LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN

September 30/16

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani

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http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletin16/english.september29.16.htm

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Bible Quotations For Today
Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters
Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ according to Saint Matthew 12/29-32/:"How can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property, without first tying up the strong man? Then indeed the house can be plundered. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come."

I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth
Book of Revelation 03/14-22/:"‘To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation: ‘I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth. For you say, "I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing." You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire so that you may be rich; and white robes to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen; and salve to anoint your eyes so that you may see.I reprove and discipline those whom I love. Be earnest, therefore, and repent. Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me. To the one who conquers I will give a place with me on my throne, just as I myself conquered and sat down with my Father on his throne. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.’"

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on September 29-30/16
Elias Bejjani/Who Trusts Aoun, Ends On His Victim’s Long List/Elias Bejjani/September 05/16
Aoun as president? Not so fast/Hasan Lakkis/The Daily Star/September 29/16
Berri vs Aoun/Hussain Abdul Hussain/Now Lebanon/September 29/16
Gulf Arab official: Rest in peace Shimon Peres/Jerusalem Post/September 29/16
Abdullah-Rafsanjani dialogue and the tussle between perception and reality/Amir Taheri/Al Arabiya/September 29/16
The ally, the enemy, and America in between/Mshari Al Thaydi/Al Arabiya/September 29/16
Why JASTA has major implications for the region/Dr. Theodore Karasik/Al Arabiya/September 29/16
Abu Sin’ between Rashed and Thaydi/Turki Aldakhil/Al Arabiya/September 29/16
International agreements on Syria will prove worthless/Maria Dubovikova/Al Arabiya/September 29/16
France’s New Sharia Police/Yves Mamou/Gatestone Institute/September 29/16
Let's Lock The Door To Islam/Geert Wilders/Gatestone Institute/September 29/16
Meet the Western Charlatans Justifying Jihad/Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/September 29/16
Why the Oslo Process Doomed Peace/Efraim Karsh/Middle East Quarterly/September 29/16

Titles For Latest Lebanese Related News published on on September 29-30/16
Elias Bejjani/Who Trusts Aoun, Ends On His Victim’s Long List
Aoun as president? Not so fast
Berri vs Aoun/Hussain Abdul Hussain/Now Lebanon/September 29/16
Berri Meets Hariri as Report Says He's Willing to Accept 'Half a Package Deal'
Lebanese Army Shells Militants in Arsal Outskirts
Landmine Wounds Three Farmers near Israel Border
Report: Hizbullah and Iran 'Hold all the Cards' to the Presidency
Jumblat Discusses Developments with Hariri at Center House
Mashnouq: Security under Control, Serious Drive to End Vacuum
Egypt Ambassador: Hariri Exerting Great Effort to End Presidential Vacancy
Moqbel to Extend Term of Army Commander
FPM Slams Extension for Qahwaji, Vows No Silence over 'Insistence on Violating Laws'
Report: FPM Drops Street Rallies Pending Hariri's Endeavors on Presidency
Health Ministry launches national breast cancer awareness campaign
EU committee inspects waste sorting plant in Kfour
Marouni: Presidential discussions have a long way ahead
Sawan issues 4 indictments over terrorism crimes
ISF: Man found strangled in Baabda
Basbous meets Reform and Guidance Association over cooperation means
Army, civil defense tame fires in several Lebanese regions
Turkish foreign visitor arrivals fall 38 pct in Aug tourism ministry

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on on September 29-30/16
Gulf Arab official: Rest in peace Shimon Peres
Peres Funeral Will Bring Back Memories of Rabin and Arafat
Canada takes in record number of immigrants in one year
US weighs tougher response to Russia over Syria crisis
Russia Says Syria Bombing to Continue despite U.S. Warning
Obama Defends Syria Policy in Face of Renewed Criticism
Pakistan Fury after India Launches Kashmir Strikes
U.N. Says 'Hundreds' of Medical Evacuations Needed from Aleppo
Merkel, Erdogan Say Russia Has 'Special Responsibility' to Calm Syria
47 Children Hurt in Abu Dhabi School Bus Accident
Saudi Crown Prince in Turkey to discuss regional issues
US approves Boeing, Lockheed fighter jet sales to Gulf
Erdogan hints state of emergency can be extended to a year
More US troops to reach Iraq ahead of Mosul battle
US: Drone strikes in Yemen killed 4 Qaeda members
India carries out ‘strikes’ on Kashmir frontier
Pakistan says Indian fire kills 2 soldiers in Kashmir
Iran: Amnesty International react to “shameful” 16-year-sentence for human rights defender Narges Mohammadi
Iran: 27 executions in three days
Iran: A report on protest rallies of staff and workers
Iran: wretched situation in Zabol Central Prison
How many more children have to pay the price of Iran regime’s negligence?
Iran political prisoner Maryam Akbari Monfared put under pressure

Links From Jihad Watch Site for on September 29-30/16
Quebec: Muslims take author to court for revealing truth about Islamic school
Obama: “There’s no religious rationale that would justify in any way any of the things” jihad terrorists do
Swedish journalist calls opponents of Muslim migrant influx “human brown rats,” calls for them to be exterminated
Authorities insist men who took NYC jihadi’s unexploded bomb out of suitcase “Egyptian tourists” who have returned home
Lejla Colak Video: What My Experience With Islam Tells Me About “Islamophobia”
Denmark: Muslim migrant may be expelled for praising Charlie Hebdo jihad massacre
French Jews targeted by Muslims, flock to Israel
Austria: Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” tries to run down pedestrians, officials investigating motive
Video: Robert Spencer on the human cost of denying the Islamic motivation of jihad terrorists
Uganda: Christian convert from Islam beaten unconscious by husband for attending church

Links From Christian Today Site for on September 29-30/16
More Christians Killed In Nigeria By Islamist Terrorists Of Boko Haram
How Christians In Iraq Are Starting To Rebuild Lives Out Of The Ashes Left By Islamic State
Five Sentenced To Life For Torture And Murder Of Christians In Turkey
Eminent Christian Philosopher Richard Swinburne Criticised After Calling Homosexuality A 'Disability'
James Macintyre: As Peres Dies, What Hopes For Peace In The Middle East?

Mark Woods: Why Christians Should Support The Right To Blaspheme
Witness Forced To Film Father Jacques Hamel's Brutal Murder
Child Sex Abuse In Non-Christian Religions: Why We Need To Know More
Why Does Barack Obama Refuse To Say 'Islamic' Terrorism?
Hillsong Pastor Calls Out 'All Lives Matter' Mantra
Singapore Sends Teen Blogger Back To Jail For Criticising Religion

Latest Lebanese Related News published on on September 29-30/16

Elias Bejjani/Who Trusts Aoun, Ends On His Victim’s Long List
من يثق بعون على الأكيد، الأكيد والأكيد، ينتهي على قائمة ضحاياه
Elias Bejjani/September 05/16
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/09/05/elias-bejjani-who-trusts-aoun-end-on-his-victims-long-list%d9%85%d9%86-%d9%8a%d8%ab%d9%82-%d8%a8%d8%b9%d9%88%d9%86-%d8%b9%d9%84%d9%89-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3%d9%83%d9%8a%d8%af%d8%8c-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%a3/
We, The Lebanese Maronites and all through our deeply rooted and very rich history of more than 1500 years, in beloved Lebanon and the Diaspora, never ever were badly and evilly hit by a plague, Moron and demagogue politician or leader like Michael Aoun, in all domains and on each and every social and national level.
The man according to all Maronite national and faith criteria is100 times worst than an Antichrist. He venomously entrapped and deceived many members of our community, and other communities’ members, invaded their thinking capabilities, poisoned their minds and controlled their political-national choices and affiliations.Aoun dragged all his pries (supporters) to side with the Iranian occupier and with its armed terrorist Hezbollah militia.
He dragged them all to resist all that is common sense, self respect, rights, independence, freedom, democracy and sovereignty..
Sadly he succeeded in making them fierce enemies of their own country and of their own people.
Aoun on purpose and in a bid to serve his mere personal political agenda, he totally negated, marginalized and contradicted, both practically and rhetorically all our Maronite Patriarchate historical convictions that preserved, safeguarded, distinguished and pioneered Lebanon and the Lebanese positive roles in all aspects, locally, regionally and internationally.
For all of the above facts, and for piles of genuine fears, many intellectual and patriotic Maronites in particular, and many Lebanese communities’ members in general strongly oppose all efforts to elect Aoun as president.
In this context comes all our genuine, loud and harsh criticism for Dr. Samir Geagea, the leader of the Lebanese Forces Christian Party. We do not see eye to eye with him that his advocacy for Aoun’s presidency serves the interests of our people, or helps Lebanon to reclaim its Iranian confiscated independence in any way.
The Question is how could, Aoun the Iranian puppet and Trojan rescue Lebanon from Iran and its Hezbollah terrorist proxy!! No logic in this bizarre equation!!
Many who closely know Geagea believe that his advocacy for Aoun’s presidency is sincere and merely patriotic because according to his personal assessment this is the only left means to save Lebanon and its political system.
It could be very true when it comes to Geagea’s sincerity, but sadly the out come of his quest is a big zero. Meanwhile Geagea’s illogical support to Aoun is making things more difficult because Aoun is not mentally balanced and lives in a world of day dreaming and fantasy.
The only scene that Aoun sees and dreams about, and the only issue that controls his mind is the presidential Baabda Palace and its presidential chair and nothing else.
There is no doubt that all Geagea’s presidential pro Aoun advocacy that we oppose and denounce is not going any where, at least up till now, while in reality Geagea’s image of credibility, patriotism, and principles has been badly shaken and blemished.
Based on Aoun’s kind of sickening personality, thinking and agenda, there is no doubt that he will stab Geagea in the back when he does not need him any more as he always did to many of his close supporters, family members, numerous friends and politicians.
In Aoun’s chameleon dictionary, the term gratitude does not exist.
In conclusion, MP. Micheal Aoun can not be trusted and all those who did trust him have paid heavy prices. In this realm, we call on Dr. Samir Geagea to totally distance himself from all kinds of advocacy for Aoun and seriously look in other, safe, practical and patriotic presidential options.
To Dr. Samir Geagea: Dear, as the Lebanese proverb goes: “You did not die, but you did not see those who died”

Aoun as president? Not so fast
Hasan Lakkis/The Daily Star/September 29/16

http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/09/29/hasan-lakkisthe-daily-star-aoun-as-president-not-so-fast/

Regardless of whether former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s current flurry of wide consultations with various leaders would lead to resolving the presidential crisis, political sources said that all parliamentary blocs must deal with this development in a positive way and become convinced of the need for an inter-Lebanese accord to end the power vacuum. This is despite the fact that Lebanon’s presidential election has always been influenced by regional and international factors since the independence in 1943.
Parliamentary sources said that Hariri’s serious efforts to end the presidential vacuum, now in its third year, were clearly manifested in two messages he sent from the northern town of Bneshaai after his meeting Monday with Marada Movement leader MP Sleiman Frangieh and also from the statement issued by the parliamentary Future bloc after its weekly meeting chaired by Hariri at his Beirut Downtown residence Tuesday.
The two messages did not reflect the Future Movement’s insistence on adopting Frangieh’s candidacy for the presidency, signaling a call for searching for another candidate acceptable to all the parties, the sources said.
The sources noted that until now, the contacts and declared attitudes by Hariri and other political blocs did not lead to nominating a third candidate other the two main rivals, MP Michel Aoun and Frangieh.
However, the sources said signs indicate that Frangieh’s receding chances are serving Aoun’s presidential aspirations.
The same sources point out that hurdles that prevent Aoun from reaching the presidential palace in Baabda are not easy to eliminate for the following reasons:
So far, there is no Christian unanimity or at least an absolute Christian majority on Aoun’s side that would allow a weighty bloc, like the Future bloc, to announce the adoption of Aoun’s candidacy.
Speaker Nabih Berri, who is allied with Aoun’s key ally, Hezbollah, does not appear yet to be convinced of supporting Aoun’s option if it is not coupled with a full package. An agreement on Berri’s proposed package is not at hand now.
It is rumored in political circles that Hariri’s supporters need a sufficient convincing dose to accept Aoun’s choice for president. This needs some time to make it possible.
“Assuming that the elements of an inter-Lebanese solution have been tackled, it remains to be seen if these elements will conform with external factors that influence the presidential election,” a source said.
The sources highlighted the importance of the time factor as sources close to the Free Patriotic Movement stress that the ongoing flurry of political activity should lead to an agreement on the election of Aoun as president within an acceptable period of time in order to curb the momentum of the FPM’s ongoing preparations for street protests on Oct. 13.
In the absence of positive signals on the election of Aoun as president, the FPM cannot suspend or postpone the planned street protests, the FPM sources said.
Given the party’s threatened protests, the parliamentary sources said they reached a conviction that a further delay in the presidential election is no longer possible.
“We are faced with only two choices: Either persuading Gen. Aoun to withdraw in favor of another candidate, with Aoun having a key role in choosing this candidate – and this is difficult if not impossible – or quickly agreeing with Aoun on acceptable conditions by everyone to elect him as a president to avert the possibility of Lebanon plunging into the game of street protests which would serve no one because Lebanon has begun to lose its political, constitutional and socioeconomic immunity,” another source said.

Berri vs Aoun
Hussain Abdul Hussain/Now Lebanon/September 29/16

http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/09/29/hussain-abdul-hussainnow-lebanon-berri-vs-aoun/
Lebanon’s presidential vacancy has been the result of Hezbollah’s inability to reconcile its two allies: the savvy speaker and the naive general
Presidential candidate Michel Aoun has built his political career on attacking Sunnis and accusing them of stealing Christian “rights” in post-Taif Lebanon. Yet Aoun’s demagoguery aside, experts agree that it was Lebanon’s Shia who emerged from the civil war as the biggest winners, snatching endless concessions from other sects and taking over key state positions, as well as inflating the Shia quota in the bureaucracy and the military.
Those were not Iran’s Shiites in Lebanon, but rather Syria’s. Through Moussa al-Sadr, the Assad regime had struck an alliance with the Shia under the command of warlord Nabih Berri. After Taif and the integration of militias into the state, Berri became speaker of parliament in 1992, a position he still holds until today. Even though the speaker technically presides over the legislative power that checks the executive power, Berri plays two roles: On the one hand he owns Parliament, which he refuses to share with other sects. On the other hand, Berri demands the Shiite share in government, the military and the bureaucracy.
After every election, Berri shuts down opposition to the renewal of his position by arguing that only the Shia get to choose the speaker, a rule that the Shia and Berri have not abided by when it comes to the selection of the Maronite president and the Sunni prime minister. Hence, while the selection of a president and prime minister requires national consensus among all sects, Berri’s speakership is outside such consensus.
Together with Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, Berri is among Lebanon’s shrewdest politicians. The two men started their careers in 1977 and 78 respectively, and have been in an alliance ever since, with occasional breakdowns. Jumblatt finds solace in like-minded Berri. Both men depend on state resources to maintain their patronage networks. Both have an elevated sense of reality that has kept them from ever overplaying their hands. Because of their savviness, the parties of both Jumblatt and Berri are overrepresented in parliament.
The shakeup that forced Assad to withdraw his forces from Lebanon in 2005 and transformed Hezbollah into the country’s actual ruler amended the nation’s political game. Hezbollah, the revolutionary militia, became reliant on Berri the statesman to watch over Shia interests in the state, especially inside the military and its Army Intelligence branch. Hezbollah was also forced to shop for Christian allies and ended up with Aoun, who sees the presidency as his right with which he plans to restore Lebanon to its pre-Taif days.
Aoun’s ambition to take over the state naturally puts him on a collision course with Berri. But since both men are Hezbollah’s allies, the party has found itself juggling between the two, a policy that has resulted in Lebanon’s political paralysis and over two years of presidential vacancy.
Without Hezbollah protecting Aoun, Berri would have beaten the “General” so hard that Aoun would have not known what had hit him. Unlike the shrewd — usually low profile but extremely influential — Berri, Aoun’s ego often distorts his sense of reality. Aoun believes he is stronger than he actually is. Hence, while Berri and Jumblatt have survived the civil war, Syrian rule of Lebanon and now Hezbollah’s rule of Lebanon, Aoun was the civil war’s biggest loser, and even with Hezbollah’s support, remains outside the presidential palace.
So modest are Aoun’s political skills that he has advocated for Berri’s dream of amending Taif and renegotiating the current split between Christians and Muslims into one that spreads the state into three parts: One for the Christians, one for the Shia and one for the Sunnis. As my friend and colleague Michael Young once wrote: How does shrinking their quota in the state from half to one third, like Aoun has been advocating, serve Christian interests?
Should the Lebanese state be renegotiated into the Third Lebanese Republic, the Shia of the state — read Berri — will have the “obstructive third.” If Aoun thinks he can stop Berri from electing a Christian president who is not Aoun, watch Berri play Lebanese politics with a more powerful hand, and with the ability to constitute two-thirds simply by coming to terms with the Sunnis, whose leader Saad Hariri has been ready to elect any president that gives him back the premiership.
Lebanon’s paralysis and presidential vacancy have been the result of Hezbollah’s inability to reconcile its two valuable allies: the savvy Berri and the naive Aoun. Jumblatt supports Berri. Meanwhile, what was once called March 14 will play along whichever way the wind blows, if Hezbollah ever allows for a winner in the stand off between Berri and Aoun to emerge.

Berri Meets Hariri as Report Says He's Willing to Accept 'Half a Package Deal'
Naharnet/September 29/16/Al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri held talks Thursday evening with Speaker Nabih Berri as part of his latest drive regarding the issue of the presidency. The meeting was followed by a dinner banquet, according to media reports. Hariri had met with Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh, his declared presidential candidate, in the wake of his return from a several-week foreign trip.He has also met with Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel and Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat and, according to MTV, he is scheduled to meet in the coming hours with Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun and Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea. Hariri is also expected to visit Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Russia in the coming days, MTV said. According to media reports, Berri has insisted in recent days that no president will be elected without an agreement on so-called package deal involving agreements on key issues such as the presidency, the government and the electoral law. But MTV reported Thursday that Berri is willing to accept “half a package deal” involving “an agreement on the electoral law, the finance minister post, creating an oil ministry and retaking the energy ministry portfolio.”Hariri's return to Lebanon on Saturday has triggered a flurry of rumors and media reports about a possible presidential settlement and the possibility that the ex-PM has finally decided to endorse Aoun for the presidency in a bid to break the deadlock. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum. Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. Hariri's move prompted Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea to endorse the nomination of Aoun, his long-time Christian rival, after months of political rapprochement talks between their two parties. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Lebanese Army Shells Militants in Arsal Outskirts
Naharnet/September 29/16/The Lebanese army shelled the positions of militant groups in the outskirts of the northeastern town of Arsal on Thursday, the state-run National News Agency reported. The army targeted the movements of militants in Wadi al-Khayl, al-Zamrani and Wadi al-Debb in the outskirts, added NNA. Militants from the IS and al-Nusra Front, which rebranded itself as Jabhat Fateh al-Sham in July when it split from the al-Qaida movement, are entrenched in rugged areas along the undemarcated Lebanese-Syrian border and the army regularly shells their posts while Hizbullah and the Syrian army have engaged in clashes with them on the Syrian side of the border. The two groups briefly overran the town of Arsal in August 2014 before being ousted by the army after days of deadly battles. The retreating militants abducted more than 30 troops and policemen of whom four have been executed and nine remain in the captivity of the IS group.

Landmine Wounds Three Farmers near Israel Border
Naharnet/September 29/16 /Three Lebanese farmers were wounded Wednesday when a landmine exploded near the border fence that separates south Lebanon from Israel's Metulla area. The blast amputated the leg of one of them as the two others sustained light injuries, Lebanon's National News Agency said. The three were transferred to the state-run hospital in Marjeyoun. NNA had initially reported that the three were "Hizbullah members" but the party swiftly issued a statement denying the report. "The party has no links to the individuals who were wounded in the landmine explosion... These were normal citizens who were working in their land," Hizbullah's media relations department said. Hizbullah's al-Manar television for its part said three civilians were injured when a landmine left over from the Israeli occupation era exploded in the border area of al-Hamames.

