ISRAEL
Israel Talks Solar With Egypt, Biofuel With Jordan
 http://planetark.org/wen/56819

JORDAN
Jordan Enlists Army In Climate Fight
 http://planetark.org/wen/56814

In Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh – the news were the record snow. So, that keeps them busy – the need to dig out from under that snow.

So far as governing goes, the Village Voice – that is Greenwich Village in new York City – wrote that the Republicans won a 41-59 majority as a result from the Massachusetts avalanche.

The new weather predictions are that the President will set now the agenda and expect the Democrats to follow – AMEN!       That is leadership – for God’s sake with 59 still standing – what do they wait for?

Further – he – that is Obama – will try to brow-beat the Republicans to cooperate first. The American people say Washington is too partisan ? If that were true the 59 would be good enough – but really? Who are the Obstructionists?

If Obama invites the Republicans to come on board that would be very clever – it would tell the Democrats to stop being obstructionists.

But, politics might be such that the Republicans feel comfortable to project that they are THE PARTY OF NO!

How do you pull out a rabbit from your top-hat? How do you change unemployment rates with nothing happening in the economy? The Republicans might be happy to see the Administration collapse – the country collapse – so who cares about OSAMA!

Obama tells the Democrats – we will be losers together if you do not shape up and they returned – SHOW US THE WAY!

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Next topic:  How long can the World’s biggest borrower continue to be the World’s biggest power?

If we get to the point that we have a difficulty to sell our treasuries in the world we will cease to be a big power – that came from Greenspan – the former head of the Federal Reserve. Henry Paulson, the present holder of that job seemed less convincing.

David Walker, former US Controller General – head of the GAO – now head of te Peterson Foundation – wrote a book on the US deficit that has reached now $1.56 trillion and this is untenable.

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Fareed Zakharia on China-US relations – a US – China economic war is MAD – that is Mutual Assured Destruction – he thinks that the two are symbiotically bound now. I think he is wrong. China has such a huge internal market that it can continue well by producing just for their own people without exports to the US. They may not want to do that because it would mean a too soon push at increasing China’s middle class and risking folks ask for a mellowing down of the political regime. But nevertheless, this does not assure an immediate rebellion. In the US rather – a rebellion is possible – or a call for some real war – internally or externally.

To the latest two skirmishes – the US sending $6.4 billion worth of weapons to Taiwan, and Obama hosting The Dalai Lama at the White House. Both topics are not new. The military hardware agreement with Taiwan was agreed in 2001, and the Dalai Lama has visited every single US previous President since he landed in India. Why did the Chinese get excited right now? That is before the April visit they will be making themselves to the White House? What about the Iran sanctions and the fact that Obama was left to wait outside that China conference room in Copenhagen? Are we going to see some muscle show here?

Christiane Amanpour, on her program had as guest Victor Gao, of the China National Association of International Studies.

He pointed out that the US sells weapons to Taiwan that it does not allow for sale to China. China is now the largest credit maker to the US. What if China buys less for several months? Is 2010 going to be the year that Obama gets tough and China gets nasty? Neither of them can afford a real trade war.

David Rothkopf affirmed that “we are interconnected” so we have to develop a different approach.

Victor Cha – he was on China desk at the National  Security Council. He said – This is a MUTUAL HOSTAGE GAME – both sides lose.

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Fareed Zakharia in Davos, had in front of an audience a half hour interview with King Abdullah II of Jordan.

It started out with Fareed pointing out the two main problems he thinks are facing Jordan: Iran’s nuclear ambitions and the Islamic fighting movement, but he was brushed aside by the King who continued coming back to the Israeli – Palestinian problem.

Fareed said that no-one has yet lost money by betting against Peace in the Middle East, but the King countered that the credibility of the US is at stake. We desperately need the undivided attention of the US – he said. If God forbid we cross the line of the viability of the 2 State Solution, what are we left with – continuing warfare – or even worse – the One State solution that many Israelis dread?

Fareed wanted to know if there is a Jordan option and was told flatly by the King that it will not work – Jordan absolutely does not want the West Bank. Are we talking of a viable entity? A third of the UN do not recognize Israel now.  The building of the wall has made Israel safer Fareed said and he spoke with President Peres who believes in a two States solution for the future of Israel but because of the security threats they think only of today and not the future.

The King disagreed – the injustice felt towards the Palestinian people pushes all other issues. He thinks that if you solved the problem of the Palestinians why should Iran then want the nuclear power. It does not make any sense for them to continue on that path. For now, it is the Palestinian issue that propels Iran’s efforts. When asked if he thinks that if not for the Israeli – Palestinian issue, there would be no Islamic terrorism? The King retreated by saying that – for evil to succeed – is for good men to do nothing. Evil will always exist – the evil always will be evil. On November 9, 2005 we had our own 9/11 and proportionately we lost twice as many people as the US casualties. The Israeli-Palestinian issue is is incendiary that it drives everything else.

Fareed suggested that Professor Bernard Lewis explained that it was rather because of the lack of openness in the Muslim world that created the Al Qaeda – it was against Egypt and Saudi Arabia. We have 400 million young people in the Islamic world that need a direction. My role is to create a viable political Middle Class. If you want to move your country it is education – education – education. Bahrain speaks our language – so is a list of young countries that agree.

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Christiane Amanpour had a panel on security issues and wanted to know what are the real security problems today. Surely it was not what you would have expected to hear. She was told:

- Outer Space

- The Open Sea

- The Cyber Space

- The Polar Ice Caps.

So far as the conventional thinking she was told that Washington and Beijing have less to fear from each other then from failed States like Somalia.

When satellites become more crucial they become targets. Where are the National borders in cyber-space? Most governments cannot even define a cyber attack.

Zbigniew Brzezinski said that we have to define the nature of the threat. Today it is not as lethal as it was when within 6 hours we could have had 80 million casualties in the cold war. But today attacks are less predictable even though less lethal.

The US still has a higher sophisticated technology capability. The Google issue is a cyberthreat. Are the hackers from China government? Do they really come from China? We may have to retaliatete selectively and we must have a foreign policy that does not object to this.

The way the domestic policy goes now, will Obama continue the international engagement that he started out with so well? Now we have gridlock.

Brzezinski called for Presidential leadership. Also – the President should persevere with the Iran effort.

The other topic is the Israeli -Palestinian conflict. Rhetorically Obama gets an A, For Performance a B or B-

On space – we must avoid a nuclear race in space – we must have the capacity to shoot down satellites and space vehicles.

———————

From the Kathie Crowley show – her interview with Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, I picked up one fleting issue – the names of the countries the Secretary mentioned as friends to work with in the present world. She clearly mentioned the big two China and India, but then she spoke also of other major economies – Brazil, South Africa and Turkey. I mention this here because it vindicates our recent decision to move Turkey to the Home-page of www.SustainabiliTank.info and it seems that we were right.

Clearly, there were no Europeans mentioned in that segment, neither Mexico nor Canada or Japan.

IPS Newsbriefs
Clean Energy Faces Tough Financial Climate in Mideast.

CAIRO, Jan 28 (IPS) – Renewable energy projects in the Middle East could be scaled back or scuttled unless fresh sources of financing are found. The global financial crisis has made debt finance less accessible, and forced energy developers to pay more costs upfront or seek alternative funding sources. Financiers say syndicated loans, once a major source of clean energy finance, have been largely abandoned by banks attempting to wipe off bad debts and concentrate on low-risk projects.

“The banking sector in general will take several years to recover and rebuild the regulatory capital that it’s lost over the past several years combined with higher regulatory capital requirements expected in the near future,” says John Dunlop, who heads the London Energy Project Finance desk at HSH Nordbank, a leading financer of renewable energy projects. “The effect will be to reduce the overall amount of debt finance coming from banks and going to all sectors, including renewables.”

Some analysts, however, point out that concerns over climate change and declining fossil fuel reserves have resulted in government stimulus packages that could help project developers overcome the short-term financing drought. “There are certainly concerns about the economy, but I think that renewable energies are going to be a priority because they represent the future,” says Helene Pelosse, director-general of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). “Countries have to make choices and, since energy resources are limited, then this is the first field where they should invest.”

Industrial nations meeting in Copenhagen last month offered 30 billion dollars over the next three years to assist developing countries in establishing and implementing procedures to reduce their emissions and mitigate the impact of climate change. They also pledged to mobilise international support to raise 100 billion dollars annually, starting in 2020.

Yet critics have charged that the Copenhagen Accord conspicuously failed to establish the source and mechanisms of this funding – an oversight that could ultimately derail efforts to mobilise financial resources. “Many who were not enthusiastic about the outcome of the conference have considered the talk about funding just a transient one,” Rashid Ahmed bin Fahad, the United Arab Emirates minister for environment and water, said during the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi last week. “The Accord did not clarify the sources of such funding, how the money is to be distributed and the systems by which these funds operate.”

Kilian Baelz, acting director of the Regional Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (RCREEE), a Cairo-based energy policy think tank, says clean technology is “still high on the agenda” of many Middle East nations, though not all have the same political will or financial means.

Oil-rich United Arab Emirates has shown no sign of abandoning its clean energy ambitions, which include the 22 billion dollar carbon-neutral Masdar City project. Other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia) appear to be proceeding with caution. “The small Gulf states have taken a more conservative approach towards lending to renewable energy projects,” says Baelz. “They have seen that their wealth is not guaranteed and that they are vulnerable to developments in the international market.”

Poorer Arab states such as Syria, Jordan and Egypt have less capital, but Baelz does not foresee any significant scaling back of current projects. “Most of the projects in the pipeline right now are either financed from public budgets or donor funded,” he says. “In addition, many renewable energy projects are comparatively small, that is they are below the 100-200 million euro threshold that has been the lending limit for many banks.” According to Dunlop, the de-leveraging of the banking sector has put priority on consolidation and quality lending. Small-scale project developers and independent power purchasers (IPPs) will still need to field clean deals if they hope to obtain financing.

The International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), based in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi, had to invite Israel for its January 2010 meeting as per a commitment to be open to all, but Israeli Minister Uzi Landau had no meetings with UAE officials as per www.albawaba.com

 http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/259483

Israeli minister attends international conference in Abu Dhabi.

Posted: 17-01-2010 , 13:33 GMT

Israel for the first time sent a Cabinet minister to the United Arab Emirates, with which it does not have relations, to attend a conference on alternative energy. National Infrastructure Minister Uzi Landau told The Associated Press on Sunday he did not meet with any Emirati officials while attending a conference of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), based in the UAE capital Abu Dhabi.

