First Time: Temple Mount Priestly Blessing on Jerusalem Day

WEEK OF MAY 29 THROUGH JUNE 4

Vatican Calls for Independent Palestinian State 'Soon'

Pope Benedict XVI told PA President Abbas at that it is urgent that Israel "live in security, at peace with her neighbors." The Vatican called urgently for a just and lasting peace between peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which it said can only be brought about through and independent Palestinian state, within internationally recognized borders. (Joel 3:2 I will also gather all nations, and will bring them down into the valley of Jehoshaphat, and will plead with them there for my people and for my heritage Israel, whom they have scattered among the nations, and parted my land.)

June 4….(Jerusalem Post) The Vatican on Friday called urgently for a just and lasting peace between peace between Israel and the Palestinians, which it said can be brought about through and independent Palestinian state. "Soon, the State of Israel and the Palestinian state must live in security, at peace with their neighbors and within internationally recognized borders," the Vatican said in a statement issued following a meeting between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican. The Holy See added that any solution to the conflict must be capable of ensuring "respect for the rights of all," calling the current situation "troubled." Abbas, who was in Italy, exchanged gifts with the Pope, with whom he also discussed the situation of Christians in the Palestinian territories as well as the Middle East. Late last year, the Vatican blamed the flight of Christians from the Middle East on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that the exodus could be devastating for the birthplace of Christianity. Some bishops who took place in a special meeting blamed fanatical Islam for the trend but others accused Israel of discriminating against Arab Christians.

Russia Warns US / Hands Off in Syria!

June 4….(In The Days) Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the US and European nations not to encourage anti-government protesters in Syria by holding out the prospect of military support like they provided in Libya. “It is not in the interests of anyone to send messages to the opposition in Syria or elsewhere that if you reject all reasonable offers we will come and help you as we did in Libya,” Lavrov, 61, said yesterday during an interview in Moscow. “It’s a very dangerous position.” Rallies against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule have swept Syria, inspired by the uprisings that ousted authoritarian rulers in Egypt and Tunisia. Syrian security forces have killed more than 1,100 people and detained at least 10,000, according to human-rights groups. The government blames the protests on Islamic militants and foreign provocateurs.

    Russia abstained from the March 18 vote by the United Nations Security Council that authorized the use of force to protect civilians from Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi’s forces, saying the resolution might lead to a “large-scale military intervention.” Operations led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have stretched far beyond the stated goal of enforcing a no-fly zone, Lavrov said. President Dmitry Medvedev expects to meet with US Vice President Joe Biden and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi later today in Rome to discuss the situation in Libya and throughout the Middle East, the Russian president said.

UN Involvement Opposed

    The UK, France, Germany and Portugal asked the Security Council on May 25 to demand that Syria end attacks on peaceful protesters and address their grievances. The European Union last week imposed a travel ban and asset freeze on the “highest level of leadership,” a week after the U.S. froze the assets of Assad and six top officials. Russia opposes Security Council involvement in Syria, Lavrov said. “First of all, the situation doesn’t present a threat to international peace and security,” he said. “Second, Syria is a very important country in the Middle East and destabilizing Syria would have repercussions far beyond its borders.” While Russia is opposed to international intervention, it supports the need for change in Syria and has encouraged Assad to implement promised reforms, Lavrov said. Assad on April 21 ordered the lifting of a 48-year-old state of emergency, abolished the Supreme State Security Court and issued a decree allowing peaceful protests. This week he offered a “general amnesty” covering political detainees. “We are gratified that our appeals have been heard,” Lavrov said. “Recently he published a draft of a new constitution, he declared an amnesty for political prisoners, and I think this should calm the situation.”

Syria Protests

    Protests continued after the amnesty decree, issued late on May 31, as opposition leaders said it was a ploy to gain time. Lavrov called for the Libyan resolution to be a unique one and said Russia will demand that any future UN mandates be more specific. “If somebody would like to get authorization to use force to achieve a shared goal by all of us, they would have to specify in the resolution who this somebody is, who is going to use this authorization, what the rules of engagement are and the limits on the use of force,” Lavrov said. Russia has stepped up diplomatic efforts to help forge a Libyan settlement that would persuade Qaddafi to step down and end NATO military action, Lavrov said.

    At the Group of Eight summit last week in France, US President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy asked Medvedev to help negotiate a deal acceptable to coalition forces, the African Union and Libyan rebels, Lavrov said. Medvedev spoke by phone with South African President Jacob Zuma before and after Zuma flew to Tripoli, Libya’s capital, on May 30, Lavrov said. The Russian president also told his special envoy for Libya, Mikhail Margelov, to go to the port city of Benghazi for talks with opposition leaders as soon as possible. Any solution must “be acceptable to all Libyans,” Lavrov said, echoing comments Zuma made after returning from Tripoli in a trip backed by the African Union.

    The US and its partners, including France and the UK, launched the first attacks against Qaddafi’s forces on March 19. NATO took command on March 31 and yesterday extended its mission for 90 days in what Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said was “a clear message” that “we are determined to continue our operation to protect the people of Libya.” The air raids killed 718 civilians and wounded 4,067 from March 19 to May 26, Agence France Presse reported, citing a spokesman for Libya’s government. Russia isn’t involved in negotiating “any deals of immunity or guarantees” for Qaddafi, though others are considering a range of options, he said. “I can tell you without revealing too many secrets that the leaders of countries who can influence the situation are actively discussing the possibilities,” Lavrov said. Officials at the G-8 summit discussed options for Qaddafi ranging “from a quiet life as a simple Bedouin in the Libyan desert to the fate of Milosevic in the Hague,” Margelov said in an interview yesterday, referring to the war crimes trial of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.

Syrian Army Kills More Protestors

June 4….(Arutz) Syrian security forces shot dead at least 34 demonstrators in the Syrian town of Hama on Friday, as once again protesters were mown down as they left Friday's noon prayers. The revolt against President Bashar al-Assad is in its 11th week and security forces, including snipers, fired into a crowd of thousands in an attempt to bring it to an end. "The firing began from rooftops on the demonstrators. I saw scores of people falling in Assi square and the streets and alleyways branching out. Blood was everywhere," a witness who gave his name as Omar told Reuters from Hama. "It looked to me as if hundreds of people have been injured but I was in a panic and wanted to find cover. Funerals for the martyrs have already started," he said. HIstory may be repeating itself in Hama, where Bashar's father, Hafez, slaughtered at least 30,000 of his own citizens in 1982, in order to suppress a revolt. Rami Abdulrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters he expected the death toll to rise because many people at the demonstration had serious injuries. One person was reported killed in Idlib, in the Kurdish northeast, and forces also opened fire on demonstrations in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor and in Damascus' Barzeh district where thousands demonstrated on Friday. Residents defied the curfew in Deraa and came out to protest.

    According to human rights groupsm security forces have killed more than 1,000 civilians since March. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who originally called Assad a "reformer" has said that his legitimacy "had nearly run out." Although the United States has joined NATO operations in Libya aimed at toppling Qaddafi, who has also killed his own citizens, no similar actions have been announced against Assad.  The EU, Australia and the United States have passed sanctions against the regime. Assad has responded to this continuing revolt against his rule with violence accompanied by promises of reforms, which protestors have dismissed as irrelevant. The media blackout instituted by the regime has made a mockery of those promises and news is dependent on activists who manage to communicate via the web.

UN Chief Demands End to 'Violent Repression' in Syria

June 4….(Jerusalem Post) After rights group claims that security forces kill 34 in Hama crackdown, UN spokeswoman says Ban-Ki-moon asks for immediate end to human rights abuses by pro-Assad forces against protesters. The UN chief on Friday demanded an immediate end to the "violent repression" and human rights abuses by Syrian forces in their bloody crackdown against anti-government protesters. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "is deeply troubled by the continued serious violations of human rights, including disturbing reports of the deaths of children under torture, live ammunition and shelling," UN spokeswoman Vannina Maestracci told reporters. She said Ban "takes note" of a promised amnesty and call for national dialogue by the Syrian authorities. "He emphasizes, however, that violent repression by security and military forces must end immediately for a genuine and inclusive dialogue to take place and lead to the comprehensive reforms and change called for by the Syrian people," Maestracci said.

    She added that Ban reiterated his for call for a full, transparent and independent investigation into the killings. The UN Security Council is considering a draft resolution condemning Syria which was circulated to its 15 members by Britain, France, Germany and Portugal last week. Veto powers Russia and China have made clear they dislike the idea of council involvement in what they see as a domestic issue. Diplomats said Security Council envoys met on Thursday to see if there was any way to amend the resolution so that Russia and China would not veto it. They have yet to overcome their differences, Western diplomats said.

First Time: Temple Mount Priestly Blessing on Jerusalem Day

June 4….(Arutz) Hundreds of religious Jews from all streams were able to happily commemorate the 44th anniversary of the first-ever entry of Israeli soldiers onto the Temple Mount. For the first time in the history of Israeli restrictions on Jewish entry to the Temple Mount, the recitation of the Priestly Blessing was permitted there. It happened on Wednesday, Jerusalem Reunification Day, when hundreds of visitors, all of whom immersed in a mikveh (ritual bath) prior to coming and took other precautions required by Jewish Law, were allowed to enter the Temple Mount in groups of 30-40. Among them were several Cohanim (descendants of Aharon the Priest). They spread their hands in the customary manner and recited, “May G-d bless and watch  over your. May G-d shine His countenance upon and show you grace. May G-d raise His countenance towards you and grant you peace” (Numbers 6, from the portion to be read aloud this week in synagogues throughout the Jewish world).

    Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, head of the Temple Institute and one of the paratroopers who helped liberate the Temple Mount in 1967, and who was miraculously saved from death at the tim, recited aloud the blessing, “Barukh, Thou art the source of blessing, G-d, Who performed a miracle for me in this place.” Many visitors and listeners, including policemen, recited "Amen!” The visitors specifically noted the fair and pleasant attitude displayed by the police, as well as the preparations and security precautions they implemented for all those wishing to ascend to the Temple Mount on this date. In addition to the above, Rabbi Yoel Elitzur delivered a Torah lesson on Temple-related issues, after which the participants, again, including policemen, stood for the recitation of the Kaddish. Despite the close proximity of the Moslem Waqf policemen and their obvious anger, the visit went off nearly without a hitch. One Israeli policemen yelled angrily and threatened the Jewish visitors, but that incident ended relatively quickly.

Hamas: America is the Enemy of Allah

June 2….(Israel Today) It has already been reported that while much of the Middle East was pleased with Osama bin Laden's assassination by American forces, the Palestinian Arabs stood out as the only regional group to oppose the elimination of the arch-terrorist. Recent rallies in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip have revealed just how much Palestinian Islamists idolized bin Laden and how broad was his popularity on the "Palestinian street." During the various rallies, the standard chants of the thousands of attendees have been: "Bin Laden Shattered Crosses" (speaking to their hatred of Christianity) and "America is the Enemy of Allah." At one rally, Hamas leader Sheikh Munir Al-Aydi eulogized bin Laden by praising the latter's dedication to "lead the global jihad against America and its allies, the worshippers of the cross." Western leaders have for the past decade been trying hard to equate Christianity with Islam and the God of the Bible with Allah. They are adamant that there is no religious war taking place. But the Palestinian Islamists clearly do not agree. In light of these dangerous delcarations by Hamas leaders, it is important to once again call out Western leaders who insist that Hamas be made part of the diplomatic peace process with Israel. Not only does Hamas continue to refuse to recognize Israel's right to exist, but it openly advocates the teachings of terrorists who want to impose Islamic law on the entire world.

Netanyahu on Jerusalem Day: This City is Ours!

June 2….(Israel Today) As Israel marked the 44th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem on Wednesday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted that Israel would never allow the city to be again divided. "Forty-four years ago, IDF soldiers realized the prophets' vision and returned Jerusalem to its proper place," Netanyahu said, referring to the liberation of the eastern half of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War. Speaking at Jerusalem's Merkaz Harav Yeshiva, which has long been at the forefront of religious Zionism, Netanyahu continued: "Jerusalem will never be divided. There's nothing more holy to us than Jerusalem, we'll protect Jerusalem, it's unity, and we'll build and develop it."

