company:palestinians

  • Netherlands recognize Gaza, West Bank as official Palestinian birthplaces
    Feb. 10, 2019 3:30 P.M. (Updated: Feb. 10, 2019 3:51 P.M.)
    http://www.maannews.com/Content.aspx?ID=782505

    BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Palestinians living in the Netherlands will be allowed to register the Gaza Strip and the West Bank as their official place of birth, Dutch State Secretary Raymond Knops told the House of Representatives in The Hague.

    The Netherlands, which does not recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, currently offers Palestinians two options when specifying their birthplace at the Dutch civil registry, the two options are Israel or “unknown.”

    Knops wrote a letter to the House of Representatives, saying that he intends to add the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem to a list of official states used by the Dutch civil registry.

    The new category will be available to Palestinians born after May 15th 1948, the day the British Mandate was officially terminated and Israel became a recognized state.

    In the letter, Knops stated that the new category is in accordance with “the Dutch viewpoint that Israel has no sovereignty over these areas,” as well as the Netherlands’ refusal to recognize Palestine as a state.

    Knops added that the new category was named based on the Oslo Accords and United Nations Security Council resolutions.
    While the UN General Assembly and at least 136 countries have recognized Palestine as a sovereign state, most of the European Union has refrained from recognition until such status is established peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. (...)

  • As U.S. pushes for Mideast peace, Saudi king reassures allies |
    Reuters

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-paelestinians-usa-saudi/as-u-s-pushes-for-mideast-peace-saudi-king-reassures-allies-idUSKBN1KJ0F9

    RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has reassured Arab allies it will not endorse any Middle East peace plan that fails to address Jerusalem’s status or refugees’ right of return, easing their concerns that the kingdom might back a nascent U.S. deal which aligns with Israel on key issues.

    King Salman’s private guarantees to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his public defense of long-standing Arab positions in recent months have helped reverse perceptions that Saudi Arabia’s stance was changing under his powerful young son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, diplomats and analysts said.

    This in turn has called into question whether Saudi Arabia, birthplace of Islam and site of its holiest shrines, can rally Arab support for a new push to end the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, with an eye to closing ranks against mutual enemy Iran.

    “In Saudi Arabia, the king is the one who decides on this issue now, not the crown prince,” said a senior Arab diplomat in Riyadh. “The U.S. mistake was they thought one country could pressure the rest to give in, but it’s not about pressure. No Arab leader can concede on Jerusalem or Palestine.”

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    Palestinian officials told Reuters in December that Prince Mohammed, known as MbS, had pressed Abbas to support the U.S. plan despite concerns it offered the Palestinians limited self-government inside disconnected patches of the occupied West Bank, with no right of return for refugees displaced by the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967.

    Such a plan would diverge from the Arab Peace Initiative drawn up by Saudi Arabia in 2002 in which Arab nations offered Israel normal ties in return for a statehood deal with the Palestinians and full Israeli withdrawal from territory captured in 1967.

    Saudi officials have denied any difference between King Salman, who has vocally supported that initiative, and MbS, who has shaken up long-held policies on many issues and told a U.S. magazine in April that Israelis are entitled to live peacefully on their own land - a rare statement for an Arab leader.

    The Palestinian ambassador to Riyadh, Basem Al-Agha, told Reuters that King Salman had expressed support for Palestinians in a recent meeting with Abbas, saying: “We will not abandon you ... We accept what you accept and we reject what you reject.”

    He said that King Salman naming the 2018 Arab League conference “The Jerusalem Summit” and announcing $200 million in aid for Palestinians were messages that Jerusalem and refugees were back on the table.

    FILE PHOTO: Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud attends Riyadh International Humanitarian Forum in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia February 26, 2018. REUTERS/Faisal Al Nasser
    The Saudi authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the current status of diplomatic efforts.

    RED LINES

    Diplomats in the region say Washington’s current thinking, conveyed during a tour last month by top White House officials, does not include Arab East Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state, a right of return for refugees or a freeze of Israeli settlements in lands claimed by the Palestinians.

    Senior adviser Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, has not provided concrete details of the U.S. strategy more than 18 months after he was tasked with forging peace.

    A diplomat in Riyadh briefed on Kushner’s latest visit to the kingdom said King Salman and MbS had seen him together: “MbS did the talking while the king was in the background.”

    Independent analyst Neil Partrick said King Salman appears to have reined in MbS’ “politically reckless approach” because of Jerusalem’s importance to Muslims.

