Erekat: Barak busy planning incursions - Jerusalem Post - March 13, 2008

Meanwhile, The Jerusalem Post has learned that Fraser will not publicize the report on compliance with the road map obligations he was expected to present at Friday’s trilateral meeting.Rather, according to diplomatic officials, Fraser is expected to present each side with his report, and then pass it - as well as the Israeli and Palestinian responses to it - on to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who will then decide how to proceed further.

Israel, Russia finalize deal for PA armored cars - Ha’aretz - March 22, 2008

Olmert approved the deal last November, but right-wing parties slammed the decision and military officials criticized the move to permit machine guns to be mounted on the vehicles. As a result, Israel postponed its final approval. The PA wants the armored vehicles to help improve its control over the West Bank and to deter its rival, Hamas.Israeli security sources told Haaretz that the military establishment agreed to let the vehicles be delivered when agreement was reached to forgo the machine guns and to restrict Palestinian police officers to carrying small, personal weapons only. Under the agreement, another 25 vehicles will be stored in Jordan, to be delivered depending on Israel’s satisfaction with how the first round of vehicles are used.

U.S. road map monitors: PA failing in fight against terror - Ha’aretz - March 25, 2008

Specifically, the Americans are concerned that the PA does not engage in the full spectrum of counterterrorism activities, including arrests, interrogation and trial, as it would if it were trying to eradicate the armed wings of Islamic terrorist organizations. Instead, it makes do with trying to “contain” terror - to prevent specific attacks, and to keep Hamas from growing strong enough to threaten Fatah’s rule in the West Bank.The PA security services do occasionally arrest members of Islamic organizations, but they do not then follow up with the other steps in the “chain of prevention”: interrogations, arrests of additional operatives, indictments and trials. Trials generally take place only if the PA is under external pressure, as in the case of the Palestinians who killed two off-duty soldiers out on a hike near Hebron three months ago. And when they do take place, they are generally hasty affairs.

Israel has been complaining about the lack of a “chain of prevention” for years, ever since the second intifada broke out in 2000. Now, it seems that the American monitoring team, headed by General William Fraser, has adopted Jerusalem’s position on this issue. Security coordination between Israel and the PA has deteriorated since the terror attack on Jerusalem’s Mercaz Harav Yeshiva three weeks ago.

Palestinian security officials are angry over what they view as Israel’s lack of faith in them, as reflected in its recent decision to go after four wanted terrorists in Bethlehem itself, rather than informing the Palestinians and letting them try to arrest the men. And while the PA has recently arrested several members of Islamic organizations in the northern West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service question the significance of these arrests.

(In the interest of full disclosure, yes the article also mentions that the monitoring team presented questions to Israel about “settlements.”)

Terrorist involved in Passover 2002 Netanya Park Hotel arrested - Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs - March 26, 2008

Now released for publication: In a joint IDF and ISA arrest operation overnight at the Bal’a village near Tulkarm, Omar Jabar, head of the Hamas terror organization in Tulkarm area, was arrested. Jabar has been sought since 2002 for his direct responsibility in carrying out the suicide attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya on Passover, March 27, 2002, in which 30 Israeli civilians were killed and 143 were injured.Jabar recruited the contact that dispatched the suicide bomber, introducing him to the head of the Hamas in Tulkarm at the time, Abed Sayad. Sayad admitted in his investigation that the connection with Jabar had already begun in 1994, when the two were imprisoned together.

Israel to make gestures to Palestinians - AP - March 26, 2008

Israel’s defense minister has agreed to transfer police cars, rubber-coated steel bullets and night-vision equipment to Palestinian security forces, officials said Wednesday.The gestures are meant to help peace efforts by strengthening moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in his standoff with the Hamas militant group. But Palestinian officials say the Israeli moves are not nearly enough.

Palestinian carrying two grenades caught at checkpoint - Jerusalem Post - March 26, 2008

A Palestinian was caught at an army checkpoint north of Nablus on Tuesday with two makeshift hand grenades.

(via Yourish)

PA Cops coordinate with terrorists: let them reset bombs in Nablus - Ha’aretz - March 28, 2008 (Hebrew)

“One of the latest reports that infuriated the Minister of Defense came from Nablus, where Israel allowed the [Palestinian] Authority to bring in 500 police to take responsibility for security in the city.According to the report, despite the good intentions of the Palestinian leadership, there is coordination between the police and terror activists. The later neutralize the bombs they have laid when the police tour the casaba and then hook them up again when they leave.”

