Tues. 23 Nov. 2010

GULF NEWS  French book stirs up Mideast interest……………………….1

GUARDIAN  How international law affects the Palestine 'peace process'…4

 Egyptian elections: independents fight for hearts and minds in 'fixed ballot'………………………………………………….7

HAARETZ  Yes, Israel is a banana republic…………………………….12

 A new way to embitter Palestinian lives…………………...14

DAILY TELEGRAPH  WikiLeaks release: WikiLeaks to release three million secret US documents ……………………………………………..16

LATIMES  Israeli lawmakers approve bill that would complicate withdrawals in Jerusalem, Golan Heights………………….18 HOME PAGE French book stirs up Mideast interest Dans Le Secret des Presidents reveals the unfair games nations play in their self- interest By Sami Moubayed, Gulf News, 23 Nov. 2010,

Earlier in the year, French author Vincent Nouzille published a groundbreaking book, Dans Le Secret des Presidents, which is selling like hot cakes in Beirut, especially after its excerpts were translated into Arabic and published by Lebanese daily As Safir.

The book, which is yet to be translated into English, reveals behind-the-scenes deals between world leaders, with a particular emphasis on the Arab world. Much of what it revealed is not new to the Arabs, about the animosity between US President Ronald 2 Reagan and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. It says, for example, that after the first Gulf War, George H. W. Bush contacted French President Francois Mitterand and told him that they will "dance in the streets of Baghdad" once the world is rid of Saddam Hussain.

The book struck a particular raw nerve in Lebanon, however, when it came to UN Security Council Resolution 1559, which it claims, Rafik Hariri knew of in advance. It also sheds light on the US-Franco rapprochement after the 2005 murder of Hariri, which culminated in a joint decision to bring down the Syrian government, and blame it for the Hariri Affair. Reportedly, Nouzille wrote his book after obtaining permission to go through official archives of the Elysee Palace, which is strange given that the French usually do not publish their official documents until 30-60 years have passed since their occurrence.

He also interviewed leading French and US politicians of the Jacques Chirac and George W. Bush eras, coming out with a

2 picture that is grotesque — to say the least — about what political scientists usually refer to as "the game of nations".

The book reveals that contrary to the democratic image France and the US projected, the two countries were willing to intervene in the affairs of two sovereign states, with a completely straight face, toying with scenarios of regime change that resemble those of the 1950s.

In September 2003, for example, Bush and Chirac met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, six months after the Iraq War. Bush reportedly asked his French counterpart to warn President Bashar Al Assad of Syria to refrain from annoying the US, shortly after the State Department described the Syrian leader as a new Jamal Abdul Nasser whose ambitions "need to be contained". Nouzille adds that speaking to US Congressmen in March 2004, Chirac asked for joint efforts to reduce Syrian influence in Lebanon. 3 When Chirac and Bush dined on June 5, 2004, the French President mentioned upcoming presidential elections in Lebanon in October, asking for US support to bring about a Lebanese president independent of Syrian influence, thereby replacing President Emile Lahoud, and calling for sanctions on Syria in order to secure its speedy withdrawal from Lebanon.

The book adds that less than a week after Hariri's murder, the French and American ambassadors in Beirut concluded that Syria was responsible for the crime, without the slightest shred of evidence against the Syrians. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak contacted Chirac to push for a similar argument while the French President was reportedly on the phone with Condoleezza Rice several times a week, to coordinate joint action on Lebanon, against Syria.

In one document, Chirac writes in black (with a red underline) of the need to incriminate Syria in Hariri's murder, in order to weaken, and eventually topple, the Syrian government. When Al Assad announced the withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon

3 in March 2005, Chirac reportedly tells Bush that "this is not enough because Syria will maintain strategic points in Lebanon". Chirac calls for more pressure on Damascus to isolate Syria and "get Hezbollah to distance itself" from Syria.

The book reminds us of earlier literature that rocked the Middle East, like Miles Copland's Game of Nations in which he confessed that the CIA had toppled Syria's democratically elected president Shukri Al Quwatli in 1949 and replaced him with a military dictator in order to make peace with Israel and approve passage of US oil pipelines through Syrian territory. The only difference is that usually when such groundbreaking information is revealed, it is done decades after events take place, when all players involved are long gone, and not just five years later, as is the case with Nouzille's book.

