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Israel hits Gaza as fears rise of new conflict

By - Jan 23,2014 - Last updated at Jan 23,2014

GAZA CITY — Increased violence in and around the Gaza Strip, where an overnight air strike killed a Palestinian fighter, have prompted blunt warnings from Israel as fears grow of another major confrontation.

The latest Israeli raid — one of nearly a dozen this month — comes after cross-border exchanges killed several Palestinians and one Israeli little more than a year after a November 2012 conflict forced Gaza’s Islamist rulers Hamas into a fragile ceasefire.

Israel warned it will use “any means” to stop rocket fire from the besieged Palestinian territory, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holding Hamas entirely responsible for such attacks, and threatening to teach it a lesson “very soon”.

Medics said an Israeli air strike killed two Palestinians including one fighter in northern Gaza early Wednesday.

Ahmad Al Zaanin, 21, and Mahmud Al Zaanin, 23, died when a missile struck their car as they were driving around the northern town of Beit Hanoun, a spokesman for the Hamas-run health ministry said.

Israel’s military said the attack targeted Ahmad Al Zaanin and described him as “a senior operative in the PFLP terror organisation” responsible for recent anti-Israeli attacks and who posed an “imminent threat” to civilian lives.

It said Zaanin was behind rocket fire on January 15 which struck open ground shortly after the funeral of former premier Ariel Sharon, which took place several kilometres from the Gaza border.

A separate Palestinian group, Islamic Jihad, claimed Ahmad Al Zaanin as a member, confirming his death and that of “one of his relatives Mahmud Al Zaanin” in the strike “near his home”.

The PFLP did not immediately claim Zaanin as a member.

Israel has continued to target Islamic Jihad, Hamas weapons stockpiles and training camps since a ceasefire with Gaza’s ruling movement took effect after a bloody eight-day conflict in November 2012.

Netanyahu vowed to teach Hamas a lesson “very soon” if attacks continue, saying that Israel’s policy of retaliating “forcefully” against rocket fire from Gaza had produced “a quiet year in 2013”.

“If Hamas and the terror organisations have forgotten this lesson, they will learn it again powerfully very soon,” he said on Tuesday.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon echoed Netanyahu’s remarks, saying Israel would use “any means” against Gaza.

“We will not hesitate to use force to combat those who threaten our security, and we will do this using any means we possess,” he said in a statement, calling Wednesday’s strike “another stage in our fight against rocket fire”.

Yaalon’s deputy Danny Danon said: “Those who engage in terrorism will pay a high price for their actions.”

Israel has insisted that Hamas will be held entirely responsible for any rockets fired from the enclave.

On Tuesday, Hamas said it had deployed forces to “preserve the truce”.

But experts said the Islamist movement might have trouble restraining rocket fire from Gaza, given the pressure it is under not to kowtow to its sworn enemy.

“Israel’s decision to go back to a policy of targeted assassinations, targeting Palestinians who are suspected of launching rockets... will gradually lead to a dangerous escalation between the Gaza Strip and Israel,” said Mkhaimer Abu Saada, a political science professor at Gaza’s Al Azhar University.

“There will be retaliation from other groups, but Hamas will even find it difficult to control its own [armed wing the] Izzeddine Al Qassam Brigades.”

Over the past month, tensions have soared in and around Gaza after more than a year of relative calm.

Since December 20, six Palestinians and an Israeli have been killed in violence in and around the territory, with militant rocket fire sparking retaliatory air strikes.

Fiery exchanges over Assad fate at Syria peace talks

By - Jan 23,2014 - Last updated at Jan 23,2014

MONTREUX, Switzerland — The biggest push yet to end Syria’s bloodshed was marked by fiery exchanges Wednesday as the warring sides and global powers clashed over President Bashar Assad’s fate at a UN peace conference.

After a day of formal speeches set to be followed this week by talks involving the two sides, UN leader Ban Ki-moon urged Syria’s regime and opposition to finally work together to end the bloodshed.

“Our purpose was to send a message to the two Syrian delegations and to the Syrian people that the world wants an urgent end to the conflict,” Ban said in a closing press conference at the talks in the Swiss town of Montreux.