An official with the UAE’s Foreign Ministry told The Associated Press that allowing Israel Cabinet minister to participate in the agency’s activities was “part of obligations in hosting (the agency) in the UAE.” He added, that Israel’s participation in the international event in Abu Dhabi will have “no implications or indications for bilateral links between the UAE and any other party.”

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From Israel the HAARETZ paper provides further enlightenment to the story.
 https://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1143160…

IRENA is the first ever international organization based in the UAE.

IRENA was established a year ago with a mission to promote sustainable use of al forms of renewable energy. In June, Abu Dhabi was selected as the agency’s headquarters.

Last year the UAE denied entry to Israeli tennis player Shahar Peer to an international tournament in Dubai. The UAE officials said Peer was denied a visa because of anti-Israel sentiments in the Gulf state following last year’s three-week war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

The tournament was fined a record $300,000 for refusing Peer the entry. Last week the UAE authorities sent a written assurance to the World Tennis Association that all players who will qualify for the 2010 championships will be allowed into the country and welcome to play in Dubai.

On Sunday, an official with the UAE’s Foreign Ministry told The Associated Press that “allowing an Israeli cabinet minister to participate in the agency’s activities was part of obligations in hosting (the agency) in the UAE.”

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. He added, that Israel’s participation in the international event in the oil-rich Abu Dhabi will have no implications or indications for bilateral links between the UAE and any other party.

Israel only has diplomatic relations with two Arab countries, Egypt and Jordan.

Last year, Mauritania and Qatar suspended contacts with Israel to protest the Gaza bloodshed. Mauritania, an Arab League member, had full diplomatic relations with Israel. Qatar, an energy-rich Gulf state had maintained low-level relations with the Jewish state by hosting an Israeli trade office in the capital Doha since 1996.

Multifaith green writers unite in Madaba, Jordan.

December 29, 2009 news.

Israelis, Palestinians and Jordanians hosted a cross-border workshop on environment blogging to spur Middle East change in response to a call from the United Nations (UN).
Since most countries in the Middle East have much to improve in all areas of environmental protection, UNEP, or as the information says – the UN – has called for more reporting on the environment in the Middle East to spur awareness and change.

Funded by the San Francisco-based United Religions Initiative, 19 prominent journalists and bloggers in Arabic, Hebrew and English met to brainstorm new ways to report on and instigate environmental change in areas of activism, design, urban health, religion and clean technologies. The bloggers plan on reporting their encounter on GreenProphet.com.

Green Prophet founder Karin Kloosterman says, “The environment is a leveler connecting Muslims, Jews and Christians in this part of the world. By focusing on our shared challenges like global warming, water and pollution, we hope to encourage the crucial conversations and work in the field for a cleaner, more rewarding and sustainable Middle East.”

The following are the top 28 finalists in the Official 2009 New 7 Wonders of Nature competition – nominated from among hundreds of sites around the world that have been proposed.

Many world leaders have emphasised the crucial importance of the global community acting to address climate change, by agreeing a comprehensive successor-pact to the Kyoto protocol. The United States president and United Nations secretary-general are among them. In looking ahead to the UN’s climate-change conference in Copenhagen on 7-18 December, they declared that 2009 “must be the year of climate change”.

* * *

No one from the region of west Asia-north Africa (WANA) – an enormous area facing huge environmental, social, and human-security problems – could disagree. Yet it is notable that despite the all-encompassing and interconnecting nature of climate change, inclusion of this region in high-level climate-policy discussion is lacking. Not one of the fifteen countries involved in preparatory meetings for the Copenhagen conference has come from this region; the Arab states, Israel, Iran and Turkey are simply not represented.

This is a signal of a wider dysfunction. The climate-change crisis is but the most alarming sign of dramatic changes in the world’s landscape, which require a move away from the failed unilateral strategies – lines drawn in the sand – of the past. If we want different results we all have to do things differently. For west Asia-north Africa, that means being included in global discussions.

* * *

The ingredients of change:

The world is facing what amounts to an existential crisis, for which it has neither the principles nor the capacities to solve. The most visible evidence of this crisis are widespread conflict and insecurity; its root causes are climate change, competition for resources, marginalisation of the majority world and global militarisation. It is a crisis where we are all wholly interconnected – in everything but policy.

The west Asia-north Africa (WANA) region is at the centre of this global crisis. The region is of great strategic importance as the intermediary meeting-point of Eurasia. As well as being home to the world’s greatest concentration of energy reserves, it also represents an arc of crisis; from Casablanca to Malacca, this is one of the most populous and poor and arguably the most volatile region of the world.

WANA must be at the heart of the efforts to address and remedy the crisis, rather than being pushed to the margins. But it must also generate its own solutions, involving approaches that dignify the human environment and ennoble people. In practical terms that also means partnerships to enable regional stabilisation, which bind the region together while looking outwards across the “energy ellipse” (from the Caucasus to the Straits of Hormuz) and beyond.

Both intra- and supra-regional dialogue is essential, but both must be driven by a vision and by people with the integrity to follow through. There are many precedents which can inspire this. The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the nucleus after two terrible world wars that began in the continent of what became the European Union, required the inspiration and the example of its large-minded architects. This could be the template for a Community of Water and Energy for WANA; more ambitiously, the Arctic Council could be the model for a Water, Energy and Petroleum Authority to oversee both the oil-possessing countries and those of the hinterland. Resource-scarcity and resource-wealth could thus be transformed from a source of conflict into points of cooperation.

A regional community using modern technology could use the region’s deserts to develop clean energy. The jobs created in the fields of water-desalination and solar energy, together with their service industries, would go some way towards meeting growing demands for employment – estimated by the World Bank as amounting to 100 million new job opportunities required by 2020. Sustainable governance of shared resources would enable us to replace fossil-fuels, solve our energy crisis, reduce carbon-emissions, slow climate change and maximise the carrying capacity of the trans-border area. But only a thematic and integrated approach that puts people, human dignity and preventive security at the forefront can create regional coherence and solidarity.

The international community has a vital role to play here. Instead of attempting to seek a balance of power and influence in the region, it would be more constructive for it to focus on fostering practical collaboration. But this too requires a recognition that to leave millions of people to subsist on the peripheries of society is irresponsible, amoral, and a threat to everyone. There must be inclusion, in policy and attitude, and at every level. This means moving beyond narrow and unrepresentative forums which inevitably produce policies to serve the few. Rather than a G8 or a G20, both of which have given primacy to the very corporate world which has brought the world economy to its knees, a G192 could begin to present policies that meet the needs of the great majority of humanity.

The world’s poor can no longer be regarded as falling beyond the bounds of what are regarded as harmonious social systems, their plight little more than collateral damage (what the Brazilian senator, Cristovam Buarque, describes as “one and a half billion people protected by gold curtains”). The most marginalised and vulnerable must be involved as stakeholders in their own development. In the WANA region, this means encouraging young people to stay in their countries of origin by guaranteeing them positive opportunities and incentives to contribute to their own communities – rather than, as so often happens now, turning them into migrants who carry burdens of bitterness across the globe.

The partnership approach

The key requirement of a new approach to these problems is to avoid reinforcing processes of exclusion (as with “in or out of the club”) or securitisation (as with “stick and carrot”), which only create various forms of abandonment and entrapment. Instead, the goal must be a synergy of partnerships. This will require enlightened leadership from within WANA, working closely with Europe, and the Barack Obama administration in America – as well as the countries of a future G192 – in pursuit of a human-security approach to both development and security.

I would like to see a synergy between a regional and a global economic and social council. The economic council would oversee alternative sources of financing; the social council would assist in the guidance of the activities of citizens, local groups, regional systems and networks in the management and protection of global common goods to meet the Millennium Development Goals and other programmes.

This effort also needs to mobilise the “third sphere” of ad hominem participation by government officials, the private sector and civil society as the only way to gain consensus on the multiple challenges. A partnership can only be developed when partners on both sides of the equation can project an authentic foreign and security policy based on the promotion of human dignity and the empowerment of the poor.

The idea and the project

The establishment of regional stability cannot be based on projects alone. It requires the formation of concepts – a stability charter to address people, land, economy, demography, supranational cooperation; supported by a perspective that looks at the region as a whole, rather than adopts futile attempts to micro-manage it. Moreover, creativity is needed in formulating a regional approach to cultural and humanitarian issues via lateral linkages.

A regional cohesion fund – to which all countries within WANA would contribute – would aim to reduce economic and social disparities; for as well volcanic rifts, the region is pervaded by huge social fissures. This fund must also address the issue of building from the bottom up, creating participation as well as stakeholding. The G8 summit in L’Aquila, Italy agreed on the need for a “global jobs pact”; welcome though that is, it needs to be supplemented by an agency that supports inclusion in the economy: an international labour-compensatory facility, or an international labour-training facility.

Such a facility would ensure that human-resource flows – the “brain drain” from the WANA region – receive the training to enable these valued citizens to contribute to shared economic advancement and to provide them with the social compensation they richly deserve. This will enable them to become the conduits for compensatory funds earmarked to contribute to the social progress, and particularly the education and training institutions of the country of origin – thereby turning migration into a “win-win” situation.

These concept-led projects, if backed by an international commitment to contribute to stabilisation, could be a mechanism for real progress: creating a complementarity between human-resource-rich countries and oil-producing countries that results in a WANA being seen as an area of stability rather than of instrumentality (a place for the extraction of oil or the sale of weapons). To get from here to there means to define common interests and priorities according to clear criteria that enables those involved to think globally and to act regionally and locally.

The regional vision

A vision is also needed for the development of a regional structure. The context of the Helsinki process on shared security is a guide to what is needed: freedom from insurgency, violence and weapons of mass destruction; an economy with a human face, with particular emphasis on social development, bridging the human-dignity divides; and a legally binding framework as regards culture and humanitarian norms.

Human rights are the first casualties of war and conflict. The degradation of human dignity in the WANA region has undone generations of agreement and convention on the rights of civilians to protection and wellbeing. Such a structure would offer policy instead of politics, regionalism instead of narrow nationalisms.

Independent and sustainable democracies depend on more than just the holding of elections. The challenge is to create a new culture of democratic participation in a diverse region, recognising the specific characteristics of each country. The focus has to turn very clearly towards human-security approaches to political violence. This means that the public discourse must redefine its purpose as world solidarity to ensure that détente is not at the expense of small nations and peripheral peoples.

The actions taken now will dictate the quality of peoples’ lives for many years to come.  Their results will decide whether there is to be hope or a continued downward spiral towards chaos and war, and hopelessness for the drifting and the dispossessed – an outcome that will mean disaster for everyone.

