Region

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — The Palestinians’ demand for Arab Israelis to figure among 26 prisoners due for release under US-brokered peace efforts has stirred an outcry in Israel’s coalition government that could wreck the initiative.

“My party and I shall oppose at any price the release of Arab Israeli terrorists,” Internal Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch, of the far-right Yisrael Beitenu Party, told public radio on Sunday.

“So far no [Cabinet] decision has been taken,” said Aharonovitch, one of five ministers on a committee charged with approving each stage of the release of 104 long-term prisoners, 78 of whom have already been freed with the final batch due for release on March 29.

Deputy defence minister Danny Danon, a hawkish member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, has already pledged to resign if Arab Israelis are included in the deal.

The hardline religious nationalist Jewish Home Party has also threatened to quit Netanyahu’s coalition if imprisoned Arab Israelis or Palestinian residents of Jerusalem walk free.

Israel’s Arab community has its roots in the 160,000 Palestinians who stayed on their land after the creation of Israel in 1948.

Today, they and their descendants number around 1.6 million out of a total Israeli population of eight million.

Those jailed for attacks are considered by Israel not only as “terrorists” but also as traitors.

In addition, Palestinians in annexed East Jerusalem have the status of Israeli residents, holding Israeli-issued ID documents and entitled to free movement around Israel, unlike Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is adamant that prisoners from both communities be eligible for the next release.

Israeli spy

With the US-brokered resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians in July, Israel agreed to release 104 prisoners with their identies to be vetted by the ministerial committee.

Candidates for the final tranche have not yet been named by Israeli authorities.

Commentators warn that the issue may sound the death knell for the already-sluggish talks which were scheduled to reach a conclusion on April 29, but show no signs of meeting the deadline.

Israeli wants the time frame extended and ministers have warned that should the Palestinians refuse, the remaining prisoners will not be freed.

Abbas warned Saturday of consequences if the release does not go through.

“We are awaiting the release of the fourth batch of prisoners, as agreed upon with the Israelis through the United States,” he told members of the central committee of his Fateh movement.

“We are saying, if they are not released, this is a violation of the agreement and allows us to act however we see fit within the norms of international agreements.”

Public radio said the United States was seeking a “creative solution” to save the talks.

US special envoy Martin Indyk met Saturday night in Jerusalem with Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, chief negotiator with the Palestinians and a moderate in the Netanyahu government.

Indyk also met chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat and was scheduled to hold talks on Sunday with Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Citing Western diplomatic sources, the radio said Washington could free jailed Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard as an incentive for Israel in an effort to save the talks.

A former US navy analyst, he was arrested in 1985 for giving Israel thousands of secret documents about US espionage in the Arab world.

He was sentenced to life in a US prison and received Israeli nationality 10 years later.

Successive Israeli administrations have sought his release, which could provide an incentive for Netanyahu and help him placate his right-wing coalition partners.

But the radio report also said there was no indication the US administration would free the spy.

GAZA CITY — Gaza’s Hamas Premier Ismail Haniyeh warned Israel on Sunday it would pay dearly if it heeded its foreign minister’s call to reoccupy the Palestinian enclave to try to halt rocket attacks.

“We tell the enemy and [Foreign Minister Avigdor] Lieberman who is threatening to reoccupy Gaza that the time for your threats is over,” Haniyeh told a rally in Gaza City.

“Any aggression or crime or stupidity you commit will cost you a very high price.”

On March 12, during a two-day flare-up in which Gaza fighters fired at least 60 rockets into Israel and the Israelis responded with dozens of air strikes, Lieberman said Israel would have no choice but to reoccupy Gaza, from which it withdrew all troops and settlers in summer 2005.

“There is no alternative to a full reoccupation of the entire Gaza Strip,” he told Channel 2 television.

Speaking to around 40,000 supporters at a public rally marking 10 years since an Israeli air strike killed Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Haniyeh warned Israel that Gaza fighters had “far more capabilities than you imagine”.

He also restated his Islamic movement’s opposition to peace talks between Israel and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority of president Mahmoud Abbas.

“Stop negotiating with the enemy,” he told the PA. “We will not recognise Israel.”

The memorial rally for Yassin — the wheelchair-bound co-founder of Hamas killed on March 22, 2004 — took place under the watchful eyes of hundreds of Hamas policemen who closed off streets around the central Al Sarraya Square and took up positions on rooftops.

Senior Islamic Jihad officials and members of smaller groups attended the event but Abbas’ Fateh, Hamas’ bitter rival, stayed away.