“Enough is enough, the time has to come to negotiate,” Ban said. “We must seize this fragile chance.”

But official statements made by the delegations Wednesday gave no hint of compromise, as the two sides met on the shores of Lake Geneva for the first time since the start of the conflict in March 2011.

Branding the opposition “traitors” and foreign agents, Syrian officials insisted Assad will not give up power, while the opposition said he must step down and face trial.

“Assad will not go,” Syrian Information Minister Omran Al Zohbi said on the sidelines of the conference.

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Mouallem wasted no time firing a broadside at the opposition in his opening speech, which went on long beyond the allotted time of less than 10 minutes, forcing Ban to repeatedly ask him to wrap it up.

“They [the opposition] claim to represent the Syrian people. If you want to speak in the name of the Syrian people, you should not be traitors to the Syrian people, agents in the pay of enemies of the Syrian people,” Mouallem said.

Ahmad Jarba, the head of the opposition Syrian National Coalition, called on the regime to “immediately” sign a deal reached at the last peace conference in Geneva in 2012 setting out “the transfer of powers from Assad, including for the army and security, to a transition government”.

He said that would be “the preamble to Bashar Assad’s resignation and his trial alongside all the criminals of his regime”.

‘Terrorist crimes in Syria’

Syrian state television broadcast Jarba’s speech in a split screen alongside footage of death and destruction under the heading “Terrorist crimes in Syria”.

Leading a series of sharp US accusations against the Syrian regime, Secretary of State John Kerry insisted Assad cannot be part of any transitional government.

“There is no way, not possible in the imagination, that the man who has led the brutal response to his own people could regain legitimacy to govern,” Kerry said.

US officials also slammed the Syrian delegation for its incendiary remarks and claims of improved aid access as “laughable”.

Damascus ‘chose inflammatory rhetoric’

“Instead of laying out a positive vision for the future of Syria that is diverse, inclusive and respectful of the rights of all, the Syrian regime chose inflammatory rhetoric,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

Expectations are very low for a major breakthrough at the conference, but diplomats gathered here believe that simply bringing the two sides together for the first time is a mark of some progress and could be an important first step.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the talks will “not be simple, they will not be quick” but urged both sides to seize a “historic opportunity”.

About 40 nations and international groups were gathered, but no direct talks are expected until possibly Friday — when opposition and regime delegations will meet in Geneva for negotiations that officials have said could last seven to 10 days.

The UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, told the closing press conference he would meet on Thursday with both sides to discuss the next step in negotiations.

“Tomorrow I am going to meet them separately and see how best we can move forward,” Brahimi said.

“Do we go straight into one room and start discussing or do we talk a little bit more separately?... I don’t know yet.”

Erupting after the regime cracked down on protests inspired by the Arab Spring, the civil war has claimed more than 130,000 lives and forced millions from the homes.

Recent months have seen the conflict settle into a brutal stalemate — with the death toll rising but neither side making decisive gains.

With no one ready for serious concessions, world powers will be looking for short-term deals to keep the process moving forward, including localised ceasefires, freer humanitarian access and prisoner exchanges.

Notably absent from the table was crucial Assad backer Iran, after Ban reversed a last-minute invitation when the opposition said it would boycott if Tehran took part.

Pitting Assad’s regime, dominated by the Alawite offshoot of Shiite Islam, against largely Sunni Muslim rebels, the conflict has unsettled large parts of the Middle East.

There were stark reminders of the conflict’s impact in the run-up to the talks, with continued fighting on the ground and new evidence in a report alleging that Assad’s forces have systematically killed and tortured 11,000 people.

The opposition called at the conference for an international inquiry into the allegations.

“We have to stop this spiral of violence. We do call for an international inspection to visit places of detention and see the facts of torture that our citizens face every day,” Jarba said.

Supporters urge Sisi to run for president

By - Jan 21,2014 - Last updated at Jan 21,2014

CAIRO — Thousands of supporters of Egypt’s powerful army chief rallied in a Cairo stadium on Tuesday, urging him to run for president and saying the third anniversary of the country’s uprising should be used as an occasion to thank him and security forces for overthrowing the former Islamist president.

