BBC – The US has said Israel’s authorisation of new building in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank does not violate a recently announced moratorium. But a state department spokesman said it was “the kind of thing that both sides need to be cautious of”. Israel has promised a 10-month pause in settlement building in the West Bank, though not in East Jerusalem. Read article
Reuters – Vice President Joe Biden began a visit to Israel and the West Bank on Monday, assuring Israelis in a newspaper interview that Washington would close ranks with them against any threat from a nuclear-armed Iran. Biden, the most senior U.S. official to visit Israel since President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, is widely expected to caution his hosts not to attack Iran pre-emptively while world powers pursue fresh sanctions against Tehran. Read article
Guardian – Approval to build 112 new flats in Beitar Illit comes despite Israeli government’s partial curbs on settlement construction. The Israeli defence ministry today authorised further construction in a Jewish settlement on the occupied West Bank. The decision came prior to the arrival in Israel of the US vice-president, Joe Biden, who is expected to announce a new round of indirect peace talks. Approval for 112 new flats in Beitar Illit, an ultra-Orthodox settlement near Bethlehem, was given despite a 10-month partial curb on settlement construction announced by the Israeli government under heavy US pressure in November. Read article
Press TV – The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) urges an all-out international effort aimed at ending the Israeli aggression after an Israeli raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque. On Saturday, OIC Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu called for “an international intervention effective at every level to end Israeli aggressions and make Israel respect international law,” AFP reported. The Israeli forces on Friday raided the compound of the holy site in the occupied East Jerusalem (Al-Quds) to push out Palestinian worshippers who had gathered for the weekly Friday prayers. Read article
Arab News – Syria said on Thursday that Israel dropped uranium particles onto Syrian soil from the air to make it look as if a covert nuclear weapons plant was being built there, diplomats at a UN nuclear watchdog meeting said. Damascus has strongly denied US intelligence that a complex in the Syrian desert bombed to ruins by Israel in 2007 had been a nascent nuclear reactor, North Korean in design and geared to making plutonium for atomic bombs. Read article
Times Online – Scores of Palestinian homes in one of Jerusalem’s most volatile neighbourhoods will need to be demolished to make way for a parks project under plans unveiled yesterday by the city’s Israeli mayor. More than 88 homes in the Arab-dominated Silwan valley area of the city are scheduled to be removed to make way for a tourist centre. The plan has been criticised by Palestinians and the United Nations. Read article
Washington Report – This estimate of total U.S. direct aid to Israel updates the estimate given in the July 2006 issue of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. It is an estimate because arriving at an exact figure is not possible, since parts of U.S. aid to Israel are a) buried in the budgets of various U.S. agencies, mostly that of the Defense Department (DOD), or b) in a form not easily quantifiable, such as the early disbursement of aid, giving Israel a direct benefit in interest income and the U.S. Treasury a corresponding loss. Given these caveats, our current estimate of cumulative total direct aid to Israel is $113.8554 billion. Read article
Spiegel – Europe is outraged over the targeted killing of Hamas functionary Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. On Monday, members of the European Parliament threatened Israel with the discontinuation of partnership talks. European foreign ministers likewise demanded Israel’s full cooperation. Read article
CBC – Australia’s foreign minister has summoned Israel’s ambassador to investigate the use of forged Australian passports in a Dubai assassination. Stephen Smith called Yuval Rotem to his office in Canberra, the capital, on Thursday. He warned him any involvement of Israel in the use of the passports — used in the Jan. 19 killing of a senior Hamas figure — would not be seen as the “act of a friend.” “I made it crystal clear to the ambassador that if the results of that investigation cause us to come to the conclusion that the abuse of the Australian passports was in any way sponsored or condoned by Israeli officials, then Australia would not regard that as the act of a friend,” Smith told reporters. Read Article
Ed – Using the principles of Problem, Reactuion, Solution, expect the Australian Government to soon announce the introduction of bio-metric data and RFID chips in all Australian passports, so to ‘prevent this kind of thing happening again’
Press TV – Israel’s air force has introduced a fleet of large surveillance UAV (unmanned aerial vehicles), claiming they can fly as far as Iran and the Persian Gulf. The Israeli military says the Heron TP drones, with a wingspan of 86 feet (26 meters), will primarily be used for surveillance, implying that they also can be used for other applications. Read article
Haaretz – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Monday for an immediate embargo on Iran’s energy sector, saying the United Nations Security Council should be sidestepped if it cannot agree on the move. Iran’s uranium enrichment, in defiance of several rounds of Security Council sanctions, has spurred world powers to consider tougher diplomatic measures, against the backdrop of threatened military action by Israel as a last resort. Read article
The National – The Israeli government and its right-wing supporters have been waging a “McCarthyite” campaign against human-rights groups by blaming them for the barrage of international criticism that has followed Israel’s attack on Gaza a year ago, critics say. In a sign of the growing backlash against the human-rights community, the cabinet backed a bill last week that, if passed, will jail senior officials from the country’s peace-related organisations should they fail to meet tough new registration conditions. Read Article
BBC – Israel’s prime minister has announced a controversial plan to add two major religious sites in the West Bank to the country’s national heritage list. Benjamin Netanyahu told his cabinet the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem would now be included in the $107m restoration plan. Read article
Guardian – Message boasts of Israeli player’s ‘hit on Dubai target’ amid mounting row over Hamas chief’s killing. Amid the mounting diplomatic row over Mossad’s alleged assassination of a Hamas commander in Dubai, the Israeli embassy has turned to Twitter to comment. A tweet issued by the embassy today read: “@israeluk You heard it here first: Israeli tennis player carries out hit on #Dubai target http://ow.ly/18A79″. It links to a story about the Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer, who beat the top-ranked Caroline Wozniacki yesterday to reach the quarter-finals of the Dubai Championship. Read article
AFP – US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said her country has no plan for military action against Iran over its nuclear programme, in a television interview broadcast on Wednesday. “Obviously, we don’t want Iran to become a nuclear weapons power, but we are not planning anything other than going for sanctions,” she told Al-Arabiya television. Read article
Ed – she’s not lying, unless of course the Israeli plan can be considered a US plan.