The timing of the book could not have been worse for the March 14 Coalition that is headed by current Prime Minister Sa'ad Hariri, 4 who was staunchly pro-Chirac in 2005-2007. Many of its members built the entire legitimacy of their careers on the anti- Syrian policies bequeathed to them by France and US during the Bush and Chirac era.

The fact that Chirac was seemingly more anti-Syrian than Bush himself puts these March 14 figures in hot water, especially as Hariri today is trying to mend fences both with Syria and Hezbollah.

Additionally the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) is currently on everybody's mind in Lebanon as indictments are expected to name Hezbollah members in the Hariri affair. Since last summer, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been telling the world that the STL is an "Israeli and American project" that cannot be trusted or supported, calling on the Lebanese people to boycott it, and the Lebanese state to distance itself from it.

Nouzille's book, if anything, adds credibility to Hezbollah's argument and proves its leader right.

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How international law affects the Palestine 'peace process' The Israel-Palestine 'peace process' is in a vegetative state, leaving the application of international law a complex process Oliver Miles, Guardian, 23 Nov. 2010,

As a former professional diplomat, I regard international law, with all its shortcomings, as much better than the alternative, the law of the jungle. I have often argued this with Israeli officials in particular, but they tend to prefer the doctrine of the iron wall, which they hope their enemies are powerless to break down and behind which they may live in safety.

I have to admit that the law affects international relations unpredictably and sometimes perversely. Right now Lebanon 5 seems to be approaching a crisis. The UN security council has sought to apply international law, but may only have made the crisis more dangerous. Sudan, too, is approaching a turning point: the referendum on the possible independence of the south. The international community's attempt to bring the Sudanese president to court has not made a peaceful resolution more likely.

In this article I'd like to consider some recent instances where the law may affect the Palestine-Israel "peace process", currently in a vegetative state.

First, "universal jurisdiction". Under UK law, people accused of certain crimes including some war crimes may be prosecuted in British courts even if they are not British and the alleged crimes did not take place in Britain. (The list does not include, it appears, the crime of starting an illegal war, so there is no prospect of prosecuting Tony Blair or George Bush.) Some Israelis involved in the Gaza war last year have cancelled visits for fear of arrest.

5 The Israelis raised this with William Hague in Israel this month, and he promised that the law will be changed. A Foreign Office spokesman is reported to have told the press that this "did not reflect a change in British law regarding universal jurisdiction, but sought to clarify that officials on state business are immune to arrest. He said the government intends to amend the law so interest groups cannot misuse it in ways that damage Britain's foreign relations".

The bit about officials is relatively straightforward. Diplomatic immunity from prosecution extends to visiting ministers and officials, and if there are any ambiguities about that they should be cleared up. But the bit about preventing "interest groups" from "misusing" the law is more problematic. The cancellation of a visit by Tzipi Livni, now out of office but foreign minister at the time of the Gaza war (and probable future foreign minister and perhaps prime minister), was a particularly sore point.

6 A second legal issue is the export of arms to Israel. In January 2009, during the Gaza war, activists broke into a factory in Hove and smashed up machinery which they believed was being used to manufacture bombing equipment for export to Israel against the law. They did not deny their actions, but used the defence of "lawful excuse", committing an offence to prevent a more serious crime. They were acquitted by a jury, and the judge is reported to have commended them for their action.

In a similar affair on two separate occasions in 2006 activists who broke into and damaged a plant in Derry alleged to be supplying missile software to Israel were acquitted. The Hove story was reported in the Guardian, but with this exception both stories were largely and unaccountably ignored by national and international media. In both cases repeat action seems likely.

The third issue, which has just been raised by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, is the use of US government (USAID) funds to build roads in the occupied territories. The Israeli occupation is illegal under international law, according to the US government as well as the rest of the international community.

6 The newspaper asks how it is possible that the Obama administration continues to subsidise the roads. "If the state of Israel is insisting on continuing to hold on and de facto annex the West Bank, it should also be allocating the money needed to take care of the infrastructure."

Their reporter asked an American official why the administration isn't demanding of Israel that it pay the price of the occupation out of its own pocket. "Who told you we aren't demanding that?" replied the official. "We are also demanding a construction freeze in the settlements and you know at least as well as anyone else what is happening on the ground." The Quartet, or Condoleezza Rice acting on its behalf in 2007, has given responsibility for promoting the economic development of Palestine and relating it to the peace process to Tony Blair, of all people.