The former security officers and army loyalists organising the campaign called “complete your good deeds”, aim to boost popular support for Defence Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi, the man who removed president Mohamed Morsi from power in a July 3 coup.

The general has yet to announce his intentions. A referendum that last week approved the country’s new constitution saw an unexpectedly modest turnout, denying him the robust popular mandate he allegedly sought as a rationale to make a run for office.

“At the top of our priorities is to choose a nationalist leader,” former interior minister Ahmed Gamal Eddin told the crowd at Cairo Stadium, where banners read: “Egypt calls upon you.”

Standing next to him on the tribune, Coptic Priest Bolous Awida described Sisi as “the soaring eagle” and led chants of “Al Sisi is my president”. Further down, former grand Imam Ali Gomaa said: “The army, the police and Egypt order you to complete your good deed.”

Presidential elections are the second phase of the military’s transition plan, introduced upon Morsi’s ouster after millions demanded he step down for alleged abuse of power and subservience to his Muslim Brotherhood group.

Some 98 per cent of voters endorsed the draft constitution, drawn up by a panel of mostly secular-minded politicians and experts after the military suspended the Morsi-era 2012 charter during the coup. But turnout was only 39 per cent.

Interim President Adly Mansour will decide whether Egyptians vote first for their president or for parliament.

The push for Sisi to run comes as Morsi’s Brotherhood calls for mass protests to mark January 25, 2011, the first day of an 18-day uprising that forced longtime autocrat Hosni Mubarak to step down.

Liberal and secular-minded activists have also made similar calls but said they will not join forces with rival Islamists in their rallies.

The Brotherhood and its supporters have held near daily protests since Morsi’s ouster but over the past weeks, the cumulative weight of a tough security crackdown that killed hundreds and jailed top leaders has left the group deeply weakened.

The government confiscated assets of hundreds of the group’s leaders and charities, and more recently labelled it a terrorist organisation responsible for a string of assassinations, suicide bombings and attacks mostly on security forces. An Al Qaeda inspired group, based in the Sinai Peninsula, has claimed responsibility for most of the violence, however.

On Tuesday, Cairo Appeals Court set February 16 as the start date for one of four trials of Morsi and top Muslim Brotherhood leaders. This one is on charges of conspiring with militant groups such as Palestinian Hamas and Lebanese Hizbollah, as well as with Iran, to destabilise Egypt. Morsi is also accused of orchestrating an insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula to avenge his ouster.

Morsi’s supporters have called the conspiracy accusations implausible. The ousted president was most recently referred to court over insulting the judiciary. Charges in the other three trials, including inciting the killing of his opponents and organising jailbreaks, carry the death penalty.

Of the four, only the one for incitement charges has started. It is to resume next month.

Morsi allies were also swept away in the crackdown.

On Monday, one of his top allies, an ultraconservative Islamist and former presidential hopeful Hazem Salah Abu-Ismail was sentenced to one year in prison for insulting the judiciary, during a trial in which he stood accused of allegedly trying to conceal that his mother was a US citizen in order to qualify for his 2012 presidential bid.

Abu-Ismail had told judges: “The court is void... This is not a real judiciary in the first place.” His trial was held in a venue adjacent to Cairo’s Tora prison where he and a large number of Brotherhood members are being held.

UAE convicts 30 Emiratis, Egyptians over Brotherhood ties

By - Jan 21,2014 - Last updated at Jan 21,2014

DUBAI — Thirty Emiratis and Egyptians were convicted of setting up an illegal branch of the Muslim Brotherhood and sentenced to up to five years in jail in the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, in a case reflecting the state’s deep mistrust of political Islam.

The UAE, a US ally and major oil exporter, was rattled by the rise of Islamists in the aftermath of the uprisings that rocked the Arab world from 2011.

It watched with relief as Egypt’s army toppled Islamist president Mohamed Mursi, who is from the Brotherhood, in July after mass protests against his rule and has poured in billions of dollars to support the army chief who deposed him.

The Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi handed the men sentences ranging from three months and five years in prison, state news agency WAM said on Tuesday, without elaborating.