Translation by IMRA

In Mideast, Rice Urges Cooperation on Security - New York Times - March 30, 2008

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began a trip to the Middle East on Saturday by calling on Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to find ways to improve security in the West Bank for Israelis and to ease roadblocks there that hamper movement for ordinary Palestinians. The goals are not new, but Ms. Rice is hoping that any steps forward on those issues will reinvigorate talks that suffered a setback after a recent outbreak of violence that killed more than 120 Palestinians in Gaza, many of them civilians, and three Israelis during one week.

New steps aimed at reaching Mideast deal - AP - March 30, 2008

Israel pledged to remove some West Bank roadblocks as a start to “concrete steps” in an agreement Sunday with the Palestinians that is aimed at paving the way for a final peace deal this year.”This is a program that will improve the daily lives of Palestinians and help make Israel secure,” the U.S. said.

Under the plan that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced, Israel will remove about 50 roadblocks and upgrade checkpoints to speed up the movement of Palestinians through the West Bank.

The Israelis also will give Palestinians more security responsibility in the town of Jenin with an eye toward looking at “other areas in turn.” They also pledged to increase the number of travel and work permits for Palestinians and to support economic projects in Palestinian towns.

Question from IMRA - March 30, 2008:

Question: Why is it that when the Olmert team sat down with the others to negotiate this announcement that they did not demand that the Palestinians also bring something concrete to the table?Yes - the Palestinians are going to deploy more gunmen - aka policemen. And they said that they are going to make an effort. But while Israel has measurable performance requirements (the number of roadblocks dismantles, for example) the goals for the Palestinians are extremely vague. How about a goal for the number of weapons that they cease and hand over for destruction by a third party? How about a goal for the number of terrorists arrested, prosecuted and sent to prison? (not just stopped for a moment and then sent on their way) ]

Responding to the final effort - Ha’aretz Editorial - March 30, 2008

Abbas’ weakness in the Palestinian community in general and in light of the Hamas military takeover of Gaza in particular has caused Rice to address most of her demands to Israel. Responding to these demands will improve the atmosphere, even if it does not affect the core issues, does not necessarily increase the strength of the moderates vis-a-vis the extremists in Palestinian society and does not lead to unity in the divided Arab world, as reflected by the summit in Damascus.

The absurdity of the situation, as evidenced by IMRA’s question is (even Ha’aretz admits) that Abbas can grant Israel nothing. Therefore the only concrete concessions are demanded of Israel. Israel, despite demonstrating the unreliability of the PA’s security forces continue to bolster those forces and now outsource more of Israel’s security to these thugs. (From the complete MFA press release, it’s clear that Fatah had an interest in stopping Jabar. Plus a related point as if any were necessary from A Blog for All.)

Part of this American’s fault. Sec. Rice has the information that the PA security forces have consistently failed to do the job they are supposed to. (That’s been the case since 1993.) And yet in the name of enhancing Israel’s “security” she insists that Israel trust the PA.

But why doesn’t the Olmert government through Fraser’s report back at the Bush administration? There can be a case for taking certain risks for peace. However trusting the PA’s security is a demonstrated bad risk. The recent evidence suggests that the risk is any better now with Abbas and Fayyad in charge.

Is Israel so scared of being labeled “against peace” that it won’t push back and tell the Bush administration, not only that strengthening the PA’s security forces won’t help Israel, but that it won’t help President’ Bush’s legacy either?

UPDATE: Please see the related post at Fresno Zionism, who writes about the three elephants that Sec. Rice is ignoring.

Here are some of the elephants that Ms. Rice does not see:Hamas
Hezbollah
Iran

Israel Matzav doesn’t ignore another elephant: Fatah corruption.

THE MOST serious scandal involves former PA Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei, who currently heads the Palestinian negotiating team with Israel. According to a document released by PA ambassador to Romania, Adli Sadek, Qurei deposited $3 million of PLO funds into his private bank account.Qurei was forced to publish a strong denial in the Palestinian media. While admitting that he did take the money, Qurei said he transferred the sum to a PLO bank account. He added that the $3m. were part of a $5m. investment that had been deposited in a bank account under Yasser Arafat’s name.

Qurei has also been forced to deny charges that he and his sons own a cement factory that has been supplying concrete for the construction of Israel’s West Bank security fence and new homes in Jewish settlements in the West Bank.

Israelly Cool! writes about the asymmetries in Israeli gestures to the Palesitnians.

In other words, Israel agrees on a whole range of gestures, including relaxing security measures that have proven to be effective in reducing the number of palestinian terrorist attacks inside Israel, while the PA promises to..try prevent terror. Besides the fact that they supposedly promised to do that at the beginning of Oslo, it is something the success of which can’t really be measured. After all, the palestinians can always claim they have been trying, but haven’t been able to succeed due to any number of factors, all of which are Israel’s fault.

Finally, Boker Tov Boulder adds a different asymmetry that’s more than a little disquieting.

