Hamas: PA gave Israel nearly a third of its Gaza targets
By Elhanan Miller
The Times of Israel website
Palestinian intelligence agencies loyal to PA President Mahmoud Abbas advised Israel on nearly 30 percent of the targets in Gaza that were attacked during Operation Protective Edge, a Hamas official claimed on Thursday.
Hamas official Salah Bardawil told his movement’s daily Al-Resalah that information provided by the General Intelligence Agency to Israel regarding Hamas and Islamic Jihad sites in the Khaza’ah and central regions of the Gaza Strip led to the death of hundreds of Palestinians in airstrikes over the summer, including many women and children.
“According to confessions of those involved with the General Intelligence Agency, the agency assisted the occupation [Israel] in creating some 29% of the target bank during the last war,” Bardawil was quoted as saying.
He added that 82% of the targets reported to Israel were in fact hit by the IDF.
Hamas has long criticized the Palestinian Authority and its security agencies for cooperating with Israel, but has never detailed the extent of cooperation and the damage caused to it as a result.
In the interview with Al-Resalah, he noted that the Israeli targets included Palestinian institutions, mosques and homes of Hamas members.
In first, Palestinian-Israeli soccer cooperation
By Times of Israel staff
The Times of Israel website
In a historic decision, the Palestine Football Association granted two soccer players international transfer certificates (ITCs), allowing them to leave the Palestinian league and play in Israel.
Until recently, the Palestinian association refused to cooperate with the Israel Football Association, hampering attempts by Palestinian players to transfer between the two leagues.
The Palestinian soccer group issued Mohammad Zuabi and Mohammad Fudi transfer certificates Monday, freeing them to “pursue sports activities and register with another national association affiliated to FIFA.”
The decision is likely related to previous complaints Israeli officials lodged with FIFA over the Palestinian refusal to cooperate, as stipulated under FIFA rules.
Mohammad Zuabi will be allowed to move from his Palestinian team of Shabab Yatta to the northern Israeli club of Sandala Gilboa, part of the fourth tier of the Israeli soccer league system. Mohammad Fudi will leave his Hebron team in favor of the Beitar Tel Aviv-Ramla club, playing in the second tier of the Israeli system.
On Tuesday, a Palestinian player was allowed to return to the Israeli league only a month after being barred for 99 years from all soccer-related activity in Israel, Israeli news site Ynet reported. Attef Abi Bilal was penalized for playing simultaneously in both the Israeli and Palestinian leagues, drawing widespread international media attention.
PA studies details of each terrorist act before issuing salaries
By Edwin Black
The Times of Israel website
Thousands of documents, newly obtained by this reporter through a lawsuit to unseal court-protected files, demonstrate that these payouts are not blind automated payments. Rather, senior Palestinian Authority officials as high as President Mahmoud Abbas scrutinize the details of each case, the specific carnage caused, and the personal details of each terrorist act before approving salaries and awarding honorary ranks in either the PA government or the military.
Thousands of documents, newly obtained by this reporter through a lawsuit to unseal court-protected files, demonstrate that these payouts are not blind automated payments. Rather, senior Palestinian Authority officials as high as President Mahmoud Abbas scrutinize the details of each case, the specific carnage caused, and the personal details of each terrorist act before approving salaries and awarding honorary ranks in either the PA government or the military.
Ministry of Prisoners spokesman Amr Nasser has explained, “We are very proud of this program and we have nothing to hide.” Nonetheless, in response to the international furor over the payments, the Palestinian Authority announced last year it would replace the Ministry of Prisoners with an outside PLO commission known as the Higher National Commission for Prisoners and Detainees Affairs.
The PA is dependent upon foreign donor countries to supply much of its budget, which now exceeds $4.2 billion annually. About ten percent of the PA budget, more than $400 million, is contributed annually by United States foreign aid. The US and many other countries have enacted laws forbidding any payments when the monies directly or indirectly support or encourage terrorism.
