hell.”

Mr. Moussavi’s angry tone appeared to reflect the steadily rising toll of those killed — some after being beaten in prison — in the crackdown that followed the disputed June 12 presidential election. A funeral was held in Tehran on Monday for Amir Javadi-Far, a student activist who died in prison after being arrested, and reports emerged of still more deaths. [continued…]

Iran’s protesters: phase 2 of their feisty campaign
By Robin Wright, Time, July 27, 2009

Phase 2 has begun. Six weeks after millions took to the streets to protest Iran’s presidential election, their uprising has morphed into a feistier, more imaginative and potentially enduring campaign.

The second phase plays out in a boycott of goods advertised on state-controlled television. Just try buying a certain brand of dairy product, an Iranian human-rights activist told me, and the person behind you in line is likely to whisper, “Don’t buy that. It’s from an advertiser.” It includes calls to switch on every electric appliance in the house just before the evening TV news to trip up Tehran’s grid. It features quickie “blitz” street demonstrations, lasting just long enough to chant “Death to the dictator!” several times but short enough to evade security forces. It involves identifying paramilitary Basij vigilantes linked to the crackdown and putting marks in green — the opposition color — or pictures of protest victims in front of their homes. It is scribbled antiregime slogans on money. And it is defiant drivers honking horns, flashing headlights and waving V signs at security forces. (See pictures of Iran’s presidential election and its turbulent aftermath.)

The tactics are unorganized, largely leaderless and only just beginning. They spread by e-mail, websites and word of mouth. But their variety and scope indicate that Iran’s uprising is not a passing phenomenon like the student protests of 1999, which were quickly quashed. This time, Iranians are rising above their fears. Although embryonic, today’s public resolve is reminiscent of civil disobedience in colonial India before independence or in the American Deep South in the 1960s. Mohandas Gandhi once mused that “even the most powerful cannot rule without the cooperation of the ruled.” That quotation is now popular on Iranian websites. [continued…]

Gates says U.S. overture to Iran is ‘not open-ended’
By Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times, July 28, 2009

Strains between the United States and Israel surfaced publicly in Jerusalem on Monday, as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates tried to reassure Israelis that American overtures to Iran were not open-ended, and as Defense Minister Ehud Barak of Israel expressed impatience with the Americans for wanting to engage Iran at all.

“I don’t think that it makes any sense at this stage to talk a lot about it,” Mr. Barak said at a joint news conference with Mr. Gates at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, referring to the American offer to talk to Iran about giving up its nuclear program. Nonetheless, he said Israel was in no position to tell the United States what to do.

But, alluding to a potential Israeli military strike against Iran if it gains nuclear weapons capability, he added: “We clearly believe that no options should be removed from the table. This is our policy, we mean it, we recommend to others to take the same position, but we cannot dictate to anyone.”

Later, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with Mr. Gates, and his office released a statement saying that he had pressed Mr. Gates on the need to use “all means” to keep Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. [continued…]

Russia and Iran join hands
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi, Asia Times, July 30, 2009

The United States may think of Russia as a strategic partner when it comes to Iran. In reality, the geostrategic tensions between Washington and Moscow are still powerful enough to warrant a common approach by Russia and its eastern neighbor Iran with respect to a deterrent strategy towards the intrusive Western superpower.

This week, a small but significant clue is on full display with joint Russia-Iran military exercises in the Caspian Sea involving some 30 vessels. This is partially disguised by a benign environmental cause.

The maneuver, dubbed “Regional Collaboration for a Secure and Clean Caspian”, combines security and maritime objectives in the Caspian Sea, the world’s largest lake and also a main energy hub that is now the scene of competing alternatives for energy transfer. It signals a new trend in Iran-Russia military cooperation that will most likely increase in the near and intermediate future in light of Iran’s observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The continuing standoff over Iran’s nuclear program should affect this warming of relations. [continued…]

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Painting Obama as an enemy will hurt Israel badly

Painting Obama as an enemy will hurt Israel badly
By Zvi Bar’el, Haaretz, July 26, 2009

In light of the public brawling between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, we can expect to start seeing graffiti saying things like “America, get out,” “Obama is an Arab” and “Neither a broker nor honest.”