    US President Barack Obama and other Western leaders have been pushing hard to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks based on Arab demands that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders. For its part, the Palestinian leadership insists it will never sign a peace deal with Israel that does not include the full surrender of the eastern half of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount. But a Jerusalem Day poll revealed that a strong majority of Israelis remain firmly behind Netanyahu's policies, and do not agree to divide Jerusalem even as part of a comprehensive peace agreement. Conducted by the Geocartography Knowledge Group on behalf of Israel's Channel One News, the survey showed that 66 percent of Israelis oppose handing over any part of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority. A 23 percent minority said they would be willing to surrender Jerusalem's Arab neighborhoods, a compromise the Palestinian Authority has already rejected. An even larger 73 percent majority opposed placing Jerusalem's holy sites under international control, a proposal that first came up during former US President Bill Clinton's oversight of the peace process. Rather than talk about how to divide Jerusalem, 67 percent of Israelis want to simply get on with building up and developing the city as the capital of Israel.

Assad is Set to Declare Victory Over Syria's Uprising

June 1….(DEBKAfile Exclusive Report) Damascus is humming in anticipation of the victory speech Syrian President Bashar Assad is about to deliver in the coming hours with the announcement that the 10-week popular uprising against his regime has been defeated, debkafile's military sources report. In advance of the speech, Assad Tuesday, May 31 declared a general amnesty "for all members of political movements including the Muslim Brotherhood" (membership of which is punishable by death in Syria.) It is not clear how many of the 10,000 protesters impirsoned will benefit from the amnesty, or how genuine it is. The Syrian ruler may only be pretending to release all political prisoners to show he is meeting one of the protesters' key demands without meaning to carry out his promise. Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz reported Tuesday to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee that according to his information the death toll from Assad's brutal crackdown had shot up to 1,200. Also Tuesday, ruling Baath party sources reported that shortly before the speech, a national dialogue commission would be established representing political and economic interests in the country. They were careful to avoid saying "political parties" would be included in this forum.

    According to our sources, propagandists in Damascus are striving to present a picture of wall-to-wall national reconciliation, while in practice, the Syrian ruler does not for a moment contemplate bringing opposition parties into his next political moves. After suppressing protest in most parts of Syria with tanks, artillery and gunfire, Syrian troops are still fighting dissidents in two suburbs of the central city of Homs, Talbiseh and Rastan. They are the only pockets where Syrian troops have been confronted with heavily armed protesters using rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. Most of the uprising's ringleaders had by last week fled to Lebanon and set up an anti-Assad struggle's headquarters-in-exile in the northern port-town of Tripoli. From there, they smuggled arms to hold-out groups in Talbiseh and Rastan. But most military sources say these are the last dying embers of national campaign of resistance and the army will soon make short work of them.

    In any case, the hard core of the protest movement is on the point of departing Lebanon, mainly by sea, and heading for a safe haven somewhere in West Europe before Assad sends commando units after them in helicopters. Syria's veteran opposition leaders in exile were given permission by the Turkish government to hold a three-day conference in Antalya on ways of sustaining the anti-Assad impetus after the first 10 weeks. At the opening session starting Tuesday, those leaders were dismayed to find their ranks had been heavily penetrated by Assad loyalists. The communiqué they issued criticizing Asssad's amnesty and national reconciliation moves as "too little and too late" was the best they could manage.

Palestinians to Approach UN Security Council About Statehood in July

(UN General Assembly authorized to accept Palestine as a member state, but can do so only after it receives a recommendation to this effect from the Security Council.)

June 1….(Ha Aretz) The Palestinian Authority plans to approach the United Nations Security Council in July to begin the process of getting Palestine recognized as a full member of the United Nations and to assure a vote on the matter by the General Assembly in September, Haaretz has learned. The UN General Assembly is authorized to accept Palestine as a member state, but can do so only after it receives a recommendation to this effect from the Security Council. This is not likely to happen, because the United States vehemently objects to the Palestinians' unilateral efforts in the UN and it has veto power over Security Council decisions. The Palestinians realize this, both Israeli and foreign diplomatic officials say, but they are interested in making sure that the United States is isolated on the Security Council and forced to exercise its veto.

    The Palestinians will then ask the General Assembly to recognize Palestine as a state, without it being a full UN member. Last Wednesday, the Palestinian leadership met in Ramallah to discuss the addresses of US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. During the meeting, the former chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, presented a document containing the Palestinian Authority's work plan through September for achieving full member status in the United Nations. The document, whose contents reached Haaretz, sets a timeline for the stages the PA must go through according to the UN Charter. The General Assembly opens on September 15 in New York. Thus, to complete the procedural requirements that would lead to a General Assembly vote, the Palestinians must apply by mid-July at the latest.

    According to the Palestinian plan, in mid-July Palestine will submit an official letter to the UN secretary-general asking that it be accepted as a full member of the United Nations on the basis of the June 4, 1967 borders. In this letter, the Palestinians are expected to declare that the state of Palestine accepts the principles of the UN Charter. The secretary-general will then pass on the request to the rotating president of the Security Council, which in July will be Germany. To receive full UN membership, the Palestinians must be recognized as meeting various international criteria for statehood, such as a territory, a people, a recognized government and more.

    Erekat's document states that after the Palestinian request is received, the Security Council will convene a special committee to debate the request. This committee must submit a report to council members at least 35 days before the General Assembly opens, meaning by August 10. Given this schedule, the PA must make its initial request to the UN secretary general by mid-July. After the report is submitted, the Security Council will vote whether to recommend accepting Palestine as a member state or to reject the request. If the Security Council recommends UN membership, as noted, an unlikely development, the Palestinians would need support of two-thirds of the General Assembly, 128 states, to attain membership.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee yesterday that while he did not believe the Security Council would recommend membership, nothing could be done to prevent the UN General Assembly from recognizing a Palestinian state. "They can decide that the world is flat, there's nothing we can do about it," said Netanyahu. "We have no way of blocking a decision by the assembly. We will get support there from only a few countries." However, Netanyahu still said the move could be thwarted. "We have no way to obstruct the UN decision," he said, warning that that the Palestinians will not succeed in their efforts in the UN Security Council. "It is impossible to recognize a Palestinian state without passing through the Security Council and such a move is bound to fail."

Two Iraqis Charged in Kentucky with Terrorism Plotting

(FOJ) In this undated photo provided by the US Marshals Service, Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, 23, an Iraqi living in Bowling Green, Ky.

June 1….(AP) Two Iraqi men living as refugees in Kentucky tried to send sniper rifles, Stinger missiles and money to al-Qaida operatives in their home country, and both boasted of using improvised explosives against American troops there before moving to the US, according to court documents unsealed Tuesday. Thirty-year-old Waad Ramadan Alwan and 23-year-old Mohanad Shareef Hammadi, both of Bowling Green, were arrested last week after an investigation that began months after they arrived in the US in 2009. Neither is charged with plotting attacks within the United States, and authorities said their weapons and money didn't make it to Iraq because of a tightly controlled undercover investigation.

    Alwan is charged with conspiracy to kill a United States national, conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to provide material support to terrorists. Hammadi is charged with attempting to provide material support to terrorists and knowingly transferring, possession or exporting a device designed or intended to launch or guide a rocket or missile.  The FBI said in an affidavit that Alwan told an informant that he took part in insurgent attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq using both improvised explosive devices and a sniper rifle, saying "lunch and dinner would be an American." Court documents say Hammadi also told an informant he planted improvised explosives in Iraq. The men pleaded not guilty to the charges during a preliminary hearing Tuesday, and they're in federal custody pending a detention hearing.

   The criminal complaints against the two men say they entered the United States legally in April 2009 and had refugee status. By late 2010, Alwan had told the informant he wanted to help terrorists in Iraq, and he recruited Hammadi early this year, authorities said. They are accused of trying to send the rifles, missiles and C4 plastic explosives to Iraq. Federal prosecutors and the FBI declined to say how the two men were able to enter the country as refugees, or what they were doing in Bowling Green, a city of 60,000. State officials said at least 253 Iraqi refugees have moved to the city since 2008 but wouldn't comment on whether the state's refugee office dealt with the suspects. "Perhaps they just thought it was a lovely community," said FBI Special Agent in Charge Elizabeth Fries, who declined to say what the men did for a living. A Department of Homeland Security official, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said Alwan and Hammadi slipped through gaps in the immigration vetting system that have since been filled. The official said the agency now checks people repeatedly as new information becomes available.

  Their arrests come after FBI Director Robert Mueller said in February that his agency was taking a fresh look at Iraqi nationals in the U.S. who had ties to al-Qaida's offshoot in Iraq. The group had not previously been considered a threat in the U.S. Hammadi's court-appointed attorney, James Earhart of Louisville, said he doesn't know much about the case beyond what's in the criminal complaint. "I haven't had a chance to sit down and talk with him yet," he said. Federal Public Defender Scott Wendelsdorf, who represents Alwan, declined comment. No one answered the door Tuesday afternoon when a reporter went to Alwan's and Hammadi's listed addresses in Bowling Green. Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said the government is trying to find out more about Alwan and Hammadi but currently has no information.

  Court documents say the probe of Alwan began in September 2009, five months after he'd come to the US Late the next year, authorities started using an informant to record conversations with him. According to the criminal complaints, Alwan told the informant he was involved in insurgent attacks in Iraq from 2003 until 2006. The FBI said Alwan drew diagrams of four types of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, for the informant. In January, investigators identified fingerprints belonging to Alwan on a component of an unexploded IED that was recovered by US forces in Iraq in 2005, the FBI said. The informant told Alwan that he worked for groups that received money from Osama bin Laden and was planning to send money and weapons to Iraq in secret compartments on cars. The criminal complaints say that in January, Alwan recruited Hammadi to assist him, describing the younger Iraqi to the informant as a relative whose work as an insurgent was well known. Later that month, Alwan and Hammadi allegedly delivered money to a tractor-trailer, believing the money would ultimately be shipped to al-Qaida in Iraq. They later helped delivered weapons that included two Stinger missiles, authorities say.

Beneath Jerusalem, an Underground City Exists

May 31….(Yahoo) Underneath the crowded alleys and holy sites of old Jerusalem, hundreds of people are snaking at any given moment through tunnels, vaulted medieval chambers and Roman sewers in a rapidly expanding subterranean city invisible from the streets above. At street level, the walled Old City is an energetic and fractious enclave with a physical landscape that is predominantly Islamic and a population that is mainly Arab. Underground Jerusalem is different: Here the noise recedes, the fierce Middle Eastern sun disappears, and light comes from fluorescent bulbs. There is a smell of earth and mildew, and the geography recalls a Jewish city that existed 2,000 years ago. Archaeological digs under the disputed Old City are a matter of immense sensitivity. For Israel, the tunnels are proof of the depth of Jewish roots here, and this has made the tunnels one of Jerusalem's main tourist draws: The number of visitors, mostly Jews and Christians, has risen dramatically in recent years to more than a million visitors in 2010.

    But many Palestinians, who reject Israel's sovereignty in the city, see them as a threat to their own claims to Jerusalem. And some critics say they put an exaggerated focus on Jewish history. A new underground link is opening within two months, and when it does, there will be more than a mile (two kilometers) of pathways beneath the city. Officials say at least one other major project is in the works. Soon, anyone so inclined will be able to spend much of their time in Jerusalem without seeing the sky. On a recent morning, a man carrying surveying equipment walked across a two-millennia-old stone road, paused at the edge of a hole and disappeared underground. In a multilevel maze of rooms and corridors beneath the Muslim Quarter, workers cleared rubble and installed steel safety braces to shore up crumbling 700-year-old Mamluk-era arches. Above ground, a group of French tourists emerged from a dark passage they had entered an hour earlier in the Jewish Quarter and found themselves among Arab shops on the Via Dolorosa, the traditional route Jesus took to his crucifixion. South of the Old City, visitors to Jerusalem can enter a tunnel chipped from the bedrock by a Judean king 2,500 years ago and walk through knee-deep water under the Arab neighborhood of Silwan.

