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.

Israel-Palestine Analysis: Welcoming a 3rd Intifada?

Is a Third Intifada On Way?: Haaretz's Zvi Bar'el considers the possibility of a third Intifada. He states that there is no one on the "other" side to take reins of such an uprising, since the Palestinian Authority is looking forward to "progress" from the Obama Administration and Hamas is locked inside the Gaza Strip, yet he says that an uprising cannot be predicted in advance and may surprise everyone.

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

Bar'el then makes a critical point, "An outbreak of violence will certainly do wonders for Israeli interests". He continues:

There's nothing like a murderous terror attack to give Israel back its image of being the victim; it would give us an excellent excuse to stop the fake freeze on settlement construction and show Barack Obama who the real culprit is. Enough with playing games, bring it on. Save us with an intifada.

Is the international community ready for those Israeli pretexts to shelve any talks or negotiations with Palestinians? If Israeli's politicians believe so, is their optimal course to sustain tension with Palestinian "radicals"?

Meanwhile, that tension played out in a statement by Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal that all options against Israel remain open, including war: "We will do everything to obtain the rights stolen from us, including confrontation with the enemy."

Israel's Army Radio reports that Hamas also called for Palestinian Authority President Salam Fayyad to be put on trial for comments  in an interview with Haaretzr. Fayyad had stated that, by 2011, there would be a Palestinian state by which refugees would be absorbed. Hamas officials responded:

Fayyad is a person without legitimacy, who has stolen control in the West Bank and whose hands are contaminated with the suffering of thousands of martyrs in the West Bank.

And on another front,  a report submitted to French President Nicholas Sarkozy by his two top diplomats supposedly gives no chance to renewed peace talks between Israel and Syria.

Patrice Paoli, director of the North Africa and Middle East desk at the French Foreign Ministry, and Nicolas Gallas, a special adviser to Sarkozy on Middle East affairs, had been in Israel and talked to top officials. Their report concludes that Israel is not ready to fully withdraw from the Golan Heights, while Syria is not prepared to cut ties with Iran and Hezbollah.