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1. PA Freezes Netanyahu's Idea for Bi-Weekly Talks
by Hillel Fendel
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu says he would like to meet with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas every two weeks in the framework of the direct diplomatic talks that are to begin next week. PA negotiator Saeb Erekat responds that the freeze is the main issue now, not the scheduling of the negotiations.
The Associated Press reported that “the Israeli leader's proposal appears to indicate that he is serious about the talks and won't allow them to fizzle out after next week's meeting in the U.S.”
Chief PA negotiator Saeb Erekat refused to commit himself, however, and said he would not accept it at the present time. "We are not against this in principle, it's just premature to talk about this now," AP quoted him as saying. Other reports said that Erekat emphasized that no progress could be made until Israel agreed to continue the construction freeze in Judea and Samaria.
Talks to Kick Off This Week
Netanyahu will be departing on Tuesday for Washington to take part in the first session of the renewed talks. He emphasized again on Sunday that the talks will be held without pre-conditions. The PA has demanded that Israel agree to continue the ten-month freeze, to which Israel agreed for the express purpose of getting the PA to agree to talks – which the PA refused to do until now.
“For [nine] months we have been waiting for the Palestinians to please come to the negotiations,” Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said last week. “They come at the last month - that’s their problem.”
No substantive issues are expected to be on the table between Netanyahu and Abbas; Netanyahu himself has said that the event will rather be more of a “White House Lawn” ceremony, including U.S. President Barack Obama, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Jordan’s King Hussein.
Cabinet Minister Silvan Shalom, however, a former Foreign Minister, said Sunday morning that he now understands that the talks will be more of a ceremony and that the talks will actually begin in earnest this week.
PA, Yesha Council Pressures
Opposing pressures to end and retain the construction freeze continue to be exerted. While Fatah Central Committee member and PA minister Hussein A-Sheikh says that the PA will not accept construction even in the settlement blocs, the Yesha Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria demonstrated outside the Cabinet meeting Sunday morning. Members of the Yesha Council sought to remind most of the Cabinet ministers of their previous pledges to resume construction on the date the 10-month freeze expires four weeks from now. They held signs with names of imaginary neighborhoods named after the Cabinet ministers in Judea and Samaria "who kept their word and enabled the end of the freeze in Yesha."
"I am convinced that if the Palestinian leadership takes these negotiations as seriously as we do,” Netanyahu told the Cabinet Sunday morning, “we can reach a stable agreement, and not just a deal for a ceasefire between wars.”
2. Potential of 4 Billion Barrels of Oil Offshore
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
More optimistic reports continue to flow from the giant Leviathan energy field off the Haifa coast. Following previous higher estimates of gas and “signs of oil,” the latest report points to a potential of 4 billion barrels of “black gold.”
The ramifications of the discovery are immense. If the estimates materialize, Israel will become self-sufficient in energy, enjoy a boon of employment for engineers and laborers, and will become an exporter of gas and oil. The shekel, barring a conflict with Hizbullah or Iran, may become rock-solid, dropping the representative rate; Israel's shekel is now worth about 26.3 cents (3.8 shekels) to the dollar.
The announcement of the new estimates states that there is a 17 percent chance of finding reserves equal to 3 billion barrels of oil at a depth of slightly more than a mile undersea. The oil field is slightly beneath the mammoth gas reserves that already have been estimated to contain 13 trillion cubic feet of gas.
There also is an 8 percent chance that another 1.2 billion barrels exist at an even lower level. Earlier this month, oil reserves at Rosh HaAyin, east of Tel Aviv and bordering Samaria, were estimated to have a possible potential of 1.5 billion barrels of oil but that commercial quantities will be much lower, if at all. Israel's estimated oil consumption is slightly less than 100 million barrels a year.
Yitzchak Teshuva, head of the Delek Group that is part of the consortium probing the Leviathan field, has jubilantly exclaimed that the gas reserves will turn Israel into an energy exporter.
Officials added that a decision on whether to drill for the oil reserves will not be made before October, when drilling for the gas reserves at “Leviathan 1” is to begin at a cost of $150 million. The operation will last five months, and a decision on drilling for oil may await the results of the gas exploration; analysts have emphasized that the chances of huge oil reserves are only 17 percent. However, every previous report has so far proven to be overly conservative.
A South African company will head the drilling, but if a decision is made to drill at deeper levels for oil, a North American company with experience at those levels will be contracted.
The estimated gas reserves already have encouraged government officials to sell back to Egypt natural gas that Israel is committed to buy. In addition, Prime Minister Netanyahu reportedly suggested to Greece that it buy natural gas from Israel.