Spiegel – The community of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel is half a million strong and growing. They live in a parallel universe cut off from the modern world in tight-knit communities where everything revolves around religion. Only a few dare to abandon this life — and the price for doing so is high. When she left, she left everything behind — even her name. She no longer wanted to be known as Sarah, the name her parents had given her. She’d felt imprisoned by that name for too long; it made her feel different and subject to laws that others imposed upon her. So, she started her new life with a new name, Mayan, the Hebrew word for “source.” Read article
Press TV = A Palestinian Authority court has sentenced a Palestinian journalist with the official Hamas-run television channel to 18 months in prison over affiliation to the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas). The court on Tuesday ruled that the 37-year-old reporter, Tariq Abu Zaid, who works for the official Hamas-run television network Al-Aqsa TV, must serve the term since acting Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas has forbidden Hamas and affiliated organizations from conducting any activities in the occupied West Bank. Read Article
UPI – A controversial order of Israeli-made Heron unmanned aerial vehicles passed critical performance tests in Israel and will soon be delivered, Turkey’s top procurement official says. “Six of the aircraft have successfully passed the tests inspected by a delegation of Turkish officials,” Murad Bayar, head of the government’s defense procurement agency, the Under Secretariat for Defense Industries was quoted telling local media. “We are expecting their deliveries in the weeks ahead. And this closes the deal from our point of view.” Read article
AFP – President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday that Iran’s arch-foe Israel was mulling starting a war “next spring or summer” but has yet to make a final decision. Without specifying whom would be targeted, Ahmadinejad said: “According to information we have they (Israel) are seeking to start a war next spring or summer, although their decision is not final yet.” Read article
The Guardian – The prime minister of New Zealand angrily denounced Israel and imposed diplomatic sanctions on it after two suspected Mossad agents were jailed for six months for trying on false grounds to obtain a New Zealand passport. The plot, which involved obtaining a passport in the name of a tetraplegic man who had not spoken in years, provoked a furious reaction yesterday.”The breach of New Zealand laws and sovereignty by agents of the Israeli government has seriously strained our relationship with Israel,” said the prime minister, Helen Clark.”This type of behaviour is unacceptable internationally by any country. It is a sorry indictment of Israel that it has again taken such actions against a country with which it has friendly relations.” Read Article
New York Times – Britain said today that Israel had admitted using fake British passports, and a newspaper said the documents were intended to help agents of the Israeli secret service attack foes abroad. The Foreign Office said it made a strong protest last October to the Israeli Ambassador, Yehuda Avner, about ”misuse by the Israeli authorities of forged British passports.” It said Israel later apologized and promised not to do it again. Read Article
Guardian – Police in Dubai are to issue arrest warrants for 11 “agents with European passports” suspected of assassinating a top Hamas official last month. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was murdered in his hotel room in Dubai on 20 January. Reports have suggested that he was in Dubai to buy weapons for Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. It has accused Israeli agents of killing him. Read article
Israel National News – U.S. Vice President Joe Biden will visit Israel next week. During the visit he is expected to discuss with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu the peace talks with the PA and the Iranian issue. Biden is expected to pressure Israel not to go forward with a pre-emptive strike on Iran which is believed to be only a year away from producing nuclear weapons. Read article
Reuters – Israel may lack the military means for successful preemptive strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities, its former top general said on Saturday. While endorsing international efforts to pressure Tehran into curbing sensitive nuclear technologies, Israel has hinted it could resort to force. But some analysts say Israeli jets would be stymied by the distance to Iran and by its defenses. Asked in a television interview about Israeli leaders’ vows to “take care” of the perceived threat, ex-general Dan Halutz, who stepped down as armed forces chief in 2007, said: “We are taking upon ourselves a task that is bigger than us.” Read article
Times Online – Israel is waging a covert assassination campaign across the Middle East in an effort to stop its key enemies co-ordinating their activities. Israeli agents have been targeting meetings between members of Hamas and the leadership of the militant Hezbollah group, and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. Read article
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