The move is likely to be denounced as weakening Israel's democratic principles while triggering accusations of official discrimination against Arabs, who form around 20 per cent of the population. The legislation is being proposed under an agreement between Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud Beiteinu bloc and the ultra-nationalist Jewish Home party, who will form part of a new governing coalition along with two Centrist parties. It will be enshrined in Israel's Basic Law – the country's equivalent of a constitution - and lay down that The State of Israel is the National State of the Jewish People. "Such legislation won't be seen as democratic by universal standards," said Tamar Hermann, a senior researcher with the Israel Democracy Institute. "But the people arguing for it will say that as long as the non-Jewish citizens have rights from an individual point of view, it's Kosher." A similar bill introduced in 2011 by Avi Dichter, a former head of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic intelligence agency, was shelved amid an outcry over provisions that included recognising Hebrew as the sole official language while depriving Arabic of its equal status. It also strictly defined the country's flags, emblems and national anthem while requiring the state to promote Jewish settlement in all areas. No such requirement applied to other groups. Proponents argued that it was aimed at preventing Israel becoming a bi-national state. Critics countered that it prioritised Israel's Jewish identity ahead of its democratic values. In a sobering message for President Barack Obama ahead of his arrival in Israel on Wednesday, the Likud Beiteinu-Jewish Home deal made no mention of peace talks with the Palestinians. The Jewish Home party's leader Naftali Bennett opposes a Palestinian state and instead favours annexing large parts of the West Bank. The new government, which will be sworn in at a ceremony on Monday in the Knesset, Israel's parliament, also includes two parties in favour of renewed talks, Yesh Atid and Hatnua, led by the former foreign minister, Tzipi Livni. But its official guidelines do not mention the "two-state solution" advocated by the US and EU countries, including Britain. Instead, they state: "Israel will seek a peace agreement with the Palestinians with the goal of reaching a diplomatic agreement." It was confirmed on Sunday that Moshe Ya'alon, a former army chief-of-staff who supports a hard line on the Palestinians, would become defence minister, replacing Ehud Barak. Mr Ya'alon, 62, is a strong supporter of Jewish settlers in the West Bank but has urged caution on the possibility of attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, in contrast to the more hawkish stance taken by Mr Netanyahu.
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By: Amira Hass
Date: 27/05/2013
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Slain Bedouin girls' mother, a victim of Israeli-Palestinian bureaucracy
Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords. The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them. In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B. The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians. Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories). In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long. The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.
By: Phoebe Greenwood
Date: 27/05/2013
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John Kerry unveils plan to boost Palestinian economy
John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector. The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace. Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago. Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid. Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority". Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations. "Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."
By: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
Date: 27/05/2013
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Isolation Devastates East Jerusalem Economy
Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops. “All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive. Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him. “I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.” Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay. “It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.” He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?” Illegal annexation Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community. Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect. “After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote. Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation. Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce. Extreme poverty Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower. While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line. “How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”. “Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked. “You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS. Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities. Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn. Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent. “Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found. Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population. To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones. It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services. “Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER). Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”
By the Same Author
Date: 14/01/2013
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Britain and France 'spearheading new Middle East peace plan'
The initiative is expected to be tabled by March following the formation of a new Israeli government after next week's general election. It will include a provision for a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem – a major sticking point in past negotiations. The Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said the plan was being spearheaded by Britain and France with Germany's support. It could eventually be adopted as a pan-European initiative by the EU's foreign policy chief, Baroness Ashton, the newspaper reported. Disclosure of the initiative follows international condemnation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Right-wing government over a recent wave of plans to expand West Bank settlements, which the EU and US fear could kill off prospects for a two-state solution. "We do know that the EU is planning to come up with something after the elections, when the new government has been formed," one Israeli official told The Daily Telegraph. "We don't know if it's going to be a fully-fledged plan, or an idea or something more or less ambitious because we have not been consulted. We believe they may want to put forward some sort of deal with parameters but they are perfectly conscious of the fact that an agreement can only be negotiated between the two sides." Citing Israeli diplomatic sources, Yedioth Ahronoth, said the proposal would suggest negotiations based on pre-1967 borders with possible land swaps and push for all core issues to be resolved by the end of 2013. It would also demand a freeze on building work in the settlements. "There is great movement behind the scenes. The Europeans can't force Israel to enter into an agreement, but they can certainly put us in an awkward position," an Israeli diplomatic official told the newspaper. "It is likely the Palestinians will accept it and that Israel will have some difficulty. It will drive us into the corner." Mr Netanyahu said Israel would continue to build after security forces early on Sunday evicted dozens of Palestinian activists from a makeshift protest camp in the highly-sensitive E1 area in the West Bank. The camp, known as Bab al-Shams, was erected last Friday in protest at Israel's decision to start planning processes for building new settlements, despite warnings that it could destroy the territorial coherence of a future Palestinian state. "We will not allow anyone to harm the contiguity between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim [a Jewish settlement next to the area]," Mr Netanyahu told the Israeli cabinet after praising the eviction of the activists. The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, told the Commons last month that he was consulting with his French and German counterparts about how to lend European weight to a US-led peace initiative. “The Foreign Secretary has made the UK position clear in recent statements to the House,” a Foreign Office spokesman said. “The only way to give the Palestinian people the state that they need and deserve and the Israeli people the security and peace they are entitled to, is through a negotiated two-state solution, and time for this is now running out. “This requires Israelis and Palestinians to return to negotiations, Israel to stop illegal settlement building, Palestinian factions to reconcile with each other and the international community led by the United States and supported by European nations to make a huge effort to push the peace process forward urgently. “The UK is working with international partners to that end.” A spokesman for Baroness Ashton said she had been asked to take the lead in promoting peace talks. “There is no secret initiative on the Middle East peace process,” he said. “However, the last meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council tasked the High Representative [Baroness Ashton] to take the lead in advancing the work on the Middle East peace process on the various strands.”
