The French appellate judge asked France 2 to hand over the unedited footage of the supposed shooting death of Mohammed Al-Dura, one of the icons of the Palestinian propaganda machine.

PJM PARIS….FLASH: The French Appellate court trial of Phillippe Karsenty in the matter of Mohammed Al Dura - the epochal case of the Palestinian boy allegedly shot by Israeli troops in 2000 - took a huge turn today. Photos of the boy have been accused of being the birth of fauxtography.

Appellate Court Presiding judge Laurence Trébucq has demanded that France 2 hand over the 27-minutes of raw footage shot on the afternoon of September 30, 2000 by Talal Abu Rahmeh. France 2 lawyer Maïtre Bénédicte Amblard tried to convince the judge that the request was not appropriate, relevant, necessary or even advisable. But the judge wants to see the outtakes with her own eyes. This is the first time the French court has made such a demand that would be normal in the US system. The court will now be able to determine if the Al Dura shooting and tape was a fake, as many have alleged.

Maître Amblard was not able to reach her clients to confirm availability of the footage. Today’s hearing was adjourned. The next hearing is scheduled on November 14th… to view the raw footage.

My birthday is November 15th. What a birthday present that will be, eh? Because if the footage doesn’t back up France 2’s lies, why have they fought so incredibly hard to keep it out of the public eye?

It’s back, and they did not reformat the hard drive. The keyboard seems to be working. I’ll check the battery later, as I simply don’t want to have to reboot. But geez, it’s nice to have a 17-inch screen again.

And my own email. I didn’t transfer Thunderbird to the loaner laptop (of course), so I was checking my mail via the web mailbox, which is inefficient, primitive, and annoying. Plus it was on a much smaller screen.

Aaaah. The sound you are hearing from this post is a great big sigh of relief. I am typing at over 100wpm on my laptop again. Life is good.

Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler’s U.S. Faces a Middle East Hungry for Peace Specifics is pretty standard fare.

The Bush administration has so far failed to generate serious traction behind its latest Middle East peace effort, with the opening session of its Washington conference of Arab and Israeli leaders tentatively scheduled for Nov. 15, according to senior Arab and U.S. officials and former U.S. envoys.

Noticeably missing from that list are “senior Israeli officials.” Well this might explain that absence.

Arab nations, notably Saudi Arabia, are looking for specific timelines and language on the most controversial issues, including the final status of Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees, eventual borders between the two states and security guarantees. “If this conference will not discuss serious topics aimed to resolve the conflict, put Arab initiative as a key objective, set an agenda that details issues as required and oblige Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories, this conference will not have any objective and will turn into protracted negotiations,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told reporters last week.

If the “Arab initiative” is the “key objective,” it makes sense that Israeli concerns aren’t at the forefront of those officials interviewed for the article.

Citing insufficient diplomacy, many are pessimistic that anything significant will come from the U.S. efforts. Martin Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel now at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center, said Rice has “underestimated the amount of heavy lifting she’ll have to do,” and that “she could succeed, but it’s going to take the kind of legwork that she hasn’t been prepared to take until now.” James A. Baker III, serving as secretary of state, made nine trips in nine months to set up the 1991 Madrid conference on Middle East peace. Then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spent more than a year to set up the 1998 Wye River summit that led to an interim agreement that was never implemented, noted Aaron David Miller, former Middle East envoy.

These two paragraphs are particularly interesting. Indyk thinks that the problem is “insufficient diplomacy,” but Miller notes that the result of sufficient (or, more precisely, excessive) diplomacy was “never implemented.” Maybe the problem isn’t diplomacy, but mindset. For example these two Arab officials. “What we want!” Doesn’t sound like they want negotiations or diplomacy, but rather terms dictated.

“The first lesson of diplomacy is that you don’t enter negotiations without knowing what the next step is,” said a senior Arab official. Added another: “Working on an agenda [at this conference] for what happens at a next conference is not what we want. Another failure is not good for the U.S. or the region.”

Finally the survey (mercifully) ends.

But the Bush administration has limited leverage, experts note. “Bush is the lamest-duck president in our lifetimes and now completely preoccupied with dragging out a war in the Middle East, which is extremely unpopular with Arabs across the board,” said Bruce Riedel, who was a negotiator in the 2000 Camp David effort. “He has not in almost seven years in the White House used his political capital to advance the Arab-Israeli peace process. Instead, he has been notably absent.”

Yes Mr. Riedel was a negotiator in 2000. And after all that political was expended on that summit, what exactly was the result? Did Arafat accept the terms that Ehud Barak offered? Did he make a counter offer? Well, no. And despite all of the commotion that he was still committed to negotiation, here’s how his rejection of Camp David was treated in the Arab world. (You know, those folks who are so interested in peace.)

The refusal of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, to negotiate away his claims to Jerusalem may have dashed American hopes of a Camp David peace agreement today, but it allowed him to return home with his credibility among Arab and Muslim leaders intact, Middle East analysts said.

That’s right, rejection of the offer enhanced his credibility in the Arab world. What’s clear is that those officials who were the source for this story don’t really want specifics. What they want are terms imposed upon Israel. (How much would have to be imposed is a question. I still doubt that however generous PM Olmert is, it will satisfy the demands of the Arab world hungering for specifics.)

