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Bible Quotation For Today/The Parable of the man who scattered seed & slept
Mark 04/26-29: "He also said, ‘The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come."

Bible Quotation For Today/It is the Lord who judges me
First Letter to the Corinthians 04/01-13: "Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they should be found trustworthy. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgement before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then each one will receive commendation from God. I have applied all this to Apollos and myself for your benefit, brothers and sisters, so that you may learn through us the meaning of the saying, ‘Nothing beyond what is written’, so that none of you will be puffed up in favour of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift? Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Quite apart from us you have become kings! Indeed, I wish that you had become kings, so that we might be kings with you! For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals. We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honour, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless, and we grow weary from the work of our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day."

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 23-24/15
Hizballah is creeping up on Israel’s Golan border, relying on Russian military cover/DEBKAfile/October 23, 2015
Onward Christian Soldiers/HussienAbdul Hussain/October 23/15
Words Have Consequences: Palestinian Authority Incitement to Violence/David Makovsky/The Washington Institute/October 22/15
New Syria Talks Highlight Russian Ascendance, U.S. Ambivalence/Anna Borshchevskaya and James F. Jeffrey/The Washington Institute/October 22/15
Putin’s Partition Plan for Syria/By HUSSEIN IBISH/New York Times/OCTOBER 23/15
Germany: Asylum Seekers Make Demands/Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute/October 23/15
Pakistan worst country in religious freedom: US body/Times Of India/October 23/15
Iran’s corruption and human rights overlooked/Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Al Arabiya/October 23/15
Jerusalemites need to be empowered not collectively punished/Daoud Kuttab/Al Arabiya/October 23/15
Saudi diplomacy distances Iran from Horn of Africa/Hassan Al Mustafa/Al Arabiya/October 23/15
Report: Israeli aircraft flew over Iran on attack test flight in 2012/Ynetnews/October 23/15

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin for Lebanese Related News published on October 23-24/15
Sayyed Nasrallah: We Shall Never Abandon this Battle, We will Triumph
Civil Society Campaigners Protest Toxic Stench of Trash Burning
Nasrallah to Make Speech Saturday Marking Ashura
Hezbollah and Amal members clash in south Lebanon
Mashnouq: Berri Vowed to Follow up on Bekaa Security Plan
Mexicans Held for Robbing Syrians of $159K as Captagon Smuggling Foiled
Lebanon busts ISIS cell
36 Arrested for Attempting Illegal Departure from Sarafand
Endangered Heneine Palace in Zukak el-Blat Placed on 2016 World Monuments Watch
Report: LF-FPM Meeting Expected ahead of Legislative Session
Report: Salam Set to Travel to Saudi Arabia in November
French Senate Chief Vows Support for Lebanon as He Begins Official Visit
Russia’s intervention in Syria is not ‘sacred’
Lebanese politician tweets: ‘Doha will be shelled’ if it enters Syria
Hizballah is creeping up on Israel’s Golan border, relying on Russian military

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 23-24/15
Israel Soldier Wounded in New Stabbing, Age Restrictions for al-Aqsa Worshippers Lifted
Observatory: Nearly 450 Killed in Russian Strikes on Syria
Moscow Struggles to Identify Moderate Rebels in Syria
Russia-U.S. Hold Key Syria Talks ahead of Saudi, Turkey Meet
Ahmadinejad’s former bodyguard killed in Syria
Russia ready to strike states endangering its Syria forces: report
Russia, Turkey , U.S., Saudi Arabia start Syria talks
Former bodyguard of Iran’s ex-president killed in Syria
Israeli soldiers destroy the apartment of jailed Palestinian militant Maher
Tourists visit the historical site of the Giza Pyramids in Giza, near Cairo,
Baghdad ‘was not informed’ of U.S. special forces raid
Nine Russian strikes ‘hit Syrian hospitals’
Palestinians take part in an anti Israel rally, in the central Gaza Strip
Israeli man shot dead after being mistaken for attacker
Israel ‘provocative rhetoric’ needs to stop
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meets with Saudi Arabia's
At Least 42 Dead in French Pensioners Coach Crash
4 Hurt in Failed Cairo Bomb Disposal near Pyramids

Sayyed Nasrallah: We Shall Never Abandon this Battle, We will Triumph
Sara Taha MoughniehLAl Manar/October 23/15/Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah expressed gratitude Friday for everyone who took part and held the responsibility of preserving security throughout Ashura, particularly the Security Forces and the Lebanese Army. As his eminence joined crowds in Sayyed Al-Shuhadaa complex on Ashura Eve, he delivered a live speech in which he reiterated that "the consequent American Administrations along with some Western countries have a clear goal in the region, that is economic, political, and military domination. He further pointed out that America's goal was to subject all the peoples of the region under its administration by forcing them to accept the existence of Israel and by gaining control over the oil and gas in the region, or else war would be waged on them." Sayyed Nasrallah assured in his speech that the American domination project did not allow countries like Egypt, Pakistan, or others to become powerful, reassuring that "America is not ruled by Human Rights Organization, but by owners of large oil and arms companies..." in indication that all it wanted was to control the region and use it as their marketplace. In this context, Sayyed Nasrallah considered that "Israel is the implementation tool in the Western domination project on our region, and this is why they are protecting it," and stressed that "Israel is a real American tool and the Palestinian people, as well as the people of the region on top of which are the Lebanese who suffered from Israeli occupation and massacres carry the burdens of this American domination project." His eminence noted that everything America said about democracy, elections, and human rights were false claims which they sought to mislead with, and added that the worst dictatorships in the region, and the worst corrupt regimes which violated human rights and denounced the constitution and elections were supported by America. In parallel, he said that "whenever America wanted to attack, it made up lies and promoted them," referring here to the problem with Iran which "only wanted to be a free and independent state that owned its goods and preserved the dignity of its people... however, this was prohibited by the Americans, who started claiming that Iran was building a nuclear weapon, and forced the UN to put pressure on the Islamic Republic and impose sanctions on it." On the Syrian Crisis, Sayyed Nasrallah stated that the war was led by Washington using regional tools that support terrorism. He also considered that the war was not for the sake of democracy and reforms but for subjecting those who rebelled against America. " After the so called "Arab Spring" America waged a new war, a war on everyone who refused to submit to the American domination," he said. On Iraq, Sayyed Nasrallah pointed out that "America and its allies offered money and weapons to ISIS in Iraq after the US was kicked out of the country to tell the Iraqi people that no one will protect you from ISIS and its freinds except America." As for Yemen, his eminence indicated that the Saudis have tried to transform the shape of the war into a sectarian one so that they would ignite the sectarian instincts of the Sunnis and urge mercenaries to fight in the battles instead of the "dull" people and army. In conclusion, his eminence reassured that the wars in the region were not for the sake of reforms, democracy, human rights, or improving social levels, they were rather waged against everyone who refused to submit to the American project and toppled the "New Middle East" project in 2006. In parallel, he noted that the same thing happened with Imam Hussein in Karbala, as he was asked to submit to the corrupt regime of Yazid or else he would be killed, robbed, and the women with him would be imprisoned... and this was what happened. "We assure that we will follow the path of Imam Hussein and stand in the face of all these threats and say "We shall never be humiliated," Sayyed Nasrallah added. "In this battle, we shall not pull back. This is a battle which we believe in and will engage in and triumph. We shall never abandon such a battle , and whoever considers doing so would be leaving Imam Hussein in the middle of the night of the tenth of Muharram," his eminence stressed.

Civil Society Campaigners Protest Toxic Stench of Trash Burning
Naharnet/October 23/15/We Want Accountability civil society demonstrators gathered by the municipality of al-Jdeideh protesting the outspread burning of garbage that has spread in several areas in Lebanon diffusing a toxic stench, the National News Agency said on Friday. The campaigners gathered by the municipality of al-Jdeideh in al-Bauchrieh. demanding that the municipalities intervene and put an end to this “phenomenon in light of the health hazards as the result of inhaling the toxic smoke and foul smell.”“The municipalities should halt this phenomenon in public places mainly because it causes serious damage to the human being, and makes one prone to blood clots as the result of the fumes,” they said. For its part, the municipality stated: “We will assist in extinguishing the fire. We are in the process of building a project in the near future to burn wastes.”A trash management crisis erupted in July when the largest landfill that receives the trash of Beirut and Mount Lebanon was closed. Politicians have so far failed to find an alternative in light of wide rejections of residents and municipalities from outside the capital who refuse to receive the trash other than their regions'. On the outskirts of the capital, mountains of putrid garbage are rising and tempers are flaring as the rubbish collection crisis shows no signs of being resolved. esperate Beirut has taken to dumping its rubbish in huge makeshift piles, with the largest -- in Karantina at the northern entrance of the city -- neighboring the trendy nightlife areas of Mar Mikhael and Gemmayzeh. Garbage mountains have also sprouted on both sides of the highway leading north out of Beirut, as well as under its bridges and near the already polluted coast. Although the government approved a plan following the biggest anti-government protests in years, it still faces tremendous obstacles hampering its implementation. Adding to the environmental and health concerns, many Beirutis are resorting to burning garbage or spraying rubbish piles with strong insecticides.

Nasrallah to Make Speech Saturday Marking Ashura
Naharnet/October 23/15/Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is set to make a televised speech on Saturday on the occasion of Ashura. The speech will be made in the morning to mark the tenth day of Ashura. The occassion commemorates the killing of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, by the army of the Caliph Yazid in 680 AD, the formative event in Shiite Islam.

Hezbollah and Amal members clash in south Lebanon
Now Lebanon/October 23/15/BEIRUT – A clash erupted in a southern Lebanese village between members of the country’s closely allied Shiite parties Hezbollah and Amal Movement, according to Janoubia news. “A clash in which melee weapons were used took place between Hezbollah and Amal members in the Bint Jbeil district town of Shaqraa after mutual provocation during Ashura commemorations,” the online outlet—which has an editorial stance opposing Hezbollah—reported Thursday. Janoubia said that according to information it had received, “the clash took place… during an Ashura procession held by Amal Movement members and led to more than one injury.”The report identified one man injured in the altercation as Hezbollah member Fadi Hassib Yazzani. “Until 10:00, confrontation and back-and-forth fighting continued between the two sides, while some residents tried to separate the Hezbollah and Amal members.”“Gunfire broke out once again at 10:15.”Ashura—which commemorates the martyrdom of Imam Hussein in the Battle of Karbala in 680—is one of the most important holy days for Muslim Shiites, who mark the ten days leading up to the holiday.

Mashnouq: Berri Vowed to Follow up on Bekaa Security Plan
Naharnet/October 23/15/Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq said that talks with Speaker Nabih Berri have highlighted the necessity to implement the security plan in the eastern area of Bekaa in light of the exacerbating theft, kidnapping and killing incidents. “I have briefed the Speaker on the latest facts which have shown that within 14 months around 245 incidents took place, which have included kidnapping and theft, in the area of Bekaa and the neighboring areas mainly in the city of Baalbek,” said Mashnouq after talks with Berri in Ain el-Tineh on Friday. “This situation must not go on. Speaker Berri has vowed that he will personally follow up on the implementation of the security plan with all the related army authorities and political figures in the area,” he stated adding that when Berri vows to follow up on something it means that the issue will be solved. The Minister added that talks also focused on the necessity to preserve dialogue as “part of the civil peace in Lebanon.” “Today we need more cohesion among the Lebanese and the continuation of civil peace,” he said in reference to the dialogue that has been prolonging between Mustaqbal and Hizbullah on one part and another dialogue between the rival lawmakers. Hizbullah and al-Mustaqbal officials have been meeting in Ain el-Tineh under the auspices of Berri since December to defuse sectarian hostility linked to the war in Syria. Berri had called for a dialogue conference among the main parliamentary parties to discuss the stalemate that has frozen government institutions for months. “The 245 security incidents that I talked about are the highest recorded so far, and you all know how the residents of Baalbek have raised their voices in protest,” he concluded. Early in October, Baalbek's sub-security council held an emergency meeting highlighting the necessity to cope with the security chaos that has aggravated in the city, and voiced calls on the army to maintain security and control the proliferation of illegal arms. The Bekaa security plan was kicked off in February and was aimed at clamping down on criminals in certain areas, such as the town of Brital, which are known to be a safe haven for car-theft gangs and drug dealers, as well as networks that kidnap people in return for ransom. The army had launched a crackdown on suspects and fugitives in the northern city of Tripoli and several other areas in an attempt to halt security chaos across the country. Lebanon has been in a state of paralysis since the term of President Michel Suleiman ended in May 2014, and the failure of the conflicting political camps to agree on a successor. The paralysis has reflected enormously on the government and parliament.