Date: 17/07/2007
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Iran's Jews Spurn Cash Offer to move to Israel
Iran's Jews have given the country a loyalty pledge in the face of cash offers aimed at encouraging them to move to Israel, the arch-enemy of its Islamic rulers. The incentives - ranging from £5,000 a person to £30,000 for families - were offered from a special fund established by wealthy expatriate Jews in an effort to prompt a mass migration to Israel among Iran's 25,000-strong Jewish community. The offers were made with Israel's official blessing and were additional to the usual state packages it provides to Jews emigrating from the diaspora. However, the Society of Iranian Jews dismissed them as "immature political enticements" and said their national identity was not for sale. "The identity of Iranian Jews is not tradable for any amount of money," the society said in a statement. "Iranian Jews are among the most ancient Iranians. Iran's Jews love their Iranian identity and their culture, so threats and this immature political enticement will not achieve their aim of wiping out the identity of Iranian Jews." The Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv reported that the incentives had been doubled after offers of £2,500 a head failed to attract any Iranian Jews to leave for Israel. Iran's sole Jewish MP, Morris Motamed, said the offers were insulting and put the country's Jews under pressure to prove their loyalty. "It suggests the Iranian Jew can be encouraged to emigrate by money," he said. "Iran's Jews have always been free to emigrate and three-quarters of them did so after the revolution but 70% of those went to America, not Israel." Iran's Jewish population has dwindled from about 80,000 at the time of the 1979 Islamic revolution but remains the largest of any country in the Middle East apart from Israel. Jews have lived in Iran since at least 700BC. Hostility between Iran's government and Israel means Iranian Jews are often subject to official mistrust and scrutiny.
Date: 01/02/2005
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Palestine's Forgotten Refugees Cling to Fading Hope They Can Go Back Home
IN the ramshackle chaos of Bourj al-Barajneh refugee camp – home, despite suffocatingly cramped conditions, to 13,000 Palestinians – hope springs eternal. But its source is not the fragile optimism revolving around the fledgling leadership of Mahmoud Abbas, but a deep well of shared faith and belief among a displaced people that they will one day return home. Last week, Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, was being hailed by Israel’s Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a potential partner for peace after persuading Palestinian militant organisations in Gaza to halt attacks on Israeli targets while Abbas tries to pursue negotiations. On the face of things, Abbas should be a beacon for Bourj al-Barajneh’s residents. Like them, his family was forced to flee from what had been Palestine during the Israeli war of independence in 1948; the Abbas family sought refuge in neighbouring Syria after abandoning their home in Safed in northern Galilee as Israeli forces closed in. But there is scant sign that the people of the camp identify with him, despite his elevated status as successor to Yasser Arafat as leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and president of the Palestinian Authority. Posters of Arafat festoon the walls throughout Bourj-al-Barajneh’s claustrophobic network of narrow, winding alleys. Also, prominent are images of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, former leader of the hardline Islamic group Hamas, and of his deputy Abdel Aziz Rantissi, both killed in Israeli missile strikes last year. Of Abbas, there is not a single picture to be seen. “Abu Mazen is the kind of person who follows the Israelis and the Americans. If he follows his own people, the Israelis won’t accept him,” said Souria Moussa, 58, eating a bowl of moghrabieh, a traditional Palestinian dish of chickpeas, chicken, meat and spices, in the kitchen behind her tiny grocery store. “In my opinion, he has no resolve. Abu Mazen is nothing but a tool for the Israelis to serve their own interests. He won’t be able to do anything.” For the people of Bourj, and for the estimated 600,000 Palestinian refugees living in camps throughout Lebanon, the defining issue in any peace talks with Israel is securing the right to return to the homes they abandoned in 1948. Many families still have the keys and ownership documents to the properties they fled. However, Israel has declared the issue to be non-negotiable – arguing its character as a Jewish state would be destroyed if it granted the right of return to around four million Palestinian refugees and their descendants now scattered across the Arab world. Israeli leaders have suggested instead that the refugees should be re-settled within the borders of a proposed future Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. In the face of this attitude, Abbas – who has visited his former family home in Safed – has shown signs of weakening. Rather than pressing for the right of return, Abbas has called for a “just solution” to the refugee problem. His language does not re-assure Bourj al-Barajneh’s long-suffering residents