On Thursday, Israel’s Deputy Ambassador to Britain, Talya Lador-Fresher, “Challenges and Hopes in the Middle East” to an University of Birmingham audience.
For her first challenge, Lador-Fresher chose the 2008/9 Gaza War. This had been “successful” since life in southern Israel is becoming normal and Egypt’s eyes have been opened so it no longer allows smuggling through almost 150 tunnels.
Challenge #2 is that the Fatah Party of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayad do not represent the majority of Palestinians since Hamas is controlling the Gaza Strip. Hamas poses Challenge #3 is that Hamas is killing and hiding among the civilian population and then crying as if they have done nothing. (Lador-Fresher stated that both the Goldstone Report and the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations are biased against Israel on the Gaza issue.)
Israel Pressures US on Syria: After this week’s meetings in Damascus between Syrian President Bashar Assad, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak has been pressing U.S. officials not to send Robert Ford, the recently nominated ambassador to Damascus.
Dubai Accuses Israel on Assassination: Dubai Police Chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim says he has DNA evidence from one of the assassins and fingerprints from the crime scene. He urged Meir Dagan, the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, to “be a man” and admit that Israel stands behind last month’s killing of Hamas chief Mahmoud al-Mabhouh.
UN Repeats Call for Call War Inquiries: On Friday, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a new resolution, by 98-7 (including the US and Israel) with 31 abstentions and 50 absent, calling on both Israel and the Palestinian Authority to investigate the 2008/9 Gaza War with inquiries that are “independent, credible and in conformity with international standards“.
EU on Dubia Assassination: On Monday, the European Union is expected to issue a statement which will include three key elements: the EU’s condemnation of the use of European passports by members of the assassination team, an expression of support for the UAE government and investigators in Dubai, and a commitment to investigate the passport forgeries and theft identities as quickly as possible.
Senior officials from Germany, France, Britain, Ireland, and the EU reportedly met Sunday to agree the language of the statement. Ireland is taking the hardest line among all EU members by demanding that the statement explicitly refer to Israel. However, according to a senior European diplomatic source, the statement will not directly cite Israel, nor is it expected to link Israel with the assassination or the forging of passports.
Meanwhile, a senior EU diplomat said on Sunday that Israel’s suspected role in the slaying of a Hamas militant in Dubai and the killers’ alleged use of forged EU passports will harm Israel’s relations with the European bloc.
Israel’s Official Response on Dubai: Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said on Saturday that there was no evidence tying Israel to the assassination of Hamas strongman Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. He added:
I don’t forsee a crisis with European allies because there is nothing that ties Israel to the assassination.
Britain, France and Germany all share our interests in the battle against global terror, therefore there will be no crisis, instead our relations [with these countries] will continue to deepen.
Palestinian-French Relations: French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner told the French Journal du Dimanche that the assassination in Dubai underscores the need for peace in the Middle East and demonstrates the need for an immediate recognition of a Palestinian state.
Before Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas’s scheduled visit to Paris next week, Kouchner said, referring to Abbas’s reportedly acceptance of indirect talks under U.S. mediation:
France is training Palestinian police, businesses are being created in the West Bank… It follows that one can envision the proclamation soon of a Palestinian state, and its immediate recognition by the international community, even before negotiating its borders.
Pressing Israel on Dubai Assassination: Following the use of French, British, German and Irish passports by the suspected assassins of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai, European states demanded further clarifications from Israel. Israeli diplomatic opinion is split, with some worrying about the image of Israel whilst others think the crisis will vanish soon. “At this stage, there is no evidence linking Israel to the incident, and if that continues, the affair will subside quickly,” one senior Israeli official predicted.
Interpol published wanted notices and images on Thursday of the 11 people in the suspected hit squad. Dubai Police Chief Lt.-Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim called on Interpol to seek the arrest of Meir Dagan, urging it to issue a “red notice against the head of Mossad.”
Hamas said the two Palestinians arrested in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh are former members of the rival Fatah movement’s security forces, with links to Fatah’s senior security official Mohammed Dahlan. Haaretz also says that the two Palestinians were at one time members of the Palestinian Authority’s security forces in Gaza, but only after Hamas took over the Strip in June 2007. Dahlan and Fatah deny the charges.
Speaking to a memorial rally for Mabhouh in Gaza, Hamas political director Khaled Meshal said from Damascus, “We call on European countries to punish Israel’s leaders for violating laws. Israel deserves to be placed on the terror list.”
On Sunday, Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, in an interview with The Guardian, said that Israel’s continued activity in the West Bank was leading to a “one-state solution“.
Abbas also said he would be prepared to resume full face-to-face peace negotiations if Israel froze all settlement construction for three months and accepted its June 1967 borders as the basis for land swaps. “These are not preconditions, they are requirements in the road map. If they are not prepared to do that, it means they don’t want a political solution,” Abbas explained.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad then jumped in. He said that, unless Israel shows that it is rolling back its occupation (referring to continuing settlements), there will be no peace, which is the “only path to security for Israel”. Fayyad added:
What is required is negotiations based on settled principles… We need to begin to see things that suggest to our people that indeed the occupation is on its way to being rolled back.
If settlements continue, the political question is how confident can we be that once relaunched, the political process will be able to deliver on permanent status issues.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared on Thursday that no proposal ignoring Jerusalem as the capital of Palestinians would be acceptable to Palestinians.
Abbas added that there would be no peace negotiations with Israel as long as the construction in West Bank settlements and East Jerusalem continues:
If Israel says in the meeting that it will not accept the 1967 borders and that it is not prepared to discuss Jerusalem and the refugee situation, what is there to talk about?
If I enter negotiations with them and the building in East Jerusalem continues, Israel will be saying that Jerusalem is theirs. So why would I agree to negotiate while building in East Jerusalem continues?
Abbas concluded that he will accept Israel as a Jewish state only when West Jerusalem accepts the terms of Palestinians.
Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said, in a separate declaration, that there was no agreement yet to resume talks with Israel. Responding to the latest US proposal for talks at a level below full-scale negotiations between leaders, Fayyad told Reuters:
We heard about low-level, mid-level, high-level (talks). I don’t think there is anything yet that has been crystallised in terms of going forward.
However, Fayyad not close the door on talks: “We Palestinians stand to lose the most from a stalled peace process, but we would still like to see the process resumed in a way that would give us confidence that it can actually deliver what it should be able to deliver.”
On Thursday, Israel’s Deputy Ambassador to Britain, Talya Lador-Fresher, “Challenges and Hopes in the Middle East” to an University of Birmingham audience.
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