    “So MbS won’t oppose Kushner’s ‘deal’, but neither will he, any longer, do much to encourage its one-sided political simplicities,” said Partrick, lead contributor and editor of “Saudi Arabian Foreign Policy: Conflict and Cooperation”.

     Kushner and fellow negotiator Jason Greenblatt have not presented a comprehensive proposal but rather disjointed elements, which one diplomat said “crossed too many red lines”.

    Instead, they heavily focused on the idea of setting up an economic zone in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula with the adjacent Gaza Strip possibly coming under the control of Cairo, which Arab diplomats described as unacceptable.

    In Qatar, Kushner asked Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani to pressure the Islamist group Hamas to cede control of Gaza in return for development aid, the diplomats said.

    One diplomat briefed on the meeting said Sheikh Tamim just nodded silently. It was unclear if that signaled an agreement or whether Qatar was offered anything in return.

    “The problem is there is no cohesive plan presented to all countries,” said the senior Arab diplomat in Riyadh. “Nobody sees what everyone else is being offered.”

    Kushner, a 37-year-old real estate developer with little experience of international diplomacy or political negotiation, visited Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt and Israel in June. He did not meet Abbas, who has refused to see Trump’s team after the U.S. embassy was moved to Jerusalem.

    In an interview at the end of his trip, Kushner said Washington would announce its Middle East peace plan soon, and press on with or without Abbas. Yet there has been little to suggest any significant progress towards ending the decades-old conflict, which Trump has said would be “the ultimate deal”.

    “There is no new push. Nothing Kushner presented is acceptable to any of the Arab countries,” the Arab diplomat said. “He thinks he is ‘I Dream of Genie’ with a magic wand to make a new solution to the problem.”

    A White House official told reporters last week that Trump’s envoys were working on the most detailed set of proposals to date for the long-awaited peace proposal, which would include what the administration is calling a robust economic plan, though there is thus far no release date.

    Editing by Giles Elgood
    Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

    • In Saudi Arabia, the king is the one who decides on this issue now, not the crown prince,
      […]
      A diplomat in Riyadh briefed on Kushner’s latest visit [in June] to the kingdom said King Salman and MbS had seen him together: “MbS did the talking while the king was in the background.

      Euh, question bête : c’est dans la même aile de l’hôpital la gériatrie de king S et la rééducation (il est probablement sorti des soins intensifs, depuis le temps) de Kronprinz bS ?

      Ce serait quand même plus commode pour Mr Son in law

  • Despite furor over Jerusalem move, Saudis seen on board with U.S. peace efforts
    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-israel-saudi-insight/despite-furor-over-jerusalem-move-saudis-seen-on-board-with-u-s-peace-effor

    Palestinian officials say Riyadh has also been working for weeks behind the scenes to press them to support a nascent U.S. peace plan.

    [...]

    Palestinian officials fear, and many Arab officials suspect, that by closing the door on East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state, Trump will align with Israel in offering the Palestinians limited self-government inside disconnected patches of the occupied West Bank, with no right of return for refugees displaced by the Arab-Israeli wars of 1948 and 1967.

    The Palestinian officials said they were concerned that the proposal that Prince Mohammed communicated to Abbas, which purportedly came from Kushner, presents exactly that scenario.

    As told to Abbas, the proposal included establishing “a Palestinian entity” in Gaza as well as the West Bank administrative areas A and B and 10 percent of area C, which contains Jewish settlements, a third Palestinian official said.

    #double_langage #arabie_saoudite

  • IDF playing war games, but with real Palestinians - Diplomacy and Defense - Israel News | Haaretz
    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.649066

    A new eruption of violence could be triggered by a local incident of a religious character (involving the Temple Mount again, or a serious attack by Jewish extremists on a West Bank mosque); exacerbation of the political crisis between Israel and the PA; an economic crunch in the West Bank; or a combination of all of the above.

    Israel has discerned growing difficulty on the part of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas – who celebrated his 80th birthday yesterday – to control the Tanzim (the Fatah movement’s grassroots groups). Tanzim activists are bearing arms more openly than in the past, and challenging the PA’s authority in the refugee camps. Israeli Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino said recently, in a private forum, that the defense establishment is concerned about a possible renewal of terrorist activity by the Tanzim – a phenomenon that disappeared in the past decade.

    The IDF set the end of March as the target date for completing its preparations, ahead of a possible new eruption of violence in the West Bank. The confrontation could come later, or not happen at all at present, as the Palestinians focus their efforts on the international diplomatic arena.