Report: Hizbullah and Iran 'Hold all the Cards' to the Presidency
Naharnet/September 29/16 /A solution to Lebanon's presidential impasse is not in the hands of al-Mustaqbal Movement chief ex-PM Saad Hariri as the latest political activities on the ground are trying to demonstrate, but in the hands of Hizbullah and Iran, al-Joumhouria daily reported on Thursday. An official in the March 14 alliance, said it is unlikely for founder of the Free Patriotic Movement MP Michel Aoun to become president, and affirmed that the “cards are in the hands of Hizbullah and Iran which is keeping it among its stack of cards in Yemen and Iraq in order to improve its negotiations with the new American administration,” the official told the daily. He added on condition of anonymity: “Everything happening at the time being is merely to hold Hariri responsible for the presidential vacuum.”Hariri, who returned to the country recently from a foreign trip that lasted several week, kicked off meetings and consultations in order to help solve the deadlock of the presidency. Media reports said that Hariri has told the members of his parliamentary bloc during a meeting on Tuesday that he might make the “bitter choice” of endorsing Free Patriotic Movement founder Aoun for the presidency as some Mustaqbal MPs described such a step as “suicidal.” He was quoted as saying that he might be compelled to endorse Aoun for the post because the March 8 camp is blaming him for the vacuum. An official statement issued after the meeting had said that Hariri “informed the bloc that he has started consultations with all political parties with the aim of speeding up the election of a president.”Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum.
Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Mrada Movemnet chief Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. Hariri's move prompted Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea to endorse the nomination of Aoun, his long-time Christian rival, after months of political rapprochement talks between their two parties. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Jumblat Discusses Developments with Hariri at Center House
Naharnet/September 29/16 /Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblat held talks Wednesday evening at the Center House with al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri. A terse statement issued by Hariri's office said the meeting tackled “the current political developments” and was followed by a dinner banquet. Health Minister Wael Abou Faour of the PSP and Hariri's adviser ex-MP Ghattas Khoury took part in the talks, the statement said. Earlier in the day, Hariri held talks with Kataeb Party chief MP Sami Gemayel in Saifi and Bikfaya. A wave of speculation had preceded the 45th presidential vote session that was held earlier on Wednesday after Hariri's return to Lebanon on Saturday triggered a flurry of rumors and media reports that the ex-PM had finally decided to endorse Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun for the presidency in a bid to break the deadlock. Hariri had held talks Monday evening in Bnashii with Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh, his declared presidential candidate. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum. Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. Hariri's move prompted Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea to endorse the nomination of Aoun, his long-time Christian rival, after months of political rapprochement talks between their two parties. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Mashnouq: Security under Control, Serious Drive to End Vacuum
Naharnet/September 29/16/Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq reassured Wednesday that the security situation is “under control,” while noting that there are serious efforts to put an end to the presidential vacuum that has been running since May 2014. “The security situations in the country are under control,” Mashnouq told Norwegian Ambassador to Lebanon Lene Natasha Lind during a meeting at the ministry. “There is a serious drive to end the presidential vacuum,” Mashnouq, a member of ex-PM Saad Hariri's Mustaqbal Movement, added. Hariri's return to Lebanon on Saturday had triggered a flurry of rumors and media reports about an imminent election of a president. The parliament however failed anew to elect a president during a 45th session that was held earlier on Wednesday and Speaker Nabih Berri has scheduled the next session for October 31. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, MP Michel Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum. Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. Hariri's move prompted Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea to endorse the nomination of Aoun, his long-time Christian rival, after months of political rapprochement talks between their two parties. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Egypt Ambassador: Hariri Exerting Great Effort to End Presidential Vacancy
Naharnet/September 29/16/ Egyptian Ambassador to Lebanon Nazih Naggari held talks Thursday with al-Mustaqbal Movement leader ex-PM Saad Hariri and noted that the former premier is “exerting a great effort to end the presidential vacancy.”“I was honored to meet with (ex-)premier Hariri, who has a special relationship with Egypt. He returned from abroad a few days ago and I wanted to meet with him as soon as possible to discuss the latest developments,” Naggari said after the Center House meeting. “Hariri is exerting a great effort to end the presidential vacancy and this is important for all the Lebanese. He has a large role and an active presence in the Lebanese political life,” he added. The envoy said Hariri briefed him on “the latest developments on this issue and on his view about the situation in Lebanon.”“We agreed to pursue the consultations in the coming period. It is clear that the matter is open as well as the options. Ex-premier Hariri is considering the possibilities and he will continue the consultations with all political forces,” Naggari added. “We will pursue this matter with him, and we hope that Lebanon will have a president as soon as possible, because the presidential vacancy for a period of two and a half years is unacceptable, and should not last more than that,” he went on to say. Hariri's return to Lebanon on Saturday has triggered a flurry of rumors and media reports about a possible presidential settlement and the possibility that the ex-PM has finally decided to endorse Free Patriotic Movement founder MP Michel Aoun for the presidency in a bid to break the deadlock. Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum. Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Marada Movement chief MP Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. Hariri's move prompted Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea to endorse the nomination of Aoun, his long-time Christian rival, after months of political rapprochement talks between their two parties. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Moqbel to Extend Term of Army Commander
Naharnet/September 29/16/ Defense Minister Samir Moqbel announced on Thursday that he will sign a decision to extend the term of Army Commander Jean Qahwaji today and another decision to extend the term of Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Walid Salman on Friday. “We will not accept vacuum in the military institution. I will sign a decision today to extend the term of Qahwaji since the cabinet failed to convene Thursday. I have summoned Major General Salman and asked him to exercise his duties as chief of staff,” said Moqbel in a press conference. Moqbel had in August last year postponed the retirement of Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji, Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Walid Salman and Higher Defense Council chief Maj. Gen. Mohammed Kheir, extending their terms by one year, after the political forces failed to reach an agreement on security and military appointments. In August 2016, he issued a decision postponing the retirement of Higher Defense Council chief Maj. Gen. Mohammed Kheir until 21 August, 2017. The appointments at the military posts is a contentious subject among political forces especially that the Free Patriotic Movement says it rejects term extensions for any military or security official. Moqbel added: “Security threats stare at us from all sides. I cannot find any institution but the military one that has stayed away from political disputes and targets the nation and citizen.”“No borders can be protected and no dignities can be preserved if it was not for the military institution. We hereby call on everyone including the people and media outlets to keep the military institution away from political enigmas,” concluded Moqbel.

FPM Slams Extension for Qahwaji, Vows No Silence over 'Insistence on Violating Laws'
Naharnet/September 29/16/ The Free Patriotic Movement on Thursday said it “strongly condemns” a decision by Defense Minister Samir Moqbel to postpone the retirement of Army chief General Jean Qahwaji, vowing that it will not “remain silent” over “the insistence on violating the laws.”
“It is a flagrant violation of all laws that can be added to the series of violations that the government has committed or overlooked in the domain of national defense and many other domains,” the FPM said in a statement. “In his illegitimate and illegal decision, the defense minister relied on flimsy excuses that do not serve the military institution but would rather weaken it and harm the morale of its finest officers through depriving them of their natural and legitimate right to be promoted to the most senior posts,” the movement added. And warning that it “will not remain silent over the insistence on violating the laws,” the FPM pledged that it will “do everything necessary to put and end to the continued destruction of the State.”Earlier in the day, Moqbel announced that he would sign a decree extending Qahwaji's term before midnight. “We will not accept vacuum in the military institution. I will sign a decision today to extend the term of Qahwaji since the cabinet failed to convene Thursday,” he said. “Security threats are surrounding us from all sides,” the minister warned. The FPM, which says it opposes term extensions for all senior officers, has recently suspended its participation in cabinet sessions in the wake of a decision by Moqbel to extend the term of Higher Defense Council chief Maj. Gen. Mohammed Kheir. The movement has also suspended its participation in national dialogue meetings and threatened street protests and a “political system crisis” over accusations that the other parties in the country are not respecting the 1943 National Pact that stipulates Christian-Muslim partnership. Qahwaji's term has already been extended twice since 2013 despite objections from the FPM, which had been reportedly lobbying for the appointment of former Commando Regiment chief Brig. Gen. Chamel Roukoz as a successor to Qahwaji.
Roukoz is the son-in-law of FPM founder MP Michel Aoun.

Report: FPM Drops Street Rallies Pending Hariri's Endeavors on Presidency
Naharnet/September 29/16 /The Free Patriotic Movement has postponed the streets rallies that it vowed to kick off after the parliamentary meeting on September 28 dedicated for the election of a president, until al-Mustaqbal Movement chief ex-PM Saad Hariri ends his consultations with political parties and the FPM's anticipations that it could bring Aoun to the post of presidency, the pan-Arab al-Hayat daily reported on Thursday. At a time when high-level sources in the FPM kept on confirming until Thursday evening that the popular movements that they prepared for continue, the daily said that “the FPM leadership has postponed the street moves that were intended under the banner of the election of a president, approving a new election law and confirming to the National Pact in government decisions. “The FPM decided to delay the moves pending communications conducted by Hariri on the presidency, and amid anticipation among the FPM circles that the results could bring forward the election of the FPM founder MP Michel Aoun.”According to FPM parliamentary sources, the street rallies and sit-ins were supposed to begin following the 45th parliamentary session that was held Wednesday, but the step was postponed and a decision was taken to wait for the outcome of political communications over the presidency, said the daily. The parliament failed to convene on Wednesday to end the over two-year presidential vacuum over lack of quorum, and Speaker Nabih Berri adjourned it to October 31
The Change and Reform parliamentary bloc of Aoun announced earlier that it has started mobilizing for street protests to kick off on September 28 and October 13 as part of its escalatory steps that are aimed at pressing the other parties in the country to “abide by the National Pact.”
FPM chief Jebran Bassil has threatened that the FPM would “topple the government” through street protests if the other parties do not heed the movement's demand regarding “partnership” and the National Pact. Hariri, who returned to the country recently from a foreign trip that lasted several weeks, kicked off meetings and consultations in order to help solve the deadlock of the presidency. Hariri started consultations with all political parties with the aim of speeding up the election of a president, amid reports claiming that he might endorse Aoun for the presidency.
Lebanon has been without a president since the term of Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014 and Hizbullah, Aoun's Change and Reform bloc and some of their allies have been boycotting the parliament's electoral sessions, stripping them of the needed quorum. Hariri, who is close to Saudi Arabia, launched an initiative in late 2015 to nominate Mrada Movemnet chief Suleiman Franjieh for the presidency but his proposal was met with reservations from the country's main Christian parties as well as Hizbullah. Hariri's move prompted Lebanese Forces leader Samir Geagea to endorse the nomination of Aoun, his long-time Christian rival, after months of political rapprochement talks between their two parties. The supporters of Aoun's presidential bid argue that he is more eligible than Franjieh to become president due to the size of his parliamentary bloc and his bigger influence in the Christian community.

Health Ministry launches national breast cancer awareness campaign
Thu 29 Sep 2016/NNA - The Health Ministry launched on Thursday a national breast cancer awareness campaign for 2016 in conjunction with Hoffmann la Roche Company in Lebanon sponsored by Prime Minister’s wife, Lama Salam, in presence of Public Health Minister, Wael Abou Faour, and other figures. Salam praised the efforts of the Ministry, the minister, and civil society organizations in terms of awareness. She said that the consecutive campaigns succeeded in informing Lebanese women, their husbands, and their families, of the importance of mammography tests that allow breast cancer early detection. Abou Faour, for his part, thanked Salam for sponsoring said event, before talking about the importance of women’s role in the society and in her house. "According to statistics, 1 women out 8 is prone to breast cancer, which constitutes 41% of all cancers in general," he added. He finally hoped that this campaign would reach the areas that have never received any campaign on breast cancer awareness.

EU committee inspects waste sorting plant in Kfour
Thu 29 Sep 2016/NNA - A committee of the European Union visited on Thursday afternoon the waste sorting plant affiliated to the Union of Shkeef Municipalities in al-Kfour Valley, to have firsthand look at the ongoing of work at said plant and its sorting mechanism. The Committee decided to "update the Plant to enjoy a force of 300 tons and supplying it with modern equipment and facilities required for the production of electricity and gas to be distributed to the surrounding towns for free, similar to the Neemeh's." After touring the lands located in the vicinity of the plant, the Committee chose a piece of land for the establishment of a sanitary landfill, which meets the environmental and health conditions far from wells and groundwater.

Marouni: Presidential discussions have a long way ahead
Thu 29 Sep 2016/NNA - Member of Parliament, Elie Marouni, said on Thursday that presidential discussions still had a long way to go. "Discussions are still in their beginning stage," the lawmaker told the Voice of Lebanon radio station, making clear that the difficulties that have been hindering the election of a president over the last two years are still the same. As for Former Prime Minister Saad Hariri's meeting with Kataeb Party leader, MP Sami Frangieh, and Former President Amine Gemayel, the lawmaker said that talks featured high on the presidential dossier. "Hariri did not express any specific position or stress the nomination of a specific presidential candidate. The meeting was of a general nature that tackled all the presidential candidates with no exception," Marouni added.

Sawan issues 4 indictments over terrorism crimes
Thu 29 Sep 2016/NNA - Military investigative judge Fadi Sawan issued on Thursday 4 indictments against two Lebanese, two Syrians and a Palestinian accused of belonging to terrorism groups and carrying out terrorist acts. The accused were referred to the permanent court for trial.

ISF: Man found strangled in Baabda
Thu 29 Sep 2016/NNA - The body of a man in his forties was found murdered by strangulation in the locality of Baabda on 1/09/2016, with no identification papers in his possession, Internal Security Forces Directorate General said in a statement. The body was transported to the public Baabda hospital. The ISF mentioned in the statement the physical features of the murdered person, and asked his family, relatives or anyone who knows about him to either report to the hospital or contact Baabda Judicial Police Station on these numbers: 05/922173, 05/921115 or 05/468894 to receive the corpse.

Basbous meets Reform and Guidance Association over cooperation means
Thu 29 Sep 2016/NNA - Internal Security Forces chief Ibrahim Basbous received this afternoon at his Barracks office a delegation of "Guidance and Reform" Islamic Philanthropic Association, led by its head Wassim Mougharbel. The visit aims at discussing means of bolstering cooperation between ISF cooperation between ISF Institution and the Association. The delegation also briefed Major General Basbous over the Association's future activities in conjunction with the ISF.

Army, civil defense tame fires in several Lebanese regions
Thu 29 Sep 2016/NNA - Army units in conjunction with civil defense firefighters doused fires that erupted yesterday in the outskirts of Neemeh, Bakifa, Kfarfakoud, al-Muncef and al-Kafoun, army command said in a communiqué. The affected areas were estimated at 138 acres of forest trees and herb lands.

Turkish foreign visitor arrivals fall 38 pct in Aug tourism ministry
Thu 29 Sep 2016/NNA - The number of foreigners visiting Turkey dropped 38 percent in August, official data showed on Thursday, showing a persistent decline as series of deadly bombings, a failed coup and tensions with Russia kept tourists away. Tourist arrivals fell 37.96 percent year-on-year in August, with 3.18 million people arriving during the month, data from the Tourism Ministry showed. It was the fourth consecutive month when the tourist numbers dropped more than 30 percent. Tourism revenues are among the key sources of financing for Turkey's current account deficit and their decline signals more pain for the Turkish economy, which is smarting from slowing exports and weak private investment.-------Reuters

Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on on September 29-30/16

Gulf Arab official: Rest in peace Shimon Peres
Jerusalem Post/September 29/16
"Rest in peace President Shimon Peres, a man of war and a man of the still elusive peace in the Middle East,” Khalifa posted on his Twitter account.
Even though Bahrain has no official diplomatic relationship, Khalifa has met with Jewish and Israeli leaders including former Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni in 2007.
Jordanian King Abdullah and Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi have not publicly commented on Peres’s death or announced if they plan to attend his funeral Friday morning.
However, the London-based al-Araby al-Jadeed reported that Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri will attend the funeral and President Sisi sent a condolence letter to Israeli officials as “is protocol in such circumstances with friendly nations.”
It is still unclear who will officially represent Jordan at the funeral.
Jordanian King Hussein and former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak attended and delivered eulogies at the funeral of former Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas sent a condolence letter to the Peres family on Wednesday, expressing his “sadness and sorrow” of the former Israeli statesman’s death.
Abbas said Peres made “unremitting efforts to reach a permanent peace since the Oslo Accords until his last moments.”
The Palestinian leadership still has not announced who will attend the funeral, but Al-Araby al-Jadeed reported that “a high-ranking,” Palestinian delegation will come.
Late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat did not attend the funeral of the Rabin, but sat Shiva with the Rabin family.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry has confirmed that top, international leaders will attend the funeral including US President Barack Obama, former US President Bill Clinton, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and many others.
Peres, 93, died on Wednesday morning two weeks after suffering a stroke.

Peres Funeral Will Bring Back Memories of Rabin and Arafat
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/September 29/16/When Shimon Peres is laid to rest on Friday, his funeral is likely to bring back memories of those of the other two men he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with: Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat. But his burial is unlikely to be similar in tone to the other two men. Israel was in a state of deep shock after then prime minister Rabin was shot dead by a Jewish extremist in 1995. The assassination came only a year after the three men won the Nobel prize for their roles in brokering the Oslo peace accords, which were supposed to lead to the creation of an independent Palestinian state. When they moved Rabin's body to Jerusalem, thousands of Israeli motorists lined the highway, headlights blazing as a sign of mourning. When his body was laid in state the day before the funeral, the queue of Israelis waiting to pay their respects to the 73-year-old premier stretched for almost three kilometers (two miles).  While thousands of Israelis were filing past Peres' coffin Thursday, the numbers are not expected to be similar. At Rabin's state funeral, many of the world's top leaders were in attendance. Then-U.S. president Bill Clinton was present, and he will also attend Peres' funeral Friday along with incumbent Barack Obama. King Hussein of Jordan and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak attended Rabin's funeral, both making their first visits to Jerusalem since Israel occupied its eastern sector in 1967. Dignitaries from Qatar and Oman were also present, despite neither state having diplomatic relations with Israel. So far, no Arab countries have confirmed whether any senior officials will attend Peres' funeral. When Palestinian leader Arafat was laid to rest in 2004 at the age of 75 there was no such political roll-call. As the peace process stumbled, Arafat became ostracized and spent much of his final years holed up in his headquarters in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. When he died, U.S. President George W. Bush did not attend the ceremony held in the Egyptian capital Cairo, nor did other major Western leaders -- though dozens of largely second-tier foreign dignitaries were present. Jordan's King Abdullah II, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and Syrian President Bashar Assad were in attendance, however. There were scenes of chaos when Arafat's body was flown by helicopter from Cairo to Ramallah as bereaved Palestinians jostled to get close to the man they saw as a hero. Thousands of Palestinians surged around the Egyptian military helicopter, with overwhelmed Palestinian security forces shooting into the air. The crowds prevented the coffin draped in the Palestinian flag from being unloaded for some 20 minutes and then swarmed the car as it was driven to Arafat's Ramallah compound. At one stage a wooden structure inside the compound collapsed under the weight of a throng of mourners, causing injuries.
 

Canada takes in record number of immigrants in one year
AFP, Ottawa Thursday, 29 September 2016 /Canada took in a record number of immigrants in the 12 months ended July 1, the government statistical agency announced Wednesday. “The country had not received such a large number of immigrants in a single annual period since the early 1910s during the settlement of Western Canada,” Statistics Canada said in a statement. The arrival of 31,000 Syrian refugees since last November helped push the figure up to 320,932, and break a previous peak set in 2009-2010 when migrants flocked to Canada to escape economic hardships.During that period, Canada had just gotten through the worst global recession since the Great Depression relatively unscathed, and welcomed more than 270,000. This latest wave of migrants also helped to push up the Canadian population by 1.2 percent to more than 36 million.1

US weighs tougher response to Russia over Syria crisis
ReutersThursday, 29 September 2016/Obama administration officials have begun considering tougher responses to the Russian-backed Syrian government assault on Aleppo, including military options, as rising tensions with Moscow diminish hopes for diplomatic solutions from the Middle East to Ukraine and cyberspace, US officials said on Wednesday. The new discussions were being held at “staff level,” and have yet to produce any recommendations to President Barack Obama, who has resisted ordering military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s multisided civil war. But the deliberations coincide with Secretary of State John Kerry threatening to halt diplomacy with Russia on Syria and holding Moscow responsible for dropping incendiary bombs on rebel areas of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. It was the stiffest US warning to the Russians since the Sept. 19 collapse of a truce they jointly brokered. Even administration advocates of a more muscular US response said on Wednesday that it was not clear what, if anything, the president would do, and that his options “begin at tougher talk,” as one official put it. One official said that before any action could be taken, Washington would first have “follow through on Kerry’s threat and break off talks with the Russians” on Syria. But the heavy use of Russian airpower in Syria has compounded US distrust of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s geopolitical intentions, not only in the 5-1/2 year civil war, but also in the Ukraine conflict and in what US officials say are Russian-backed cyber attacks on US political targets. The US officials said the failure of diplomacy in Syria has left the Obama administration no choice but to consider alternatives, most of which involve some use of force and have been examined before but held in abeyance.