The interdepartmental bureaucratic notations the Palestinian Authority has recorded on each terrorist before approving the level of salaried compensation is extensive. For example, one prominent case involved Ahmad Talab Mustafa Barghouti, who personally coordinated numerous terrorist acts. These included a January 2002 shooting spree on Jaffa Street in Jerusalem, killing two and wounding 37; a March 2002 shooting spree at a Tel Aviv restaurant, killing three and wounding 31; and finally a March 27, 2002 attempt to smuggle an explosive suicide belt in an ambulance. The Israel Defense Forces arrested Barghouti. On July 30, 2002, a military court concluded that he was responsible for murdering 12 Israelis, and he was sentenced to 13 life sentences.
European Union ‘is breaking international law’ by funding illegal West Bank building projects, report claims
By Jake Wallis Simons
The Times of Israel website
The EU is acting illegally by funding unauthorised Palestinian building in areas placed under Israeli control by international law, say an NGO, international lawyers and MEPs.
More than 400 EU-funded Palestinian homes have been erected in Area C of the West Bank, which was placed under Israeli jurisdiction during the Oslo Accords – a part of international law to which the EU is a signatory.
The Palestinian buildings, which have no permits, come at a cost of tens of millions of Euros in public money, a proportion of which comes from the British taxpayer.
This has raised concerns that the EU is using valuable resources to take sides in a foreign territorial dispute.
Official EU documentation reveals that the building project is intended to ‘pave the way for development and more authority of the PA over Area C (the Israeli area)’, which some experts say is an attempt to unilaterally affect facts on the ground.
Locally, the villages are known as the ‘EU Settlements’, and can be found in 17 locations around the West Bank.
They proudly fly the EU flag, and display hundreds of EU stickers and signs. Some also bear the logos of Oxfam and other NGOs, which have assisted in the projects.
Questions have also been asked about the conduct of EU workers in the region, after a picture emerged of a man in EU uniform threatening soldiers and bystanders with a rock outside a settlement in 2012. An EU spokesperson declined to comment on the picture.
Palestinians urge EU to force Israel to release taxes
By Times of Israel staff and AP
The Times of Israel website
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah met with a representative from the European Union on Thursday to ask for EU pressure in convincing Israel to release $200 million worth of withheld tax revenues, the Hebrew media Ynet website reported.
Hamdallah’s plea came after last month the United Nations also called on Israel to release the monies that were withheld after the PA decided to join the International Criminal Court in December 2014.
A senior UN official told the Security Council that the freeze, imposed on January 3, was in violation of the Oslo peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
“We call on Israel to immediately resume the transfer of tax revenues,” said UN Assistant Secretary-General Jens Anders Toyberg-Frandzen.
The United States and the European Union have criticized Israel’s retaliatory move in response to the Palestinian application to join the ICC, which could investigate war crimes complaints against Israel.
The 15-member council met to discuss the Middle East after rejecting a vote last December on a resolution for Palestinian statehood that had been strongly opposed by the United States.
The failed Arab-backed resolution set the end of 2017 as the deadline for a full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines that would pave the way to Palestinian statehood.
While the United States and Australia voted against but China, France and Russia were among eight countries that backed the resolution, leaving it just one vote short of the nine required for adoption.
The outcome spared the United States from resorting to its veto, a move that could have undermined its standing in the Arab world at a time when Washington is leading a campaign against Islamists in Iraq and Syria.
Five countries seen as having a more pro-Palestinian stance began their term at the Security Council this month – Angola, Malaysia, New Zealand, Spain and Venezuela.
Rouhani slams ‘criminal’ Israel, says Iran doesn’t need nukes
By Lazar Berman
The Times of Israel website
Iran does not need a nuclear weapon, nor has the bomb kept rival countries safe, said the country’s president Wednesday.
In a pugnacious speech in Isfahan, a major city in the country’s center, Hassan Rouhani said that Iran is a “great, sacrificing, and unified nation,” and therefore has no need to build atomic bombs, The Guardian reported.
The city is home to a number of nuclear research and uranium conversion facilities.
