RAMALLAH, June 17 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Thursday he feels the Palestinian National Authority ( PNA) and the U.S. administration's positions are completely identical.
Abbas, who returned Wednesday to the West Bank after visiting five countries, including the United States, said "the most important thing in this tour is that the U.S. and Palestinian positions were completely identical."
"There are no differences between me and President Barack Obama on any issue," Abbas told the Ramallah-based al-Ayyam newspaper.
"He supports us and for the first time in years he accepts my request to get (financial) support to Gaza, this is very good," Abbas added.
Abbas, who met Obama in the White House on June 9, said the U.S. president supports the PNA efforts to lift the Israeli blockade on the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian demand to form an international committee to probe the Israeli raid on a Turkish-led aid flotilla heading for Gaza on May 31.
The killing of nine activists in the attack had sparked an international outcry that the Israeli siege to isolate Hamas must be lifted. President Obama said after meeting Abbas the situation in Gaza was "unsustainable."
Obama has promised 400 million U.S. dollars for infrastructure projects in the West Bank and Gaza though Washington classifies Hamas, which took over Gaza by force in 2007, as a terrorist organization.
Abbas also said he had held "positive talks" with senators and congressmen in the United States.
Obama administration is leading indirect proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinians in a bid to bridge the gaps and to enable the two sides to resume their face-to-face negotiations which stopped in 2008.
PA Uses EU Logo on TV Program Showing Haifa Part of ‘Palestine’
Tammuz 1, 5770, 13 June 10 09:55, by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
(Israelnationalnews.com) The Palestinian Authority has escalated its campaign to make Israel illegitimate by exploiting the European Union logo on a PA television program that promotes the port city of Haifa as “a Palestinian city.”
The Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) unmasked the program with a translation of a daily quiz that was broadcast as a promo for the second season of a weekly quiz show on a Palestinian Authority television program called “The Stars.” The first season was funded by the European Union.
The question posed to the TV viewers was, "A Palestinian coastal city is:
1. Ramallah
2. Bethlehem
3. Haifa
Viewers are invited to “Call the number that appears on the screen and win $500."
PA TV is under the direct control of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's office. Haifa is the only coastal city among the three choices.
PMW noted that the first season of the program dealt solely with questions on Europe, covering all areas of life. The new season is sponsored by a PA cell phone company. The PA television program shows the EU flag in the background although it is not yet known if the EU is continuing to sponsor the program.
The quiz is part of an increasingly sophisticated PA campaign to be more subtle in inciting hatred against Israel and delegitimizing the Jewish State.
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told U.S. President Barack Obama last week, “And we say in front of you, Mr. President, that we have nothing to do with incitement against Israel, and we're not doing that. What we care about is to live in coexistence with Israel, in order to bring about the independent Palestinian state that will live side by side with Israel in peace and stability."
In February, PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad rejected accusations of incitement, saying Israel’s claims are “clearly part of a systematic effort to isolate us internationally.”
The PA agreed under the now obsolete American Roadmap plan to halt all incitement against Israel. The Netanyahu government recently agreed to be part of American-mediated indirect talks with the PA, with one of the stipulations being that the PA halt incitement.
Kurdish rebels declare expanded war on Turkey
Turkey: May air raid killed 100 Kurdish rebels
ANKARA (AP)
Turkey's military said Friday it killed as many as 120 Kurdish rebels in an air raid on rebel hideouts in northern Iraq last month and a daylong incursion by elite commandos into Iraq this week.
Kurdish rebels have dramatically stepped up attacks in Turkey in recent months in an escalation that poses a dire threat to a remarkable attempt at ending one of the world's longest guerrilla wars. The Turkish military responded to the rebels by sending its warplanes across the Iraqi border to bomb Kurdish rebel positions after acquiring intelligence, apparently from the United States and recently purchased drones from Israel.
The rebels have long used northern Iraq as a springboard for hit-and-run attacks on Turkish targets in a campaign for autonomy in Turkey's Kurdish-dominated southeast. Several past Turkish air raids and incursions have failed to stop rebel infiltration through the mountainous border.
Maj. Gen. Fahri Kir, the head of the military's internal security operations, said another 30 Kurdish rebels were killed inside Turkey since March in anti-rebel operations. He said the Turkish losses were 43 in the same period. It was not possible to independently verify the figures, which the military says are based on intelligence reports, including interception of radio communication between the rebels of the Kurdistan Workers Party or PKK.
"We anticipate (PKK attacks) to continue incrementally," Kir told a news conference at the military headquarters.
Message of detention
The PKK declared an expanded war on June 1, a day after imprisoned Kurdish rebel chief Abdullah Ocalan said in a message communicated by his lawyers from the prison island of Imrali, near Istanbul, that his calls for rebel dialogue with Turkey had been ignored, so he was abandoning them and giving his consent to the rebel command in northern Iraq to determine the course of action.
Kir said the PKK aims to expand its attacks throughout Turkey in an attempt to create "fear and chaos." The escalation of violence followed the major air assault on May 20 on rebel positions in Hakurk region of the northern Iraq in which several warplanes bombed a large area to kill about 100 rebels.
