INTERNATIONAL
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
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Israel blocks two UN Gaza schools, citing Hamas threat GAZA CITY: UN plans to address Gaza’s schooling shortage have hit a wall, with Israel banning the construction of two new schools on a site it says could be targeted in strikes on Hamas. The two schools at the centre of the dispute between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) and Israeli authorities are part of the agency’s plans for 12 new schools in the Gaza Strip. At the moment, little more than mounds of sand and some prefabricated building materials mark the site where UNRWA wants to put the new facilities.
The plot was once the location of the preventative security headquarters, which fell into the hands of Hamas fighters after they routed the rival Fatah faction in bloody internecine fighting in June 2007. Little over a year later, the entire building was reduced to rubble when Israeli forces bombed it during Operation Cast Lead, which lasted from late December 2008 to January 2009. Now, a lone guard watches over the precious building materials that UNRWA, which cares for Palestinian refugees, has stacked at the site. “We
saw an opportunity for building on the site of a security installation two civilian schools to educate thousands of children,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness told AFP. The agency has launched a series of projects since Israel announced it would ease a blockade on the Gaza Strip it imposed in 2006, after the kidnap of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit by Gaza militants. Israel tightened the blockade in 2007, after Hamas routed Fatah from Gaza, but bowed to international pressure after a May 2010 raid on aid ships attempting to break the siege, agreeing to loosen the restrictions.
Israel agreed to allow the import of construction materials for projects supervised by the international community, allowing UNRWA to start addressing Gaza’s school shortage. The agency already accommodates over 200,000 students in Gaza, 90 percent of them studying in schools that run double shifts to expand access. But with building material trickling into Gaza and construction running at a slow pace, UNRWA had to turn away some 40,000 schoolchildren at the start of the school year in September. Gunness said the two new facilities
could accommodate some 4,000 children in a district where there are no UNRWA schools, but in October Israel said the construction could not proceed because of Hamas activity in the area. “In the list of the 12 schools that they gave us, we allowed all the schools and only two of them were close to a Hamas implantation,” said Major Guy Inbar, spokesman for the Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT). “We have information that there is still activity of Hamas there in that place and because we don’t
want the Hamas later on to use the schools and the children as human shields... that’s why we didn’t allow them to build,” Inbar told AFP. During the Gaza war, Israel and Hamas accused each other of using civilians as human shields. Residential buildings, some still blackened and pockmarked by the impact of the blast that destroyed the former security headquarters, surround the site. Several bearded men clear debris from the ground of a grey building damaged by the attack, while children file out of a nearby red-brick government school. A few dozen
metres (yards) away lies Al Quds hospital, where France is upgrading the emergency services unit, with Israeli permission. But despite the civilian buildings the surround the site, Inbar said any school there would be at risk. “If there is Hamas activity, they can shoot rockets from there and then when we will attack in response to their shooting, we could hurt the people there,” he said. In January 2009, an Israeli strike next to an UNRWA school in the northern Gaza Strip killed 43 people, in one of the bloodiest episodes in the three-week war. —AFP
Heavy rain, floods kill 30 in Morocco 24 killed in bus crash RABAT: At least 30 people have been killed in Morocco after heavy rain and floods, official sources said yesterday. The official MAP news agency said 24 people died when a bus carrying them was swept away by a flooding river in
ARBIL: An Iraqi Christian woman waits with others outside the French Consulate in the northern Iraqi Kurdish city of Arbil, . —AFP
Iraq foils plot to bomb French embassy in Baghdad BAGHDAD: Iraqi security forces foiled a plot to bomb the French embassy in Baghdad after arresting 12 suspected al Qaeda members in connection with an attack on a Christian church, security officials said yesterday. The al Qaeda cell responsible for the Oct 31 church assault, which ended with 52 hostages and police killed, intended to prepare a car bomb for an attack on the embassy, which is located in Baghdad’s Karrada district, officials said. In April, suicide bombers launched coordinated car bomb attacks on the Iranian, Egyptian and German embassies in the capital, killing up to 40 people and wounding more than 200. Iraqi security forces said on Saturday they had arrested al Qaeda’s Baghdad leader and 11 other members of the Islamist militant group for involvement in the attack on the Our Lady of Salvation cathedral. Militants took more than
100 Christian hostages during Sunday mass. “The reason for targeting the embassy was because the French embassy is very active ... and there is investment activity among French companies in the whole country,” a senior Iraqi security official said. France has been on high alert due to tensions over the presence of its forces in Afghanistan and the country’s ban on full-length Islamic veils. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, a group of mostly Algerianborn militants, has carried out small-scale attacks including the recent abduction of seven foreigners, five of them French, in Niger. When they announced the arrest of the suspects in the church attack, Iraqi authorities said they had seized 6 1/2 tonnes of explosives intended for use against a government ministry, hotels and the Christian community. —Reuters
Iran agrees to discuss its nuclear program TEHRAN: Hardening its position ahead of next week’s nuclear talks with the world powers, Iran’s president vowed yesterday it would not make “one iota” of concessions about its nuclear rights. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said yesterday that any kind of breakthrough could only be expected only if the new talks are held under “equal” conditions and that Iran’s rights are respected. “If you want results from the talks, you must put aside the devil’s temper and sit together under equal conditions on the basis of justice and respect ...
