Israel: Netyanahu "I'm Staying Away from US Nuke Summit"

Looks like the head of at least one nuclear power will not be attending President Obama's high-profile summit in Washington pursuing nuclear security. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has cancelled his trip to the US, reportedly because Egypt and Turkey were going to raise the issue of Israel's nuclear stockpile.

West Jerusalem has never officially admitted that it has atomic weaponry, but former US President Jimmy Carter reveals that the Israelis had 150 devices.

Middle East Inside Line: Palestine Money to Israel?, Obama’s Peace Plan, Netanyahu’s Confession, and More

An Israeli official said:

In the last 24 hours, the Israeli government has learned of various reports from various sources on the intention of several states attending the conference not only to deal with the issue at hand, but to take the opportunity to make a point of grand-standing against Israel and the issue of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The prime minister was dismayed at this, and decided to stick to the Israeli policy that Israel is usually represented at these types of conferences at the professional-ministerial level.

Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor will head the Israeli delegation attending the summit.

Middle East Inside Line: Palestine Money to Israel?, Obama's Peace Plan, Netanyahu's Confession, and More

Palestinian Money Channelled into Israel?: Haaretz reports the Justice Ministry’s intervention between the Finance Ministry and the Civil Administration in Area C of the West Bank. The dispute is whether the Civil Administration in the West Bank should be compensated for hundreds of millions of shekels, to be used for operational expenses as well as for infrastructure and welfare services for Palestinians, collected in the West Bank and given to the State of Israel. According to international law, an occupying power is prohibited from claiming the benefits of economic activity in an occupied territory.

A lawyer at the Military Advocate General's Office said the transfer of such funds to the state was improper and should cease. The Civil Administration has requested that the money again be given directly to it. However, the Finance Ministry claims that in the past 15 years the state has invested in the West Bank more than double the amount it has collected.



New Peace Plan on the Way?: Speaking to columnist David Ignatius on Wednesday, two top officials in Washington stated that President Barack Obama is weighing the possibility of submitting a new American Middle East peace plan by this fall.

All core issues are to be discussed with the beginning of negotiations. One of the officials, with reference to Camp David in 2000, claimed that "90 percent of the map would look the same.”

It was also stated that the planned peace plan would be linked with other regional problems. One official told Ignatius:

We want to get the debate away from settlements and East Jerusalem and take it to a 30,000-feet level that can involve Jordan, Syria and other countries in the region.

Netanyahu's Confession on East Jerusalem: On the anniversary of his government’s coming to power, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Wednesday he has not yet worked out his differences with Washington over a disputed construction project in East Jerusalem.

In response, Kadima criticized Likud and Netanyahu harshly:

Netanyahu lives in Bibiland, not in Israel.

Netanyahu’s trickery is meant to throw sand in the eyes of the public and artificially blur the crushing failure of the most over-sized and wasteful government in Israel's history.

Unclenching Fists With Obama: Religious terms such as "Islamic extremism" are to be removed from the National Security Strategy document under President Obama. Breaking from the Bush Administration's language that “the struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century”, the strategy document is being re-written without any phrase that can target Islam.

Turkish-Israeli Relations: The tension between Turkey and Israel remains along with the continuation of defensive alliance between two countries. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Wednesday that “Israel is the main threat to peace in the Middle East.”

Erdogan said that it is impossible to praise a country that exerted such excessive force in Gaza, including the use of phosphorus weapons. He also criticized Israel for not signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying Israel should not be exempt from international supervision of its nuclear facilities.

On the same day, a ceremony was held in Turkey to mark the completion of a project in which the Israeli defense contracting firm Elbit upgraded 170 tanks for the Turkish army.

Middle East Inside Line: Jordan's Warning; Lieberman's Threat; Gaza's Unity; Turkey's Israel Tension

King Abdullah's Warning to Israel: In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned on Tuesday that “Israel’s long-term future is in jeopardy unless there is permanent solution to the Middle East conflict”. He continued:

Over the Israeli-Lebanese border, if you spoke [to some Lebanese] today they feel there is going to be a war any second. [It] looks like there is an attempt by certain groups to promote a third intifada, which would be disastrous. Jerusalem as you are well aware is a tinderbox that could go off at any time, and then there is the overriding concern about military action between Israel and Iran.

So with all these things in the background, the status quo is not acceptable; what will happen is that we will continue to go around in circles until the conflict erupts, and there will be suffering by peoples because there will be a war.



The job of Jordan and the other countries in the international community is to keep common sense and keep hope alive until America can bring its full weight on the Israelis and the Palestinians to get their act together and move the process forward.

Lieberman's Threat over Ramallah's Plan: With no concrete steps towards the confidence-building measures demanded by the Netanyahu government, the Palestinian Authority’s chief negotiator Saeb Erekat told Voice of Palestine radio on Tuesday that Washington has reached a dead end in its attempts to revive Middle East peace talks. Erekat pointed to Israel’s failure to give guarantees, demanded by the US, that it not issue any more tenders to build on land where the Palestinians aim to establish a state, including East Jerusalem.

Meanwhile, referring to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s statement that there would be a Palestinian state by 2011, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman warned the PA against plans to declare independence unilaterally, saying such a move could prompt Israel to annex parts of the West Bank and annul past peace agreements.

The Gaza Factions Meet: The four Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip --- Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Popular and Democratic Fronts for the Liberation of Palestine --- met on Sunday, as a senior Egyptian official said that Cairo is concerned that the recent escalation of tensions on the Gaza border could lead to another Israeli invasion. On the same day, all factions said that they will cease firing Qassam rockets at Israel.

Israel-Turkey War of Words Continues: At a ceremony to mark the opening of an Arab-language television and radio company,  Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that Turkey will come to the defense of Muslims around the world:

We cannot be indifferent to the problems of the Islamic world of Jerusalem.