Twenty Egyptians, six of them tried in absentia, and 10 Emiratis, had been charged with setting up an illegal branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UAE, stealing and airing state security secrets and collecting funds illegally.

The defendants had denied all the charges, a family member of one of the detainees told Reuters after the opening of the trial in November.

The relative added some of the Egyptians had said they were physically abused in custody and their confessions were obtained under coercion.

The UAE denies using torture. In November, WAM said the court had ordered medical tests for some of the defendants.

On Monday, Amnesty International called on the UAE to end the “downward cycle of unfair political trials”.

The London-based group said it considered at least three of the defendants — Mohammed Al Mansoori, Hussain Alhammadi and Saleh Al Dhufairi — to be “prisoners of conscience”.

A source close to the UAE government told Reuters: “The trial took place in a transparent manner. The proceedings went according to the legal and juridical laws and regulations in the UAE.”

The 10 Emiratis who were convicted on Tuesday are among 61 Islamists convicted by a UAE court in July of plotting to overthrow the government, activists said.

Many of the jailed Islamists are members of Al Islah group, which the UAE says has links to the Brotherhood. Al Islah denies any relationship.

Thanks to its state-sponsored cradle-to-grave welfare system, the UAE has largely avoided the unrest that has unseated long-serving Arab rulers elsewhere in the region.

But it has shown little tolerance towards dissent. Dozens of people have been detained since 2011 and most were tried and convicted of planning to overthrow the government.

Yemeni president’s term extended

By - Jan 21,2014 - Last updated at Jan 21,2014

SANAA — Yemen’s political factions extended the president’s term by a year and approved a new federal system at the end of national reconciliation talks on Tuesday, a milestone in the troubled country’s transition to democracy.

Highlighting the security challenges facing Yemen, which borders major oil exporter Saudi Arabia and is home to one of Al Qaeda’s most active branches, unknown assailants shot dead a leader of the Yemeni Shiite Muslim Houthi group while he was driving to attend the final session of the talks.

Yemen has been torn by rising violence and lawlessness as the US-allied country struggles to overcome political turmoil after long-serving president Ali Abdullah Saleh stepped down following months of mass protests against his rule in 2011.

The nation’s political factions gave interim president Abed-Rabbo Mansour Hadi, whose two-year term had originally been due to end with elections in February 2014, an extra year after delays in the transition to democracy.

He will oversee a shift to a federal system intended to accommodate southern separatist demands for more autonomy. Southern separatists have been demanding to revive the state that merged with North Yemen in 1990.

The national reconciliation talks, launched in March 2013 as part of a Gulf-brokered power transfer deal, have been plagued by walk-outs by politicians.

Hadi, who will head a special committee, was also tasked with the drafting of a new constitution within three months.

He was also mandated to reshuffle the Cabinet and restructure the shura council, the consultative upper house of parliament, to give more representation to the south and to Shiite Muslim rebels in the north.

Mindful of the challenges, Hadi told delegates: “I did not take over a nation, I took over a capital where gun shots are continuous day and night, where roadblocks fill the streets. I took over an empty bank that has no wages and a divided security apparatus and army.”

“The national dialogue document [final communiqué] is the beginning of the road to build a new Yemen,” he said at the Movenpick Hotel on a hilltop on the outskirts of Sanaa where the sessions have been taking place.

Yemeni analyst Hatem Bamehrez said Hadi’s task was huge.

“If the dialogue took 10 months to complete, then implementation needs enough time and one year is not enough,” Bamehrez said, adding that shifting the major issues for Hadi to deal with later represented “a big danger” to the process.

Security

Marring Tuesday’s talks, Ahmad Sharafeddin, a Houthi delegate at the reconciliation talks who had served as dean of the law faculty at Sanaa University, was killed when gunmen in a speeding vehicle sprayed his car with bullets in central Sanaa, officials said.

They said he died instantly and the gunmen escaped.

It was not immediately clear who was behind the assassination, but another Houthi leader, Abdulkarim Al Khiwani, accused hardline Sunni Muslim militants of carrying out the attack.

