Gilad Shalit Deal Reached With Hamas: Israel Radio
JERUSALEM — In a much-anticipated prisoner exchange that could have broad implications, Israel and Hamas on Tuesday announced that an Israeli soldier abducted to Gaza five years ago would be swapped for about 1,000 Palestinians held by Israel and accused of militant activity. Israel’s government approved the deal early Wednesday following a three-hour debate after both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal announced the agreement in televised comments. Netanyahu said the captured soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, would return home within days. Mashaal, portraying the agreement as a victory, said the Palestinian prisoners would be freed in two stages over two months. Hamas and Israel are bitter enemies. Hamas has sent dozens of suicide bombers into Israel, killing hundreds, and Israel blockaded Gaza after Hamas seized power there in 2007, carrying out a large-scale invasion in 2009 to try to stop daily rocket attacks on Israel. More than 1,500 Gaza Palestinians have been killed in Israeli raids and airstrikes since the soldier was captured. In the northern Gaza town of Jebaliya, thousands of Hamas supporters flocked the streets, led by masked militants. Cars with loudspeakers played praise for Hamas. Thousands of other Gazans rushed to their border with Egypt, clutching Palestinian and Egyptian flags, tossing flowers and cheering. Gaza’s Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, smiled as he threw candy to celebrating backers. The deal maintains a decades-long tradition of lopsided exchanges that have come under increasing criticism in Israel – and ends a period of tortured indecision by Israeli governments torn between securing the release of a single soldier and the risk that freed militants might return to violence that could cost many more lives. “There is built-in tension between the desire to return a kidnapped soldier … and the need to preserve the security of the citizens of Israel,” Netanyahu said, in comments at opening the Cabinet meeting. “I believe we reached the best deal that we can reach at this time, a stormy time in the Middle East.” In agreeing to go ahead with the deal, the career hard-liner made a potentially fateful choice. It gives Hamas, a militant group that rules the Gaza Strip, a victory that might strengthen its hand against the more moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority runs the West Bank. Mashaal said 1,000 male prisoners and 27 female ones would be released, the first 450 over the next week and the rest within two months. He said the released would include 315 prisoners serving life sentences, suggesting they were convicted of attacks that caused the deaths of Israelis. Seeming to confirm Israel’s fears, Mashaal said that those who are released “will return to … the national struggle.” “This is a national achievement for the whole Palestinian people,” Mashaal said, adding that he was pained not to be able to release the thousands of remaining prisoners held by Israel. The exact number of prisoners is under some contention, with the Palestinians citing 8,000 and Israel confirming about 5,000. Yoram Cohen, head of Israel’s Shin Bet security agency, said over the course of six secret rounds of talks in recent months, Hamas had backed down from key demands, including the release of some top militants. He said about 40 of the first group of prisoners would be exiled to other countries. News of the deal set off wild celebrations at a protest tent erected by Schalit’s family outside Netanyahu’s residence in Jerusalem. Several hundred people danced in the street and waved flags with Schalit’s image on it. The soldier’s father, Noam, has become a well-known public figure by pushing for his son’s freedom. The tiny structure is decorated with pictures of Schalit, as well as a large sign with the number 1,934, the number of days he has been in captivity. Schalit’s parents sat in the tent, smiling as people flooded to the area and cars honked horns in excitement. But typical of the criticism was a statement by Almagor, a group representing victims of Palestinian attacks. “In the end Netanyahu has surrendered to Hamas,” the group said. “The terrorists who are released are a danger to the citizens of Israel.” The plight of Palestinian prisoners is equally emotional among Palestinians. Virtually every Palestinian has a relative who has served time in an Israeli prison, and Palestinians routinely hold large demonstrations where they hold up posters of their imprisoned loved ones. The very fact of any agreement between Israel and its archenemy seemed to offer a beguiling prospect of a new dynamic in the region. To date, Hamas has not abandoned its ideology that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. For its part, Israel has never accepted the violent Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007. Though neither side hinted at changes in those basic policies, the prospect of even lukewarm relations developing between Israel and Hamas could open a new window for peace efforts. The deal was also an important milestone for the new military authorities in Egypt, which both sides credited with brokering the deal and who emerge with a heightened aura of regional leadership. Schalit was captured in a cross-border raid in June 2006 by Palestinian militants who burrowed into Israel and dragged him into Gaza after killing two other soldiers. Little has been known about his fate since then, and Hamas has outraged public opinion in Israel by