    Beginning this summer, a new passage will be open nearby: a sewer Jewish rebels are thought to have used to flee the Roman legions who destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 AD. The sewer leads uphill, passing beneath the Old City walls before expelling visitors into sunlight next to the rectangular enclosure where the temple once stood, now home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the gold-capped Dome of the Rock. From there, it's a short walk to a third passage, the Western Wall tunnel, which continues north from the Jewish holy site past stones cut by masons working for King Herod and an ancient water system. Visitors emerge near the entrance to an ancient quarry called Zedekiah's Cave that descends under the Muslim Quarter. The next major project, according to the Israel Antiquities Authority, will follow the course of one of the city's main Roman-era streets underneath the prayer plaza at the Western Wall. This route, scheduled for completion in three years, will link up with the Western Wall tunnel. The excavations and flood of visitors exist against a backdrop of acute distrust between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Muslims, who are suspicious of any government moves in the Old City and particularly around the Al-Aqsa compound, Islam's third-holiest shrine. Jews know the compound as the Temple Mount, site of two destroyed temples and the center of the Jewish faith for three millennia.

    Muslim fears have led to violence in the past: The 1996 opening of a new exit to the Western Wall tunnel sparked rumors among Palestinians that Israel meant to damage the mosques, and dozens were killed in the ensuing riots. In recent years, however, work has gone ahead without incident. Mindful that the compound has the potential to trigger devastating conflict, Israel's policy is to allow no excavations there. Digging under Temple Mount, the Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg has written, "would be like trying to figure out how a hand grenade works by pulling the pin and peering inside." Despite the Israeli assurances, however, rumors persist that the excavations are undermining the physical stability of the Islamic holy sites. "I believe the Israelis are tunneling under the mosques," said Najeh Bkerat, an official of the Waqf, the Muslim religious body that runs the compound under Israel's overall security control. Samir Abu Leil, another Waqf official, said he had heard hammering that very morning underneath the Waqf's offices, in a Mamluk-era building that sits just outside the holy compound and directly over the route of the Western Wall tunnel, and had filed a complaint with police. The closest thing to an excavation on the mount, Israeli archaeologists point out, was done by the Waqf itself: In the 1990s, the Waqf opened a new entrance to a subterranean prayer space and dumped truckloads of rubble outside the Old City, drawing outrage from scholars who said priceless artifacts were being destroyed.

    This month, an Israeli government watchdog released a report saying Waqf construction work in the compound in recent years had been done without supervision and had damaged antiquities. The issue is deemed so sensitive that the details of the report were kept classified. Some Israeli critics of the tunnels point to what they call an exaggerated emphasis on a Jewish narrative. "The tunnels all say: We were here 2,000 years ago, and now we're back, and here's proof," said Yonathan Mizrachi, an Israeli archaeologist. "Living here means recognizing that other stories exist alongside ours." Yuval Baruch, the Antiquities Authority archaeologist in charge of Jerusalem, said his diggers are careful to preserve worthy finds from all of the city's historical periods. "This city is of interest to at least half the people on Earth, and we will continue uncovering the past in the most professional way we can," he said.

Netanyahu Warns Egypt Losing Control of Sinai To Terrorists

(PM says Hamas and international terror groups are strengthening presence in Egypt and that the country's military government is having trouble 'realizing its sovereignty' in Sinai)

May 31….(Ha Aretz) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Monday that Egypt's new military government was having a "hard time" controlling the rise of international terror organizations in the Sinai Peninsula. "Egypt is having a hard time realizing its sovereignty in Sinai," Netanyahu said during a meeting of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "International terror organizations are stirring in Sinai and their presence is increasing due to Sinai's connection to Gaza." Netanyahu also warned that Hamas is getting stronger and that Israel is concerned for its future in the region, in particular with its peace partners Egypt and Jordan. "Hamas is strengthening in Egypt," Netanyahu said. "It transferred more of its activities to Egypt and less to Syria due to the turmoil there. The Muslim Brotherhood is also not an insignificant player in Egypt." The prime minister noted that Israel must act responsibly in light of the Arab world turmoil, saying that even though Israel supports the hope for democracy, it is unclear when and if this will happen. Meanwhile on Monday, Egyptian security forces were pursuing 400 al-Qaida members who have been located in Sinai, said a senior Egyptian security source on Sunday. According to a report on Egypt's Al-Hayat television channel, the operatives were planning terrorist attacks in Egypt and in Sinai. The source said the al-Qaida members include Bedouins, Palestinians and foreign Arab nationals. They reportedly attacked a number of security stations in the past in the El Arish area. Last January, Egypt's interior minister said al-Qaida is trying to establish terror cells in the Gaza Strip. His remarks came as Egyptian security forces had arrested 19 suspected al-Qaida militants, who were suspected of planning suicide bombings at holy sites throughout the country.

Arab League Chief Backs UN Route for Palestinian State

(Amr Moussa calls Palestinian plans to seek UN recognition for a future state in September 'the sound path' to statehood in light of 'futile' negotiations with Israel)

May 30….(Ha Aretz) The head of the Arab League said on Saturday the Palestinians should seek UN recognition for their statehood in September because negotiations with Israel have proven futile. "The sound path is going to the United Nations and political struggle," Amr Moussa told Reuters. He was speaking in Doha, where Arab League member states were to meet later on Saturday to discuss Palestinian options in the wake of major policy speeches by US President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Moussa said a vision presented by Netanyahu in a speech to the US Congress this week had amounted to a series of "no's". "I believe that negotiations have become futile in light of all of these no's. What will you negotiate on?" Moussa said, referring to the Netanyahu speech which the Palestinians said put more obstacles in the path of the moribund peace process. Netanyahu said he was willing to make concessions for peace but repeated terms long rejected by the Palestinians, including an insistence that they recognize Israel as a Jewish state and accept Israel keeping settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank.

    Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, in Doha for the meeting of the Arab League's peace process committee, said this week he would seek UN recognition for Palestinian statehood if there was no breakthrough in the peace process by September. The Palestinians currently have the status of UN observers without voting rights, but are hoping that at September's General Assembly they can persuade other nations to accept them as a sovereign member. Both Netanyahu and Obama have criticized the move, and although US opposition means the Palestinians have very little chance of success, the Israelis fear the maneuvering will leave them looking increasingly vulnerable on the diplomatic front.

    US-brokered talks between the Palestinians and Israel broke down last September in a dispute over continued Jewish settlement building in the West Bank. In a bid to break the deadlock, Obama said in a major policy speech last week that a future Palestinian state should be based on the borders as they existed on the eve of the Six Day War in 1967, with land swaps mutually agreed with Israel. Netanyahu immediately rejected Obama's proposal saying it would leave Israel with "indefensible" borders. Abbas described the idea as "a foundation with which we can deal positively."

Arab League to seek full UN membership for Palestinian state

(At General Assembly meeting in New York in September, Arab League will request that UN recognize a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital)

May 30….(Ha Aretz) An Arab League committee decided on Saturday to seek full UN membership for a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its capital, it said in a statement. The Arab League's peace process follow-up committee said it would request membership for the state of Palestine at the UN General Assembly's meeting in New York in September.

(FOJ) Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani speaks as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (L) listens on during the opening of the Arab League Monitoring Committee in Doha on May 28, 2011.

    The committee decided to go to the United Nations to request full membership for Palestine on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital," it said in a statement. Earlier on Saturday, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said there were "no shared foundations" for peace talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seeking UN recognition of Palestinian statehood was his only option. Abbas expressed concern that taking the diplomatic step opposed by the United States and Israel could result in financial sanctions and urged Arab states to fill any gap. While he left room for a compromise, saying a resumption of peace talks on terms acceptable to the Palestinians would avoid the UN move, the remarks were some of Abbas's bleakest yet on the likelihood of more negotiations. Palestinian leaders have said Netanyahu's ideas for peace with the Palestinians, outlined in a speech to the US Congress on Tuesday, put more obstacles in the path of an already moribund peace process. "We see from the conditions that Netanyahu laid out that there are no shared foundations for negotiations. Our fundamental option is to go to the United Nations," Abbas said.

US-Russian deal for two rulers who survived the Arab revolt

May 30….(DEBKAfile Exclusive) Although 2,300 kilometers separates Libya from Syria, Muammar Qaddafi and Bashar Assad have this in common: Both Arab leaders look like surviving the revolts against them and neither is buckling under the pressures thrown at them by the United States and Europe, albeit in different forms and varying measures. Debkafile's military sources report that Sunday, May 29, there were solid signs that Assad and his army was recovering control of most parts of Syria, excepting only the Homs area of central Syria.

    Elsewhere, after three months of battling the regime, the opposition is finding it harder to get protesters out on the streets for big rallies. Sunday, Syrian forces backed by tanks and heavy machine guns killed three civilians and wounded scores in the central towns of Talbiseh and Rastan and villages around Homs. Otherwise, most Syrian cities were calm.

This achievement is largely the result of the Syrian president's iron-fisted crackdown on protest followed by a ruthless purge of opponents to the regime in one area after another. But four more factors played their part:

1. The affluent middle class living in Syria's biggest towns, Damascus and Aleppo, stood aside from the uprising.

2. Likewise the Druze community which obeyed its leaders to stay out of it on orders coming from the Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt.

3. Syria's Christians who are the backbone of the country's business community actively supported the Syrian ruler.

4.  More than 100 Iranian and Hizballah officers placed their active experience in crushing opponents at Assad's disposal. They brought with them a whole range of manpower and equipment for breaking up demonstrations against which the popular demonstrators were helpless.

    Large military units have occupied the southern region of Horan and its capital Daraa, where the uprising first flared, and where a million people live under a reign of terror. Outbreaks in the suburbs of Damascus have been crushed and the port cities of Tartous and Latakia have gone back to normal. While the protest movement has not been completely extinguished and may continue to raise its head for some time, President Assad has undeniably regained control of his country. Outside the Middle East, in Washington and Moscow, Debkafile's sources report word going round that President Barak Obama and President Dmitry Medvedev Friday, May 27, came to an reciprocal understanding on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Deauville about the fate of the Syrian and Libyan rulers.

    Obama is reported to have promised Medvedev to let Assad finish off the uprising against him without too much pressure from the US and the West. In return, the Russian president undertook to help the US draw the Libyan war to a close by means of an effort to bring about Muammar Qaddafi's exit from power, in a word, the two big powers traded Qaddafi for Assad.

     According to our sources, neither the US nor Russia sees anyone in the Libyan rebel political or military leadership capable of taking over the reins of power in Tripoli. It is therefore assumed that a member of the Qaddafi clan will be chosen as Libya's interim ruler. Obama and Medvedev also quietly agreed, those sources say, that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron, despite their excessive involvement in the Libyan war, were wasting their time because they had no chance of making Qaddafi leave. According to the information the Russian president offered Obama, NATO attacks had not disabled a single one of Qaddafi's five brigades. Obama confirmed this from his own sources.