Russia Says Syria Bombing to Continue despite U.S. Warning
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/September 29/16/Russia on Thursday said it is pressing on with its bombing campaign in Syria despite the U.S. warning it will end talks on the conflict if Moscow does not halt the assault on Aleppo. A ceasefire deal hammered out between Moscow and Washington that could have led to the two countries coordinating strikes on jihadists has unraveled in acrimony, with both sides blaming each other for the failure. Russia is backing up a ferocious assault by the forces of Syria's President Bashar Assad to seize the rebel-held eastern half of the city of Aleppo that has sparked condemnation from the West. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov insisted Moscow was still interested in seeing the deal with the U.S. work out, but said Washington had failed to deliver on its side of the bargain. "We have unfortunately taken note of the rather unconstructive character of the rhetoric from Washington over the past few days," Peskov said. "Moscow maintains its interest in cooperating with Washington for the realization of the agreement."In the meantime, Peskov said "Moscow is continuing its air operation to support the anti-terrorist actions of the Syrian armed forces."U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday that possible plans to set up a joint U.S.-Russia military cell to target jihadist groups in Syria could also be put on hold. Kerry and Lavrov have been leading international efforts to bring Syria's five-year-old civil war to an end, and on September 9 agreed to demand a ceasefire. Moscow was to order its ally Syrian leader Bashar Assad to rein in his military and end the bombardment of civilian communities, and Washington was to persuade rebel forces to separate themselves from the jihadist Fateh al-Sham, the former al-Qaida affiliate once known as al-Nusra Front. But fighting continued and the truce collapsed. In Moscow, the defense ministry said Wednesday that it was "ready to continue joint work with our American partners on the Syrian issue" but gave no sign that Russia is ready to ground the Syrian air force.

Obama Defends Syria Policy in Face of Renewed Criticism
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/September 29/16/President Barack Obama defended his refusal to use military force to end Syria's brutal civil war Wednesday, as diplomatic efforts faltered and a humanitarian crisis of historic proportions unfolded in Aleppo. With just months left in office, the besiegement and bombardment of Syria's second city has put Obama's polices back under the spotlight and exposed deep unease within his administration. "There hasn't been probably a week that's gone by in which I haven't reexamined some of the underlying premises around how we're dealing with the situation in Syria," Obama told a CNN town hall debate. "I'll sit in the situation room with my Secretary of Defense, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we'll bring in outside experts -- I will bring in critics of my policy to find out, OK, you don't think this is the right way to go." But, Obama insisted, "in Syria, there is not a scenario in which, absent us deploying large numbers of troops, we can stop a civil war in which both sides are deeply dug in." "There are going to be some bad things that happen around the world, and we have to be judicious." The civil war has dragged on for more than five years and so far killed 300,000 people.
Obama has sent around 300 troops to Syria, focused on the battle against the Islamic State group, but has refused to plunge them into a civil war that is not in America's strategic interest. Instead he has instead backed diplomacy as the only way out of the crisis. But since a US-brokered ceasefire crashed on takeoff last week, Russia and Syria have launched rolling airstrikes on rebel-held eastern Aleppo, where a quarter of a million people are trapped. Forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad's regime have simultaneously launched a ground assault, eying a victory that could prove decisive in the five-year war. On Wednesday, two of the largest hospitals in rebel-held parts of the city were bombed, prompting UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to describe that attack as a war crime. Already the situation is being compared to Guernica -- a savage bombardment immortalized by Pablo Picasso's painting. In response, Obama's administration has threatened to suspend its engagement with Russia unless the bombing stops. But Obama again insisted that ultimately there must be a political solution, while saying that the US would try to ameliorate the suffering. The State Department on Wednesday said it would release a further $364 million to UN aid agencies and NGOs working to help vulnerable Syrian civilians inside and outside the war-torn country.  - Diplomacy, not war -Obama came to office on a platform of opposition to the war in Iraq and ending the war in Afghanistan. Throughout his presidency he has been reluctant to deploy combat troops and argued for a more judicious use of American military power and assessment of the national interest. "Historically, if you look at what happens to great nations, more often than not, they end up having problems because they are overextended, don't have a clear sense of what is their core interests," Obama said. Critics argue that he has defined the national interest too narrowly and that the Syrian conflict has called America's reputation and commitment to the rule of law into serious question. It has also created a refugee crisis that has destabilized Europe and has allowed Russia and Iran to assert greater power in the Middle East. "It is long past time for the United States to reassess its shameful approach to the Syrian crisis," said Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute. "US indecision, risk aversion, a total divergence between rhetoric and policy, and a failure to uphold clearly stated 'red lines' have all combined into what can best be described as a cold-hearted, hypocritical approach.""At worst, Washington has indirectly abetted the wholesale destruction of a nation-state, in direct contradiction to its fundamental national security interests and its most tightly held values."

Pakistan Fury after India Launches Kashmir Strikes
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/September 29/16/Indian commandos carried out a series of lightning strikes Thursday along the de facto border with Pakistan in Kashmir, provoking furious charges of "naked aggression" from its nuclear-armed neighbor. Amid anger in India over a recent deadly assault on one of its army bases in Kashmir, officials said troops had conducted "surgical strikes" several kilometers inside the Pakistan-controlled side of the disputed territory to prevent attacks being planned on major Indian cities. The strikes aimed at "neutralizing the terrorists" had caused "multiple casualties", according to Indian officials. Pakistan said two of its soldiers had been killed and nine more wounded in what it described as small arms fire and dismissed the talk of surgical strikes as an "illusion" designed to whip up "media hype." Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh, director-general of military operations, announced news of the strikes in New Delhi, sending shares on the Indian stock market sliding nearly two percent. "Some terrorist teams had positioned themselves at launchpads along the Line of Control," Singh told reporters. "The Indian army conducted surgical strikes last night at these launchpads. Significant casualties have been caused to these terrorists and those who are trying to support them." Singh said the decision to launch the strikes was taken following intelligence that militants were planning "to carry out infiltration and terrorist strikes in Jammu and Kashmir and various other metros" in India. A senior government source said commandos carried out the strikes some way across the unofficial border known as the Line of Control (LoC), beginning after midnight and finishing before dawn. "They were conducted two-three kilometers across the LoC," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity. "Seven launchpads were targeted. The defense minister himself monitored the ops and the Indian side did not suffer any casualties." Another Indian government official source put the number of dead on the Pakistani side in "double digits."Most of the casualties were "terrorists", said the source, insisting India had not been targeting the Pakistani army.
'Naked aggression' -
Pakistan's Defense Minister Khawaja Asif said two Pakistani soldiers killed and nine wounded as authorities in Islamabad played down the scale of the strikes. "There has been no surgical strike by India, instead there had been cross border fire initiated and conducted by India," said a military statement. "As per rules of engagement same was strongly and befittingly responded by Pakistani troops."Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif "strongly condemned the unprovoked and naked aggression of Indian forces." Tensions between the two arch rivals have been boiling since the Indian government accused Pakistan-based militants of launching an assault on an army base in Kashmir earlier this month that killed 18 soldiers. India has also been on a diplomatic drive to isolate nuclear-armed Pakistan since the raid on September 18, the worst such attack in more than a decade. On Tuesday India said Prime Minister Narendra Modi would not attend a regional summit in Islamabad in November in a major snub to its neighbor. Ashok K Mehta, a retired major general in the Indian army, said it was the first time in a decade that officials in New Delhi had acknowledged its troops had crossed into the Pakistani side of the LoC. "We have to see whether the Pakistani army will respond in kind.... Now the the ball is in Pakistan's court if they want to escalate things." Residents on the Pakistani side of the LoC were hunkering down over fears the situation could unravel further. "I did not send my children to school today. The situation is very tense," said Tahir Iqbal, who runs a grocery in the town of Athmuqam. There was similar foreboding on the Indian side as villagers living along the LoC and the undisputed international border further south in the state were placed on alert to evacuate if required. Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since gaining independence from Britain seven decades ago. The Indian-controlled part of the picturesque territory has a Muslim majority and there are a number of armed separatist groups who are fighting to break free from New Delhi. India has said the attack on the Uri army base in Kashmir was carried out by a Pakistan-based group called Jaish-e Mohammed. Tensions had already been high in the region since the Indian army killed a leading Kashmiri separatist in a gunfight in early July, sparking a series of protests that have been staged in defiance of curfew orders. More than 80 people have been killed in the Indian-controlled part of Kashmir since July, many shot by the army at the protests.

U.N. Says 'Hundreds' of Medical Evacuations Needed from Aleppo
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/September 29/16/The United Nations described Thursday a desperate situation in Syria's rebel-held eastern Aleppo, warning "hundreds" needed medical evacuation and that there was only enough food aid left for a quarter of the city's population. "Utmost on our mind is the need to address the very concerning medical situation" in the east of Aleppo, U.N. deputy envoy for Syria, Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, told reporters in Geneva. "Medical evacuations are urgently needed," he stressed, adding that "probably hundreds" of people needed to be urgently evacuated from the war-ravaged city. His comments came a day after two of the largest hospitals in the city's east were bombed, prompting U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to describe that attack as a war crime. Ramzy warned that medical supplies were running dangerously low and only around 35 doctors remained in eastern Aleppo, where an estimated 250,000 people have been under siege by government forces since early September. "As many as 600 wounded cannot be provided with adequate treatment," Ramzy said. He also cautioned that "food stocks are running low," with many bakeries closed and only 14,000 food-aid rations remaining. With each of those rations enough to feed five people, that would be sufficient for 70,000 people, or only about a quarter of the population, according to the U.N.'s World Food Program. "We hope it will be possible to create conditions for (aid) deliveries to be made. The U.N. continues to be ready to deliver humanitarian assistance including medical supplies as soon as possible," Ramzy said. Speaking after a meeting of the U.N.-backed humanitarian taskforce for Syria, Ramzy said the discussions had been "long and difficult" and overshadowed by the situation in Syria's second city. He said the U.N. had appealed to taskforce co-chairs Washington and Moscow to help clear the way for desperately-needed aid to go into Aleppo and other areas. The United States and Russia have meanwhile been busy trading blame over the collapse of a truce they negotiated on September 9, with Washington harshly criticizing Moscow's participation in the Aleppo offensive by forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad. "The bombing must stop. Civilians must be protected. And the cessation of hostilities must be restored," Ramzy insisted. The U.N.'s top envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura told AFP Thursday that there was little prospect of restarting long hoped-for peace negotiations in light of the situation on the ground. Dozens of civilians have been killed, residential buildings have been reduced to rubble and residents of east Aleppo are facing severe shortages. The U.N. children's agency UNICEF said at least 96 children have been killed and 223 wounded since Friday in eastern Aleppo.

Merkel, Erdogan Say Russia Has 'Special Responsibility' to Calm Syria
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/September 29/16/Russia has a "special responsibility to calm violence and give a political process a chance" in Syria, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday. "The latest offensive by the Syrian regime against Aleppo -- supported by Russia -- has made the suffering of the civilian population yet worse," the two leaders agreed in a telephone conversation, according to a statement released by Merkel's office. Russia said on Thursday that it would continue its Syrian air campaign in the face of warnings from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry that Washington would pull the plug on any more talks unless Moscow stopped the bombing of the besieged city. Syrian government forces backed by Russian air power have launched a renewed assault on the rebel-held eastern half of Aleppo, after a ceasefire deal brokered by the United States and Russia broke down.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Wednesday labeled bombings that hit the two main hospitals in Aleppo's rebel district "war crimes.""The repeated flagrant violations against humanitarian international law which have been reported are unacceptable. A ceasefire is more urgent than ever," Merkel and Erdogan agreed in their conversation, which also touched on the fight against the Islamic State group. Turkey launched an offensive dubbed "Euphrates Shield" on August 24 to drive IS jihadists and Kurdish rebel fighters away from its southern frontier. Ankara supports rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar Assad, while Russia's air force has been supporting the government forces for a year. Ties between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Erdogan were badly shaken in November, when Turkish forces shot down a Russian bomber they said had strayed into their airspace from Syria.  But Moscow and Ankara have since removed their relations from the deep freeze with promises of closer cooperation.

47 Children Hurt in Abu Dhabi School Bus Accident
Naharnet/Agence France Presse/September 29/16/At least 47 children were injured Thursday when a public transport bus and two school buses collided in United Arab Emirates capital Abu Dhabi, police said. Most of the children suffered only minor injuries though two were in serious but stable condition after the accident near one of the bridges connecting the island of Abu Dhabi to the UAE mainland, police said.Local daily The National said 14 of the injured were treated at the scene of the accident. The paper quoted Brigadier Ali Khalfan al-Dhaheri, head of central operations at Abu Dhabi police, saying the accident was due to drivers not paying attention, speeding and failing to leave a safe distance between vehicles.

Saudi Crown Prince in Turkey to discuss regional issues
Al Arabiya News EnglishThursday, 29 September 2016/Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Naif bin Abdulaziz arrived in Ankara on Thursday afternoon ahead of a two-day official visit, during which he will meet with Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Binali Yildirim. According to Saudi and Turkish state run news agencies, discussions will tackle bilateral cooperation, regional issues, including the situation in Syria and Yemen, the relations with Iran and the fight against ISIS. Turkish analyst Mustafa Ozcan said in an interview with Al Arabiya Channel, the visit - which comes at a “very sensitive time” - would see bilateral ties take the lead, and the Turkish government would also discuss with the Saudi crown prince the signing of a free trade agreement between Turkey and GCC States. Media outlets noted as well that a number of agreements would be signed regarding both economic and cultural areas. Asharq al-Awsat newspaper quoted, Mustafa Goksu, senior advisor at the Investment Support and Promotion Agency at the Turkish prime ministry, saying the Saudi crown prince would meet during his visit with owners and directors of the country’s top business companies. Goksu noted that Saudi Arabia was a business hub for the entire Gulf region. He added that more than 700 Saudi companies were currently investing in Turkey, with investments amounting to more than $2 billion.

US approves Boeing, Lockheed fighter jet sales to Gulf
By Andrea Shalal Reuters, Berlin Thursday, 29 September 2016/The United States on Wednesday began notifying lawmakers that it has approved $7 billion in long-stalled sales of Boeing Co fighter jets to Kuwait and Qatar, and more than $1 billion in Lockheed Martin Corp jets to Bahrain, sources familiar with the decision said. The sales had been pending for more than two years amid concerns raised by Israel, Washington's closest Middle East ally, that arms sold to Gulf Arab states could be used against it, and criticism of Qatar for alleged ties to armed Islamist groups. US officials began notifying lawmakers informally about the sale of 36 Boeing F-15 fighter jets to Qatar valued at around $4 billion, and 28 F/A- 18E/F Super Hornets, plus options for 12 more, to Kuwait for around $3 billion, the sources said. They also told lawmakers about plans to sell 17 Lockheed F-16 fighter jets to Bahrain, plus upgrades of up to 20 additional aircraft. The deals will be formally announced once the 40-day informal notification process has ended. Then lawmakers will have 30 days to block the sales, although such action is rare. Reuters reported earlier this month that the US government was poised to approve the long-delayed sales to Kuwait and Qatar. The State Department said it could not comment on any ongoing government-to-government arms sales.Delays in the process had caused frustration among US defense officials and industry executives, who warned that Washington's foot-dragging could cost them billions of dollars of business if buyers grew impatient and sought other suppliers. The approval of the fighter jet sales comes as the White House tries to bolster relations with Gulf Arab allies who want to upgrade their military capabilities. They fear the United States is drawing closer to Iran, their arch-rival, after Tehran's nuclear deal with world powers last year. Sources said officials at both the State Department and Pentagon had largely agreed to the deals some time ago, but had been awaiting final approval from the White House. Qatar, home to the largest US air base in the Middle East, and Kuwait have ramped up military spending after uprisings across the Arab world and amid rising tensions between Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states and Iran, the region's Shi'ite power. Both Qatar and Kuwait are part of a 34-nation alliance announced by Saudi Arabia in December aimed at countering Islamic State and al Qaeda militants in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt and Afghanistan.
The sales will boost fighter production for both companies. Boeing's F-15 line is set to close in 2019 after Boeing completes work on a large order for Saudi Arabia, unless a follow-on order is approved. As orders slow, Boeing is increasingly relying on technology upgrades and services sales to maintain its revenue stream from fighter jets, Shelley Lavender, president of Boeing's military aircraft division, said in an interview. The company is adding new technology to the F-15 and F/A-18 and other aircraft, and is refurbishing them on the same assembly lines use to build new aircraft, she said.
When the current fighter jet lines end, that loss of revenue will be offset by upgrade efforts. "We're blurring the traditional lines of new aircraft builds and sustainment," Lavender said. Boeing's broad portfolio from commercial derivatives rotocraft, autonomous vehicles, fighters and weapons "will allow us to remain healthy for the decades to come," she said. **Byron Callan with Capital Alpha Partner said he expected all three sales to be approved.

Erdogan hints state of emergency can be extended to a year
The Associated Press, Ankara, Turkey Thursday, 29 September 2016 /Turkey’s president hinted on Thursday that the three-month state of emergency declared following the failed July 15 coup could be extended to over a year. Addressing a group of local administrators in Ankara, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dismissed criticism over plans for Turkey to prolong the state of emergency, saying no one should determine a “calendar or roadmap” for Turkey. “Wait, be patient. Even 12 months might not be enough,” Erdogan said.His comments came a day after the national security council recommended that the state of emergency - which was instituted on July 20 - should be extended for another three months. The security council, made up by political and military leaders and chaired by Erdogan, said Wednesday an extension is needed in order “to take measures to protect the rights and freedoms of citizens.”Erdogan supported the move during Thursday’s speech. “This state needs time to be purged of these terrorist organizations’ extensions. Right now we’re racing against time. The matter is so deep and complicated it looks like three months will not be enough,” he said. The government accuses US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen of masterminding the coup. The state of emergency has allowed the government to pass legislation through decrees, facilitating a massive crackdown on his movement. Turkey has arrested some 32,000 people in connection to the coup. Tens of thousands of people have been dismissed or suspended from government jobs including the police, military and judiciary. Erdogan revealed in his Thursday speech that the military council has also recommended July 15 be declared a national holiday in honor of those people killed while resisting the coup attempt.

More US troops to reach Iraq ahead of Mosul battle
Reuters, Baghdad/Albuquerque, N.M.Thursday, 29 September 2016/
The United States will send around 600 new troops to Iraq to assist local forces in the battle to retake Mosul from ISIS that is expected later this year, US and Iraqi officials said on Wednesday. The new deployment is the third such boost in US troop levels in Iraq since April, underscoring the difficulties President Barack Obama has had in extracting the US military from the country. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said in a statement that his government asked for more US military trainers and advisers. Obama called it a “somber decision.”“I’ve always been very mindful that when I send any of our outstanding men and women in uniform into a war theater, they’re taking a risk that they might not come back,” Obama said during a town hall event at a military base in Fort Lee, Virginia, televised on CNN. The new troops will train and advise Iraqi security forces and Kurdish peshmerga forces, primarily in the Mosul fight, but also serve “to protect and expand Iraqi security forces’ gains elsewhere in Iraq,” US Defense Secretary Ash Carter said. In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Captain Jeff Davis said the troops would be deployed to Iraq in the coming weeks. Three US service members have been killed in direct combat since the launch of the US campaign against ISIS. In an exclusive interview to Al Arabiya English last week, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher P. Karns, Director of Air Force Central Forces Public Affairs, US Air Force, had said that the coalition is creating organizational dysfunction among ISIS ranks and that the terror outfit will be defeated soon.

