JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Sunday canceled a conscription agreement with a Jewish seminary because its principal rabbi refused to condemn acts of mutiny by some of its pro-settler soldiers.

Last month pro-settler soldiers raised fears of rebellion in the ranks of the Israeli military in any future land-for-peace moves with the Palestinians after some of them protested the partial removal of a settler outpost in the occupied West Bank.

A Defense Ministry statement said that Barak canceled the agreement with the Har Bracha Yeshiva situated in the West Bank because of the refusal of principal Rabbi Eliezer Melamed to speak out against acts of mutiny.

“The Defense minister has determined that the actions and words of Rabbi Melamed have undermined the basis of Israeli democracy and they promoted and incited some of his pupils to protest, mutiny and to harming the spirit of the Israel Defense Forces,” the statement said.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel triggered a fresh rift with Washington over settlement building on Tuesday by approving the building of 900 homes for Jews on West Bank land it occupied in a 1967 war and annexed to its Jerusalem municipality.

The Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said U.S. President Barack Obama’s envoy, George Mitchell, had asked an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a meeting in London on Monday, to block the proposed construction at the settlement of Gilo.

But a government planning commission approved the addition of 900 housing units at Gilo, where 40,000 Israelis already live.

The Israeli decision drew an unusually sharply worded rebuke from the White House, which said it was “dismayed” and accused Israel of undermining Obama’s efforts to resume peace talks with Palestinians stalled since December.

JERUSALEM, Nov 17 (Reuters) – Israel triggered a fresh rift with Washington over settlement building on Tuesday by approving the building of 900 homes for Jews on West Bank land it occupied in a 1967 war and annexed to its Jerusalem municipality. The Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth said U.S. President Barack Obama’s envoy, George Mitchell, had asked an aide to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, at a meeting in London on Monday, to block the proposed construction at the settlement of Gilo. But a government planning commission approved the addition of 900 housing units at Gilo, where 40,000 Israelis already live. The Israeli decision drew an unusually sharply worded rebuke from the White House, which said it was "dismayed" and accused Israel of undermining Obama’s efforts to resume peace talks with Palestinians stalled since December. "At a time when we are working to relaunch negotiations, these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said. In his statement, Gibbs also said the United States objected to continued evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also deplored the Israeli move, spokesman Farhan Haq said. Ban "believes that such actions undermine efforts for peace and cast doubt on the viability of the two-state solution" for Israelis and Palestinians, he said. Nabil Abu Rdaineh, aide to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, said Israel’s move "destroys the last chances for the peace process." Abbas has said peace talks stalled since December may resume only once Israel freezes settlement construction. A spokesman for Nir Barkat, the Israeli mayor of Jerusalem, seemed to confirm the newspaper report about Mitchell’s request, saying Barkat "strongly objects to the American demand to halt construction in Jerusalem." Israel rejects the international description of Gilo as a settlement and says it is a neighborhood of Jerusalem, the city it claims as its capital. Some 500,000 Jews live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, also captured in 1967, among 2.7 million Palestinians. Israel annexed East Jerusalem after the 1967 war, a move that was not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a state they hope to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. STALEMATE Mark Regev, a spokesman for Netanyahu, had said in response to the newspaper report that "Prime Minister Netanyahu, in order to get the peace process back on track, is willing to adopt the policy of the greatest possible restraint concerning growth in the West Bank — but this applies to the West Bank." "Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and will remain as such," he said, stating an Israeli position not recognized by world powers. Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said Israel’s decision was a further step "intended to prevent the Palestinian state from happening." Britain’s consulate-general in Jerusalem also condemned the Israeli move saying "this decision on Gilo is wrong and we oppose it." Obama is pressing for a resumption of peace talks and has asked Israel to show restraint on settlements while seeking to persuade Abbas to resume negotiations without a total freeze on the construction. Netanyahu has offered a temporary restriction on building projects, but Abbas has rejected this as insufficient, both in scale and because it does not include areas Israel annexed to Jerusalem. Palestinian officials asked the United Nations and the European Union earlier this week to consider whether they might at some point endorse the framework of a Palestinian state without a negotiated solution to the conflict with Israel. (Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Eric Beech) (For blogs and links on Israeli politics and other Israeli and Palestinian news, go to http:/blogs.reuters.com/axismundi)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel warned the Palestinians Monday that declaring a state without concluding a peace agreement would lead to Israeli counter-measures that could include annexation of more of the occupied West Bank.