and talk about various economic and nuclear fields, reach a deal and do joint work,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech broadcast live on state TV. The European Union said Iran agreed to talks next week in Geneva and its top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili will meet with EU foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton on Dec. 6 and 7. Her office said she will act “on behalf” of the US, China, Russia, France, Britain and Germany, six nations representing the international community in its standoff over Iran’s nuclear
program. Officials from the six nations are expected to attend the Geneva talks. The meeting was set after several weeks of proposals and counterproposals about a suitable venue and will be the first talks in a year after negotiations bogged down. Addressing a crowd in Sari, north Iran, Ahmadinejad was quick to say that Iran wouldn’t negotiate over its rights enshrined in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. As an NPT member state, Iran says it has every right to enrich uranium to produce nuclear fuel. —AP
A young girl drowned on Tuesday in Tiflet, east of Rabat, when she was swept away while trying to cross a bridge. In the north, one man drowned and rescue services were looking for seven other people swept away by a river in flood. In Casablanca, schools were ordered to shut on Tuesday after Morocco’s biggest city and business centre received a record 18 cm of rain overnight. The head of Morocco’s state-run weather service, Abdellah Masqat, told 2M television the heavy rain would continue until tomorrow. News footage from state television station Al-Maghribia showed suburbs of Casablanca submerged. Flag carrier Royal Air Maroc said flights were disrupted from the country’s main airport in Casablanca because flooding on highways and railway tracks prevented some passengers reaching the airport. In the capital Rabat, people formed long queues in front of a rare working ATM machine after communication systems of some banks were put out of action. “The lines are down because of the rain. We can’t process any operation for the moment,” said an employee at a branch of Attijariwafa Bank in downtown Rabat. In another development, a Moroccan bus fell into a river in heavy rains yesterday, killing 24 people, the North African nation’s official news agency said. The crash occurred between the towns of Mohammedia and Bouznika on the country’s Atlantic coast, the MAP news agency said. Search operations continued, but it was not immediately clear if any people were missing. Moroccan King Mohammed VI sent condolences to the victims families’ and said he would pay for the hospitalization of the injured and burials for those killed, MAP said. The agency said the death toll was provided by civil defense officials. — Agencies
From the Bubble to the Trouble: Israel’s divide
the Atlantic coastal town of Bouznika, south of the capital Rabat. Four people, including three from the same family, died when heavy rain brought down their homes near the central city of Khenifra and in Sale, near Rabat, MAP said.