refusing to even allow Red Cross visits, releasing only a brief audio recording and a videotaped statement early in his five years in captivity. Schalit’s ordeal has become an obsession in Israel, where military service is mandatory and the public has identified with his family. Israel’s Channel 2 TV said Schalit would be returned to Israel via Egypt. Cohen, the Israeli security chief, said there was a turning point in July, when Hamas dropped its demands to free key imprisoned militants. He said the most prominent names, uprising leader Marwan Barghouti, faction leader Ahmed Saadat and Hamas bombmaker Abdullah Barghouti were not included. Saadat was convicted of planning the assassination of an Israeli Cabinet minister in 2001. Barghouti was the top local commander of Fatah, the movement of President Mahmoud Abbas, when he was arrested in 2002 and convicted of a role in deadly attacks against Israelis. He is serving multiple life terms but is widely touted as a future Palestinian president. Israel has been carrying out unequal prisoner swaps for decades, including handing over 4,600 Palestinian and Lebanese captives in 1983 in exchange for six captured Israeli soldiers. In 2008, it even freed Arab prisoners for the bodies of two soldiers killed by Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. Hamas is in a bitter rivalry with Abbas, who is enjoying a burst of popularity after defying Israel and the U.S. and seeking membership for the Palestinians at the U.N. Abbas, traveling in South America, praised the deal. “We’ve worked very hard for a long time to reach this agreement and reach this objective,” Abbas said after meeting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. “The Israeli soldier will finally return to his family … but there are 5,000 jailed Palestinians in Israeli prisons, whose families are impatiently waiting for them.” Netanyahu is also eager for a domestic boost. The Israeli leader has faced growing criticism for a deadlock in peace efforts with the Palestinians, as well as a series of domestic protests over the country’s steep cost of living. Bringing Schalit home could make Netanyahu a hero. ___ Diaa Hadid and Daniel Estrin in Jerusalem, Sarah El Deeb in Cairo, Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City and Patricia Rondon Espin in Caracas contributed reporting.
Click here to view this media Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann said Monday that it would be “foolish” to normalize trade with Cuba because Hezbollah could soon have “missile sites” there. “Why would you normalize trade with a country that sponsors terror?” the candidate asked a crowd of supporters in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “There is reports that have come out that Cuba has been working with another terrorist organization called Hezbollah. And Hezbollah is looking at wanting to be part of missile sites in Iran and, of course, when you are 90 miles offshore from Florida, you don’t want to entertain the prospect of hosting bases or sites where Hezbollah could have training camps or perhaps have missile sites or weapons sites in Cuba. ” Bachmann was most likely basing her fear on an unsubstantiated report from the Italian publican Corriere della Sera , which was picked up by numerous conservative websites earlier this month (see here , here , here and here .) Even if that report were true, it makes absolutely no mention of “missile sites.” Bachmann then pivoted to explain that Republicans didn’t need to worry about picking the most electable nominee because the country had already decided not to re-elect President Barack Obama. “I’m just here to tell you, Barack Obama will be a one-term president,” she said. “The country has already made up it’s decision. I am convinced of it. The issue is who will be our nominee? Will it be someone who understands these issues so they will go and fight for them or will we have a compromise candidate?” “Because we have candidates that have said that when it comes to Obamacare that their plan is to issue an executive order or to issue a waiver. I’m here to tell you, I get this bill. I fought it. I am the chief author against it. I was called Barack Obama’s chief critic. That’s my badge of honor, to be his chief critic. Because I understand what some of the other candidates do not… We can’t settle, and 2012 is it. We will have socialized medicine for ever and ever and ever in this country unless we get it out in 2012.”
Continue reading …New York Times Watch Quotes of Note: ‘Deep Cuts in Social Services’ by Conservatives Led to London Riots
August 29, 2011 No Comment
“Deep Cuts in Social Services” By Conservatives Led to London Riots “Frustration in this impoverished neighborhood, as in many others in Britain, has mounted as the government’s austerity budget has forced deep cuts in social services. At the same time, a widely held disdain for law enforcement here, where a large Afro-Caribbean population has felt singled out by the police for abuse, has only intensified through the drumbeat of scandal that has racked Scotland Yard in recent weeks and led to the resignation of the force’s two top commanders….Economic malaise and cuts in spending and services instituted by the Conservative-led government have been recurring flashpoints for months…As the budget cuts take hold, risk of unemployment increases and social measures like youth projects are sacrificed, Mr. Beech said, and ‘all logic says there will be an increase in antisocial behavior.’” – London-based reporter Ravi Somaiya on the riots there, August 8.