The Izzeddine Al Qassem Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, sent threatening text messages to Israelis and foreign reporters in Israel on Saturday, the anniversary of Yassin’s killing.

“If Gaza will be attacked the life of the Zionists will be hell” and “In the next war all the Land of Palestine will return,” some read.

“Al Qassem has chosen you to be the next Shalit,” another message stated, referring to Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was abducted and held in Gaza for five years until Hamas freed him in exchange for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

The e-mail account of an Israeli security affairs newsletter, Israel Defence, was hacked and an e-mail posted on Yassin’s killing. “We don’t forget the blood of our sheikh, We swear again to take revenge, and this time by taking off the head of your leaders,” it said.

BAGHDAD — An officer in the Iraqi president’s guard shot dead a well-known radio journalist during a quarrel Saturday near the leader’s east Baghdad residence, police said.

The shooting of Radio Free Iraq’s Baghdad bureau chief Mohammed Bdaiwi drew condemnation from Iraqi politicians and highlights the resentment many residents of the capital feel towards the often aggressive bodyguards of Iraq’s VIPs.

Elsewhere in Iraq, a series of attacks killed 16 members of the security forces and civilians, officials said.

Bdaiwi was allegedly shot by a junior officer working for Iraqi President Jalal Talabani at a checkpoint near his residence, police said. Talabani is an ethnic Kurd and his bodyguards are also Kurdish.

After the shooting, Iraqi security forces besieged the residency compound and the alleged killer was handed over to them, police and state TV said.

Talabani suffered a stroke last year and is being treated in Germany. Few details have been released about his health since then.

His office issued a statement expressing deep sorry of the “murder” of Bdaiwi. “This act runs against all the values of the Presidential Brigade... We stress that the perpetrator will stand trial and receive his fair punishment,” it said.

State-run TV showed Prime Minister Nouri Al Maliki arriving at the crime scene near the presidential palace. “All the people behind this should stand trial. Blood for blood and this is a violation of the law,” he said

Meanwhile, a series of blasts struck across the country. Police officials said the wave began with a roadside bomb in a commercial street in the northern city of Tikrit. Minutes later, a car bomb struck policemen who had arrived to inspect the site of the first blast.

The officials say five policemen and two civilians were killed and 18 people were wounded in the bombings. Tikrit is 130 kilometres north of Baghdad.

Hours later, police said a suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden car into a security checkpoint near the town of Adeim about 100 kilometres north of Baghdad. Three civilians and three police were killed.

Also, a roadside bomb hit a military checkpoint near the northern city of Mosul, killing two soldiers and wounding three others, according to the police.

The Iraqi security forces are a favourite target for Sunni insurgents who attempt to undermine the Shiite-led government.

Violence has spiked in Iraq since last April, a surge unseen since 2008. The relentless attacks have become the government’s most serious challenge.

In the southern city of Basra, gunmen shot dead police Col. Madhi Ashour, the head of the crime investigation department in the city as he was walking near his house, said police.

Violence is less common in the Shiite-dominated south, although Shiite militias and criminal gangs operate there.

Medical officials confirmed the casualty figures from all attacks. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorised to talk to the media.

JENIN, Palestinian Territories — Three Palestinians were killed in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank early on Saturday after Israeli soldiers launched an operation to arrest a fighter, Palestinian officials said.

Medical and security sources said that two of those killed were fighters and the third was a civilian. They said 14 Palestinians were also wounded, with two in critical condition.

The Palestinian sources said Israeli soldiers entered the camp in the northern West Bank city to arrest Hamza Abu Alheja, 20, a member of the military wing of Hamas, the Ezzedine Al Qassam Brigades.

Fire was exchanged, and “other gunmen gathered around the house” to help Abu Alheja, including Mohammad Abu Zena, 19, an Islamic Jihad fighter who was killed along with Abu Alheja, the medical and security sources said.

A civilian named as Yazan Jabarin was also killed, the Palestinians said, and announced a day of mourning and a strike in Jenin.

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner called Abu Alheja “a ticking bomb” who was “directed by Hamas in Gaza”.

“He had been previously involved in a terrorist attack in the region, and was in the advanced stages of the preparation of further attacks against IDF (Israeli military) personnel and Israelis,” Lerner told reporters.

He said security forces shot Abu Alheja only after he shot and lightly wounded two Israelis while trying to escape from the building in which he had holed up.

“In the meantime, more armed operatives were alerted to the location. Palestinians began to shoot and throw explosive devices at the troops, and as a result we have two more killed,” Lerner added.