US aid to Israel runs at around $3bn a year, by far the most 7 generous aid programme in the world in proportion to the population receiving it. The US government is reported to have offered another $3bn-worth of the most modern bombers if Israel will suspend its (illegal) settlement-building activities for three months to allow the peace process to be resuscitated. According to the Israeli press this would be over and above the regular payments, but this is not confirmed. The efforts of the state department spokesman to avoid answering that question are worth reading by connoisseurs of evasion.

Friends and enemies of Israel will react in very different ways to these stories. As one who tries to remain a friend, I regard the first as the most important. I argued when I was still a government official that we should talk to the PLO when they were still regarded simply as terrorists, and I have argued publicly that the British and other governments should now be ready to talk to Hamas and Hezbollah, and I would add the Taliban, because it is only by talking that differences can be identified and resolved. By the same argument, we must be able to talk freely to the Israelis, whether officials or not. Legal obstacles to their coming to Britain for such talks hurt the cause of peace.

7 But I am glad I do not have to draft the law that will preserve the principle of universal jurisdiction but ensure someone like Tzipi Livni can travel freely.

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Egyptian elections: independents fight for hearts and minds in 'fixed ballot' Muslim Brotherhood and rivals raise profiles for Sunday's vote, but without hope of unseating ruling NDP Jack Shenker in Cairo, Guardian, 22 Nov. 2010,

The cramped alleys of Kirdasa do not lend themselves to easy passage. With a mass of broken and dusty rocks below and a tangle of casually strung electricity cables above, even donkey 8 carts find it tricky to negotiate the town's narrow twists and turns.

But that has not stopped Abdel Salaam Bashandi's campaign bus, a bright-red pickup truck adorned with posters and a creaking sound system, from plunging into the warren.

"Islam is the solution – wake up and vote on 28 November!" blares the loudspeaker, as hundreds of well-wishers crowd at their doorways to shake hands with Bashandi, a bespectacled book publisher in his early 50s.

"We have great, great hopes of this poll," grins the Muslim Brotherhood candidate amid the commotion. "Of course this isn't about winning the seat. The regime won't allow such a thing."

Welcome to the bizarre world of Egypt's parliamentary elections, where thousands of candidates from dozens of parties are competing for parliamentary seats – all safe in the knowledge that their campaigning will have virtually no impact on the result.

8 "No one thinks parliamentary elections in Egypt are democratic or even semi-democratic," says Mona El-Ghobashy, a political scientist. "The elections do not determine who governs. They are not free and fair. Citizens know that elections are rigged, with polling places often blocked off by baton-wielding police, so few of them vote."

Yet despite the fraud accompanying what is theoretically one of the largest democratic exercises in the Middle East, these elections matter deeply to a plethora of political forces – from the ruling National Democratic party (NDP), which is guaranteed to emerge from the ballot with a landslide majority in parliament, to a wide range of opposition movements exploiting the poll to mobilise local support bases and raise their party's profile.

For political observers within Egypt and beyond, Sunday's vote promises something else too, a rare insight into the drama over who will succeed the country's ill and ageing president, Hosni 9 Mubarak, himself up for re-election next year.

Kirdasa, a palm-fringed suburb of Cairo, offers a unique window on to the surreal dynamics of this poll. Once a village far from the chaos of the capital, Cairo's unstoppable urban sprawl has now enveloped the place completely; in recent years migration from the countryside has sent population levels soaring, making this electoral district one of the biggest and most hotly contested in the country.

Every large-scale party is running a candidate here, but few of Kirdasa's residents seem enthusiastic.

Although the area laps up to the edge of the 4,500-year-old Giza pyramids, it is this constituency's more modern neighbourhoods, and the contrast between them, that best explains why so many voters feel excluded from political life.

Kirdasa's vast electoral district encompasses gated compounds for the rich alongside redbrick settlements for the poor, the type of neighbourhood where six in 10 Cairenes now reside and a stark

9 illustration of the social chasm that has come to epitomise Mubarak's Egypt.