The Houthi group fought radical Sunni Salafis in northern Yemen from October until earlier this month, when a ceasefire was reached to relocate the Salafis to another city some
250km away. But clashes have continued in other parts of northern Yemen with tribesmen allied to the Salafis.

More than 210 people have been killed in the fighting that erupted in late October after the Houthis accused the Salafis of recruiting foreign militants in preparation to attack them.

The Salafis, who follow an austere brand of Sunni Islam, say the foreigners are students of Islamic theology.

Tuesday’s attack was the latest in a string of killings against high-profile Yemenis and foreigners. Last week an Iranian diplomat was killed in Sanaa when he resisted gunmen who were trying to kidnap him.

Key players at Syrian peace talks

By - Jan 21,2014 - Last updated at Jan 21,2014

AMMAN — President Bashar Assad’s government and the Syrian opposition are scheduled to sit at peace talks for the first time on Wednesday in Switzerland after nearly three years of civil war.

Assad has the advantage of iron control over his delegation, which is led by officials with long diplomatic experience. The political opposition in exile is struggling to overcome internal divisions and is weakened by rebel statements rejecting its authority. Below is a description of key players:

Government

Walid Al Mouallem

Assad’s foreign minister and head of the government delegation. As ambassador to Washington in the 1990s, when Syria and Israel embarked on failed peace talks, Mouallem has more than a decade of direct experience in high-stake talks.

The 73-year old career diplomat was appointed foreign minister in 2006 to signal a more flexible foreign policy by Assad. Mouallem can talk tough. He has denied findings of a UN investigation that said he threatened former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Al Hariri two weeks before Hariri was assassinated by a massive car bomb in Beirut in 2005.

In public appearances since the revolt against Assad’s rule broke out in March 2011, Mouallem has towed the official line, blaming the demonstrations on a foreign conspiracy and dismissing the possibility of Assad giving up power. Mouallem is from a Sunni Muslim family in Damascus, where an alliance between the city’s wealthy Sunnis and Assad’s Alawite minority, has been a pillar of the four-decade Assad family’s rule.

Bouthaina Shaaban

An adviser to Assad and a rare non-security figure with direct access to the president. An Alawite who was a translator to the President’s father, Hafez Assad, Shaaban’s career has been shaped by the elder Assad and his historic decision before his death in 2000 to turn down a peace deal with Israel that would have returned most of the Golan Heights to Syria.

Shaaban, who has acted on occasions as a de facto spokesman for Bashar, has a PhD in English literature from Britain. Although she espoused reform early in the revolt, she has appeared more hardline as the anti-Assad camp took up arms. She has denied that children were killed in a nerve gas attack on rebel neighbourhoods of Damascus in August last year.

Faisal Mekdad

Officially deputy foreign minister, Mekdad is one of the most powerful figures in the Cabinet by virtue of his connections with the intelligence apparatus and the ruling Baath Party. A protégé of Farouq Al Shara, Syria’s ceremonial Sunni vice president who has been sidelined since the revolt started, Mekdad is calm and deliberate in projecting support for Assad, while being fiercely critical of the uprising and the subsequent rise of Islamist rebels. He is from the southern province of Deraa, the birthplace of the revolt.

Omran Zoabi

Information minister and a lawyer by training, also from Deraa. Zoabi, an avowed Baathist like Mekdad, has been assuming a more public role on the domestic scene defending Assad’s handling of the revolt and attacking the opposition as stooges of foreign governments.

Bashar Jaafari

Syria’s UN ambassador. Jaafari is close to Assad and his defence of Assad’s handling of the revolt has been key to projecting to an international audience an image of government cohesiveness. Erudite and confident in public, Jaafari worked and studied in France.

Key opposition figures who may attend

Ahmad Al Jarba

President of the Western-backed umbrella opposition group in exile, the National Coalition. Jarba was elected six months ago after a bitter power struggle that saw the ascendancy of an opposition bloc backed by Riyadh but less influenced by Islamists.

Jarba’s leadership was called in question when he slapped a coalition member at a meeting of the coalition two months ago, but he has since defeated a challenge to his leadership by a Qatari-backed wing and established a rapport with Kurdish parties who were brought into the Coalition.