    The three terms that are most in use in internal IDF briefings are containment; restraint in the use of force; and avoidance of large-scale Palestinian casualties. But even such well-intentioned planning does not take into account the fact that it is the blue – Israeli – side that is initiating in the confrontation against the adversary, which is marked in red on the briefing maps.

    The current danger of possible escalation is attributable to the actions of both sides: the Palestinians’ request, last December, to join the International Criminal Court in The Hague; Israel’s subsequent decision to freeze the transfer of 1.5 billion shekels ($380 million) of tax revenues collected for the Palestinians; and Likud’s victory in the election last week, which has aggravated the sense of pessimism in the territories.

    The military effort to prepare an effective but not exaggerated response is akin to the promise of the Waze navigation application to bring a driver to his destination by the quickest possible route. What happens is that, as the app directs more and more drivers using Waze to that same quick route, it causes it to become jammed – which is to say, the behavior of the system itself wields considerable influence on the course of events and the final results.

    Dress rehearsal under coercion

    This week, during a visit to nighttime maneuvers by the IDF’s Territorial Brigade in the Ramallah (Binyamin) region, in preparation for a possible escalation on the ground, one could discern an effort by the commanding officers to delineate for the troops the character of the expected confrontation.

    Only the brigade commander and, to a lesser degree, the battalion commanders still remember what a genuine West Bank intifada looks like. The company commanders may have fought in Gaza, but not in the West Bank. The exercise was predicated on a mix of possible events: violent mass demonstrations; shooting attacks; and use of live fire by members of the Palestinian security forces.

    In practice, the sector was quiet. As the soldiers advanced on foot toward the town of Bir Zeit, next to Ramallah, the antennae of the new Palestinian city of Rawabi were visible behind them, to the north. Late last month, after multiple bureaucratic delays, Israel finally agreed to allow the city to be connected to the water-supply infrastructure. IDF officers say they are impressed by the high level of construction in the meticulously planned city, which will eventually house some 40,000 Palestinians. A four-room apartment will cost $120,000. It’s 45 minutes (and one checkpoint) by car from Tel Aviv, but at this stage Israeli investors aren’t showing an interest.

    The Israeli forces raid Bir Zeit at points chosen in advance. The soldiers climb up a hill to the town through groves and fields, and then spread out on the empty streets. In one house, a drowsy male student in pajamas – a Jenin resident studying at Bir Zeit University – converses in English with a female soldier from a Home Front Command battalion. A superficial search turns up a poster in memory of the two East Jerusalem terrorists who murdered four worshipers and a policeman at a Jerusalem synagogue last November.

    In the Home Front battalions, which carry out missions in the territories very similar to those of the infantry (policing, routine security, arrest of Palestinian suspects), women are full-fledged combatants, executing the same tasks as the men in mixed units. What no one on the Israeli side seems to be taking into consideration is that by sending women out on night missions into the homes of a society that remains quite conservative, Israel is sticking another finger in the eye of the Palestinians.

    The exercise was planned with the goal of causing relatively little disruption to the routine of Palestinian life. The only complaint that reached the Israeli media came from the head of the regional council in the (Jewish) Beit Arye settlement: his PR man fired off an angry email about an attack helicopter landing in the settlement without prior warning. The helicopter, he wrote, “woke up children and caused panic among the inhabitants.” The army apologized and explained that the helicopter was supposed to have landed next to a nearby Palestinian village.

    Still, after almost 48 years of occupation, it seems that only an outsider is taken aback by situations the IDF blithely accepts. It’s the duty of commanders to collect intelligence and prepare their troops ahead of a possible confrontation. However, within the framework of the maneuvers – and with no immediate security need – the Palestinian residents become extras who are not asked whether they want to take part in the dress rehearsal, and receive no warning of what is about to take place. Their homes are targets for night visits, searches and the family’s coerced awakening.

    At best, the PA can preserve order and protect the citizens of the West Bank from manifestations of anarchy. But when the IDF enters, the PA steps aside and the inhabitants are left on their own. Shortly before the exercise began, the Israeli brigade commander phoned his Palestinian counterpart to inform him about the planned entry of the troops. According to the regular procedure, which is also applied in real operations to arrest suspects, the Palestinian commanders ordered police officers to remain inside the camps and police stations.

    The first stage of the exercise ended at 3 A.M., the dark hour when prime ministers fear phone calls bearing bad news. The brigade’s units had completed the task of locating the targets.

    The rest of the night also passed without any unusual drama. The events reported via radio communication – firebombs being thrown, sniper fire, an attempted suicide bombing attack – didn’t go beyond the scenarios invented by the leaders of the exercise. Bir Zeit would soon awaken to a new day.