"Our circumstances don't allow for politics; we're living on the breadline," says Alaa Khalil, a 37-year-old welder and Kirdasa native. "The sons of Egypt are in crisis right now. Food prices are spiralling, our incomes are going down, and we have almost no means with which to feed our kids. Elections may have some value for the 'big sharks', but not for us."

Khalil's cynicism is understandable. Kirdasa has long been marginalised from Egypt's civil and political centre. With the area viewed by the government as a potential opposition stronghold, no resident has ever been allowed to become a security officer or hold a senior position within the state bureaucracy.

At the last parliamentary elections in 2005 Bashandi, who, in common with other Muslim Brotherhood candidates, is forced to 10 run as an independent to circumvent a legal ban on religious parties, claimed to have won a majority of 12,000 votes, a figure backed up by a number of independent sources.

But the authorities refused to accept the ballot count and instead declared Bashandi's rival NDP candidate the winner. Later that day riot police stormed the town, tear-gassing hundreds of protesting youths.

This time few of Bashandi's supporters believe he will represent them in parliament, regardless of the final vote tally. Five of them have already been detained by the security services, adding to the 1,200 Muslim Brotherhood activists arrested nationally in the run- up to these elections.

In a damning report detailing government repression, Amnesty International concluded that "the pattern being established is one that is already familiar from previous elections, which were carried out amid … serious human rights violations".

10 It is this sort of political repression that led a host of prominent dissidents, including former UN nuclear weapons chief Mohamed ElBaradei, to call for a boycott of these elections, a call the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as a number of legally sanctioned secular opposition parties offering no real challenge to the political status quo, has chosen to ignore.

"What is happening right now is the actual rigging of the vote," Saad el-Katatni, a prominent Brotherhood politician, said in a press conference this morning.

Bashandi said: "In normal circumstances we are not allowed to give lectures or hold conferences, we're deprived of all opportunities to promote our beliefs and connect with the community. During election time, those opportunities sometimes arise, so to remove ourselves from that process altogether would be illogical."

11 Judging by the adulation on the streets, Bashandi's anti-corruption and pro-local services message is finding an audience, despite the frustration at the inequities of the voting process.

But Sunday's vote is not only a litmus test for Egypt's opposition movements as they seek to refine their divergent tactics ahead of next year's presidential ballot. It is also a critical moment for the NDP, which, in light of Mubarak's waning health, is beginning a search for his successor – the future leader of the biggest nation in the Arab world.

Mubarak's son Gamal, long considered to be heir-apparent to his father, recently has been forced to publicly distance himself from suggestions that he might inherit power, while competing factions in the NDP clash over Egypt's post-Mubarak state.

Those internecine struggles have put the ruling party into the strange position of running several official candidates for the same seat in some districts, including Kirdasa, where two formal NDP candidates and one other NDP member are both lining up against Bashandi.

11 Some disaffected elements of the local NDP are even throwing their weight behind Bashandi, according to local sources.

"It's impossible to separate the coming parliamentary elections from the 2011 presidential race," says Bahey el-din Hassan, director of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. "The NDP's latest decision to have multiple candidates compete over single seats means the internal party battle has moved from 'behind the scenes' to the front lines of elections."

And so Egypt will elect its parliament this week with a collective shrug from the majority of its population, while below the surface a series of developments help reshape the political trajectory of one of the west's closest allies in the Middle East.

For at least one voter in Kirdasa, though, polling day cannot come too soon. "We have lived our entire lives under Mubarak and the 12 NDP but Egypt is on the brink of something big over the next year," says Sara Moustafa, a 19-year-old student, who is voting for the first time. "Times are changing; those at the top may think we are too young to have an opinion, but here we are. They'll see."

Media crackdown Egypt's vibrant independent media sector has been dealt a series of blows in the run-up to this year's parliamentary elections, with TV stations shut down, critical chatshows hauled off air, outspoken columnists and newspaper editors forced out of their jobs, and new regulations bringing mass SMS messaging and live broadcasts firmly under state control.

Despite government assurances that freedom of expression will not be restricted as the country enters a year of intense political uncertainty, rights groups have criticised a "climate of terror" created by the state, in which dissident voices are excluded from public debate. "At a time when the free flow of political information takes on heightened significance, the government is

12 intent on controlling all sources of alternative knowledge," warned the prominent Egyptian blogger Baheyya last month.