Mexicans Held for Robbing Syrians of $159K as Captagon Smuggling Foiled
Naharnet/October 23/15/Two Mexicans have been arrested at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport after they stole $159,000 from the car of two Syrians in the Karantina area, the Internal Security Forces announced on Friday. It said the two Syrians filed a theft report Thursday with the al-Nahr police station. “Following intensive investigations, two individuals who were in the area when the robbery occurred were suspected of being involved in the operation,” the ISF said. “In coordination with the al-Nahr police station and the ISF Intelligence Bureau, the Judicial Police department at RHIA managed to arrest them,” it added. The ISF identified the two men as two Mexicans – 43-year-old E. M. and 36-year-old H. O. “$155,000 was seized in their possession and they were referred to the al-Nahr police station for further investigations under the supervision of the relevant judicial authorities,” the ISF added. In a separate operation, a 39-year-old Syrian man was arrested Thursday at the airport for trying to smuggle 22,100 Captagon pills to an Arab country. The ISF said the narcotic pills were hidden in sweets boxes inside a handbag. On Saturday, the ISF seized more than 35 kilograms of Captagon at the airport. Two Syrian travelers were trying to smuggle them to an Arab Gulf country, the ISF said.

Lebanon busts ISIS cell
Now Lebanon/October 23/15/BEIRUT – Lebanon’s General Security has arrested two suspects who confessed to plotting a series of terror attacks in the country on behalf of ISIS, one of whom was purportedly the extremist group’s point-man in the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp. Al-Akhbar on Friday published a detailed report on the arrest of Jihad and Ziad Kaaoush, a day after General Security announced that it had rounded-up the two brothers who they said plotted to organize suicide bombings targeting political figures as well as Shiites. The newspaper reported that Jihad Kaaoush—who General Security said confessed to being ISIS’ chief in Ain al-Hilweh—“received his religious education in Algeria, where he studied under sheikhs of various persuasions.” According to Al-Akhbar, people who know him in the camp all say that he is “virtuous and calm, has been active in the field of preaching and is not involved in military activity.”General Security, however, said that the cell intended to attack “Lebanese Armed Forces checkpoints, Lebanese and Palestinian political figures” as well as neighborhoods in southern Beirut’s Shiite-majority Dahiyeh suburbs during the Ashura holy day commemorated by Shiite Muslims. The agency added that Jihad’s brother, Ziad, had met with top ISIS officials in the extremist organization’s de-facto capital in Syria’s Raqqa to coordinate “security operation in Lebanon” that aimed to “incite sectarian strife.” Security sources told Al-Akhbar that the cell was preparing for an operation that would set the stage for announcing the creation of ISIS' branch in Lebanon. The pro-Hezbollah newspaper said that the two detainees had confessed to placing Popular Nasserist Organization leader Osama Saad—a top pro-Hezbollah figure in Lebanon’s Sidon—under surveillance in preparation for his assassination. The brothers also reportedly confessed to aiming to kill Mahmoud Abdel Hamid al-Issa—aka Al-Lino—the head of the Palestinian Struggle, Fatah’s security wing in Lebanese Palestinian refugee camps, and an avowed enemy of Islamists in Ain al-Hilweh. According to Al-Akhbar, the suspects also “admitted to recruiting suicide bombers, planning to blow up the LAF base in Sidon and targeting the LAF’s checkpoints and the city’s al-Zahraa complex.” The detainees gave the names of the suicide bombers they recruited to carry out the operations,” sources told the newspaper. While General Security did not go into details on their arrest, Al-Akhbar reported that the two brothers had been captured ten days ago following a months-long intelligence operation. Sources told the daily that the investigation began several months ago when one of Lebanon’s security apparatuses observed noticeable ISIS activity in Ain al-Hilweh that suggested “preparations for a big security operation.” “After this, [General Security] identified seven suspects whose names and aliases were known and who had pledged allegiance to ISIS,” the report said. “Another piece of information also came to light suggesting that the same cell was working to attract new arrivals, had succeeded in taking in many and had benefitted from the fact that they had money.”The report also said that “stories were circulating in Ain al-Hilweh” that Ziad Kaaoush been arrested at Beirut’s Rafiq Hariri International Airport upon arrival from Turkey. According to this narrative, Jihad Kaaoush then voluntarily turned himself into a local security branch after they called him to “come to [its] center for clarification about his detained brother.” NOTE: The original version of this story mistakenly identified Jihad Kaaoush as a 15-year old.

36 Arrested for Attempting Illegal Departure from Sarafand
Naharnet/October 23/15/A number of migrants were detained at dawn Friday for attempting to illegally leave the country through the Sarafand port, announced the navy. It said that 36 Lebanese and Palestinians were detained on a boat that was headed to Turkey. They have since been referred to the concerned authorities for investigation. Army Intelligence later arrested five people in the southern city of Sidon, who are directly involved in the smuggling operation. On Wednesday, the navy thwarted an attempt to illegally smuggle a number of migrants from the northern city of Tripoli. Fifty-three people were arrested off the coast of Tripoli as they attempted to depart the country in a Lebanese boat that can support no more than 15 people. The detainees included eight Lebanese, 28 Palestinians, and 14 Syrians. Lebanese migrants from the North have exceeded 2,000, while this number tops 4,500 when departures from Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport are included.

Endangered Heneine Palace in Zukak el-Blat Placed on 2016 World Monuments Watch
Naharnet/October 23/15/On October 15th 2015, World Monuments Fund officially announced 50 sites to join the 2016 World Monuments Watch at their press conference in New York. Following its nomination by Save Beirut Heritage, the remarkable yet endangered. Heneine Palace, in Zukak el-Blat, Beirut, Lebanon, was chosen to join this list, thereby receiving well deserved international recognition - both for its exceptional historical attributes and its unfortunate state of deterioration. World Monuments Fund is a private nonprofit organization founded in 1965 by individuals concerned about the accelerating destruction of important artistic treasures throughout the world. In 1996, it launched the World Monuments Watch, a global program that aims to identify imperiled cultural heritage sites and direct financial and technical support for their preservation.Save Beirut Heritage, a youth-led heritage NGO, prepared an exhaustive nomination file for the Heneine Palace. Several architects, historians and urban experts contributed to the compilation of the file with their knowledge and expertise. This initiative was endorsed by the Ministry of Culture, and the Arab Center for Architecture. The ensuing visit from a WMF representative to inspect the site and the discussions among jurors, culminated in the selection of the Heneine Palace for the 2016 Watch. Built in the 1860s, Heneine is today one of the most exceptional remaining examples of Ottoman-era palace architecture. Its multiple rooms and receptions halls, vestibules, corridors, staircases and arcaded galleries feature an incredibly lavish and intricate set of decorations. As such, it was up until the civil war, a meeting place for Beirut’s intellectual, artistic and political elite. It was later abandoned then squatted, and has recently been drastically damaged, endangering its structural integrity. Inclusion on the 2016 Watch will open many doors to the enduring heritage preservation campaign in Lebanon, as it provides an important opportunity to promote the case of the Heneine Palace locally and internationally. Using. this exceptional support, Save Beirut Heritage will soon start working towards the effective protection of the site. In collaboration with a panel of experts, a proposal for the Palace’s renovation will be made and the possibility of its development with a civic program will be discussed with all private and public actors. With the assistance of World Monuments Fund, it is hoped to gather around such a project the engagement of all stakeholders – the local community, state and city officials and the palace’s owners. In this way, Save Beirut Heritage is aiming to save the Heneine Palace from irreversible decay, but to also make it an example of virtuous and participative development of our common heritage.

Report: LF-FPM Meeting Expected ahead of Legislative Session
Naharnet/October 23/15/A meeting is expected to be held soon between Lebanese Forces and Free Patriotic Movement officials ahead of next week's legislative session, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Friday. It said the Change and Reform bloc Secretary MP Ibrahim Kanaan is set to pay a visit to Maarab “within the next two days to come up with a joint vision of the parliamentary session.” A meeting had been held between LF media officer Melhem Riachi and FPM officials at Rabieh earlier this week. Contacts have intensified in recent days between political blocs over next week's legislative meeting. Al-Joumhouria reported that the LF and FPM are seeking to place the parliamentary electoral draft law on the agenda of the meeting, among a number of other laws. The daily said however that it is “almost impossible” for the draft law to be included on the agenda. “There are some 18 draft laws and proposals that have not been approved by the joint parliamentary committees so that they can be presented to parliament,” it explained. The legislative session is set for Tuesday.Failure to adopt a new parliamentary electoral law has led to the postponement of the elections twice and the lawmakers' extension of their term twice as a result.

Report: Salam Set to Travel to Saudi Arabia in November
Naharnet/October 23/15/Prime Minister Tammam Salam is set to kick off in upcoming weeks a trip to a number of countries, including Saudi Arabia, reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Friday. Sources told the daily that the premier is set to visit the kingdom in mid-November.
His trip will likely coincide with the Arab-South American summit hosted by Riyadh. Salam had paid a visit to Saudi Arabia last year where he held talks with a number of officials, including late King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.

French Senate Chief Vows Support for Lebanon as He Begins Official Visit
Naharnet/October 23/Head of the French Senate Gerard Larcher arrived in Lebanon on Thursday for talks with a number of top officials. “We know that the region is going through very difficult circumstances and the presence of France and the French Senate alongside our Lebanese friends is a duty during dire times,” said Larcher at Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport. “Lebanon can depend on its French friends in the French Senate,” he added. He said his visit will tackle “the political situation in Lebanon and the region.”“For us, Lebanon is not only a country, but also a symbol,” Larcher went on to say. Noting that Lebanon “hosts the biggest number of Syrian refugees,” the French official urged “collective support” from the international community for the Lebanese authorities as they face “a very difficult situation.” Larcher later held separate talks with Prime Minister Tammam Salam and Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji. His talks with Salam addressed “means to strengthen bilateral ties between France and Lebanon and to activate the work of parliamentary committees in both countries as well as the general developments and the Syrian refugee crisis,” state-run National News Agency said. Larcher is also scheduled to meet with Speaker Nabih Berri, Maronite Archbishop of Beirut Boulos Matar and a number of politicians. The French embassy in Beirut had declared that the visit is part of the “strong ties of friendship between France and Lebanon.” While in Lebanon, Larcher is also expected to launch the Beirut Francophone Book Fair. “This visit will serve as an opportunity to confirm France's support to Lebanon against the challenges it is facing on all levels, especially in harboring Syrian refugees,” An Nahar newspaper said.

Russia’s intervention in Syria is not ‘sacred’
Nayla Tueni/Al Arabiya/October 23/15/
A few days ago, Muslim scholars protested in front of the Russian embassy in Beirut against Moscow’s intervention in Syria. In response, members of the Syrian community in Lebanon - who were mobilized by the embassy - protested in support of the intervention and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Support for Russia’s role may be political, but it took a sectarian turn following attempts to liken it to a crusade. This support for Russia’s role may be political, but it took a sectarian turn following attempts to liken it to a crusade. Those doing so fail to realize the possible negative repercussions on coexistence in Lebanon, Syria and the region. They have also missed the fact that Russia is only serving its own interests. If Russian tradition stipulates that priests must bless all humanitarian and military campaigns, then what the spokesman for the Russian Orthodox Church said about war is worth reading. He said confronting terrorism is a sacred act as terrorism deprives people of their right to live and to express themselves. He said Muslims in particular must confront the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) with all their power, or else they will be viewed as implicitly agreeing with its crimes. Instead of confronting terrorism in all its forms, some are reopening wounds and inciting divisions.
Response
In response, Orthodox intellectuals such as Elias Audi, Metropolitan bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church for the Archdiocese of Beirut, said during his sermon on Sunday: “The Church doesn’t bless he who kills another, as a man’s life is the possession of God, and he who kills a man [is tantamount] to he who desires to kill God. “The murdered goes to God, while the murderer’s heart is dark and unjust as the devil dwells there, and the devil doesn’t enter the kingdom of God. Every church must be as such if it instructs God’s teachings and abides by his words...“Our people in this region are leaving their homes and living a miserable life, but they’re not responding to this abuse by a similar abuse. So let it be clear that our Orthodox Church... doesn’t sanctify wars, and doesn’t call any war sacred.”

Lebanese politician tweets: ‘Doha will be shelled’ if it enters Syria
Staff writer, Al Arabiya News Thursday, 22 October 2015/Lebanese politician Wiam Wahhab said in a tweet he wrote Wednesday that Qatar will be targeted in what appears to be a reaction to Qatar’s foreign minister stating that the Gulf country could possibly intervene militarily in Syria.“If Qatar implements its military threats in Syria, Doha is going to be shelled,” Wahhab, who leads the pro-Hezbollah Tawhid Party, wrote on his twitter account without explaining by whom. Hezbollah is a Shiite Lebanese movement currently backing embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in its fighting against rebels including Islamist militants. Wahhab’s tweets also showed that he is in support for Russia’s airstrikes in Syria, claiming they are effective in getting rid of “terrorists” in Syria. In one of his tweets, he said Russia has revealed that “the U.S.-led coalition was an act rather than real airstrikes.”This tweet came after Qatar’s Foreign Minister Khalid al-Attiya suggested in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, that due to Russia’s air campaign in Syria, Doha could possibly intervene militarily, although it prefers a political solution to end the crisis. He said: ““If a military intervention will protect the Syrian people from the brutality of the regime, we will do it.”Russia’s air campaign in Syria is also polarizing some in the region with camps supporting the intervention and others fervently opposing it. Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has become the latest to feel the growing pressure from Shiite militias wanting Russian airstrikes against ISIS.