In the new Israeli debate, America is slowly beginning to be perceived as an enemy – and the dispute is going personal: Our prime minister versus their president. Yesterday, he simply demanded that Israel adopt the two-state solution, then called for a freeze on construction in the settlements (without agreeing to settle for “only” the completion of projects already underway), and now he wants to divide Jerusalem. Not Netanyahu – Obama. [continued…]

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White House sends A-Team to Israel to try to overcome settlements impasse, talk Iran

White House sends A-Team to Israel to try to overcome settlements impasse, talk Iran
By Laura Rozen, Foreign Policy, July 23, 2009

A flurry of upcoming meetings between senior U.S. and Israeli officials suggest that Washington is determined to try to overcome the current impasse. Defense Secretary Robert Gates arrives in Israel Monday for talks with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and other leaders. Aides declined to discuss the secretary’s agenda at all except to confirm the trip.

Mitchell too is headed back to Israel Sunday, after visits today in Abu Dhabi, and Damascus tomrrow, and before going on to Egypt and Bahrain. One notes that Mitchell’s and Gates’s trips might overlap, and that both have Defense Minister Barak as one chief interlocutor.

National Security Advisor Gen. James. L. Jones also confirmed to Foreign Policy that he plans to lead a separate multiagency team that reportedly includes officials from the Treasury Department, CIA, as well as NSC Senior Director for the Central Region Dennis Ross to Israel for meetings next Wednesday with Israeli national security advisor Uzi Arad and others. Iran is expected to be the major focus of these talks, which are separate from the Gates’ trip, a U.S. defense official said. Some Iran watchers believe if Iran hasn’t responded to the offer for talks by September, that the process for organizing a tougher sanctions regime targeting Iran will begin to get underway at the U.N. General Assembly in September and subsequent G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, although administration and outside sources have indicated Russia is not likely to support such measures until after the end of the year. [continued…]

An Economist debate: This house believes that Barack Obama’s America is now an honest broker between the Israelis and the Arabs
Daniel Levy in debate with David Frum, The Economist, July, 2009

Daniel Levy: “Brokering real progress on Israel-Palestine is now more readily understood as being in the US national interest. An especially compelling case can also now be made on why a two-state solution is urgent for Israel and its future as a democracy, and there are new progressive dynamics in America’s Jewish community and in online political organising that support this trend.

“Against this backdrop, Mr Obama is staking out that role of the honest-enough broker. His administration has made public its disagreement with Israel’s settlement policy, unequivocally calling for a full freeze. US relations with Syria have been upgraded. The president has made a point of reaching out to the Arab and Muslim worlds, notably in his Cairo speech, and has done so respectfully, eschewing the arrogant and lecturing tone of his predecessor. Obama has conveyed his determination to realise a two-state solution, just last week telling American Jewish leaders that he would be ‘evenhanded’, having honest conversations with and putting pressure on both the Israeli and Arab sides.” [continued…]

U.S., Israel abort missile test
By Margaret Coker and Josh Mitnick, Wall Street Journal, July 24, 2009

Israeli and U.S. military officials this week aborted a test of a missile-defense shield under development by the two countries, raising questions about the reliability of Israel’s defenses against a potential Iranian attack.

The news, which military officials were careful not to characterize as a failure of the Israeli missile-defense program, comes amid heightened tensions in the Middle East over the strengthening of Iranian hawks loyal to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s recent electoral victory has fueled renewed debate in Washington and European capitals about whether to rely on continued diplomacy to curb what the U.S. and Israel see as Iran’s intention to build nuclear weapons. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes. [continued…]

Israeli warships’ passage through Suez Canal causes a stir
By Jeffrey Fleishman and Batsheva Sobelman, Los Angeles Times, July 24, 2009

There’s no sneaking a warship through the Suez Canal, so it’s best to sail through and remain coy.