Lerner noted the ongoing security coordination between Israel and the PA, but said the Jenin operation “was an independent IDF and special forces mission”.

“They [PA security forces] don’t really operate in the Jenin refugee camp, and that was why we were required to do as such,” he said, adding that the army did not forsee any imminent escalation there.

Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said the incident “saved lives” since it “thwarted a terror attack that had already been planned and was supposed to target Israelis”.

‘End security coordination’ 

Palestinian Islamist movements Hamas and Islamic Jihad both slammed Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas’ rival Fateh Party for its security coordination with Israel.

A spokesman for Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, called the incident a “crime” that “shamed” the PA.

“We call on the [PA] security forces to end security coordination with the Israeli occupation and leave the resistance to act freely,” Sami Abu Zuhri said in a statement.

Alheja’s father, Jamal Abu Alheja, is a prominent Hamas leader imprisoned by Israel.

An Islamic Jihad statement issued from Gaza said the Jenin killings demonstrated that “resistance continues”.

“The Palestinian people cannot tolerate this — the West Bank is boiling over because of the crimes of the Zionists,” senior Islamic Jihad official Nafez Azzem said.

“The United States and Israel want to force the Palestinians and the entire region to surrender, but Gaza and the West Bank resist this,” Azzem said.

A spokesman for Abbas condemned the “continuing escalation against the Palestinian people” and blamed Israel.

“We call on the US administration to move quickly to prevent a general collapse in the region,” Nabil Abu Rudeina said.

On Thursday, he said US-sponsored peace talks with Israel have reached an impasse because of Jewish settlement activity.

The talks are on the brink of collapse, with Washington fighting an uphill battle to get the two sides to agree to a framework proposal to extend the negotiations to the year’s end after an April 29 deadline.

The violence in Jenin came as Palestinians in Gaza prepared to mark the 10th anniversary of the killing of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, in an Israeli air strike.

Saturday’s deaths brought to nine the number of Palestinians in the West Bank killed by Israeli forces this year, according to an AFP tally.

BEIRUT — Syria’s army has been making advances against the opposition in recent days by exploiting divisions among rebel fighters and by relying on elite fighters from Lebanon’s Hizbollah, analysts say.

On Sunday, the regime seized the rebel bastion of Yabrud, near the Lebanese border, dealing a powerfully symbolic and strategic blow.

And on Thursday, its forces recaptured the famed Krak des Chevaliers Crusader castle in central Homs province, which had been seized by rebels shortly after the uprising began in March 2011.

The advances have been aided by a new strategy developed in the wake of truces negotiated between the government and opposition in areas around Damascus, an army official told AFP.

“The army has learned the lessons of the truces around Damascus,” where exhausted fighters have laid down their arms.

“It completely encircles an area and allows fighters to leave if they turn over their arms and pledge not to resume fighting,” he added.

“That creates serious divisions between the local rebels and the hardliners, particularly the jihadists, and then the army attacks.”

The description accords with accounts given by fighters and activists in both Yabrud, where jihadists accused moderate rebels of abandoning the town, and the Krak des Chevaliers battle.

“The fort area was under army siege for more than two years,” an activist with ties to rebel commanders in Homs told AFP.

“To get food in, the fighters had to pay bribes at the military checkpoints.”

He said the rebels were left exhausted, and were further demoralised after troops took the nearby town of Al Zara.

“The situation became even more difficult, and there was an agreement where the regime agreed to open a safe passage for the fighters to leave to Lebanon so they could withdraw, and that’s what happened,” he said.

Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Centre, said that had become a familiar scenario in the conflict, now in its fourth year.

“Free Syrian Army-linked groups have consistently demonstrated a willingness to pragmatically withdraw when the defence of a certain locality has become futile,” he told AFP.

Jihadist fighters, including Al Qaeda affiliated Al Nusra Front, have been less willing to do so in some cases, leading to “recriminations”, he added.

Not a turning point 

The divisions have been exacerbated by infighting in rebel-held areas in the north, where opposition groups have turned against the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

And fighters say new weapons pledged by outside backers and the opposition National Coalition never arrived at the Yabrud front.

Fabrice Balanche, a Syria specialist and geographer, also cited the opposition divisions.

“A divided opposition facing a united regime cannot win,” he said.

But he noted that Lebanon’s Shiite Hizbollah movement and the National Defence Forces, a local pro-regime militia, had help bolster the army.