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Yes, Israel is a banana republic There were times when Israel asserted its independence, even though it was considerably weaker economically than it is today. By Moshe Arens Haaretz, 23 Nov. 2010,

In December 1981, in response to Washington's criticism of Israeli policies, Prime Minister Menachem Begin summoned the U.S. ambassador and told him that Israel was not a "banana republic." As for the American demand that Israel repeal the Golan Heights Law, Begin said to the American ambassador that "there is no force on earth that can bring about its rescission." 13

Surprisingly enough, U.S.-Israeli ties improved following Begin's determined stand in defense of Israel's interests. U.S. President Ronald Reagan and his Secretary of State, Alexander Hague, learned to respect Begin for his steadfastness and honesty. Yitzhak Shamir, as well, who was not prepared to give an inch when it came to Israel's interests, earned the respect and even admirations of U.S. Secretary or State George Shultz.

Those were times when Israel asserted its independence and was really not a banana republic, even though it was considerably weaker economically than it is today.

But now, every time our prime minister visits Washington or receives a message from there, he backtracks on principles he has sworn to defend. His promises that brought him victory in the last elections are gone with the wind.

When he, under American pressure, agreed to a 10-month freeze on construction in Judea and Samaria, he announced that this was

13 a one-time move and that construction would resume after 10- months. It took no more than another trip to the U.S., American pressure and some financial inducements for him to change his mind. Israel really does not need the F-35's that have been offered, and wouldn't even get them for another five years.

It seems that everything is for sale; principles and promises have no real value anymore. We have, indeed, become a banana republic. If the prime minister believes that this unprincipled behavior will earn him the respect and friendship of the administration in Washington, he is gravely mistaken. He should learn from his predecessors, Begin and Shamir.

What is all this backtracking for? To bring Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to the negotiating table. Abbas does not believe in negotiating without preconditions. He has preconditions, and it is not clear that even if they are met he will come to the table. He prefers Washington to squeeze concessions out of Israel over 14 facing Netanyahu across the table. And after being provided with sufficient inducements, can negotiation with him bring an end to the long drawn-out Israeli- Palestinian conflict? The irony of it all is that these negotiations, that Abbas is so hesitant to begin, are nothing but a sham.

They cannot possibly bring about an end to the conflict, for the simple reason that Abbas does not represent the Palestinians. Not only does he not speak for the Palestinians in Gaza, but his standing in Judea and Samaria is worse than precarious.

A Palestinian journalist recently stated that he is corrupt, discredited, weak and does not have much power. If Israel were to withdraw from Judea and Samaria, his administration would probably collapse and Hamas would take over.

The only thing that keeps him in his present position is the massive infusion of American money. The administration in Washington believes that they can engage in Palestinian "nation building" by using American money and having an American general build an army for Abbas.

14 It won't be the first time that the Americans will have misunderstood Middle Eastern realities. Those who claim that Israel can bring about an end to the conflict by negotiations with Abbas are living in a fantasy.

Whereas in the past, negotiations with Egypt and Jordan were truly direct, now the U.S. administration is not serving as the honest broker but rather as Abbas' sponsor and supporter.

The American plans are transparent. In the additional three-month moratorium on construction in Judea and Samaria that they insist that Israel agree to, they want negotiations to lead to an Israeli agreement to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines.

We can expect further American pressure and payoffs to get Israel to agree to that. And once that is settled, additional construction in Judea and Samaria will depend on Arab agreement. Don't hold 15 your breath waiting for Abbas' approval of such construction.

What is it they say about the slippery slope? Netanyahu has stepped on it and he is sliding down very fast.

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A new way to embitter Palestinian lives Settlers in the occupied territories are converting springs and other water sources into memorials and tourism sites. Haaretz Editorial 23 Nov. 2010,

Settlers in the occupied territories have found a new way to embitter Palestinians' lives: converting springs and other water sources into memorials and tourism sites, as Zafrir Rinat reported in yesterday's Haaretz. As if it were not bad enough that Palestinians have no access to most of these springs since they are barred from using roads near the settlements, Israeli flags now fly

15 over these water sources and they are walled off by fences and guards.

"Over the last two years there has been great development in the tourism field, and as part of the development program [sponsored] by the Tourism Ministry and the council, fouled springs are being turned into pleasant tourism sites ... and opened to the general public," the Mateh Binyamin Regional Council wrote in one of its publicity brochures.