US: Drone strikes in Yemen killed 4 Qaeda members
AFP, WashingtonThursday, 29 September 2016/The United States said Wednesday it conducted drone strikes against al-Qaeda in Yemen last week, killing four members of the terror group. The first attack occurred on September 20 in Marib province and left two al-Qaeda operatives dead, the military’s central command for the Middle East said in a statement. The second attack, on September 22 in central Baida province, killed two al-Qaeda members, it said. The two drone strikes had been reported by Yemeni security officials but this was the first time the United States claimed them. “These were al-Qaeda operatives who continue to support their organization's destabilizing effects in Yemen,” said Army Major Josh Jacques, US Central Command spokesman, in the statement. “US Central Command continues to protect the US, its allies and partners from these threats by denying Yemen as a haven for AQAP.”A third lethal drone strike last week was reported by Yemeni security officials. The attack happened Friday in Marib province and killed a local al-Qaeda commander and four of his guards, they said. The United States has not claimed that attack.

India carries out ‘strikes’ on Kashmir frontier
AFP, New DelhiThursday, 29 September 2016/India’s military has carried out “surgical strikes” along the de facto border with Pakistan in Kashmir to thwart a series of attacks being planned against major cities, the army said Thursday. Pakistan’s military however accused India of killing two of its soldiers in “unprovoked firing” along the Line of Control that divides the disputed territory and said its troops had responded. India said its strikes targeted “terrorists” along the frontier. “Some terrorist teams had positioned themselves at launchpads along the Line of Control,” Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh, the director-general of military operations, said. “The Indian army conducted surgical strikes last night at these launchpads. Significant casualties have been caused to these terrorists and those who are trying to support them,” he told a press conference in New Delhi. “The operations aimed at neutralizing the terrorists have since ceased.” Singh said the decision to launch the strikes had been taken after the military determined the launchpads had been set up with “an aim to carry out infiltration and terrorist strikes in Jammu and Kashmir and various other metros in our country.”
He did not say whether the strikes had been carried out by the Indian air force or by ground troops. The strikes come after the Indian government accused Pakistan-based militants of launching a deadly assault on an army base in Kashmir earlier this month that killed 18 soldiers. India has also been on a diplomatic drive to isolate its arch rival and fellow nuclear power since the attack on the base on September 18.

Pakistan says Indian fire kills 2 soldiers in Kashmir
The Associated Press, Islamabad Thursday, 29 September 2016/Pakistan’s military says that Indian troops have killed two of its soldiers on the Pakistani side of the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir in an “unprovoked” attack. In a statement Thursday, the military said Pakistani soldiers “befittingly responded to Indian unprovoked firing” - implying they returned fire- along the border, near the villages of Bhimber, Kel and Lipa. Pakistan and India often trade fire in Kashmir. The incident comes a day after Pakistan said India will “disintegrate” when Kashmir gains independence. India is trying to isolate Pakistan diplomatically after a recent militant attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir that killed 18 Indian soldiers. New Delhi blames a Pakistan-based militant group for the attack. Pakistan denies that. Sharif speaks
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the “naked aggression of Indian forces” Thursday after two Pakistani soldiers were killed in firing along the Line of Control that divides the disputed territory of Kashmir. A statement from Sharif's office said he “strongly condemned the unprovoked and naked aggression of Indian forces” and vowed the military was capable of thwarting "any evil design to undermine the sovereignty of Pakistan”. (With inputs from AFP)

Iran: Amnesty International react to “shameful” 16-year-sentence for human rights defender Narges Mohammadi
Thursday, 29 September 2016ظNCRI - Amnesty International have highlighted the recent news that the 16-year prison sentence against Iranian human rights defender Narges Mohammadi, who is critically ill, has been upheld by the Iranian regime’s appeal court.
Their Research and Advocacy Director for the Middle East and North Africa, Philip Luther, said: “This verdict is yet another cruel and devastating blow to human rights in Iran, which demonstrates the authorities’ utter contempt for justice. Narges Mohammadi is a prominent advocate of human rights and a prisoner of conscience. She should be lauded for her courage not locked in a prison cell for 16 years.” He added that it is “harsh” and “appalling” that this sentence has been given for human rights work that has been carried out peacefully. He said it is clear that the authorities have “laid bare their intent to silence human rights defenders at all costs”.
Luther said that this sentence is even more shocking because it comes at a time when Iran’s regime is preparing for renewed bilateral dialogue with the EU, and “given that Narges Mohammadi was convicted for her work campaigning against the death penalty and meeting with the former EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs”. He said that this sentencing raises many doubts about Tehran’s commitment to dealing with the EU over human rights issues.
“Narges Mohammadi’s conviction and sentence must be quashed and the authorities must order her immediate and unconditional release. We urge the EU to make these calls, too, and put the heightened repression of human rights defenders in Iran at the heart of their dialogue.”

Iran: 27 executions in three days
NCRI /Thursday, 29 September 2016/A woman, four Baluchis and eight Kurds were among those executed The total number of those executed since the beginning of September amounts to 75 The Iranian regime hanged at least 27 prisoners in three days, September 27-29, 2016, in Gohardasht, Orumiyeh, Minab and Khorrambad prisons. Among the eight prisoners hanged together in Orumiyeh, there was a woman by the name of Molouk Noori. Seven other prisoners were Kurds from Orumiyeh. Seven prisoners were hanged in the Central Prison of Minab (southern Hormuzgan Province). They aged between 25 and 30, and four of them were Baluchis. In another criminal measure, eleven prisoners were hanged in Gohardasht Prison (northwest of Tehran). Two of them had been relocated to Gohardasht in a sudden nightly transfer from Khorin Prison of Varamin. The number of those executed since the beginning of September thus amounts to 75. The families of those executed in Orumiyeh staged a protest outside Darya Prison which led to an armed clash with the SSF Special Unit. The Iranian Resistance underlines the fact that the clerical regime depends on savage executions to be able to continue its suppression of the populace. The NCRI calls on the people of Iran and particularly the youths to protest against such criminal sentences in solidarity with the families of execution victims. The Iranian Resistance urges the United Nations and EU member states to end their passive approach to the rising trend of executions in Iran and make their relations with the clerical regime contingent on end to executions. The Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran/September 29, 2016

Iran: A report on protest rallies of staff and workers
Thursday, 29 September 2016/NCRI - Retired teachers in Tehran and other provinces hold a rally
According to ILNA news agency, in protest against poor living conditions and low pensions, retired teachers held gathering in Tehran and other provincial capitals on the morning of Tuesday September 27. According to the report, the rally in Tehran, in which more than several hundred teachers had taken part, began at 10 am in front of the regime’s parliament.According to some reports, the number of the protesters in front of the regime’s parliament reached 2000. The retired teaches have already held several gatherings to protest against their poor living conditions. Meanwhile, the retired teachers also held rallies in several other cities including Kermanshah, Mashhad and Tabriz.
“Mehr Pardis Housing” applicants protest in front of Ministry of Roads
According to “Fars” state news agency on September 25, some of Mehr Pardis Housing applicants gathered in front of The Ministry of Roads to protest against non-delivery of housing units on time as well as increasing the designated payments.
One of the Pardis applicants told the news agency in this regard: “Our units were supposed to be delivered in 18 months, whereas they’ve not only not yet been delivered but their prices have been raised as well.”
He continued: “with three children, I’m not able to provide 30 million toman cash.”
Pardis Petrochemical workers protest
Pardis Petrochemical workers refused to eat at work to protest against mandatory implementation of work shifts. ILNA news agency has on September 27 quoted the protesting workers as saying: “At the beginning of September, the employer has required the Four Work Shifts Scheme to be implemented, while implicitly talking about the possibility of cutting off or reducing cooperation with the workers who are opposed to work shifts.”
Reduced wages following a change in the work shift, having to spend less time with their families and being forced to settle in the area followed by rising cost of rents are among the main issues the workers are protesting about.

Iran: wretched situation in Zabol Central Prison
Thursday, 29 September 2016/NCRI - According to reports, Zabol Central Prison in Sistan and Baluchestan Province (Southeastern Iran) is lacking the most basic sanitary living requirements. Located 2000 km away from central Iran, Zabol Central Prison is one of the most remote and perhaps the most forgotten prison in Iran in which the prisoners have been brutally piled up on one another. While Zabol with its continuous dust is suffering from air pollution, the prisoners held in the Central Prison of the city, are deprived of even healthy drinking water. In the meantime, new sanitary and drug problems, malnutrition and other basic requirements are harming the prisoners as well. Iran’s fundamentalist regime uses this prison as a place of exile for prisoners. At some wards of this prison there are 250 prisoners cramped together, and between 18 and 25 prisoners are kept in each cell. The executioners in this place of exile are trying to silence the prisoners with an atmosphere of fear while controlling the protesting prisoners with pressure and suppression. Most prisoners held in this prison are charged with common crimes, and sending political prisoners into exile in this prison is aimed at putting them under extreme pressure.
The mullahs’ regime sent 63-year-old political prisoner Arjang Davoodi into exile in this prison on September 24. The executioners even prevented him from taking his belongings and medication. While suffering from various illnesses like heart and kidney problems as well as diabetes, Arjang Davoodi has been transferred from one prison to another from 2003. He has been under various tortures and persecutions while being held in solitary confinements for a long time. Davoodi is now transferred to Ward 2 in Zabol Prison, where the ordinary prisoners are being held.

How many more children have to pay the price of Iran regime’s negligence?
NCRI/Thursday, 29 September 2016/Mehdi Fathi, a math teacher in Sanandaj, north-west Iran, in a letter published on social networks has explained the tragic condition of the schools across the country. The following are excerpts of his letter: “Less than five months after the old and worn walls of a school (in Sistan and Baluchistan Province) collapsed on the head of the devoted teacher ‘Hamid Reza Gangouzehi,’ we learned that once again in Sistan and Baluchistan the worn walls and doors of another school collapsed over a 5-year old school girl ‘Fariba Chardivari’ who with high enthusiasm along with other children of her age went to school to get her books, but while riding (swinging) on the school entrance door in her childhood world experienced the dream of flying …“Even the walls of Sistan and Baluchistan schools and most deprived areas in Iran are fed up with so much educational injustice and are no longer able to bear even the weight of the doors and windows, let alone the weight of a few children hanging on the doors and playing swinging game. “The heavy iron door, which is already too much for the wall of the old and worn school, becomes heavier and collapses together with the side column on the head of the children, who are playing and dreaming, and the collapsed wall takes the life on one (child) and sends three others to hospital to let us understand that the life of these schools are over and they must be demolished and we must find a solution for these marginalized and deprived areas.
“Our language falls short and we do not know how and with what language we should talk to the authorities to make them understand the dire and disastrous situation of schools to think on a fundamental solution? What other disaster should occur until the elite come to themselves and take care of these deprive children?
“Even the school walls are screaming and brutally taking the life of teachers and schoolchildren in order to flip the society and those profit-driven authorities who prefer their own interest over the collective interests of the people, but thousands of accidents like these will not awaken their sleeping conscience...
“After these accidents how do we expect the students to be happy and spend half of the day in these schools with fear and trembling? And how do we expect the teachers who should have complete peace of mind and be in total mental calmness to educate and train students> How can they focus while the classroom ceiling may collapse on them and their students at any time?
“Mr. President, Mr. Fanny and fervent representatives of the parliament, here is neither Gaza, nor Iraq, nor Syria… There is no war and no explosion nor suicide bombing to cause the death of schoolchildren and teachers. Here is Sistan and Baluchistan, and the walls of schools have undertaken the task of Daesh (ISIS) taking the lives of students and their teachers one after another. And we are still thinking about sophisticated military equipment to defend these people and this country....”
**Mehdi Fathi – Math teacher of district 1 in Sanandaj

Iran political prisoner Maryam Akbari Monfared put under pressure
NCRI/Thursday, 29 September 2016/According to reports, Iranian political prisoner Maryam Akbari Monfared, held at the women’s ward in Evin Prison, was transferred in late September to Ward 209, a ward controlled by the Iranian regime’s Ministry of Intelligence, to be interrogated. The executioners attempted to inspect her before she could enter the ward. Akbari Monfared didn’t accept to be humiliated this way and said: “I’ve not left the prison; you yourselves want to transfer me to another ward, then why should I be inspected?”Eventually this led to a dispute between Akbari Monfared and prison officials at the end of which she didn’t allow to them to inspect her. At the beginning of her arrival, the interrogator asked Akbari Monfared what was going on in her ward. In response Akbari Monfared said: “I’m not reporting on the ward. If you have any questions about myself, you can go ahead and ask.”To check out the status of the political prisoners, the intelligence agents first reprimand them and then, if possible, try to make them spy for the regime on fellow inmates. The agents ask questions like “What are you going to do after your release?” and some other questions on personal matters which have nothing to do with the notorious Ministry of Intelligence. Maryam Akbari Monfared was arrested in 2009 and sentenced to 15 years in prison. Three of her brothers and one of her sisters were executed in 1982, 1985 and 1988 for supporting the main opposition group People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI or MEK). Her other brother is held in Gohardasht Prison in Karaj. Her two other sisters and one other brother are members of the PMOI. In her letter to Ahmad Shaheed, the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights situation in Iran, Maryam Akbari Monfared had written that judge Salavati had once told her: “You are carrying your sisters and brothers’ burden.”Akbari Monfared is a mother of three. Her husband has said: “They accused Maryam of being a Mohareb (waging war on God), whereas according to their own law, Mohareb is someone who fights against the regime with weapons.”
 

Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on on September 29-30/16

Abdullah-Rafsanjani dialogue and the tussle between perception and reality
Amir Taheri/Al Arabiya/September 29/16
Ever since they seized power in 1979, Iran’s ruling mullahs have faced the challenge of forging a synthesis between perception and reality. In almost every case, attempts at replacing reality with the perception of an ideal ends in grief. And in many cases, the ideological regime is prepared to sacrifice reality to perception. What matters is how things look, not how they are. Iran’s Khomeinist regime is the latest illustration of that. The seizure of American hostages in 1979 ended with a disaster for the Iranian economy, not to mention the nation’s prestige. Yet, the ayatollah declared victory over the “Great Satan.” In 1988, the eight-year war with Iraq had a humiliating end for the Islamic Republic. But, there too Khomeini crowed about his triumph, and ordered the execution of thousands of prisoners to divert attention. More recently, President Hassan Rowhani labelled the so-called nuclear deal the “greatest diplomatic victory in the history of Islam” while accepting some of the most humiliating terms dictated to an Iranian government even at times of historic weakness.
Over the years, most nations have learned to treat the Islamic Republic leaders in Tehran as snooty teenagers who would fall in line as long as they don’t lose face. Last month, the Foreign Minister Muhammad Jawad Zarif toured a number of Latin American countries with bankrupt leftist regimes and reported that the Islamic Republic was now the leader of a new bloc of revolutionary powers. It didn’t matter that Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Venezuela didn’t have even two farthings to rub against each other. The Tehran Foreign Ministry’s Economic Director-General, a certain Mr. Haqbin, had the temerity to declare Zarif “a gift to mankind” for “having created a new framework for global prosperity.”
Over the years, most nations have learned to treat the Islamic Republic leaders in Tehran as snooty teenagers who would fall in line as long as they don’t lose face
‘The diplomatic victories’
For two decades the Islamic Republic has tried to become a full member of the so-called Shanghai Group, an alliance led by Russia and China. Every year, Tehran’s application is politely set aside. And every year, Tehran declares “great diplomatic victory” because of a promise to examine the application the following year. It is also two decades that the Islamic Republic declares “diplomatic victory” regarding an agreement on the status of the Caspian Sea by the littoral states. And, yet, all four states that share the sea with Iran- that is to say Russia, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan-, have simply isolated Iran and continue to do as they please regardless. Russia has even violated three treaties under which the Caspian must be free of a military presence.
Last month, Zarif went all the way to Laos to persuade a summit of the Association of East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to admit Iran as a member. Back in Tehran, he declared the usual “diplomatic triumph of Islam” ignoring the fact that the Vientiane summit shelved the Iranian demand with a promise to examine it a year later. Instead, the same summit admitted Chile and Morocco as members, neither of them even in Asia.
Earlier this year Tehran was preparing for what it hoped would be an even greater “diplomatic triumph”, persuading the Saudis to play the mullahs’ script by allowing the mullahs to appear as if they could dictate the terms under which Iranians would perform the Hajj rites. Soon, however, it became clear that this time the Saudis would not play the role written for them in a script designed to deceive the Iranians, other Muslims, and indeed the whole world.
The mullahs had played a similar game in 1987, triggering a tragedy in which more than 400 pilgrims died and, later, in 1997 when they used their favorite tactic of taqiyah (dissimulation) to resume their attempt at the politicization of the Hajj rites. An account of the prelude to that attempt is given by Ayatollah Ray-Shahri, the mullah who led the Iranian pilgrims at the time. In his memoirs published in Tehran, the ayatollah recalls a meeting between the then Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz and the Islamic Republic President Hashemi Rafsanjani in Pakistan during the Islamic Summit.
Ray Shahri makes it clear that Rafsanjani was trying to persuade the Saudi leader to allow Iran to play a game of deception by pretending that the pilgrims in Mecca had responded to Ayatollah Khomeini’s call for mass demonstration. Rafsanjani wanted a space, any space, in which a few Iranians would gather, make films for TV and show it in Tehran to say the entire pilgrimage paid tribute to Khomeini and his policies. It would be an exercise in make-believe, like a Cecil Be DeMille movie made in a studio.
Historic document
Khomeini would be deceived, Iranians would be deceived and the regime would declare another triumph. Ray Shahri quotes part of the dialogue verbatim.
It is a valuable historic document. Here it is:
Crown Prince Abdullah: What is this Hajj pilgrimage leader you have named? Why don’t you appoint someone who obeys you? We have had enough, enough of suffering about what happened before (in previous Hajj seasons). Non-Muslims laugh at us. We’ve had enough. As one Iranian brother has told us you could do your demonstration in the desert or in Europe.
President Rafsanjani: We’ve a clear solution to offer. There is no need for either of us to be concerned.
Crown Prince Abdullah: Let me tell you something which is from the time of the Shah. It shows that Iranian people have always been Muslims. The only nation that came for Hajj in good discipline was the Iranians. They knew where they were and what they should do. In Arafat, Mina and elsewhere they had the best places. We welcomed them and offered full facilities.
President Rasfanjani: Let me make a deal with you, a final deal. I have also talked to {your} foreign minister. For example, if you give us a mosque anywhere in Mecca, even a very small mosque we could agree on the number of people {for demonstration}.
Crown Prince Abdullah: Why couldn’t they perform Hajj as before? Weren’t Iranians who did it before also Muslims?
President Rafsanjani: Things changed since we created an Islamic government. We’ll solve it, you won’t have any problem.
Crown Prince Abdullah: But God created the Iranian people as Muslims from the beginning of creation.
President Rafsanjani: But before we had the Shah. Give us a tent, a small tent; say for 500 to 1000 people {to make a film for TV}
Crown Prince Abdullah: Why not in your assigned place (ba’atha)?
President Rafsanjani: We accept even in our place. We won’t fix loudspeakers and make no announcement. We’ll have people there to pray, say for half an hour or an hour, won’t give the news to any newspaper, the footage will be shown only in Iran. No loudspeakers.
Crown Prince Abdullah: No need for loudspeakers. God can hear even the prayer of an ant.
President Rafsanjani: With this arrangement you will be Ok and we will be comfortable.
Ray Shahri then relates how the “Supreme Guide” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ignored Rafsanjani’s promises to the Saudi leader and how thousands of Islamic Revolutionary Guard members and security agents went on a rampage in Mecca.
This year, President Hassan Rowhani, a disciple of Rasfanjani, tried the same trick aimed at deceiving the Saudis presumably with Khamenei’s consent. This time, however, the technique didn’t work.
**This article was first published in Asharq al-Awsat on Sept. 16, 2016.