“Since the recapture of Qusayr, the regime has gone on the offensive,” he said, referring to a Homs provincial town the army took from the rebels last June.

“The national defence forces are protecting the territory that the government has taken, which has freed up the soldiers to launch new offensives, strengthened by Hizbollah,” he told AFP.

The Lebanese group is believed to have played a key role in the army’s recapture of Yabrud, which lies close to the Lebanese border.

The fall of the town and subsequent operations nearby to seal off the border will sever rebel supply lines that ran across it.

The town’s capture came after a lengthy regime operation in the surrounding Qalamun region last year, during which it captured a string of nearby towns and began shelling Yabrud.

Thomas Pierret, a Syria specialist at the University of Edinburgh, also emphasised Hizbollah’s role in the capture of Yabrud and broader Qalamun.

“The regime’s success in Qalamun was due to Hizbollah’s strong involvement because of the area’s proximity to Lebanon,” he said.

But he cautioned against assuming the regime’s recent advances marked a turning point in the conflict, noting rebel success elsewhere.

“I think that we need to do away with these generalisations, between these military developments are highly local,” he said.

“The regime advances in some areas; it is pushed back in others.”

SANAA — Twelve people were killed Saturday in clashes between Yemeni forces and Shiite rebels on the outskirts of the northern city of Amran, a local official and tribal sources said.

The rebels, known as Huthis or Ansarullah, had travelled to Amran to take part in a demonstration, but shooting erupted when they insisted on crossing a checkpoint to the northern entrance to the city with their weapons, an official said.

Eight rebels were among the dead, as well as two soldiers and two civilians, a local official and tribal sources said.

A senior security official in Sanaa said orders have been given to prevent Huthis from entering Amran, as the army dispatched reinforcements from the 310nd armoured brigade.

The military also set up more checkpoints around the city as rebels attempted to enter from the east and west, local sources said.

Last week, Huthis armed with assault rifles paraded through Amran along with vehicles fitted with rocket launchers, demanding the sacking of the “corrupt government”.

The Huthis have fought the central government in Sanaa for years, complaining of marginalisation under former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was ousted in 2012 following a year of protests.

WASHINGTON — Iran is building a crude mock-up of an American aircraft carrier at a ship yard on its Gulf coast and US officials said Friday the goal of the project remains a mystery.

Iran has made no attempt to hide its “curious” construction effort near Bandar Abbas on the Gulf, as commercial satellite imagery has shown a vessel gradually taking shape, resembling the outlines of a Nimitz-class carrier, three administration officials said.

“They got this barge and threw some wood on top of it to make it look like the USS Nimitz. That’s all we know for sure,” a defence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.

“We think they’re going to try to get some propaganda value out of it,” he said. “We find it very curious...We don’t know what Iran hopes to gain by building it.”

Defence officials stressed that the vessel was not a working aircraft carrier, had no nuclear propulsion system and was essentially a barge outfitted to look — but not operate — like a carrier.

Officials said the Iranians have previously used barges in military exercises and later broadcast television footage of the vessels being blown up with missiles.

The project was first reported by The New York Times, which quoted officials speculating the Iranians may blow up the fake carrier for television cameras as a propaganda exercise.

“It is not surprising that Iranian naval forces might use a variety of tactics — including military deception tactics — to communicate and possibly demonstrate their resolve in the region,” said a third US official, who asked not to be named.

Commercial satellite photos show a ship under construction in Gachin shipyard on the Gulf and more recent images reveal a vessel with the unmistakable design of a Nimitz-class carrier, along with fake aircraft parked on the deck.

The puzzling project came to light at a moment of lowered tensions with Iran and intense diplomacy, as Washington and major powers try to broker an agreement with Tehran over its disputed nuclear programme.

Over the past year, Iran has stepped back from assertive manoeuvres in the Gulf, officials said, as previously Iranian speed boats had sometimes swarmed around US warships passing through the Strait of Hormuz.

TUNIS — Unidentified gunmen have kidnapped a Tunisian diplomat in Tripoli, Tunisia’s foreign minister said on Saturday, one of a string of diplomatic abductions in the Libyan capital this year.

Three years after Libya’s revolt to topple Muammar Qadhafi, the North African country is struggling to impose security in the face of brigades of former rebels, Islamist militants and ex-fighters who refuse to disarm.

“A Tunisian diplomat was kidnapped in Tripoli, the Tunisian ambassador told me that his car was found empty,” Foreign Minister Mongi Hamdi told the local radio station Shems FM.