that he is the leader to bring them deliverance. “Abu Mazen is not insisting on this point,” said Ahmad Moustapha, leader of the left-wing Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine within the camp. “He has his own vision, such as calling off the intifada. He wants to stop the resistance. “The policy of Abu Mazen doesn’t extend to complete leadership or control. There will still be some interference from the Israelis, even when they set up the Palestinian state. “A Palestinian state doesn’t mean that all the Jewish settlers will be evacuated and the settlements dismantled, because the settlers are refusing to leave their homes. “When they talk about recognising Israel’s right to exist, it’s a question of abandoning our rights.” Palestinian refugees in Lebanon complain they endure worse conditions than their counterparts in other Arab countries, or indeed than in Gaza or the West Bank. Stigmatised as outsiders under Lebanese law, they are resentful at being denied jobs in areas like medicine and the legal profession and bitter about the squalid conditions of the refugee camps. Certainly, the surroundings of Bourj al-Barajneh stand in jarring contrast to the opulence of central Beirut, which has re-emerged from the civil war that ravaged Lebanon between 1975 and 1990 to become once again a city of international sophistication. In the camp, memories of the war remain vivid. Residents still recall being under siege from the hardline Shi’ite militia group Amal during the 1980s. During one six-month siege in 1986, starvation in the camp was so rampant that people were eating cats, donkeys and even grass to stay alive. Today, nobody is starving but life in the camp is still a trial. Male unemployment is estimated at 70% and many families are dependent on women working in industries such as catering. The refugees could escape their predicament and earn entitlement to full rights by adopting Lebanese citizenship, one of several options advocated by the Geneva Peace Accords, an outline agreement signed in 2003 by Israeli left-wingers and Palestinian doves. But in the atmosphere of defiant national pride that pulsates through Bourj al-Barajneh, it is an idea with few takers. “For me, Palestine is my mother and my father,” said Moussa, the grocery store owner, who left her home with her parents when she was two years old. “If they offered to fill my house with money I would refuse Lebanese citizenship. I would rather live in my homeland in a tent than live here in a castle.” As he baked pastries in the local bakery, Ahmed al-Ali, 24, said he was determined to live in the land of his ancestors despite never having seen it and knowing only life in the camp. Invoking the late president of Egypt, Abdel Gamel Nasser, he added: “I don’t believe in Abu Mazen’s negotiations. “As Nasser said, what was taken by force shall be recovered by force.” Rosetta Eissa, 49, who said she would be happy to live alongside Israelis just to savour life in the village of Kabbreh, now in northern Israel, that her parents and grandparents told her so much about, was a lone voice in favour of Abbas. “Inshallah (God willing), he can help because we have had enough wars and have sacrificed enough,” she said. “He has a problem in the West Bank now and he is trying to do things step by step. “Once he solves that problem, he can talk about the refugees. But it can only be solved through negotiation. “You cannot solve problems through war.” Date: 25/01/2005
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New Palestinian President Launches High-Risk Crackdown Against The Militants
Jerusalem - Around 1000 armed Palestinian security officers were patrolling the northern Gaza Strip yesterday in a show of force which could make or break the fledgling leadership of the newly elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. The officers were deployed at strategic points of the Jabalya refugee camp, as well as the towns of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, in a move aimed at stopping Islamic militants from launching rocket attacks against the Israeli town of Sderot, which lies less than a mile from Gaza. The deployment, made in full agreement with Israel, represents a major risk for Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen. It has been undertaken to forestall a massive Israeli military offensive which army top brass put before Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, last week as a means of finally ending the stream of crude Qassam rockets which have rained down on Sderot since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada more than four years ago. By showing he is determined to tackle the militants, Abbas, who won a landslide victory two weeks ago to replace the late Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority president, is trying to pave the way to re-open serious peace negotiations with Israel. Sharon's coalition government announced it was cutting ties with Abbas last week after an eight-year-old girl in Sderot was left brain dead in the latest rocket attack. Contact was restored days later on the grounds that it was necessary to give him a chance to clamp down on militant groups. But persuading Palestinian security forces to fire on their own compatriots trying to carry out attacks against