Syrian Tanks Attack Towns That Held Protests

May 30….(Yahoo) Syrian government troops backed by tanks attacked three central towns Sunday in an attempt to stop round-the-clock protests there against President Bashar Assad's regime, killing at least five people and wounding scores of others, activists and a rights group said. Activists said a school employee was killed and several students hurt, four seriously, when a shell exploded near a school bus.Security forces in several other parts of the country fired on crowds holding overnight demonstrations, causing casualties, activists said.The new attack using military forces pointed to Assad's determination to crush the two-month-old revolt, despite U.S. and European sanctions, including an EU assets freeze and a visa ban on Assad and nine members of his regime.The uprising, which began in mid-March, is posing the most serious challenge to his family's 40-year rule. What began as a disparate movement demanding reforms has grown into a resilient uprising seeking Assad's ouster. Human rights groups say more than 1,000 people have been killed in the crackdown.Sunday's military attacks targeted the towns of Rastan, Talbiseh and Teir Maaleh in the central province of Homs. Authorities had sealed off and isolated the towns by closing roads and cutting phone service, the activists said."The towns are under siege," one of the activists said.The activists spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing government reprisals.Residents of the towns have held anti-regime protests since the start of the uprising. Those protests have increased recently, with crowds taking to the streets day and night to call for the fall of Assad's regime, an activist said.The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two people were killed in Rastan and four were wounded in Talbiseh. There were no immediate reports of casualties in Teir Maaleh.An activist said at least three people were killed in Tabliseh. The activist said that nearly 100 wounded people were taken to hospitals in the central city of Homs.

   The Local Coordination Committees in Syria, which help organize the protests, said security forces were detaining men in Talbiseh. They said people were blindfolded before being loaded to buses that took them to detention centers.Also Sunday, human rights activist Mustafa Osso said security forces opened fire at about 8,000 protesters in the northeastern town of Deir el-Zour, wounding several people. He said there were protests overnight in several parts of Syria, including the Damascus suburbs of Zabadani and Douma.In recent days, many Assad opponents have been holding protests and candlelight vigils at times of the night when the security presence has thinned out.Osso said armed forces were also conducting operations in the southern village of Hirak, near the city of Daraa, where the uprising began. Tanks have been used against Syrian cities and towns in the past weeks and major military operations were conducted in areas such as Daraa, the coastal town of Banias and the western town of Talkalakh near the border with Lebanon.

WEEK OF MAY 22 THROUGH MAY 28

Iran Sending Special Forces to Assist in Syria Crackdowns

(Iran sending members of elite Quds force as well as weapons, riot gear, sophisticated surveillance equipment to use against Syria government opposition.)

May 28….(Ha Aretz) US officials said that Iran is assisting Syrian President Bashar Assad's violent crackdown on protesters, sending trainers and advisers to suppress opposition, according to a Washington Post report. Iran has sent members of its elite Quds force, whom the United States has recently sanctioned in response to the 10 weeks of brutal Syrian government quashing of protests, to help the Syrian government, Iran's most important ally in the region. Manpower is only one of the forms of assistance Iran has sent to Syria, the report said, with the Islamist government sending weapons, riot gear and sophisticated surveillance equipment that allows Syrian authorities to trace and find opposition members through Facebook and Twitter accounts. The surveillance system has reportedly prompted the arrest of hundreds of Syrians in recent weeks, two US officials and a diplomat from an allied nation told the Washington Post, all speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the information. The diplomat said that Iranian military trainers have been brought to Syria's capital Damascus to teach security forces techniques that were used against the "Green Movement" in 2009. Protests to the allegedly corrupt election of current President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad were met with brutal violence from Iranian security forces.

    The elite Iranian Quds force has reportedly played an influential role in crackdowns since at least mid-April, the sources told the Washington Post, prompting Obama to sign an executive order sanctioning the group last month. The Quds Force is a branch of the Iranian government's principal security agency which operates outside Iran and has in the past been accused by US officials of interfering extensively in political and insurgent activities in Iraq. The elite force has also helped train members of Hamas and Hezbollah. Although the number of Iranian advisers in Syria remains unknown, it has reportedly been increasing, according to the US and allied officials. The Obama administration mentioned the Quds force in a second set of sanctions last week, which targeted Assad and six other top officials including Mohsen Chizari, and Iranian military officer who is the Quds Force's third in command responsible for training.

    In March Turkey informed a UN Security Council panel that it seized a cache of weapons Iran was attempting to export to Syria in breach of a UN arms embargo. The report to the council's Iran sanctions committee, which oversees compliance with the four rounds of punitive steps the 15-nation body has imposed on Iran over its nuclear program, said a March 21 inspection turned up the weapons, which were listed as "auto spare parts" on the plane's documents. The plane was bound for Aleppo, Syria, and was given permission to pass through Turkish airspace provided it made a "technical stop" at Diyarbakir airport, the report said.

White House Getting Set for Obama-Netanyahu-Abbas Summit

May 28….(DEBKAfile Exclusive Report) The White House is going full steam ahead with preparations for an early summit between US President Barack Obama, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas for restartng the peace process, debkafile's Washington sources report exclusively. Sources in Jerusalem and Ramallah confirm that they too are getting set for the occasion. A high-ranking US official told Debkafile: "Till now, we have had the curtain-raiser and opening positions: Now we are going for the real show, negotiations." He was referring to the Middle East six-speech marathon launched by the US president May 19, countered by the Israeli prime minster and swinging back and forth up until Thursday, May 26 when Obama reiterated his concept of the Middle East peace track in London. While many circles have accused the Israeli prime minister of taking a hard line on peace in Washington, Obama is reportedly congratulating himself on what was generally perceived as a debate between the two leaders but which he feels extracted from Israel three major concessions:

1.  Netanyahu is the first Israeli prime minister to offer to leave settlements outside borders in a prospective accord establishing a Palestinian state. A high US official credited successful diplomatic cooperation between Obama and Netanyahu with obtaining this concession. He noted that the Netanyahu government is now off the hook of having to evacuate settlements, which would have been politically impossible after the traumas still lingering from Israel's 2005 pullout from the Gaza Strip and destruction of settlements there. In the view of the US official, the prime minister is now able to give roughly 120,000 settlers outside certain pre-determined areas the option of relocating across the lines in pre-1967 Israel or remaining on the West Bank under sovereign Palestinian rule.

     The US official elaborated on the president's conception of the "mutual swaps of land": These swaps need not entail the evacuation of large populations or numerous settlements but rather create Israeli and Palestinian pockets that would remain in situ in each other's territories under the "sovereign symbols" of the opposite party, Israeli or Palestinian. More crises obviously lie ahead for Washington and Israel as they hammer out the exact nature and scope of these arrangements. But the moment the Israeli leader accepted the principle of settlements outside borders, the door swung open for restarting peace talks. The US official noted that the Palestinian leader had positively ruled out any Israeli settlements remaining under Palestinian rule. The White House was treating his position as negotiable.

2.  If the Obama administration can bring the Israelis and Palestinians to agree on the nature of the "symbols of sovereignty" in the swapped pockets, it will have come up with the formula of joint sovereignty for solving the core issue of Jerusalem, said the official. Neither side would have to give up its sovereign rights in the city, and it would also be possible to introduce an international presence in defined areas.

3.  After examining the ways in which the concept of 1967 borders was interpreted, the US official found no major differences between Obama and Netanyahu. While the Israeli prime minister insists those lines are indefensible, Obama says they are the basis for negotiating changes that meet Israel's security requirements. Both Israel and the Palestinians will be free to demand changes in the 1967 boundaries. The official pointed out that although the Israeli and Palestinian leaders assert that the differences between them are too wide to bridge, both are busy preparing for the triple summit at the White House. State Department sources told Debkafile that, considering the Palestinian refusal for almost two years to sit down and talk to Israel, some members of the White House National Security Council and State Department as closely watching the Arab League foreign ministers' meeting in Qatar Saturday, May 28,as the key to unlocking Mahmoud Abbas' resistance to the peace track. The White House has been working behind the scenes to ensure that the ministers give him the green light for the three-way summit to go ahead.

Those officials stress that the start of negotiations is the best way to stop Abbas turning to the UN in September for recognition of a Palestinian state within 1967 borders.

Sources in Jerusalem confirmed the preparations for the triple summit, but were absolutely sure that the US official was overdoing the optimism in order to squeeze Israel for more concessions. They said the US president had loaded his Middle East speech of May 19 with pro-Palestinian arguments and laid down two propositions that Israel can on no account accept.

--- No Israeli military presence would remain across the new agreed borders between Israel and the Palestinians, i.e. Israel would be denied security provisions;

--- As part of the land swap, Israel would have to give up territory – or, in other words, withdraw not just to the 1967 lines but further west and give up chunks of pre-1967 sovereign land. If Obama sticks to this position, Israeli sources stressed, the negotiations will end very soon after they begin and the distrust between Israel and Washington will only deepen.

What Really Happened in 1948?

(FOJ) Arabs and Palestinians mark the day Israel was reborn in 1948 in the Promised Land as “al Nakba” or the great catastrophe. For Israel, the day marked a miracle that reversed the “Diaspora” inflicted upon them by Rome in the 1st century. UN Resolution 181 allowed for the existence of Israel on pre 1967 lines. The Arabs rejected those lines in 1948. So, why would those same lines bring peace today?

May 27….(Israel Today) With country after country lining up to support the unilateral creation of a Palestinian Arab state in September, the Palestinian leadership is feeling increasingly confident in rewriting history. In an op-ed piece published by the New York Times last week, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas claimed that after the UN decided to partition "Palestine" into Jewish and Arab states in 1947, the "Zionists" launched an unprovoked military offensive forcing surrounding Arab states to intervene. Abbas wants the world body to "right that historic wrong" by recognizing an independent Palestinian state on ancient Jewish lands later this year. It has been nothing short of astonishing to watch as respected international media outlets like the Times act as mouthpieces for these grotesque revisions of documented history. This phenomenon should leave little doubt that there is a spiritual battle taking place, and that its physical manifestation often defies logic.

Sha'ath: Unity Deal Will Allow us to 'Liberate Palestine'

(Highest ranking Fatah official to visit Gaza since Hamas reconciliation vows Abbas determined to go ahead with Palestinian unity.)

May 27….(Jerusalem Post) Nabil Sha’ath on Thursday became the highest ranking Fatah official to visit the Gaza Strip since the signing of the Egyptian-brokered reconciliation agreement between his faction and Hamas in Cairo earlier this month. A former PA foreign minister, Sha’ath entered the Gaza Strip through the northern Erez crossing. He told reporters upon his arrival that he came to tell everyone that PA President Mahmoud Abbas was determined to go ahead with the Fatah-Hamas accord and rebuild destroyed homes in the Gaza Strip. Sha’ath said that the recent speeches of US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Washington over the past week would have no impact on the Palestinians. “We will remain steadfast and we will continue, because this is a national and strategic interest,” he said in reference to the reconciliation pact. “Without it, we won’t be able to liberate Palestine and with it, we will be able to establish the Palestinian state.” Sha’ath said that Abbas was also planning to visit the Gaza Strip, but did not say when. Sha’ath added that he was carrying messages from Abbas to leaders of all the groups that he’s planning to meet with.

    He said that neither Netanyahu nor anyone else would succeed in foiling the Hamas-Fatah reconciliation agreement. Sha’ath was scheduled to hold talks with leaders of Hamas and other Palestinian groups on the latest developments in the region and on the PA’s intention to ask the United Nations in September to recognize a Palestinian state, an official in Ramallah said. Later on Thursday, former PA chief negotiator Saeb Erekat condemned the inauguration of a new Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem that was attended by several Israeli officials, Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

    Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin, Interior Minister Eli Yishai, Education Minister Gideon Sa’ar and Environmental Protection Minister Gilad Erdan attended the dedication ceremony of the second stage of the Ma’aleh Hazeitim neighborhood on Wednesday night, which celebrated 60 new apartments in the Jewish compound located in the heart of the Arab neighborhood of Ras el-Amud in the capital’s southeast. “The Israeli government is implementing its vision for the destruction of a two-state solution presented by Prime Minister Netanyahu to the American Congress,” said Erekat. “This settlement is not only another obstacle to returning to negotiations, but it also raises tensions, institutionalizes discrimination, and brings those with extremist beliefs in close proximity to Palestinian residential areas,” he added. Erekat called on the international community to act “so that Israel will understand that the creation of its facts on the ground can never make legal what is a war crime under international law. We call on all peace-loving countries that have not recognized the Palestinian state on the 1967 border to do so now.”