Hizballah is creeping up on Israel’s Golan border, relying on Russian military cover
DEBKAfile/October 23, 2015
Wholly preoccupied with the ferocious Palestinian terror campaign washing over their country, Israelis have scarcely noticed that Hizballah forces, believing they are protected by the Russian military presence in Syria, are creeping toward Israel’s northeastern Golan border.
DEBKAfile reports: The Lebanese group thinks it is a step away from changing the military balance on the Golan to Israel’s detriment and gaining its first Syrian jumping-off base against the Jewish state – depending on the Syrian-Hizballah forces winning the fierce battle now raging around Quneitra opposite Israel’s military positions.
For two years, Hizballah, egged on intensely by Iran, has made every effort to plant its forces along the Syrian border with Israel. For Tehran, this objective remains important enough to bring Al Qods Brigades chief, Gen. Qassem Soleiman, on a visit last week to the Syrian army’s 90th Brigade Quneitra base, which is the command post of the battle waged against Syrian rebel forces. Soleimani, who is commander-in-chief of Iran’s military operations across the Middle East, is acting as military liaison in Syria between Tehran and Moscow. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the Iranian general inspected the Quneitra battle lines no more than 1.5-2 km from the Israeli Golan border. He arrived a few days after Revolutionary Guards Col. Nader Hamid, commander of Iranian and Hizballah forces in the region, died there fighting against Syrian rebels.
His death betrayed the fact that not only are Hizballah forces gaining a foothold on the strategic Golan enclave, but with them are Iranian servicemen, officers and troops.
While in Quneitra, the Iranian general also sought to find out whether Col. Hamid really did die in battle or was targeted for assassination by Israel to distance Iranian commanders from its border. Just 10 months ago, on Jan. 18, Israel drones struck a group of Iranian and Hizballah officers who were secretly scouting the Quneitra region for a new base. Iranian Gen. Ali Mohamad Ali Allah Dadi died in that attack. But Tehran and Hizballah are again trying their luck. During his visit to Quneitra, Soleimani called up reinforcements to boost the 500 Hizballah fighters in the sector.
Seen from Israel, the Syrian conflict is again bringing enemy forces into dangerous proximity to its border. The Iranian general and Russian Air Force commanders agree that the drawn-out battle for Quneitra will not be won without Russian air strikes against the rebels holding out there. A decision to extend Russia’s aerial campaign from northern and central Syria to the south would be momentous enough to require President Vladimir Putin’s personal approval. This decision would, however, cross a strong red line Israel laid down when Binyamin Netanyahu met Putin on Sept. 21 in Moscow and when, last week, a delegation of Russian generals visited Tel Aviv to set up a hot line for coordinating Israeli and Russian air operations over Syria.
Israeli officials made it very clear that Iranian and Hizballah forces would not be permitted to establish a presence opposite the Israeli Golan border and that any Russian air activity over southern Syria and areas close to its borders was unacceptable. The possibility of Israeli fighter jets being scrambled against Russian aerial intervention in the Quneitra battle was not ruled out. This state of affairs was fully clarified to Gen. Joseph Dunford, Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of Staff, when he was taken on a trip this week to the southern Golan under the escort of IDF Chief of Staff Gen. Gady Eisenkot and OC Northern Command Gen. Avivi Kochavi. He visited the command post of Brig. Yaniv Azor, commander of the Bashan Division, which will be called upon for action if the hazard to Israel’s security emanating the Quneitra standoff takes a dangerous turn.

Israel Soldier Wounded in New Stabbing, Age Restrictions for al-Aqsa Worshippers Lifted
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 23/15/Israel lifted age restrictions for the main weekly prayers at Jerusalem's flashpoint Al-Aqsa mosque compound Friday, in an apparent bid to ease tensions over the site that sparked a surge in Israel-Palestinian violence. The decision, which allows all Muslim worshipers to attend Friday prayers, comes as Israel faces growing international pressure to defuse a crisis which many fear heralds a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising. The Middle East peacemaking Quartet – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon -- were to hold talks on the escalating violence later Friday. The increasing diplomatic efforts came as Palestinian political parties called for a "day of rage" with protests to be held after Friday prayers in Gaza and the West Bank. Hamas, the Islamist movement which rules the Gaza Strip, called in a statement for "more protests and more clashes with soldiers in the West Bank". Thousands of worshipers streamed into the Al-Aqsa mosque compound ahead of prayers, many of whom had not been allowed in on a Friday since mid-September when clashes broke out at the site between Palestinians and Israeli police. "Of course it is better but there are still checkpoints and searches. There is still no respect," said Wissam Abu Madi, 20, who said he believed a wave of attacks on Israelis would continue. "Everyone is scared that if you get searched and (they think) you make a wrong move, you will get shot. It is a terrible situation."
The Al-Aqsa mosque compound is one of the key sources of tensions between Israelis and Palestinians, as it is both the third-holiest site for Muslims and the holiest site for Jews, who call it the Temple Mount.A visit by former prime minister Ariel Sharon - then opposition leader -- in 2000 sparked the second intifada which lasted until 2005 and left nearly 4,700 dead. To avoid tensions Jews are allowed to visit but not pray at the site located in east Jerusalem, which was annexed by Israel in 1967. It is managed by an Islamic foundation under the auspices of Jordan but Israel controls access. Clashes erupted over the Jewish religious holidays last month as an increase in visits by Jews to the compound raised fears among Muslims that Israel was planning to change the longstanding rules governing the site. Israel then put in place age restrictions which meant only Muslim men over the age of 40, 45, or 50, depending on the decision taken on a particular week, were allowed to enter the esplanade for Friday prayers. The protests at Al-Aqsa triggered a wave of lone-wolf knife attacks, shootings and car-rammings against Israelis. In the latest attack Friday a Palestinian stabbed and lightly wounded a soldier in the occupied West Bank and was shot and wounded by Israeli forces. A military spokeswoman told AFP the soldier was a Bedouin tracker who had opened a gate to enable Palestinians to harvest their olive trees. Since October 1, at least 49 Palestinians and one Israeli Arab have been killed, including alleged attackers. Eight Israelis have been killed in attacks. One Israeli Jew and one Eritrean have also been killed after being mistaken for attackers. The recent unrest is led by a new generation of young, frustrated Palestinians who no longer see their leaders as capable of improving their lot. Mohammed, 29, who was attending prayers at Al-Aqsa, laid the blame on the Israelis. "They are responsible because there is no work. If there was work, if people had money, they wouldn't do anything."The international community has launched a flurry of diplomatic activity in a bid to calm the latest round of violence in one of the oldest conflicts on earth. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday expressed "cautious optimism" after four hours of talks in Berlin with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "If parties want to try -- and I believe they do want to move to a de-escalation -- I think there are sets of choices that are available," he said, expressing hope that "we can seize this moment and pull back from the precipice".Kerry was due to meet Lavrov and Mogherini on the crisis on Friday in Vienna, joined by Ban via video link from New York. Netanyahu has repeatedly accused Abbas of fanning the flames by suggesting Israel wants to change the status quo at the compound under which Jews are allowed to visit but not pray. The Israeli leader has insisted he has no intention of changing the rules.

Observatory: Nearly 450 Killed in Russian Strikes on Syria
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 23/15/Russian air strikes in Syria have killed at least 446 people, more than a third of them civilians, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said on Friday. Russia launched an air war on opponents of the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad on September 30 and says it is targeting the Islamic State jihadist group and other "terrorists."Of the total killed since then, 151 are civilians and include 38 children and 35 women, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said. The strikes have also killed 295 combatants, including 75 IS jihadists and 31 members of al-Qaida's Syrian affiliate, al-Nusra Front, Abdel Rahman said.The Britain-based Observatory says it relies on a network of activists, medical staff and fighters on the ground who identify Russian warplanes based on model, flight patterns and munition types. Russia has been criticized by rebel groups and their backers for targeting non-jihadist groups and inflicting civilian casualties. It has been also accused of hitting hospitals and field clinics. On Tuesday, the Observatory gave a toll of 370 killed in the Russian air strikes across Syria, a third of them civilians. Moscow has dismissed previous reports by the Observatory of civilian casualties from its bombings as "fake."

Moscow Struggles to Identify Moderate Rebels in Syria
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 23/The Kremlin said Friday Moscow has not yet found any moderate rebels it could support in Syria, after Bashar Assad reportedly told Russia he was ready to talk to armed rebels. This week President Vladimir Putin hosted Syria's embattled leader for a surprise summit at the Kremlin, Assad's first known foreign trip since unrest erupted in his country in 2011. On Thursday, Putin said Assad had told him he was ready to talk to armed opposition groups if they were really committed to fighting Islamic State jihadists. At the same time, the Kremlin said Russia was struggling to identify any moderate rebels it could work with in the war-torn country. "From the very beginning of the Syria operation, President Putin and other representatives of Russia have spoken of our readiness to cooperate with the so-called moderate opposition," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday. "At the same time we had to stress that we have been unable to single out the so-called moderate opposition." "Unfortunately, there is not a single central force which one could cooperate with," he said. "All the difficulties arise from this.""Unfortunately, neither our American nor our European colleagues, nor others are so far able to help us with identifying them."Peskov's remarks came as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov went into key talks on the Syrian crisis with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Vienna. Speaking at a meeting of political scholars known as the Valdai Club on Thursday, Putin said he and Assad discussed Russia's possible support for armed rebels in Syria. "I asked him: what do you think if we find armed Syrian opposition which is ready to oppose and truly fight terrorists, the IS," he was quoted as saying by Russian news agencies. "What would you think if we support their efforts in the fight against terrorists in the same way we are supporting the Syrian army?" "He replied: 'I would view this positively.'""We are now thinking about this and trying to implement these agreements, if it works out," Putin added. Western countries have accused Russia of targeting Western-backed opposition groups with air strikes that Moscow says are aimed at Islamic State militants, and of making little distinction between jihadists and moderate rebels. Earlier this month Russia said it was ready to establish contacts with Syria's main Western-backed moderate opposition group, the Free Syrian Army, to find a political solution to a crisis that claimed more than 250,000 lives since 2011.

Russia-U.S. Hold Key Syria Talks ahead of Saudi, Turkey Meet
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 23/15/Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov held talks on the war in Syria with U.S. counterpart John Kerry on Friday after Moscow thrust itself into the heart of the crisis with its bombing campaign backing President Bashar Assad. Lavrov shook hands with Kerry as they sat down at a Vienna hotel for a crunch meeting that will then see the duo joined by Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir and Turkey's Feridun Sinirlioglu. Washington, Riyadh and Ankara -- which all back groups battling against Assad -- are looking to sound out Lavrov after the embattled Syrian strongman made a surprise visit to Moscow to meet President Vladimir Putin this week. On September 30 Russia launched a bombing campaign in Syria, which has shifted the dynamics of the brutal four-and-a-half year war -- allowing Assad's battle-weary forces to go on the offensive and overshadowing a U.S.-led coalition bombing the Islamic State (IS) group. The U.S. and its regional allies have decried Russia's strikes, insisting Moscow is not focusing on IS as it claims, but other groups fighting the regime in Damascus, and that the Kremlin's intervention will only prolong the bloodshed. Assad's fate remains a major stumbling block for talks and after years of failure to stop the bloodshed in Syria there was scant hope of any major breakthrough in Vienna. His surprise visit to Moscow on Tuesday -- his first known trip abroad since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011 -- has now placed the Kremlin as the key link to the strongman.Washington and its regional allies have long insisted Assad has to go for there to be any chance of a political solution to fighting that has cost more than 250,000 lives, but Moscow says it must first help him defeat IS and other "terrorists" before talks can start on any reforms. "The aim of the U.S. is to get rid of Assad, probably that is so, our aim is to defeat terrorism, to battle terror, and to help President Assad claim victory over terror," Putin said Thursday in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. "In this way, we can then create the conditions for the start and, I hope the successful reaching of a conclusion, of the political process to find a settlement." Meanwhile, Kerry said in Berlin that while all sides agreed on the need to find a political solution and battle IS only "one thing stands in the way... a person called Assad -– Bashar Assad". However, analysts say some Assad opponents appear to be softening their line and conceding that he could remain in power temporarily, while Moscow does not seem wedded to the strongman long-term. Putin -- who has been isolated by the West for some 15 months over the Ukraine crisis -- went on a diplomatic blitz in the wake of the visit by Moscow's long-standing ally, calling the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan and Egypt. Russia has been frantically trying to get the U.S. and its coalition partners to cooperate with its bombing campaign in Syria, and Putin on Thursday stressed the need for "joint work" to defeat "terrorism" in Syria. Moscow had called for other Middle East powers -- particularly staunch Assad ally Iran, which is also backing his forces on the ground -- to take part in the Syria talks but that was rejected due mainly to strong Saudi opposition. Lavrov is also expected to meet his counterpart from Jordan Nasser Judeh separately in the Austrian capital to discuss the situation in Syria, Russia's foreign ministry said. While Syria is set to dominate in Vienna, Lavrov and Kerry will also hold talks with representatives from the European Union and United Nations on the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian violence. The talks -- to include the EU's foreign policy chief and U.N. head Ban Ki-moon via video-link -- are part of a flurry of diplomatic activity seeking to end weeks of violence that has raised fears of a new Palestinian intifada, or uprising. Kerry on Thursday expressed "cautious optimism" about defusing the crisis after a four-hour meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Berlin.