Crossposted at Soccer Dad.

peace process, israel, palestinians.

Israel has declared Gaza a “hostile entity.” One might be tempted to call that a keen grasp of the obvious. One might be right.

The security cabinet voted on Wednesday to declare the Gaza Strip a hostile political entity. The ministers also discussed the continuous rocket attacks against Israel.

The unanimous vote also authorized the imposing of economic sanctions against Gaza, so long as they do not affect the civilian population. The measures to be taken against Gaza include cutting back on the supply of electricity and fuel, in accordance with international law.

This is the interesting part. I wonder if there will be any follow-through. Although Israel’s detractors like to pretend otherwise, Israel is not the kind of country that will allow people to starve, even her enemies. I think it’s possible we’ll see limited cutbacks, just enough to make the Gaza population even more pissed at Hamas.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said that Israel’s decision constituted a “declaration of war.”

“This is a dangerous escalation of the attempt to legitimize destroying Palestinian land, criminal behavior and bringing a humanitarian disaster on the Palestinian people. This is Israel attempting a knock-out blow against Hamas following its successes in taking control of Gaza.

Yeah, I’m not seeing a downside to that, Barhoum.

Here comes the laugh-out-loud part of the story, though:

Barak’s office said that in accordance with international law – in dealing with a hostile entity, Israel would be able to respond without imposing a collective punishment against the civilian Palestinian population.

Those measures include preventing the flow of funds into Gaza, restricting the operations of the various border crossings, cutting off the Israeli supply of fuel to Gaza and cutting back the amount of electricity provided to the public.

Ehud Barak is being rather naive here. Doesn’t he know that the rules that apply to the rest of the world do not apply to Israel? Nobody is calling emergency UN sessions on the murder of Sudanese refugees by Egyptian border police. The UN and world leaders didn’t call for restraint when the Lebanese Army attacked a Palestinian refugee camp, indiscriminately killing civilians while trying to oust the terrorists in the camp. And the world doesn’t think it’s a crime that Gaza sends rockets into Israel on a near-daily basis.

Meryl’s prediction: Israel will cut back on the flow of electricity and fuel, and the world will rise up as one—against Israel. I sure hope I’m wrong. But I think not.

Say, remember this post from the summer?

Doing the IDF’s work for them: 15 Syrian soldiers are dead in a blast that is attributed to the heat.

“There is a heat wave and temperatures reached close to 50 degrees, which caused an ammunition dump to explode,” one official told Reuters.

Uh-huh. Works for me, because a nation with desert temps in the summertime wouldn’t prepare their ordnance containers for, say, high periods of heat. Noteworthy facts: It occurred in a complex housing Syrian special forces teams. Say, anyone think maybe Iranian weaponry had anything to do with it?

When I’m right, I’m right.

Dozens of Syrian military officers and Iranian engineers were killed about two months ago in an a chemical weapons accident, Jane’s Magazine reported Monday, revealing new details on the incident which took place in a secret weapons facility.

According to the report by the British magazine, the explosion occurred early in the morning on July 26, in a factory in the city of Halab, as the officers were attempting to mount a chemical warhead with mustard gas on a Scud-C missile.

A fire which started in the missile’s engine led to an explosion near a storage location of chemical substances. The blast spread lethal chemical agents, including mustard gas, VX gas and sarin nerve gas, which are considered extremely toxic and are banned for use according to international treaties.

Jane’s Magazine reports that the explosion killed 15 Syrian officers and dozens of Iranian engineers who were in the facility. Dozens of people were injured.

The incident was reported at the time by Syria’s official news agency, but the report only included information on the Syrian casualties and did not mention the Iranian representatives.

This makes the raid on Syria even more meaningful now, doesn’t it? And gee. It’s so nice to know that Ehud Olmert respects the man who is loading sarin and mustard gas on warheads aimed at Israel.

but not in Gaza

For years, the seaside Flower of the Cities resort was that rare place in the Gaza Strip where the dress code did not rule out bikinis. Now, with some of its cinder-block cabanas turned into prayer rooms, the beach club shows how Hamas is consolidating its hold here three months after seizing power. Bushy beards and black head-to-toe cloaks for women have become common at the club, which the armed Islamic movement torched in June after routing the secular Fatah party on the streets. The facility has been rebranded the al-Aqsa Resort, with a new logo featuring the revered mosque complex in Jerusalem next to a beach umbrella. Hamas followers collect the $2.50 entrance fee. Like the party it supported, the bikini crowd has disappeared, leaving the trash-flecked beach and murky swimming pool to Bassem al-Khodori and a half-dozen other Hamas supporters, who now have jobs at the resort.

UPDATE: Douglas Farah observes

But ultimately, the Gaza experience shows us what the Muslim Brotherhood wants to create. It has a chance on the ground to build a government that has actual authority. How will it use that authority, and how will it respond to dissent? The answer, so far, is not a very bright picture.

(h/t Seraphic Secret)

And Noah Pollak adds

In many ways Hamas has been emboldened by the continued arrival, regardless of its terror war, of foreign aid money and water and electricity from Israel. Hamas, in other words, has been given the ability to run a consequence-free jihad.

(h/t Daled Amos)

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

gaza, hamas.