G8 Leaders to Endorse Aid to Arab Democracies

May 27….(Jerusalem Post) Leaders of the Group of Eight began gathering in France on Thursday to endorse aid to new Arab democracies, but wrangling among Western and developing economies over who runs the IMF may take up much of their time. Overnight violence in Yemen, one of several Arab states where veteran rulers have faced unprecedented popular uprisings, may also get attention, the United States, a key sponsor of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, ordered all but essential diplomatic staff to leave the country as clashes intensified. Officials from the G8, the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia, had held preparatory talks on Wednesday in the seaside resort of Deauville to hammer out common positions on issues ranging from the world economy to Libya's civil war, Iran's nuclear goals and unrest in Syria.

    Hosted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the summit runs until Friday. It is expected to approve a multi-billion-dollar aid package for Tunisia and Egypt, after "Arab Spring" uprisings deposed their autocratic leaders, and to seal an agreement to back others in the region who want democracy. Protests against other allies of the West, notably in the oil-rich Gulf, are, however, unlikely to win clear assistance. "We share a compelling interest in seeing the transitions in Egypt and Tunisia succeed and become models for the region," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote in a letter to the G8 on Wednesday. "Otherwise, we risk losing this moment of opportunity."

   

   

Nasrallah: Obama, Netanyahu Issued Declaration of War

(Hezbollah's leader has lashed out at US President Barack Obama, saying the US and Israel have the same goals.)

May 26….(YNET) Sheik Hassan Nasrallah spoke Wednesday on "Liberation Day," which marks the withdrawal of the Israeli army from southern Lebanon in 2000. He said both US President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have dealt a "mortal blow" to the peace process, and urged the Arab League to withdraw its initiative for the Middle East peace process in response. Both speeches, he added, required a response from Arab governments: "The speeches offered a knockout blow to the Arab peace initiative. I call on the Arab League to take that initiative off the table... it's time to withdraw it," he said to cheers from the crowd. Citing Israel and the United State’s "unwillingness to offer the Palestinians anything," Nasrallah said the Arabs were left with only one option: armed resistance: “What have Obama and Netanyahu left for the Palestinian people, Palestinian Authority and Palestinians factions?" Nasrallah asked the crowds via video link to the rally. "The Palestinians have only resistance to achieve liberation,” he continued. Nasrallah vowed that the group would maintain its arsenal and said no one could disarm it: "Our rockets will remain, and they will stay efficient. No one will be able to take it away."

Hizbullah Arsenal Bigger Than Most Nation

 May 26….(Arutz) The Hizbullah terrorist organization has an arsenal bigger than that of most countries, according to outgoing US Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The Lebanon-based terrorist group has at least 550 bunkers, 300 surveillance sites and 100 other bases, according to a map publicized two months ago by Israel. According to the map produced by Israel's military intelligence, one of the bunkers is even located inside a mosque. “Our interest is to show the world that the Hizbullah organization has turned these villages into fighting zones,” a senior military commander told the newspaper. “Hizbullah cruise missiles could threaten US ships with anti-ship missiles with a range of 65 miles,” Gates told a gathering at the American Enterprise Institute on Wednesday. He warned that the terrorist group may also have acquired biological and chemical weapons, according to CNN.

Turkey Ditches Assad

May 26….(DEBKAfile Exclusive) Syrian President Bashar Assad's Arab and Muslim support is melting fast. Debkafile's intelligence sources report that his second most steadfast supporter after Iran, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, has secretly ordered his government officials to dump Ankara's ties with Damascus with all speed. This change has several consequences which may also indirectly affect Turkey's relations with Israel. For now, Erdogan has given Syrian opposition leaders permission for the first time to hold a meeting in Anatalia from May 31 to June 2 to turn over ways of intensifying the three-month popular uprising to the right pitch for finally toppling Bashar Assad.  After three months of unstinting support for the Assad regime, Turkish government circles seek to shun finding themselves "backing a regime which shoots to kill Muslims in the street." After the number of Syrian deaths rose past 1,100, one high-ranking official commented to debkafile, "Turkey is a Muslim democracy. It must not lend support to dictators who murder their citizens." This change of policy has taken form in three additional steps:

1.  The following message was posted to Damascus on Tuesday, May 24:  Turkey is not a member of the European Union and is therefore not bound by its sanctions it has imposed freezing Assad's assets and barring him and his regime heads from travelling. Nonetheless, the Syrian ruler is advised not to try and test its intentions by trying to visit Turkey.

2.  Assad's repression of the uprising in the Kurdish regions of northern Syria is causing ferment among the Kurds of southern Turkey. Unless it is stopped forthwith, Ankara will take overt action against the Syrian ruler.

3.  Erdogan has discontinued his almost daily phone conversations with Assad. In any case, his advice to the Syrian ruler on how to overcome the uprising against him was never heeded.

    Our sources report that he also ordered the Hakan Fidan, chief of Turkish MIT intelligence service, to stop traveling to Damascus with updates on Syrian opposition activities. Assad has thus lost his key source of information about what the opposition is up to. As a by-product of this radical policy change in Ankara, the Turkish Prime Minister is reported by our sources to have reconsidered the dispatch from Turkish ports of a large anti-Israel flotilla for breaking the Gaza blockade. It was scheduled for the last week of June. Fifteen vessels carrying 1,500 activists from several countries were due to take part, led by the Mavi Marmara, the Turkish vessel aboard which nine people were killed in a violent clash with Israeli commandos a year ago. Erdogan decided to withdraw Turkish participation lest Syria exploit another possible Israel-Turkish clash at sea to launch an attack on Israel's northern border as a show of Syrian-Turkish solidarity. These days, Ankara is working hard to avoid any suggestion of solidarity with Syria.

US Slaps Sanctions on Syria's Assad

May 25….(Yahoo) The United States slapped sanctions on Syrian President Bashar Assad and six senior Syrian officials for human rights abuses over their brutal crackdown on anti-government protests, for the first time personally penalizing the Syrian leader for actions of his security forces. The White House announced the sanctions today, a day before President Barack Obama delivers a major speech on the uprisings throughout the Arab world. The speech is expected to include prominent mentions of Syria. The Obama administration had pinned hopes on Assad, seen until recent months as a pragmatist and potential reformer who could buck Iranian influence and help broker an eventual Arab peace deal with Israel. But US officials said Assad's increasingly brutal crackdown left them little choice but to abandon the effort to woo Assad, and to stop exempting him from the same sort of sanctions already applied to Libya's Moammar Gadhafi. In a letter to congressional leaders, Obama said he issued the new sanctions order as a response to the Syrian government's "continuous escalation of violence against the people of Syria." Obama cited "attacks on protesters, arrests and harassment of protesters and political activists, and repression of democratic change, overseen and executed by numerous elements of the Syrian government." The sanctions will freeze any assets Assad and the six Syrian government officials have in US jurisdiction and make it illegal for Americans to do business with them. The US had imposed similar sanctions on two of Assad's relatives and another top Syrian official last month but had thus far refrained from going after Assad himself. "The actions the administration has taken today send an unequivocal message to President Assad, the Syrian leadership and regime insiders that they will be held accountable for the ongoing violence and repression in Syria," said David S. Cohen, Treasury's acting under secretary for terrorism, said in a statement. "President al-Assad and his regime must immediately end the use of violence, answer the calls of the Syrian people for a more representative government and embark upon the path of meaningful democratic reform," Cohen said. Treasury officials could give no estimate on how much in Assad's assets were located in the United States that would be frozen by the new sanctions order.

    The US move came as Assad said earlier that his security forces had made mistakes during the two-month uprising and blamed poorly trained police at least in part for the crackdown that has killed more than 850 people. On Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was increasingly alarmed by developments in Syria and called out Assad and his allies for failing to follow through on earlier pledges of reform. "They have embraced the worst tactics of their Iranian ally, and they have refused to honor the legitimate aspirations of their own people in Syria," Clinton told reporters. "President Assad talks about reform, but his heavy-handed, brutal crackdown shows his true intentions." Clinton's pointed accusation about Assad bearing personal responsibility for the repression came as the White House ramped up its criticism of his rule. White House press secretary Jay Carney said democratic change had to come to Syria. "The recent events in Syria we believe prove that the country cannot go back to the status quo ante," he said. "Syria's future will only be secured by a government that reflects the popular will of its people."

Netanyahu in Congress: Jerusalem Will not be Divided

(Historic speech: Prime minister receives warm welcome in Congress, expresses willingness to give up 'parts of ancestral Jewish homeland.' Israel will be generous to Palestinians, he says, but will not return to 1967 borders)

May 25….(YNET) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the Unites States Congress in a historic and much anticipated speech on Tuesday. Netanyahu urged Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to tear up the pact with Hamas and recognize a Jewish state and also noted that Israel will withdraw from some West Bank settlements. Netanyahu received a particularly warm welcome in Congress. "I'm deeply moved by this warm welcome and I'm deeply honored that you've given me the opportunity to address this congress for the second time," he said. "I see a lot of old friends here and a lot of new friends as well, democrats and republicans alike," he noted. "Israel has no better friend than America and America has no better friend than Israel." Netanyahu declared "I am willing to make painful compromises to achieve peace. As a leader it's my responsibility to lead my people to peace. It's not easy, because I recognize that in a genuine peace we will be required to give up parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland." He added: "We'll be generous about the size of the Palestinian state but as Obama said the border will be different than 1948. Israel will not return to the border of 1967."

    Netanyahu stressed that Israel is not a colonial power. "The Jewish people are not foreign occupiers. We're not the British in India, or the Belgians in the Congo. This is the land of our forefathers, no distortion of history will deny the 4,000 year-old bond between the Jewish people and the Jewish land." Netanyahu congratulated the US on the assassination of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. "Congratulations America. You got bin laden – good riddance!" He also thanked President Obama for his great commitment to Israel's security. There were several disruptions during the speech, to which Netanyahu replied: "In Tripoli and Iran this wouldn’t have happened, this is a true democracy." Netanyahu reminded Congress again that Israel is the only democracy in a turbulent Middle East. "In an unstable Mideast Israel is the one anchor of stability," he said and noted Israel will always be America's friend.

'Israel will negotiate on settlements'

    Netanyahu noted that the status of the settlements will be agreed upon as part of peace negotiations and said that any real peace agreement will see settlements outside Israel's borders. He mentioned the withdrawal from Gaza and Lebanon and warned against a massive flow of weapons into a Palestinian state which could be fired into Israel should it withdraw from the territories. Finally, Netanyahu addressed Mahmoud Abbas and urged him to cancel the reconciliation agreement with Hamas. "Tear up your pact with Hamas, sit down and negotiate, make peace with the Jewish state. I you do I promise you this, Israel will not be the only state to welcome a Palestinian state." Netanyahu's speech concludes his turbulent visit in Washington which exposed acute disagreements with the US administration, most notably after his meeting with President Obama. Earlier on Tuesday, Netanyahu told the AIPAC conference that the State of Israel is not the root of the Middle East’s problem and must not be blamed for the region’s troubles. “Israel’s not what’s wrong with the Middle East. Israel is what’s right about the Middle East,” he said to the cheering audience.

Netanyahu: We Won't Negotiate with Palestinian Version of al-Qaida

May 25….(Jerusalem Post)Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells Congress Hamas isn't a partner for peace, its charter calls for killing Jews; says he's ready to make "far-reaching compromises," but strategic areas must be kept in any pragmatic deal. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told a joint session of the US Congress on Tuesday that he is willing to return to negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, but not with Hamas. Israel will not, he said, "negotiate with a Palestinian government, which is backed by a Palestinian version of al-Qaida," he said referring to Hamas after noting that they condemned the US killing of Osama bin Laden. Hamas, he noted, is not a partner for peace. It "remains committed to Israel's destruction and to terrorism. They have a charter, it calls not only for the destruction of Israel, it says: kill the Jews." The prime minister also told the gathered congress-people that he is "prepared to make a far-reaching compromise," for peace. Israel, he said, will be generous with the size of a Palestinian state but will be firm on where we put the border." Netanyahu said he recognize that "a Palestinian state must be big enough to be viable." Jerusalem, however, "must remain the united capital of Israel." Only a democratic Israel, the prime minister said, "has protected the freedom of worship" in the holy city. "The status of the settlements will only be be decided in negotiations, but I'll say this; in any real peace agreement, that ends the conflict... some settlements will end up beyond Israel's borders," the prime minister went on, adding, "The exact border will be negotiated.' The prime minister also stressed Israel's position as the one democracy in the Middle East, in a special joint session of Congress. "Israel is the one anchor of stability in a region of shifting alliances," Netanyahu said. He went on to stress the strong ties between Jerusalem and Washington. "Israel has no better friend than America and America has no better friend than Israel," Netanyahu said. The two countries "stand together, to defend democracy, to advance peace and to fight terrorism," he said.