No further details about the abduction or the victim were immediately available. But the minister urged Libyan authorities to protect members of its diplomatic mission.

In January, five Egyptian diplomats were briefly kidnapped in Tripoli in what security officials said was retaliation for Egypt’s arrest of a Libyan militia chief. They were later freed and Egypt released the militia commander.

A South Korean trade official was also kidnapped the same month as he left his office in Tripoli. But he was freed days later by security forces, and Libyan officials said it was not a politically motivated abduction.

Foreigners have been targeted in attacks over recent months though motives were unclear. An American teacher was shot dead in Benghazi in December and in January, a British man and a New Zealand woman were shot execution-style on a beach in western Libya.

ZAWIYA PORT, Libya — The US navy handed over to Libyan authorities on Saturday an oil tanker carrying crude that had been loaded at a port controlled by armed rebels in defiance of Tripoli’s government.

The Morning Glory tanker was due to arrive later on Saturday at Libya’s government-controlled Zawiya port after being seized by US commandos and escorted back through international waters by the US Navy, Libyan officials said.

Hours before the handover, at least 16 people were wounded when Libyan rebels occupying three eastern oil ports clashed with troops and attacked an army base, where pro-government forces had been preparing to break the rebel blockade.

Anti-aircraft gunfire and explosions were heard overnight and after dawn on Saturday in Ajdabiya, the hometown of rebel leader Ibrahim Jathran, whose fighters seized the ports last summer to demand a greater share in Libya’s oil resources.

The struggle for control of Libya’s vital petroleum resources is one of the key challenges facing the weak central government, which has still failed to secure the North African country three years after the fall of Muammar Qadhafi.

Brigades of former anti-Qadhafi rebels and militias refuse to disarm and often use armed force or control of oil facilities to make demands on a state whose army is still in training.

US special forces boarded and seized the Morning Glory tanker last Sunday off Cyprus, days after it left Libya with a cargo of crude from one port, Es Sider, occupied by Jathran’s men who had vowed to export oil themselves to resist Tripoli.

“The handover took place in international waters off the coast of Libya, and the Government of Libya and its security forces are now in control of the vessel,” the US embassy said in a statement.

Once the Morning Glory docks, crude from the tanker will be fed into Zawiya refinery, which has been forced to lower its production because of a protest at another oil facility, the El Sharara oilfield, officials at Zawiya port said.

Zawiya port is 55km  west of the capital Tripoli.

The Tripoli government gave Jathran a two-week deadline on March 12 to end his port blockade or face a military assault, though analysts say Libya’s nascent armed forces may struggle to carry out that threat.

Jathran’s self-declared Cyrenaica government is demanding more autonomy for his eastern region. Attempts to broker a deal between the rebels and Tripoli have so far failed.

LANA state news agency said tribal community leaders helped stop the fighting earlier on Saturday between the rebels and Libyan soldiers. But the agency reported 16 people were wounded.

BEIRUT — Fighting raged Saturday between rebels and loyalist forces in Syria’s northern Latakia province, a day after 34 people were killed as Islamists sought to seize a border crossing into Turkey, an NGO said.

The fighting has prompted President Bashar Assad’s government to complain to the United Nations that Turkey was providing cover to rebels crossing the border from its territory.

Latakia province, which includes Assad’s family village, is considered a regime stronghold, and many of its residents are from his Alawite minority.

Large parts of Latakia have remained relatively insulated from three years of fighting in Syria, but the province was shaken Friday as three Islamist groups battled to seize the Kasab border crossing.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Islamists included the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, who were also active in Saturday’s clashes against regular troops and pro-regime militia.

There were no immediate reports on casualties, but the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 34 people were killed on Friday, including 13 rebels and five civilians.

Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based observatory, said fighting was under way in three government-controlled villages and another three that loyalists were trying to seize from rebels.

State news agency SANA said loyalists had “destroyed an ammunition and rocket depot, as well as vehicles transporting weapons... in numerous operations” in the north of the province.

And a security source said the army on Friday had retaken two police stations that had been captured by “rebels infiltrated from Turkey”.

The source said Damascus had sent a message to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon accusing Ankara of “providing cover” for the rebels and demanded that the Security Council “denounce this terrorist attack on Syrian territory”.

“Terrorist” is the common regime term for rebels.

Friday’s clashes came after Al Nusra, Sham Al Islam and Ansar al-Sham announced the beginning of the “Anfal” campaign in the Latakia area.

More than 146,000 people have died in the three-year war, and millions more have been displaced.