Again, no one – in west Asia-north Africa or beyond – can dispute the proposition that 2009 “must be the year of climate change”. But it must also be the year of casting off narrow nationalisms, private clubs and power-plays, and embracing a shared and inclusive WANA regional policy, for the sake of our peoples and our planet.

Succession Issues Face Key U.S. Middle East Allies.
Analysis by Helena Cobban

WASHINGTON, Jul 12 (IPS) – Two key U.S. allies in the Arab world, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are now both facing succession crises that may absorb, or even split, their political elites. This promises a period of political unpredictability ahead in both countries.

It may well also complicate Pres. Barack Obama’s Israeli-Arab peace diplomacy, which is based centrally on the role these two large allies – and one smaller one, Jordan – can play in solving inter-Arab problems, reassuring Israelis, and helping to tempt everyone to the peace table.

Since January, the head of Egypt’s military intelligence, Lieut.-Gen. Omar Suleiman, has been in charge of three key Middle East mediations. He has been mediating between Israel and the Palestinian movement Hamas over both strengthening the Gaza ceasefire and winning a prisoner exchange between them. He’s also been mediating a chronically elusive reconciliation between Hamas and the other big Palestinian movement, Fatah.

Meanwhile, Washington is hoping this year, as always, that Saudi Arabia can buttress U.S. diplomacy with cash and some political leadership. Saudi Arabia has now won the support of all the relevant Arab leaderships, including Hamas’s political bureau, for a key 2002 peace initiative that promises Israel normal political and economic ties in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from lands occupied in 1967 and a fair resolution of Palestinian refugee claims.

The Saudi king, Abdullah ibn Abdul-Aziz, will be 85 this August. His longstanding crown prince (and half-brother) Sultan ibn Abdul-Aziz, is 83, and was recently hospitalised for several weeks with suspected cancer.

The big question regarding the Saudi succession hangs over whether, and how, the kingship will ever be transferred from the numerous ageing brothers and half-brothers who stand in line after Crown Prince Sultan, to the “next generation” of princes – some of the more senior of whom are already nearing 70 years old.

Earlier this year, King Abdullah named his 76-year-old half-brother Naif ibn Abdul-Aziz as “second deputy prime minister”, a position that places him a likely – but not certain -second in line to throne after Sultan.

When King Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud, the founder of the modern Saudi state, died in 1953, he left some 37 sons from his 22 wives. Various of these sons have ruled the kingdom in turn since then.

Many of Abdul-Aziz’s sons had a dozen or more sons of their own. Saudi Arabia has no system of “primogeniture” (first-son succession.) Thus, there are hundreds of possible eventual claimants to the throne. Indeed, the youngest of Abdul-Aziz’s sons, Prince Muqrin, is, at 64, some years younger than several of the next-generation princes who now hope to become king.

There have been no reports that any possible successor monarchs might want to change a foreign policy stance that, since the 1930s, has aligned Saudi Arabia very closely with Washington. But among the country’s political elite, including its princes, there are many differing views on domestic affairs, including oil policies, economic policies, the role of the country’s powerful religious institutions, and the role of women.

These differences are inevitably hard fought over at times of succession, and could at the least distract Riyadh from playing the role in regional diplomacy that Obama wants it to play. (At worst, the kingdom could see a struggle between its many power centres that is even deeper and more debilitating than the one now rocking nearby Iran.)

In Egypt, meanwhile, there have been many recent reports that the country’s 81-year-old president, Hosni Mubarak, is ailing and finally eager to quit. Some reports say he has already told the Saudi monarch he may not even finish serving his current six-year term in office, which ends in 2011.

Mubarak has led Egypt’s 76 million people since 1981. Throughout those years he has always refused to name a vice-president.

Now, one of the two main contenders to succeed him is his 45-year-old second son, Gamal, who has held an important post in the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) since 2002.

(It is not wholly strange that, even in a republic, a son might succeed his father as president. It has happened in North Korea, Syria, several African countries and even -with an eight-year interlude – when George W. Bush became president of the United States.)

Behind the scenes in Egypt, though, the military is still almost the same big force in the political system – and economy – that it has been since 1952. There is a considerable question whether the shadowy power centres in the Egyptian military will support Gamal Mubarak, an investment banker who has no record of service in the military.

The leading military man mentioned for possible next president is none other than Omar Suleiman, the intelligence chief who has been conducting so much of Mubarak’s sensitive Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy. (It also remains possible that the military might throw its weight behind another “insider” candidate, not Suleiman.)

The fact that Suleiman has been tasked by Pres. Mubarak with diplomatic jobs that are so important to the broader progress of Washington’s regional peace diplomacy means this diplomacy may well become entangled in any succession struggle that occurs in Cairo.

For example, if – as many well-placed Egyptians claim – Pres. Mubarak strongly wants his son to follow him in office, he may be less than eager to see Suleiman gain public kudos as a successful negotiator. There has been some questioning whether Mubarak may have set Suleiman up for failure by giving him overly strict parameters for his diplomatic chores.

Certainly, though Suleiman has been heading all three of these building-brick negotiations since late January, he has not succeeded in any of them yet.

Egypt’s succession struggle is connected to the broader diplomacy in another way, too. Hamas has nearly always been closely aligned with Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB), a broad, nonviolent Islamist movement that is the main challenger to Mubarak’s NDP.

Mubarak has never allowed the MB to participate freely in Egypt’s regime-dominated politics, though during a brief and very partial democratic opening in 2005, its candidates won 88 of the 444 elected seats in the Egyptian parliament.

If Suleiman succeeds in one or more of his diplomatic tasks, then Hamas would immediately gain much more international legitimacy as a valid participant in the broader peacemaking. Many NDP insiders fear that could reflect well on the MB, too.

Ominously enough, the most recent round of reports about Mubarak’s failing health has been accompanied by new arrest campaigns against MB leaders and activists. It is possible that Egypt might see additional political heat during the coming summer months. Jordan is smaller and weaker than Egypt and Saudi Arabia. There at least, the ruling monarch, Abdullah II, has laid to rest – for now – the questions that once swirled around his succession. On Jul. 2 he appointed his son Prince Hussein as crown prince.

Prince Hussein is only 15 years old. But since the king is only 47, there is a good chance the crown prince will not be taking over any time soon. (Or perhaps, ever. Back in 1999 when Jordan’s King Hussein died of cancer, in his very last days he revoked the appointment that his brother, Hassan, had held as crown prince since 1965; and he named Abdullah II his successor, instead.)

But in Saudi Arabia and Egypt, political succession issues are now taking centre stage.

*Helena Cobban is a veteran Middle East analyst and author. She blogs at www.JustWorldNews.org.

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NORTH KOREA LEADER KIM JONG IL REPORTED TO HAVE PANCREATIC CANCER.
The San Francisco Sentinel, 12 July 2009
BY RICHARD LLOYD PARRY

North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong Il, is suffering from cancer of the pancreas and is in danger of dying of the disease, South Korean television reported this morning, the latest and most specific in a series of reports on the dictator’s health.

The information, which was attributed by Yonhap Television News to unidentified Chinese and South Korean intelligence sources, is consistent with a report in a Japanese newspaper over the weekend that Mr Kim has a “serious pancreatic disorder”, and with television images from North Korea last week, in which he appeared a frail-looking Kim Jong Il, emaciated and slow on his feet.

Mr Kim disappeared from public view for three months last year after what intelligence agencies assume was a stroke last August. Since then, judging from television footage of him, his health has declined.

The South Korean intelligence agency has reported signs that Mr Kim is paving the way for his youngest son, Kim Jong Un to succeed him; unconfirmed reports have even had the 25-year old visiting Beijing to get to know officials of the closest thing North Korea has to an ally – China.

All year, Pyongyang has staged a series of verbal and physical provocations, including the launch of an intercontinental rocket and an underground nuclear test, which suggest that it has abandoned expectations of negotiation with the international community in favour of whipping up nationalist fervour at home.

Thee are no obvious signs are that Kim Jong Il is in anything less than complete control, but close examination of recent internal developments leads many Pyongyang-watchers to the conclusion that he is leaning towards military hardliners, and away from the more reform-oriented advisers whom he favoured in the middle of the present decade.

————

For Immediate Release from ETE ON THE UN:
July 12, 2009, by Anne Bayefsky

This article, by Anne Bayefsky, originally appeared in Forbes.
 info at EYEontheUN.org

President Obama in Ghana: What He Refused To Say in Cairo.
Stroking Muslim and Arab nations has become the hallmark of Obama’s foreign policy.

Speaking in Ghana on Saturday President Obama lectured Africans on local repression, corruption, brutality, good governance and accountability. The startling contrast to his June speech in Cairo was revealing. Stroking Muslim and Arab nations has become the hallmark of Obama’s foreign policy.

In Egypt, he chose not to utter the words “terrorism” or “genocide.” In Egypt, there was nothing “brutal” he could conjure up, no “corruption” and no “repression”.

In Ghana, with a 70% Christian population, he mentioned “good governance” seven times and added direct calls upon his audience to “make change from the bottom up.” He praised “people taking control of their destiny” and pressed “young people” to “hold your leaders accountable.”

He made no such calls for action by the people of Arab states–despite the fact that not a single Arab country is “free,” according to the latest Freedom House global survey.

Before the Muslim world Obama donned the role of apologist-in-chief. Over and over again his examples of shortfalls in the protection of rights and freedoms were American: the “prison at Guantanamo Bay,” “rules on charitable giving [that] have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation,” impediments to the “choice” of Muslim women to shroud their bodies.

Christian Africa was to be treated to no such self-flagellation. In a rare tongue-lashing for Africans from any American president, he chastised: “It’s easy to point fingers and to pin the blame of these problems on others. Yes, a colonial map that made little sense helped to breed conflict … But the West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy … or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants … tribalism and patronage and nepotism … and … corruption.”

He might equally have said to the Arab and Muslim world: “It’s easy to scapegoat Israel and blame your problems on the presence of Jews–albeit on a fraction of 1% of the territory inhabited by the Arab world–but Israel is not responsible for poverty, illiteracy, torture, trafficking, slavery and oppression rampant across your countries.” But he did not.

In Ghana he pointed to specific heroes that had exposed human rights abuse, singling out by name a courageous investigative reporter. In Egypt, though journalists and bloggers are routinely threatened, jailed and worse, no such brave soul came to mind.

In a Christian African nation he said, “If we are honest, for far too many Africans, conflict is a part of life, as constant as the sun. There are wars over land and wars over resources. And it is still far too easy for those without conscience to manipulate whole communities into fighting among faiths and tribes.”