The ally, the enemy, and America in between
Mshari Al Thaydi/Al Arabiya/September 29/16
Regarding the comparison between the Saudi presence in all aspects of American life and that of Iran, two news stories should be considered. The first is the US Senate paving the way for a $1.15 billion deal to sell tanks and other military equipment to Saudi Arabia. The Senate voted 71 to 27 to oppose legislation aimed at obstructing the deal.
The second is the draft law Congress is working on to reveal the amount of money held by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and 80 other senior figures. Congress voted 39 to 20 in favor of the draft law. The White House issued a statement rejecting the draft law and referring to a presidential veto, saying the law will have implications on the Iran nuclear deal.
These examples highlight the extent of Saudi interests in the US, and how they oblige American policy-makers to respect the kingdom. However, this is an incomplete picture.
Liberals
During Barack Obama’s presidency, we have witnessed an intense attack against Saudi Arabia in liberal media outlets such as CNN and the New York Times, and an attempt to demonize the kingdom, Arabs and Sunnis, even if it is not explicitly admitted. Is it possible to make these media platforms work in favor of Saudi Arabia? I do not think it is possible to do so with someone who has decided in advance to stereotype you.
Hostility toward Saudi Arabia and politically conservative Arabs is an integral part of Western leftist ‘traditions,’ so it is pointless to woo them
Hostility toward Saudi Arabia and politically conservative Arabs is an integral part of Western leftist ‘traditions,’ so it is pointless to woo them. Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif despises the kingdom and keeps benefiting from leftist hatred of it.
A trusted Saudi friend - who has spent half his life studying in the US, and who works in business there and in Saudi Arabia - told me that think tanks are our only chance to expel spiteful propaganda against the kingdom, because they are fed up with the way US media outlets handle Saudi Arabia and Islam.
For example, prominent researcher Gregory Gause wrote in Foreign Policy about US media stereotypes of Saudi Arabia, despite him previously criticizing the kingdom sharply.
**This article was first published in Asharq al-Awsat on Sept. 23, 2016.

Why JASTA has major implications for the region
Dr. Theodore Karasik/Al Arabiya/September 29/16
As America’s presidential campaign heats up on the heels of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump’s first debate, US lawmakers opened up a Pandora’s Box surrounding the Justice against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). The House and Senate buried their partisan politics and overrode US President Barack Obama’s veto of JASTA, which allows families killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks to sue Saudi Arabia’s government for the kingdom’s alleged involvement. The implications for the MENA region and the GCC in particular are paramount.
Without a doubt, Saudi Arabia is on the frontline in the beginning of this long-term legal drama. Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir strongly stated that if JASTA became law, “everybody will begin to think twice before they invest in a place where their assets could be seized”. Whether this will become a reality doesn’t really matter now because there are larger issues at play.
To be sure, JASTA allows Saudi citizens to sue the US government and its employees in foreign courts. Given the Kingdom’s leading role in the region under the guidance of Saudi King Salman, other Arab countries, specifically those who are partnered with the Kingdom in Operation Restore Hope in Yemen, could also be part of JASTA’s fallout.
But JASTA also risks opening the door for foreign governments to return the gesture by amending their own laws to allow their citizens to sue the US government and its employees in foreign courts, most likely state security courts. That would cause quite a headache for Washington given how active the United States is abroad with everything from drone strikes to foreign surveillance and backing foreign militias.
From a GCC point of view, JASTA is taking Saudi Arabia on at exactly the wrong time. The Saudi leadership is pursuing the opening months of the Kingdom’s fifteen-year Vision 2030 program. This vital Saudi program does not need any hiccups along the way between America and Riyadh in their bilateral relations. Major US companies are planning major investments in the Kingdom.
There is no doubt that as a consequence of JASTA, Riyadh may convince officials in the other five Gulf capitals to scale back counter-terrorism cooperation with Washington, in addition to rolling back investments and access to strategic located military bases. There is precedent for GCC-wide actions.
Overall, JASTA is going to ignite a firestorm of legal warfare that will directly undermine political relationships at a time when robust ties to fight terrorism is required
There have been occasions when Saudi Arabia rallied the GCC behind the Kingdom at times of trouble. Last year, Sweden’s Foreign Minister harshly criticized Riyadh for human rights issues, resulting in a backlash against Stockholm’s interests across the GCC which prompted the Swedes to take retract. The previous year, the Saudis along with Bahrain and the UAE imposed unprecedented pressure on Qatar to punish Doha for sponsoring the Muslim Brotherhood across the MENA region.
Remarkably, the door is open for MENA countries which may see the opportunity to sue the US in their courts. These states, in varying circumstances, can change their policy on diplomatic immunity to pursue political aims by arresting American soldiers, intelligence officers, and government officials. If, for example, disagreements break out between the US and Turkey and Ankara pursues extraordinary legal measures unilaterally against American personnel this action may end up being fought in Turkish courts within a political context.
Case-by-case
Other countries can use this example on a case by case basis. In other words, JASTA can backfire in an extremely negative way for Washington now that the US has set the precedent of allowing its citizens to sue foreign governments for the actions of some of their own citizens.
A key issue in the MENA states that may find itself in regional court systems is that America’s role behind acts of terrorism. American action in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen are seen by many as being criminal acts and acts of terrorism. The idea that Washington is guilty of destroying the Middle East and allowing the rise of Islamic State is prominent.
In an age when America is trying to lead the global fight against terrorism through numerous international organizations and coalitions, JASTA is possibly opening the door to accusations of terrorism flying in numerous directions where sovereign immunity is worthless.
For example, what about US citizens who join the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). These Americans joined the YPG at a time when violence between the Turkish military and Kurdish forces escalates throughout Turkish/Syrian Kurdistan. As the battlefield evolves, these US citizens may find themselves in new, uncharted legal territory if captured or involved in a violent act. This fact holds true for other MENA conflicts with those holding American passports in conflict zones. Overall, JASTA is going to ignite a firestorm of legal warfare that will directly undermine political relationships at a time when robust ties to fight terrorism is required. JASTA is the ultimate disaster and hopefully cooler heads will prevail as sovereign immunity is tossed out the window.

Abu Sin’ between Rashed and Thaydi
Turki Aldakhil/Al Arabiya/September 29/16
The recent arrest of Saudi teenager “Abu Sin” (whose nickname translates as “toothless”) has stirred a heated debate between my two friends Abdulrahman al-Rashed and Mshari Thaydi. This was triggered by the latter’s article protesting the dangerous lack of regulation in modern communication applications, which tempted the boy to gain fame by broadcasting bad content.
Al-Thaydi supported the boy’s arrest to protect him while al-Rashed said he did not think there was a law that criminalizes what the boy did. Al-Rashed did not support the Riyadh police’s action adding that he “Abu Sin” was just acting silly and that is not a criminal offence. According to him, if it acts such as these lead to or involve rape then that’s an entirely different matter.
The two differing perceptions highlight the extent of influence the world of communication has on teenagers who represent a large section of the Saudi society. Differing perceptions highlight the extent of influence the world of communication has on teenagers who represent a large section of the Saudi society
Communication revolution
We cannot claim that major chaos and hideous exploitation is caused by the Internet alone and that it only promotes crime, exploits children, leads to drugs and prostitution rings and spread terrorism. Security and political institutions in Saudi Arabia and across the world have sounded alarm bells. There are many teenagers who should be devoting their time to education and should be out there in parks engaging in physical activities. But instead they are involved in practices that are not appropriate for their age. Under these circumstances, social institutions must intervene and education and guardianship of relevant figures must perform their roles. There is a view that considers parents forcing their children into performing art as violation of their rights. They believe that at this young age they must be looked after before they are assigned with certain tasks. They must be educated before they take precedence and must finish their basic education.
We are confronting a big problem and proof of that is the discussion between two prominent writers on a subject which some believe is insignificant.
**This article was first published in Okaz on Sept. 29, 2016.

International agreements on Syria will prove worthless
Maria Dubovikova/Al Arabiya/September 29/16
The Syrian conflict has taken another turn for the worse with major belligerent parties indicating a military solution in the only way to end the fighting. For its part, the Syrian opposition has lost faith in the political process and in the promises of international negotiators.
The international community is expecting too much from the agreement between the US and Russia. This agreement is perceived by the international community as an agreement between two major powers who have concrete influence on the belligerent parties on the ground in Syria. Consensus is considered the key to upholding a ceasefire, truces and the political process in the country, even though it is not.
However, the US has had no influence on the opposition forces from the beginning and has no influence now as the opposition is not unified. The US has no capacity to impose its will on the Syrian opposition, give it orders or influence it in any other way. Russia also has no real influence on the Damascus regime, which has ostensibly put Russia in a hostage situation time and time again, breaking given promises and aggravating the situation.
Russia has, on numerous occasions, guaranteed the transition of the Syrian government to the international community. Shortly after those Russian statements, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad delivered provocative and dangerously controversial speeches announcing that he would retake all Syrian territory and saying that he is the legitimate leader of Syria.
The Russian position
Russia cannot renounce the position it’s taken on the Syrian conflict and the Damascus regime knows it. It has a clear understanding that whatever it does, Russia will not change its attitude towards them. Regarding the conflict, Russia initially attempted to balance the situation both on the ground and at the negotiation table.
Russia intervened in the Syrian conflict with its air force two weeks before the fall of Damascus. The clumsy move was intended to balance negotiations and balance the situation on the ground but was immediately interpreted as blind support of the Damascus regime. The quiet voice of Russian diplomacy was hardly heard in the cannonade of the battlefield and in the media games traditionally won by the Western media.
Finally, we have ended up in a situation where Russia looks like a blind supporter of the regime, while it is actually a hostage of the situation and the extreme complexity of the crisis. Considered the perceived impotency of the major players, the only solution seen by the oppo-sition is to depend on themselves and on the power of weapons. The ceasefires will not succeed, no matter how strong the agreement between the US and Russia is, if they are not agreed to by all belligerent parties.
Taking into account the lack of sane evaluation in Damascus, its unwillingness to make com-promises and that the Syrian opposition now seems to be hostile toward any negotiation initia-tives, there is little hope for any peaceful settlement of the conflict.
The most important thing the international community should concentrate on is not the agreements between Russia and the US but how to encourage Syrians to trust in peaceful negotiations
Scenarios for the future
The potential scenarios for the future are dangerously explosive. At best, the country will end up being totally split, breaking into separate regions. This will weaken the region, pushing it toward further cataclysms and instabilities which will improve conditions for radical groups to flourish.
This would create conflict-prone situations on the borders of the neighboring countries and could lead to splits in other countries, ratcheting up blood-letting in the region.
In this case, global players will plunge the world into a new Cold War. At worst, the Syrian conflict could bring about a direct clash between the US and Russia in Syria. This would have unpredictable consequences, one of which could be a new world war. A lot will depend on the sanity and rationality of the president to be elected in the US in November.
If the current trend carries on, Syria is doomed to end up in complete catastrophe. The most important thing the international community should concentrate on is not the agreements between Russia and the US but how to encourage Syrians to trust in peaceful negotiations, a transition and in each other. Without this, any international pact is nothing but a groundless agreement between the mediators, not between the belligerent sides.

France’s New Sharia Police
Yves Mamou/Gatestone Institute/September 29/16

http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/09/29/yves-mamougatestone-institute-frances-new-sharia-police/

Are French institutions sacrificing one freedom for another? Is equality between men and women being sacrificed to freedom of religion (Islam) to impose its diktats on French society?
If someone still does not realize that the Islamic dress code is the Trojan horse of Islamist jihad, he will learn it fast.
For years, “big brothers” have been obliging their mothers and sisters to wear a veil when they go out. Now that this job is done, they have begun to fight non-Muslim women who wear shorts and skirts — no longer just in the sensitive Muslim “no-go zones” of the suburbs, where women no longer dare to wear skirts — but now also in the heart of big cities.
“The law guarantees women, in all fields, same equal rights as men.”
What people do not seem to know is that in the heart of Paris, a Muslim man can insult a woman for drinking a cola in the street and is served in stores first, before women.
Many people evidently still do not know that Islam is a religion and a political movement at war with the West — and openly intent on subjugating the West. It must be responded to as such. The problem is, every time it is responded to as such, Muslim extremists run for cover under the claim of freedom of religion.
It is crucial for Western societies to start making a distinction between freedom of speech and incitement to violence, and to begin seriously penalizing attacks on innocents, as well as calls to attack innocents.
The Council of State, the highest administrative court in France, decided that, to allow freedom of religion, the burkini must not be banned. At first the ruling looked sound: why should people not be able to wear what they wish when they wish? What is not visible, however, is that the harm comes later.
If someone still does not realize that the Islamic dress code is the Trojan horse of Islamist jihad, he will learn it fast.
A few recent incidents include:
September 7. In Guingamp, Brittany, a 17-year-old girl in shorts was beaten by a man who considered her outfit “too provocative”. Although the attacker escaped, so that the police have no idea who he is or what his background might be, it is a taste of things to come.
September 7. In Toulon, southern France, two families were on a bicycle path when they were insulted by a gang of 10 “youths” (the French press uses “jeunes” [youths] in order not to say Arabs or Muslims). According to the local prosecutor, the “youths” shouted at the women, “whores!” and “strip naked!” When the women’s husbands protested, the “youths” approached and a fight began. One of the husbands was found unconscious with multiple facial fractures.
At first, the motive of the attack was reported to be linked to the women wearing shorts, but in fact the women were not wearing shorts; they were wearing leggings.
July 19. In a resort in Garde-Colombe (Alps), a Moroccan man stabbed a woman and her three daughters, apparently because they were scantily dressed. One of the girls was seriously injured. The attacker, Mohamed, says that he was the “victim,” because he claims the husband of the woman he stabbed scratched his own crotch in front of Mohamed’s wife. According to the prosecutor, “the husband of the victim does not remember having made such a gesture.”
July 7. A day-camp center in Reims, eastern France, circulated a note asking parents to avoid dressing their daughters in skirts because of the improper conduct of boys aged 10 to 12. A mother published the document on Twitter and commented on Facebook: “Obviously the idea did not occur to them that it is not for little girls to adapt their dress to big creeps, but for big creeps to get educated? “
In early June, 18-year-old Maude Vallet was threatened and spat on by a group of girls on a bus in Toulon because she was wearing shorts. She posted a photo of herself on Facebook with the caption, “Hello, I’m a slut.” The posting was shared by more than 80,000 people. The attackers were Muslim girls, but Maude, according the “politically correct” who believe “thntdwi” (this has nothing to do with Islam), did not want to reveal their ethnic origin.
April 22. Nadia, a 16-year-old girl wearing a skirt, was severely beaten in Gennevilliers, a suburb of Paris, by three girls who were apparently Muslims.
Snapshots of France’s new sharia police. Left: In Toulon, 18-year-old Maude Vallet was threatened and spat on by a group of Muslim girls on a bus, because she was wearing shorts. She posted a photo of herself on Facebook with the caption, “Hello, I’m a slut.” Right: In a resort in Garde-Colombe, a Moroccan man stabbed a woman and her three daughters on July 19, apparently because they were scantily dressed.
These cases were dramatically publicized in all media, both official and social. Ironically, however, none of these incidents triggered the international attention and outrage that greeted a Burkini incident in Nice: A woman, apparently Muslim, was lying alone on a beach with no towel, no book, no parasol, no sunglasses, no husband (or brother, or father) to “protect” her, in the full glare of the midday sun near a police post — with a photographer nearby ready and waiting to take pictures of her surrounded by four policemen. Who alerted them? The woman was issued a fine and possibly ordered to remove some of her clothes on the beach. Pictures of the incident were first published on August 23 by the Daily Mail and within minutes went viral, provoking international indignation against these seemingly racist French people discriminating against innocent Arab women. A week later, however, the Daily Mail suggested that this incident may well have been “staged” and the “pictures may be SET UP.”
So the real question is: Are Islamists in France now using photos and videos, the way the Palestinians are doing against Israel: to film and disseminate fake and staged situations in order to provoke global indignation about supposedly poor Muslim “victims” — especially women who are allegedly “discriminated against” in France?
If fabricated propaganda is allowed to persist, the defrauders will win a big war.
“In the war that Islamism is leading with determination against civilization, women are becoming a real issue,” said Berenice Levet, author and professor of philosophy at the École Polytechnique to the daily Le Figaro.
She added:
“Rather than produce figures that say everything and nothing, I want it recognized once and for all that if today the roles of the genders are forced to regress in France, if domination and patriarchy are spreading in our country, this fact is related exclusively to our having imported Muslim values.”
Ironically, at the same moment, France’s Minister for Family, Children and Women’s Rights, Laurence Rossignol, decided to spend public money on an ad campaign against “ordinary sexism” — the supposed sexism by all French men against supposedly eternally victimized women. But there was not a word in this campaign about the possible victimization or potential outcome from the increasing proliferation of the burqa, veil or burkinis on Muslim women.
Commenting the ad campaign, Berenice Levet added:
“Laurence Rossignol should read Géraldine Smith’s book, Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud. Une vie de famille entre barbus et bobos (“Jean-Pierre Timbaud Street: The life of a family among bearded men [Islamists] and Bohemians”). She would learn — among other things — that in some stores or bakeries, men are served first, before women.”
In this book, we can learn also that in the heart of Paris, a Muslim can insult a woman for drinking a cola in the street. But for many, including Rossignol, it seems the only enemy is the white Frenchman.
Two serious questions are at stake:
Are sharia police emerging in France?
Are French institutions sacrificing one freedom for another? Is the principle of equality between men and women being sacrificed to freedom of religion (Islam) to impose its diktats on French society?
Sharia Police
In France, no organized Islamist brigades patrol the streets (as in Germany or Britain) to fight alcohol consumption or to beat women for the way they are dressed. Yet gangs of “youths”, again, both men and women, are increasingly doing just that in practice. For years now, “big brothers” have been obliging their mothers and sisters to wear a veil when they go out. And now that this job is done, they have begun to fight non-Muslim women who wear shorts and skirts — no longer just in the sensitive Muslim enclaves, the “no-go zones” of the suburbs, where women no longer dare to wear skirts — but now also in the heart of big cities.
More and more, the equivalent of “Islamist Virtue Police” try to impose those standards by violence. As Celine Pina, former regional councilor of Île-de-France, said in Le Figaro:
“In the last recorded attack [on the families in Toulon], with cries of “whores” and “strip naked”, the young men were behaving as a “virtue police” that we had thought impossible here in our parts…
“It cannot be expressed more clearly: it is a command to modesty as a social norm and self-censorship as a behavioral norm… [it]… illustrates the rejection of the female body, seen as inherently impure and dirty…
“The question of the burkini, the proliferation of full veils, assaults against women in shorts and the beating of their companions, share the same logic. Making body of the woman a social and political issue, a marker of the progress of an ideology within society.”
Laurent Bouvet, a professor of political science, noticed on his Facebook page that after the men were beaten in Toulon, so-called human rights organizations — supposedly “professionals” of “anti-racism” — remained silent in the debate.
The prosecutor of #Toulon said: “the fight was trigger by a women’s dress code. These women were not wearing shorts… Sexism is undeniable. Where are the professionals of public indignation?”
Laurence Rossignol, Minister for Women’s Rights, remained silent too. So a new rule has emerged in France: the more politicians and institutions do not want to criticize Islamists norms, the more violent the debate on social networks.
Equality between Men and Women or Freedom of (Islamic) Religion?
The silence of politicians and human rights organizations, when non-Muslim women are violently assaulted because they wear shorts that are not compatible with sharia — as opposed to their thundering indignation against police for issuing a fine to a Muslim woman in a burkini — signals an immensely important political and institutional move: A fundamental and constitutional principle, equality between men and women, is being sacrificed in the name of freedom of religion, thereby enabling one religion (Islam) to impose its diktats on the rest of society.
Studying the burkini case in Nice, Blandine Kriegel, philosopher and former president of Haut Conseil à l’intégration (High Council of Integration) published an analysis in which she establishes that in the burkini case, secularism or individual freedom were not even in danger in the first place. But “fundamentally an openly, the principle of equality between men and women” was surrendered:
In its remarkable ordinance, the Council of State refers to the jurisprudence of 1909 concerning the wearing of a cassock and does not pay attention to more recent laws voted on by sovereign people, prohibiting the veil at school (2004) and burqa in public places (2010).
The Council of state did not feel inspired either by the constitutional commitment towards women: “the law guarantees women, in all fields, same equal rights as men.”
In the burkini affair, neither secularism nor individual freedom is at stake; but fundamentally and openly the principle of equality between men and women. … This term “burkini” integrates intentionally the word “burqa”; this word does not express the desire to go swimming at the beach (nothing prohibits this); or the affirmation of a religious freedom (no mayor has ever prohibited the exercise of the Muslim religion); the word burkini express only the essential inequality of women.
Contrary to their husbands, who feel free to exhibit their nudity, some women must be covered from head to toe. Not only because they are impure, but mostly because of the legal status conferred to them: they are under the private law of the husband, the father or the community.
The Republic cannot accept something opposed to its laws and values. Inequality of women cannot be defended on the ground of religious freedom… of freedom of conscience. This issue was addressed three centuries ago by our European philosophers, who are founding fathers of the Republic. To those who were legitimating oppression, slavery and inequality were merely the expression of free will, explained the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, inspiring our 1789 Declaration [of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen], and that freedom and equality are inalienable possessions.
France’s socialist government and administrative judges have apparently found it politically useful to make concessions to Islamists. Perhaps they originally agreed to burkinis not only because they may think that people should wear what they like, but also in the vain hope of calming down the permanent pressure that increasingly appears to be a cultural jihad. It may not even have occurred to them that they were potentially sacrificing the principle of equality of women.
Many people evidently still do not know that Islam is a religion and a political movement at war with the West — and openly intent on subjugating the West. It must be responded to as such. The problem is, every time it is responded to as such, Muslim extremists run for cover under the claim of freedom of religion.
It is high time for French and European politicians to draw a hard line between where one person’s right to worship as they see fit ends, and where society’s right to freedom and security begins. And it is time to outlaw, not necessarily the burkini, but the very real problem of aggressive supremacism.
The root problem is incitement to violence. It is crucial for Western societies to start making a distinction between freedom of speech and incitement to violence, and to begin seriously penalizing attacks on innocents, as well as calls to attack innocents.
**Yves Mamou, based in France, worked for two decades as a journalist for Le Monde.
© 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9014/france-sharia-police