Our task is the integration with the Western world but we did not turn our back to the East. Arabs and Turks are brothers and we share the same values.

We cannot watch the murder of children in Gaza with indifference. We worry about the Gaza children but our hearts are also for the children of Haiti and Chile.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry’s response was immediate.  A statement issued in West Jerusalem said:

Israel is not interested in confrontation with any country, including Turkey. The impression that is being created is that the Turkish prime minister is seeking to integrate with the Muslim world at Israel's expense.

We suggest he find a more creative way, and to try to integrate with both the Muslim and Western worlds without turning into an extremist leader in the style of Hugo Chavez.

The Israelis also advised Erdogan to “be equally concerned for the killing of innocent civilians in Pakistan and Iraq at the hands of terrorist groups.”

Ankara's Search for "Balance of Power": In an interview with French newspaper Le Figaro, Erdogan repeatedly called Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad his “dear friend”, as he sent two messages to two different fronts. On the one hand, Erdogan reminded his “dear friend” that there should be no arms race in the region. On the other hand, he criticized countries pushing for another round of sanctions in the United Nations Security Council:

We consider that this question should be resolved diplomatically. Sure, sanctions are an issue at the moment, but I don't think that the ones being discussed can bring results.

Middle East Inside Line: Washington Reverses on Settlements?; US & Ahmadinejad on Gaza

Washington Calms Down US Jewish Community, Reverses Position on Settlements?: On Friday, the top National Security Council official for the Middle East, Dan Shapiro issued a message to U.S. Jewish community leaders: Barack Obama is a friend of Israel and there is no disagreement between Israel and the US.

Shapiro called recent tension a result of "bad timing" and said that the US did not intend to insist that Israel halt settlement construction in East Jerusalem. He said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's recent meeting with Obama in Washington was open and honest, during which they reached agreements on the building in East Jerusalem, negotiations with the Palestinian Authority, and Iran's nuclear program.

MENA House: Arab League Weakness; Egypt Cultural Corner; Fun Football Facts
Middle East Inside Line: Gaza Tension; Palestinian State by 2011?; Israel’s Hebron Show

Response to Gaza Tension: The US State Department released a statement Friday night that there is no “military solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Spokesman P.J. Crowley said:

The Israelis have a right to self-defense. At the same, as we've said many times, we don't ultimately think there is a military solution to this.

Our message remains to the Israelis and Palestinians that we need to get the proximity talks going, focus on the substance, move to direct negotiations and ultimately arrive at a settlement that ends the conflict once and for all.

We are always concerned that steps taken by either side, legitimate or otherwise, can be misconstrued, can be twisted and end up causing turbulence that can be an impediment to progress.

Iran's Ahmadinejad Warns Israel: On Saturday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Israel and world leaders that attacks on Gaza would cost "too much":

One more time I warn the leaders of arrogant powers and the supporters of Zionist regime to not make a new mistake in the Middle East -- attacking Gaza will cost you too much.

MENA House: Arab League Weakness; Egypt Cultural Corner; Fun Football Facts

Christina Baghdady is in the MENA House:

Arab League Extraordinaire: Yet again, the Arab leaders have failed to agree. The question on this occasion is, "What have they failed to agree on?"

Well, it's whether the Palestinians should resume their peace talks with Israel. The hot-blooded Arab League has once again lived up to its reputation of talking too much, flexing their muscles against superpowers, but not achieving very much.

MENA House: Changing of the President in Egypt?

The 22nd Arab summit was held in the Libyan city of Sirte on 27-28 March. Moussa Kossa, Secretary to Libya’s People’s Committee of Foreign Liaison and International Coorporation, urged Arab states in his opening statement to "take action to lift the siege imposed on the Palestinian people and to salvage Jerusalem”, in a reference to ongoing efforts by Israel to "Judaize" the city.



Some analysts, however, downplayed the Arab threat to end support of negotiations with Israel. “The Arab leaders might introduce rhetorical changes in their resolutions, but the substance will remain the same,” said Tarek Fahmy, an expert in regional affairs at the Cairo-based Middle East Research Institute. He added that the Arab "moderate" camp --- which includes Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority --- does not want to jeopardize what it sees as a readiness on the part of US President Barack Obama to exert pressure on the Cabinet of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

It will be interesting to see how this may play out regarding the expansion of Israeli settlements and any further pressure on Israel.

On that note, today Egypt and Israel commemorated the 31st anniversary of the signing of the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, which came on the heels of the 1978 Camp David Accords. In 1994, Jordan became the second Arab country to sign a peace deal with Israel.

Cultural Moment: This week is the anniversary of the death of the cultural icon of the Middle East and North Africa; Abdel Halim Hafez, otherwise known as Al-Andaleeb. If you ever consider a holiday to Egypt and you reach for local tips and advice, there will always be information in the music section on Al Andaleeb. He was born on 21 June 1929 and completed 15 movies and more than 206 songs before he died in 1977. His first musical hit came in 1951 when he stepped in for singer Kareem Mahmoud on Egyptian National Radio. To this day his music and films live on.

Andaleeb’s music has gone beyond borders. The background music for the Chemical Brothers, "Galvanize" is originally from Abdel Halim’s song "Zay il Hawa" (Like the Air) and Jay-Z’s song "Big Pimpin’" draws from "Khosara".

Did You Know? King Farouk I (the father of the last King of Egypt, King Farouk II) had his own football team. Founded in 1911 as "Kasr il Nil" (The Palace of the Nile), the team was renamed in 1940 to, "Farouk Al-Awal" after Farouk I. Following the Revolution in 1952, the name was changed to "Zamalek" after the area where the club is located.