Ahmadinejad’s former bodyguard killed in Syria
Now Lebanon/October 23/15/BEIRUT – An Iranian soldier who had served for years as former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s bodyguard has been killed fighting in Syria, the latest Iranian casualty in the war-torn country. “Abdullah Bagheri, who for years was a bodyguard for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was [killed] yesterday in Aleppo in defense of the [shrine] of Sayyida Zainab,” Iran’s Fars News reported Friday. The report added that Bagheri was 34 years old and had two daughters, but did not go into specifics on what military unit he served in or what his rank or role was. Bagheri’s brother told the news agency that his body has not yet been returned to Iran, and that the date for his funeral has yet to be set. Meanwhile, Iran’s Tasnim news said that his funeral was expected to be held Saturday, which marks Ashura, one of the most important Shiite holy days held in commemoration of the death of Imam Hossein in the Battle of Karbala in 680. Bagheri’s death is the latest in a series of Iranian casualties in Syria, where Tehran has reportedly deployed hundreds of troops to fight alongside regime forces against rebels in the northwest of the country. A number of top officers have died in the past two weeks fighting in Syria, including General Farshad Hasounizad, the former head of the IRGC’s elite Saberin Brigade, and Hamid Mokhtarband, the former chief-of-staff of the 1st Brigade of Iran’s crack 92nd Armored Division, which is considered the country’s top armored unit. Their deaths followed the dramatic killing earlier in October of IRGC general Hussein Hamdani, who was one of the IRGC’s leading generals and the country’s top military advisor in Syria.

Russia ready to strike states endangering its Syria forces: report
Now Lebanon/October 23/15/BEIRUT – Vladimir Putin told Bashar al-Assad during their meeting in Moscow that Russia was prepared to strike any country that provides man-portable air-defense systems to Syrian rebels, according to a Kuwaiti daily closely following Moscow’s military intervention on behalf of the Syrian regime. “Russia used cruise missiles [against rebels] to confirm to all players on the ground in Syria that [Moscow] will target everyone who supplies extremists with missiles that affect Russian planes,” Al-Rai quoted Putin as saying during his Tuesday sit-down with Assad. A close confidante of Assad—who spoke on condition of anonymity—also told Al-Rai that Putin had emphasised his readiness to retaliate against anyone threatening his country’s forces in Syria. “Every state that supports the militants in a way that endangers Russian forces will be a legitimate target for us,” the Russian president allegedly said. During the meeting, Putin also reportedly explained that his country had “altered its foreign policy” and now aims to “equal to the role of Washington at the height of its power, not today.”“The United States is regressing noticeably,” the daily quoted him as saying. Since Russia began its aerial bombardment campaign in Syria on September 30, rebels have pleaded for the provision of MANPADs to strike Russian fighter jets. However, reports indicate that the US is unwilling to supply rebels with the anti-aircraft weapon system. “We are not going to shoot Russian airplanes. We are not going to hit their airfields [in Syria]. And we are not going to equip [rebels] with MANPADs,” an unnamed US official told the Daily Beast on October 1. Russian ground forces not necessary, Assad says. Al-Rai also reported that Assad told Putin he does need Russia to dispatch ground forces. “Assad said that the battle fronts do not need Russian ground [forces] because the Syrian army’s current numbers have increased as a result of the confidence that has returned to its ranks since Russia’s intervention,” Assad’s confidante told the Kuwaiti daily. “And that goes without mentioning the force made up of regional allies supporting the Syrian army, who are fighting side by side [with it] to wipe out the terrorists,” the sources quoted Assad as saying during his Moscow trip.Hezbollah and Iran have reportedly deployed a large number of their troops fight alongside regime soldiers in northwest Syria, with reports emerging of mounting casualties among both foreign fighting forces outside Hama, Latakia and Aleppo. Despite not asking for Russian ground support, Assad allegedly asked Putin to ramp up Russia’s aerial campaign and provide regime forces with modern tanks. “Putin immediately gave orders to his defense minister Sergey Shoygu, [telling him to] work on increasing Russian strikes and air support, and to supply the Syrian army with all the T-72 tanks and new combat vehicles it needs,” the report claimed. According to the source, Putin also instructed Shoygu to supply the Syrian army with “high-tech electronic devices that monitor all projectiles passing through the air and give coordinates to the army so that it can respond instantaneously.”

Russia, Turkey , U.S., Saudi Arabia start Syria talks
By AFP Friday, 23 October 2015/The top diplomats of Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States started key talks on Friday in Vienna to try to find a way to end the Syrian conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov -- whose government backs Damascus -- was meeting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry along with the foreign ministers of Turkey and Saudi Arabia, who all support Syrian rebel groups fighting President Bashar al-Assad.
‘Full-scale talks’
Moscow backs talks between the government of Bashar al-Assad and the “full spectrum” of the Syrian opposition, Lavrov said on Friday.“Our common position is that we need to boost efforts for the political process in the Syrian settlement,” he told journalists at a press conference in Vienna with his Jordanian counterpart. “This foresees the start of full-scale talks between representatives of the Syrian government and the full spectrum of the Syrian opposition, both domestic and external -- with the support of outside players.”
Jordanian-Russian cooperation. In the same press conference, Lavro said Russia and Jordan have agreed to “coordinate” military operations in Syria.“The armed forces of the two countries, the Russian and Jordanian forces, agreed to coordinate their actions, including those of their air forces over Syria,” Lavrov told reporters, adding that a “mechanism” had been set up in the Jordanian capital.

Former bodyguard of Iran’s ex-president killed in Syria
By Reuters, Ankara Friday, 23 October 2015/A former bodyguard of Iran’s hardline former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been killed in Syria while defending a religious site near Aleppo, the semi-official Fars news agency reported on Friday. “Abdollah Bagheri Niaraki, who for a while was the bodyguard of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was martyred near Aleppo yesterday (Thursday),” Fars reported, adding that he had been fighting to defend a shrine. It did not say whether he was a member of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).Iran is the main regional ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has provided military and economic support during Syria’s four-year-old civil war. Tehran denies having any military forces in Syria, but says it has offered “military advice” to Syrian army in their fight against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) militants and other rebel groups. Four Iranian commanders were killed this month fighting in Syria. Another Iranian IRGC commander was killed in Syria in June.

Israeli soldiers destroy the apartment of jailed Palestinian militant Maher
By AFP, Occupied Jerusalem Friday, 23 October 2015/Israel’s High Court has issued injunctions blocking the demolition of six West Bank homes belonging to Palestinians accused of killing Israelis. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month pledged to expedite punitive house demolitions, as part of measures to combat a recent wave of violence. Since October 15, Israeli authorities have issued nine demolition orders for homes of suspected Palestinian militants in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. The army had been set Thursday to demolish the homes of the alleged Palestinian killers of two Israelis shot in the occupied West Bank on October 1, as well as those accused of murdering two Israelis in June. But following petitions by family members and neighbours, the court issued “temporary orders” preventing the structures from being demolished or confiscated. Israeli rights group Hamoked, which filed the petitions, said a court hearing on the issue was set for October 29. Home demolitions were “disproportionate, and lacked balance between the alleged benefit of deterring potential assailants and the harm caused by demolishing the homes of entire families,” Hamoked said. Following the court’s injunction, Netanyahu stressed home demolitions were “one of the most efficient tools” in discouraging Palestinian attacks, even in the case of suicide attackers, and expressed hope the court would rule on the issue as soon as possible.

Tourists visit the historical site of the Giza Pyramids in Giza, near Cairo,
AFP, CairoFriday, 23 October 2015/Four people including two Egyptian policemen were wounded Friday in a failed attempt to dismantle a bomb outside a Cairo hotel near the pyramids, a security official said. Two policemen and two hotel security guards were wounded as they tried to deactivate the explosive device found by security guards outside the Meridien hotel near the Giza pyramids, he said. The blast left one of the policemen in critical condition. Elsewhere in Egypt, four policemen were wounded in the North Sinai town of El-Arish in an explosion as they drove past in an armored vehicle. North Sinai, where security forces are fighting an Islamist insurgency, is a bastion of the Egyptian affiliate of the jihadist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group. The insurgency has swelled since the army's ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Mursi in July 2013. Militants loyal to ISIS have killed hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and policemen, mostly in North Sinai. A government crackdown targeting Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood movement since 2013 has left hundreds dead and thousands jailed. Hundreds more, including Mursi himself, have been sentenced to death after speedy trials.

Baghdad ‘was not informed’ of U.S. special forces raid
Reuters, Baghdad/Friday, 23 October 2015/Iraq’s Defense Ministry was not informed about a joint U.S. and Kurdish military operation that rescued 69 prisoners held by ISIS , a ministry spokesman said on Friday. “We just heard this from the media, we didn’t know about it,” General Tahsin Ibrahim Sadiq told Reuters. “It was just the peshmerga (Kurdish forces) and the Americans, and the Ministry of Defense didn’t have any idea about that.”Sadiq said ministry officials were meeting representatives of the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad on Friday to learn more about the operation, the most significant raid against ISIS in months. Initial reports said Thursday’s operation near the northern town of Hawija had freed Kurdish hostages, but officials later confirmed the detainees were Arabs, including around 20 members of the Iraqi security forces. The others were local residents and ISIS fighters that the group had accused of spying, said a U.S. official. The prisoners were about to be executed and dumped in four mass graves, the official said. ISIS holds hostages in similar detention centers across the sprawling lands it controls in northern Iraq and neighboring Syria. The extremist group also regularly executes people it accuses of various crimes including spying for the Iraqis or foreign powers. It was not immediately clear why these particular hostages triggered a potentially risky rescue mission. Long-standing enmity between Arabs and Kurds, who aspire for greater autonomy in their northern region, have complicated efforts to unify the battle against ISIS militants. During a recent visit to Iraq, U.S. Marine General Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for changes to Iraq’s fragmented security structure. The security forces are now divided, with different commanders speaking to the United States on behalf of Iraq’s army, its militias, police and Kurdish peshmerga. A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the suggestion that the rescued hostages had connections to the U.S. government. The Pentagon’s press secretary said the operation did not mark a change in U.S. tactics in the war on ISIS militants.

Nine Russian strikes ‘hit Syrian hospitals’
AFP, Beirut Friday, 23 October 2015/Nine Russian air strikes have hit hospitals or field clinics operating in war-torn Syria, killing civilians and medical staff, a Syrian medical organization said late Thursday. The Syrian-American Medical Society, which operates several facilities in Syria, said a deadly strike earlier this week “adds to the previous estimated eight Russian air strikes on hospitals in Syria, as well as the 313 attacks on medical facilities since the start of the conflict.”It said several of its facilities had been hit in Russia’s bombing campaign, including in the Mediterranean coastal province of Latakia and the central province of Hama on October 2 and in the northwestern province of Idlib on Tuesday. The latest strike killed two medical personnel and at least 10 civilians, and wounded 28 civilians, it said. Russia has strongly denied reports that its aircraft hit the hospital in the Idlib province town of Sarmin, describing them as “fake.” The society’s president, Ahmad Tarakji, called for international action to stop hospitals and clinics being hit again. “We call on the international community to use all means necessary to end attacks on civilians and to prevent the further targeting of healthcare facilities in Syria,” he said.
Russia began its air campaign in Syria on September 30 in support of its ally President Bashar al-Assad. The campaign has been criticised not only for causing civilian casualties but also for targeting non-militant rebel groups more than the ISIS or Al-Qaeda.

