Barak bureau satisfied with PA handling of terrorism?

IDF RADIO 7/12/99: "Israeli officials are never quick to admit satisfaction with the Palestinian handling of terrorism, but yesterday we heard a senior official in the Baraq bureau say they are indeed satisfied with the way the Palestinians have been handling terrorism. He added that they do have a few reservations, but in general, the situation is much better than it was in previous years.

Moreover, Shin Bet director 'Ami Ayalon said yesterday at the cabinet meeting that the Palestinian Authority [PA] was giving terrorism an intensive care. By the way, the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] and the Intelligence Branch are slightly less satisfied. They say that while the Palestinians are fighting terrorism, they are yet to deal with the terrorist infrastructures of Hamas [Islamic Resistance Movement] and of the other Islamic organizations."

     

Arab Restrictions on opponents including Hamas

HA'ARETZ 7/15/99: "The Hamas spokesman in Gaza, Mahmoud a-Zahar, claims that since Ehud Barak's election as prime minister and his public statements about renewing the peace process, several Arab states have taken steps to curtail the activity of Palestinian organizations opposed to the peace process, both in their own territories and in the Palestinian Authority.

Reports in recent days - some of them coming from sources in the Hamas mission in Amman - claim that the Jordanian authorities are attempting to cut back on the movement's activity in Jordan. One of the first signs of this new trend was the detention last week of two bodyguards of senior Hamas official Khaled Meshal on suspicion of illegal possession of weapons.

Sources in both Israel and the Palestinian Authority have confirmed in recent days that the Syrian authorities "have increased their supervision" of extremist Palestinian organizations operating from within Syrian territory. Damascus has instructed these organizations to prepare to shift to solely political activity.

In recent weeks, three manifestos have been published in Jordan accusing local Hamas leaders, headed by Meshal, of various types of corruption. Speculation is that these manifestors are the result of an internal rift within the movement."

     

Israeli owned Balkan Airlines will carry passageners to Damascus and Beirut

Sofia's DEMOKRATSIYA 7/12/99: "Hemus Air will carry Balkan Airlines passengers to Damascus and Beirut, Bulgarian National Television announced yesterday. Airline tickets already purchased will be honored. Last week Syria and Lebanon suspended relations with Balkan Airlines as a result of the airline being sold to the Israeli companies Zeevi Group and Arkia. So far the airline has received no official notification of the refusal to accept flights, Balkan Airlines Chief Filip Mustakov announced.

According to him, the reaction of Lebanon and Syria is politically based and is only temporary. He said that problems of this kind were foreseen, but they cannot affect Balkan Airlines operations nor result in any losses for the economy.

Privatization Agency Chief Zakhari Zhelyzakov predicted that the present problems with the Arab countries will soon be resolved, most likely through diplomatic channels. He said that the sale of the airline will not be cancelled. According to him, Balkan Airlines was due to be liquidated. The Israeli offer was the best one received, and the group dealing with the airline's privatization, the Privatization Agency itself, and the government all agreed to the sale..."

     

Muslim Brotherhood takeover?

London's AL SHARQ AL AWSAT 7/12/99: "After the war of messages between the Palestinian National Authority and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) subsided, a number of Hamas cadres have sparked off another war of statements entitled "messages," two of which have been distributed by fax. The second message, of which Al-Sharq al-Awsat obtained a copy yesterday, and which is addressed to Hamas cadres and the movement's leaders in Jordan, contained delicate details about what it termed the Hamas leadership's excesses abroad, specifically in Jordan, most notably Hamas's attempt to take control of the Muslim Brotherhood organization in Jordan.

The message said that that was represented in the support for a Brotherhood figure in the Jordanian parliamentary elections before the decision to boycott the elections. This is in addition to the interference in the Brotherhood's shura council and presenting the idea of establishing an Arab, Islamic Palestinian party inside Jordan that relies on the Brotherhood's masses, and the attempt to take control of the Palestinian section in the Brotherhood."

     

Results of Geneva conference on Israel

AP 7/15/99: "A scaled-back conference to examine whether Jewish settlements in the West Bank violate international law went ahead today over Israeli and U.S. objections. The U.N.-ordered session, which lasted around 45 minutes, was called to examine whether the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war apply to the settlements in Israeli-occupied territory. It unanimously approved a text stating that they do, said Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian planning minister and senior Palestinian representative to the conference. ``We're satisfied'' with the outcome, he said.

Consultations between Arab and European countries on how to proceed had lasted late into Wednesday night. Israeli and the United States stayed away. They say the conference is unhelpful at a time when new Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak is trying to revive the Mideast peace process. The U.N. General Assembly voted 115-2 in February to convene the meeting, with Israel and the United States casting the only votes opposed.

Attending today's closed-door session at the U.N.'s European headquarters were interested countries that have ratified the conventions. Shaath said 102 countries attended. At issue is land Israel captured from Jordan during the 1967 Mideast War: the West Bank and east Jerusalem.