To the Arab and Muslim world he could have said: “Since the day of Israel’s birth Arab and Muslim countries have made conflict with Israel a part of life, warring over land and manipulating whole communities into fighting in the name of Islam to render the area Judenrein.”

Instead, he turned on the only democracy in the Middle East and said the presence of Jews on Arab-claimed territory–settlements–is an affront to be “stopped.” It didn’t matter that agreements require ultimate ownership of this territory to be determined by negotiation or that apartheid Palestine is hardly a worthy pursuit.

From Ghana he chided Africans: “No person wants to live in a society where the rule of law gives way to the rule of brutality and bribery. That is not democracy, that is tyranny, even if occasionally you sprinkle an election in there. And now is the time for that style of governance to end.”

For an Arab and Muslim audience he cooed: “America will defend itself, respectful of the sovereignty of nations and the rule of law. And we will do so in partnership with Muslim communities, which are also threatened.”

Ghanaians will likely turn the other cheek, secure enough to take it and even be grateful for the spotlight. But Obama’s double-standard is not a victimless crime. The disparity between the scolding he gave in Ghana and the love-in he held in Cairo illuminates an incoherent and dangerous agenda.

In his lofty, but empty, rhetoric in Ghana, Obama promised “we must stand up to inhumanity in our midst,” pledged “a commitment … to sanction and stop” warmongers and embraced the Zimbabwe non-governmental organization that “braved brutal repression to stand up for the principle that a person’s vote is their sacred right.”

These are devastating words for Iranians struggling valiantly to keep the hope of democracy alive but forced to bear witness to the contradiction. Betrayed, they have watched the Obama administration pledge to move forward on negotiations with illegally ensconced Iranian thugs–at the very same time their victims are being rounded up, tortured and readied for show-trials in advance of certain execution.

On Friday, Obama, and the rest of the G-8 with his blessing, announced that thinking about more sanctions on Iran can wait until September. And then we can expect yet another round of Security Council dickering over minimalist responses to more Iranian stalling tactics–until an Iranian nuclear weapon is inevitable. Though it is 2,202 days since the U.N.’s atomic energy agency first declared that Iran was violating the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Obama pretends legitimizing those same nuclear-proliferating fascists makes it more likely the clock will stop ticking.

Iranians standing up for their allegedly “sacred rights” know Obama has it exactly backwards. Speechifying about “our interconnected world” and “common interests” in Ghana was cold comfort to the voices of Muslim dissidents and Jewish victims deserted in the Obama wilderness.

From: Hassan Mansour
He says: There is now ample evidence of the ecological impacts of recent climate change from polar terrestrial to tropical marine environments. So on behalf of the Egyptian Society for Environmental Sciences (ESES) it is our pleasure to welcome you to the fourth international conference on “Impacts of Climate Change on Natural Resources” that will take place in Ismailia, Egypt on November 10-11, 2009.

As in the past three years, this conference will offer outstanding international speakers. There will be ample time for abstracts, posters, and the many informal discussions that have helped make past meetings successful.

Those of you who attended the past conferences of ESES already know that Ismailia is a vibrant modern city, and that Suez Canal University makes an outstanding venue for this meeting.

for more information, please feel free to contact:

Hassan Mansour
Representative of the Organising comittee
 hmansour at uga.edu,  man_griesh at yahoo.com
Or visit our website: www.eses-catrina.com

further, they say:

Recently, the environment has been the topic of the hour, the whole world started to pay a great attention to the environment as a strategic choice to conserve the natural resources which will ensure the continuity and sustainability of these resources in the future.

Sinai Peninsula and Suez Canal area are characterized by their geographical importance and their richness in natural resources which include plants, animals, geological structures and marine habitats.

The natural resources of Egypt, especially these of Sinai Peninsula are facing many threats such as over collection, overgrazing, habitat destruction and urbanization which in return change the wild life, distinction of some species, threat some other and rarity of others.

Also, the unique geological structure affected by many threats as the random quarrying and overexploitation for material resources. The underground water also affected by the pollutants.

—————

Management Committee:

President:

Prof. Abdel-Raouf A. Moustafa

Vice-Presidents:

Dr. Nabil N. El-Masry

Secretary:

Dr. Mohamed S. Zaghloul

Treasurer:

Dr. Raafat H. Abdel-Wahab

Members:

Prof. Samira R. Mansour

Dr. Wafaa M. Kamel

Dr. Samy A. Abdel-Malek

White House Sends Long-Term Presence To Jerusalem

The Pulse
POSTED JUNE 5, 2009 – 10:47AM

Alex Fishman   in Yedioth Ahronoth:

Next week the high commissioner, George Mitchell, is to return. But this time he is not coming alone. He will be arriving with a whole organization aimed at executing Barack Obama’s policies for the Middle East.

George Mitchell is no longer going solo. He has appointed four deputies. The first, David Hale, from the State Department, will reside regularly in Jerusalem. The second, Mara Rudman, served as chief of staff of the National Security Council under Clinton and was extremely active in the New America Foundation which concerns itself a great deal with providing aid for the Palestinians. She will be stationed in Washington and coordinate the administration’s activity with the representative in Jerusalem.

The third is a former military man, Fred Hoff, an expert on Syrian affairs. He has a clear world vision, which states that the US administration must reach a deal with Syria before withdrawing from Iraq.

George Mitchell himself will arrive in Damascus, for the first time, already in the next few weeks. Until now Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman visited there twice. These visits signify an upgrading in talks between the United States and Syria.

The fourth figure is the region’s military advisor, US Security Coordinator Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, who is building the Palestinian Authority’s military forces. Just recently he and the defense minister agreed to continue to expand the forces operating in the West Bank.

Mitchell’s organization was established in order to channel all of American policy towards Israel and the surrounding countries into one conduit. To unite this into one coordinated voice encompassing all branches of government. The embassy in Tel Aviv will provide services, and the consul in Jerusalem, whose working relations with the Palestinians were not exactly to their satisfaction, has been replaced by one of the State Department’s stars, former head of the Israel and Palestinian desk: Daniel Rubinstein.

The days of a shuttle envoy, who waits to have meetings set up with Israel officials, asks questions and waits for answers that often fail to come, have passed. From now on we’re talking about a permanent presence, with presidential authority, which executes the White House policy, gets updates from the field, follows implementation of policy from up close and reports directly to the president on an ongoing, daily basis. A front line branch office of the White House.

From Uri Avnery
Sent out, Saturday, May 16, 2009.

Quarrel on the Titanic. {that is on the Palestinian side – our comment}

ONE OF THE HAPPIEST moments in my life {writes Uri Avnery – the wise man in Israel – before the Netanyahu-Obama meeting} occurred in a restaurant.

It happened before the second intifada. I had invited Rachel to celebrate her birthday with dinner at a famous restaurant in Ramallah.

We were sitting in the garden under strings of colorful lights, the air was fragrant with the perfume of flowers and the waiters were hurrying back and forth with laden trays. We ate Mussakhan, the Palestinian national dish (chicken with tahini baked on pita bread), and I drank arak. Our waiter, who had overheard us talking, took our order in Hebrew. We were the only Israelis there. At the nearby tables, Arab families with the children in their best clothes, as well as a bride and groom with their wedding guests. Bursts of laughter punctuated the murmur of Arabic conversations, and spirits were high.

I was happy, and a sigh escaped me: “How wonderful this country could be, if only we had peace!”

I THINK of that moment every time I hear sad news from Ramallah. The news is depressing, but the memory helps me to keep alive my hope that things could be different.

The most depressing news concerns the split between the Palestinians themselves. This split is a disaster for them, and, I believe, also for Israel and the world at large. That’s why I dare to comment on a matter that seemingly does not concern us Israelis. It does.

It is easy to blame Israel. Easy and also justified. In their struggle against the national aspirations of the Palestinians, successive Israeli governments have applied the old Roman maxim divide et impera, divide and rule.

Since the Oslo agreement, the central component of this policy has been the physical separation between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Article IV of the Oslo Agreement of September 1993 says: “The two sides view the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a single territorial unit, whose integrity will be preserved”.

Article X of Annex 1 of the Interim Agreement of September 1995 says: “There shall be a safe passage connecting the West Bank with the Gaza Strip for movement of persons, vehicles and goods…Israel will ensure safe passage for persons and transportation during daylight hours…in any event not less than 10 hours a day.”

In practice, the safe passage was never opened. Among all the blatant violations of the Oslo agreements, this was the most severe. Its consequences have been disastrous for both sides.

True, there was a lot of talking about the passage. Ehud Barak once fantasized about constructing a giant bridge between the West Bank and the Strip, after seeing such a 40 km long bridge somewhere abroad. Others spoke about a tunnel underneath Israeli territory. Yet others proposed an extraterritorial highway or railway. None of these ideas was ever implemented. On the contrary, while before Oslo there had been free movement for all, including the inhabitants of the occupied territories, after Oslo this freedom was abolished.

THE PRETEXT was – as always – security: convoys of murderers and terrorists would pack the safe passage, trucks loaded with Palestinian rockets would drive to and fro. But the consequences disclose the true aim: what remained of Palestine was cut into two disconnected parts.

One cannot rule a territory without physical contact with it. That was proven in Pakistan, which was founded as a state with two disconnected parts separated by Indian territory. Soon enough, war between the two broke out and the Eastern part became the independent state of Bangladesh.

According to the latest Palestinian statistics, which seem reliable, there are now 2.42 million Palestinians living in the West Bank and 1.46 million in the Gaza Strip (in addition to 379 thousand in East Jerusalem). From Yasser Arafat I once heard that more than half of the Palestinian Authority’s resources were being devoted to the Gaza Strip, in spite of the fact that the Strip amounted to only 6% (one sixteenth) of the Palestinian territories.

Now there exist in practice two Palestinian entities: the West Bank, whose actual capital is now Ramallah, and the Gaza Strip, with its capital Gaza city. From the political, economic and ideological points of view, the distance between them is growing.

And from the point of view of the Israeli occupation policy, that is a great victory.

THE ISRAELI government conducts different strategies against the two Palestinian entities.

Against Gaza, the policy is simple and brutal: to overthrow the Hamas government by turning the life of those 1,460,000 men and woman, old people and children, into hell. They are allowed to bring in only the most basic foodstuffs. There was an international outcry when Senator John Kerry discovered the import of noodles is prohibited, because pasta is apparently a luxury. “We shall not give them chocolate when Gilad Shalit is not getting chocolate,” an army officer declared this week. It would be interesting to know how much chocolate the 11 thousand Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are getting.