The energy discovery has brought two headaches: several Finance ministry officials want to hike the royalties on gas and oil discoveries to add more money to government coffers, raising heated protests from the energy consortium. Secondly, Hizbullah and Lebanon are claiming that the Leviathan reserves are in Lebanese territorial waters, and have threatened war with Israel over the energy field.
The Leviathan discovery is separate from the Tamar field, located to the south, which also is estimated to contain huge gas reserves that could possibly supply Israel’s gas needs at least until 2030.
3. Netanyahu Weighs 'Semi-Secret' Freeze
by Maayana Miskin
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is weighing a “semi-secret,” partial construction freeze in Judea and Samaria, according to political sources. The prime minister is searching for a way to appease both Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, who insists that Jews be prohibited to build homes in Judea and Samaria, and his constituents, who were promised that the freeze would end in September.
Sources close to Netanyahu say the prime minister is likely to announce his official strategy for dealing with the dilemma at the last minute, just before the construction freeze ends on September 26.
Netanyahu and Abbas are set to begin direct negotiations on September 2. Abbas has threatened to pull out of talks if Jews are allowed to resume building in Judea and Samaria.
The “mini-freeze” option would involve allowing construction in major Israeli population centers in Judea and Samaria, while prohibiting new building projects in smaller towns. However, the small town construction freeze may be a “quiet freeze,” officially enacted but never formally announced, in an attempt to maintain ties with groups opposing the freeze.
Abbas has demanded a full construction freeze not only in Judea and Samaria, but in much of Jerusalem as well, saying that all territory east of the 1949 armistice line is “occupied” by Israel and should be given to the PA for the creation of a new Arab state. Netanyahu is unlikely to give in to the PA demands, which are widely opposed by members of both his ruling coalition and the opposition parties in Knesset.
4. Pirate Arab Water Connections Detached
by Hillel Fendel
Over 200 Arab pirate connections to Israel’s main water lines, siphoning off water to PA Arabs who do not pay, have been detached in a joint police-Mekorot action.
Mekorot Water Company workers, under close police protection, have completed an operation disconnecting 230 pirate Arab connections to Israel’s main water lines. The connections siphoned off much-needed water for the benefit of Palestinian Authority Arabs, who thus avoided paying for the commodity.
In addition, the IDF’s Judea Region destroyed several small reservoirs in which stolen water was gathered in the Kiryat Arba-Hevron region.
On yet another front in the war against water thieves, police have begun laying ambushes, making several arrests and confiscating over 85,000 meters (53 miles) of piping used to pipe the stolen H2O to Arab fields and homes.
Infrastructures Minister Uzi Landau, who gave the order to take a stronger hand against the water thefts, expressed his satisfaction with the cooperation among the various bodies. “We plan to continue working to stop all water piracy, which affects the lives of all residents in the region," he added.
Residents of Kiryat Arba and neighboring communities, and Arabs as well, have suffered from lack of water in their faucets on numerous occasions, especially on especially hot days. The army has been frequently forced to deliver water to the towns. It has also been noticed, at the same time, that Arab fields along the roads of Judea appear to be extra green and thriving.
“Water theft is a grave phenomenon,” Landau said, “and it most manifest in Judea and Samaria. We have to deal with it seriously, especially in a country like ours where water is so precious.”
In a related item, the level of the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee), Israel’s main water reservoir, is in the midst of its customary summer drop. It now stands at approximately 213.5 meters below sea level – slightly more than half a meter higher than it was last year at this time. However, it is also a half-meter below the level beyond which authorities strive not to let it drop.
5. Hamas Threatens to 'Step on Heads' of PA for Talks with Israel
by Chana Ya'ar
The military wing of the Hamas terrorist organization that controls Gaza has threatened to “step on the heads” of the PA government if it compromises on Jerusalem and other issues in direct talks with Israel.
Khalil al-Haya, a leader of the Izz a-Din al-Qassam Brigades, announced Saturday in Gaza that the group would “step on the heads of those who dare cede the right of return, Jerusalem and Palestine.”
Hamas Won't Recognize Any Agreement
Al-Haya said the talks, set to take place September 2 in Washington D.C., would give Israel the excuse to “wipe away the Palestinian presence, continue Judaizing Jerusalem, continue building settlements and erase the Palestinian right of return.”
He called on PA Arabs to “rise up” against the talks and against the Ramallah-based PA negotiators who are set to travel to the United States. PA Chairman and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas does not “represent Palestine, Jerusalem, the refugees, or al-Aqsa,” Al-Haya said.