But they aren't open to the entire public. The whitewashed language used to justify the new venture is only a prelude to this statement: "For obvious security reasons, and due to the terrorist attacks that have occurred in the past, the Israel Defense Forces do not allow Arabs access to springs near the settlements."

This is the time-honored system for abusing the Palestinians and driving them off their lands, under the settlers' dubious 16 orchestration. First they set up a settlement (which is ostensibly legal ) or an outpost (which is illegal even by Israeli standards ). Next, the IDF, which is committed to ensuring the settlers' safety, refuses to allow Palestinians to travel in that vicinity.

But even this is not enough for the settlers, so they create provocations. For their takeover of the springs does not just deny the Palestinians access to water sources; it also, and primarily, creates a violent provocation. Putting up a sign that erases a spring's Arab name and invents a Hebrew name to replace it, or destroying an ancient building and putting up a memorial in its place in an attempt to create an exclusive Jewish settler memory, are provocations solely for the sake of provocation.

"Access to the springs is liable to change, in order to prevent violent friction," the IDF Spokesman's Office says. So the settlers are being rewarded twice over: Instead of punishing them for their Wild West behavior, the state is standing behind them and supplying them with protection and funding.

16 The Tourism Ministry must understand that such shameful colonialist acts are liable to make it hard to market Israel as an open democracy. The ministry would do better to reconsider the costs and benefits of this project and remove its aegis from the settlers' disruptive behavior.

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WikiLeaks release: WikiLeaks to release three million secret US documents The WikiLeaks website has announced it plans to publish nearly three million more secret US documents in its next mass release of confidential material. Alex Spillius in Washington, Daily Telegraph, 23 Nov. 2010,

It would be seven times larger than its release last month, when it 17 posted some 400,000 secret documents about the war in Iraq on its site.

"Next release is 7x the size of the Iraq War Logs. Intense pressure over it for months. Keep us strong," WikiLeaks said on its Twitter feed, adding a link to a donations website.

"The coming months will see a new world, where global history is redefined." it added in a later message.

It would be WikiLeaks' third mass release of classified documents after it published 77,000 secret US files on the Afghan conflict in July.

The US authorities fear that a substantial amount of the next leak could include cables prepared by ambassadors and diplomats in the Middle East that could prove more damaging than the earlier releases.

17 The State Department has previously expressed concerns that the material could reveal the "source and methods" used by the US to gather intelligence overseas.

Foreign leaders could be able to read what American diplomats have written about them in secret cables sent to Washington, such as appraisals of their leaders' personalities, competence and honesty.

Earlier this year Bradley Manning, the soldier suspected of providing the material for the first two leaks, boasted about providing 260,000 stolen cables to WikiLeaks, according to a former computer hacker who chatted with him online.

"Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public," Manning wrote at 18 the time.

However, analysts said the announcement by WikiLeaks, which gave no details of the contents of the documents and said only that the release would be in "coming months", could be designed to relieve pressure on Julian Assange, the website's Australian head. He is wanted in Sweden for questioning related to rape and sexual molestation accusations.

Mr Assange has been in England since leaving Sweden, where the website is based, in August after publicity surrounding the allegations made by two women.

Mark Stephens, a London lawyer working for Mr Assange, said the allegations were "false and without basis". He also said Mr Assange has repeatedly offered to be interviewed by the Swedish authorities.

"All of these offers have been flatly refused by a prosecutor who is abusing her powers by insisting that he return to Sweden at his

18 own expense to be subjected to another media circus that she will orchestrate," he said.

WikiLeaks has defended it earlier releases, saying they have shed light on the two wars.

The Iraq files contained allegations of torture by Iraqi forces which were routinely ignored by the Americans and suggested that there has been 15,000 more civilian deaths in Iraq than previously thought.

Incident reports told how a helicopter gunship involved in the shooting of journalists also shot insurgents after they tried to surrender.

The Afghan logs detailed cooperation by local informers with the US forces, raising fears that Taliban insurgents would exact revenge. A subsequent Pentagon investigation however found 19 there had been no such reprisals.

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Israeli lawmakers approve bill that would complicate withdrawals in Jerusalem, Golan Heights DAN PERRY, JOSEF FEDERMAN Los Angeles Times (original story is by the Associated Press), 22 Nov. 2010,

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's parliament passed a bill Monday that could complicate peace efforts with the Palestinians and Syria by making it very difficult for any government to make territorial withdrawals.