“If the Palestinians take such a unilateral line, Israel should also consider … passing a law to annex some of the settlements,” Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel Radio.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, speaking to reporters, declined to specify what action Israel might take.

But he said: “It is clear any such step by the Palestinians would not pass without an Israeli response.”

JERUSALEM, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Israel warned the Palestinians on Monday that declaring a state without concluding a peace agreement would lead to Israeli counter-measures that could include annexation of more of the occupied West Bank. "If the Palestinians take such a unilateral line, Israel should also consider … passing a law to annex some of the settlements," Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel Radio. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, speaking to reporters, declined to specify what action Israel might take. But he said: "It is clear any such step by the Palestinians would not pass without an Israeli response." Without setting a timeframe, Palestinian officials said on Sunday the Palestinians planned to go to the U.N. Security Council in an effort to secure international support for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians attributed the move to frustration at the lack of progress in peace talks, which have been stalled for a year. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said negotiations cannot resume until Israel halts settlement expansion. U.S. senators visiting the Middle East said Washington would veto a Palestinian declaration of statehood in the United Nations Security Council. They said it would go nowhere and urged Arab states to stop it. "It would be D.O.A. – dead on arrival," said Democratic Party Senator Ted Kaufman (DE) "It’s a waste of time." State Department spokesman Ian Kelly would not say if the United States would veto any such Palestinian declaration. "I can’t say we’re going to veto something we haven’t seen or hasn’t even been proposed yet…we support a Palestinian state that arises as a result of a process between the two parties." Diplomats deferred comment, saying it was not immediately obvious by what means the Palestinians might pursue a declaration of statehood, or how international law might apply. Recent examples suggest they might take the same route as Israel’s founders in 1947 and simply seek U.N. support for a resolution calling for statehood, which is what East Timor did to become the first new state of the 21st century in 2002. Or they might declare independence without going to the U.N. as Kosovo did when it became the world’s newest state in 2008, knowing it could not win Security Council endorsement because of a threatened Russian veto, but would receive quick recognition by most NATO and European Union governments. NETANYAHU WARNING The Palestinian remarks on possible unilateral steps prompted a warning from Netanyahu. He said in a speech on Sunday only peace talks with Israel would secure a Palestinian state. "There is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and any unilateral path will only unravel the framework of agreements between us and will only bring unilateral steps from Israel’s side," Netanyahu said. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the aim of the initiative was not to declare statehood but was meant to preserve the two-state option and to formalise international support for the nation the Palestinians want to establish. "Heading to the Security Council to issue a resolution recognising an independent Palestinian state … differs entirely from a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. The PLO is not proposing the option of declaring a state unilaterally," Erekat said in a statement. Erdan, in the radio interview, discussed other sanctions open to Israel, which captured the West Bank in a 1967 war and annexed some of the territory along with Arab East Jerusalem. "Everything is open … it could begin at stopping the transfer of money that the Israeli government currently transfers to the Palestinian Authority," he said, referring to tax payments Israel collects on the Authority’s behalf under interim peace deals. Erdan said Israel might also consider tightening recently loosened travel restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank. (Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Douglas Hamilton and Tom Perry in Ramallah, Editing by Diana Abdallah)