The war against Gaza (“Molten Lead”) was intended to wreak death and destruction upon the civilians, so that they would rise up and overthrow their elected government. The dead are already buried, but the piles of rubble remain. The Israeli government does not allow building materials to be brought in, and the inhabitants have started to build homes of mud, as their ancestors did centuries ago. (To make the whole thing even more depressing, it is forbidden to bring in toys, books and musical instruments.)

The Egyptian government cooperates with the Israeli army in enforcing the blockade on the inhabitants of Gaza. Lately it has intensified its efforts to choke the essential supply line through the Rafah tunnels (“smuggling” in Israeli and Egyptian parlance). The campaign recently started by the Egyptian authorities against Hizbullah agents in Sinai has the aim, among others, of cutting this pipeline.

The Gaza people have not toppled the Hamas government. On the contrary, their opposition to the Ramallah government seems to be growing, and some say that it is turning into pure hatred.

AGAINST THE Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, the occupation authorities employ a different, but no less destructive, strategy. They make every effort to present it as a kind of Palestinian Vichy regime, in order to prevent the healing of the Palestinian rift.

The Israeli government declares this openly and loudly. This week, the Chief of Staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, wondered publicly how the Palestinian Minister of Justice could sue Israel before the International Criminal Court for war crimes committed in Gaza.

How come, Ashkenazi complained, when throughout the Gaza War there was such close cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority?

In other words, the Chief of Staff of the Israeli army declares publicly before the Palestinian people and the entire world that the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah cooperated with the Israeli government in the war against their Palestinian brothers in Gaza, in which – according to the Ramallah Minister of Justice – systematic war crimes were committed. A more damaging blow to the standing of Mahmoud Abbas can hardly be imagined.

Other Israeli officers do not spare their praise for the Palestinian security forces, which – they allege – cooperate with the Israeli army in eliminating Hamas sympathizers in the West Bank. It is hard to imagine that such statements by the occupation officers will do anything to elevate the standing of Abbas in the eyes of the Palestinians, who see with their own eyes how the settlements on their land grow daily.

This week, a friend told me about a conversation he had with a Palestinian official from Ramallah. If Israel attacks Iran, he said with great enthusiasm, the Hamas regime in Gaza will collapse.

For an outsider looking in, this is incomprehensible. When the entire Palestinian people is facing a danger to their very existence, when the Israeli government is working tirelessly to make it impossible for a Palestinian state to come into being and there is a real threat that the Palestinian people will be eventually driven out of Palestine altogether, the split resembles a quarrel on the bridge of the Titanic.

THERE IS an old Jewish saying that “the destruction of the temple (in the year 70 A.D.) was caused by mutual hatred.” When the Romans were already besieging Jerusalem, the various Zealot factions in the beleaguered city burned each other’s stocks of food. Among the Palestinians, such things are happening right now.

Disunity has always been a curse. In 1948, when they were fighting for their survival, they were unable to form a unified leadership and a unified military force. In practice, every village fought alone, without coming to the aid of its neighbors. Otherwise, perhaps, the Naqba would not have happened, and the untold suffering that continues to this very day would have been prevented.

The main result of the disunity 61 years ago was that the Palestinians were unable to establish the State of Palestine next to the State of Israel, and the territory allotted for it by the UN was divided between Israel, Jordan and Egypt.

Yasser Arafat understood this well. He made a huge effort to maintain the unity of his people at almost any cost. As long as he was alive, this unity was maintained. The secret services that planned his murder obviously wanted to sabotage this unity, much as Yitzhak Rabin’s murderers wanted to destroy the peace process. The two murders complemented each other, and not by accident.

Anyone who believes that peace is essential for the two peoples and for the entire world must fervently hope for the establishment of a Palestinian unity government.

I believe that this is still possible.

IT SEEMS that in this matter, too, Barack Obama must play a leading role. He must put an end to the stupid and disastrous policy of boycotting Hamas and employ his full power to bring about the creation of a Palestinian unity government. Perhaps it will have to be, in the beginning, a kind of super-government under which both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip keep some kind of autonomy.

Peace among the Palestinians themselves is a necessary precondition for peace between Israel and Palestine. Only Israeli-Palestinian peace can also bring about reconciliation between the two peoples and perhaps restore the atmosphere of that magic evening in the Ramallah restaurant – so that it will not remain just a sweet memory.

Pope Benedict XVI stressed his “deep respect” for Islam as he arrived in Jordan to begin a Middle East visit.

David Willey,
BBC News, Amman, May 8, 2009.

POPE’S MID EAST SCHEDULE
Visit to a Jordanian mosque on Saturday and also to Mount Nebo, the site where the Bible says Moses viewed the Promised Land.
On Sunday Pope gives an open-air mass and will pray at Wadi Kharrar on the east bank of the River Jordan, where Christians believe Jesus was baptised.
On Monday Pope travels to Tel Aviv for four days in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
While there he will visit a Palestinian refugee camp and is also due to visit Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

———-

Pope Benedict XVI says he has ‘deep respect’ for the Muslim community.

He described religious freedom as a fundamental human right, and said he hoped the Catholic Church could play a role in the Middle East peace process.
The Pope says he is going on his eight-day tour – his first to the region as pontiff – as a “pilgrim of peace”.
But Jordanian Islamist leaders have demanded that he apologise for a speech in 2006 that linked Islam and violence.
After Jordan, the Pope’s tour will take him to Israel and the West Bank.

—————

Only an hour after arriving on Jordanian soil Pope Benedict made a surprising reference to the ancient Semitic people who once lived in this part of the world.
In Jordan’s archaeological museum I saw some evidence of what he was talking about. A series of stunning but enigmatic white human figures up to one metre high, sculpted out of plaster spread over a skeleton woven from reeds.
They look a bit like extra-terrestrial dolls with stylishly painted eyes.
Archaeologists say they are more than 8,000-years old.
They are believed to have been ritual objects used in ancestor worship.

————-

He was met at the airport in Amman by Jordan’s King Abdullah, Queen Rania and Muslim and Christian leaders.
The BBC’s David Willey says the Jordanian royal couple broke protocol to greet the Pope in person. Normally they do not go to the airport to welcome visitors.
King Abdullah welcomed the Pope to “the heartland of faiths for Christians and Muslims alike”.
The 82-year-old Pope praised Jordan’s “respect for religion”.
The visit, he said, “gives me a welcome opportunity to speak of my deep respect for the Muslim community”.
He added: “Religious freedom is of course a fundamental human right and it is my fervent hope and prayer that respect for the inalienable rights and dignity of every man and woman will come to be increasingly affirmed and defended, not only throughout the Middle East, but in every part of the world.”

Creating dialogue
The Pope’s visit is aimed at encouraging the minority Christian community in the Middle East, and creating a better dialogue with Muslims and Jews.

As head of the Roman Catholic Church, he is seeking to strengthen ties with Jewish and Muslim leaders after offending believers of both religions in the past three years.
In 2006, Pope Benedict infuriated Muslims with a speech linking the Prophet Muhammad with violence.
He later said he was “deeply sorry” over the reaction to the remarks and that the passage he quoted did not reflect his own opinion.
In Jordan, speaking before the Pope’s visit, the opposition Islamic Action Front party said the pontiff was not welcome unless he offered an outright apology.
BBC security correspondent Frank Gardner says that anonymous jihadis have called for Pope Benedict’s assassination during his stay in Jordan, branding him “the enemy of Islam”.
However, during Friday prayers at Amman’s oldest mosque, a cleric told worshippers to welcome the Pope.
“I urge you to show respect for Christians as they receive their church leader,” Abdul-Qader of the Al-Husseini mosque said.

Passive stance
Recently, the German-born Pope offended Jewish leaders by lifting the ex-communication of a Holocaust-denying bishop.

Many in Israel have also been angered by the proposed sainthood of Pope Pius XII, reviled by some Jews for his passive stance during the Holocaust.

During the visit – which includes a stop in Bethlehem, in the occupied West Bank – Pope Benedict is expected to deliver a plea for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, and for the establishment of a Palestinian homeland.

But his main aim is to give hope and encouragement to the rapidly diminishing minority Christian community in the Middle East.

Many Muslims Reject Terror Tactics, Back Some Goals.
Jim Lobe, Terra Viva, February 26, 2009.

WASHINGTON, Feb 25 (IPS) – Strong majorities of people in predominantly Muslim countries reject terrorism but support key goals of Al Qaeda, notably expelling U.S. military forces from the Islamic world, according to a major new study of public opinion in seven nations and the Palestinian territories released here Wednesday.

Nearly 90 percent of Egyptian respondents, 65 percent of Indonesians, 62 percent of Pakistanis, and 72 percent of Moroccans said they agreed with Al Qaeda’s goal of “pushing the U.S. to remove its bases and its military forces from all Islamic countries,” according to a detailed survey carried out late last summer by the University of Maryland’s Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA).

Majorities or pluralities of respondents in five of the eight countries – the Palestinian territories (90 percent), Egypt (83 percent), Jordan (72 percent) and Morocco (68 percent), and Turkey (40 percent) – said they approved of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq. Slightly lower percentages in each of those countries said they approved of attacks on U.S. military forces elsewhere in the Gulf and in Afghanistan.

“The U.S. faces a conundrum,” said Steven Kull, director of PIPA’s WorldPublicOpinion.org. “U.S. efforts to fight terrorism with an expanded military presence in Muslim countries appear to have elicited a backlash and to have bred some sympathy for al Qaeda, even as most (Muslims) reject its terrorist methods.”

Indeed, only small minorities in all seven of the countries surveyed – ranging from six percent in Azerbaijan to 15 percent in Jordan – said they approved of attacks on U.S. civilians working in Islamic countries. Respondents in the Palestinian territories, however, said they approved of such attacks, although 50 percent said they opposed them, and another 18 percent said they had mixed views on the question.

But, as a general principle, majorities took a negative view toward the use of violence, such as bombings and assassinations, to achieve political or religious goals. Two-thirds of Pakistani respondents, 83 percent of Egyptians and nearly 90 percent of Indonesians said such methods could not be justified at all, according to the survey.

The survey, which was the latest in a series dating back to 2007 conducted by PIPA, was designed to gauge public opinion about al Qaeda and the United States in predominantly Muslim countries.

Because the polling took place last summer, the new study did not account for how the election of Barack Obama as U.S. president may have affected views on these issues, if at all.

“There is openness that things could change” with the new administration, Kull said Wednesday, citing post-election polls of Muslim countries, but it hasn’t happened yet, and the Islamic world is “still watching.”