Palestinians take part in an anti Israel rally, in the central Gaza Strip
By Maayan Lubell - Reuters, Occupied Jerusalem Friday, 23 October 2015/Palestinian factions called for mass rallies against Israel in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in a “day of rage” on Friday, as world and regional powers pressed on with talks to try to end more than three weeks of bloodshed. Hours after the announcements, a Palestinian stabbed and wounded an Israeli soldier in the West Bank, before being shot and wounded by other troops, the Israeli military said, part of a wave of violence that has killed around 60 people. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he was cautiously optimistic there was a way of defusing the tensions after holding four hours of talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Berlin on Thursday. Israeli authorities also lifted restrictions on Friday that had banned men aged under 40 from using the flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem’s Old City - a move seen as a bid to ease Muslim anger. One of the worst waves of street violence in years was triggered in part by Palestinian anger over what they see as Jewish encroachment on the compound, Islam’s third holiest site, which is also revered by Jews as the location of two ancient temples. The calls for mass protests were backed by both Palestinian militant group Hamas and the Fatah movement of Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas, as well as other factions. Hamas, the Islamist movement which controls the Gaza Strip, issued a statement calling on “angry Palestinians to take part in the mass rallies at the Friday of rage and new confrontation against occupation (Israeli) soldiers.”The Palestinians seek a state in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Teenagers
While the political factions have been active in calling for protests, the stabbings and shootings mostly have been carried out by “lone wolf” attackers, some inspired by social media postings and many of them teenagers. The family of the Palestinian who stabbed the Israeli soldier on Friday said he is 16 years old. Fifty Palestinians, half of them assailants, have been shot dead at the scene of attacks or during demonstrations in the West Bank and Gaza since Oct. 1. Nine Israelis have been stabbed or shot dead over the same period. One Israeli was killed by soldiers who mistook him for an attacker, and an Eritrean migrant was beaten and shot dead by a crowd of Israelis who thought he had taken part in a shooting. Kerry was expected to hold meetings on Saturday with Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah, who has a role as a custodian of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. One of Kerry’s goals is to reinforce the status quo at Al Aqsa, which has long banned non-Muslim prayer at the site. Netanyahu says Israel has not changed the status quo and has no intention of doing so. An Israeli government source said Netanyahu told Kerry in their meeting that to curb violence, Abbas and King Abdullah should publicly declare the status quo has not changed. A spokesman for Netanyahu would not confirm the prime minister made such a demand. On Thursday Israeli police said an Israeli who went on a stabbing rampage two weeks ago, wounding four Arabs in the southern town of Dimona, would be charged with aggravated assault rather than terrorism-related charges. At the time, Israeli politicians described the Israeli’s actions as “terrorism” and said he should be treated like any other attacker. The lesser charges are likely to fuel the sense among Palestinians that Israel applies double standards. Palestinians are also angry at what they see as excessive use of force by Israeli police and soldiers, with many attackers shot dead at the scene when they might have been detained. The European Union’s senior diplomat Federica Mogherini said the “Quartet” of Middle East peace mediators would meet in Vienna on Friday to urge Israeli and Palestinian leaders to tone down their rhetoric and calm down the situation on the ground.

Israeli man shot dead after being mistaken for attacker
The Associated Press, Jerusalem/Friday, 23 October 2015/A Jewish Israeli man was shot and killed in a scuffle with Israeli soldiers who suspected he was a Palestinian attacker, police said on Thursday, in a reflection of the jittery mood that has gripped Israelis amid a spate of near-daily stabbings. The shooting came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was in Germany for talks with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on how to restore calm. Kerry expressed a “cautious measure of optimism” following the four-hour meeting about proposals that could help defuse tensions. Kerry is set to meet with the Palestinians this weekend. Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the shooting of the Israeli man in occupied Jerusalem late on Wednesday occurred after soldiers patrolling the area asked him to show ID as he got off a bus. The man refused, scuffled with the soldiers and then attempted to seize one of their weapons. A private security guard nearby shot the man, and one soldier also opened fire, police said. The man later died of his wounds. Police said the soldiers had grown suspicious when the man, speaking in Hebrew, asked to see their IDs and proclaimed, “I am ISIS,” referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria group. “The soldiers had high suspicions that he was a terrorist,” Rosenfeld said. Police later identified the man as a 28-year-old Jewish resident of Jerusalem, without providing further details. Ten Israelis have been killed over the last month, while on the Palestinian side, 48 people have been killed, 27 of them labeled by Israel as alleged attackers, and the others killed in clashes with Israeli forces. Violence erupted a month ago, fueled by rumors that Israel was plotting to take over a sensitive Jerusalem holy site of the al-Aqsa Mosque compound. Palestinians point to the growing number of Jewish visitors to the site, as well as calls from activist groups and senior politicians for expanded prayer rights. An internationally recognized status-quo dictates the Jews are allowed site visits, but not prayers.

Israel ‘provocative rhetoric’ needs to stop
AFP, WashingtonFriday, 23 October 2015/The White House has warned Benjamin Netanyahu against “inflammatory rhetoric” on Thursday after the Israeli prime minister claimed a Palestinian religious leader provoked the Holocaust. Netanyahu on Tuesday suggested Hitler was not planning to exterminate the Jews until he met Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Hajj Amin al-Husseini, a Palestinian nationalist, in 1941. Responding sharply to the controversial claim, since pedaled back by the Israeli leader, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said, “I don’t think there’s any doubt here at the White House who is responsible for the Holocaust that killed six million Jews.”“We here continue to stress publicly and privately ... the importance of preventing inflammatory rhetoric, accusations or actions on both sides (that) can feed the violence.”“We believe that inflammatory rhetoric needs to stop.”Netanyahu’s comments were widely criticized, with Palestinian leaders and the Israeli opposition accusing him of distorting the past, while historians called them inaccurate. The White House reaction comes after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Netanyahu in Berlin, urged Palestinians and Israelis to halt all incitement.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan meets with Saudi Arabia's
By Staff writer Al Arabiya NewsFriday, 23 October 2015/Saudi King Salman received a telephone call on Thursday from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Al Arabiya News Channel reported. During the call, the two leaders discussed the latest regional developments, as well as bilateral relations between their two nations.

Onward Christian Soldiers
HussienAbdul Hussain/October 23/10/2015
At the heart of defeating ISIS is undermining the group’s narrative about injustice that has befallen the world’s Muslims, especially the Sunnis. Before exiting Iraq, the Bush administration went to great lengths to rebalance a Sunni-Shia status quo, an exercise that the Obama administration — naturally biased toward Iran — has miserably failed to maintain. The outbreak of the Syrian revolution reinforced a Sunni narrative that the world is conspiring in favor of the Shiites, mostly Iran and its proxies: the Iraqi government, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Sunni victimhood is, in and of itself, a rallying cry for ISIS that appeals to young Sunnis worldwide. And as if American shortsightedness on subcontracting control of Levantine and Iraqi Sunnis to Iran was not enough, the Russians have added insult to injury. Moscow not only takes sides against any country, organization or entity with a Sunni majority, it often lumps all Sunnis into one category of Islamist terrorists. Russia even sent its priests to bless the missiles that its fighter jets rained down on Syrians. If the Russian war on Syria looks like a Christian war against Islam, so be it. Russian President Vladimir Putin loves his image as the world’s toughest bully.
Other Christian and Jewish forces have also expressed similar preferences, though in a more subtle way than Putin. Rightwing Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz attended a gathering in Washington last year to tell the congregating Christians there to ally with Israel against terrorists (read: Middle Eastern Sunnis). He thinks beating ISIS is a priority over toppling Assad. Even the famous former Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, a knowledgeable American figure, wrote that it is in America’s interests to prioritize defeating ISIS over toppling Assad, and that the US should make sure Assad stays to prevent terrorists (also read: Sunnis) from taking his place. In an article in The Wall Street Journal, Kissinger called for a federal state in Syria divided between the Sunnis and the Alawites. Such an arrangement, according to the 92-year-old former politician, would protect American interests and prevent genocide against Alawites. Whatever happens to Sunnis, who have already suffered massacres, does not seem to bother the Jewish American, himself a refugee displaced by Nazi crimes in Europe. It is no wonder that ISIS’s first order of the day has been to deepen the divide between Sunnis of Iraq and Syria and other communities. The more Christians ISIS kills, enslaves or displaces, the more enraged the world becomes against — not ISIS, but Sunnis. The world seems to care about Syria’s Alawites, Christians and ancient ruins, but not about its Sunnis. America’s rightwing Christian politicians make it look as if the world and Putin are all partners in this crusade against the Sunnis, which, thanks to the internet, makes it easy for ISIS to recruit young Sunni men and women around the world. Justice is the basis of peace, whether civil peace within states or world peace. Putin and Iran have been crying foul against Western injustice — real or imagined — for decades. Likewise, ISIS has been rallying Sunnis who feel that their brethren in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon are facing massacres. Throughout the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Arab states spent decades arguing that a just solution was the key to Middle Eastern problems. Starting 1979, Iran jumped on the Palestinian injustice bandwagon and used it as a rallying cry to build formidable militias like Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Eventually, Washington caught up with the Arab narrative. Since 1987, every US administration — Democrat and Republican — has made the Arab-Israeli peace process the centerpiece of its Middle Eastern policy in the belief that justice makes it hard for agitators who thrive on narratives of victimhood. Today, 16 months after the beginning of the US-led war on ISIS, Putin, his priests and their crosses, and his minority coalition that is targeting Sunnis have all wiped out whatever progress America made between 2008 and 2010 in the War on Terror.Restoring justice in the Middle East is key to defeating ISIS. Everything else, from air raids to combating ISIS’s message, comes second. As long as the war against ISIS looks like a crusade against Sunnis, the defeat of the notorious terrorist group will remain elusive. **Hussain Abdul-Hussain is the Washington Bureau Chief of Kuwaiti newspaper Alrai. He tweets @hahussain

At Least 42 Dead in French Pensioners Coach Crash
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 23/15/At least 42 people, most of them elderly, were killed when a coach collided with a lorry and caught fire in southwest France on Friday, in the country's worst road accident for three decades. The coach was carrying a club of elderly people on an excursion when it collided with the lorry near the village of Puisseguin among the vineyards of the St Emilion region, east of Bordeaux. Many of the victims were thought to have died in the fire, according to emergency workers and local authorities in the department of Gironde. Images shown on French television showed the coach as a charred shell that had been entirely burned. "I saw a cloud of smoke," said local resident Yvette Seguy on France's i-Tele TV station, adding that it took place on a bend that is known to be dangerous. The driver of the coach was thought to be among the dead. The rest of the victims were passengers on the coach, officials said. Eight people managed to escape the burning coach -- four of them seriously injured, according to a local official. It was not clear if the lorry driver, who was transporting wood, also died. Unconfirmed reports said he had managed to escape his burning vehicle to help the coach passengers. "The French government has fully mobilised after this terrible tragedy," President Francois Hollande said from Athens, where he is on an official visit. "We are plunged into sadness due to this drama."The crash is the deadliest in France since August 1982, when 53 people including 44 children were killed in a motorway pile-up. Some 60 firemen and 20 fire engines were dispatched to the scene on Friday, supported by helicopters. A psychological crisis cell and information hotline were also set up. Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve and Transport Minister Alain Vidalies were also on their way to the site, according to the transport ministry. It has not been ruled out that Hollande might cut short his visit to Greece. Valls expressed his "emotion in the face of this very heavy toll" on Twitter, and promised his "support to the families of the victims".'An incredible tragedy'
The coach, carrying 49 passengers and a driver, departed early Friday from a tiny village of 650 residents near the site of the accident. Pierre Henri-Brandet, spokesman for the interior ministry, told BFMTV that four people "were extremely severely injured" -- two with burns and two with head injuries. Four others escaped with only minor injuries."It's an incredible tragedy with an extremely heavy toll. It's a catastrophe," he said. "They were retired people, elderly people, who were going on a day out."Henri-Brandet added that the accident happened just a few minutes after the bus left the village of Petit-Palais-Cornemps. Details of how the crash happened were still unclear. "Apparently, the bus slid into a bend," a local shopkeeper from Puisseguin told French radio station RTL. "The truck and bus were in flames. We saw smoke from 10 kilometres away." The group were part of a club for retired people and were heading south to the nearby region of Landes for a visit.

4 Hurt in Failed Cairo Bomb Disposal near Pyramids
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 23/15/Four people including two Egyptian policemen were wounded Friday in a failed attempt to dismantle a bomb outside a Cairo hotel near the pyramids, a security official said. Two policemen and two hotel security guards were wounded as they tried to deactivate the explosive device found by security guards outside the Meridien hotel near the Giza pyramids, he said. The blast left one of the policemen in critical condition. Elsewhere in Egypt, four policemen were wounded in the North Sinai town of El-Arish in an explosion as they drove past in an armored vehicle. North Sinai, where security forces are fighting an Islamist insurgency, is a bastion of the Egyptian affiliate of the jihadist Islamic State (IS) group. The insurgency has swelled since the army's ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in July 2013. Militants loyal to IS have killed hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and policemen, mostly in North Sinai. A government crackdown targeting Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood movement since 2013 has left hundreds dead and thousands jailed. Hundreds more, including Morsi himself, have been sentenced to death after speedy trials.