JERUSALEM, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Israel warned the Palestinians on Monday that declaring a state without concluding a peace agreement would lead to Israeli counter-measures that could include annexation of more of the occupied West Bank. "If the Palestinians take such a unilateral line, Israel should also consider … passing a law to annex some of the settlements," Environment Minister Gilad Erdan, a close ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Israel Radio. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, speaking to reporters, declined to specify what action Israel might take. But he said: "It is clear any such step by the Palestinians would not pass without an Israeli response." Without setting a timeframe, Palestinian officials said on Sunday the Palestinians planned to go to the U.N. Security Council in an effort to secure international support for an independent state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Palestinians attributed the move to frustration at the lack of progress in peace talks, which have been stalled for a year. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has said negotiations cannot resume until Israel halts settlement expansion. Diplomats deferred comment, saying it was not immediately obvious by what means the Palestinians might pursue a declaration of statehood, or how international law might apply. Recent examples suggest they might take the same route as Israel’s founders in 1947 and simply seek U.N. support for a resolution calling for statehood, which is what East Timor did to become the first new state of the 21st century in 2002. Or they might declare independence without going to the U.N. as Kosovo did when it became the world’s newest state in 2008, knowing it could not win Security Council endorsement because of a threatened Russian veto, but would receive quick recognition by most NATO and European Union governments. NETANYAHU WARNING The Palestinian remarks on possible unilateral steps prompted a warning from Netanyahu. He said in a speech on Sunday only peace talks with Israel would secure a Palestinian state. "There is no substitute for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority and any unilateral path will only unravel the framework of agreements between us and will only bring unilateral steps from Israel’s side," Netanyahu said. Senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said that the aim of the initiative was not to declare statehood but was meant to preserve the two-state option and to formalise international support for the nation the Palestinians want to establish. "Heading to the Security Council to issue a resolution recognising an independent Palestinian state … differs entirely from a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state. The PLO is not proposing the option of declaring a state unilaterally," Erekat said in a statement. Erdan, in the radio interview, discussed other sanctions open to Israel, which captured the West Bank in a 1967 war and annexed some of the territory along with Arab East Jerusalem. "Everything is open … it could begin at stopping the transfer of money that the Israeli government currently transfers to the Palestinian Authority," he said, referring to tax payments Israel collects on the Authority’s behalf under interim peace deals. Erdan said Israel might also consider tightening recently loosened travel restrictions on Palestinians in the West Bank. (Writing by Jeffrey Heller, Additional reporting by Allyn Fisher-Ilan and Douglas Hamilton and Tom Perry in Ramallah, Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

JERUSALEM, Nov 3 (Reuters) – A self-confessed killer dubbed "The Jewish Terrorist" has shown how far settlers may go to stop Israel trading land for peace with Palestinians and the risks even lone attackers can pose to stability in a tinderbox region. So concluded many Israelis as media devoted much of their newsprint and airtime this week to the arrest of Yaakov "Jack" Tytell, an American immigrant to a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank. Police said he had admitted killing two Arabs a decade ago and more recent attacks on Israeli leftists. Analysts were quick to compare him to the right-wing Jew, angry at peace deals with the Palestinians, who assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin 14 years ago this week. The jailed killer Yigal Amir remains a hero to thousands on the Israeli right. Many on the left believe hopes of peace died with Rabin. Newspapers, most of which devoted numerous pages to Tytell, also recalled Baruch Goldstein, the settler physician from New York who shot nearly 200 Arab worshippers at a Hebron mosque in 1995, killing 29 of them — an act swiftly followed by Palestinian suicide bombings and other attacks in Israel. Former Israeli secret service agents warned of a "Jewish Underground", dormant and ready, out in the wilder edges of the West Bank hilltops, that has the weaponry to make good on hardliners’ threats to resist with violence any move by Israel’s government to end its 41 years of military occupation, or even to evict settlers from some of their fringe "outposts". And Menachem Landow, a former head of the Shin Bet security service’s Jewish Division which combatted underground settler cells behind bombings in the 1980s, said even loners threatened national security, either by posing a risk to leaders like Rabin or by provoking Arab attacks, like Goldstein and others. "The Shin Bet gets involved the moment the threat is to national security," Landow said. "The priority is to prevent murders, but clearly there is a secondary drive — to prevent escalation … It can trigger a revolution." SETTLERS’ DEFENCE Leaders of the half-million settlers, who are at the heart of arguments among Israel, the Palestinians and Washington that have held up peace talks, distanced themselves from Tytell, a 37-year-old father-of-four. His lawyer was quoted saying he was not responsible for actions he saw as a "mission from God". Police were forced to explain why it took them 12 years to find the alleged killer of a Palestinian shepherd and of an Arab Jerusalem taxi driver but only months to arrest the same man after he wounded an Israeli professor with a pipe bomb — the hunt was complicated because Tytell was a loner, police said. But a former head of the Shin Bet, whose agents helped police arrest Tytell last month, said that while Tytell may have acted alone he was far from unique among settlers: "This is the soil where this grows," Ami Ayalon said. Several unsolved murders of Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem have led Shin Bet officers to assume the existence of Jewish killers, security sources say. But they are unsure how far they are connected or politically driven. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition, elected this year, includes a foreign minister who is himself a settler and another senior cabinet member lately caught on camera calling Israel’s main anti-settlement group a "virus". Yet even Netanyahu has faced virulent criticism from some settlers, who account for about 8 percent of Israeli Jews, for even modest gestures of "restraint" on settlement expansion he has offered Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — gestures that U.S. President Barack Obama says do not go far enough. Netanyahu, however, highlights the strength of opinion among settlers as a limit on what concessions he can offer — even when many among the majority of Israelis who do not live on occupied land express little sympathy for hardline colonists. Aware of the potential backlash, settler leader Danny Dayan said: "Any person of conscience … must rise up in indignation against such acts — and against any despicable attempt to use them to gain political capital by blaming an entire community." Aside from the 1990s murders of Arabs committed when he was a tourist, Tytell is also accused of injuring a leading Israeli left-winger, Zeev Sternhell, an outspoken critic of settlers last year by planting a pipe bomb at his Jerusalem home. (Additional reporting by Dan Williams; Editing by Dominic Evans)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A senior Israeli cabinet minister Tuesday blamed local human rights groups for hindering travel abroad by some leading officials concerned that they might faces war crimes charges.