Israel might be beyond Abbas. Israeli intelligence sources believe that Palestinian police knew in advance about an attack on a cargo crossing between Israel and Gaza 10 days ago that left six Israelis dead, yet did nothing to prevent it. But in a parallel strategy, Abbas has been trying to persuade the two hardline Islamic groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to agree to a ceasefire while he pursues negotiations. The two organisations agreed to a hudna - or temporary truce - in the summer of 2003, when Abbas was prime minister, only for the arrangement to collapse after less than two months. Last week, faced with the prospect of his presidency collapsing before it got properly started, Abbas - who has publicly criticised the intifada - travelled to Gaza in an attempt to persuade them to repeat an exercise which had left most militants feeling embittered the first time round. This time, Hamas is making a show of playing hard to get, demanding that Israel stop the assassinations that have so depleted the group's ranks. Hamas's external leadership, headed by Khaled Mashal in the Syrian capital, Damascus, is reluctant to accept a ceasefire. However, faced with serious financial difficulties and a desire to become involved in the mainstream Palestinian political process - which it has previously rejected - the group's home-based leadership in Gaza and the West Bank is believed to be ready to work with Abbas. The group has said it will give Abbas a definitive answer today . But a hint at accommodation was given last week when it issued a document in which it appeared, for the first time, to accept the aim of a Palestinian state within the pre-1967 borders, in other words, in the West Bank and Gaza. Until now, Hamas has been committed to Israel's destruction. In a significant statement, Hassan Yousef, a Hamas leader in the West Bank, told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth last week that a ceasefire was possible if Israel accepted certain conditions, including an end to its policy of killing wanted militants and releasing prisoners. "The ball is in Israel's court," he said. "If Israel proves that it wants a ceasefire there will be one. We will not close the door to Abu Mazen. Serious talks are taking place." Abbas believes he has already persuaded the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, which is linked to his own Fatah movement, to stop attacks for the time being. If Hamas also desists, that would leave only the much smaller Islamic Jihad grouping. Islamic Jihad, however, is proving more reluctant. Its leaders see Hamas's new-found pragmatism as an opportunity for it to step into the vacuum and appeal to disenchanted militants. The group is now believed to have the active support of the Lebanese Shi'ite militia group, Hezbollah - funded by Iran - in continuing its policy of armed struggle. So Islamic Jihad might be a problem. But even if it can be brought round, Abbas still has the problem of keeping his ranks appeased by wringing significant concessions out of Israel. Top of his priorities will be coaxing Sharon to release a large number of the 10,000 Palestinian prisoners Israel says it holds. Abbas's failure to secure the release of prisoners was a key issue in ending his premiership in 2003 when Arafat was still president of the Palestinian Authority. The release of prisoners is widely accepted as the most potent issue on the Palestinian streets. If he succeeds on that issue, Abbas will be able to forge ahead with his internal priorities - which are believed to include a desire to root out Arafat loyalists such as Saeb Erekat, the current negotiations minister, and the foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, from his government. Abbas is also keen to reduce the influence of the prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, a veteran Fatah party colleague. To that end, he is believed to have lined up a key ally, Mohammed Dahlan - the former interior minister - to serve as Qureia's deputy. Yet Abbas knows that his chances of success depend on Israel and its willingness to trust him. With Labour - headed by the veteran dove, Shimon Peres - now back in the Cabinet, there may be more reason for optimism on that score. And some Israeli analysts believe that Abbas's reliance on Sharon might be mutual. Writing in Yedioth Ahronoth, the Israeli analyst Alex Fishman suggested that Sharon - hardliner though he is - recognises that he needs Abbas to be successful if he is to pull off his strategy of withdrawing Israeli troops and 8000 Jewish settlers from Gaza by the end of this year. "The wave of terror that washed over Gaza last week had sharpened the realisation among all the decision-makers in Israel that disengagement without co-ordination with the PA [Palestinian Authority] means, most certainly, disengagement under fire," Fishman wrote. "And disengagement under fire - with the area being filled with troops and large Palestinian areas re-conquered - would not take place. Therefore Abu Mazen must succeed so as to make the implementation of disengagement at all possible." Given that logic, Abbas may even reflect that the militants, with their Qassam rockets, may actually have done him a favour. Contact us
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