PIPA and its affiliates carried out detailed face-to-face interviews with more than 1,000 respondents in each of the three countries – Egypt, Indonesia, and Pakistan – where PIPA had asked the same questions in previous polling. Additional polling was carried out in Azerbaijan, Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Turkey, and predominantly Muslim regions of Nigeria.

Among the three countries that were polled in 2007, especially Pakistan, where U.S. missile attacks on al Qaeda and Taliban targets have drawn strong protests, popular support for attacks on civilians increased over the past two years, while rejection of such tactics fell, according to the study.

At the same time, the survey found a growing belief that terrorism is ineffective. The number of Egyptian respondents who said such attacks were “hardly ever effective” rose from 35 percent two years ago to 52 percent last summer, although in Pakistan the percentage was largely unchanged.

Strong approval in all three countries of al Qaeda’s goal of forcing the U.S. to withdraw its military forces from Islamic countries was virtually unchanged from 2007.

Hostility to the U.S. military presence in the Islamic world appears related to the perception of Washington’s goals in the region, according to Kull.

“They perceive those bases as there to coerce. (To them), the bases are there as a threat,” he said.

Large majorities ranging from 65 percent in Azerbaijan to 87 percent in Egypt and the Palestinian territories said they believed that one major goal was to “weaken and divide Islam”; from 52 percent (Indonesia) to 88 percent (Palestinian territories) cited “spread(ing) Christianity”; and from 62 percent (Pakistan) to around 90 percent (Azerbaijan, Egypt, Turkey, the Palestinian Territories, and Jordan) cited “maintain(ing) control over the oil resources of the Middle East.”

Pluralities and majorities ranging from 43 percent in Azerbaijan to 96 percent in Egypt and 90 percent in the Palestinian territories also cited “expanding Israeli borders” as a U.S. goal in the region, although, remarkably, a majority of Palestinians (59 percent) said they believed that Washington also wants to create a Palestinian state.

The poll found that negative views of U.S. objectives have softened somewhat in Indonesia over the past two years but have hardened in Egypt and much more so in Pakistan.

Conversely, more benign U.S. goals, such as spreading democracy, are given little credence, with pluralities agreeing with the statement that “the U.S. favours democracy in Muslim countries, but only if the government is co-operative with the U.S.”

“These results show a reason (for the U.S.) not to promote democracy,” said Daniel Brumberg, acting director of the Muslim World Initiative, United States Institute of Peace.

On U.S. relations with the Islamic world, an average of only 12 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that Washington “mostly shows respect”. The rest were split between those who agreed that Washington’s disrespect derived from “ignorance and insensitivity” and those who said the U.S. “purposely tries to humiliate the Islamic world.”

Kull added that the people interviewed saw al Qaeda as “a balancer” to the U.S. “larger effort to achieve world domination.” He quoted one interviewee as saying “(the U.S.) wants a uni-polar system.”

However, “If you ask people generally if you think that Sharia law should be applied, there are a lot of people who say yes, but they have their own interpretations of it,” said Telhami. But if you ask them if they support a Taliban-like state, then you only get very few – less than 8 percent.

The survey also found strong support for Islamic parties being permitted to participate fully in government. Majorities ranging from 53 percent in Turkey to 83 percent in Pakistan agreed with the proposition that “all people should have the right to organise themselves into political parties and run candidates, including Islamist groups.” In Jordan, a 50 percent plurality agreed (compared to 26 percent) who disagreed, and the question was not asked in Egypt.

Shibley Telhami, an expert on Arab public opinion at the University of Maryland, said the latest survey results were consistent with his own polling in the region, which he conducts annually.

“The only apparent difference is that (the PIPA poll) suggests there is broad agreement with al Qaeda’s objective of spreading Islamic governance. But people have their own interpretation of what that means, and if you ask them if they support Taliban-like states, then the support for that is usually only five or six percent.”

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 28, 2009

MIDEAST: A Tale of Two Summits.

Analysis by Adam Morrow and Khaled Moussa al-Omrani for IPS.

CAIRO, Jan 27, 2009 – Despite declarations of Arab unity at a recent economic summit, Egyptian commentators say that fundamental differences between rival Arab camps – especially over the issue of Palestine – are far from over. “The deep divisions currently plaguing the Arab world cannot be solved over the course of an official state luncheon,” Mohamed Abu Al-Hadid, political analyst and chairman of the board of the state-owned Dar Al-Tahrir publishing house wrote in official daily Al-Gomhouriya Thursday (Jan. 22).

On Jan. 16, leaders and representatives of 12 Arab League (AL) member states attended a meeting in Doha, Qatar to discuss the carnage then taking place in the Gaza Strip through Israel’s military campaign. The meeting followed repeated calls by Qatar for an emergency AL summit in hope of forging a common Arab stance against ongoing Israeli aggression.

Regional heavyweights Egypt and Saudi Arabia, however, declined to attend. Instead, they announced their intention to discuss the crisis at a scheduled Arab economic summit in Kuwait three days later. The move highlighted the longstanding divide among AL members, which pits Washington’s “moderate” Arab allies – including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan – against those opposed to U.S. policy in the region.

The differences between the two blocs are defined largely by their respective positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict. While the former grouping backs U.S.-backed Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, the latter supports resistance against Israel led by Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

Abbas recognises Israel and insists on holding U.S.-sponsored negotiations with Israeli counterparts, despite the abject failure of talks to realise even modest Palestinian demands. By contrast, Hamas – democratically elected in 2006 – rejects Israel’s legitimacy, cleaving instead to a strategy of armed resistance.

Israel’s 2006 war on southern Lebanon fostered similar divisions, with Washington’s Arab allies supporting the U.S.-backed Beirut government against Lebanese resistance faction Hizbullah. Israel’s recent war on the Gaza Strip – which lasted from Dec. 27 to Jan. 17 and resulted in more than 1,300 Palestinian deaths – aggravated the longstanding rift.

According to Nabil Abdel Fattah, assistant director at the semi-official Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, the decision by Egypt and Saudi Arabia to avoid Doha reflected “conflicts over how to deal with the crisis” then playing out in Gaza.

Notably, for the first time ever at a high-level Arab political meeting, the Palestinian people were represented by Hamas, not – as has always been the case at AL meetings – by the PA. Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal used the opportunity to reiterate Hamas’s rejection of any ceasefire proposal that did not include the permanent reopening of the Gaza Strip’s borders.

According to Abdel Fattah, the decision by Egypt and Saudi Arabia to spurn the event was also partially aimed at Qatar. Despite its tiny size, Qatar has recently reinvented itself as a regional power broker, straddling the fence between rival camps.

“Qatar has tried to take a leading role in the region, and Egypt and Saudi Arabia see this as an infringement on their own diplomatic roles,” he said. “Egypt also fears that Qatar might be acting as a mask for Iranian and Syrian influence.”

In an editorial, Abu Al-Hadid reminded readers that Qatar – despite its pretensions – represented no less of a U.S. ally than states of the “moderate” axis. “Let’s not forget that Qatar, while trumpeting a tough stand against Israel, plays host to the biggest U.S. airbase in the region,” he wrote.

Nevertheless, discord appeared to give way to unity when Arab leaders gathered in Kuwait for the economic summit on Jan. 19 and 20. Although initially intended to focus on Arab economic, social and development issues, the meeting was dominated by ongoing violence in Gaza.

He added: “This, of course, is because the U.S. is in the region expressly to protect these regimes.”

 http://web.israel21c.net/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Articles%5El2417&enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Democracy&

Eilat to host major international energy conference.
By Karin Kloosterman
January 13, 2009

Despite the ongoing conflict in Israel, a three-day international conference on renewable energy planned for February is going ‘full steam ahead,’ according to organizers.

Far from the range of Hamas rocket strikes, the three-day Eilat-Eilot International Renewable Energy Conference will take place in the southernmost city in Israel, from February 17-19, at Eilat’s Herod’s Palace.

This is the second major renewable energy conference for Eilat, and hundreds of clean technology leaders, entrepreneurs, VCs, companies and government representatives from around the world are expected to take part.

An abundance of blinding sun, and few rainy days, makes the Israeli city of Eilat a perfect destination for farming clean energy from the sun. Located at the tip of the Red Sea, where Israel meets Sinai and Jordan, Eilat has been getting serious about clean technologies for some years.

Noam Ilan, project developer for the Renewable Energy Authority of Eilat-Eilot, the body organizing the conference, says that a major goal of the event is to show how Israel plans to implement its own world-class clean technologies.

Known around the world for water technologies and solar energy, the conference will shine a bright green light on local projects, and the region’s own Timna Renewable Energy Park.

Some of the projects to be showcased at the conference include two hybrid energy projects: one is a solar energy farm, paired with a biogas generator. “The idea is that this plant will answer requirements when energy is most needed,” he says.

Part of the new project calls for biogas fuel harvested from the city’s waste dump when the sun is not shining. Enabled by an Israeli solar energy company, the project can be ready in a little more than a year, Ilan anticipates.

Visit the Silicon Valley of renewable energy:

A second city-sponsored project is a solar thermal plant that will provide both energy and desalinated water to the water-depleted region. “We’re bringing seawater from Eilat and using it to cool off turbines. When we do that the water gets warm and suitable for desalination. We’re creating electricity and fresh water in a cheaper and less energy intensive way,” Ilan tells ISRAEL21c, pointing out that this project will make a great study site for other arid regions like the Sahara.

The Israeli solar energy company Solel and the national water carrier company Mekorot, are among the tech enablers of the project, which could take up to five years for implementation.

Also at the conference, Israel and the United States will launch the US-Israeli Energy Cooperation Act, passed two years ago by the US Congress.

“The Ministry of National Infrastructures views with high import the development of the Eilat-Eilot Region as a center of renewable energy solutions, and we not only fully supporting them in this pursuit, but we ourselves are very involved in advancing their initiatives,” says Hezi Kugler, director general of the Ministry of National Infrastructures in Israel.

“The conference is an important step towards developing the alternative energy capabilities of this region, and will certainly push us forward in becoming an alternative energy world leader,” he says.

The UJA Federation of Greater Toronto has given a major backing to Eilat’s renewable energy efforts.

Among the conference highlights, the Eilat event will feature technologies from renewable energy companies and enablers from around the world.

After the hob-knobbing and new clean technology business ventures and cooperation is put in place, Eilat is the perfect destination to stay and relax for another week or so, offering some of the best luxury resorts, eco-adventuring and Scuba diving in the world.

