Middle East Inside Line: Stalemate over Lebanon's Government; Israel's Settlements as "Human Rights"

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Stalemate over Lebanon Government: Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad al-Hariri (pictured) submitted the list for a new national unity government to Lebanese president Michel Suleiman on Monday. Hariri's "March 14" alliance gets 15 of 30 seats in the new cabinet and the opposition "March 8" alliance 10 seats. The other five seats will be chosen by the president.

Hezbollah and its allies refused to support the  list since several ministries and appointees that it demanded had been rejected by Hariri. Haaretz quotes one senior Hezbollah official: "We will not deal with this proposal because we know nothing about it. As far as we are concerned, it does not exist and we will have nothing to do with it."

President Suleiman is not expected to approve any Cabinet proposal that does not have opposition support.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Government has decided to intervene. An Israeli official said that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu addressed the issue in the past, and that his position then still stands: "If Hezbollah joins the Lebanese government, then the Lebanese government is accepting responsibility for Hezbollah's actions, including its actions against Israel."

Israel's Settlements Expand for Sake of "Human Rights": On Monday, right-wing lawmakers, including Supreme Court Judge Eliyakim Rubinstein, celebrated the establishment of a new neighborhood in the E-1 corridor connecting Jerusalem to settlement suburbs in the West Bank. National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau and Information Minister Yuli Edelstein were also present.

Following Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak's decision to approve construction of 455 new homes, this was a "victory" demonstration for some Likud Party members. Landau told the crowd:

This land is ours and ours alone... It is the Arabs who are occupiers... A settlement freeze is a violation of human rights. What can we tell the families? Don't have any more kids, don't build another house, you can't have a playground here. This construction must not stop under any circumstances.

Middle East Inside Line: Israel and Hamas Manoeuvre on Settlements Policy

Israel Government Moves for Common Line on Settlements: On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel would likely reach a final plan with George Mitchell during the American envoy's visit to Israel this week.

Dealing with increasing criticisms from his Likud Party, the Prime Minister held meetings with some Likud cabinet ministers and members of Parliament to get their support for a freeze on construction in the West Bank settlements. Netanyahu's meetings came as Defense Minister Ehud Barak gave partial approval for 500 new housing units to be constructed in the West Bank, with 2000 more to be approved on Monday morning. A source in the Prime Minister's office said Netanyahu did not use the word "moratorium" or "freeze" but described the proposed measure as "reducing the scale of construction".

While the European Union reiterated its call for a "total settlement freeze," Washington sharpened its tone:

Continued settlement activity is inconsistent with Israel's commitment under the road map.... The administration of President Barack Obama does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement expansion and we urge that it stop. We are working to create a climate in which negotiations can take place, and such actions make it harder to create such a climate.

Meanwhile, Israel and Hamas Stand Tough: On Sunday, Deputy Prime Minister Eli Yishai told Likud Party members:

The postponement in construction is a strategic delay... We won't give up on building in Jerusalem and will still build hundreds of construction units. We are looking ahead, here.

On the other side, Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal warned Arab states:

There is an Israeli effort to avoid the American demands... We warn against any Arab rush toward normalization.

Middle East/Iran Inside Line: Israel Presses Ahead with Settlements, Tehran Draws Line on Nuke Talks

The Latest from Iran (6 September): The Reformists Speak

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Israel Pushes Ahead with Settlements: On Friday, a senior Israeli government source reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would approve the construction of hundreds of new housing units in West Bank settlements before he declares a moratorium. Significantly, these "hundreds of houses" are beyond  the 2,500 housing units currently being built.

The Israeli source claimed that Netanyahu informed U.S. officials weeks ago of his decision to authorize the additional construction. The White House, however, "regretted" the reports:

We regret the reports of Israel's plans to approve additional settlement construction... Continued settlement activity is inconsistent with Israel's commitment under the road map.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas called Netanyahu's planned approval of the West Bank construction as "unacceptable", and Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the new construction has been criticized by all 27 EU ministers.

Iran Draws Line on Nuke Talks: On Friday, Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ali Asghar Soltanieh, accused the United States of using "forged documents" to make its case that Iran is building nuclear weapons:

By interfering in the work of the IAEA and exerting various political pressures, the government of the United States attempted to spoil the cooperative spirit between the Islamic republic of Iran and the IAEA... The government of the United States has not handed over original documents to the agency since it does not in fact have any authenticated document and all it has are forged documents.