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Rising violence in Iraq risks being used by American and Iraqi elements to abort the 2008 agreement between the two governments that all American troops leave the country by the end of the year. Monday’s wave of attacks against Iraqi security forces across the country, evoking old battleground names like Ramadi and Baquba, set a record — 89 killed and 315 wounded…
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Reporting from Beirut— International jurists Wednesday released details of how an analysis of cellphone calls led investigators to conclude the Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah was behind the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri six years ago. The unsealing of the 47-page indictment, which suggests a complicated three-month plot by at least 11 conspirators to trail Hariri for months, establish his travel patterns and then dispatch a suicide bomber with a van full of explosives to kill him, did not produce surprises for close observers of the investigation and was immediately criticized by Hezbollah. The inquiry of Hariri’s Feb. 14, 2005, slaying has been beset by…
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The international tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has published the indictment against Hezbollah members accused in the attack. (Aug. 17)
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The international tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri has published the indictment against Hezbollah members accused in the attack. (Aug. 17)
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Just as with the last Republican takeover of the House in 1995, it was easy to predict the media elite were going to dig deep into the mud and throw every smear they had at the new conservative powers in town. Congress finally passed, and the president signed, a deeply deficient kick-the-can compromise into law in order to raise the debt ceiling. Tea Party conservatives correctly denounced the deal as woefully inadequate. When Standard & Poor’s downgraded the creditworthiness of the United States government, Sen. John Kerry shamelessly labeled it a “Tea Party downgrade,” and no one in the press questioned him.
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Martin Chulov reports on the elusive Iranian with so much Iraqi influence that Baghdadis believe he is controlling the country There’s a story that the new CIA director, David Petraeus, likes to tell which harks back to his days as a four-star general in Iraq. Early in 2008, during a series of battles between the US and Iraqi army on one side and the Shia militias on the other, Petraeus was handed a phone with a text message from the Iranian general who had by then become his nemesis. The message came from the head of Iran’s elite al-Quds Force, Qassem Suleimani, and was conveyed by a senior Iraqi leader. It read: “General Petraeus, you should know that I, Qassem Suleimani, control the policy for Iran with respect to Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. And indeed, the ambassador in Baghdad is a Quds Force member. The individual who’s going to replace him is a Quds Force member.” Petraeus hardly needed to be told. Much of the US military’s work with Iraq’s Shia Muslims had been undermined by Suleimani and the client militias of the Iranian general’s al-Quds force. So too had US government diplomatic efforts elsewhere in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon. Petraeus last year told a thinktank, the Institute for the Study of War, about the problem Suleimani created for him: “Now, that makes diplomacy difficult if you think that you’re going to do the traditional means of diplomacy by dealing with another country’s ministry of foreign affairs because in this case, it is not the ministry. It is a security apparatus.” As he prepared for the job of the US’s most senior spy, Petraeus would surely have been preparing for further shadow boxing. Suleimani’s reputation as the most formidable operator in the region has not diminished in the past three years. By some measures it has actually increased: Syria now also comes within Suleimani’s sphere of influence. The strength of the ties between Suleimani and Iraqi legislators has been revealed during weeks of interviews with key officials, including those who admire him and those who fear the man like no other. Iraq’s former state security minister, Sharwan al-Waeli is one who knows Suleimani well. A formal conversation between the Guardian and al-Waeli last year took on a very different tone as soon as Suleimani’s name was mentioned. The Shia legislator was a known ally of Iran, so much so that he was seen by secularists and Sunnis in parliament as someone prepared to do Iran’s bidding. He denied Iran played a pervasive role in Iraq until he was interrupted with a question that Iraqi officials have long prefered to ignore: when was the last time Qassem Suleimani came to the Green Zone, the fortified government district in the heart of Baghdad? Al-Waeli’s left hand trembled slightly and his brow furrowed. “You mean Sayed Qassem Suleimani,” he said, giving Suleimani an Arabic honorific reserved for the most esteemed of men. He refused to elaborate. In Baghdad, no other name invokes the same sort of reaction among the nation’s power base – discomfort, uncertainty and fear. “He is the most powerful man in Iraq without question,” Iraq’s former national security minister, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, said recently. “Nothing gets done without him.” Until now, however, few Iraqis have dared to talk openly about the enigmatic Iranian general, what role he plays in Iraq and how he shapes key agendas like no one else. “They are too busy dealing with the