AxisMundi Jerusalem

The Mysterious Mr. Mitchell’s MacGuffin

It’s a bit like a Hitchock thriller. Nobody knows where he is — not even the U.S. State Department — and nobody knows when he will show up in Israel. All we know is, suspense is building and it’s time to watch out for surprises.

President Barack Obama’s Middle East peace envoy Senator George Mitchell is somewhere in transit — probably – and expected in Israel and the Palestinian Territories next week –  sometime.

A State Dept. spokesman at Wednesday’s regular briefing could not say much at all about Mitchell’s movements beyond he has left Washington.  Could he be in London meeting the Syrian foreign minister? Don’t know.  Is he going to Turkey as well? We will try to find that out. When is he going to be in Israel? Can’t say exactly.

Mitchell is famous for playing his cards very close to his vest and his vest very close to his skin. He gives out very little information when he is engaged in high-stakes mediation.

There is an unmistakable aura of mystery about what is going on at this delicate stage of talks with Israel and the Palestinians to get stalled peace negotiations started again, by resolving what looks like a standoff between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and Washington’s demand that it cease.

Why did Fayyad resign?

A stated desire to open the way for the creation of a Palestinian unity government wasn’t the only reason why Prime Minister Salam Fayyad tendered his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas on March 7.

While the move could help Abbas’s Fatah faction and Hamas Islamists bury the hatchet in a reconciliation dialogue in Cairo, it also stemmed from Fayyad’s growing sense of frustration over his acrimonious relations with Fatah stalwarts, confidants said.

Fayyad, a former World Bank official who does not belong to any Palestinian faction, has had to battle constantly behind closed doors with some Fatah leaders opposed to Western-praised reform policies that include transparency in the Palestinian Authority finances.

And with Fatah still licking its wounds from the loss of the Gaza Strip to Hamas Islamists in internal fighting in 2007, a non-Fatah Palestinian prime minister — especially one who has toured West Bank towns and villages offering financial support — boosted fears among the long-dominant faction’s faithful that they were losing political influence.

Close aides to Fayyad said he had wanted to quit several months ago but Abbas refused to accept his resignation.

Fayyad then thought about stepping down before an international conference convened last month in Egypt to fund reconstruction in the Gaza Strip after the 22-day offensive Israel launched in December.

Captured Israeli soldier’s parents take protest to Olmert’s doorstep

Dubbed Israel’s most polite protesters by one Israeli newspaper columnist, the parents of captured soldier Gilad Shalit have set up a protest tent outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Jerusalem residence to press for his release.

Shalit, 22, has been held since 2006 by militants from Hamas and two other groups who tunnelled into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Hamas has demanded Israel release hundreds of its members held in Israeli prisons in exchange for the soldier.

Some of those Hamas men have been convicted of carrying out attacks that have killed Israelis, and the prospect of their release has set off a heated debate in Israel.

Israeli leaders have agreed to numerically lopsided swaps with Arab enemies in the past in exchange for captured soldiers or their bodies. Those in Israel opposed to a similar deal to get Shalit back argue it would only strengthen Hamas’s resolve in its fight against Israel.

Foreign Affairs

Israeli newspapers are abuzz this morning as they mull over the possibility that ultranationalist Avigdor Lieberman could be appointed foreign minister in the government that Benjamin Netanyahu is working to stitch together.

The strong showing by Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel our Home) party in last month’s election – where it won the third most Knesset seats ahead of the Labour Party - has put the Moldovan-born former nightclub bouncer turned bureaucrat in a strong position in the lobbying for top ministerial posts in the new government.

With Israel’s coalition building process such a tortuous and drawn-out affair, speculation, much of it wild, about who will get what job is inevitably rife in the local media.

As we reported yesterday – Netanyahu has ruled Lieberman out as a future defence minister, one of the top jobs in an Israeli government.

Lieberman is also understood to be interested in other key jobs for himself and his people including Justice, Interior and Internal security.

His aides, though, play down talk of all this horse-trading and deal-making.

“He has said he wants the defence portfolio, but he has also said cabinet positions are not a deal-breaker. What’s really important is that we agree on basic policy lines,” Yisrael Beiteinu spokeswoman Irena Etinger said.

Waiting, in Gaza

Walking in the street, travelling in a car or sitting in a cafe in the Gaza Strip these days, you can hear people talking about and analysing one central issue - whether new Egyptian-sponsored efforts to reconcile the rival Islamist Hamas and the secular Fatah groups can work.  Another thorny thought common in almost every discussion is whether Cairo would be able to turn the current lull in fighting between Israel and Hamas into a durable, sustainable ceasefire that will allow a proper opening of crossings into the coastal territory. Gaza’s 1.5 million popupation was relieved when Israel and Hamas declared separate ceasefires in January following 22-day of Israeli military strikes that killed 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. But relief is still mixed with doubt and unease a month later.