Let's Lock The Door To Islam
Geert Wilders/Gatestone Institute/September 29/16

http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/09/29/46490/
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/9037/geert-wilders-lock-the-door
Yesterday, I visited Maassluis. It is a town near Rotterdam, where the indigenous Dutch inhabitants have become the victims of immigrant youths of Moroccan descent.
Cars have been demolished, houses vandalized, people threatened. The Dutch no longer feel free and safe in their own city. When the local radio station interviewed some of the victims and referred to the perpetrators as Moroccans, it received an anonymous letter: "You are racists! Your time will come! I won't take care of it because I am too old. But our boys are the new soldiers."
Maassluis. It is just one of the many Dutch towns and neighborhoods terrorized by Moroccan or Turkish youth gangs. Others are Schilderswijk, Oosterwei, Kanaleneiland, Zaandam, Helmond. Not surprisingly, a poll shows that 43% of the Dutch people want fewer Moroccan immigrants in our country. These people are not racists; they are decent people, patriots who love their country and do not want to lose it.
The great Ronald Reagan once said that "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction." These wise words are more true today than ever before. We are the free men and women of the West.
Freedom is our birthright. But if we fail to defend it, we are bound to lose it. And, sadly, that is exactly what is happening today.
2016's Black Summer of Jihad, with terror attacks all over the free world, teaches us that the enemies of freedom are already among us. The ruling elites all over the Western world have accepted millions of people into our countries without demanding that they assimilate.
Many of these immigrants acquired our nationality. But some do not care for our country at all. They do not love it. They do not respect it. Nor do they respect us and our values.
They carry our passports, but they do not belong to us. They spit on our identity and behave like conquerors.
This is particularly true of many immigrants with an Islamic background. That is not surprising. Islam is a totalitarian ideology aimed at establishing tyrannical power over non-Muslims.
Islam commands its followers to make all nations submit to Islamic Sharia law, if necessary through the use of violence and terror.
Last week, we had an important debate in the Dutch Parliament. We discussed the future of our country. I pointed out that we will have no future if we do not de-islamize the Netherlands. Our time is a time for action.
Islam is an existential threat to our survival as a free nation. It violates all the basic principles and freedoms of our Constitution. It discriminates against non-Muslims, who have no rights under Islamic Sharia law.
It discriminates against women, who according to the Koran are worth only half a man. There is no freedom of religion under Islam. Apostates deserve the death penalty, the Koran tells Muslims that Jews are pigs and monkeys, and Christians have to submit or die.
There is no freedom of speech in Islam either. Criticism of Allah or Muhammad is punishable by death. There is no right to personal integrity. Islam advocates cruel corporal punishments, such as whipping, amputations, stoning, beheading. There is no right to live in peace and dignity. Islam orders war until the whole world has been submitted to Allah.
Some seem to think that by allowing freedom to the enemies of freedom, we prove that we stand for freedom. The opposite is true. By refusing to draw boundaries to our tolerance, we are handing away our freedom. If we continue being naive we will lose everything.
By depriving Islam of the means to destroy freedom, we are not violating freedom; we are preserving it. We should not turn freedom into a snake eating its own tail. Freedom requires a democracy willing to defend itself.
We need a political freedom agenda. It looks like this.
We must end all immigration from Islamic countries. There is more than enough Islam in our countries already. Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office, expects 77 million immigrants to enter Europe in the next half century. Most of them are Islamic.
If we do not stop them, we will be facing a catastrophe. We will be colonized and Islamized. We will cease to exist. We can already see how disruptive relatively small groups are. Research by the University of Amsterdam showed that 11% of the Muslims in the Netherlands are prepared to use violence for the sake of Islam. This is more than 100,000 people.
The more Islam we get, the more dangerous and less free our society becomes. Let us keep our countries safe. And lock the door to Islam.
We must also stimulate voluntary remigration of those who are already here. And those who stay must adopt our values; they must assimilate and integrate.
It is not extremist to demand that Muslims, who want to live in our midst, renounce the hateful doctrine and texts of Islam and abide by our laws. If they commit crimes, act against our laws, impose Sharia law, or wage jihad, we must expel them. My party wants to strip all criminals with dual nationalities of their Dutch nationality and expel them to the country of their other nationality.
These measures are part of our de-islamization plans and have been on our party platform for over ten years.
And, finally, in order to remain free, we must honor our freedoms by using them. That is why I will never give up my freedom of speech. Not in parliament nor anywhere else.
I have been dragged to court for asking party members at a meeting whether they want more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. 65% of Dutch Moroccan youths have been suspected of criminal activities. They are six times as often suspects of violent crime as indigenous Dutch, and 22 times as often of hold-ups and street robberies.
Geert Wilders during his March 2014 speech, where he asked "Do you want more or fewer Moroccans?" (Image source: nos.nl video screenshot)
They also constitute almost 80% of the Dutch jihadis traveling fighting in Syria for IS. Just last week, a Dutch Moroccan was arrested in Rotterdam for supplying French jihadis with Kalashnikovs and explosives. Nevertheless, according to the public prosecutor, asking Dutch voters whether they want more or less Moroccans in the Netherlands is a criminal offense.
But no matter the outcome of the trial, I will keep speaking. No judge will ever be able to silence me. And no jihadist will succeed either. For twelve years already, I have been on the death list of several Islamic terror organizations, from al-Qaeda to IS and the Taliban. I am under 24/7 protection by the police. I live in a safe house, am driven around in armored cars, have to wear bullet proof vests in public, and have to stand trial in converted bunkers. But I will never shut up.
The more they try to do so, the louder I will speak.
It is time to raise our voices. Let them sound like thunder: Freedom has a price. The price is to always defend it, no matter the consequences. To be brave and let no-one bully us into submission. So, let us do our duty and ensure that Reagan's warning never becomes a reality: Extinction is not an option! Freedom or Islam. You cannot have it both ways. There is no middle way.
**Reprinted from Breitbart by permission from the author.
© 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.
 

Meet the Western Charlatans Justifying Jihad
Giulio Meotti/Gatestone Institute/September 29/16
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8741/western-intellectuals-jihad
Why has the philosopher, Michel Onfray, become so popular among the French jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq? Journalist David Thomson, a specialist in jihadi movements, explained that "Onfray is translated into Arabic and shared on all pro-ISIS sites."
Onfray recognizes that we are at war. But this war, to him, was started by George W. Bush. He "forgets" that 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001. If you remind him that "ISIS kills innocent people", Onfray will reply: "We have also killed innocent people." It is the perfect moral equivalence between ISIS and the West. Barbarians against barbarians! With his moral relativism, Onfray opens the door to Islamist cutthroats.
The French intellectual Thomas Piketty, after the massacres in Paris, pointed at "inequality" as the root of ISIS's success. Another well-known German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, claimed that the September 11 attacks were attacks were just "small incidents".
Famous representatives of European culture also embraced Adolf Hitler's dream. Their heirs now justify jihad as the ultimate punishment for Western freedoms and democracy.
After September 11, 2001, the cream of European intellectuals immediately started to find justifications for jihad. They evidently were fascinated by the Kalashnikov assault rifle, "the weapon of the poor". For them, what we had seen in New York was a chimera, an illusion. The mass killings were supposedly the suicide of the capitalist democracy, and terrorism was the wrath of the unemployed, the desperate weapon of a lumpenproletariat offended by the arrogance of Western globalization.
These intellectuals have sown seeds of despair in a large Western echo-chamber. From 9/11 to the recent massacres on European soil, the murdered Westerners are portrayed as just collateral victims in a war between "the system" and the damned of the earth, who are only claiming a place at the table.
One of these intellectuals is Michel Onfray. It has been a while since we heard the expression: "Useful idiot." The cynical expression is often attributed to Lenin, and was used to designate Western sympathizers who justified the horrors of Communism. The French magazine L'Express used it for Onfray: "the useful idiot of Islamism".
When his "Atheist Manifesto" was published in 2005, Onfray could never have imagined that ten years later, he would become the darling of the jihadist group, Islamic State (ISIS). Yet, on November 21, 2015, a week after the massacres in Paris, Onfray appeared in a propaganda video of the Islamic State. A few days later, Onfray, this idol of the reflexive European middle class, said that a "truce could be signed between ISIS and France".
Onfray just gave another interview to the magazine Famille Chrétienne, where he explained that there is no moral difference between "killing innocent lives of women, children and elderly" and "state terrorism" -- between ISIS and the Western war on terror.
Onfray is the most widely read French philosopher in the world and has dethroned Michel Serres, Michel Foucault and Jean-Paul Sartre. This philosopher, drunk with the Enlightenment, has written 80 books, translated into nearly 30 languages. He is not a Marxist, but a libertarian hedonist. According to Onfray, the entire Judeo-Christian heritage prevents free, loving enjoyment. Hence his insistence, ultimately, that the Western civilization is "dead."
How did this great hedonist, the theorist of materialism and atheism, become the darling of Islamist cutthroats? Prime Minister Manuel Valls accused him of having "lost his bearings."
When Onfray calls for a truce with the Islamic State, it is because he believes that France is responsible for what happened to itself. In his recent book Penser l'islam ("Thinking Islam"), Onfray wrote: "If we look at the historical facts and not at the emotions, the West attacked first." France is supposedly reaping what it has sown. Of course Islamists kill and massacre, but it is not their fault, as the West, in his view, previously attacked them.
Onfray also gave the impression of finding more excuses for ISIS by speaking a French "Islamophobia." Why has Onfray has become so popular among the French jihadists fighting in Syria and Iraq? Journalist David Thomson, a specialist in jihadi movements, explained that "Onfray is translated into Arabic and shared on all pro-ISIS sites." Talking to Jean-Jacques Bourdin in 2013, Onfray even defended the right of Islamists to apply Islamic sharia law in Mali.
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger (left) was one of many European intellectuals and artists who embraced Adolf Hitler's dream. Today, French philosopher Michel Onfray (right) has become the darling of the jihadist group, Islamic State, with his view that, while Islamists kill and massacre, it is not their fault; he blames the victims, because "the West attacked first."
Onfray recognizes that we are at war. But this war, to him, was started by George W. Bush. He "forgets" that 3,000 Americans were killed on September 11, 2001. If you remind him that "ISIS kills innocent people", Onfray will reply: "We have also killed innocent people." It is the perfect moral equivalence between ISIS and the West. Barbarians against barbarians! The 130 French people killed on November 13, 2015 are just puppets of the West. With his moral relativism, Onfray opens the door to Islamist cutthroats.
Onfray belongs to a long list of charlatans who abound among Europe's intellectuals. Writing for Le Monde, the most famous living German philosopher, Jürgen Habermas, claimed that "jihadism is a modern form of reaction to the living conditions characterized by uprooting." Someone should have explained to him that all the terrorists were well integrated into the French and Belgian democracies, and living with welfare subsidies.
Another celebrity-philosopher, the Slovenian neo-Marxist guru Slavoj Zizek, argued that Islamism may seem reactionary, but "in a curious inversion religion is one of the possible places from which one can deploy critical doubts about today's society. It has become one of the sites of resistance." Zizek also claimed that "Islamo-Fascists" and "European anti-immigrant racists" are "the two sides of the same coin."
The French intellectual Thomas Piketty, after the massacres in Paris, pointed at "inequality" as the root of ISIS's success. Another well-known German philosopher, Peter Sloterdijk, claimed that the September 11 attacks were attacks were just "small incidents".
José Saramago, a Nobel laureate for literature, claimed that flying two planes into the Twin Towers was "revenge against the humiliation".
There were also those, like the French thinker Jean Baudrillard, who said that the attacks on the Twin Towers were actually desired by the United States. In short, Islamic terrorists did it, but we had really wanted it. Or to quote from the famous German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, the attack on the World Trade Center was "the greatest work of art that is possible in the whole cosmos."
The peak of cynicism was reached by Dario Fo, the winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize for literature, who said after 9/11:
"The great speculators wallow in an economy that every year kills tens of millions of people with poverty — so what is 20,000 dead in New York? Regardless of who carried out the massacre [of 9-11], this violence is the legitimate daughter of the culture of violence, hunger and inhumane exploitation".
It has happened before. Philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and Carl Schmitt, writers such as Knut Hamsun and Louis Ferdinand Céline, musicians such as Wilhelm Furtwangler and Ernst von Karajan, are just some of the most famous representatives of European culture who embraced Adolf Hitler's dream. Their heirs now justify jihad as the ultimate punishment for the Western freedoms and democracy.
**Giulio Meotti, Cultural Editor for Il Foglio, is an Italian journalist and author.
© 2016 Gatestone Institute. All rights reserved. The articles printed here do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editors or of Gatestone Institute. No part of the Gatestone website or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied or modified, without the prior written consent of Gatestone Institute.