The bill requires a two-thirds Knesset majority to cede land in east Jerusalem to the Palestinians or in the Golan Heights to Syria. Failing that, either withdrawal would become subject to a referendum, and polls show winning public approval would be an uphill battle.

19 The bill — which passed by a 65-33 majority — will have little impact in the short term, since neither deal seems imminent. But it reflects growing jitters by hard-liners in parliament — especially over U.S. efforts to forge a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's own position seems influenced by his need to appease his voter base while preventing the collapse of the peace process — which would anger the Israeli center, alienate America and risk new violence. On Monday, he voted along with the hard-liners.

"Any peace agreement requires national agreement and the bill promises that," he said in a statement. "The Israeli public is involved, aware and responsible and I trust that when the day comes it will support a peace agreement that answers the national interests and security needs of the state of Israel." 20 The Palestinian government in the West Bank, which refuses to negotiate without a freeze on new Jewish construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, condemned the bill. "With the passage of this bill, the Israeli leadership, yet again, is making a mockery of international law," said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. "Ending the occupation of our land is not and cannot be dependent on any sort of referendum." There was no comment from Syria, which lost the Golan Heights to Israel in the 1967 war and wants it all back as the price for peace. Talk of withdrawal is hugely unpopular in Israel, where the heights, which overlook northern Israel, are considered a strategic asset.

With the Syrian negotiations stalled for years, the more acute issue appeared to be east Jerusalem — which Israel also seized in 1967 and which the Palestinians want for their capital.

Israel swiftly annexed the Arab core of the city and has surrounded it with a series of communities to solidify its control. Israelis tend to view these as mere Jewish neighborhoods of the

20 capital — while Palestinians liken them to the West Bank settlements they revile.

Israeli governments over the years have wrestled with how to meet Palestinian demands, which would mean giving up control of one of the world's most coveted historical areas — Jerusalem's Old City — within a stone's throw from Israel's centers of government. Now, the referendum bill would make it even more difficult.

By requiring a two-thirds majority, the law raises the bar for passage. It would also mean that only a rightist government — one that could depend on opposition support — could ever reach such a deal.

Rightist-authored peace deals are less likely but not without precedent: Israel's historic 1979 peace agreement with Egypt was passed in parliament by a 95-18 margin, sponsored by the nationalist government of Menachem Begin. 21 More recently, the interim Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians in the 1990s, reached by the center-left government of Yitzhak Rabin, passed by the slimmest of majorities.

Going to the Israeli public if the parliament vote should fail could be equally difficult.

"Israel has gone back to having a majority of people who view peace as a dangerous trap that the Arabs ... are laying at the feet of weak politicians," wrote respected columnist Akiva Eldar in the Haaretz daily.

Polls tend to show most Israelis oppose ceding the Old City, where Judaism's holiest site shares the same hilltop compound as the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam — both a short walk from a focal point of Christianity at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

21 "There is no doubt that this is a dramatic piece of legislation for the people of Israel and the state of Israel," the bill's sponsor, Yariv Levin of Netanyahu's Likud Party, said before the deliberations began. "The law determines that peace must be made between peoples and not just between leaders."

That Netanyahu allowed a junior member of the coalition to push through so critical a bill probably reflects his own ambivalence toward President Barack Obama's peace push — and the peace enterprise in general.

Under heavy American pressure, Netanyahu has pledged to reach a deal with the Palestinians by September. But he leads a party that is cool to surrendering captured territory and has himself given few indications that he is willing to make the dramatic concessions that would be needed.

The law could still come under a Supreme Court challenge. But if 22 it survives, it would require 80 of 120 lawmakers to approve any withdrawal from those two areas. Without that special majority, the government would need to win approval in a binding national referendum. The law comes as there is some renewed talk of changing the makeup of Netanyahu's coalition by bringing in the centrist Kadima party, which would enable him to proceed more easily with peace moves.

During a parliamentary debate before the vote, Kadima member Meir Sheetrit said that requiring a referendum would weaken the parliament's decision-making powers.

"There is only one referendum here. That referendum is called elections," he said. "If the government doesn't want to withdraw, let it say that. If the government wants peace, let it say that." HOME PAGE

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