Rouhani also attacked Israel, calling it a “criminal.”
“Have you managed to bring about security for yourselves with atomic bombs? Have you managed to create security for the usurper Israel?” he asked.
Rouhani did not mention talks between Western powers known as the P5+1 and Tehran.
The US and other nations negotiating with Tehran have long suspected Iran’s nuclear program is secretly aimed at atomic weapons capability. Tehran insists the program is entirely devoted to civilian purposes.
Rouhani also mocked the US for failing to provide healthcare for all its citizens.
According to State Department officials, US Secretary of State John Kerry will meet Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif in Munich, Germany, on Saturday to discuss the ongoing nuclear negotiations.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because the official wasn’t authorized to discuss Kerry’s plans before they were formally announced.
The meeting with Zarif comes as an end-of-March target date for a framework nuclear deal approaches. Kerry and Zarif last met one-on-one in Geneva in January.
Kerry to hold talks with Iran foreign minister Saturday
By AFP
The Times of Israel website
US Secretary of State John Kerry is to hold talks with his Iranian counterpart on efforts to secure a deal over Tehran’s nuclear drive, a US official said Thursday.
“Secretary Kerry will meet with Iranian Foreign Minister (Mohammad Javad) Zarif in Munich, Germany on Saturday to discuss the ongoing nuclear negotiations,” a senior State Department official said.
The top-level meeting comes as landmark negotiations involving international powers – the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany – and Iran aim to hammer out a complex deal on Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
Negotiators are eyeing the end of March for a political agreement, and June 30 as the deadline for a final pact which Washington hopes will prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
Kerry and Zarif last held direct talks January 23 on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos.
Under an interim deal agreed in November 2013 by Tehran and the so-called P5+1 Powers, Iran has frozen its uranium enrichment in exchange for limited sanctions relief.
But two deadlines for a full accord cutting off Iran’s possible pathway to an atomic bomb have been missed.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday warned that reported progress on a nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers was being made on Tehran’s terms, and repeated his call for the world to bar the country from becoming a nuclear threshold state.
PM calls Abdullah to voice support
By Herb Keinon
The Jerusalem Post, Page 1
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu phoned Jordan's King Abdullah II on Thursday and extended his condolences to him and the Jordanian people following Islamic State's grisly murder of captive Jordanian pilot Mouath al-Kaseasbeh.
Netanyahu said that all civilized people were "shocked by this barbaric cruelty, which the world must fight."
Thursday's phone call marks the first time the two have spoken since they met in Amman in November, together with US Secretary of State John Kerry, at the height of tension surrounding the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
Gaza terror groups condemn Egypt for anti-Hamas stance
By Times of Israel staff and AP
The Times of Israel website
Representatives of several Palestinian terror groups based in the Gaza Strip condemned Egypt’s decision to declare Hamas’s armed wing a banned terrorist group, adding that the ruling would cripple the Islamist organization’s efforts to carry out attacks against Israel.
A masked gunman, who read the condemnation statement aloud on behalf of 10 terror groups in the Strip, stressed that Gaza had no quarrel with Egypt and called on Cairo to halt its measures against the Palestinians.
“Resistance factions… concentrate their work against the Zionist enemy,” the gunman said, according to Reuters.
“We reaffirm that we do not intervene in the internal affairs of Arab countries and we hope that no one will export their internal problems toward the Palestinian people and its resistance factions,” he said.
Last Saturday, an Egyptian court ruled that Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, was a terror organization, in a move that left the Islamist group reeling.
Friendly Bulgarian diplomat picked as UN special Mideast envoy
By Herb Keinon
The Jerusalem Post, Page 3
A new type of UN special Mideast envoy may be on his way of Israel.
On Thursday the UN named former Bulgarian foreign minister Nickolay Mladenov as the replacement for Robert Serry. Serry had a very rocky relationship during his more than six years here, culminating in Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman saying last summer he should be declared persona non grata for allegations that – despite both Israeli and PA opposition – he worked inside the UN to transfer $20 million from Qatar to pay Hamas salaries.