Israel-Palestine: No Progress but Obama Presses for Talks on Tuesday

Video/Analysis: Obama’s Statement on Jewish New Year
Barack Obama’s Message to Muslims: “Eid Mubarak!”

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On Saturday, despite Palestinian and Israeli officials blamed each other for "being responsible for the failure of U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell's last round of talks in the region", Washington announced that both sides are ready for a tripartite meeting in New York next week.

According to Agence France Presse, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that "the road is now blocked", since Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not agree on a full freeze on construction of Israeli settlements. Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy responded, "The Palestinian Authority is...preventing such a meeting and the renewal of the diplomatic process by setting preconditions."

An American statement declared that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas would hold joint meetings with President Barack Obama on Tuesday in New York: "These meetings will continue the efforts of President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Special Envoy George Mitchell to lay the groundwork for the re-launch of negotiations, and to create a positive context for those negotiations so that they can succeed."

A senior Netanyahu aide was quick to declare victory, "The meeting will be held without preconditions, as the prime minister had always wanted."

UPDATED The Goldstone Report: Both Israel and Hamas Committed War Crimes

Text of The Goldstone Report

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UPDATE 17 September 1045 GMT: Judge Richard Goldstone has written an opinion piece in The New York Times this morning: "Pursuing justice in this case is essential because no state or armed group should be above the law. Western governments in particular face a challenge because they have pushed for accountability in places like Darfur, but now must do the same with Israel, an ally and a democratic state. Failing to pursue justice for serious violations during the fighting will have a deeply corrosive effect on international justice, and reveal an unacceptable hypocrisy."

UPDATE 17 September 1000 GMT: On Wednesday, the leaders of Israel attacked the Goldstone report. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the findings were "a kangaroo court against Israel, whose consequences harm the struggle of democratic countries against terror". Defense Minister Ehud Barak said the outcome was "a prize for terrorism". Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman claimed, "The Goldstone report is seeking to bring the UN back to the dark days in which it decided, under the guidance of states with interests, that Zionism is racism, " and his deputy Danny Ayalon asserted, "The Goldstone report is a dangerous attempt to harm the principle of self-defense by democratic states and provides legitimacy to terrorism." Ayalon also stated that Israel would work to enlist the support of Western democracies in a campaign "to prevent turning international law into a circus."

Israeli President Shimon Peres went even further with the claim:

The Goldstone Commission report is a mockery of history.. It fails to distinguish between the aggressor and a state exercising its right for self defense... The report in practice grants legitimacy to terrorism, premeditated shooting and killing while ignoring the duty and the right of a state to defend itself, something which is explicitly stated in the UN charter.

The United Nations Commission under former South African Judge Richard Goldstone, formed in April to investigate last year's conflict in Gaza,  concluded on Tuesday that both Palestinians and Israelis committed war crimes. The report follows 188 interviews and a review of 10,000 documents and 12,000 photoraphs and videos. 

The report says: "Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, possibly crimes against humanity." It says that Israel killed civillians, destroyed non-military facilities and imposed a blockade on Gaza as "collective punishment". The report, finds these war crimes were a result of direct consciousz decisions of Israeli officials:

Taking into account the ability to plan, the means to execute plans with the most developed technology available and statements by the Israeli military that almost no errors occurred, the Mission finds that the incidents and patterns of events considered in the report are the result of deliberate planning and policy decisions.

On the other side, the reports states that rocket and mortar attacks into southern Israel were "war crimes":

Where there is no intended military target and the rockets and mortars are launched into civilian areas, they constitute a deliberate attack against the civilian population.

The Jerusalem Post stated that the report was "nauseating,"as it created an unjust "equivalence of a democratic state with a terror organization" and lacked the context of a decade of terrorist attacks by Hamas. Foreign Ministry spokesman Yossi Levy reinforced the public view:

Israel is nauseated and furious about a report that did not surprise us in its imbalance, but did surprise us in the lack of any real pretense to balance.. The report is one of the most disgraceful documents in the long collection of shameful documents put out by the United Nations....The immediate message of this report is: Terror pays. It says that terrorists who attack Jews, unlike terrorists who attack Americans, Spaniards, or other Arabs, will earn the protection of the UN.

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Gabriela Shalev, said: "The mandate of the Goldstone Commission was one-sided from the beginning and the initiative to establish the commission came from the UN Human Rights Council, which is known for regularly and routinely condemning Israel."

Hamas's reaction was just as negative, as its officials claimed that the report was unbalanced and completely misrepresented reality.

Middle East Inside Line: Israel Ground War with Lebanon?

Is Israel Backing Away from Shalit Release?
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had two significant messages for high school students on Tuesday. First, as German mediators await a Hamas response over the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, Barak said Israel "would do every way to secure Shalit's release but not at any cost....The time has come to say bluntly: combat troops and soldiers arrive with the knowledge that the task of fulfilling their missions entails a willingness to risk their lives and that the fighters have that willingness to undertake the mission."

Barak's second message was just as tough:

We cannot blur the basic truth... We are a generation of fighters and in the Middle East, there is no mercy for the weak and there will not be a second opportunity for those who do not know how to defend themselves.

Israeli Military on Ground War with Lebanon: The commander of Israeli ground forces (and soon the head of the Israel Defense Forces' Central Comman) Major-General Avi Mizrachi,  OC Ground Forces Command Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrachi,  has told a conference of more than 100 military officers from almost 30 countries that "the future battlefield the IDF will face will be more difficult, lethal and uncertain":

A war cannot be won without moving forces on the ground....Even today there are people who believe that it is sufficient to threaten to use the forces but in the Middle East this is not enough. Only a ground maneuver will end the conflict and win the war.

OK, but where will be that "future battlefield" be?

The head of the Israeli Armored Corps Brigadier-General Agay Yehezkeli said that, in case of a war between Lebanon and Israel, the IDF would need to launch a quick ground operation, heavily dependent on tanks, deep into Lebanese territory to curb rocket attacks. Chief Infantry Officer Brigadier General Yossi Bahar disagreed: several brigades would be capable of conquering southern Lebanon and taking control of the 165 villages south of the Litani River.

Conflict between Israel and European Media Widens: The controversy over a Swedish newspaper's coverage of the allegation that Israeli troops harvested the organs of dead Palestinians has been joined by a second furour. The Spanish daily El Mundo is interviewing historians to mark 70 years since the start of World War II; one of them is David Irving, who served time in an Austrian prison for his denial of the Holocaust..

Israeli diplomatic circles and media are furious over Irving, whose interview appears on Saturday, being considered as an expert. The Israeli Ambassador to Spain, Raphael Schutz, argued that the publication would give credibility to Irving and his ideas. El Mundo responded that the interview was part of freedom of the press.

Meanwhile, the Swedish-Israeli dispute has another participant. Syrian President Bashir al-Assad's spokeswoman Bouthaina Shaaban praised the article in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat on Tuesday, saying that "Israel should be put on trial" and giving a lengthy explanation of "Soprano-like networks", run by US rabbis, "to sell the kidneys of Palestinian martyrs in the US black market".

Yossi Levy, the Foreign Ministry's spokesman for the Israeli press, responded, "It is not surprising that Damascus smelled the anti-Semitism emanating from the article, and quickly embraced it for its propaganda purposes....Poisonous anti-Semitism was no stranger to Syria's political philosophy."