aftermath,” said a senior US official. “He dictates terms then makes things happen and the Iraqis are left managing a situation that they had no input into.” Suleimani’s journey to supremacy in Iraq is rooted in the Islamic revolution of 1979, which ousted the Shah and recast Iran as a fundamentalist Shia Islamic state. He rose steadily through the ranks of the Iranian military until 2002 when, months before the US invasion of Iraq, he was appointed to command the most elite unit of the Iranian military – the al-Quds force of the Revolutionary Guards Corp. The al-Quds force has no equal in Iran. Its stated primary task is to protect the revolution. However, its mandate has also been interpreted as exporting the revolution’s goals to other parts of the Islamic world. Shia communities throughout the region have proved fertile grounds for revolutionary messages and have formed deep and abiding partnerships with the al-Quds force. So too have several Sunni groups opposed to Israel – first among them Hamas in Gaza. But Iraq has been Suleimani’s key arena. The last eight years have witnessed a proxy war between Suleimani’s Quds force and the US military, the full effects of which are still being played out, as the US prepares for a full departure from Iraq and Iraq’s leaders ponder over whether to ask them to stay. Arabian heartland At stake is no less than who gets to shape the destiny of the heartland of Arabia. “His power comes straight from (the country’s lead cleric Ayatollah) Khamenei,” said one of Iraq’s three deputy prime ministers, Saleh al-Mutlaq, a secular Sunni. “It bypasses everyone else, including Ahmadinejad. “There is a saying in Islam that you should never get angry with your father or mother. The [Shia] interpret that as meaning what (Khamanei, via Suleimani) says has to be respected by every [Shia] inside, or outside Iran. “All of the important people in Iraq go to see him,” said Mutlaq. “People are mesmerised by him – they see him like an angel.” A second MP – a senior member of Prime Minister Nour al-Maliki’s inner circle who regularly meets Suleimani in Iran – said the general has only travelled once to Iraq in the past eight years. He described him as “softly spoken and reasonable, very polite”. “He is simple when you talk to him. You would not know how powerful he is without knowing his background. His power is absolute and no one can challenge this.” Silver-haired, slight and with a perennial serene smile, Suleimani comes across as the most unlikely of warlords. Those who met him during the one time he traveled to Baghdad at the height of the 2006 sectarian conflict say he walked around the compounds of his two key hosts without bodyguards. The
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Hassan Nasrallah defies UN-backed tribunal’s arrest warrants for four Hezbollah members wanted for 2005 assassination Hezbollah’s leader has vowed never to turn over four members of his Shia militant group who have been indicted in the 2005 murder of the former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri. In a defiant speech, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said that “even in 300 years” authorities will not be able to touch them. In his first comments since the indictments were announced Thursday , he promised that the country would not see a new “civil war” linked to the findings of the UN-backed tribunal. But Saturday’s assurance came with a tacit warning that peace in Lebanon depends on the government not pushing ahead with the arrests. Nasrallah also denounced the six-year investigation as a plot by Israel and the US and said it was “an aggression against us and our holy warriors”. Bursts of celebratory gunfire and fireworks erupted in Beirut immediately after Nasrallah’s comments. Hezbollah, which gets crucial support from Iran and Syria, has denied any role in the killing. The accusations that Hezbollah – the most powerful political and military force in Lebanon – had a role in the 2005 Beirut truck bombing that killed Hariri threatens to plunge the country into a new and violent crisis. Nasrallah, however, sought to allay such fears and said “there will be no civil war in Lebanon”. “This is because there is a responsible government in Lebanon that will not act with revenge,” he added. Hezbollah has amassed growing political clout in the government this year, having toppled the previous administration in January when then-prime minister Saad Hariri refused to renounce the tribunal investigating his father’s death. The new prime minister, Najib Miqati, who was Hezbollah’s pick for the post, issued a vague promise on Thursday that Lebanon would respect international resolutions as long as they did not threaten the civil peace. The ambiguous wording leaves ample room to brush aside the arrest warrants if street battles are looming. The cabinet is packed with Hezbollah allies, so there is little enthusiasm within the current leadership to press forward with the case. Even if Saad Hariri were still in power, however, it’s unlikely he would be able to force Lebanese authorities to arrest the men to do so– they would have to directly confront a well-armed militant group that wields serious power over the Lebanese state. The bombing that killed Hariri and 22 other people in February 2005 was one of the most dramatic political assassinations in the Middle East. A billionaire businessman, Hariri was Lebanon’s most prominent politician after the 15-year civil war ended in 1990. In the six years since his death, the investigation has sharpened some of Lebanon’s most intractable issues: the role of Hezbollah and its massive arsenal, and the country’s history of sectarian divisions and violence. Lebanon Global terrorism Middle East guardian.co.uk
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