Born in the northeastern Syrian province of Hasaka, which is inhabited by Arabs and Kurds, 44-year-old Jarba belongs to the Shammar, a large Arab tribe that extends into Saudi Arabia and Iraq. He was a political prisoner for two years in the 1990s. He was also arrested during the uprising and fled to Saudi Arabia, a Sunni state that is leading support for the Syrian opposition.

Riad Seif

One of the most prominent figures in the opposition, Seif played a key role in founding the National Coalition. In recent months he has been out of the limelight as he faced health problems.

Seif, a former businessman in his 60s, remains an influential figure in opposition politics behind the scenes with a reservoir of moral authority for his longstanding opposition to Assad. Since Assad took office in 2000, Seif was jailed for two times for a total of eight years.

Michel Kilo

A Christian opposition campaigner who has spearheaded efforts by the mainly Sunni Muslim opposition to appeal to minorities, Kilo is considered the brains behind the ascendancy of Jarba to the coalition. A veteran opposition campaigner and former political prisoner, he has a deep understanding of the Assad family and the intricate working of the security apparatus. A writer versed in several languages, Kilo was jailed for three years before the revolt after writing a column criticising the Alawite domination of the military.

Farouq Tayfour

A Muslim Brotherhood stalwart among the most influential in the group’s collegiate leadership. Born in the city of Hama in 1945, Tayfour fled Syria in the 1980s when a crackdown by Hafez Assad, which especially targeted the Brotherhood, killed many thousands and resulted in the destruction of Tayfour’s home city. A cunning negotiator, Tayfour is known for relishing in political confrontations. His colleagues say before crucial meetings he says: “Now it’s playtime.”

Burhan Ghalioun

Former President of the Syrian National Council, the forerunner of the National Coalition, Ghalioun, a professor of politics living in France, has been advocating democratic reform in his homeland since the 1970s. Criticised for his aloof leadership style when he was Council president, Ghalioun has assumed a low-key but influential role in the coalition as a figure well connected with Gulf and Western governments.

Suhair Al Atassi

One of the few women in the coalition, Atassi is the scion of a political family from the city of Homs with a long history of opposition to Assad family rule. A holder of a French Literature degree from Damascus University, Atassi helped organise a bold demonstrations in central Damascus to demand the release of political prisoners that helped spark the revolt. She was jailed for a month and soon after her release she criticised Assad’s proposed reforms as insufficient, saying he cannot remain “behaving as if he is the master of Syria”.

Anas Al Abdeh

A geologist by training, Abdeh represents a younger generation of pragmatic Islamists with exposure to the West. Abdeh, who lives in Britain, is the external representative of the Damascus Declaration, a movement for political reform.

Peace hopes fade as Israel plans 381 more settler housing units

By - Jan 21,2014 - Last updated at Jan 21,2014

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM — Israel moved ahead Tuesday with plans for another 381 units for West Bank settlers, prompting Palestinian charges it was more interested in building settlements than building peace.

It was the third such announcement in just over two weeks, and raised to 2,530 the number of new settler units announced since the start of the year.

The new construction will take place in Givat Zeev, a settlement which lies immediately south of the West Bank city of Ramallah, Peace Now spokesman Lior Amihai told AFP.

“The Israeli Civil Administration, which falls under the defence ministry, has published plans for the construction of 381 extra units in Givat Zeev,” he said.

The move comes just three weeks after Israel’s release on December 31 of 26 veteran Palestinian prisoners, in accordance with commitments under US-led peace talks.

“This is the third time since the last phase of Palestinian prisoner releases that the government has approved plans for new houses,” Amihai told AFP.

The announcement showed that the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “not serious about the two-state solution and that its actions are contradictory with the negotiations”.

On January 6, Israel approved plans for 272 new units in various West Bank settlements, and four days later it unveiled plans for more than 1,877 new units, some in annexed Arab East Jerusalem.

Settlements vs. peace

Last July, Israel and the Palestinians embarked on nine months of direct negotiations at the urging of US Secretary of State John Kerry.