Israel has done just that. At least two of its missile-class Saar 5 warships and a Dolphin submarine have sailed through the canal in recent weeks, prompting conjecture about Israel’s intentions. Possible scenarios include the sending of a message to Iran about Israeli military might and giving the impression that Israel and Egypt, which controls the Suez, are closely cooperating against regional security threats.

The Israeli government has said little about why the vessels were on missions that took them through the Suez, but they come as Israel has grown insistent on stopping Iran’s nuclear program. That fits in with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to link the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with agreements from Arab states to help Israel counter Iran. [continued…]

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Jerusalem impasse threatens Obama peace plan

Jerusalem impasse threatens Obama peace plan
By Tony Karon, Time, July 23, 2009

Last summer, in the course of a campaign speech reaching out to pro-Israel groups concerned about his commitment to the Jewish state, then presidential candidate Barack Obama declared, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” Those words, which he later qualified, may now be coming back to haunt the President as he seeks to restart the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process by getting Israel to freeze all construction outside its pre-1967 borders. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has drawn a line in the sand over Jerusalem, vehemently rejecting Washington’s demand that he halt a construction project in the Arab eastern portion of the city that was occupied by Israel in 1967. Israel claims sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, and Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that this claim was nonnegotiable.

Although the U.S. has routinely opposed Israeli construction in East Jerusalem — President Bush’s Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called it “unhelpful” — Netanyahu appears to be betting that by very publicly challenging Obama on Jerusalem, he can rally support from those Jewish leaders in the U.S. who have lately expressed disquiet over the President’s Middle East policies, and also from Christian conservative supporters of Israel. And the Israelis are plainly looking to make a campaign of it, with the mayor of Jerusalem being dispatched to the U.S. to rally opposition to the Administration’s position on the city. [continued…]

Take the case
By John Dugard, New York Times, July 23, 2009

A request is pending before the International Criminal Court in the Hague into whether international crimes were committed during the Israeli operations in Gaza in December 2008.

Over 1,400 Palestinians were killed, including at least 900 civilians, and over 5,000 wounded in the offensive. Some 3,000 homes were destroyed, as were many government buildings, schools, universities, mosques, hospitals and factories.

Several investigations — including one by the Arab League Independent Fact Finding Committee (I.F.F.C.), which I chaired — have found considerable evidence that serious crimes were committed in Israel’s offensive. [continued…]

Israel doesn’t see U.S. limiting loan guarantees
Reuters, July 23, 2009

Israel does not expect the United States to limit use of loan guarantees despite a dispute with Washington over building in East Jerusalem and in West Bank settlements, Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz said on Thursday.

“I don’t see any limitations on the horizon. It’s not time to be concerned about that,” Steinitz told reporters. [continued…]

Israel’s barrier to progress
By Seth Freedman, The Guardian, July 22, 2009

In many parts of the West Bank, Israel’s much-vaunted separation wall is conspicuous by its absence; Ha’aretz reports that only around 60% of the barrier has been completed will come as no surprise to those who spend time in the area around the project’s proposed route.

In places such as the South Hebron Hills, the only obstacles separating thousands of Palestinians from Israeli communities are sporadic flying checkpoints thrown up by the army, or flimsy, unguarded wire fences ostensibly keeping the terrorist hordes at bay. If mainstream Israeli thinking is to be believed, the “security” wall is vital for the safety of Israel’s citizens, the implication being that scores of would-be bombers are daily banging their heads against a concrete wall as they try desperately to reach Israeli cities to unleash carnage on unsuspecting women and children. [continued…]

Israeli PM says West Bank barrier there to stay
AFP, July 22, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel’s controversial separation barrier in the occupied West Bank would not be pulled down.

“I hear today people who say that because the situation is calm in the West Bank we can dismantle the security barrier, but it is in fact because of this barrier that there is calm,” he told a session of parliament.