Moshe Yaalon, one of four deputies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he specifically would not travel to England for fear of prosecution over war crimes allegations made by human rights and pro-Palestinian groups.

“As a former officer … I cannot travel because of a campaign that has been initiated here by (rights groups) who were not happy with my performance,” Yaalon told Israel Radio.

“There is one place in the world to which I don’t travel at the moment and that is England, unless it’s an official visit because on an official visit I am supposed to have immunity.”

JERUSALEM, Oct 6 (Reuters) – A senior Israeli cabinet minister on Tuesday blamed local human rights groups for hindering travel abroad by some leading officials concerned that they might faces war crimes charges. Moshe Yaalon, one of four deputies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said he specifically would not travel to England for fear of prosecution over war crimes allegations made by human rights and pro-Palestinian groups. "As a former officer … I cannot travel because of a campaign that has been initiated here by (rights groups) who were not happy with my performance," Yaalon told Israel Radio. "There is one place in the world to which I don’t travel at the moment and that is England, unless it’s an official visit because on an official visit I am supposed to have immunity." Yaalon was summoned by Netanyahu in August for calling anti-settler group Peace Now a "virus". Last week pro-Palestinian groups failed to persuade a London court to issue an arrest warrant against Israel’s Defence Minister Ehud Barak, whom they accused of war crimes in his conduct of Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip this year. Barak attended the British Labour Party’s annual conference in Brighton and met Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The London magistrates court said Barak had diplomatic immunity. Other senior Israeli officials and officers, active and retired, also avoid certain destinations for fear of arrest. Some European states allow for private war crimes lawsuits. Spain said earlier this year it would change its law after protests from Israel over a court decision to launch a war crimes probe into seven Israelis, including Yaalon and former defence minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, for a 2002 attack in the Gaza Strip that killed 14 civilians and a Hamas leader. INTERNAL PROBE Sarit Michaeli, a spokeswoman for Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, said the problem was of Israel’s own making. "Israel has only itself to blame for possible legal proceedings that might be taken against leading politicians and officers abroad, because of its lack of internal investigations into wrong-doing by its security forces," Michaeli said. "The first line of defence against external prosecutions is independent, credible internal investigations conducted outside of the army," she added. Israel refused cooperation with a United Nations inquiry into alleged Gaza war crimes led by South African jurist Richard Goldstone, whose report criticised the Israeli army and Palestinian militants. In 2005, General Doron Almog, former head of Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip, was warned by Israeli diplomats not to leave an El Al aircraft that landed in London after a tip-off that British police were about to arrest him on war crimes charges. A British Muslim group had obtained an arrest warrant on charges that he breached the Fourth Geneva Convention in the demolition of Palestinian homes in 2002 which Israel said provided cover for gunmen. Almog stayed on the plane and flew back to Israel. (Editing by Samia Nakhoul)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Chicago’s anemic presentation at Friday’s vote to choose the host for the 2016 Olympics was partly to blame for the U.S. city’s humiliating first-round elimination, a voting delegate said on Sunday.

Israel’s International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Alex Gilady said Chicago’s dismal showing at the Copenhagen congress that chose Rio de Janeiro to stage the Games was enhanced only by U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle.

“Chicago’s presentation without (the Obamas) was very, very anemic and Rio’s presentation was excellent,” Gilady told Israel Radio in a telephone interview from Copenhagen.

Chicago’s shock exit came after it received only 18 votes from the more than 100 IOC members despite the presence for the first time of a sitting U.S. president and an eloquent speech from the first lady.