But over the past six months, Israel has not slowed its construction on land the Palestinians want for a future state, raising questions over its commitment to the talks.

Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said the message was clear.

“Netanyahu’s government does not want peace,” he told AFP.

“This decision confirms that Netanyahu’s government only wants to continue settlement building, which will destroy any possible peace.”

With very little progress visible and the April deadline for a framework agreement looming, Erakat said there was no chance the Palestinians would contemplate any extension of the talks.

“We’ve not been presented with a [plan for] extending negotiations, but we will not extend them for even an additional day after the nine month period we agreed on,” he said.

“There are still three months left which Israel can use to move with us towards a peace agreement, but its actions confirm that it’s not interested in this. It’s destroying everything that might help a comprehensive peace agreement.”

Last week, four key European states summoned Israeli ambassadors over the January 10 settlement announcement, drawing the ire of Netanyahu, who denounced the move as lacking “balance and fairness”.

Netanyahu has also denied that Israel is breaching any prior commitment to the peace talks in its persistent settlement expansion.

“We are keeping in line exactly with the understandings we undertook at the beginning of the talks,” he said in an address to the foreign press on January 16.

“Israel undertook no restraints on construction.”

Israeli construction on land the Palestinians want for a future state is one of the thorniest issues of the peace process, and brought down the last attempt at direct talks in 2010.

The international community considers all Jewish settlements built on land Israel seized in the war of 1967 to be illegal.

New Beirut car bombing against Hizbollah kills 4

By - Jan 21,2014 - Last updated at Jan 21,2014

BEIRUT — A suicide car bomb killed four people in south Beirut Tuesday, in the latest in a string of attacks targeting strongholds of Lebanon’s powerful Shiite movement and Syria ally Hizbollah.

The blast was quickly claimed by Al Nusra Front in Lebanon, a group believed to be linked to Al Qaeda’s Syrian arm.

“Four people are dead, and there are 35 injured,” Red Cross spokesman Ayad Al Monzer told AFP.

The army said it had discovered the remains of explosive devices, along with body parts apparently from the suicide bomber and an explosive belt that did not detonate.

Al Nusra Front in Lebanon, in a statement on Twitter, said it was behind the attack.

“With the help of God almighty we have responded to the massacres carried out by the party of Iran [Hizbollah]... with a martyrdom operation in their backyard in the southern [Beirut] suburbs,” it said.

The blast took place on busy Al Arid Street in the Haret Hreik neighbourhood, targeted by a suicide car bombing earlier this month.

An AFP photographer saw troops and Hizbollah security men deployed, as firemen worked to put out the flames and rescue workers took the wounded to hospitals.

The blast is the sixth to target areas considered Hizbollah strongholds since the group announced on April 30 that it was sending fighters to support President Bashar Assad in neighbouring Syria.

And it was the third in a month.

Less than a week ago, a car bomb exploded in Hermel in the eastern Bekaa Valley, killing three people. That attack was also claimed by Al Nusra Front in Lebanon.

And on January 2, a suicide car bombing claimed by the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) killed five people on the same street targeted Tuesday.

While the attacks appear to be targeting the Hizbollah, the victims have all been civilians.

Lebanon violence spiralling

Tuesday’s killing sparked swift condemnation at home and abroad.

President Michel Sleiman urged “national unity,” which he said would “reduce the chances of terrorism, a phenomenon that must be fought hard and relentlessly.

France and the United States also condemned the violence and offering condolences to the victims.

Lebanon has suffered a spike in violence since the war in Syria broke out, with the frequency of attacks rising in recent weeks.

The conflict between Alawite Syrian President Bashar Assad and a Sunni-led uprising has stoked long-standing tensions between Alawite and Sunni residents in the northern city of Tripoli.

On Tuesday, one person died of wounds suffered in the latest clashes there, and four soldiers were wounded, a security source said.

That brought to seven the death toll in three days of clashes between the Sunni Bab Al Tebbaneh and Alawite Jabal Mohsen districts.

Targeted attacks have also struck opponents of Hizbollah and Damascus.