Words Have Consequences: Palestinian Authority Incitement to Violence
David Makovsky/The Washington Institute/October 22/15
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
If Palestinians do not publicly acknowledge the Jewish connection to holy sites, violence could continue and possibly intensify.
Chairman Royce, Ranking Member Engel, and Distinguished Members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the ongoing volatility in Jerusalem. It needs to be handled with supreme caution. In addressing the situation today, it should be clear that there is no justification for any incitement to violence. When you say that Israel wants to undermine the status of the al-Aqsa Mosque or change the status quo on the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif, it is equivalent to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, given the role that such allegations have played in provoking past violence.
As Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview with National Public Radio last Friday, "There's no excuse for the violence. No amount of frustration is appropriate to license any violence anywhere at any time. No violence should occur. And the Palestinians need to understand, and President [Mahmoud] Abbas has been committed to nonviolence. He needs to be condemning this, loudly and clearly. And he needs to not engage in some of the incitement that his voice has sometimes been heard to encourage. So that has to stop."
This incitement includes public remarks by President Abbas, during which he said that "every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem is pure. Every martyr will reach paradise, and every injured person will be rewarded by God." He has also said that Jews "have no right to desecrate the mosque with their dirty feet." Abbas has not renounced these statements, and in recent days he has called for "popular nonviolent struggle." (This is not to say that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has not made some questionable statements of his own. Recently, he said that the leader of the Palestinian national movement in the 1940s was more adamant about killing Jews than Adolf Hitler, a claim that has been refuted by Holocaust historians.)
Sadly, the charge that Israel is out to destroy the mosque is not new. This claim was made in 1929, resulting in riots in Hebron that killed 63 people. More recently, fatal violence surrounding the Temple Mount occurred in 1991 (20 killed), 1996 (87 killed), 2000 (153 killed within the first month of violence), and 2014 (9 killed). I want to be clear that this does not mean that all Palestinians favor this approach. In fact, more than 400 Jews were saved in 1929, when many found refuge in the homes of Palestinians.
A few things need to occur to ensure that this pattern is not repeated. First, there needs to be an honest acknowledgment that the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif is holy to both Muslims and Jews. Israeli leaders of all stripes have asserted the sanctity of the area to Muslims since the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the seventh century. The reverse has not been the case. The Palestinian leadership does not tell its public that the area also has historical significance for the Jewish people.
Ancient Jewish history was defined by the Temple eras -- one lasting 410 years and another lasting 420 years. When the Temples were destroyed, so were the first two Jewish commonwealths, ending finally in 70 C.E. It took until 1948, or close to 1,900 years, for that longing for sovereignty to be restored. At the Camp David summit in 2000, Yasser Arafat famously angered President Bill Clinton by denying that the Temples existed -- saying they were located instead in Nablus or even Yemen. Clinton reportedly responded that every Sunday school student in Arkansas knew this was not the case. Anyone who has been to a Jewish wedding knows there is a breaking of the glass, done to indicate that even the most joyous occasion is mixed with sorrow, recalling the destruction of those Temples. For close to two thousand years, Jews have prayed three times a day in the direction of the Temple Mount. It is the Zion of Zionism.
The vast majority of Jews in Israel and around the world do not attempt to pray on the Temple Mount. If Jews have not ascended the Temple Mount, it is not because it is not holy but because it is too holy. From 1967 to today, the Chief Rabbinate has forbidden Jews from visiting the area, believing this should only occur during the messianic age. A few radical Israeli activists and even some politicians, including Agriculture Minister Uri Ariel, have nonetheless recently visited the Mount. They believe that archaeology has provided a far more precise perimeter of the Mount, as it existed historically, and that, therefore, they can more precisely avert its exact location. These proponents favor Jewish prayer in what they consider the permitted section of the Mount, but this is bound to lead to bloodshed. Yuval Diskin, former head of the Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet, echoed the view of many who oppose Jewish prayer on the Mount, since it is "the most fuel-saturated flammable area in the Middle East." To its credit, the Netanyahu government has refused to change the status quo.
Ironically, this lack of acknowledgment on the Palestinian side was historically not always the case. A pamphlet for tourists visiting al-Haram published by the Supreme Muslim Council in 1924 said the fact that al-Aqsa is built on the site of Solomon's Temple is "beyond dispute." However, the intertwining of religion and nationalism ensured that this historical acknowledgment was erased. Of course, neither side has to accept the narrative of the other as sacrosanct. Yet if they cannot acknowledge that the other side reveres the site as they do, violence is bound to continue, as we have seen. Understanding that both sides have religious rights seems to be a prerequisite for calming the situation.
While the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif issue has been the primary cause of violence in Jerusalem in the last twenty years, other factors have led to violence. For example, during the summer of 2014, a Palestinian teenager was killed as tensions roiled over the kidnapping and subsequent murder of three Israeli teens, which indirectly contributed to the outbreak of the ensuing war in Gaza. Moreover, none of this is to rule out economic factors possibly affecting the violence. Observers believe Israel's ambiguity in heavily investing in Palestinian-sector infrastructure is due to the notion that Israel may yield these neighborhoods in any final deal with the Palestinians. It is estimated that three-fourths of the 316,000 Palestinians in the city live below the poverty line. Palestinians see their status in limbo, as Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem flourish.
So what can be done? When such allegations surfaced last year, Secretary Kerry, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Jordan's King Abdullah were able to meet in Amman and defuse the situation. Historically, Jordan has been the Arab custodian of the Temple Mount. Indeed, this week, Kerry is meeting with Netanyahu, Abdullah, and Abbas to see what can be done to defuse the situation. In principle, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority all have an interest in quelling instability, which only serves to benefit extremists. While all sides say they do not want to change the status quo, the problem is that the status quo on the Temple Mount/al-Haram al-Sharif has not been delineated in an explicit set of understandings. If there were trust between Israelis and Palestinians, perhaps verbal understandings would be sufficient, but this is not the case today. The U.S. government can be helpful in reaching a set of understandings between the parties to measure the status quo going forward. In order to be effective, this would need to be publicly reaffirmed by Jordan. Such a three-way agreement, among Kerry, Netanyahu, and Abdullah, should then be acknowledged by Abbas. Hopefully, making such understandings explicit would add a vital measure of predictability to an unpredictable situation.
Israel needs to also find a way to communicate better with Palestinians in East Jerusalem. Israel has been called the "start-up nation," given the success of its high-tech sector. In the recent war in Gaza, Israel used its high-tech prowess to communicate to Gaza residents. Israel was able to limit civilian casualties by sending text messages to Gazans, telling them to evacuate their homes in advance of airstrikes. If Israel can reach those Palestinians, why can't they text Palestinians in East Jerusalem in Arabic and deny rumors about changing the status quo on the Temple Mount?
Of course, when dealing with an issue as volatile as the Israeli-Palestinian issue, there is a tendency to throw up your hands in despair. I would kindly caution against such a move, given how much is at stake. Since October, ten Israelis have been killed in Palestinian attacks. Twenty-six Palestinian assailants were killed and more than twenty additional Palestinians were killed by Israeli fire in clashes in Jerusalem and the West Bank. However, the scale of violence has not approached that of the second Palestinian intifada. Between 2000 and 2004, four thousand people were killed -- approximately three thousand Palestinians and one thousand Israelis -- and the number injured was far greater than what we see today.
It reminds us that as bad as the situation is, it could get far worse. Some people might say, well, let's just cease funding to the Palestinian Authority (PA). Yet it is important to remember that Israeli and PA security officials are engaged in daily security cooperation that is vital not just for Palestinians but for Israelis too. This is the view of top Israeli security officials. Benny Gantz, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces until a few months ago, said in a recent speech at my own Washington Institute: "We need to stick to security and give up the dreams as we would like to have them -- all governments of Israel have [expressed support for a] two-state solution." Similarly, in a 2014 op-ed, Yuval Diskin wrote, "The coordination between the security forces has [made] a significant contribution [to] the relative quiet" in the West Bank. He called this cooperation better than ever, despite the impasse in peace negotiations since 2007. He said that the PA "understands that Israel's security is central to their survival in the struggle with Hamas in the West Bank."
We are approaching the twentieth anniversary of the killing of Israel's iconic premier and 1967 war hero, Yitzhak Rabin. He was known as a hardened realist. Nobody could call him a dreamy peacenik. Yet he understood an important insight. The traumas of Israelis and Palestinians will require them to separate and avoid a de facto binational reality, a recipe for permanent bloodshed. This insight underscores the need to continue working for separate political entities, one Israeli and one Palestinian, and for dignity for both peoples. We cannot afford to give up. Given the bloodshed in Jerusalem, Palestinians must come to grips with the fact that both peoples do not just have political rights but also a religious connection to the land based on their own history. If that recognition is not reached, I worry that violence will continue to periodically erupt and possibly intensify.
Watch video of the full hearing on the Committee on Foreign Affairs website.
**David Makovsky is the Ziegler Distinguished Fellow and director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at The Washington Institute.

New Syria Talks Highlight Russian Ascendance, U.S. Ambivalence
Anna Borshchevskaya and James F. Jeffrey/The Washington Institute/October 22/15
Without stronger American military efforts to hurt ISIS and help the rebels, the Vienna summit has little chance of preventing Moscow from taking the driver's seat in Syria.
This week, President Bashar al-Assad made an unannounced trip to Moscow on the eve of October 23 talks in Vienna between Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, Secretary of State John Kerry, and their Turkish and Saudi counterparts, who are meeting to discuss the Syrian conflict. In his welcoming remarks to Assad, President Vladimir Putin linked Moscow's political and military strategies: "On the question of a settlement in Syria, our position is that positive results in military operations will lay the basis for working out a long-term settlement, based on a political process that involves all political forces, ethnic groups, and religious groups."
Russia's motivations have not changed: in a zero-sum approach to diplomacy, Putin has consistently taken advantage of Western ambivalence on Syria since the uprising began in 2011. The vacuum created by this indecision allowed Putin to insert himself into the peace discussions and advance a self-serving agenda: namely, keeping Assad in power, positioning the Kremlin as an indispensable global player, and distracting the Russian public from domestic problems. After the 2012 and 2014 international peace talks in Geneva failed to produce a resolution, Moscow hosted its own "intra-Syrian" talks in January and April 2015. Those meetings did not advance a true peace settlement either. Rather, they allowed the Kremlin to engage factions that do not demand Assad's departure while reinforcing the notion that he is an indispensable actor in battling "terrorists" -- which Moscow and Damascus define as any armed individual who opposes the regime.
Putin is confident in making such moves because he believes that Western policymakers will not stand by their words, a lesson learned when Washington failed to enforce its redline on chemical weapons use in Syria, welcomed Moscow's 2013 offer to disarm the regime, and tacitly accepted Assad as part of the peace process despite previous statements that he should "step aside." Similarly, since Moscow launched its military intervention last month, Russian forces in Syria have violated Turkish airspace multiple times and reportedly shadowed a U.S. drone without consequence -- Putin tested the West and saw once again that it will reply with little besides angry rhetoric and symbolic moves.
Putin's meeting with Assad this week is a further testament to his confidence that he can force the West to accept his position. According to Russia's TASS News Agency, the parliament's upper house speaker Valentina Matviyenko called on "all interested countries to join the dialogue between Russia and Syria" after the meeting, highlighting Moscow's perceived position as the leader in resolving the crisis.
In this context, the October 23 meeting in Vienna represents a defeat for traditional U.S. policy in the region since 1973, under which America and its allies have borne primary responsibility for countering threats to peace. This defeat is the inexorable result of the Obama administration's reluctance to use necessary military force in Syria -- first in withholding threatened strikes against Assad when he used chemical weapons against his own people, and then in limiting strikes against ISIS despite vowing to "destroy" the group. It simultaneously reflects the emergence of not only a Russian military operational presence in the region, but also a budding Russian alliance with Iran. The only good news is that the Assad regime will not be at the table in Vienna -- though even that is tempered by Assad's surprise trip to Moscow.
In all likelihood, Friday's talks will have one of two outcomes. The first is American and Saudi acquiescence to an "Assad stays for the moment" strategy in order to focus on fighting ISIS. Such an approach would reflect the military steps Russia and Iran are taking in Syria with their allies, as well as continued unwillingness in Washington -- and thus the entire Arab-Turkish anti-Assad coalition -- to challenge Moscow and Tehran. If this scenario comes to pass, the U.S. and Saudi policy of seeking Assad's ouster would be left in shreds, and he would remain in power indefinitely to complete the depopulation of much of his country.
Alternatively, Washington and Riyadh might refuse to formally endorse Assad and play second fiddle to Moscow and Tehran's so-called "anti-ISIS" campaign, yet still offer some flexibility on the timing of Assad's departure. While not as abject a surrender as the first possibility, this position would amount to only temporary face saving unless it were backed by much more aggressive U.S. and Saudi support for those fighting Assad, and a much more effective, rapid U.S.-led military campaign against ISIS. Barring that, Russia and Iran are unlikely to feel any pressure.
In either scenario, it is far from clear whether any ceasefire or transition agreements emerging from the Vienna talks could be implemented on the battlefield. U.S. credibility with armed rebel factions is very low, and their regional backers are unlikely to back off whether Russia is bombing or not. It also remains doubtful that Russia could deliver Assad to anything but a Potemkin political process of the sort that the opposition has already rejected multiple times, even while losing on the battlefield. Therefore, the likeliest scenario is that no matter what happens in Vienna, the war's diplomatic and military tracks will continue to head in two different directions.
**Anna Borshchevskaya is the Ira Weiner Fellow at The Washington Institute. James Jeffrey is the Institute's Philip Solondz Distinguished Fellow.