Israel considers all of Jerusalem its capital and says its claim to the West Bank, site of the heaviest settlement construction, is as solid as Palestinian claims.

The Palestinians say Israel's settlement activity violates the Fourth Geneva Convention's prohibition on population transfers in occupied territories. The text adopted said signatories ``reaffirmed the applicability of the Fourth Geneva Convention to the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem'' and ``reiterated the need for full respect for the provisions of the said convention in that territory.''...

No date was set for the meeting to resume, although Shaath had argued Wednesday for a fixed date to review Israeli compliance with the Geneva conventions..."

     

Bibi interview: self-effacing

AP 7/15/99: "It was an intimacy only the best of enemies could achieve. ``Look at yourself three years ago -- you looked so good,'' the reporter said, nodding at the flickering images on the monitor. ``Now you look so much older.'' ``It's the job,'' the former prime minister said. ``Out of office, you sleep more, you exercise more'' -- he glanced down at the paunch beneath his silk tie -- ``you eat less.''

Two months after the electorate sent him packing, Benjamin Netanyahu finally made his peace Wednesday night with voters he once thought he understood and with the media he had blamed for leading them astray. The cocky Netanyahu, who just weeks ago would interrupt reporters saying ``not IF I'm re-elected, but WHEN I'm re-elected'' was gone. Instead, in 45 minutes on Channel 2 TV with journalist Amnon Levy, he was subdued, self-effacing, even regretful.

``I didn't explain myself well enough,'' he said when Levy asked why so many supporters who rushed forward to praise him three years ago stepped back in May, when he was buried in a landslide. Netanyahu came close to acknowledging what many have said was a divisive style. He said he did little to heal the wounds created by the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

``Someone had to be blamed'' for Rabin's murder by an ultranationalist Jew opposed to his land-for-peace policies, Netanyahu said. ``I got stuck with it.'' But he quickly added that he failed to make the compromises necessary to set up the broad-based government that might have become a national salve. ``A Nationality Unity government would have made it better,'' he said. ``Perhaps I made a mistake.''

Instead, he opted for confrontation -- especially with Israeli journalists, whom he depicted as irredentist liberals seeking his ouster because of his hard-line views on ceding land to the Arabs. In one memorable scene, just days before the May 17 elections, he led a crowd of supporters in an anti-media chant of "They are AFRAIIIID!''

Netanyahu especially resented the press for probing into his personal life, and for pillorying his wife as an over-involved shrew. ``Maybe I threw my hands up too soon,'' he said of a relationship with the press. "But, if you're attacked, you shoot back.''

Levy didn't stint on questions, ranging from Netanyahu's lost peace opportunities to his expanding waistline and his lack of friends and through his famous infidelities (he and his wife "survived on love,'' Netanyahu confessed.) The hand that waved away a thousand queries reached over and patted Levy's thigh at each tough question. ``That was politics,'' he kept saying, as if losing an election was a 12-step recovery program.

He was expansive -- saying the man who ousted him after a bruising, personal campaign, Ehud Barak, would make ``a very good prime minister'' if he kept his promises. He was also still capable of the carefully timed media bombshell bound for the next day's front pages: Syria, he revealed, had agreed in secret talks to a long-term Israeli military presence on the Golan Heights as part of a peace package.

Netanyahu said he knew the election was lost the morning the polls opened. He locked himself in his office with his wife, Sarah, and wrote his speech accepting defeat. Losing wasn't a problem, he insisted. "Winners can lose,'' he said. "Winners pick themselves up when they lose.'' Other times, he seemed overwhelmed by three years in the maw of a highly critical, unforgiving polity. "This is a tough country,'' he said. Still, he added, "I believe in Democracy, with a capital D. The people know.'' ...

What about a political comeback, Levy insisted? President Clinton asked him the same question the night of his defeat. "I told him, 'Give me a break, Bill,''' Netanyahu recalled. "I need time off.''

     

Barak in US

ARUTZ7 7/14/99: "Prime Minister Ehud Barak is on his way to Washington, after meeting with Turkish President Demirel in Jerusalem this morning. Barak, who met last night with Jordan's King Abdullah, told the Washington Post yesterday that the anticipations raised by his election had best be lowered, and said that the negotiations with the Palestinians will be "tough."

As if to place Barak's suspicions in bold relief, a senior State Department official said that the U.S. has "high hopes" from Barak. U.S. President Clinton, with whom Barak will meet four times during the week-long visit, is looking forward to Barak's trip, saying today, "I'm as excited as a little boy with a new toy." Itim correspondent Yoram Levy said today that the Americans are making extensive efforts to ensure the success of the visit, including a large dinner at the White House for Mr. and Mrs. Barak and an overnight stay with the Clintons in Camp David.