People who lost their houses remain homeless, living with friends, with relatives and in rental apartments and their hopes to rebuild their homes seem remote following news of a setback in Egyptian efforts to reach a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas earlier this month. In daylight those people visit tents they established on and near the rubble of what were once their houses in order to receive Arab and other foreign visitors who visit to assess the damage and promise aid to come. International donors will discuss funding at Sharm el-Sheikh in neighbouring Egypt on Monday. Bulldozers have cleared streets in areas where the Israeli army operated in January but the rubble of houses, offices and Hamas security headquarters remained unremoved. Hamas policemen helped by United Nations teams acted to remove several unexploded bombs from several locations after two children were killed playing with an object recently.

Visitors are often received by appeals, anger, despair and some of mistrust by those who lost their houses or loved ones. International envoys have urged Hamas and Fatah to reunite in order for the donors to find an official recognised party to deal with over Gaza reconstruction plans. But for aid to come and crossings to open and allow construction materials into the coastal territory, efforts by Egypt need to succeed to recocile Hamas with both President Mahmoud Abbas Fatah movement and, up to a point, with Israel.

There are many questions that torment Gazans when talking about these issues and the failure in previous initiatives to reconcile Hamas and Fatah hover like a ghost over conversations. Will Abbas and Hamas be able to form a unity government, one Israel, the United States and the West would agree to cooperate with and support? In a visit to Prague on Monday Abbas said Hamas needed to respect existing peace deals with Israel to be a partner in a unity government with his Fatah group.

“God’s willing it will work. Enough is enough,” said Hassan, a Fatah activist, whose brother was detained by Hamas. “We want to see an end to this. Since Fatah and Hamas leaders met recently we have begun to feel better and we hope it is going to be really better,” he said. Hamas activists also want an end to arrest campaigns against them by Fatah security services in the Fatah-run, Israeli-occupied West Bank. The issue of prisoners foiled Egypt’s efforts to reconcile the two groups on November and it remains an issue of dispute that cast a shadow of doubt over the current Cairo intervention. Hoping to corner the factions and push them to reconcile, the Egyptian proposal has stitched the thorny files together - a truce with Israel, reconciliation talks and Gaza reconstruction, and any failure in one of these files would heavily affect the other.

“If you want a sack of cement, you need Fatah and Hamas to unite and you need a truce. If you need fuel, you need peace between Hamas, Fatah and Israel,” said Abu Mohammed Ali, who works for a telephone company. “It is like a scorpion’s web.”

A covert challenge to Iran’s nuclear ambitions?

Israeli officials aren’t talking, but Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper is quoting intelligence experts and an unnamed former CIA agent as saying that Israel is waging a covert war of sabotage inside Iran in an effort to delay its suspected attempts to build a nuclear weapon.

An intelligence source in the Middle East has told Reuters the Israeli campaign includes sending letter bombs or anthrax-tainted mail to scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear programme and sabotaging related infrastructure. European countries and the United States are also part of the cloak-and-dagger war, the source said.

It could all be disinformation, of course, to keep pressure on Iran to halt uranium enrichment which Tehran insists is aimed only at generating electricity. But scientists working for Israel’s enemies have been targeted in the past.

In the early 1960s, Wolfgang Lotz, later known as the Israeli Mossad’s “champagne spy”, was living the high life of a rich, German exile in Egypt. He was actually a German-born Israeli tasked, among other things, with keeping a close eye on German scientists working in Egypt. The Mossad feared they could help Cairo, then in a state of war with Israel, to build long-range missiles.  The spy agency wrote letters to the scientists, making sure to mention the names of their wives and children, and urged them to halt their work if they wanted to keep their loved ones safe.

In 1990, Gerald Bull, a Canadian ballistics expert, was shot and killed in Belgium, a “hit” widely believed to have been the work of the Mossad. Bull’s Brussels-based company was helping Saddam Hussein’s Iraq build “superguns” — artillery designed to fire projectiles more than 1,200 km (750 miles), making Israel an easy target.

In a renewed expression of concern over Iran, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Monday that Iranian atomic weapons would pose an “existential threat” to the Jewish state and to “world order”.

from Global News Journal:

Mission Accomplished?

It was really only a matter of time.

Within days of the end of Israel's offensive in Gaza - which included the dropping of massive 'bunker-buster' bombs to destroy the vast network of tunnels that run under Gaza's border with Egypt - the tunnels are up and running again.

The tunnelers say they are not interested in smuggling weapons - the food and fuel that Gazans so desperately need are far more profitable contraband anyway.

To see the tunnels open again - so soon after the end of 22 days of military operations - has riled Israel and led to warnings that further military force could be used against the tunnels.

The warnings are of little concern to those doing the digging and the smuggling - if Israel wants to stop the smuggling, they say, open Gaza's borders.

Stopping the smuggling was one of the stated aims of Israel's offensive. Although Israel has been bolstered by US and European support in its bid to cut off the smuggling of rockets - the facts on, and under, the ground suggest the aim was not achieved.