The agency didn't deliver any original documents to Iran and none of the documents and materials that were shown to Iran have authenticity and all proved to be fabricated, baseless allegations and false attributions to Iran... Therefore, this subject must be closed.

Middle East Inside Line: Chavez Attack on Israel, Gaza Low-Intensity Conflict

Chavez's Diplomatic Dive Bombing of Israel: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez targeted Israel and the U.S. during his visit to Syria. After a one-hour meeting with Syrian President Bashir al-Assad, Chavez blamed Israel for "dividing the Middle East" as "a country that annihilates people and is hostile to peace":

The entire world knows it. Why was the state of Israel created? ... To divide. To impede the unity of the Arab world. To assure the presence of the North American empire in all these lands.

I believe [this] is a fateful battle. It's either now or never in order to liberate the world from imperialism and change the world from a unipolar into a multi-polar world.

Likud Splitting over Settlements Issue? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is feeling pressure from his Likud Party members in the wake of headlines that he already accepted a temporary freeze on settlement construction in the West Bank. More than half of the party leadership has accepted an invitation to speak at a hawkish rally in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. Vice Premier Silvan Shalom, Ministers Gilad Erdan, Moshe Kahlon, Yuli Edelstein and Michael Eitan, and Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin have accepted, while Vice Premier Moshe Ya'alon has not decided whether to attend.

Shalom has asserted:

A clear, wide majority in the Likud would not give a hand to any step that would strangle the settlements, which is one of the party's banners... We need to take steps to advance the diplomatic process, but with conditions, and one of them must be not freezing the settlements that we built. The Palestinians cannot ask us to make unilateral, irreversible, far-reaching concessions that impact the permanent [borders] just for agreeing to meet with us.

Shalom added that US President Barack Obama's diplomatic process would "blow up in our face and lead to a dead end."

Education Minister Gideon Sa'ar supported Netanyahu on Thursday:

In today's complex situation, our prime minister whom we chose, Binyamin Netanyahu, must maintain all our national interests - the settlements that are the apple of our eye, Jerusalem, and also our relations with the United States and avoiding international isolation, because we will not be able to do the things that are close to our hearts if we are isolated.

Israel-Gaza Low-Intensity Conflict: Seven mortar shells were fired from Gaza into Israel, all hitting open areas without casualties or damage. On Thursday night, Israeli jets bombed a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip.

Middle East Inside Line: Israel's New PR Campaign

Middle East Inside Line: Fatah and Israel, US Withdrawal From Iraq to Turkey?, Israel-Sweden Fight

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Israel - No Arrests, The Americans Are in Town: According to Ha'aretz, Israeli soldiers serving in the West Bank have been instructed by their commanders to cancel a number of planned arrest operations while American diplomats are touring inside the West Bank and East Jerusalem “to gather testimony on settlement construction, to oversee American-funded projects, and to meet with Palestinian Authority officials". One of the officers said: "We were told that the situation with the Americans is sensitive and that it is not desirable that operations are conducted that could lead to violent situations when they [the Americans] are there."

Israel's New PR Campaign: On Monday, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman publicly dismissed Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad’s “de-facto state” plan. He also said that there should not be any deadline for a future agreement between Palestinians and Israelis.

On the same day, the Jerusalem Post reported that Lieberman is working on a new campaign to fix Israel’s image in the eyes of Washington: "Government ministers Moshe Ya'alon, Yossi Peled, Dan Meridor and Benny Begin, as well as Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon and former consul-general in New York Alon Pinkas, will begin on Sunday - in a staggered fashion - fanning out across America, meeting with political and media figures, policy-makers, campus groups and Jewish organizations, in an effort to explain the government's positions.”

Holding the Line on Israeli Settlements: Yossi Peled, Israeli Minister Without Portfolio, spoke at the gathering of Likud Party activists in Tel Aviv on Tuesday after accompanying Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his trip to Europe. He assured the audience that the Prime Minister had not made any deal with the Obama Administration to freeze construction in Judea and Samaria and that he was not willing to do so:

I heard the prime minister say with my own ears that he has no intention of freezing construction in the settlements or in Jerusalem… He said there is no agreement to freeze construction in the settlements. I am telling you this first-hand.

Peled added that Netanyahu had said in his meetings in Europe that "Jews should be able to live wherever they want".