"Hanging in the background is $1.2 billion that was promised to Israel if the Wye Agreement is carried out," noted Levy. He observed that the Prime Minister's office is happy with the pleasant relations forged at the recent meetings with Arab leaders Mubarak, Arafat, and King Abdullah, "although this is no more than should be expected for a new Prime Minister in his first talks with regional leaders."

     

Israeli-Arab first on Knesset foreign affairs

ARUTZ7 7/14/99: "MK Hashem Mahmeed (United Arab List) will represent the Israeli-Arab sector on the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee - the first time that an Arab has been included in the committee. During the intifada, Mahmeed called upon Arabs "not to suffice with stones" against Israeli soldiers.

In February of this year, Mahmeed praised the Lebanese Hizbullah terrorist organization as a "national liberation movement of the first order." The Likud will submit a no-confidence motion against the government because of the decision, and Likud MK Gideon Ezra, a former Deputy Head of the General Security Service, said that he would not sit on the committee with an Arab Knesset Member."

     

Natan & Avigdor

HA'ARETZ 7/15/99: "Yisrael b'Aliyah leader Natan Sharansky and Yisrael Beitenu head Avigdor Lieberman - who have hardly exchanged even the most banal of pleasantries over the past two years - agreed to bury the hatchet yesterday during a heart-to-heart talk in the Knesset. Both men defined the meeting as "positive, extremely useful and a new beginning," and both agreed that it would not be a one-time occurrence.

Relations between the two men have been marked by mutual hostility ever since the Roni Bar-On scandal, when Sharansky accused Lieberman of having been in cahoots with former Shas leader Aryeh Deri in masterminding the deal that led to Bar-On's short-lived appointment as attorney general.

The meeting was due to a reappraisal by both men of their political interests, following the defection of MKs Roman Bronfman and Alexander Tzinker from Yisrael b'Aliyah. Sharansky suddenly found himself leading a mere four-person faction, and was consequently under intense pressure from One Israel to make do with proportionately smaller political spoils.

His party was faced with what Sharansky regarded as humiliating demands by One Israel to accept unilateral changes in the coalition agreement that would reflect his party's smaller size, including the cancelation of Yuri Edelstein's planned appointment as absorption minister once the cabinet is enlarged, and loss of the chair of one of the Knesset's standing committees. Sharansky was affronted by One Israel's glee over his plight, and has accused Haim Ramon and other senior One Israel figures of orchestrating what he called "the second stinking maneuver."

His party abstained on Monday's no-confidence vote, evoking a strongly worded rebuke from Barak "to put up or shut up and decide whether you're in the coalition or out."

Last night, however, Barak decided that he did not want to lose a coalition partner less than a week after his government was sworn in, and he told his people to begin damage control. One Israel's attitude towards Sharansky's party became more cordial, and by last night's meeting of Yisrael b'Aliyah's executive committee, it was clear that there was no danger of the party leaving the coalition in the near future. Nevertheless, the meeting between Lieberman and Sharansky is significant.

They control eight seats between the two of them, and they could either cooperate to join the coalition as a larger faction, or alternatively jointly swell the ranks of the opposition, effectively denying Barak any significant base among the Russian immigrants - who currently number approximately 600,000, and whose ranks continue to swell every year."

     

Turkey to supply water to Israel

HA'ARETZ 7/15/99: "Turkey could solve Israel's chronic water shortage by sending enormous water-filled plastic bubbles hauled by tug boats across the Mediterranean Sea, Turkish President Suleyman Demirel suggested yesterday. Demirel said a project already in place could supply Israel with 180 million cubic meters (6.3 billion cubic feet) of water a year, and a new effort could yield four billion cubic meters (140 billion cubic feet) annually in the future.

That would meet Israel's needs "several times over," he said, adding, "Israel should take into consideration that we can supply water." Israel and Turkey are already close military allies, and the relationship would become even stronger should Turkey turn into Israel's major water supplier. Many Arab countries in the region, especially Syria, watch the Israeli-Turkish ties with great concerns, fearing the alliance could eventually dominate the Middle East.

Demirel yesterday began a two-day visit to Israel, to be followed by a one-day trip to the Palestinian areas tomorrow. Demirel met with Prime Minister Ehud Barak and President Ezer Weizman...Demirel plans visits to Israeli industries to check on joint projects and the aircraft plant where Israel is upgrading Turkish Air Force Phantom fighter planes. Answering Arab criticism of his country's military ties with Israel, he said the relationship is "not an alliance," and is not directed against any other country."

Get around the sensational news blocks to see the real story. Do your research here.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in the content and articles of this website, do not necessarily express the opinions of the Zionist Organization of America, nor the editor and creator of this website.

You found ZINC at http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/3132
You can use our easy-to-remember but redirected URL:  http://over.to/zinc
and then bookmark our page with the direct URL for future reference. 

NOTE:  All talit star designs have hints. Try with you mouse pointer and see.