Ahmadinejad Survives Assassination Attempt

May 25….(DEBKAfile Special Report) A large explosion set fire to an oil refinery unit in Abadan, Iran's biggest oil city, during a visit by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Tuesday, May 24. He came to inaugurate a unit for expanding production capacity by 4.2 million liters a day. Two people were killed and 12 injured. The blast was attributed by officials to a gas leak or "a technical fault" in one of the units, without specifying whether it was the same unit Ahmadinejad was scheduled to visit. However, according to Debkafile's Iranian sources, the explosion was triggered by his pushing the button to activate it that same unit, which must have been tested and run in before the inauguration ceremony to avoid any technical hitches. A news conference was quickly staged live on state TV showing him answering questions about the Abadan refinery, apparently to put a stop to spreading rumors that he had been assassinated. He did not refer to the explosion. The last known attack on Ahmadinejad's life was on Aug. 24, 2010 when a grenade was lobbed at his motorcade in the western town of Hamadan. Officials then said it was only a firecracker. Our Iranian sources point to three possible parties who might have rigged the attack:

1. Abadan on the Shatt al Arb is near the Iraqi border and the route popular with Arab agents from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf moving in and out of the Iranian oil-rich rich of Khuzestan, which is the hotbed of disaffected Arab Iranians and their liberation movements.

2. Infighting at the top of the Revolutionary Guards Corps or elite regime circles, where Ahmadinejad's prestige has slipped badly over his dispute with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the division of authority. The ayatollah's clique says the president violated the Islamic Republic's first commandment, some said even the precepts of the faith, by disobeying the Supreme Ruler. Ahmadinejad flouted his order reinstate the intelligence minister he sacked - only to be overruled by Khamenei. The Supreme Leader's suspects that Ahmadinejad is secretly plotting to topple him. The two camps are now squaring up for a fight with the president seeking to drum up popularity by claiming he is targeted for assassination. Maybe he is.

3.      A foreign clandestine agency may be responsible, possibly the same unnamed hand

which for two years has bedeviled Iran's nuclear program by liquidating its leading scientists and planting the Stuxnet virus in its computer control systems.

Obama's Betrayal of Israel Even Worse than we Thought

May 25….(WND) While President Obama last week outlined an Israeli retreat as part of a deal with the Palestinian Authority, the US in recent weeks also quietly has been leading talks aimed at an Israeli surrender of the strategic Golan Heights, WND has learned. Dennis Ross, Obama's Middle East envoy, has exchanged messages the past few weeks between Israel and the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to informed Israeli and Arab officials. The Israeli officials said that in the course of the discussions, the U.S. concluded Syria is in possession of a chemical weapons arsenal. The officials said the weapons were taken into consideration by the US in its assessment of Assad's regime. "It was part of the equation that led the White House to conclude that Assad should stay in power," said one Israeli official. Informed Arab officials, meanwhile, told WND that Assad believes previous negotiations with Israel could form the basis of a future accord in which Israel would surrender the vast majority of the Golan Heights. Both Israeli and Arab officials said the Obama administration believes it is in US interests for Assad to remain in power. The US reasons that even though Assad is a partner of Iran and a sponsor of Hamas, the alternative to his regime would likely be Islamist radicals.

    Assad has been threatened with uprisings in recent weeks. He has been accused of ordering rampant human rights violations and mass killings in attempting to suppress the rebellions. The Israeli officials told WND that in recent discussions, the US belittled White House sanctions passed targeting Assad and top Syrian officials, explaining the sanctions are more symbolic and that the measures will not harm Assad in reality.

In a major address last week, Obama called for Israel to retreat to the 1967 borders, meaning a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem while allowing for some territorial swaps. In his address, Obama supported the Arab revolutions across the Middle East and North Africa and called for the ouster of dictators and transitions to democracy. On Sunday, Obama clarified that Israel could retain some of the West Bank, telling a pro-Israel group negotiations based on 1967 borders would include mutually agreed swaps. He clarified that he did not mean the exact borders that existed on June 4, 1967. Meanwhile, with Assad's regime faltering, the White House has been pushing Israel to surrender the Golan in an accord with Syria. Syria twice used the Golan, which looks down on Israeli population centers, to mount ground invasions into the Jewish state. News media accounts routinely billed the Golan as "undisputed Syrian territory" until Israel "captured the region" in 1967. The Golan, however, has been out of Damascus' control for far longer than the 19 years it was within its rule, from 1948 to 1967.

    Even when Syria shortly held the Golan, some of it was stolen from Jews. Tens of thousands of acres of farmland on the Golan were purchased by Jews as far back as the late 19th century. The Turks of the Ottoman Empire kicked out some Jews around the turn of the century. But some of the Golan still was farmed by Jews until 1947, when Syria first became an independent state. Just before that, the territory was transferred back and forth between France, Britain and even Turkey, before it became a part of the French Mandate of Syria. When the French Mandate ended in 1944, the Golan Heights became part of the newly independent state of Syria, which quickly seized land that was being worked by the Palestine Colonization Association and the Jewish Colonization Association. A year later, in 1948, Syria, along with other Arab countries, used the Golan to attack Israel in a war to destroy the newly formed Jewish state. The Golan, steeped in Jewish history, is connected to the Torah and to the periods of the First and Second Jewish Temples. The Golan Heights was referred to in the Torah as "Bashan." The word "Golan" apparently was derived from the biblical city of "Golan in Bashan."

    The book of Joshua relates how the Golan was assigned to the tribe of Manasseh. Later, during the time of the First Temple, King Solomon appointed three ministers in the region, and the area became contested between the northern Jewish kingdom of Israel and the Aramean kingdom based in Damascus. The book of Kings relates how King Ahab of Israel defeated Ben-Hadad I of Damascus near the present-day site of Kibbutz Afik in the southern Golan, and the prophet Elisha foretold that King Jehoash of Israel would defeat Ben-Hadad III of Damascus, also near Kibbutz Afik. The online Jewish Virtual Library has an account of how in the late 6th and 5th centuries BC, the Golan was settled by Jewish exiles returning from Babylonia, or modern day Iraq. In the mid-2nd century BC, Judah Maccabee's grandnephew, the Hasmonean King Alexander Jannai, added the Golan Heights to his kingdom. The Golan hosted some of the most important houses of Torah study in the years following the Second Temple's destruction and subsequent Jewish exile; some of Judaism's most revered ancient rabbis are buried in the territory. The remains of some 25 synagogues from the period between the Jewish revolt and the Islamic conquest in 636 have been excavated. The Golan is also dotted with ancient Jewish villages.

China Warns USA to Respect Pakistan Sovereignty

May 24….(The Statesman) In the wake of the US raid in Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden, China has “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China,” a media report claimed today. The warning was formally conveyed by the Chinese foreign minister at last week's China-US strategic dialogue and economic talks in Washington, The News daily quoted diplomatic sources as saying. China also advised the USA to “respect Pakistan's sovereignty and solidarity”, the report said. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao informed his Pakistani counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani about the matters taken up with the US during their formal talks at the Great Hall of the People yesterday. The report said China “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China”. The two premiers held a 45-minute one-on-one meeting before beginning talks with their delegations. The Chinese leadership was “extremely forthcoming in assuring its unprecedented support to Pakistan for its national cause and security” and discussed all subjects of mutual interest with Mr Gilani, the report said. Mr Gilani described Pakistan-China relations and friendship as “unique”. Talking to Pakistani journalists accompanying him, he said that China had acknowledged his country's contribution and sacrifices in the war against terrorism and supported its cause at the international level. “China supported Pakistan's cause on its own accord,” Gilani said with reference to the Sino-US strategic dialogue where the Chinese told the US that Pakistan should be helped and its national honor respected. Gilani said China had asked the US to improve its relations with Pakistan, keeping in view the present scenario.

    Pakistan reiterated its position on the one-China policy and said it fully supported China on the issues of Taiwan and Tibet, he said. He said both sides will continue their consultations on UN reforms. It was also agreed that both countries will formulate a long-term joint energy mechanism for electricity generation in Pakistan through various means, including nuclear energy. Wen announced that the Chinese leadership will send a special envoy to Islamabad to express solidarity with Pakistan at this “crucial period in its history”. The envoy, a senior minister, will take part in celebrations marking the 60th anniversary of diplomatic ties between the two countries. The USA has stepped up pressure on Pakistan to crack down on terrorist sanctuaries and to probe whether military and intelligence officials were aware that bin Laden had been hiding in the garrison city of Abbottabad, which is home to thousands of soldiers.

     Pakistan has turned to China, its “all weather friend,” for support in the face of reports that US lawmakers are pressing for cuts in aid. China has agreed to provide Pakistan 50 new JF-17 Thunder multi-role jets under a co-production agreement, The News reported. It is likely that these planes will be supplied by June next year. The two countries are also discussing the supply of Chinese J-20 stealth jets and Xiaolong/FC-1 multi-purpose light fighter aircraft to Pakistan. They are discussing the mode of payment and the number of planes to be provided to Pakistan, the report said. China will also launch a satellite for Pakistan on 14 August. The satellite will supply “multifarious data” to Pakistan, the report said. Mr. Gilani said both sides had agreed to increase defense cooperation and China had assured Pakistan of help in enhancing the capacity of its armed forces. He said Pakistan's trade with China had registered a significant increase in the last two years and efforts were being made to raise it to US$ 15 billion a year. Gilani said Pakistan has the capability and capacity to defend its frontiers and the armed forces are fully vigilant, and no incident like the US raid against bin Laden will happen in future. He said Pakistan will continue its efforts to stop US drone attacks, which have proved to be counter-productive. To a question, Gilani said Pakistan's political and military leadership will decide about a military operation in North Waziristan agency. No pressure will be accepted in this regard and Pakistan alone will decide on this issue, he said. Gilani said Pakistan desired good relations with all its neighbors, including India, Afghanistan and Iran.

Taliban Raid Triggers Pakistan Nuke Shockwave

May 24….(Financial Times) The brazen attack on a Pakistani naval air base has sent shockwaves through the nuclear-armed country, raising concerns about the military’s ability to protect sophisticated weaponry. The ease with which six Taliban militants stormed the PNS Mehran base in Karachi, close to the city’s busy commercial airport, and destroyed two newly US-supplied P-3C Orion maritime surveillance aircraft has unnerved Pakistan’s military establishment. The militants held off security forces for more than 16 hours, killed 12 naval personnel and injured 14. Their primary objective appeared to be some of the military’s most sophisticated electronic warfare equipment, as they wiped out Pakistan’s anti-submarine warfare capability in a single stroke. Ghazanfar Ali, a former brigadier general, said the Taliban attack would “hurt Pakistan’s reputation as a nuclear weapons state” in the eyes of the international community, by emphasising the country’s vulnerability. In its arms race with arch-rival India, Pakistan developed nuclear weapons in the 1990s and carried out its first nuclear tests in 1998. Pakistan’s security establishment insists that the nuclear arsenal is carefully guarded. Some analysts, however, argue that nuclear material used in the earlier phases of weapons production is more vulnerable. “There is more concern about the plutonium and highly enriched uranium in production facilities and laboratories, which involve considerably more people and facilities that aren’t as protected as well as military bases,” said David Albright at the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. “You would worry that militants could try to seize a reactor in order to have a very visible suicide mission where they could threaten to damage the reactor or cause a massive radiation release.” “The biggest assurance is that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are not deployed,” said Mahmud Durrani, a former national security adviser to the prime minister. “They are kept disassembled and in different locations.” But others are demanding an urgent review of military capabilities after the Karachi attack and this month’s cross-border raid by US special forces, which slipped across Afghan-Pakistan border undetected and killed Osama bin Laden in a hide-out just 50km from Islamabad.