“We have not received word from any of the conference lecturers that they are canceling their trip to Israel and we are therefore continuing our preparation for the event as originally planned,” says Amnon Samid, a conference organizer.
“We hope that the conflict will be over well before the conference begins and believe that this event represents a wonderful opportunity for people from around the world to demonstrate their support for Israel at this critical time.”

 UPDATED January 19, 2009:

Two days after Israel declared a unilateral cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, the country now says it plans to withdraw all of its forces by the time Barack Obama is sworn in as president on the condition that Hamas fighters hold their fire.

=================

From Arabian Business   - http://www.arabianbusiness.com/543845-is…

Israel halts Gaza offensive.
by AFP on Sunday, 18 January 2009

Israel held its fire in Gaza Sunday after declaring a unilateral ceasefire in its 22-day onslaught which has killed more than 1,200 Palestinians and levelled vast swathes of the Hamas-run enclave.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had said after a meeting of his security cabinet he was calling an immediate end to offensive operations but added that troops would stay in Gaza for the time being with orders to return fire if attacked.

“At two o’clock in the morning (local time) we will stop fire but we will continue to be deployed in Gaza and its surroundings,” Olmert said in a speech after the vote.

“We have reached all the goals of the war, and beyond,” he added.

An army spokesman confirmed at 2:00 am (0000 GMT) that the order to stand down had gone into effect.

Hamas had said in response to Olmert’s announcement that it would not accept the presence of a single soldier in the territory, while Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said the ceasefire should be followed by a full pull-out.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak acknowledged there was “no guarantee” that Hamas would stop firing rockets but said the army would hit back “severely.”

“The army will stay as needed and if Hamas continues to fire, the army will fire back severely and will be ready to follow and intensify its operations as necessary,” he said.

The response from Hamas, an Islamist group which has ruled Gaza since 2007 and is sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state, stopped short of an outright threat to continue the rocket attacks.

“We will not accept the presence of a single soldier in Gaza,” Fawzi Barhum, a Gaza-based Hamas spokesman, said, before restating the movement’s demands for a complete Israeli withdrawal and the opening of Gaza’s border crossings.

One of the main aims of the offensive has been to put a halt to rocket and mortar attacks but more than 30 projectiles were fired from Gaza on Saturday, including eight fired after Olmert’s announcement.

Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak, who had been striving to broker a bilateral truce between Israel and Hamas, said only an unconditional ceasefire would suffice and called for all troops to leave the territory.

Mubarak and French President Nicolas Sarkozy are to co-host a summit on Gaza in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh Sunday which will also be attended by a string of European leaders, the king of Jordan and UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

In the hours leading up to the security cabinet meeting, Israel kept lobbing shells into the densely populated urban area, while to the north in Beit Lahiya a UN-run school was set ablaze by bombs.

Two brothers, aged five and seven, were killed and another dozen people wounded in the attack, in which burning embers trailing smoke rained down on a school where some 1,600 people were sheltering, setting parts of it alight.

Ban called the fourth such attack on a UN-run school during the war “outrageous” and demanded a thorough investigation.

During the course of the war , schools, hospitals, UN compounds and thousands of homes all came under attack with the Palestinian Authority putting the cost of damage to infrastructure alone at 476 million dollars.

At least 1,206 Palestinians, including 410 children, have been killed since the start of Israel’s deadliest-ever assault on the territory on December 27, according to Gaza medics, who said another 5,300 people have been wounded.

Those slain in the war also include 109 women, 113 elderly people, 14 paramedics, and four journalists, according to Dr. Muawiya Hassanein, the head of Gaza emergency services.

Since the start of the operation 10 Israeli soldiers and three civilians have been killed in combat or in rocket strikes. The army says more than 700 rockets and mortar rounds have been fired into Israel during that period.

The halt to the violence came after the Jewish state won pledges from Washington and Cairo to help prevent arms smuggling into Gaza, part of the Palestinians’ promised future state.

Although Egypt has not given any details about what assurances it has given Israel, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed a pledge on Friday promising “enhanced US security and intelligence cooperation with regional governments on actions to prevent weapons and explosive flows to Gaza.”

The ceasefire comes less than a month before Israel holds elections when Olmert, who formally resigned last autumn, is due to stand down.

The premier, whose reputation was badly damaged by a 2006 war in Lebanon seen by many Israelis as a disaster, said the Gaza war had “strengthened the deterrence of the state of Israel in the face of all those who threaten us.”

” Hamas received a hard blow. Its leaders are hiding. Many of its men have been killed. Dozens of tunnels have been bombarded. The ability to launch rockets into Israel has been reduced.”

————————–

Further, it became known that in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, the leaders of Britain, the Czech Republic, Egypt, France, Germany, Jordan, Spain and Turkey, along with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, met to coordinate policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
They gathered to back Egyptian efforts to turn a shaky ceasefire into a solid mutual agreement leading to Israeli withdrawal.

The above list of intervening powers includes the EU members – UK, France, Germany, Spain, as well as the present EU Presidency – the Czech Republic. Also Turkey, Jordan and Egypt. They will have to see how Egypt could effectively close its border with the Gaza Strip so there is no underground entree of weapon materials to the Gaza Strip. When this is achieved, they will go as in-between in what concerns Israel and the Palestinians of Gaza and of the West Bank.

The open question will eventually be how to start direct negotiations between the combatants, and the clear need for Israel to negotiate also directly with the Hamas. This point will come eventually when the US will change its position in regard to the acceptance of Hamas at the negotiations’ table when Israel is present. The absence of the US from Sharm el-Sheikh made it possible to reach the temporary   result so far. An Obama Administration will perhaps reconsider US reluctance to talk to Hamas.

It seems that Olmert, Barak and Livni are at last able to agree to put an end to the Gaza horror. But, still no end to arrogance   as they speak of a “unilateral” cease-fire. “However unequal the parties, the fighting has to stop from two sides.   And, it is not with the United States that Israel must come to an   agreement. Israeli and Hamas were parties in war and have to be parties to the cease-fire.” One can not choose one’s neighbors says the Israeli Peace Movement spokesperson.

In the meantime, Hamas said today that it would cease fire immediately along with other militant groups in the Gaza Strip and give Israel, which already declared a unilateral truce, a week to pull its troops out of the territory. According to Israel there was still some shelling by Hamas after above announcement.

———-

Finally, January 7, 2009, all holidays over, serious talking about the latest Middle East shellings has started to take place at the UN Security Council.

THE IMPECCABLE DIPLOMATIC LANGUAGE OF THE BRITISH FOREIGN SECRETARY, Mr. DAVID MILIBAND, MAY CARRY THE DAY.

The analysis of his statement shows the following:

a. He recognizes that the UNSC is wasting much time by centering on the Middle East while NOT talking to the main culprits. So they met three times on the “Middle East” but heard from Presidents Mubarack and Abbas only now.

b. He anoints President Abbas of the Palestinian Authority, as President “democratically elected” of all Palestinians, but no mention that it was Hamas that was democratically elected by the Arabs living in the Gaza Strip – the fact that our web recognized as a budding separate state of Hamasstan or Palestine II, albeit just as Palestinian as the Abbas presently ruled West Bank that we called Palestine I.

It is this non-recognition of Hamasstan by those at the UNSC table that encouraged also Israel to not recognize the reality that if it wants peace on the Gaza border it must sit down and talk to Hamas. It is not helpful to call HAMAS a terrorist organization when in effect it is the elected party by the relevant people living in the Gaza Strip. From the Israeli side – it is plainly idiotic to ignore that reality in the Gaza Strip and allow thus the people of Gaza to be presented as innocent bystanders in a fight between a terrorist group (Hamas) and a neighboring State of Israel. The deligitimization of the Hamas has then further led all the doo-gooder , and the international media, to present the women and children of Gaza as by-stander victims rather then as a population that is ripped apart by the acts of their own elected government in a war that was started by their own government’s army – the Hamas – in acts of random shelling of the civilian population in Israel.

We suggest, among other material to be discussed today at the UNSC, they also be shown the one hour program on Fareed Zakharia’s show on CNN, this last Sunday, January 3, 2009, where it was clearly evidenced that children having to live underground because of the shelling from Gaza, means the denial of life, in no way less then the use of children by the Hamas as human shield to their military in their attacks on Israel.

The clear evidence that it is a mistake not having recognized the Palestinian’s free will in voting for Hamas was put before us again, today, when the Oxfam NGO at a UN Press Conference pushed the idea that “a Palestinian faction” lobbed Israeli Settlements across the Border – so it should not justify for collective punishment of the Palestinians. Upon a question on what are Palestinian civilians beyond women and children, the panel of NGOs that lobby for EU trade restrictions against Israel, had just a very mumbled reply. All this would not have been the case had it be made clear that Hamas is the Army of the Gaza Palestine.

c. Egypt is the only other State bordering the Gaza Strip. In effect Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip for 19 years – from 1948 till 1967 – denying independence to the Palestinians. It was the Israeli war against Egypt that liberated the Palestinians of Gaza from the Egyptian supervision. Today Mubarack’s Egypt border with the Gaza Strip covers a network of underground tunnels that are as tight as a sieve when it comes to the flow of military material that supports the Hamas attacks against Israel. It was UN and European funds for the refugees that were behind the Egyptian post-1948 interest in Gaza, and it is now the post-1967 US funds to Egypt that were supposed to lead Egypt to patrol its border with Gaza. Egypt gets those funds but allows the hidden war against Israel to continue, while Israel itself colludes with this situation by being afraid to speak out against this two-faced modern Egyptian sphinx in order to avoid having to point at Egypt for   non-performance according to the agreements it has with the funding US Congress.

Foreign Secretary Miliband is completely right in stressing the need for Egyptian participation in the finding of a solution to Gaza, and the fact that the Arab League must come in as a back-up to Egypt in its coming clean on this issue.

 Without full participation of Egypt, and without OPEN BACKING from the Arab League, there will be no end to the shelling from Hamas, but then without dealing with Hamas itself, there will be no move to a settlement of the Arab/Palestinian dispute with Israel. Hamas is a spun-off from the Islamic movement that originated with the Wahabbi regime in Saudi Arabia because of its duplicity of living from oil-money that helped disintegrate the Islamic mores, and its readiness to provide the needed funds to those that were ready to fight for Islamic mores outside Saudi Arabia.

Now, the reality-search brings us to our own complicity that started with us buying happily the Arab oil. But then, this takes us too close to the real subjects followed in our website, and that is much more then the exchange of bombs and the crawling in tunnels at the borders of the Gaza Strip.