Why the Oslo Process Doomed Peace
Efraim Karsh/Middle East Quarterly/September 29/16
http://eliasbejjaninews.com/2016/09/29/efraim-karshmiddle-east-quarterly-why-the-oslo-process-doomed-peace/
In 1994, (left to right) PLO chairman Yasser Arafat, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and foreign minister Shimon Peres received the Nobel Peace Prize following the signing of the 1993 Oslo accords. But twenty-three years later, peace is still illusive. For Israel, the accords have been the starkest strategic blunder, establishing an ineradicable terror entity on its doorstep, deepening its internal cleavages, and weakening its international standing.
Twenty-three years after its euphoric launch on the White House lawn, the Oslo “peace process” between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) stands out as one of the worst calamities to have afflicted the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. For Israel, it has been the starkest strategic blunder in its history, establishing an ineradicable terror entity on its doorstep, deepening its internal cleavages, destabilizing its political system, and weakening its international standing. For the West Bank and Gaza Palestinians, it has brought subjugation to the corrupt and repressive PLO and Hamas regimes, which reversed the hesitant advent of civil society in these territories, shattered their socioeconomic wellbeing, and made the prospects of peace and reconciliation with Israel ever more remote. This in turn means that, even if the territories were to be internationally recognized as a fully-fledged Palestinian state (with or without a formal peace treaty with Israel), this will be a failed entity in the worst tradition of Arab dictatorships at permanent war with both Israel and its own subjects.
False Partner, Missed Partner
“We make peace with enemies,” Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin reassured a concerned citizen shortly after the September 13, 1993 conclusion of the Israel-PLO Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (DOP, or Oslo I). “I would like to remind you that the [March 1979] peace treaty with Egypt had many opponents, and this peace has held for 15 years now.”[1] True enough. But peace can only be made with enemies who have been either comprehensively routed (e.g., post-World War II Germany and Japan) or disillusioned with the use of violence—not with those who remain wedded to conflict and war. And while Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was a “reformed enemy” eager to extricate his country from its futile conflict with Israel, Yasser Arafat and the PLO leadership viewed the Oslo process not as a springboard to peace but as a “Trojan Horse” (in the words of prominent PLO official Faisal Husseini) designed to promote the organization’s strategic goal of “Palestine from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea”—that is, a Palestine in place of Israel.[2]
Arafat admitted as much five days before signing the accords when he told an Israeli journalist, “In the future, Israel and Palestine will be one united state in which Israelis and Palestinians will live together”[3]—that is, Israel would cease to exist. And even as he shook Rabin’s hand on the White House lawn, the PLO chairman was assuring the Palestinians in a pre-recorded, Arabic-language message that the agreement was merely an implementation of the organization’s “phased strategy” of June 1974. This stipulated that the Palestinians would seize whatever territory Israel surrendered to them, then use it as a springboard for further territorial gains until achieving the “complete liberation of Palestine.”[4]
The next eleven years until Arafat’s death on November 11, 2004, offered a recapitulation, over and over again, of the same story. In addressing Israeli or Western audiences, the PLO chairman (and his erstwhile henchmen) would laud the “peace” signed with “my partner Yitzhak Rabin.” To his Palestinian constituents, he depicted the accords as transient arrangements required by the needs of the moment. He made constant allusion to the “phased strategy” and the Treaty of Hudaibiya—signed by Muhammad with the people of Mecca in 628, only to be disavowed a couple of years later when the situation shifted in the prophet’s favor—and insisted on the “right of return,” the standard Palestinian/Arab euphemism for Israel’s destruction through demographic subversion. As he told a skeptical associate shortly before moving to Gaza in July 1994 to take control of the newly established Palestinian Authority (PA):
I know that you are opposed to the Oslo accords, but you must always remember what I’m going to tell you. The day will come when you will see thousands of Jews fleeing Palestine. I will not live to see this, but you will definitely see it in your lifetime. The Oslo accords will help bring this about.[5]
This perfidy was sustained by Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas, who has had no qualms about reiterating the vilest anti-Semitic calumnies: In his June 2016 address to the European Parliament, Abbas accused Israeli rabbis of urging the poisoning of Palestinian water.[6] In his doctoral dissertation, written at a Soviet university and subsequently published in book form, he argued that fewer than a million Jews had been killed in the Holocaust, and that the Zionist movement colluded in their slaughter.[7] He has vowed time and again never to accept the idea of Jewish statehood, most recently in March 2014, when he rallied the Arab League behind his “absolute and decisive rejection to recognizing Israel as a Jewish state,”[8] and in September 2015, when he derided Israel in his U.N. address as “a historic injustice … inflicted upon a people … that had lived peacefully in their land.”[9]
An unreconstructed Holocaust denier, PA president Mahmoud Abbas has voiced incessant anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incitement. In his June 2016 address to the European Parliament, Abbas accused Israeli rabbis of urging the poisoning of Palestinian water. He has pledged to prevent the Jews from “defiling al-Aqsa with their filthy feet” and has vowed time and again never to accept the idea of Jewish statehood.
Back home in the PA, Abbas was even more forthright, pledging to prevent the Jews from “defiling al-Aqsa with their filthy feet” and stating that “every drop of blood that has been spilled in Jerusalem is holy blood as long as it was for Allah.”[10] When this incitement culminated in a sustained wave of violence that killed scores of Israelis in a string of stabbings, car rammings into civilians, and shooting attacks, Abbas applauded the bloodshed as a “peaceful, popular uprising. … We have been under occupation for 67 or 68 years [i.e., since Israel's establishment],” he told his subjects in March 2016. “Others would have sunk into despair and frustration. However, we are determined to reach our goal because our people stand behind us.”[11]
In other words, more than two decades after the onset of the Oslo process, Israel’s “peace partner” would not even accept the Jewish state’s right to exist, considering its creation an “illegal occupation of Palestinian lands.”
What makes this state of affairs all the more tragic is that, at the time of the Oslo accords, the Rabin government had a potentially far better peace partner in the form of the West Bank and Gaza leadership. To be sure, Israel’s hand-off policies during the two-and-a-half decades from the June 1967 capture of the territories to the onset of the Oslo process enabled the PLO to establish itself as the predominant force there at the expense of the more moderate local leadership. But this meant no blind subservience to the organization’s goals or means. Unlike the PLO’s diaspora constituents (or the “outside” in Palestinian parlance) who upheld the extremist dream of returning to their 1948 dwellings at the cost of Israel’s destruction, West Bankers and Gazans (the “inside”) were amenable to peaceful coexistence that would allow them to get on with their lives and sustain the astounding economic boom begun under Israel’s control. During the 1970s, for example, the West Bank and Gaza were the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world, ahead of such “wonders” as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, making socioeconomic conditions there far better than in most neighboring Arab states. While the “outside” diaspora had no direct interaction with Israelis (and for that matter with any other democratic system), Israel’s prolonged rule had given the “inside” Palestinians a far more realistic and less extreme perspective: hence their perception of Israel as more democratic than the major Western nations;[12] hence their overwhelming support for the abolition of those clauses in the Palestinian charter that called for Israel’s destruction and their rejection of terror attacks;[13] and hence their indifference to the thorniest issue of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute, and the one central to the PLO’s persistent effort to destroy Israel, namely, the “right of return.” As late as March 1999, two months before the lapse of the official deadline for the completion of the Oslo final-status negotiations, over 85 percent of respondents did not consider the refugee question the most important problem facing the Palestinian people.[14]
The PLO had been ostracized by its Arab peers following its support for Iraq’s brutal occupation of Kuwait.
Against this backdrop, the Rabin government had a unique opportunity to steer the Palestinian populace in the West Bank and Gaza in the direction of peace and statehood, possibly in collaboration with Jordan’s King Hussein, who just a few years earlier had thrown his hat in the ring only to be rebuffed by Prime Minister Shamir. In a Nablus public opinion poll shortly before the DOP signing, 70 percent of respondents preferred Hussein to the PLO as their sovereign,[15] not least since the PLO had been totally ostracized by its Arab peers following its support for Iraq’s brutal occupation of Kuwait. At that point, its prestige in the territories was at one of its lowest ebbs; Hamas was at an early stage of development; the radical Arab regimes were thoroughly disorientated by the collapse of their communist backers; and the West Bank and Gaza leadership was bent on participating in the U.S.-sponsored peace talks between Israel and its neighbors, launched at the October 1991 Madrid Conference and sustained in Washington, against the PLO’s adamant objection.[16]
But then, instead of seizing the moment and opting for the obvious peace partner that was far better attuned to the needs and wishes of the local Palestinian populace, and against his personal inclination to strike a deal with the “moderate insiders” rather than the “extremist Tunis people [i.e., PLO leadership],” Rabin was persuaded by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and his deputy Yossi Beilin (who reportedly collaborated with the PLO in obstructing the Washington talks) into surrendering the West Bankers and Gazans to an unreconstructed terror organization whose leader would not hang up his ubiquitous battledress, not even for the signing ceremonies of the various Oslo accords or the receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, and who used peace as a strategic deception aimed at promoting the eternal goal of Israel’s destruction.[17]
As a result, twenty-three years of 1) incessant hate mongering by the PLO/PA (not to mention Hamas, which exploited the Oslo process to become the preeminent military and political factor in the territories); 2) countless terror attacks (including a full-fledged terror war, euphemistically named “al-Aqsa Intifada” after the Jerusalem mosque); 3) three protracted large scale military encounters between Hamas and Israel; and 4) economic collapse induced by the PA’s and Hamas’s corrupt and inept rule have thoroughly radicalized the West Bank and Gaza populace with a new generation of Palestinians brought up on vile anti-Jewish (and anti-Israel) incitement unparalleled in scope and intensity since Nazi Germany.
Tarnished Security
Apart from making the prospects of peace and reconciliation ever more remote, the Oslo process substantially worsened Israel’s security position. At the heart of the DOP lay the conviction that it would end three decades of PLO violence and transform the organization overnight from one of the world’s most murderous terror groups into a political actor and state builder. As Oslo’s chief architect, Yossi Beilin, confidently prophesied shortly after the DOP signing, “The greatest test of the accord will not be in the intellectual sphere. Rather, it will be a test of blood.”[18]
This chilling prediction was put to the test in short order as terrorism in the territories spiraled to its highest level since Israel took control following the June 1967 Six-Day War. In the two-and-a-half years from the signing of the DOP to the fall of the Labor government in May 1996, 210 Israelis were murdered—nearly three times the average death toll of the previous twenty-six years[19] when only a small fraction of the fatalities had been caused by West Bank- or Gaza-originated attacks.[20]Moreover, nearly two thirds of the 1994-96 victims were murdered in Israeli territory inside the “Green Line”—nearly ten times the average fatality toll in Israel in the preceding six violent years of the Palestinian uprising (intifada).[21]
Israeli soldiers patrol Nablus during Operation Defensive Shield. Following the signing of the Oslo accords, the Palestinians have engaged Israel in a near constant state of war and terror, including hundreds of terror attacks in Israeli cities, a full-fledged terror war (the “al-Aqsa intifada”), and three protracted large scale military encounters between Hamas and Israel.
In September 1996, Arafat escalated the conflict and crossed another threshold when he reverted to direct violence by exploiting the opening of a new exit to an archaeological tunnel under the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, to unleash widespread riots (labeled the “tunnel war”) in which 17 Israelis and some 80 Palestinians were killed. And while the PA quickly dropped the tunnel issue from its agenda once it had outlived its usefulness, Arafat was to repeat this precedent on several occasions, most notably by launching the September 2000 terror war (al-Aqsa intifada) a short time after being offered Palestinian statehood by Israel’s prime minister Ehud Barak.
By the time of Arafat’s death four years later, his war—the bloodiest and most destructive confrontation between Israelis and Palestinians since 1948—had exacted 1,028 Israeli lives in some 5,760 attacks—nine times the average death toll of the pre-Oslo era.[22] Of these, about 450 people (or 43.8 percent of victims) were killed in suicide bombings—a practically unheard of tactic in the Palestinian-Israeli context prior to Oslo. The only pre-Oslo suicide bombing, in which one local Palestinian and the two bombers were killed, took place in April 1993 in the desolate Jordan Valley, outside the pre-1967 line.[23] All in all, more than 1,600 Israelis have been murdered and another 9,000 wounded since the signing of the DOP—nearly four times the average death toll of the preceding twenty-six years.[24]
It was Hamas, rather than the PLO, which was to bring Arafat’s genocidal vision for Israel to fruition.
But the story does not end here. For underlying this bloodletting was the transformation of the territories into unreconstructed terror bastions in line with Arafat’s vision of making them a springboard of “a popular armed revolution” that would “force the Zionists to realize that it is impossible for them to live in Israel.”[25] Only it was Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, which made its debut during the 1987-93 intifada, rather than the PLO, which was to bring Arafat’s genocidal vision to fruition.
With its initial fears of repression by the newly-installed PA quickly assuaged, Hamas waged a sustained terror campaign (with Arafat’s tacit approval) that exerted a devastating impact on the nascent peace process. Its March 1996 murder of 58 Israelis in the span of one week, for example, was instrumental in Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral defeat of Prime Minister Peres two months later. But Hamas also reached an agreement with the PLO/PA on the continuation of these attacks provided they did not emanate from territories under the latter’s control.[26] Collaboration between the two organizations reached its zenith during the “al-Aqsa intifada” when Hamas played the leading role, especially in the field of suicide bombings, carrying out the deadliest and most horrific attacks inside Israel. And while Israel managed to destroy the West Bank’s terror infrastructure in a sustained counterinsurgency effort, Hamas managed to retain its Gaza base largely intact despite the targeted killing of many of its top leaders, including founding father Ahmad Yasin and his immediate successor Abdul Aziz Rantisi.
Moreover, by way of compensating for its dwindling capacity for suicide bombings—which dropped from sixty in 2002 to five in 2006—the Islamist terror group reverted to massive high trajectory attacks from Gaza. In 2004, 309 home-made Qassam rockets and 882 mortar shells were fired on Israeli villages in the Strip and towns and villages within Israel (compared to 105 and 514 respectively in 2003), and the following year saw 401 and 854 respective attacks despite Hamas’s acceptance of a temporary suspension of fighting.[27] This left little doubt among Palestinians as to who spearheaded the “armed struggle” against Israel, and when, in the summer of 2005, the Israeli government unilaterally vacated the dozen odd villages in the south of the Strip with their 8,000-strong population, the move was widely considered a Hamas victory. A few months later, on January 25, 2006, the organization reaped the political fruits of its military prowess when, in its first electoral showing since the DOP (it boycotted the first parliamentary elections in 1996), it scored a landslide victory winning 74 of parliament’s 132 seats. As the PLO/PA would not accept this reality, in 2007, relations between the two groups deteriorated into violent clashes, especially in Gaza, with scores of people killed and many more wounded as Hamas seized full control of the Strip.[28]
Smuggling tunnel in Rafah. Following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Philadelphi patrol route along the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, Hamas embarked on a massive buildup of its terror infrastructure. By 2008, Hamas was launching ten rockets, missiles, and mortar shells into Israel a day.
Flushed with success and encouraged by the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Philadelphi patrol route along the Strip’s border with Egypt, Hamas embarked on a massive buildup of its terror infrastructure with vast quantities of weapons and war matériel smuggled from Sinai through an extensive and rapidly expanding underground tunnel system. Within a year of Israel’s unilateral withdrawal, there was a fourfold increase in the number of rockets and missiles fired from the Strip (from 401 to 1,726); and while this pace ebbed slightly in 2007 (to 1,276 attacks), it peaked to a whopping 2,048 attacks in 2008 (in addition to 1,668 mortar shells), or ten attacks a day.[29]
In an attempt to stem this relentless harassment of its civilian population, in December 2008-January 2009, Israel launched a large ground operation in Gaza (codenamed Cast Lead). But while the operation eroded Hamas’s military capabilities and led to a vast decrease in the firing of rockets and missiles,[30] it failed to curb the organization’s military might and political ambitions. In the ensuing five years, Israel was forced to fight two more inconclusive wars against the Islamist group—Operation Pillar of Defense (November 14-21, 2012) and Operation Protective Edge (July 8-August 26, 2014). And to add insult to injury, it was Israel, rather than Hamas, that came under scathing international censure for its supposed use of “disproportionate force,” including two major U.N. fact-finding reports and a string of indictments by humanitarian organizations. In December 2014—a mere four months after Hamas had criminally subjected millions of Israelis to sustained rocket and missile attacks for seven full weeks—the European Court of Justice removed the group from the EU’s list of terrorist organizations.[31]
The PLO’s Growing International Stature
Since no theme has dominated the discourse of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict more than Israel’s “illegitimate occupation of Palestinian lands,” it was believed by the Oslo architects that by ceding control of the territories’ population, Israel would be able to quiet the chorus of criticism and to boost its international standing.
Withdrawal from Gaza had been completed by May 1994 apart from a small stretch of territory in the south of the Strip containing a few Israeli villages. By January 1996, Israel had also withdrawn its forces from the West Bank’s populated areas with the exception of Hebron where redeployment was completed in early 1997, leaving 99 percent of the territories’ population under PLO/PA rule. “As of today, there is a Palestinian state,” gushed Arafat’s Arab-Israeli advisor Ahmad Tibi after the January 1996 elections for the incipient Palestinian parliament. This upbeat prognosis was echoed by the Israeli minister of the environment, Yossi Sarid, while Beilin proclaimed the elections to have made the political process irreversible, expressing relief at the ending of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian populated areas:
We have been freed of a heavy burden. I never believed in the possibility of an enlightened occupation. It was necessary to lift that burden so as to avoid becoming a target for organizations throughout the world that viewed us as oppressors.[32]
During Bill Clinton’s eight years in office, Arafat (left) was welcomed to the White House more often than any other world leader. The EU, for its part, stuck with the PLO leader, disregarding PLO/PA excesses and growing disillusionment in the West Bank and Gaza with Arafat’s repressive and corrupt leadership.
In fact, not only did Israel get no credit whatsoever for its withdrawal from the territories, but this move went virtually unnoticed by the international community while the PLO surged to unprecedented international heights—without shedding its genocidal commitment to Israel’s destruction, surrendering its weapons, or abandoning its terrorist ways. So much so that during Bill Clinton’s eight years in office, Arafat was welcomed to the White House more often than any other world leader; he even happened to be seated opposite the U.S. president when he was first questioned about his affair with Monica Lewinsky.[33] Within five years from the signing of the DOP, the PA had received $2.5 billion of the pledged $3.6 billion in international aid, apart from some $600 million contributed to activities in the West Bank and Gaza through the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA); by 2016, the United States alone had committed more than $5 billion in bilateral economic aid to the Palestinians.[34]
But then, rather than use their formidable economic leverage to pressure the PLO/PA to abide by its peace obligations, the donor states turned a blind eye both to Arafat’s condoning of proxy terrorism (by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad) and to his direct use of violence. Not only did his launch of a terror war shortly after being offered statehood by Barak fail to attract international criticism, it boosted the PLO/PA’s standing and boxed Israel into a corner. Media outlets, commentators, and politicians throughout the world blamed the premeditated Palestinian violence on the supposed “provocation carried out at al-Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem on 28 September 2000 [i.e., Ariel Sharon's visit to Temple Mount],” to use the words of a special Security Council resolution, which the United States failed to veto.[35] Even President Clinton, who two months earlier had publicly chided Arafat for failing to seize Barak’s generous offer of statehood,[36] swiftly changed tack and pressured the Israeli government for further concessions (which it made), only to be rebuffed yet again by the Palestinian leader.
The European Union became the PA’s foremost international backer as the terror war against Israel escalated.
For its part, the European Union became the PA’s foremost international backer as the terror war escalated. Making no distinction between terror attacks and counterinsurgency measures aimed at their deflection, it blamed both sides for the continuation of violence, criticized Israel at every turn, and increased financial aid to the Palestinians despite the incontrovertible evidence that much of this aid was being channeled to terror activities: In 2001-04, international disbursements doubled from an annual average of $500 million to over $1 billion as Arafat’s terror war plunged the territories into dire economic straits.[37]
Disregarding both the PLO/PA excesses and the growing disillusionment in the West Bank and Gaza with Arafat’s repressive and corrupt leadership, the EU stuck with the PLO leader to his dying day, jeopardizing President George W. Bush’s attempt to bring about “a new and different Palestinian leadership … not compromised by terror.”[38] So did the International Court of Justice, the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, which condemned Israel’s attempt to stem the tidal wave of suicide bombings through the construction of a security barrier between its territory and the West Bank as “contrary to international law.”[39]
The PLO painted Israel as the main obstacle to peace despite Jerusalem’s consistent supportfor the two-state solution.
The solemn pledge by Abbas to persist in his predecessor’s (violent and corrupt) path failed to impress the Palestinians’ international backers as evidenced among other things by their indifference to the disappearance of $3.1 billion worth of aid between 2008 and 2012; to his abstention from disarming the terror groups operating under his jurisdiction as required by the Oslo accords; and to his refusal to hold new elections upon the expiry of his presidency in January 2009. Nor was Abbas’s supposed interest in peace questioned despite his categorical rejection of the idea of Jewish statehood (the root cause of the decades-long failure of the two-state solution); his incessant anti-Semitic and anti-Israel incitement; and his abandonment of the bilateral peace talks in search of an internationally imposed Palestinian state—without a peace agreement. On the contrary, with Barack Obama determined to put the maximum “daylight” between Washington and Jerusalem,[40] the U.S. administration not only snubbed the Israeli government as a matter of course but exploited blatant anti-Israel activities (e.g., the international chorus of condemnation attending the May 2010 Mavi Marmara incident) to tighten the political noose around Jerusalem.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to break the stalemate by agreeing in June 2009 to the creation of a Palestinian state and imposing in November 2009 a 10-month freeze on Jewish construction activities in the West Bank failed to impress the Palestinians. Dismissing his gestures out of hand, they walked away from the negotiating table upon the expiry of the construction moratorium and sought to present Israel with a fait accompli by gaining U.N. recognition of Palestinian statehood—in flagrant violation of the Oslo accords that envisaged the attainment of peace through direct negotiations between the two parties. Having failed to garner sufficient support at the Security Council, in November 2012, they obtained General Assembly recognition of Palestine as a “non-member observer state,” following which the PA set out to join a string of international bodies and agencies, most importantly the International Criminal Court (ICC). On January 2, 2015, the “State of Palestine” acceded to the Rome statute, the ICC’s founding treaty, and two weeks later, the court opened a preliminary examination into “the situation in Palestine,” having received jurisdiction over alleged crimes committed “in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, since June 13, 2014.”[41] Nine months later, on September 30, fresh from yet another anti-Israel diatribe, Abbas joined Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for an official ceremony in which the Palestinian flag was raised for the first time outside the U.N.’s headquarters in New York.