“It is because of this barrier and because of a certain improvement on the part of the Palestinian security services that the situation is calm,” Netanyahu said. “The barrier will stay.” [continued…]

Senior Fatah official: We won’t recognize Israel
By Ali Waked, Ynet, July 23, 2009

As the Fatah movement prepares for its upcoming leadership convention, a senior group member says the event will be used to display Fatah’s commitment to the armed struggle against Israel.

Preparations for the convention, scheduled for August 4, are in full force at this time. During a series of preliminary meetings ahead of the event, senior Fatah official Rafik al-Natsheh said that the group will not be recognizing Israel.

‘We will maintain the resistance option in all its forms and we will not recognize Israel,” he said. “Not only don’t we demand that anyone recognize Israel; we don’t recognize Israel ourselves. However, the Palestinian Authority government is required to do it, or else it will not be able to serve the Palestinian people.” [continued…]

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Obama’s Gitmo task force blows its deadline

Obama’s Gitmo task force blows its deadline
By Michael Isikoff, Newsweek, July 20, 2009

An Obama administration task force set up to develop a plan for the closure of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay will miss its first deadline this week—and put off a key report—amid continued divisions over how to resolve one of the president’s thorniest policy dilemmas.

The task force, set up on Obama’s second day in office, was charged with preparing a report to the president by Tuesday, July 21, outlining a long-term detention plan for detainees captured in counterterrorism operations after Sept. 11. But continued debate within the task force over the legal basis for holding detainees who are not charged with any crimes—and where to house them once they are moved from Guantánamo—has forced the task force to postpone its report by a “few months,” a senior administration official told Newsweek.

A separate task-force report on interrogations—also due this week—is being put off as well, said the official, who, like others quoted in this article, asked not to be named talking about private deliberations. [continued…]

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US-Israeli tensions

‘No difference to U.S. between outpost, East Jerusalem construction’
By Akiva Eldar, Barak Ravid and Jack Khoury, Haaretz, July 20, 2009

The United States views East Jerusalem as no different than an illegal West Bank outpost with regard to its demand for a freeze on settlement construction, American sources have informed both Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

This clarification came in the context of a growing crisis in U.S.-Israel relations over the planned construction of some 20 apartments for Jews in the Shepherd Hotel, in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. The U.S. has demanded that the project be halted, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the cabinet meeting Sunday that “Israel will not agree to edicts of this kind in East Jerusalem.” [continued…]

Netanyahu-Mitchell meeting postponed again
By Roni Sofer, Ynet, July 19, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s scheduled meeting with US Mideast envoy George Mitchell has been postponed at least until the end of the month.

Another meeting between the two, which was set to take place in Paris last month, was also cancelled.

Mitchell was originally scheduled to arrive in Israel on Sunday and later hold meetings with senior Palestinian officials in Ramallah. Jerusalem did not state the official reason for the delay, but some officials suspect it relates to the fact that the Netanyahu and Obama administrations have yet to resolve their differences on the issue of settlement expansion in the West Bank, among other things. [continued…]

What Netanyahu wants from Obama’s ‘self-hating Jews’
By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz, July 20, 2009

Who is to blame for the latest dispute with the United States over the new neighborhood going up in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah area? Mayor Nir Barkat? Certainly not. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who stood behind him? Ridiculous. Any child knows that everything is the fault of other Jews: Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod, two American administration officials who are inciting President Barack Obama against their own people.

This is not the first time that “self-hating Jews” have given us trouble. In negotiations over the separation of forces agreement in the 1970s, U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, the scion of a family of Jewish refugees who had escaped from Nazi Germany, earned the anti-Semitic epithet “Jewboy” in Israel. At the end of the 1980s, when president George H.W. Bush dared to argue that the peace process does not jibe with settlement expansion, the Shamir government instigated a campaign against “the ‘Jewboy’ trio”: Dennis Ross, Aaron Miller and Dan Kurtzer. Now it is the turn of Obama’s Jewish confidantes to be the scapegoats.