Putin’s Partition Plan for Syria
By HUSSEIN IBISH/New York Times
OCTOBER 19, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/opinion/putins-partition-plan-for-syria.html?_r=0
WASHINGTON — Taking advantage of the paralysis of American policy in Syria, Russia’s dramatic escalation of military activity in that country seeks to reorder the strategic landscape of the Middle East.
Few appear to grasp the full scope of what Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, is attempting. This is partly because, in theory, this should be beyond Russia’s capabilities. But Mr. Putin cannily senses an opportunity, at the very least, to restore Russia to the role in the Middle East that it lost in the 1970s.
Russia’s intervention anticipates a resolution of the Syrian conflict through de facto partition. The Reuters news agency reports that, months ago, Iran proposed the joint offensive, now underway, to save the dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad from imminent collapse. Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ elite Quds Force, is depicted poring over maps of Syria with Russian officials in the Kremlin.
Russian firepower is aimed at securing the larger, western part of the rump Syrian state that is still controlled by Mr. Assad — in particular the air and naval bases near Latakia and Tartus. And aside from forays into northern trouble spots like Aleppo, Iranian and Hezbollah forces will mostly concentrate on the lower half of this strip, which runs from the Lebanese border through Qalamoun, up to Damascus, and from there to the port cities and coastal heartland of the Alawites, the Syrian Shiite sect loyal to Mr. Assad.
For all of the talk of combating the Islamic State, Russia’s real aim is to push back rebel groups and secure this ministate. Given what Mr. Assad’s allies are willing to do to salvage this “Little Syria” — compared with the limited intervention being considered by Mr. Putin’s international antagonists — this is probably an achievable goal.
Such a partition of Syria would leave other parts of the country in the hands of nationalist and Islamist rebels, a Kurdish area in the north, perhaps some smaller enclaves and, most ominously, the “caliphate” of the Islamic State in the north and east. Despite Kremlin propaganda, the Islamic State is already among the biggest winners from the Russian intervention.
At the end of last week, for example, the group took advantage of Russian airstrikes, some 90 percent of which have reportedly targeted other rebel groups, and captured several villages near Aleppo. The militants also killed some of Iran’s most senior commanders in Syria, including Brig. Gen. Hossein Hamedani. These advances are realizing Mr. Assad’s goal of making the choice for both Syrians and the world at large appear to be between him and the jihadists.
Russia’s unspoken but unmistakable message is that Moscow is trying one— and perhaps the only— way of ending the conflict by means of a Lebanese-style segregation of Syria into zones controlled by rival militias. To Washington’s perennial concern in any Middle Eastern imbroglio, “Tell me how this ends,” Moscow responds: The Syrian conflict will be “resolved” on Russia’s terms, even if Mr. Assad proves dispensable to the Kremlin in the long run.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration’s desire to see the conflict end without actually doing anything itself means that, as Bloomberg View suggested recently, there is a group of senior American officials prepared to go along with the Russian plan. After all, America’s own policy in Syria has rapidly moved from tragedy to farce. The latest fiasco was the cancellation of the $500 million military training program for anti-Islamic State rebels that produced barely a handful of fighters on the ground.
So if Moscow has a policy, and Washington doesn’t, why not just support that?
Beyond the fact that it’s absurd to hope that Mr. Putin’s approach is likely to benefit American interests, giving way to Russia’s policy would, in effect, entail abandoning the fight against the Islamic State in Syria. And the militants cannot be effectively countered in Iraq alone. So what this final, ignominious capitulation would really mean is that not only would Mr. Assad (or some Russian-appointed successor) menace Syrians for the foreseeable future, but so too would the Islamic State.
No wonder Gen. John R. Allen, America’s envoy to the international coalition against the Islamic State, recently announced his resignation. Being in charge of a farce is bad enough; no one can accept being the front for a fraud.
Even worse, viewed through a broader regional framework, American acquiescence to this Russian initiative would ultimately mean an accommodation with a major reshaping of the strategic order in the Middle East. Moscow is clearly trying to accomplish the creation of a powerful alliance with Iran, Iraq, Hezbollah, “Little Syria” and others. To secure this new compact, Russia is willing to risk not only confrontation with the West, but also its recently improved relations with other regional powers like Turkey and Saudi Arabia.
There’s no good reason Washington should go along with any of this. Russia is manifestly less powerful militarily, economically and diplomatically than the United States. But it’s no longer a matter of capabilities; it’s become a matter of will. On paper, Russia is in no position to barge into the Middle East and throw its weight around. But after the interference in Ukraine, the annexation of Crimea and the Syrian chemical weapons debacle, Mr. Putin correctly judged that nobody would stop him.
Mr. Putin is canny enough to know that he is already overstretched, faces potential quagmires and has core differences with putative allies like Iran. So, at any given moment, he’ll be ready to pocket his gains and do a deal with the Americans — from an already advantageous position.
The remaining question is: How far will he be allowed to go? At the moment, the astonishing answer appears to be: all the way.
Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington and a contributing opinion writer.

Germany: Asylum Seekers Make Demands
Soeren Kern/Gatestone Institute/October 23/15
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6753/germany-migrants-demands
"Human traffickers and the media in their home countries are making promises that do not correspond to reality." — Hans-Joachim Ulrich, regional refugee coordinator.
The migrants said they were angry they were being asked to sleep in a huge warehouse rather than in private apartments. Hamburg officials say there are no more vacant apartments in the city. "The city lied to us. We were shocked when we arrived here," said Syrian refugee Awad Arbaakeat.
"One of the men, who spoke broken German, said they [a family of asylum seekers from Syria] were not interested in viewing the property because I am a woman... I was taken aback. You want to help and then are sent away, unwanted in your own country." — Aline Kern, real estate agent.
"A constitutional state cannot allow itself to be blackmailed." — Marcel Huber, Bavarian politician.
"I man. You woman. I go first." — Muslim male with a full shopping cart at the supermarket.
An asylum seeker from Somalia successfully sued the German Agency for Migration and Refugees for taking too long to process his application -- 16 months. The agency said it currently has a backlog of 250,000 unprocessed applications.
Seventy percent of migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria who were offered apprenticeships fail to complete them. According to the director of the Munich Chamber of Trade, many young migrants believe apprenticeships are beneath them.
Asylum seekers are increasingly using tactics such as hunger strikes, lawsuits and threats of violence in efforts to force German authorities to comply with an ever-growing list of demands.
Many migrants, unhappy with living conditions in German refugee shelters, are demanding that they immediately be given their own homes or apartments. Others are angry that German bureaucrats are taking too long to process their asylum applications. Still others are upset over delays in obtaining social welfare payments.
Although most asylum seekers in Germany have a roof over their head, and receive three hot meals a day, as well as free clothing and healthcare, many are demanding: more money, more comfortable beds, more hot water, more ethnic food, more recreational facilities, more privacy — and, of course, their own homes.
Germany will receive as many as 1.5 million asylum seekers in 2015, including 920,000 in the last quarter of 2015 alone, according to government estimates. This figure is nearly double the previous estimate, from August, which was 800,000 for all of 2015. By comparison, Germany received 202,000 asylum seekers in all of 2014.
With refugee shelters across the country already filled to capacity, and more than 10,000 new migrants entering Germany every day, Germany is straining to care for all the newcomers, many of whom are proving to be ungrateful and impatient guests.
In Berlin, 20 asylum seekers sued the State Agency for Health and Social Welfare (Landesamt für Gesundheit und Soziales, Lageso) in an effort to force local authorities to speed up their welfare payments.
Berlin expects to receive 50,000 asylum seekers in 2015. German taxpayers will spend 600 million euros ($680 million) this year to pay for their upkeep.
Also in Berlin, more than 40 migrants, mostly from Pakistan, seized control over the observation deck of the city's television tower and demanded stays of deportation, jobs, and exemptions from mandatory residence (Residenzpflicht), a legal requirement that asylum seekers reside within certain boundaries defined by local immigration authorities. More than 100 police were deployed to the tower to remove the protesters. After a brief questioning, they were set free. Police said no crime had been committed because the migrants had purchased tickets to the observation deck, some 200 meters (650 feet) above the Berlin.
In the Kreuzberg district of Berlin, more than 400 migrants, mostly from Africa, occupied an abandoned school because they no longer wanted to live in tents in a nearby square. When 900 police arrived to clear the building, some migrants poured gasoline inside the structure and threatened to set themselves on fire, while others threatened to jump off the roof of the building. "We are currently negotiating with local authorities about how to proceed," a Sudanese migrant named Mohammed said. "We will not leave until our demands [amending German asylum laws so they can remain in the country] are met."
In Dortmund, 125 migrants complained about the "catastrophic conditions" at the Brügmann sports facility, which now serves as a refugee shelter. The list of complaints included: bad food, uncomfortable beds and not enough showers.
Just hours after arriving in Fuldatal, 40 asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Syria complained about conditions at a refugee shelter there and demanded that they be given their own homes. The regional refugee coordinator, Hans-Joachim Ulrich, said that migrants are coming to Germany with unrealistic expectations. "Human traffickers and the media in their home countries are making promises that do not correspond with reality," he said.
In Hamburg, more than 70 asylum seekers went on a hunger strike in an effort to pressure local authorities to provide them with better housing. "We are on a hunger strike," said Syrian refugee Awad Arbaakeat. "The city lied to us. We were shocked when we arrived here." The migrants said they were angry they were being asked to sleep in a huge warehouse rather than in private apartments. Hamburg officials say there are no more vacant apartments in the city, the second-largest in Germany.
Also in Hamburg, more than 100 migrants gathered in front of the city hall to protest the lack of heating in their tent shelters. City officials said they were caught off guard by the early frost and that all tents would have heating before the winter sets in. According to Hamburg Mayor Olaf Scholtz, some 3,600 migrants would be spending the coming winter in tents due to the lack of alternative housing in the city.
According to Hamburg officials, 35,021 migrants arrived in the city during the first nine months of 2015. During this same period, Hamburg police were dispatched to the city's refugee shelters more than 1,000 times, including 81 times to break up mass brawls, 93 times to investigate physical and sexual assaults, and 28 times to prevent migrants from committing suicide.
Meanwhile, a confidential document that was leaked to the German newspaper Bild reveals that the Hamburg transit authority (Hamburger Verkehrsverbund, HVV) has ordered ticket inspectors to "look the other way" whenever they encounter migrants who are using public transportation without a ticket. The move ostensibly aims to protect the HVV against "bad press."
According to the leaked document, ticket inspectors should be lenient with asylum seekers because many migrants are "the victims of professional counterfeit ticket scammers" and many others have "barely comprehensible knowledge" of the HVV's tariff structure.
The CDU's transportation expert, Dennis Thering, said the HVV's policy cannot be left unchallenged. "This 'look-the-other-way' policy must be withdrawn. In Hamburg there is the opportunity to purchase discounted HVV tickets, explicitly also for persons who receive benefits under the Asylum Seekers Benefits Act." Every newly arrived refugee receives 149 euros in pocket money every month. This includes 25.15 euros that have been earmarked for the purchase of transport tickets.
In Halle, four security guards were injured when they tried to stop a mob of asylum seekers from Africa and Syria from entering the city's social welfare office before opening hours. The migrants, who were there to pick up their welfare payments, became angry when it appeared to them as though some migrants cut in front of the line. It later turned out that some migrants were there for other business, and thus were not required to stand in line.
In Munich, 30 migrants went on a hunger strike to protest shared accommodations in refugee shelters. Two of the men were rushed to the hospital after losing consciousness. "A constitutional state cannot allow itself to be blackmailed," Bavarian politician Marcel Huber said. "We have zero tolerance for this action."
In Nürnberg, six migrants from Afghanistan, Ethiopia and Iran went on a hunger strike to protest the rejection of their asylum applications. The men, who are living in a tent in downtown Nürnberg for several months, demanded to speak to local authorities. The asylum applications were rejected six years ago, but the men are still living in Germany.
In Osnabrück, an asylum seeker from Somalia successfully sued the German Agency for Migration and Refugees (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, BAMF) for taking too long to process his application. A judge ordered the BAMF to make a decision on his application within three months or provide him with financial compensation.
The man said he had been waiting for 16 months to get an answer from the BAMF. In its defense, the BAMF said it currently has a backlog of 250,000 unprocessed applications, and this number is expected to skyrocket as more asylum seekers arrive in Germany.
A spokesperson for the court said the ruling set a precedent, and that many more asylum seekers likely would file lawsuits against the BAMF in the near future.
Groups of migrants across Germany have been launching hunger strikes, demanding more money, more comfortable beds, more hot water, more ethnic food, more recreational facilities, and their own homes. In Berlin (right), 900 police were needed to remove more than 400 migrants who had occupied an abandoned school. Some migrants poured gasoline inside and threatened to set themselves on fire; others threatened to jump off the roof.
In Walldorf, a town in the state of Baden-Württemberg, a group of migrants demanded that local authorities immediately provide them with private apartments because they were tired of living in a refugee shelter with 200 other asylum seekers. The leader of the group, a 46-year-old refugee from Syria, said he expected more from Germany. It was high time for Germans to begin to "treat us like human beings," he said.
Following up on the complaints, state and local authorities inspected the shelter and found that conditions there were "absolutely acceptable," with cubicles for privacy and plenty of food and clothing.
In Wetzlar, a city in the state of Hesse, migrants threatened to go on a hunger strike in an effort to force local authorities to move them into permanent housing. Local authorities said they delays were due to a quarantine after several migrants were found to be infected with Hepatitis A.
In Zweibrücken, 50 asylum seekers from Syria went on a hunger strike to protest the slow pace of the application approval process. "We can accept the living conditions in the refugee camp, but we need hope," one of the men said. Local officials said the process has collapsed because of the large number of applicants.
Asylum seekers have also gone on hunger strikes in Birkenfeld, Böhlen, Gelsenkirchen, Hannover, Walheim, and Wittenberg.
Meanwhile, teachers at Gemeinschaftsschule St. Jürgen, a grade school in the northern German city of Lübeck, ordered eighth graders to spend a morning at a local refugee shelter and "actively help" the migrants by making their beds, sorting their clothing and working in the kitchen.
Some parents complained that their children are also being asked to bring gifts and food for the migrants, who are already receiving handouts financed by German taxpayers. A woman wrote: "Sometimes I do not even know how I am going to put food on my own table."
Another woman wrote: "This is going too far. Students are supposed to make beds and do cleaning work at a refugee shelter. My friend's 14-year-old son is being asked to do this!!! I am not an agitator and I am tolerant, but this is going way too far. Is there now a new course in Lübeck schools called: Slavery??
The school's principal, Stefan Pabst, said the negative reaction was a "catastrophe." He said that having the children work in a refugee shelter was the best way for them to "understand social behavior." The German newsmagazine, Stern, complained that the dissenting parents belonged to "right-wing circles" and are "spreading their stupid slogans."
In Bad Kreuznach, a family of asylum seekers from Syria made an appointment to view a four-room rental property but refused to view the house because the real estate agent was female. According to real estate agent Aline Kern:
"One of the men, who spoke broken German, said they were not interested in viewing the property because I am a woman, I am blonde, and because I looked the men into their eyes. This was inappropriate. My company should send a man to show the property.
"I was taken aback, annoyed. One wants to help and then are sent away unwanted in your own country."
In Idar-Oberstein, a town in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate, an imam at a refugee shelter refused to shake the hand of Julia Klöckner, a visiting dignitary, because she is a woman. After Klöckner, the vice-chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), shared her experience with the German newsmagazine Focus, she received more than 800 emails from women across the country describing how they, too, have been mistreated by Muslim migrants.
One woman described how Muslim men repeatedly cut in front of her at the supermarket checkout line. "Twice while shopping at a German supermarket I was shown that I am a second-class citizen," she wrote. In one instance, an adult Muslim male with a full shopping cart cut in front of her. In broken German, he said: "I man. You woman. I go first." In another instance, a young Muslim male elbowed the woman while cutting in front of her. "When I said that I would let him go ahead of me if he asked me for permission, I was instructed by his sister that boys do not need to ask, they just demand."
A teacher at a vocational school wrote: "The most problematic students are Muslim males, who do not acknowledge the authority of female teachers and who disrupt the classes."
A mother reported that during a visit to her daughter's school, she approached a fully-veiled female refugee and asked her if she could be of help to her. "A man with a fancy suit and a three-day beard, he seemed like out of a Hugo Boss fashion magazine, said: 'My wife does not speak the language of the unclean.' When I asked him who here was unclean, he said I was. I asked him what that means. He said it was nothing against me personally, because all German women are unclean, and that his wife should not speak the language of the unclean, so that she can remain clean."
Klöckner is now calling for Germany to pass a new law that requires migrants and refugees to integrate into German society. She said: "We need an integration law. We are a liberal and free country. If we give up the foundations of our liberality, we will wake up in a different country."
Klöckner insists that migrants must be informed about German "rules of the game" from the first day they arrive in the country. "The people who want to stay here must, from the first day, accept and learn that in this country religions coexist peacefully and that we cannot use force to resolve conflicts," she said.
In Berlin, more than 150 migrant youths from North Africa and Eastern Europe are occupied as full-time purse-snatchers and pickpockets. Also known as the klau-kids (thief kids), they post their plunder (smart phones, laptops, designer sunglasses) on the Internet to taunt police. A 16-year-old known as Ismat O. has been detained more than 20 times on suspicion of theft, but each time he has been released, only to continue his trade. Walid K. has been arrested more than 10 times, and is also free.
According to the director of the police union in Berlin, Bodo Pfalzgraf, "it is incomprehensible that such serial offenders do not remain in pre-trial detention." Police say the youths are released because German judges are not prepared to issue arrest warrants for so-called petty crimes such as purse-snatching. The youths can only be deported if they have been sentenced to at least three years in prison.
In Bavaria, the Munich Chamber of Trade (Handwerkskammer München und Oberbayern) reported that 70% of migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria who have been offered apprenticeships fail to complete them. The normal washout rate is 25%. According to the director of the chamber, Lothar Semper, many young migrants believe the apprenticeships are beneath them. "We have to make a tremendous effort to convince young people that they should even begin an apprenticeship," he said. "Many have the expectation of quickly earning a lot of money in Germany."
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group. Follow him on Facebook and on Twitter. His first book, Global Fire, will be out in early 2016.