The only further note to the Miliband concise statement is that the present conflict, as discussed at the UNSC, did not start December 28, 2008 as he said – but three years earlier with the firing of the first Hamas “kassams” at Shderot – the clumsy rockets that have no physical aims but only the psychological aim of destabilizing life in Israel. To the Minister’s attention, these were no different then the bombs the Nazis targeted at London – and as historians know, the Nazis were the democratically elected regime in Germany and Austria.We hope this last comment illuminates some further the topic at hand.

————–

Now To The Message From The UK Mission to the UN:

From:  Hazel.Foster at fco.gov.uk
Date: January 6, 2009 7:31:35 PM EST

DAVID MILIBAND, UK FOREIGN SECRETARY, SPEAKS TO THE UN PRESS CORPS ON THE SITUATION IN THE MIDDLE EAST, 6 JANUARY 2009

We are at the beginning of over 24 hours of very active diplomacy.   I have just come from an extensive meeting with the Arab League and obviously I’ll be meeting with all other delegations here.

I think first of all that the terrible events at the UN School this afternoon in Gaza underline the importance of the discussions that we are going to have here in New York over the next 24 hours.   It’s also significant that within the last half an hour there has been an important statement by President Mubarak and I gather that there are further statements by Prime Minister Olmert and other regional leaders coming up and that underlines the fast-moving nature of the events that are underway.   I think it is very important that the discussions that we have here and any positive developments on the ground in the region are mutually reinforcing.

The position of the United Kingdom has been since Saturday 28 December, since the start of this conflict, to argue for an immediate and durable ceasefire.   We need to get into the details of that in terms of the action to tackle the trafficking of illegal arms and also the issue of opening up the crossings that are so important, not just to relieve the misery and the humanitarian need of the people of Gaza, but also to undermine the smuggling of trade.

I think it is also very significant and I will refer to this in my speech that today is the third Security Council discussion of the Middle East over the last three months, but the first that has been addressed by President Abbas.   And I think that it is very important that we reinforce that President Abbas speaks for all the Palestinian people whether they live in the West Bank or in Gaza or are refugees elsewhere actually.   And that it is vital for the long-term future that the Palestinians are able to speak with one legitimate and democratic voice in discussions that take forward the Resolution 1850 that was passed here just three weeks ago.

So if you’ll excuse me now, I am going to make my statement and to engage in Security Council discussions, but I assure you that we have 24 hours of each other’s company ahead and we also have a binding imperative to address the desperate circumstances that exist in the Gaza Strip at the moment.

Thank you very much indeed.   Thank you.

——————–

The Miliband Statement at the UNSC Table:

STATEMENT BY DAVID MILIBAND, UK FOREIGN SECRETARY, IN SECURITY COUNCIL DEBATE ON THE MIDDLE EAST, 6 JANUARY 2009

There could not be a greater contrast between the daily regime of delicate diplomacy at the United Nations and the day-to-day reality of death and destruction in Gaza.   But the two are linked.

The United Kingdom believes that the crisis, and I use that word advisedly, the crisis in Gaza is an indictment of our collective failure, all of us, over a long period, to bring about the two-state solution that offers the only hope of security and justice for Israelis and Palestinians alike.

The two speeches that we have just heard from President Abbas and Ambassador Shalev define the challenge for this Council.   Both were moving, deeply felt and passionate and I believe that in this debate we cannot simply restate our national positions – we have a wider responsibility to support all efforts to achieve an immediate ceasefire and to chart a course back to the common vision set out just three weeks ago in UN Security Council Resolution 1850.

As we meet, lives are at stake and new initiatives are underway, notably from President Mubarak and President Sarkozy to engineer new action for a ceasefire that engages Israel and responds to its security concerns.   The United Kingdom supports these initiatives and we need now in this Council to use our discussions over the next 24 hours to be clear in our principles and practical in our conclusions to reinforce these efforts.

Mr President, the truce of June to December 2008 was in truth less than that.   Rockets were fired into Israel.   Palestinians died in Israeli military action.   And the people of Gaza suffered greater and greater deprivation.

However, the immediate trigger for Israeli military action was the end of the truce: Hamas rejected its extension and fired almost 300 rockets between December 19th and December 27th 2008.   These rockets are not just a danger and a provocation, though they are that – they demonstrate a choice by Hamas, not just to target the people of Israel, but also to target the fragile negotiations for peace sponsored over the last year by the United States.

However, the immediate consequence of Israeli military action over the last ten days is also clear.   600 dead, many of them civilians and children, the horror of war piled upon months of deprivation.   The confirmation just a few hours ago that 30 civilians were killed today in a UN school in Gaza is a devastating reminder of the urgency of our responsibilities.   Early today, the Quartet Envoy called the situation in Gaza ‘hell’.   The shortages of food, fuel and medicine are according to our reports acute.   The scale of the suffering is immense.   The need for humanitarian supplies is urgent and in this context it is right to salute the leadership, not just of the Secretary-General, but of the brave United Nations workers trying to relieve suffering in Gaza.

Mr President,
The United Kingdom stands four-square behind the Security Council statement of 28 December calling for an immediate halt to all violence.   I reiterate today the call of my Prime Minister for an immediate ceasefire.

But we are enjoined to come to the United Nations, not just to make declarations, but to seek common ground and to find common purpose.   So we must focus on the substance and permanence of a ceasefire, as well as its timing.

Mr President,
Israel is right to say that the flow of illegal arms into Gaza is a threat to its citizens and needs to be curbed.   We say that we need to support countries in the region in developing the tools to tackle the trafficking of weapons from land and sea.   This will be a complex and difficult task, but it is essential.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority is right to say that it concluded an agreement in 2005 for the opening of crossings for people, goods and aid into Gaza.   We say that we need to open those crossings and re-establish the authority of the Palestinian Authority over them.   This will help the people of Gaza.   It will also undercut the smuggling of trade.

Mr President, the permanence of a ceasefire depends on something else.
President Abbas is a powerful and consistent advocate for the interests of all Palestinians, whether they live in Gaza or the West Bank.   The unity of Palestine is essential to any decent vision of the future.   It is also a precondition of a democratic politics of consent in which there is one legitimate authority and in which every Palestinian has a voice in the only process that counts – the peace process.

Mr President,
The test for us over the next 24 hours is simple.   Do we help bring an end to the current conflict and pave the way back to the vision this Council set out three weeks ago?   Our starting point must be the goals of an immediate ceasefire, an end to arms trafficking and an opening of the crossings.   But we also have a responsibility to keep alive the vision of a peaceful Middle East in which Palestinians have the dignity of statehood and Israelis have recognition and security from their neighbours.   That is the responsibility of this Council, that is our task today and those are responsibilities and tasks that the United Kingdom wants to help resolve.

Thank you very much.

——————–

Hazel Foster (Miss)
Third Secretary Press
United Kingdom Mission to the United Nations
One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza
885 Second Avenue (48th Street & 2nd Avenue, 28th Floor)
New York
NY 10017

Fax:   00 1 212 745 9316

UKMis Web:   ukun.fco.gov.uk
FCO Web:   www.fco.gov.uk
Visit our blogs at http://blogs.fco.gov.uk

The Drylands, Deserts, and Desertification – 2008 Conference. December 14-17, 2008, Sede Boqer Campus, The Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research, Israel.

www.desertification.co.il

THE PROGRAM As Available on November 18, 2008. There might be still Changes and Additions, as well –   further Poster Sessions.

Download this schedule: detailed_program_sessions_1611_publish.doc

Please note that the list of presentations is still not final.

 The Washington Post gives us indication of the very active, though private, work of the Obama transition team of 450.

The headquarters are in Chicago, and the President elect is busy also returning phone calls from World leaders.

Among the Tuesday calls were calls to:

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil
His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of India
His Majesty King Abdullah of Jordan
President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya.

Previously it was also noted that Obama returned calls from leaders of most US allies – those in Europe and also among others, China, Japan and Israel.

Obama will not go to the G-20 meeting in Washington, but we do not think that he will be out of reach by phone.

Obama Also Lays Out Ethics Rules.
President-elect Barack Obama today released a series of ethics guidelines for those working in the transition operation, a continuation of the anti-lobbying policies adopted by the Illinois Senator during his primary and general election campaigns.

The ethics rules — no federal lobbyist can raise or contribute money for the transition efforts, no one who has lobbied in the last 12 months can advise the transition on the policy area on which they lobbied, no one involved in the policy work of the transition can lobby on that issue for a calendar year — were announced by transition co-chair John Podesta during a press briefing for reporters this afternoon. (Full details of the Obama ethics plan for the transition are after the jump.)

Podesta cast the new ethics rules as a leading indicator of what he termed “the most open and transparent transition in history.” Podesta added that members of the transition team will sign an ethics code laying out the specific principles announced today.

Asked about reports of tension between President George W. Bush and Obama in their meeting Monday, Podesta demurred, saying only that it was a “private meeting” in which the auto industry as well as plans for an economic recovery package were raised.

Podesta rejected reports that the passage of economic stimulus plan or a package to help the auto industry was part of a proposed legislative exchange for the elimination of Democratic opposition to the Colombia free trade agreement.

“While the topic of Colombia came up, there was no quid pro quo,” Podesta asserted. He added that the relations between the current White House and the Obama transition teams have been “collegial” and “cooperative”.

Podesta said that Obama had no plans to meet with any of the world leaders coming to town for the G20 gathering this weekend and aimed at addressing the global economic crisis. The President-elect will send an emissary to the meetings but Podesta would not offer any names as to the identity of that liaison.

As for the nuts and bolts of the transition itself, Podesta said that the budget was approximately $12 million with $5.2 million of that coming in appropriations from Congress. The remaining $6.8 million will be raised by the transition operation, according to Podesta.

The total transition staff will reach approximately 450 individuals, said Podesta, adding that beginning Monday a top to bottom review of every government agency would begin in an effort to insure “we hit the ground running on Jan. 20 because we don’t have a moment to lose.”

Podesta offered few specifics about the naming of Cabinet officials other than to indicate that the announcements would likely be made by Obama in Chicago. As for White House senior staff, those announcements “will come out as they are ready to be announced.”

Obama Ethics Rules

* Federal Lobbyists cannot contribute financially to the transition.

* Federal lobbyists are prohibited from any lobbying during their work with the transition.

* If someone has lobbied in the last 12 months, they are prohibited from working in the fields of policy on which they lobbied.

* If someone becomes a lobbyist after working on the Transition, they are prohibited from lobbying the Administration for 12 months on matters on which they worked.

* A gift ban that is aggressive in reducing the influence of special interests.

By Chris Cillizza |   November 11, 2008; 3:00 PM ET