He added that Hamas would not agree to recognize any agreement signed by “the Zionist enemy,” and vowed to “prepare for the final battle until your banishment from Palestine.”
Who is Al-Haya?
A senior member of the Hamas leadership, Al-Haya was one of three survivors of the five top leaders, and the first to resurface, following the group's defeat in Israel's counter terrorism Operation Cast Lead war in the winter of 2008-2009.
“We promised to come out to you either as martyrs or as victors,” Al-Haya told supporters at a January 30, 2009 rally. “Today I come out to you, and you are victors.” A year earlier, Al-Haya bragged to reporters in Gaza of his family's track record as martyrs for jihad against Israel.
“This is the 10th member of my family to receive the honor of martyrdom,” he proudly told an AFP news reporter while kissing his son's bloody head in a Gaza morgue; his son had been killed in an IAF air strike while leading a terror cell launching a rocket attack at southern Israel. “I thank G-d for this gift,” he said.
Al-Haya himself has escaped several assassination attempts, including one by the IAF in 2007, when an IAF air strike killed two of his brothers and six other relatives in one of the family homes.
“This is part of our people's path, and G-d willing, our people will achieve victory,” Al-Haya said at the time.
6. Gaza-Bound Missiles Found in Sinai
by Hillel Fendel
Egyptian security forces uncovered over the weekend 190 anti-tank missiles and 10 anti-tank bombs, ready for smuggling from Sinai into Gaza. Egypt had just announced the day before that there are no terrorist organizations in the Sinai Peninsula.
The security forces raided storehouses in northern Sinai as part of a wide-scale police operation to ferret out drugs and weapons.
IDF and Shabak leaders have warned in recent months that world Islamic Jihad terrorist groups have established many terror cells throughout the Sinai. The gangs have reportedly amassed large amounts of weapons and ammunition, and are constantly engaged in recruiting members.
"Very Dangerous Place"
This past Wednesday, a special Israeli committee on terrorism categorized the Sinai as a “very dangerous” place for Israelis, following intelligence warnings of planned terror attacks. The committee stated that Israelis in the Sinai are under “very high concrete threats,” and that they should not spend the upcoming holidays there.
In response, a high-ranking Egyptian military official announced that the peninsula is under his country’s full security control, and “not even one terrorist organization is present there.”
The Egyptian official said, just a day before the discovery of the Gaza-bound rockets, “These are untrue rumors, started by Israeli tourism companies that wish to promote domestic Israeli tourism.”
Sinai has been under Egyptian government control since 1906. It was captured by Israeli, French and British forces in 1956, after Egypt closed the Suez Canal to Israeli shipping, but was “returned" to Egypt several months later under heavy international pressure. Israel captured it again during the Six Day War in 1967, heading off Egyptian threats to “throw Israel into the sea.” Israel retained the Sinai for 15 years, until 1982, after Israel and Egypt signed a peace treaty.
7. Iran Under Pressure: ‘No Final Decision’ on Death by Stoning
by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
Iran is reeling under an international uproar over the sentencing of a woman to death by stoning for adultery, and now says no final decision has been made in the case, which is "under review." Human rights groups have called on the European Union to slap new sanctions against the Islamic Republic if it carries out the sentence.
The case concerns Sakineh Mohammadi-Ashtiani, 43, who was convicted four years ago of adultery and of being an accomplice in the murder of her husband. She was sentenced to death by stoning, but an international outcry so far has kept her alive.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner wrote the European Union Friday, calling on other European countries "to remind Iranian authorities that, just as in the nuclear matter, their isolationist and closed stance will have a cost for them."
EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton replied, "The moment has come for the European Union to collectively express its rejection of practices of another age."
The defendant’s lawyer told the London Times that Iranian judicial officials know “their decision will have international ramifications. If they can get away with stoning Sakineh, they can get away with anything."
The woman recently was denied visits from her family and her lawyer, whose home was ransacked and searched, according to CNN.
"Because I am her lawyer, and working for her release and trying to prove that she is innocent, for this reason they are not letting me visit her," lawyer Houtan Kian told the television news channel. Another lawyer for Ashtiani fled Iran earlier this month after authorities harassed his family and arrested his wife. Kian said he would not leave the country despite pressure from authorities.
More than 100 cities around the world hosted protests on Saturday against stoning in Iran. Ashtiani is one of 24 Iranians, mostly women, who face a similar death penalty.
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