It is easy to imagine what an uproar there would be in Jerusalem if an Arab leader or newspaper dared to claim that an American president was favorable to Israel because of the influence of a Jewish adviser. Netanyahu, who spent many years in the United States, knows very well the extent to which Jewish administration officials in key positions are sensitive to the slightest hint of dual loyalty – to their birthplace and their historic homeland. It turns out that for him, politics bends the iron-clad rule that “all Jews are responsible for one another.” [continued…]

Israeli settlers versus the Palestinians
By Nina Burleigh, Time, July 27, 2009

In a hilltop suburb South of Jerusalem called Efrat, Sharon Katz serves a neat plate of sliced cake inside her five-bedroom house, surrounded by pomegranate, olive and citrus trees that she planted herself. She glances out the window at the hills where, she believes, David and Abraham once walked. “We are living in the biblical heartland,” she sighs.

It is a heartland the prophets would not recognize, replete as it is with pizza parlor, jazz nights at the coffee shop, grocery store and yellow electronic gate with machine-gun-wielding guards. Efrat is one of 17 settlements that make up a bloc called Gush Etzion, located not in Israel but in the occupied West Bank. The Katzes (Sharon, husband Israel and five children) consider themselves law-abiding citizens. They publish a small community magazine and take part in civic projects. Sharon raises money for charity by putting on tap-dancing and theater shows. And yet to much of the outside world, the Katzes are participating in an illegal land grab forbidden by the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit an occupying power from settling its own civilians on militarily controlled land. Some Israelis have admitted as much. While Benjamin Netanyahu, then as now Prime Minister, was negotiating with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in 1998, Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon got on Israeli radio and urged Israelis to settle more land fast. “Grab the hilltops, and stake your claim,” he said. “Everything we don’t grab will go to them.” [continued…]

Vatican teaching Hezbollah how to kill Jews, says pamphlet for IDF troops
By Ofri Ilani, Haaretz, July 20, 2009

The Pope and the cardinals of the Vatican help organize tours of Auschwitz for Hezbollah members to teach them how to wipe out Jews, according to a booklet being distributed to Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

Officials encouraging the booklet’s distribution include senior officers, such as Lt. Col. Tamir Shalom, the commander of the Nahshon Battalion of the Kfir Brigade. [continued…]

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Obama and the Bush years

Obama and the Bush years
By Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2009

Whenever he’s asked about the scandals of America’s war on terror — the torture, the wrongful detentions, the legal corners cut — President Obama has responded with some version of this statement: “We have to focus on getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.”

But that approach can’t work. The unanswered questions are too many, the lawsuits too numerous, the fundamental questions of accountability too nagging. We need a public reckoning — and, much as they might like to avoid the distraction, Obama and his people must know it.

The latest controversy was the disclosure last week that the CIA had launched a program to track down and kill Al Qaeda leaders without informing Congress. The CIA withheld the information, according to Director Leon Panetta, on orders from then-Vice President Dick Cheney. [continued…]

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Jerusalem – 7/19

Netanyahu: Israel rule over Jerusalem not up for discussion
By Barak Ravid, Haaretz, July 19, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem was not a matter up for discussion. The prime minister’s comments came after the U.S. State Department told Israeli envoy Michael Oren that Israel must halt a construction project in East Jerusalem.

Netanyahu told ministers at the weekly cabinet meeting that Jerusalem is the united capital of Israel and that all citizens are allowed to purchase property in any part of the city they choose. [continued…]

‘U.S. tells Israel to halt East Jerusalem building’
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz, July 19, 2009

The United States has told Israel it must halt an East Jerusalem construction project in accordance with the Obama administration’s demands for a complete freeze on settlement building, Israeli radio stations reported on Sunday.

The State Department summoned Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren over the weekend to advise him that the project developed by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz should not go ahead, according to both Israel Radio and Army Radio.

Moskowitz, an influential supporter of Israeli settlement in East Jerusalem, purchased the Shepherd Hotel in 1985 and plans to tear it down and build housing units in its place. The hotel is located near a government compound that includes several government ministries and the national police headquarters. [continued…]

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