Posts Tagged ‘PM Benjamin Netanyahu’

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Wave of protest greets Israeli PM

August 26, 2009
Morning Star Online, Tuesday 25 August 2009
by Daniel Coysh
Gordon Brown meets Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu for talks

Gordon Brown meets Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu for talks

Hundreds of peace and solidarity campaigners have gathered at Downing Street to protest at Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s cosy meeting with far-right Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu.

Protesters from the Stop the War Coalition, Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the British Muslim Initiative converged on Downing Street at lunchtime, demanding an end to Israel’s violations of international law, with its refusal to dismantle the illegal settlements on the West Bank, the “ethnic cleansing” of east Jerusalem and its ongoing siege of Gaza.

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Israel PM vows never to evict settlers

August 10, 2009

Yahoo! News, Aug 9, 2009

AFP

AFP/File – An Israeli policeman stands guard as Jewish settlers enter a house following the eviction of a Palestinian …

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged on Sunday that he will never evict Jewish settlers from occupied Palestinian land as Israel did in 2005 in the Gaza Strip.

“The withdrawal from the Gaza Strip brought us neither peace nor security. The territory has become a base for the pro-Iranian Hamas movement and we will never make the same mistake again,” Netanyahu said at the weekly cabinet meeting.

“We will not evict any more people from their homes,” he added in comments carried by public radio.

In September 2005, the government of prime minister Ariel Sharon unilaterally removed all Jewish settlements from Gaza in a move aimed at ending Israel’s costly 38-year military presence in the Gaza Strip.

Sharon vowed to follow up that withdrawal with further pullbacks from the West Bank, but a massive stroke incapacitated him and his successor Ehud Olmert abandoned the policy in the wake of the June 2006 capture of an Israeli soldier by Gaza-based militants in a deadly cross-border raid.

An opinion poll published on Sunday showed Israeli Jews back Netanyahu’s stance against halting construction of settlements in occupied territory, with 66 percent endorsing his view that Israel has the right to build in east Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as the capital of their proposed state.

The survey of 512 people by Tel Aviv University‘s BI Cohen Institute found that only 27 percent of Israeli Jews, mostly supporters of the leftwing Meretz and Labour parties, oppose Netanyahu’s position.

Netanyahu has risked a rift with Israel’s strongest ally, the United States, by refusing to heed Washington’s calls to freeze building of settlements, which the international community considers illegal.

Deputy Foreign Minister Dany Ayalon on Sunday rejected UN protests against last week’s expulsion of two Palestinian families from their homes in occupied east Jerusalem.

In a meeting with UN Middle East envoy Robert Serry, Ayalon told him the expulsion followed a decision in an Israeli court and that Israeli jurisdiction applied to the entire city, a senior diplomat told AFP.

On August 2 club-wielding Israeli riot police evicted two Palestinian families from their houses in Jerusalem‘s Sheikh Jarrah district.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the European Union condemned the evictions, which followed an announcement by Israel that it planned to build Jewish homes in the Arab neighborhood.

Israel annexed the eastern part of the city in 1967 but Israeli sovereignty over the conquered territory has not been recognised internationally.

Around 200,000 Jewish people are estimated to have moved into the dozen or so Israeli settlements in east Jerusalem, home to 270,000 Palestinians.

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The Two-state Solution, Israeli-style

July 10, 2009

Charity, checkpoints and client rulers

By Jonathan Cook in Ramallah | Information Clearing House, July 9, 2009

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has been much criticised in Israel, as well as abroad, for failing to present his own diplomatic initiative on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process to forestall US intervention.

Mr Netanyahu may have huffed and puffed before giving voice to the phrase “two states for two peoples” at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, but the contours of just such a Palestinian state — or states — have been emerging undisturbed for some time.

In fact, Mr Netanyahu appears every bit as committed as his predecessors to creating the facts of an Israeli-imposed two-state solution, one he and others in Israel’s leadership doubtless hope will eventually be adopted by the White House as the “pragmatic” — if far from ideal — option.

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ANALYSIS / Netanyahu bringing Israel closer to war with Iran

May 26, 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking during a faction meeting in the Knesset on Monday.
 (AP)

By Aluf Benn, Haaretz Correspondent | Haaretz/Israel, May 26, 2009
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu considers the lifting of the Iranian nuclear threat his life’s mission. Before coming to power, he had mentioned that such an operation might cost thousands of lives, but the price was justified in view of the threat’s severity. His comments yesterday at the meeting of Likud’s Knesset faction put to rest Ariel Sharon’s doctrine that Iran is not just Israel’s problem but the entire world’s problem, and Israel must not be at the forefront of the struggle. Israel is now at the forefront.

The leaders of Iran and Israel escalated the verbal confrontation yesterday. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said discussions on the nuclear issue are over, which means Iran does not intend to give up enriching uranium. Netanyahu said that if Israel does not lead the defense against the Iranian threat and bring in the United States and other countries, no one else will.

In both cases, in Tehran and Jerusalem, it’s possible to justify the leaders’ comments by citing domestic political needs. But even if the immediate motive is domestic politics, the strategic implications cannot be ignored.


Netanyahu reiterated that he has come to an understanding with U.S. President Barack Obama on preventing Iran from acquiring a military nuclear capability. Unlike the dispute between Netanyahu and the United States on the Palestinian question, the Americans have not denied his statements on understandings reached on Iran.

