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Haniyeh tells Haaretz : withdrawal to 1967 borders will lead to peace
Haaretz : Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh told Haaretz yesterday that the Hamas government is prepared to agree to an extended cease-fire if Israel withdraws to the 1967 lines.
"If Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, peace will prevail and we will implement a cease-fire [hudna] for many years," Haniyeh said during an interview in his south Gaza office. "Our government is prepared to maintain a long-term cease-fire with Israel." Palestinian Transportation Minister Ziad Zaza described the hudna during the interview as "the cease-fire that will be renewed automatically each time." Haniyeh expressed surprise that the Israeli government has not been accepting of the Palestinian government’s decision allowing its ministers to conduct negotiations with representatives of the Israeli government regarding day-to-day issues.
The decision was one of the first that the Hamas government made, and Haniyeh sees it as fitting in with his approach - that his government is ready for talks with Israel on practical matters, though not on ideological or political issues. When asked about his government’s failure to indicate the slightest interest in changing its positions or to accept the Arab peace initiative presented at the 2002 Beirut summit, Haniyeh responded : "That is an issue between us and the Arabs."
The prime minister wouldn’t discuss the Hamas charter rejecting the existence of Israel, saying, "Leave Hamas aside now - I am speaking to you as the leader of the Palestinian government, the government of all the Palestinians, and not as the leader of a movement." Haniyeh and his associates are upset that their government has been depicted as a Hamas government, insisting that it be referred to as "the Palestinian government." Haniyeh also said that Israel must give the Palestinian Authority the tax monies it has collected and decided to withhold. He said the transfer of NIS 50 million in medicines and medical supplies to Palestinian medical centers, which the cabinet approved Sunday, represented only a small portion of the money Israel must pay the Palestinians.
Olmert in Washington
All the dailies : Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met yesterday evening in Washington with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in the company of a battery of aides on either side. The Olmert-Rice meeting is described by the Israeli mass circulation dailies today as a preparatory session in advance of the prime minister’s meeting this afternoon with President George Bush.
Yediot Ahronot : Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President George Bush have meetings planned to last only a total of five hours. The meetings are going to begin this evening at 10:00 PM Israel time and will continue until before dawn. The message that Olmert is bringing with him from Jerusalem to Washington is : “let’s make history.”
Bush intends to stress the importance of negotiations in keeping with the principles of the road map. The goal, Bush will say, is the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside of Israel.
Olmert intends to tell Bush that he is going to meet with Abu Mazen shortly and discuss a resumption of negotiations with him. In their joint statement, the president and the prime minister will voice a uniform position about the need for the international community to take urgent action to curb the Iranian nuclear program. The Iranian issue will be given a lot of time in the course of the actual meeting [between Bush and Olmert] so as to review all of the existing approaches maintained by the two governments. One question is the matter of urgency : the Israeli approach is that Iran is liable to reach the point of no return “within months.” The American assessments are less alarming.
A second question is what will be feasible on the assumption that no international agreement can be reached to impose sanctions or, if after sanctions are imposed, they prove to be ineffective. The option of using military force against Iran is highly unpopular in the United States, given the quagmire Iraq has proven to be for the Bush administration.
Olmert will say that his government deeply aspires to engage in negotiations with Abu Mazen, but that it is not prepared to be held hostage by the Hamas government. Against the backdrop of the agreement that there has to be, as one Israeli source put it, “a genuine attempt to engage in negotiations,”
Israel is currently not asking President Bush to support a unilateral step. With that having been said, Olmert is making it clear to the Americans that he will seek America’s support if and when the efforts to engage in negotiations with Abu Mazen have been exhausted. “A long list of American presidents tried to get Israel out of the territories and were unsuccessful,” said one Israeli source. “Olmert is proposing to Bush to bring about the evacuation of a majority of the settlements and of nearly all of Judea and Samaria. That is a proposal that, if carried out, will give Bush a place in history.”Maariv : As time passes, it appears that Israel has no clear policy on the Palestinian matter, and it is projecting conflicting messages.
Parallel to the position of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, according to which Abu Mazen is a weak leader who is incapable of carrying out the road map, eradicating terrorism and imposing order, Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres turned about yesterday and publicly stated the complete opposite. At every opportunity, Peres reiterates all the time that the Palestinian Authority chairman is relevant and needs to be assisted, negotiated with and spoken with. “Abu Mazen is gaining strength, not becoming weaker. Hamas is losing power. Hamas has not won yet, and it will not win,” he said yesterday.
European Jewish Congress about to sue Ahmadinejad
Yediot Ahronot : The European Jewish Congress has prepared a file against Iranian president Ahmadinejad accusing him of crimes against humanity. French lawyer Francis Szpiner, who also defends Ilan Halimi’s family, is in charge of the case. The European Jewish Congress (EJC) is waiting for lawyers from several European countries to back the case before submitting it to the International Tribunal of the Hague. The president of the European Jewish Congress Pierre Besnainou told the Yedioth Ahronot he was pleased to see that Israeli lawyers also wanted to sue Ahmadinejad. The EJC has asked the German government to prevent Ahmadinejad from attending the first World Cup match of the Iranian team in ton June 11 in Nuremberg.
Other headlines
Yediot Ahronot : A plot to blow up an El Al plane at Geneva’s international airport has been thwarted. Swiss intelligence agencies uncovered a terrorist cell last December that plotted to strike an Israeli plane while it was taking off through an RPG rocket attack in December 2005.
The French website Le Point featured a report on Friday saying that "intelligence of the Swiss secret services carrying the date December 2005 shows that two people, a Libyan and an Algerian, held a mortar bomb, and planned to carry out an attack against an Israeli airlines El Al plane at Geneva’s airport." The incident has caused El Al’s Geneva flights to be moved to Zurich for a week - until the danger passed. The Shin Bet said that "past experience and information received from time to time points to plans by terror organizations to strike Israeli targets overseas. The security arms are working in a variety of ways and means in order to thwart these threats, and are using various security means."
Haaretz : Fears of a historic rift between the Chief Rabbinate and Orthodox rabbis overseas have been sparked by the Chief Rabbinate’s recent decision not to recognize conversions and divorce decrees (gets) by most Orthodox rabbis abroad. The Rabbinate confirmed that rabbinic courts in Israel have been instructed not to recognize conversions and gets authorized by overseas rabbis until those rabbis pass Rabbinate exams in Israel. This means that Jews who underwent an Orthodox conversion abroad will have to convert again in Israel in order to be recognized as Jews by rabbinic courts. Jewish women who received a get overseas and wish to remarry in Israel will have to ask their ex-husbands for another get if the first one was approved by Orthodox rabbis not recognized by the Rabbinate. Under the new policy, Diaspora rabbis must be examined by a special rabbinic court panel appointed by the Chief Rabbinate Council for their conversions and gets to be recognized. Rabbis seeking recognition for their gets are required, in addition to the exam, to attend a brief training program in which they join the deliberations at rabbinic courts and learn how to register gets. The Rabbinate will still continue to recognize conversions and gets by a group of some 50 senior Orthodox rabbis around the world. These rabbis, whose names appear on a list prepared several years ago by previous chief rabbis, will not be required to take the exams.