On Friday, a day after the Hermel car bombing, eight people were killed in cross-border shelling of the Sunni frontier town of Arsal.

And on December 27, moderate Sunni politician Mohammed Chatah, known for his opposition to Syria’s regime, was assassinated in a massive car bombing in central Beirut that also killed seven others.

Salman Sheikh, director of the Brookings Doha Centre think tank, said the security situation in Lebanon was trending badly.

“What should worry people is this frequency, the short time period between each bombing,” he told AFP.

Lebanon was dominated by Syria for nearly 30 years until its troops withdrew under pressure in 2005, and it continues to be deeply affected by events in its larger neighbour.

The conflict has contributed to a nine-month political impasse over forming a government, with the anti-Damascus March 14 movement and Hizbollah unable to reach a deal.

However, key March 14 figure and leader of the Future bloc Saad Hariri said Tuesday he was rescinding a previous refusal to join a government with Hizbollah.

“I have made this decision for the sake of Lebanon’s interests, rather than my own,” the former premier said.

The overture has raised hopes a new government could be in the works, which Sheikh said “may provide some antidote” to the violence.

“It would, I hope, illustrate that the main parties are not interested in this kind of thing... and that the finger points more to the Syrian side, whether it’s the Syrian regime or Sunni extremists fighting against it,” he said.

Iraq says it intends to make 3 new provinces

By - Jan 21,2014 - Last updated at Jan 21,2014

BAGHDAD — Iraq’s Shiite-led government said Tuesday it had decided in principle to create three new provinces from contested parts of the country in an apparent attempt to address Sunni grievances and counter the expansion of the Kurdish self-rule region.

One of those provinces would be centred on Fallujah, a city overrun earlier this month by Al Qaeda and allied insurgents after more than a year of protests there and in other Sunni cities against what they consider treatment as second-class citizens. Separate province status was not a major Sunni demand, but it could allow the area to receive increased federal funding.

The other two areas — Tuz Khormato and the Ninevah Plain — border Iraq’s northern Kurdish self-rule region. The former is a mixed city containing Arabs, Kurds, and ethnic Turkomen, while the latter has a large Christian population.

A statement said the Cabinet had “agreed in principle to turn the areas of Tuz, Fallujah and the Ninevah Plain into provinces and the Cabinet will decide after the fulfilment of the necessary requirements.” It did not give a reason for the decision.

Turkomen and Christians, many of whom fear absorption into the Kurdistan regional government, have been demanding separate province status for Tuz Khormato and Ninevah Plain for years. The Fallujah announcement, however, was unexpected.

Geneva II offers ‘best chance for political solution’ in Syria — Oxfam

By - Jan 21,2014 - Last updated at Jan 21,2014

AMMAN — The Geneva II Conference, which opens on Wednesday, “must deliver real change in the lives of ordinary Syrians”, said aid agency Oxfam in a statement issued on Tuesday.

“Millions of lives are riding on this event, which offers the best chance of ending the violence and alleviating the suffering of the millions of Syrians caught up in the conflict,” the organisation said.

More than 2.3 million refugees have fled their homes to neighbouring countries, and an estimated 9.3 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian assistance inside Syria.

“Geneva II offers a real opportunity for a major breakthrough for all those who are suffering the effects of this devastating crisis. This chance must not be squandered,” the statement quoted Oxfam’s adviser on humanitarian and security issues, Shaheen Chughtai, as saying.

“While negotiations will not resolve the crisis overnight, they should instead deliver a clear timeline and process for doing so. Time will fly this week — and every second in Montreux counts,” he said.

“Whatever comes out of the talks, strides must be made to alleviate the humanitarian suffering of ordinary Syrians – this cannot be used as a political bargaining chip,” Chughtai stressed.

Oxfam “wants to see the full and active participation of women and civil society organisations in the political process moving forward”, the statement said.

Oxfam called for Syrian civil society groups to be involved in the implementation of negotiated agreements, including monitoring ceasefires and human rights violations.

“The peace talks should involve all governments and institutions involved in the conflict and those intending to play a part in Syria’s reconstruction,” the agency added.

Oxfam called on the international community not to undermine the talks.

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