    Today and every day, about 160,000 Palestinians from the West Bank – some 40,000 of them illegally – make their living from working in Israel, the settlements and Israeli industrial zones in the West Bank. These are the same people, of course, who are theoretically carrying out acts of terror in the aforementioned scenarios. The Israeli security forces recently issued 10,000 new work permits, in an effort to offset the economic damage being caused by the freeze on tax transfers. Besides, someone has to go on building the settlements.

  • Israeli forces injure six Palestinians in #jerusalem's #al-Aqsa compound
    http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/israeli-forces-injure-six-palestinians-jerusalems-al-aqsa-mosque-

    Israeli police clashed with Palestinians at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City on Sunday, injuring six Palestinians, Ma’an news agency reported. Director of Al-Aqsa Mosque Sheikh Omar al-Kiswani told Ma’an that more than 50 Israeli “special forces” stormed the compound through the Moroccan Gate and the Chain Gate during the raid, closing the Chain Gate shut. Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld claimed the violence erupted when police opened one of the walled compound’s gates to non-Muslim visitors, according to the regular visiting hours. read more

    #Israel #Palestine #Top_News

  • Ex-Clinton aide returns to White House with Persian Gulf brief - Haaretz
    | Feb. 19, 2014

    http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/1.575015

    Robert Malley, the White House aide who advised President Bill Clinton during his futile effort to broker an agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians at Camp David in 2000, is rejoining the White House, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

    The paper quoted administration officials as saying that Malley will manage the fraying ties between the United States and its allies in the Persian Gulf. As a senior director at the National Security Council, he will help devise American policy from Saudi Arabia to Iran.

    Malley, who has been program director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, has been something of a lightning rod in a field that can be culturally and ideologically treacherous. In 2008, he was forced to sever his ties as an informal adviser to the Obama presidential campaign when it was reported that he had met with members of Hamas, which the State Department classifies as a terrorist organization.

    Malley also came under fire for an article, co-written with Hussein Agha, that argued that some of the blame for the failure of the Camp David talks lay with the Israeli leader at the time, Ehud Barak, and not just with the uncompromising position of the Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, which was the conventional wisdom then.

    Some right-wing critics accused Malley of showing a persistent anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian bias in his writings. A few even cited his father, the prominent Egyptian-born Jewish journalist, Simon Malley, who had close ties to the Egyptian government.

    But Malley was stoutly defended by five former colleagues from the Clinton administration — Sandy Berger, Dennis B. Ross, Martin S. Indyk, Daniel C. Kurtzer and Aaron David Miller — who wrote a letter condemning what they said were “vicious, personal attacks” that were “unfair, inappropriate and wrong.”

    White House officials played down those controversies on Tuesday, saying Malley had forged strong relationships, including with officials in the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

    “There are always differences in tactics,” said Antony J. Blinken, the principal deputy national security adviser. But, he added, “I can’t think of anybody outside government who has a stronger set of relationships with the Israelis, as well as with people throughout the region.”

    Malley, who declined to comment about his new job, will have plenty to keep him occupied. Next month, President Obama is scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia to meet with King Abdullah on what officials said will be a fence-mending mission.

    Saudi Arabia has been frustrated by Obama’s unwillingness to do more to support rebel forces in Syria. The Saudis have funneled weapons to the rebels, in part because they view the civil war there as a proxy battle between Sunni Arabs and Shiite Iran, which is an important backer of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

  • Israel okays PA’s acquisition of anti-riot gear ahead of UN vote - Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News
    http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israel-okays-pa-s-acquisition-of-anti-riot-gear-ahead-of-un-vote-1.384530?l

    Israel has given approval for the Palestinian Authority to equip its security forces with riot-control gear, such as tear gas grenades and rubber bullets.

    The PA has approached Israeli firms to buy such equipment in advance of expected demonstrations on the West Bank around the Palestinians’ request for United Nations recognition as an independent state.

    Palestinian security officials told their Israeli counterparts in their regular meetings that they will do everything within their ability to contain demonstrations and prevent violent interactions with the Israel Defense Forces and settlers. But the two sides are also preparing for the possibility that demonstrations will escalate into violence the PA will find it difficult to control. Thus, the IDF recommended a few months ago to allow the PA to acquire such equipment, so the Palestinians could deal with demonstrations before the IDF had to.

    Si l’Autorité palestinienne pouvait se charger de tuer les palestiniens à la place d’Israël, ça serait drôlement pratique.