BOUZNIKA: People look at a bus that plunged off a road into a ravine during heavy rain in Bouznika, near Rabat yesterday. At least 18 passengers died. — AFP
WikiLeaks: Netanyahu supports land swaps JERUSALEM: A confidential diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks says Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports the notion of land swaps with the Palestinians. But an Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to disclose the contents of a confidential conversation, said yesterday that Netanyahu did not discuss land swaps. Netanyahu has been very careful to keep his positions on
Israel’s future borders very close to the vest. The Feb 26, 2009 cable, dated two weeks after the Israeli leader was elected, says “Netanyahu expressed support for the concept of land swaps, and emphasized that he did not want to govern the West Bank and Gaza but rather to stop attacks from being launched from there.” This sentence was contained in the cable summary but is not amplified in the section of the report that refers to peacemaking
with the Palestinians. “The prime minister never raised the issue of land swaps and the telegram does not quote him as saying so,” the official who spoke on condition of anonymity said. “The elaborated part of the conversation shows that that in fact is the case.” US Embassy spokesman Kurt Hoyer would not comment on the cable. He said the diplomat who signed off on it, Luis G. Moreno, had left Israel and could not immediately be
reached. Previous Israeli governments and the Palestinians have expressed support for the concept of trading West Bank land where Jewish settlements stand for Israeli territory. Netanyahu has not publicly voiced his opinion on this matter, though his foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, favors redrawing Israel’s borders to include settlements and exclude areas with large Arab populations. — AP
Liberalism, prosperity enliven Israel’s coastal metropolis TEL AVIV: It takes just 45 minutes to drive from the clogged freeways and gleaming office towers of Tel Aviv to the roadblocks and watchtowers of the West Bank. The humid metropolis of the coast, where most Israelis prefer to live, seems a world away from the dry air of Jerusalem and tensions of the occupied Palestinian territory, where the inescapable choices facing the nation await resolution. The travel guide Lonely Planet this month rated Tel Aviv 3rd in the Top 10 world cities worth visiting, after New York and Tangier. LP praised its relaxed liberalism, hedonistic beach culture and international flavor. The breezy, secular life in what Israelis call “The Bubble” by the Mediterranean Sea is so far divorced from the windswept outposts of armed settlers who have planted themselves among the Palestinians that the country’s soul seems split in two. On the coast, there are gays walking pedigree dogs, clubs throbbing on the Sabbath, leggy
girls in skimpy minis, old guys with pony tails, high-toned places and greasy little joints. In Jerusalem, ultra-religious Jews with antiquated black dress and a ready hostility to Sabbath violators are a more common sight. Out in the stony hills of what religious Jews call “Judea and Samaria”, guards watch at fences and steel gates. But Israel can’t have two futures. If it wants peace, it has to give up the land. If it keeps the land, peace will not come. Whatever the choice, all Israelis will share its consequences. LOYALTY OATH With an economy growing faster than Germany, a burgeoning high-tech sector and wage levels that put it this year into the OECD club of Western market democracies, Israel is a wealthy little country with strong, knowledge-based economic prospects. For a majority, it seems, the Jewish homeland is a healthy success and though threats persist, it offers a good future. For a minority, however, the home-
land will not be complete until the Biblical lands are Israel’s as well. The Palestinians must either accept it and be absorbed, or move out. A March poll by Hebrew University in Jerusalem showed 71 percent of Israelis supported a 2-state solution and 60 percent backed dismantling most settlements under such a deal. Among settlers, however, 52 percent opposed a 2-state treaty and 69 percent opposed dismantling settlements. Mixed with religious imperatives is an ultranationalist sentiment, driven by the Israel Our Home party of Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who does not consider making peace with the Palestinians to be Israel’s most pressing issue. He recently persuaded Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to endorse the idea of a “loyalty oath to the Jewish state”, which has fanned the simmering resentment of the Arab Israelis who make up 20 percent of the population of some 7.5 million. Its “love-it-or-leave-it” message
seems plain enough. This month, rabbis in the city of Safed urged Jews not to rent flats to Arab Israeli students. A Safed Holocaust survivor who dared to do so was vilified. A court ruling this month permitted an apartment block to be built in Jaffa exclusively for religious Israeli Jews, where Arabs would be unwelcome. Meanwhile, privileges for the ultra-religious, whose small parties can make or break Israeli coalitions, provoked street protests by students opposed to giving grants to Torah students who may never work for a livinga prospect Israeli economists consider alarming, as their numbers grow. LAST EXIT Stripped of its many nuances, Israel seems to face a choice between a future as a secular democracy building a stable place in a tough neighborhood, or a nationalist quasi-theocracy betting on territorial expansion, with God on its side. Security is a dominating fact of Israeli life, even in The Bubble. —Reuters
TEL AVIV: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to the media in Tel Aviv, Israel, Monday. —AP