It was the largest air assault on the rebels since a 2008 ground operation into Iraq that saw many guerrillas return to bases along the border after Turkish units withdrew. The Turkish military says around 4,000 rebels are based just across the border in Iraq and that about 2,500 operate inside Turkey.
Hundreds of elite commandos crossed into Iraq for a daylong operation to hunt down a group of rebels who were escaping after an attack near the border town of Uludere. Kir said the commandos, who returned to their bases on the same day, killed five rebels but later intelligence reports suggested that the rebel casualties, also in a coordinated air strike, were about 20.
Kir said 545 rebels were believed to have defected from PKK last year as a result of Turkish operations and difficult living conditions on the mountains. He put the number of PKK deserters this year at 148.
Maj. Gen. Ferit Guler, the secretary-general of the Turkish military, stressed on Friday that while the military chased Kurdish guerrillas, "the state should use economic, socio-cultural and propaganda measures in coordination at the international level for an effective struggle against terrorism."
Turkey has waged a harsh crackdown during the grinding 26-year insurgency by the Marxist group PKK, which has been labeled a terrorist organization by the West for killing civilians in urban bombings and arson attacks and slaying government teachers, engineers and clergymen.
The government, however, has tried to distinguish its Kurdish citizens from those who support the rebel group and extended greater cultural rights to the Kurds such as broadcasts in Kurdish language on television, to try to win their hearts.
Turkey, however, rejects calls from the Kurdish rebels and politicians to allow education in schools in Kurdish. The language is also barred in parliament and other official settings on the grounds that its use would divide the country along ethnic lines.
The conflict has killed as many as 40,000 people and allegations of Turkish brutality and restrictions of Kurdish rights have stained the country's human rights record and hampered its bid to join the European Union. The military offensive has also cost hundreds of millions of dollars in defense spending and slowed construction of schools, hospitals and irrigation projects.
All rights reserved for Alarabiya.net © 2010A PKK guerrilla makes tea in a valley below the Qandil Mountains (Photo Courtesy of Times Online)
Friday, 18 June 2010 (Al Jazeera
Fighting near Iraq border marks escalation in conflict
Twenty dead as Turkish troops clash with rebels
Saturday, 19 June 2010 Al Arabiya
Diyarbakir, TURKEY (Agencies)
Turkish troops and Kurdish guerrillas clashed overnight in southeast Turkey, killing eight soldiers and 12 rebels, Turkey's military headquarters said on Saturday.
The battle at Semdinli in Hakkari province, near the border with Iraq, re-kindled the conflict in the region and prompted the armed forces to hit Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) targets inside northern Iraq later.
The PKK militants touched off the fighting with an attack on an army border unit and 14 soldiers were wounded, the General Staff said in a statement on its website. The wounded have been transferred to hospitals.
"Reinforcements were sent to the region and throughout the night support was provided to the conflict zone by attack helicopters and artillery. Separately, the Air Force struck targets identified in the northern region of Iraq," it said.
The military responded with helicopters and reportedly killed 12 rebels, the army statement added.
There has been an increase in separatist conflict in the mainly Kurdish southeast in recent weeks.
On Friday the Turkish military announced that at least 130 members of the PKK had been killed inside Turkey and in an air raid on rebel hideouts in Iraq since violence flared anew in March. The military had lost 43 personnel.
The military also said it expected the PKK to further intensify and spread its attacks.
The mounting violence in recent months has clouded the government's bid to seek a peaceful end to the 26-year-old conflict with Kurdish rebels seeking a separate homeland in the country's southeast.
The conflict with the PKK, considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and much of the international community, has claimed more than 45,000 lives since it began in 1984, according to the army.
Dutch political parties scrap candidates who deny WWI massacre of Armenians was genocide
The Associated Press
Published: September 27, 2006
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands The two largest Dutch political parties have scrapped ethnic Turkish parliamentary candidates who refuse to acknowledge the mass killings of Armenians during World War I amounted to genocide. The candidates include Ayhan Tonca of the governing Christian Democrat Party. Tonca is one of the country's most prominent Muslim politicians and is chairman of an umbrella organization of Islamic groups known as CMO. The Christian Democrats also retracted the candidacy of Osman Elmaci, and the opposition Labor Party ended the candidacy of Erdinc Sacan. In their platforms ahead of next month's election, both parties have staked out positions on Turkey's possible entry into the European Union, a divisive issue around the continent.
Lees verder...
Israeli-Palestinian Dialogue and Why it Isn't Working
Recently two friends came to visit Israel from abroad. One asked a question, and the other may have answered it in part. One visitor is a student from California is comparing the role of dialuge in the conflict in Northern Ireland with that in Israel. In Ireland, dialogue between politicians, and between communities seems to have succeeded. Between Israelis and Palestinians it has not.
Differences of language and culture between Jews and Arab Palestinians are much greater than those between factions in Northern Ireland, but instinct tells us that something else is wrong. Something is not working in these dialogue efforts, because we have not been able to get ordinary people, who represent their societies, involved. Instead, "dialogue" seems to have become a pursuit of a self-selected few.
Ratna Palle visited from Holland and met members of the Family Forum (or Parents Circle) group. Her impressions provide, in part an answer to why dialogue is not working between Israelis and Palestinians, and within Israeli society.
No comments:
Post a Comment