Al Qaeda Masterminded Pakistani Base Assault

May 24….(DEBKAfile Special Report) The fingerprints of Al Qaeda's interim operations commander Saif al Adal were all over the assault on the important Pakistani PNS Mehran naval air base in Karachi, which began Sunday night, May 22 and ended only after 17 hours of fierce combat, Debkafile's counter-terror sources report. It was the jihadist group's first major revenge operation for Osama bin Laden's death in Pakistan on May 2. Fourteen Pakistani military personnel were killed and 15 injured. Four attackers died, 4 were captured and 2 got away. The operation had four telltale features:

1. In planning and execution, the Merhan hit looked as though it was modeled on the Al Qaeda attack of May 12, 2003 on three fortified estates populated by a Saudi-foreign mix in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which Saif al Adal orchestrated.

2. The Pakistani base also had a strong foreign military presence of at least five Americans and 11 Chinese naval personnel. The attack therefore aimed at damaging the US-Pakistani intelligence collaboration which al Qaeda believes to have been indispensible to the operation for killing Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. Targeting Chinese personnel was meant to tear a hole in Islamabad's ties with Beijing which contribute substantially to Pakistan's military potency. According to official statements, no Americans or Chinese advisers were hurt in the attack despite earlier reports that hostages were taken from the latter group.

3. The military professionalism exhibited by the estimated 12-15 attackers was greater than the usual combat standards of terrorist organizations or Pakistani Taliban. The outer walls of the base were smashed in with explosives and the intruders used ladders to climb in, a method used in al Qaeda's attack on the US consulate in Jeddah on December 7, 2004 and believed adopted by Saif al-Adal based on mistakes he made in the break-in to the Riyadh estates.

4.  Meticulous and detailed advance surveillance of the base's layout armed the attackers with precise targets, indicating aid from an inside accomplice or long and careful reconnaissance by spies disguised in Pakistani military uniforms with false ID.

    The operation's objectives were: First, to impair Pakistan's intelligence-gathering capabilities: Pakistani surveillance aircraft take off from Mehran for their missions over the tribal districts bordering Afghanistan, especial North Waziristan, home to terrorist strongholds. Some of this information is passed on to the Americans for Predator drone missile strikes. Second, to destroy the three P-3C Orion surveillance planes the US had given Pakistan: Two were totaled and a third badly damaged. The hangars housing them, which contained a substantial amount of surveillance and technical equipment, were blown up and set on fire. Third, to disable Islamabad's intelligence operations over the Arabian Sea coastal area and water which separates Pakistan from India:

    No indigenous Pakistani element, including Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack in Karachi, would have wanted to harm Pakistani's intelligence capacity against India. Al Qaeda's motives were quite separate from those of Taliban in this case: In recent years, a high goal on its agenda has been to stir up trouble, up to and including war, between the two nuclear neighbors by means of terrorist operations in India which are clearly labeled "made in Pakistan."  By hitting Mehran and so removing the seeing eyes of Pakistani surveillance, al Qaeda aimed to give itself a free hand to launch more attacks on India.

    In summing up the operation, debkafile's military sources judge it was not one of the biggest or most dramatic al Qaeda has ever perpetrated. But it achieved its goals in terms of strategic gains, precision and rapid organization at very short notice after the death of its leader. Saif al-Adal does not specialize in the mega-attacks typical of al Qaeda's late leader. His expertise lies in medium-scale precisely targeted serial terror recurring at short intervals. More attacks are therefore coming.

Russia Hosts Hamas and Fatah, Praises Power-Share

May 24….(Newsmax) Russia hosted representatives of rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas on Monday and praised a power-sharing deal that US President Barack Obama has called an "enormous obstacle" to Middle East peace. "We very much value your agreement," Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told members of Fatah, Hamas and other parties to the deal signed early this month in Cairo. "All peoples need unity, not least the Palestinian people, who are justly seeking a solution to their task of creating a state," Lavrov said. Israel and the United States have criticized the deal between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement and its Islamist rival Hamas, which they shun. Obama said on Sunday that the agreement "poses an enormous obstacle to peace. "No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction."

     A partner of the United States, the EU and the United Nations in the Middle East "quartet," Moscow has made a point of calling for the inclusion of Hamas in diplomacy, hosting its leaders and saying isolating it is counterproductive. Hamas deputy leader Moussa Abu Marzouk said after the talks that Lavrov promised Moscow's support if the Palestinians seek recognition as a UN member-state in September. Lavrov did not comment directly on the issue in public. Obama said the United States would veto a Palestinian statehood bid at the United Nations. Lavrov also welcomed the Palestinian plans for elections in October. The Palestinian Authority recently postponed the local balloting, which had been scheduled for July, gaining more time to organize voting in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. Fatah and Hamas have yet to reach a deal setting up a new government, and the choice of a prime minister could help increase Western support for the reconciliation deal. Marzouk said the factions would hold further talks on candidates early next week and would announce the name of a new prime minister in early June, state-run Russian news agency RIA reported.

Obama Thinks Jerusalem is Outside Israel?

May 24….(Arutz) The United States State Department is standing behind the wording of an official statement that implied that Jerusalem, including its western parts, is not a part of Israel. Against the backdrop of President Barack Obama's speech calling on Israel to return to the 1949 Armistice lines, the statement's implications appear more alarming. The May 18 statement was cited in a Weekly Standard column by Eliot Abrams, a former foreign policy advisor for presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. Abrams wrote: “In what country is the Knesset? It seems that this question has stumped the State Department. It does not know or will not say what country the Knesset is in, nor, one must assume, does it know what country the Prime Minister’s Office, the Israel Museum, or especially the Western Wall are in. He quotes a “remarkable” press release from the State Department about the travels of Deputy Secretary James Steinberg, which says: Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg visits Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank May 18-19, 2011. In Israel, Deputy Secretary Steinberg met with Israeli academic and student leaders. In the West Bank, he met with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and other Palestinian officials. Among other issues, he discussed moving forward on Middle East peace as well as the recent fundamental changes in the region and the United States’ response to them.  On May 19, he will participate in the U.S.-Israel Strategic Dialogue. The Strategic Dialogue allows senior U.S. and Israeli leaders to discuss, on a regular basis and in depth, the many issues that affect our mutual security and partnership.

    The wording of the statement seems to imply that Jerusalem is outside Israel. Since Steinberg’s visit included a meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon in the Foreign Ministry, which is in western Jerusalem, the implication seems to be that western Jerusalem, too, is separate from Israel. “I suppose the poor benighted Israelis believed they were hosting Steinberg in their country when he visited government offices,” Abrams wrote sarcastically. “But he knew better.  What makes this especially egregious is that Israeli government offices, where Mr. Steinberg would have had his official meetings, are actually in west Jerusalem, the portion Israel controlled even before 1967. Yet the Clinton State Department is apparently unwilling to call even that portion of the city ‘Israel.’”

     Abrams believes the statement is not an innocuous mistake: “While Deputy Secretary Steinberg and Secretary Clinton’s State Department may believe that the Western Wall of the ancient Temple is actually not in Israel, and are apparently unwilling to confirm that the Knesset and Prime Minister’s Office are in Israel, it’s an unsustainable position. It is a ludicrous, insulting, morally untenable position.” In response to a query by Arutz Sheva, the State Department did not retract or try to claim the statement had been misunderstood. A US Embassy spokesperson would not directly address the article, but stated: “The formula as it was written does not show any change in the American policy toward Israel, and similar wording was used in the past.”

When Doomsday Doesn’t Come

(FOJ “Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” —Matthew 7:15) (FOJ—People like Mr. Camping cause more harm to the prophetic word of God than any tactic Satan can invent. Bible prophecy was given to us by God for specific purposes, and playing guessing games about the timing of the rapture event is fool hearty, and brings about more harm and discredit to the field of eschatology than anything I can think of.)

May 23….(Yahoo) If you're reading this, Harold Camping's predictions that the end of the world would start Saturday (May 21) failed to pan out. That's good news for most of us, but Camping and his followers were looking forward to the end. After all, they believed that they were likely to be among the 200 million souls sent to live in paradise forever. So how do believers cope when their doomsday predictions fail? It depends, said Lorenzo DiTommaso, a professor of religion at Concordia University in Montreal who studies the history of doomsday predictions. "If you have a strong leader, the group survives," DiTommaso told LiveScience. "Sometimes the group falls apart. Most often, the answer given by the group is that the prophecy is true, but the interpretation was wrong." In 1994, Camping predicted a September doomsday, but hedged his bets with a question mark. On his website, Camping wrote that he had misunderstood a key biblical passage, but since that time, biblical evidence for a 2011 end had "greatly solidified."

Doomsdays without doom

    The classic study of "doomsdays gone bad" took place in 1954. A Chicago woman named Dorothy Martin predicted a cataclysmic flood from which a few true believers would be saved by aliens. Martin and her cult, The Seekers, gathered the night before the expected flood to await the flying saucer. Unbeknown to them, however, their group had been infiltrated by psychologist Leon Festinger, who hoped to find out what happens when the rug of people's beliefs is pulled out from under them. Festinger's study, which became the basis of the book "When Prophecy Fails" (Harper-Torchbooks 1956), revealed that as the appointed time passed with no alien visitors, the group sat stunned. But a few hours before dawn, Martin suddenly received a new prophecy, stating that The Seekers had been so devout that God had called off the apocalypse. At that, the group rejoiced, and started calling newspapers to boast of what they'd done. Eventually, the group fell apart. Martin later changed her name to "Sister Thedra" and continued her prophecies. 

    Other failed doomsday prophets have struggled to keep their followers in line. One self-proclaimed prophet, Mariana Andrada (later known as Mariana La Loca), preached to a gang of followers in the 1880s in the San Joaquin Valley of California, predicting doomsday by 1886. But Andrada was not consistent with her predictions, and believers began to defect. Trying to keep one family from leaving, Andrada told them one of them would die on the journey. Sure enough, the family's young son soon fell violently ill and passed away. The family accused Andrada of poisoning him. She was arrested and found not guilty, but never returned to preach to her followers.

Searching for explanations

    How Camping's followers will cope with a failed doomsday prediction depends on the structure of the group, said Steve Hassan, a counseling psychologist and cult expert who runs the online Freedom of Mind Resource Center. "The more people have connections outside of the group, the more likely it is that they're going to stop looking to Camping as the mouth of God on Earth," Hassan told LiveScience. "Information control is one of the most important features of mind control." In his experience, Hassan said, about a third of believers become disillusioned after a failed prediction, while another third find reason to believe more strongly. The remaining group members fall somewhere in between, he said. Doomsday groups in history have run a gamut of responses after failed predictions, said Stephen Kent, a sociologist at the University of Alberta who studies new and alternative religions. On occasion, a leader will admit he or she was wrong; other groups will come up with a face-saving explanation. Some groups may blame themselves, rationalizing that their lack of faith caused the failure, Kent told LiveScience. Other groups blame outside forces and redouble their efforts. "One of the options is for the group to say, 'Society wasn't ready, Jesus felt there weren't enough people worthy of rapturing. Hence, we've got to go out and convert more people,'" Kent said.