Just one question. Why is it that housing for Arabs is part and parcel of the “peace process,” but housing for Jews is an “obstacle to peace” ??

Finally, Jewish Current Issues demonstrates that in its zeal to move forward, the Bush administration has proven itself positively Clintonesque in its ability to abandon commitments to Israel.

The very essence of the Roadmap was the “constraint of the phases. ” It was precisely the plan’s “sequentiality” that imposed the only discipline possible on the process: no final status negotiations, not even a provisional state, until terrorism was dismantled.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

Roee Nahmias is hereby officially pronounced an Apprentice of Juvenile Scorn™ for this story about the PIJ haxxor d00dz incredible hacking skillz.

Islamic Jihad operatives have been able to hack into several Israeli websites, the London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Sharq al-Awsat reported Sunday.

“The electronic surveillance unit of the media warfare division has been able to hack into several Israeli websites and take them over,” said a statement by the al-Quds Brigades, quoted by the paper.

Wow, that’ sounds pretty scary. What websites did they hack? IAF? IDF? Mossad?

A Ynet probe has revealed at least two websites hacked by the Islamic Jihad – the Kfar Truman and the “High-Tech Motors Body-Shop” websites.

The next sound you hear will be the sound of millions of true hackers around the world snorting with derision. Oooh. A body shop website. The world trembles at the loss of yet another scratch-and-dent repair website, so vital to Israeli security.

And here’s where Roee gets that Juvenile Scorn apprenticeship:

Website defacement of this nature requires only basic programming know-how and usually boils down to changing the main page – a file easy to reconstruct.

[...] A statement by any terror group pointing to a unit dedicated to defacing websites does not necessarily indicate any operational sophistication, since any teenager with basic programming skills can do the same.

[Snicker]

Well done, Roee.

Contents
The Egyptian Israel media bias watcher
Al Jazeera’s Jewish anchor - quits
South African sponsored reconciliation radio

The Egyptian Israel media bias watcher
Adel Darwish wants to change the way Israel is covered in the British media. (h/t ETBuzz)

A new organization seeking to promote accurate and responsible media coverage of Israel in the UK is to be launched in London on Friday.By holding journalists accountable to the principles created by the industry, Just Journalism says it is aiming to promote responsible journalism and fairness in reporting on Israel.

Founded by a group of young professionals with backgrounds in the media, law, public relations and academia who are concerned with the influence of the media and their lack of accountability, the new organization will analyze and monitor press and broadcast coverage of Israel to ensure it adheres to core journalistic principles.

Just Journalism is an independent organization funded by private individuals and led by Egyptian-born journalist and Middle East commentator Adel Darwish.

This is even more surprising.

Darwish brings over 40 years of reporting experience on the region to the group. He was a senior reporter at the Independent for over 10 years and has worked on an array of other newspapers including The Daily Telegraph and The Times. The author of four books, he is a frequent commentator on BBC and Sky News, as well as major Arabic-language, American and Canadian television networks.

He worked for the Independent!

I looked up Darwish, and it turns out that he has a website. I poked around a little bit and found that he isn’t what I expected. Clearly I’d have disagreements with Mr. Darwish, but he writes this:

‘We will only recognise Israel,’ Arabs say, ‘when it returns all occupied Arab land.’ Such health warning attached to the Peace Plan could be for populist demagogic reasons, or, as many believe born of of traditional hostility to the Jewish state. The condition neverthless deflects popular anger, and possible revolt, away from Arab autocratic regimes.Peace packages, by their very nature, are usually subjected to endless the haggling by the Middle Eastern souk mentality. Nearly all Arab officials still reject a public handshake with Israeli officials. The Arabs should develop their Plan innto a Middle Eastern Road Map, of building confidence blocks. It will be slow, and nothing like the dramatic impact of Sadat’s 1977 bold visit to Jerusalem; but modest steps taken, will still be forward on the road to peace and certainly more positive than the current static situation that breeds hatred and wastes valuable resources on arms.

Of course, Arab confidence building measures have been absent in Middle East peace-making. I’m glad to see that there’s someone out there who agrees.

Al Jazeera’s Jewish anchor - quits

A little more than two years ago Al Jazeera English hired an American to be its anchor. In November 2006, Washington Post profiled former Nightline reporter David Marash, who had been hired by the Qatar based station.

In February, Marash, a lifelong broadcast newsman, became the Washington-based anchor of Al Jazeera English (AJE), the English-language spinoff of the Arabic TV news network. When AJE begins its first globe-spanning broadcast today, Marash will be its most prominent American face.Embedded in “why,” however, are two other questions: How can an American work for an operation affiliated with al-Jazeera, which achieved notoriety — and to some, infamy — by airing video communiques from Osama bin Laden, images of dead American soldiers and routine denunciations of the United States? Moreover, how could Marash, who is Jewish, work for an organization that has provided a platform for Holocaust denial and hate speech against Israel, Zionism and Judaism?