The significance of these developments cannot be overstated. Twenty-four years after its exclusion from the U.S.-orchestrated international peace talks in Madrid and its wall-to-wall ostracism by its Arab peers, the PLO had recast itself in the eyes of the international community as the legitimate, peaceable, and democratically-disposed ruler of the prospective Palestinian state against all available evidence to the contrary, painting Israel as the main obstacle to peace despite its surrender of control of the territories’ population and consistent support for the two-state solution. In addition, the former terrorist group had laid the groundwork for Israel’s international indictment for supposed “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.”[42] And all this transpired without the PLO/PA accepting the Jewish state’s right to exist as stipulated by the United Nations sixty-eight years earlier and while remaining committed to Israel’s eventual demise.
Radicalizing the Israeli Arabs
The Oslo process has confronted Israel with the likely creation of a revanchist Palestinian state committed to its destruction (whether tacitly as in the case of the PLO/PA or overtly as with Hamas) and imposed severe constraints on Jerusalem’s international maneuverability and capacity for self-defense. But the process has also dealt a devastating blow to the delicate edifice of Jewish-Arab relations within Israel—not that the PLO had previously refrained from meddling in the affairs of the Israeli Arabs. Yet the Oslo process raised this involvement to a qualitatively different level for the simple reason that by recognizing the PLO as “the representative of the Palestinian people,” the Rabin government effectively endorsed its claim of authority over a substantial number of Israeli citizens and gave it a carte blanche to interfere in Israel’s domestic affairs. Such a concession would be problematic even under the most auspicious circumstances; made to an irredentist party still officially committed to the destruction of its “peace partner,” it proved nothing short of catastrophic.
Decades of incitement and radicalization following Oslo have had a palpable effect on Arab-Jewish relations in Israel. Arab Israeli leaders have openly identified with Israel’s sworn enemies, and Israeli Arabs have rioted often in reaction to Israeli attempts to stop Palestinian terrorism.
As the PLO seized its newly-gained opportunity with alacrity, open identification of Israeli Arab leaders with the country’s sworn enemies became commonplace with many visiting the neighboring Arab states—from Syria, to Lebanon, to Libya, to Yemen—to confer with various heads of the “resistance movement” and to urge anti-Israel terror activities.[43]
As the 1990s wore on, open calls for Israel’s destruction substituted for the euphemistic advocacy of this goal. Azmi Bishara, founding leader of the ultranationalist Balad party, predicated on the demand for “a state of all its citizens”—the standard euphemism for Israel’s transformation into an Arab state in which Jews would be reduced to a permanent minority—began comparing the Jewish state’s fate to that of the crusading states. He fled the country in 2006 to avoid prosecution for treason, having allegedly assisted Hezbollah during its war with Israel in the summer of that year. His successor, Jamal Zahalka, preferred a more contemporary metaphor, claiming that just as South Africa’s apartheid had been emasculated, so its Zionist counterpart had to be destroyed.[44]
And Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the northern branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, who never tired of crying wolf over Israel’s supposed designs on the al-Aqsa mosque, prophesied the Jewish state’s demise within two decades should it not change its attitude to the Arab minority.[45] Even the “national committee of the heads of local Arab municipalities in Israel,” the effective leadership of the Israeli Arabs, issued a lengthy document outlining its “Future Vision for the Palestinian Arabs in Israel,” which derided Israel as “a product of colonialist action initiated by the Jewish-Zionist elites in Europe and the West”; rejected Israel’s continued existence as a Jewish state, and demanded its replacement by a system that would ensure Arab “national, historic and civil rights at both the individual and collective levels.”[46]
Most Arabs would rather remain Israeli citizens, knowing that life in a democratic society is preferable to that in the prospective Palestinian state.
It is true that most Arabs would rather remain Israeli citizens, knowing full well that life in a civil, democratic, and pluralistic society, albeit a Jewish one, is preferable to what will be on offer in the prospective Palestinian state.[47] Yet the Oslo decades of incitement and radicalization have had a palpable effect on Arab-Jewish relations in Israel. When, in February 1994, a Jewish fanatic murdered twenty-nine Muslims at prayer in Hebron, large-scale riots erupted in numerous Arab settlements throughout Israel with mobs battling police for four full days. The scenario repeated itself in April 1996 when dozens of Lebanese Shiites were mistakenly killed in an Israeli bombing of terrorist targets in south Lebanon, and yet again in September 1996, during the Jerusalem tunnel riots, reaching an unprecedented peak on October 1, 2000, when the Israeli Arabs turned on their Jewish compatriots—in support of an external attack on their own state (i.e., the “al-Aqsa Intifada.”).
Small wonder that commemoration of the October 2000 riots has often been accompanied by violence, at times coordinated with the PA, as have Israel’s defensive measures against Palestinian terrorism. When on March 29, 2002, the Israel Defense Forces launched Operation Defensive Shield against the terror infrastructure in the West Bank, violent demonstrations broke out in Arab settlements throughout Israel, and the Arab-Israeli Islamist movement initiated widespread activities in support of the West Bank Palestinians. Similar outbursts of violence occurred in December 2008-January 2009 when Israel moved to end years of rocket and missile attacks on its towns and villages (Operation Cast Lead) from Hamas-controlled Gaza.[48]
Destabilizing Israel’s Political System
However dramatic, the radicalization of its Arab citizens has not been Israel’s worst Oslo-related domestic debacle; far more significant has been the destabilization of the country’s political system from which it has not recovered to date. In the twenty-three years from the signing of the DOP, just one of the nine reigning Israeli governments completed its four-year tenure with one term ended by the unprecedented assassination of the incumbent prime minister. Meanwhile, parliament’s average duration dropped from 3.6 years to 3 years, and an unprecedented number of parties were formed, torn apart, and disbanded.
To be sure, Israel’s diverse political system has seen the rise and fall of sectorial parties from the early days of statehood; yet the proliferation of “atmosphere parties” thriving on the general yearning for change while effectively servicing their founders’ political ambitions, skyrocketed to new heights during the Oslo years as the cognitive dissonance between realization of Palestinian perfidy and the lingering longing for peace drove many Israelis to cling to the latest celebrity hope peddler to emerge on the political scene. Thus the nascent Third Way Party won four of the Knesset’s 120 seats in 1996, only to evaporate into thin air three years later. It was followed by the similarly disposed Center Party, which won six seats in 1999 before disappearing from the political scene in the 2003 elections when another one-term party—One People—came into brief and unremarkable existence. The Shinui (Change) party, a splinter of the one-term Democratic Movement for Change (DASH) that played a key role in Likud’s 1977 historic ascendance, managed to win six and fifteen seats in the 1999 and 2003 elections respectively, before vanishing altogether in 2006. Its unhappy fate was replicated by the Kadima party, established by a string of prominent Likud and Labor defectors headed by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, which managed to form a government in 2006 and win the 2009 elections by the slimmest of margins (though it was Likud that eventually formed a government), before fading into oblivion in the 2013 elections. So did Hatenua party, formed by Likud-defector-turned-Kadima-refugee Tzipi Livni, which was amalgamated with Labor in the 2015 elections.
It remains to be seen for how long the Yesh Atid party, which made an impressive debut in 2013 (19 seats, dropping to 11 in 2015) and is headed by television personality Yair Lapid, or the Kulanu Party, which entered the political fray in 2015 (10 seats) and is led by Likud defector Moshe Kahlon, will survive, identified as they are with their founders’ personal fortunes. Yet the detrimental effects of these parties, as well as those of their many failed precursors and likely successors, are bound to haunt Israel’s political system and the country’s governability for years to come.
Palestine Betrayed
A dozen Palestinian Authority security and intelligence services all answered directly to Arafat. They supported Arafat’s repression of his Palestinian subjects and his terror war against Israel and secured extensive protection and racketeering networks.
International relations are rarely a zero-sum game where one’s loss is necessarily the other’s gain, and the Oslo process has been no exception to this rule. Not only have its massive Israeli setbacks not been translated into direct Palestinian gains, but the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza (and Palestinian Diaspora communities for that matter) has paid a heavy price for its leaders’ perennial disinterest in statehood and obsession with violence. Just as these leaders’ rejection of the November 1947 partition resolution and the waging of a war of annihilation against their Jewish neighbors led to the collapse and dispersal of Palestinian society, so the use of Oslo as a tool for anti-Israeli activities and domestic repression rather than the vehicle for peace and state-building it was meant to be has made these long overdue goals ever more remote, plunging relations between the two parties to their lowest ebb since 1948.
For all his rhetoric about Palestinian independence, Arafat had never been as interested in the attainment of statehood as in the violence attending its pursuit. In the late 1970s, he told his close friend and collaborator, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, that the Palestinians lacked the tradition, unity, and discipline to become a formal state, and that a Palestinian state would be a failure from the first day.[49]Once given control of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza as part of the Oslo process, Arafat made this bleak prognosis a self-fulfilling prophecy, establishing a repressive and corrupt regime where the rule of the gun prevailed over the rule of law and where large sums of money donated by the international community for the benefit of the civilian Palestinian population were diverted to funding racist incitement, buying weaponry, and filling secret bank accounts.
Arafat told his friend and collaborator, the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (left), that the Palestinians lacked the tradition, unity, and discipline to become a formal state, and that a Palestinian state would be a failure from the first day. Arafat was true to his word.
Within a short time of its creation, the Palestinian Authority had literally become the largest police state in the world with one policeman for every forty residents—four times as many as in Washington, D.C., the American city with the highest number of law enforcement officers per capita.[50] Backed by a dozen security and intelligence services, all answering directly to Arafat, these forces were ostensibly designed to enforce law and order and to combat anti-Israel terrorism. In reality, they served as Arafat’s repressive tool over his Palestinian subjects, as an instrument of terror against Israel, and as guardian of the extensive protection and racketeering networks that sprang up in the territories under the PA’s control while the national budget was plundered at will by PLO veterans and Arafat cronies. In May 1997, for example, the first-ever report by the PA’s comptroller stated that $325 million, out of the 1996 budget of $800 million had been “wasted” by Palestinian ministers and agencies or embezzled by officials.[51]
Though this breathtaking corruption played an important role in Hamas’s landslide electoral victory of January 2006, the PLO/PA leadership seems to have learned nothing and to have forgotten nothing. For one thing, Abbas sustained his predecessor’s repressive regime, blatantly ignoring the results of the only (semi) democratic elections in Palestinian history by establishing an alternative government to the legally appointed Hamas government (which he unsuccessfully sought to topple through the denial of international funding) and by refusing to hold new elections upon the expiry of his presidency in January 2009.[52] For another, he seems to have followed in Arafat’s thieving footsteps, reportedly siphoning at least $100 million to private accounts abroad and enriching his sons at the PA’s expense while blocking the timid reform efforts of his appointed prime minister, Salam Fayyad, and eventually forcing him out of office.[53]
Under the PA’s control, the national budget was plundered at will by PLO veterans and Arafat cronies.
In these circumstances, it was hardly surprising that the well-being of the West Bank/Gaza population has ebbed dramatically during the Oslo years. At the time of the DOP signing, and despite the steep economic decline in the six years of the intifada (1987-93), socioeconomic conditions in the territories were far better than in most neighboring Arab states after two decades of constant expansion under Israeli control that saw a tenfold rise of the per-capita gross domestic product. As late as September 2000 when Arafat launched his war of terror, Palestinian income per capita was nearly double Syria’s, more than four times Yemen’s, and 10 percent higher than Jordan’s (one of the better off Arab states) despite the steady deterioration of the West Bank and the Gaza economies under the PA’s control.[54]
By the time of Arafat’s death in November 2004, however, his terror war had slashed this income to a fraction of its earlier levels, with real GDP per capita some 35 percent below pre-September 2000 levels, with unemployment more than doubling and most Palestinians reduced to poverty and despondency. And while Israel’s suppression of the terror war generated a steady recovery with the years 2007-11 recording an average yearly growth above 8 percent, by mid-2014, a full-blown recession had taken hold in the territories with the growth rate dropping to minus 1 percent (0.5 percent in the West Bank and -4 percent in Gaza), a quarter of the population living in poverty (with rates in Gaza twice as high as in the West Bank), and unemployment soaring to over a quarter of the workforce.[55]
Conclusion
Twenty-three years and thousands of deaths after the launch of the Oslo “peace process,” one might have hoped that the international community would begin to realize that the Palestinian leadership is as implacably opposed to the two-state solution as its predecessor was to the U.N.’s endorsement of the idea sixty-nine years ago. But that is evidently a pipe dream. Just as President Clinton, whose hope of brokering a Palestinian-Israeli peace was dashed by Arafat in the July 2000 Camp David summit and again in December of the same year, and who blamed the PLO leader for the collapse of the Oslo process, could suggest five months before Arafat’s death that the United States and Israel had no choice but to resume negotiating with the PLO/PA leader,[56] so the EU has recently endorsed a French plan for an international peace conference in total disregard of Abbas’s adamant rejection of Israel’s right to exist.
This soft racism—asking nothing of the Palestinians as if they are too dim or too primitive to be held accountable for their own words and actions—is an assured recipe for disaster. For it is the total absence of accountability from Middle Eastern political life that has allowed a long succession of local dictators, from Gamal Abdel Nasser, to Saddam Hussein, to Yasser Arafat, to Bashar al-Assad, to inflict recurrent disasters and endless suffering on their peoples and mayhem on the world.
So long as policies and actions on the Palestinian side are permitted, or encouraged, to remain as they are, there will be no progress whatsoever toward peace: not in the framework of a Paris international conference, not even in bilateral talks, were the Palestinians to be somehow coerced to return to the negotiating table. Just as the creation of free and democratic societies in Germany and Japan after World War II necessitated a comprehensive socio-political and educational transformation, so it is only when Palestinian society undergoes a real “spring” that will sweep its corrupt and oppressive PLO and Hamas rulers from power, eradicate the endemic violence from political and social life, and value the virtues of coexistence with their Israeli neighbors, that the century-long conflict between Arabs and Jews can at long last be resolved. Sadly, this possibility, which seemed to be in the offing in 1993, has been eliminated for the foreseeable future by the Oslo “peace process.”
**Efraim Karsh, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, is emeritus professor of Middle East and Mediterranean studies at King’s College London and professor of political studies at Bar-Ilan University where he also directs the BESA Center for Strategic Studies. This article is part of a wider study prepared under the auspices of the BESA Center.
http://www.meforum.org/6264/why-the-oslo-process-doomed-peace
[1] Roy Mandel, “‘Shalom osim im oivim: mikhtavim shekatav lanu Rabin,“ Ynet (Tel Aviv), Oct. 18, 2010.
[2] Faisal Husseini, interview with al-Arabi (Cairo), June 24, 2000.
[3] Ha’olam Ha’ze (Tel Aviv), Sept. 8, 1993.
[4] “Political Program for the Present Stage Drawn up by the 12th PNC, Cairo, June 9, 1974,” Journal of Palestine Studies, Summer 1974, pp. 224-5.
[5] Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), “Al-Quds al-Arabi editor-in-chief: Arafat planned that Oslo would chase away Israelis,” Sept. 3, 2015.
[6] Haaretz (Tel Aviv), June 23, 2016.
[7] Mahmoud Abbas, al-Wajh al-Akhar: al-Alaqat as-Sirriya bayna an-Naziya wa-l-Sihyuniya (Amman: Dar Ibn Rushd, 1984).
[8] Haaretz, Mar. 26, 2014.
[9] WAFA (PLO/PA official news agency), Sept. 30, 2015.
[10] Al-Hayat al-Jadida (Ramallah, official PA daily), Sept. 17, 2015, PMW.
[11] “Mahmoud Abbas: Murdering Israelis is ‘peaceful popular uprising,’” PMW, Dec. 1, 2015; “Abbas: All of Israel Is Occupation,” official PA TV, Mar. 11, 2016, PMW, Apr. 6, 2016.
[12] “Results of Public Opinion Poll No. 25,” Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, Washington, D.C., Dec. 26-28, 1996, p. 14.
[13] “Palestinian Public Opinion about the Peace Process, 1993-1999,” Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, Washington, D.C., 1999; “New Beginning,” U.S. News & World Report, Sept. 13, 1993.
[14] “Public Opinion Poll No. 31—Part I: On Palestinian Attitudes towards Politics,” Jerusalem Media and Communications Center, Mar. 1999, p. 3.
[15] Mohamed Heikal, Secret Channels: The Inside Story of Arab-Israeli Peace Negotiations (London: Harper Collins, 1996), p. 450.
[16] See, for example, Pinhas Inbari, Beharavot Shvurot (Tel Aviv: Misrad Habitahon, 1994), chap. 18-23.
[17] See, for example, Mamduh Nawfal, Qisat Ittifaq Uslu: ar-Riwaya al-Haqiqiya al-Kamila, (Amman: al-Ahliya, 1995), pp. 61-3; Efraim Sneh, Nivut Beshetach Mesukan (Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot, 2002), pp. 22-3; Adam Raz, “Hazitot Mitnagshot: Haanatomia ‘Hamuzara’ shel Hakhraat Oslo shel Rabin,“ Israelim, Autumn 2012, pp. 107-9.
[18] Beilin, interview with Maariv (Tel Aviv), Nov. 26, 1993.
[19] “Fatal Terrorist Attacks in Israel, Sept. 1993-1999,” Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), Jerusalem, Sept. 24, 2000; “Terrorism Deaths in Israel—1920-1999,” idem, Jan. 1, 2000; Wm. Robert Johnston, “Chronology of Terrorist Attacks in Israel: Introduction,” Johnston’s Archive, Jan. 8, 2016; “Global Terrorism Database,” National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, University of Maryland, College Park, Md., accessed July 6, 2016.
[20] Thus, for example, the May 1972 Lod (now Ben-Gurion) airport massacre, in which 26 people were murdered, was carried out by three Japanese terrorists arriving from Rome while the Maalot and Kiryat Shmona massacres two years later, in which 43 people (including 30 children) were killed, were perpetrated by terrorists coming from Lebanon as was the coastal plain massacre of March 1978, where 38 Israelis (including 13 children) were murdered.
[21] “Statistics: Fatalities in the First Intifada,” B’Tselem, Jerusalem, accessed July 6, 2016.
[22] “Analysis of Attacks in the Last Decade 2000-2010,” Israel Security Agency (ISA), Jerusalem accessed July 6, 2016; “Terrorism Deaths in Israel – 1920-1999,” MFA.
[23] “Suicide and Other Bombing Attacks in Israel since the Declaration of Principles,” MFA, accessed July 6, 2016.
[24] “Victims of Palestinian Violence and Terrorism since September 2000,” MFA, accessed July 6, 2016.
[25] Arafat, interview with al-Anwar (Beirut), Aug. 2 1968.
[26] Al-Quds (Jerusalem), Dec. 22, 1995; Yigal Carmon, “So Now We All Know,” The Jerusalem Post, Jan. 5, 1996.
[27] “2006 Summary—Palestinian Terror Data and Trends,” ISA, accessed July 6, 2016; “Analysis of Attacks in the Last Decade 2000-2010,” idem, accessed July 6, 2016; “2004 Terrorism Data,” MFA, Jan. 5, 2015.
[28] The New York Times, June 14, 2007.
[29] “2006 Summary,” ISA; “Analysis of Attacks in the Last Decade,” idem.
[30] “Rocket Launching,” ISA, accessed July 6, 2016; “Mortar shells launching attacks,” idem, accessed July 6, 2016.
[31] See, for example, “Human Rights in Palestine and other Occupied Arab Territories. Report of the United Nations Fact-finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict,” (Goldstone Report), U.N. General Assembly, Human Rights Council, Sept. 25, 2009; “Report of the independent commission of inquiry established pursuant to Human Rights Council resolution S-21/1,” idem, June 22, 2015; “‘Black Friday’: Carnage in Rafah during 2014 Israel/Gaza Conflict,” Amnesty International, July 29, 2015; The Independent (London), Dec. 17, 2014.
[32] Davar Rishon (Tel Aviv), Jan. 21, 1996; Maariv, Jan. 22, 1996.
[33] Tony Karon, “Clinton Saves Last Dance for Arafat,“ Time, Jan. 2, 2001.
[34] “The Promise, The Challenges and the Achievements: Donor Investment in Palestinian Development 1994-1998,” World Bank and the U.N. Office of the Special Coordinator in the Occupied Territories, Jerusalem, 1999, p. 14; Jim Zanotti, “U.S. Foreign Aid to the Palestinians,” Congressional Research Service, Washington, D.C., Mar. 18, 2016.
[35] “Resolution 1322 (2000). Adopted by the Security Council at its 4205th meeting on 7 Oct. 2000,” U.N. Security Council, New York.
[36] See, for example, Hussein Agha and Robert Malley, “Camp David: the Tragedy of Errors,” New York Review of Books, Aug. 9, 2001; The Jerusalem Post, July 26, 30, 2000; The New York Times, July 26, 2000.
[37] “The Palestinian war-torn economy: aid, development, and state formation,” U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), New York and Geneva, 2006, p. 37.
[38] “President Bush Calls for New Palestinian Leadership,” White House Press Office, Washington, D.C., June 24, 2002.
[39] “Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” International Court of Justice, The Hague, The Netherlands, July 9, 2004.
[40] Scott Wilson, “Obama Searches for Middle East Peace,” The Washington Post, July 14, 2012.
[41] “The Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, opens a preliminary examination of the situation in Palestine,” International Criminal Court, Jan. 16, 2015.
[42] U.N. Watch, Geneva, Nov. 25, 2015.
[43] See, for example, Haaretz, June 13-17, July 11, Nov. 4, 2001, Feb. 26, 2002, Jan. 12, 2009; Ynet News, Apr. 25, 2010, Feb. 25, 2011.
[44] Haaretz, June 5, 2008, Jan. 22, 2009.
[45] The Marker (Tel Aviv), Feb. 16, 2007; Haaretz, Apr. 1, 2007.
[46] Havaad Haartzi Leroshei Harashuyot Haarviyot BeIsrael, “Hahazon Haatidi Laarvim Hafalestinim BeIsrael,” Nazareth, 2006, pp. 5, 9.
[47] See, for example, Itamar Radai et al., “The Arab Citizens in Israel: Current Trends According to Recent Opinion Polls,” Strategic Assessment, 18/2, Institute for National Security Studies, Tel Aviv, July 2015; Shibley Telhami, “2010 Israeli Arab/Palestinian Public Opinion Survey,” Washington D.C., Brookings Institution, Oct. 20- Nov. 3, 2010.
[48] Haaretz, July 30, Oct. 1, 2001, Mar. 2, Apr. 3, 14, 15, Sept. 29, 2002, Oct. 9, Dec. 28, 2008, Jan. 12, 2009, Oct. 1, 2012.
[49] Ion Pacepa, Red Horizons. Inside the Romanian Secret Service—The Memoirs of Ceausescu’s Spy Chief(London: Coronet Books, 1989), p. 28.
[50] “Law Enforcement Officers Per Capital for Cities, Local Departments,” Governing, accessed July 5, 2016.
[51] Agence France-Presse, May 24, July 30, 1997; Khaled Abu Toameh, “Money down the Drain?” Jerusalem Report, Jan. 8, 1998, p. 26; Ronen Bergman, Veharashut Netuna (Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot, 2002), p. 156.
[52] See, for example, Ali Abunimah, “When Salam Fayyad secretly urged the US to block salaries to Palestinian Authority employees,“ The Electronic Intifada, Oct. 4, 2012; The Jerusalem Post, May 5, 2012.
[53] Jonathan Schanzer, “Chronic Kleptocracy: Corruption within the Palestinian Political Establishment,” Hearing before U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, Washington, D.C., July 10, 2012, pp. 17-8; Bergman, Veharashut Netuna, pp. 162-3; Rachel Ehrenfeld, “Where Does the Money Go? A Study of the Palestinian Authority,” American Center for Democracy, New York, Oct. 1, 2002, pp. 9-10; Yediot Ahronot (Tel Aviv), July 14, 2002.
[54] See, for example, “A Poorer Peace,” Newsweek, Sept. 1, 1997; Keith Marsden, “The Viability of Palestine,” The Wall Street Journal, Apr. 25, 2002; Patrick Clawson, “The Palestinians’ Lost Marshall Plans,” The Jerusalem Post, Aug. 9, 2002.
[55] “Four Years—Intifada, Closures, and Palestinian Economic Crisis. An Assessment,” World Bank, Washington, D.C., Oct. 2004, pp. xv, 3, 9. 13, 29-32; “Assistance Strategy FY15-16 for the West Bank and Gaza,” idem, Oct. 8, 2014, pp 3-5; “Economic Monitoring Report to the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee,” idem, May 27, 2015.
[56] The Guardian (London), June 21, 2004.