A senior source close to the Obama administration has said that the dialogue Obama has offered Iran will come to nothing and that the U.S. will not strike Iran unless something unusual and unexpected happens. If this turns out to be the case, the Netanyahu government may have to decide whether to attack Iran’s nuclear installations.

Three arguments are normally made to reject the likelihood of an Israeli military option: the complexity of the mission, the U.S. veto and opposition in the government. It is usually assumed that Israel will seek to repeat the 1981 bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq. This is only one scenario and not a likely one.

There are other possibilities to consider: a war in the north that drags Iran in, or a strike against a valuable target for the Iranian regime, which leads Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Ahmadinejad to take action against “the Zionist regime.” If Iran attacks Israel first, the element of surprise will be lost, but then Israel’s strike against the nuclear installations will be considered self-defense.

The second argument, regarding American opposition to a strike, depends on the circumstances. It’s hard to imagine that Obama will order the interception of Israeli aircraft on the way to Natanz if all other ways of stopping the centrifuges have failed. Clearly the administration will have to chastise Israel, and let’s not forget the statements by CIA chief Leon Panetta, who warned against any operation not coordinated with the United States. But no one knows how Obama will behave in the moment of truth. He told Newsweek that he will not tell Israelis what their defense requirements are. Netanyahu liked this very much.

The third claim, about political opposition at home, is entirely mistaken. In talks on going to war, the ministers and officers compete over who is more patriotic, not who is wiser or more rational. At decision time, no one will dare go down in history as having reservations and risk being portrayed as a coward. If the Second Lebanon War is anything to go by, all the “heroes” who criticized the war in retrospect had voted to go to war. This will be the case if Netanyahu brings to the cabinet a plan to attack Iran, and the Israel Defense Forces will say that it can.

A war with Iran is not inevitable. But the prime minister took another step yesterday toward preparing the general public for the possibility that it might break out.

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Israel seeks Egypt’s support against ‘extremists’!

May 12, 2009

Khaleej Times Online, May 11, 2009

(AP)

SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought Egypt’s help Monday in building a coalition of Arab nations against Iran, framing the broader Middle East conflict as one in which moderates must band together to confront extremists.

The Israeli leader spoke at a news conference beside Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak after they met in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik. Mubarak avoided any mention of specific regional threats and said peace with the Palestinians would bring stability and reinforce cooperation in the region.

It was Netanyahu’s first trip to the Arab world since becoming prime minister on March 31. His election was ill-received in the Arab world because of his hard-line positions against yielding land captured in Middle East wars and his refusal to support Palestinian independence.

The Israeli leader, meanwhile, has sought to redirect the Middle East agenda by focusing on Iran as the key threat to regional stability. Israel and the U.S. accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons — a charge Iran denies — and Arab nations are also wary of Iran’s growing regional clout and what they say is its interference in Arab affairs.

In Egypt, Netanyahu made an argument that the Jewish state and moderate Arab nations shared a common threat.

“The struggle in the Middle East is not a struggle between peoples or a struggle between religions,” he said. “It is a struggle between extremists and moderates, a struggle between those who seek life and those who spread violence and death.”

Behind the effort to build common ground is a shared concern by Israel and U.S. Arab allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia about the Obama administration’s overtures to start a dialogue with Iran after decades of shunning Tehran.

Without mentioning Iran by name, the Israeli leader said, “Today to our regret, we are witness to extremist forces who are threatening the stability of the Middle East.”

Before his trip, an official in Netanyahu’s office said one of his aims would be to forge cooperation with Arab nations against what he described as the common threats of Iran and its regional proxies, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Appealing directly to Mubarak for support, the Israeli prime minister said, “We expect, Mr. president, … your help in the struggle against extremists and terrorists who threaten peace.”

Mubarak did not respond publicly to that theme at the news conference. Instead, he spoke of the need to forge ahead with Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts where they left off under a U.S.-backed plan aimed at establishing an independent Palestinian state.

He stressed the importance of resuming talks “on the basis of a clear political horizon that deals with the final solution issues and establishes an independent Palestinian state side by side with Israel in security and peace.”

Netanyahu, however, made no endorsement of Palestinian statehood, though he said he hoped to renew peace talks in the coming weeks, and he asked for Egypt’s help there as well.

“We want to expand peace. We want to expand it first of all to our neighbors, the Palestinians,” Netanyahu said. “We want Israelis and Palestinians to live together with a horizon to peace, security and prosperity. … Therefore, we want at the earliest opportunity to renew the peace talks between ourselves and the Palestinians.”

Netanyahu, who has yet to unveil his government’s policy on peace efforts, has said his preference is for concentrating on Palestinian economic growth for now, while putting statehood talks aside for some point in the future.

While the U.S. too is concerned about Iran’s role in the region, it also is pressing hard for an Israeli commitment to establish a Palestinian state. Netanyahu is certain to hear that message during his pivotal May 18 meeting with President Barack Obama in Washington.

The U.N. Security Council on Monday also called for “urgent efforts” to create a separate Palestinian state and achieve an overall Mideast peace settlement. Speaker after speaker at an open ministerial meeting warned of more violence unless efforts are made to restart Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, reconcile the divided Palestinian factions, and renew talks between Israel and Syria.

Accompanying Netanyahu on Monday, Israeli Trade Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told reporters that his Egyptian counterpart, Rachid Mohammed, would travel to Israel in two weeks in a rare visit by an Egyptian Cabinet minister.

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