After the apocalypse

    Often, a failed prediction leads to splinter groups and re-entrenchment. After Baptist preacher William Miller predicted the end of the world on Oct. 22, 1844, a date thereafter known as "The Great Disappointment" when nothing happened, his followers struggled to explain their mistake. One subset decided that on that date, Jesus had shifted his location in heaven in preparation to return to Earth. This group later became the Seventh-Day Adventist church. Sociologists and doomsday experts agree that Camping is likely convinced of doomsday rather than perpetuating a hoax or running a scam. A con artist, Hassan said, would never set himself up for failure by giving a firm date. A belief in doomsday gives followers a clear sense of the world and their place in it, Kent said. Those comforting beliefs are difficult to maintain after the world fails to end. "This could be a fairly sad day for these people," Kent said. "There will be some greatly disheartened people who may be terribly confused about what didn't happen."

Israelis Slam Obama's Dangerous Peace Policies

May 23….(Israel Today) Israeli officials on Sunday had harsh criticism for US President Barack Obama a day after he sided with Arab "peace" demands and strongly suggested that Israel is the obstacle to peace in the region. In a televised foreign policy speech last Thursday, Obama stated that "the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines," and insisted that "the Palestinian people must have the right to govern themselves and reach their full potential." A day later, Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. During their joint press conference following the meeting, Netanyahu flat-out rejected Obama's premise that peace must be based on the 1967 borders. "While Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines because these lines are indefensible [and] because they don’t take into account certain changes that have taken place on the ground," explained Netanyahu. Netanyahu went on to note that "before 1967, Israel was all of nine miles wide. And these were not the boundaries of peace; they were the boundaries of repeated wars, because the attack on Israel was so attractive." The Israeli leader warned that basing a future peace deal on the 1967 borders, as the Arabs insist, will result in "a peace based on illusions that will eventually crash on the rocks of Middle Eastern reality."

    Writing for the leftist Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, top political analyst Ari Shavit said that Obama's speech was good for Israel in that it opposed Palestinian efforts to unilaterally secure independence, slammed Mahmoud Abbas' unity deal with Hamas, and recognized Israel as the Jewish state, and called on the Palestinians to do the same. But, Shavit said, Obama erred critically in his insistence on the 1967 borders. "Instead of presenting the 1967 borders as the end of the process, Obama made them its start. Instead of tying them to the end of demands and the end of the conflict, they were tied to greater demands and continued conflict," wrote Shavit. He continued: "Without intending any harm, Obama presented Israel with a suicidal proposition: an interim agreement based on the 1967 borders. It's a proposal that runs along the same lines as the Hamas offer of a hudna - a long-term cease-fire." Shavit warned that by setting the 1967 borders as the starting point for final status negotiations, Obama had allowed the Palestinians to make the "right" of millions of so-called "Palestinian refugees" to flood Israel the focal point of continued negotiations.

     Israelis from across the political spectrum reject the Palestinian effort to demographically destroy the Jewish state by bringing in those millions of foreign-born Arabs. If the Palestinian "right of return" becomes the primary topic of discussion, there is little to no hope of concluding a peace deal. Right-wing Israeli lawmaker Yaakov Katz (National Union) was less forgiving, cautioning in a letter to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC): "Don't fall for Obama's magical oratory. He put a gun to Israel's head and asked it to commit suicide." According to some reports, Netanyahu recognized the danger of Obama's words, and the two leaders had a tense discussion during their White House meeting. Netanyahu dismissed reports of increased tension between himself and Obama, insisting that their disagreements on certain details of the peace process are "differences of opinion...among friends." But many believe the writing is on the wall, and Obama will soon push Israel into a dangerous peace deal. His clear suggestion that Israel's repeated stalling, rather than Palestinian peace infractions, is the main reason for a lack of peace today is telling. "The international community is tired of an endless process that never produces an outcome," said Obama in his Thursday foreign policy speech. "The dream of a Jewish and democratic state cannot be fulfilled with permanent occupation."t;

    In his remarks following the White House summit, Obama said the current political changes across the Arab world offers an opportunity for his vision of peace to be realized. "There is a moment of opportunity that can be seized as a consequence of the Arab Spring," said Obama. In an interview last month with Israel Today, Israeli political analyst Yoram Ettinger said the opposite is in fact true. The reality, said Ettiger, is that the "Arab Spring" demonstrates just how fragile the Arab world is, and how foolish it would be to trust Israel's security to a Palestinian regime that could be swept aside in a moment. Obama's reiteration that without a state the Palestinians cannot reach their true potential and must live in humiliation also ignored realities on the ground. In the upcoming issue of Israel Today, average Palestinians told us that they don't want an independent state ruled by Abbas and his thugs, and that they already live in peace and prosperity with the Jews around them.

Putin Decides to Retake Russian Presidency

May 23….(The Australian) Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has decided to run for the presidency next year, raising the possibility of a power struggle with his protege Dmitry Medvedev, the incumbent Kremlin leader, say highly placed sources. The once-close relationship between Putin, the tough-talking former KGB officer who has inspired a personality cult, and Medvedev, a softly spoken Twitter enthusiast, has become increasingly fractious amid speculation in Moscow that the younger man wishes to stand again. Insiders familiar with both leaders said Putin, who served eight years as president before becoming Prime Minister three years ago, had begun to lose confidence in Medvedev's loyalty. Under the constitution, Mr Putin's move to reclaim the presidency could see him rule for two consecutive six-year terms until 2024, when he will be 72. If so, he would have served as prime minister or president for 24 years in all. The sources said recent criticism by Medvedev had made Putin suspicious. "Putin will run for president. He's made up his mind for good. Rumours that he's still weighing his options are false," said one source. "There's mounting tension between Medvedev and Putin. The view in Putin's camp is that Medvedev has started behaving with too much arrogance and wants to challenge him. Putin is starting to doubt his loyalty." The Russian constitution allows the president to serve no more than two consecutive terms. Putin stepped down in 2008 and handed the reins to Medvedev on the tacit understanding that he could come back next year if he wished.

    At first Medvedev was regarded as a puppet. He even took to imitating Putin's distinctive macho stride and speaking style. But three years later, Medvedev, who at 45 is still Russia's youngest leader in more than seven decades, is understood to be reluctant to step aside for Putin. The President is said to be frustrated at the perception, both at home and abroad, that he is a lame duck. A second term would give him the power to pursue a more liberal agenda of greater political freedom and sweeping judicial reforms, in contrast to that of Putin, who is viewed as authoritarian. "Both Putin and Medvedev see themselves as the next Russian president," said another Kremlin source. "Given that the former brought the latter to power, that's a problem. "It's the classic tale of the pupil trying to overtake his master. Putin's camp thinks Medvedev is getting too cocky while the President and his people say it's time for the old man to retire." In a comment seen as a veiled attack on Putin, Mr Medvedev said last week: "A person who thinks he can stay in power indefinitely is a danger to society. "Russian history shows that monopolizing power leads to stagnation or civil war." In the past, Medvedev, a Led Zeppelin fan and iPad devotee who speaks fluent English, has been careful to avoid open criticism of Putin but they have clashed recently. "Make no mistake, Medvedev is an impressive leader who would be good news for Russia if he stays on," said a Kremlin source. "There's rivalry with Putin but they're both too smart to get drawn into a nasty personal conflict. "The difference is simple: Putin can ask Medvedev to step aside. No matter how reluctantly, he'll oblige. But Medvedev can't stop Putin from coming back. And Putin wants to be president again."t;

Hamas: US Can't Convince us to Recognize Israel

(Hamas rejects US President Obama's demand to recognize Jewish state, says US favors Israel at expense of Palestinian freedom)

May 23….(YNET) Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri responded to US President Barack Obama AIPAC speech Sunday, saying that "the American government has failed in the past, and will continue to fail in its attempt to convince Hamas to recognize the Israeli occupation. "They have a clear preference for Israel, at the expense of the freedom of the Palestinian people and its right for self-definition and the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state," he said. In the speech made during the AIPAC conference Sunday, Obama slammed the Fatah-Hamas unity deal. "The recent agreement between Fatah and Hamas poses an enormous obstacle to peace," he said. "No country can be expected to negotiate with a terrorist organization sworn to its destruction. "We will continue to demand that Hamas accept the basic responsibilities of peace: recognizing Israel’s right to exist, rejecting violence, and adhering to all existing agreements," he went on to say. "We once again call on Hamas to release Gilad Shalit, who has been kept from his family for five long years." Abu Zuhri countered by saying that "Obama's speech proves that it is a mistake to consider the American government as fair mediator, and that it is a mistake to continue betting on the role that the United States plays."

'Interference in Palestinian affairs'

    Senior Hamas official Salah al-Bardwil expressed his disapproval as well. "Obama's speech is unacceptable, and it is a blatant interference in the Palestinian internal affairs," he said. "It is an attempt to continue to deepen the Palestinian rift in order to please Israel," he added. Bardwil said that the Palestinians must move forward in the reconciliation process, and called on world leaders, especially European ones, to support Palestinian unity, "remove the blockade and stop the settlements." Fatah officials kept a low profile following Sunday's speech; Nabil Abu Rodeina, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said that the Palestinian leadership will convene on Wednesday in Ramallah and the Arab Peace Initiative will convene on Saturday in Doha, Qatar to discuss the implications of Obama's statements.

Obama at AIPAC: Israel's Borders to Differ from 1967 Lines

May 23….(DEBKAfile Exclusive Analysis) US President Barack Obama corrected the harsh impression Israel gained from his May 19 Middle East speech in one of the most pro-Israeli addresses ever delivered by an American president. He explained to the 11,000 delegates at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, AIPAC conference Sunday, May 22 that the final Israeli-Palestinian borders would differ from the 1967 lines because of the "mutually agreed swaps" he had also advocated. Obama reverted to the guarantee President Bush gave Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2004 against a return to the indefensible 1967 boundaries, adding that demographic changes on the ground and the interests of both sides made it unrealistic and were bound to be changed in negotiations. The US president thus addressed the cardinal objection raised insistently by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu when they met at the White House Friday, May 20, although Netanyahu was accused by critics at home of overstating the case.  Netanyahu responded by saying he is determined to work with Obama on finding ways to renew peace talks and voiced deep appreciation for his efforts and speech.  Obama was also influenced by the heated criticism he encountered in the American media, which not only ignored the principles he set forth in his wider Middle East vision, but accused him of pandering to the Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas to lure him back to the table after two years.

    In a speech aimed at pleasing his solidly pro-Israeli audience, Obama offered another key concession by clarifying his early comment: Last Thursday, he said the future Palestinian state would share borders with Jordan, Egypt and Israel, but did not refer to the security provisions demanded by Israel, such as a military presence on the Jordan River border. Sunday, the US President explained that the IDF withdrawal from the territory which would be assigned to the Palestinian state in peace negotiations would be graded to match the guaranteed ability of the new state and its security forces to prevent terror, arms smuggling and infiltration. Otherwise, Israel would stay on the West Bank. Debkafile's military sources stress this correction is vitally important because it comes close to Israel's on security perception. Obama stood by his original definition of a non-militarized rather than a demilitarized Palestinian state in view of the armed force needed to fight terror. He stressed that both states must enjoy the right to self-defense.

He also repeated his earlier assertion that the status quo is unsustainable for three reasons:

1.  The Palestinian population west of the Jordan River is increasing rapidly making it harder for Israel to remain a Jewish democratic state.

2.  Technological advances will jeopardize Israel's presence on the West Bank. He was alluding to the pileup of long and short-range missiles in its enemies arsenals.

3.  A new Arab generation is shaping the region. Therefore, Israel cannot rely on any peace treaty with one or more Arab rulers. "The world is moving too fast and is too impatient," said Obama.

    At the same time, he offered Israel some important commitments: The US will maintain Israel's qualitative military edge and has an unbreakable commitment to Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people. He vowed to prevent Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and oppose any effort to "chip away at Israel's legitimacy." The US opposed the Palestinian plan to ask the UNto recognize a unilaterally declared state. Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with a party dedicated to its destruction, namely Hamas, he said. Hamas must release Gilead Shalit after holding him for five long years, he said. The US will stand up against any attempt to single out Israel at the UN or any international forum. The Israeli prime minister addresses the AIPAC conference Monday.