Next phase in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations set to open
As Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams are preparing to meet in Jerusalem’s King David Hotel within the hour, news reports describe the following atmospherics:
Palestinian victims of yesterday’s Israeli attack on Gaza are mourned and buried.
Some 17 Qassam rockets have been launched from Gaza into Israel, injuring several people in Sderot (Israeli media indicates that Islamic Jihad, and not Hamas, took credit for firing 11 of the rockets).
At least 13 Palestinians were arrested by the IDF in the West Bank on Wednesday morning — 11 from Ramallah, and 2 from Bethlehem (where Quartet Special Envoy Tony Blair reportedly stayed overnight last night in the city’s best hotel — not named in initial reports, but Ma’an news agency reported later that Blair stayed at the Intercontinental Hotel — to show how Bethlehem is a safe destination for tourists this Christmas season).
Photo taken by Rev. Julie Rowe of the huge poster put up
by the Israeli Ministry of Tourism
just outside the main Israeli checkpoint into Bethlehem.
For an idea of scale, that’s a full size tourist bus entering the gate
at the left side of the photo.
The 307 controversial new housing units being planned at Har Homa are not all: Haaretz reported today that “There are hundreds, even thousands, of planned housing units in the West Bank that have building permits and do not need any further government approval before their construction can begin, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, the head of the Civil Administration, told the interministerial committee on illegal outposts Tuesday. Their construction ‘could cause similar embarrassment to that created by the publication of the tender for building in Har Homa’, he added … Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni agreed. ‘Another advert in the papers for a construction tender could ruin the negotiations with the Palestinians’, she said”. This report in Haaretz is published here.
And, Haaretz reported today, “The security cabinet was set to meet Wednesday to discuss the situation in the Gaza Strip after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert vowed on Tuesday to remove the threat of Qassam rockets from the southern part of the country. ‘The situation in the south of the country, in light of the Qassam rocket fire, has generated a difficult reality’, Olmert told an Institute for National Security Studies conference in Tel Aviv Tuesday night. ‘We will have to act on this matter in the necessary manner, with the appropriate dose and the right timing, without exaggerating and creating unrealistic expectations. We will not rest until the Qassam rocket threat is completely removed from Sderot and the western Negev’.” Haaretz reports, in the same article, that “At Wednesday’s cabinet meeting, ministers were due to hear intelligence reports from security officials as well as reports from Foreign Ministry officials regarding political options … Some two months ago, the cabinet decided on a series of sanctions that would hit the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, including a reduction in electricity and fuel supply. However, several legal opinions on the matter have since rendered most of the cabinet decisions irrelevant. A senior government official said that at the time, the security establishment came out against a wide-scale military campaign in Gaza, but that the ministers would be hearing an updated security assessment“. ‘Since the last cabinet [meeting], there has been movement on the security establishment position, and therefore the ministers need to hear about it from the primary sources’, the government official said”. This Haaretz report hinting heavily that a military operation in Gaza may be imminent is posted here.