But Marash — affable, burly and possessed of gloriously resonant voice — seems almost delighted to be on the defensive. His short, glib answer: He was out of a job.

The Post’s reporter, Paul Farhi, then goes on to describe Al Jazeera , not as a terrorist propagandists, but as a bold new startup.

In some respects, Al Jazeera English will be worlds apart from its established, decade-old sibling. Al-Jazeera focuses primarily on news of the Middle East, for an audience of mostly Arabic-speaking Muslims. AJE will have broader horizons, aiming to draw a billion-plus English speakers from Madagascar to Maine — for Muslims, yes, but also for anyone else who wants another perspective on the day’s news.In other words, AJE — based in the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar — is hoping to become the first non-Western source to challenge the global info-supremacy of CNN and the BBC. This, although it’s not yet available over broadcast frequencies in the United States.

Finally, Farhi gets to the problems with Al Jazeera, at least as claimed by “conservatives.”

Cliff Kincaid, who edits the conservative Accuracy in Media Report, points to troubling connections: Al-Jazeera journalist Tayseer Allouni last year was convicted in Spain of collaborating with al-Qaeda; and al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj was arrested by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2001 and has been held at Guantanamo Bay. (Al-Jazeera says the two men are innocent.)”We haven’t seen any evidence that tells us that [AJE] will be significantly different than al-Jazeera in Arabic,” Kincaid says. “It’s sponsored by the same people, paid for by the same people and has the same editorial philosophy.”

Kincaid all but says Marash is a dupe: “The emir has plenty of Arab oil dollars to buy anyone he wants. They need Western media faces to give them credibility.”

It really shouldn’t be Kincaid’s call, it’s something Farhi could have observed himself. Later he does quote Steven Stalinsky from MEMRI, which he describes as “moderate.”

(On its Web site, MEMRI catalogues al-Jazeera’s news coverage into several telling categories, such as “Anti-Semitism,” “Conspiracy Theories,” “Suicide (Martyrdom) Operations,” “Holocaust Denial.”)

However, at the time, David Marash claimed to know better.

“Al-Jazeera is one of the most positive and significant cultural events in the Arab world in centuries,” he declares. Unlike state-controlled media throughout the Arab world, he says, al-Jazeera regularly broadcasts dissent and opposing points of view, providing “the broadest spectrum of argument” that many Arab viewers have seen.”Do they broadcast hate speech?” he asks. “Yes, they do. Is it put in context and is it discussed as hate speech? Yes, it is. Hate speech is part of the dialogue of the Middle East. To censor or to exclude it would be to lose all credibility” among al-Jazeera’s viewers, he says.

Well now, nearly two years after the taking the job (noted elsewhere too), David Marash has quit Al Jazeera.

Former “Nightline” reporter Dave Marash has quit Al-Jazeera English, saying Thursday his exit was due in part to an anti-American bias at a network that is little seen in this country.Marash said he felt that attitude more from British administrators than Arabs at the Qatar-based network.

Marash was the highest-profile American TV personality hired when the English language affiliate to Al-Jazeera was started two years ago in an attempt to compete with CNN and the BBC. He said there was a “reflexive adversarial editorial stance” against Americans at Al-Jazeera English.

“Given the global feelings about the Bush administration, it’s not surprising,” Marash said.

Nice soundbite David. It really helps boost your objectivity quotient. Maybe Al Arabiya or Press TV have openings.

South African sponsored reconciliation radio

AP reports on a new radio station based in Ramallah and Jerusalem sponsored by a Jewish South African businessman intended to bridge gaps between Israelis and Palestinians.

But now RAM-FM, owned by Jewish businessman Issy Kirsh in South Africa, has greater ambitions. Modeled after a South African station that provided a venue for reconciliation after apartheid, RAM-FM wants to create a safe place for Israelis and Palestinians to talk, and make money in the process.

It’s Almost Supernatural points out that Mr. Kirsh has been vilified by South Africa’s Muslim lobby. He also points out that the station on which Ram FM is based has some pretty strong words about Israel in its editorial content. (He limits the critique to opinions on 702, not the news.)

I hope it’s not an exact model of 702. Yusuf Abramjee, the 702 station manager, (and group head of news and programming for Primedia Broadcasting) is far from a neutral and objective observer when it comes to the Middle East. He has penned a number of anti-Israel articles including one which concluded in no uncertain terms that Israel is an apartheid state and should be condemned.

Crosspoted on Soccer Dad.