Pakistan worst country in religious freedom: US body
Times Of India/ Oct 22, 2015/
WASHINGTON: Asserting that Pakistan is the worst country in terms of religious freedom, a Congressional- established commission on international religious freedom has asked the Obama Administration to designate Pakistan as 'country of particular concern' citing "egregious" violations.The just-released IRF (International Religious Freedom) Report leaves no doubt that the egregious nature of the violations in Pakistan warrant a CPC designation," Robert George, Chairman of the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), said.
With Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in town for a meeting with US President Barack Obama, George urged the State Department to further expand its CPC list to reflect the severe violations occurring in seven other countries, such as Pakistan, which "USCIRF has called the worst situation in the world for religious freedom for countries" not currently designated by the US government as CPCs.
CPC designation is given to countries or those governments that "engage in or tolerate" systematic, ongoing, and egregious violations of religious freedom.
The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 (IRFA) requires the US annually to designate as "countries of particular concern" or CPCs, and to take action to encourage improvements in each CPC country.
"Now that the IRF Report has been released, the next step is for the State Department to promptly designate the worst violators as CPCs and to leverage those designations to press for much-needed reforms in those countries," George said.
In its recent report on IRF, the State Department has said that there is widespread violation of human rights of religious minorities in the country, in particular the Hindus and Christians.. In July 2014, the State Department designated nine countries as CPCs: Burma, China, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
State Department's 2014 IRF report said Pakistan "government's general failure to investigate, arrest, or prosecute those responsible for religious freedom abuses promoted an environment of impunity that fostered intolerance and acts of violence, according to domestic and international human rights organisations."
USCIRF's 2015 annual report, released in April, recommended that these countries be re-designated as CPCs, and also called for eight additional designations: Central African Republic, Egypt, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Tajikistan, and Vietnam.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/pakistan/Pakistan-worst-country-in-religious-freedom-US-body/articleshow/49495334.cms?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=TOI

Iran’s corruption and human rights overlooked
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh/Al Arabiya/October 23/15/
While Iran’s nuclear deal continues to hold the spotlight, two other critical issues demand much more attention than they are receiving. Despite President Hassan Rowhani’s pledges to the contrary, corruption and human rights continue to pose a huge challenge. According to Transparency International, Iran ranks 136 out of 175 countries. The scale of corruption has not changed significantly when comparing Rowhani’s presidency with that of his predecessor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. A considerable part of the economy and financial systems are owned and controlled by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the office of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Since they enjoy the final say in decision-making, Rowhani and his cabinet do not have the power to tackle corruption. Corruption in Iran is ingrained in the political and financial institutions that are the country’s backbone. However, often figures across the political spectrum, including members of the president’s office, engage in corruption for their political and financial benefit. Corruption in Iran is ingrained in the political and financial institutions that are the country’s backbone.Embezzlement and money-laundering within the banking system are prime examples of corruption. In addition, corruption takes place by granting loans, financial benefits and fellowships to relatives of senior officials or those who show their loyalty.
Facade
From time to time, the judiciary might bring a political or business figure to court on charges of corruption. Most recently, billionaire Babak Zanjani has been put on trial, accused of embezzling $2.7 billion from the government-owned petroleum company. The rare occasions when cases are brought to court are not part of a concerted effort to fight corruption. Instead, they appear to be a facade put on to alleviate people’s frustration over the economic difficulties they face, which are exacerbated by corruption. Normally such cases are closed, or the sentences are kept secret after months of trial with no legal explanation. These cases can also be due to political disagreement between factions of the system and the defendant, thereby used as a tool to warn or punish. If the government really wanted to fight corruption, the first step would be to properly enforce article 142 of the constitution, which states: “The assets of the Leader, the President, the deputies to the President, and ministers, as well as those of their spouses and offspring, are to be examined before and after their term of office by the head of the judicial power, in order to ensure they have not increased in a fashion contrary to law.”The government claims to be working to improve Iran’s human rights records, but many have observed that Rowhani’s promises have not even begun to be fulfilled.
Human rights
The government claims to be working to improve Iran’s human rights records, but many have observed that Rowhani’s promises have not even begun to be fulfilled. His office appears to have chosen not to challenge the three major institutions that set the boundaries for human rights, civil liberties and social justice: the IRGC, Iran’s intelligence (Etela’at) and the judiciary. The judiciary recently executed a juvenile convicted for the death of her husband. According to a recent release by the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Iran, Ahmed Shaheed: “These executions are disturbing examples of surging execution rates and questionable fair trial standards.” Iran “must comply with its international law obligations and put an end to the execution of juvenile offenders once and for all.”

Jerusalemites need to be empowered not collectively punished
Daoud Kuttab/Al Arabiya/October 23/15/
Israel’s continued punishment for the people of Jerusalem will do little to de-escalate the tensions, but will certainly contribute to widening them. Isolating neighborhoods and demolishing Palestinian homes is considered a collective punishment and a violation to the IV Geneva Conventions. What Israel needs to do immediately is to empower Palestinians in East Jerusalem by allowing local leadership to rise. Israel has full control over East Jerusalem (unlike the rest of the occupied territories) and has created a wall separating to further isolate the city from its natural Palestinian cities and leadership.
Isolating neighborhoods and demolishing Palestinian homes is considered a collective punishment. The Israeli obsession to weaken the national aspiration of Jerusalemites by cutting off East Jerusalem from the rest of Palestine has meant that the Ramallah-based Palestinian leadership has no leverage on fellow Palestinians. Palestinian institutions like the Orient House and the Chamber of Commerce have been ordered closed by the emergency regulations despite opposition of the international community. Today, Jerusalem’s 350,000 Palestinian Arabs are political orphans and totally leaderless. Israel physically separated the Palestinians of East Jerusalem from their natural connections to their brothers and sisters in outlaying areas, in Ramallah and Bethlehem and throughout the West Bank and Gaza. Political leaderships have been regularly imprisoned and any connection to the Palestinian leadership in Ramallah has been outlawed. This has reached such ridiculous levels that included Israeli decisions to ban a children's puppet festival or the launch of a film on the problems of drug use in the Old City simply because it received funding from or through the Palestinian government in Ramallah.
Totally stateless
The Palestinians of Jerusalem are totally stateless. Unlike the rest of Palestinians in the occupied territories, they are prevented from holding a Palestinian passport. Most carry a Jordanian passport without having Jordanian citizenship. Some Palestinians in Jerusalem have opted to apply for Israeli citizenship, an option available to them after Israel's unilateral annexation of the city in 1967. Instead of understanding this move as a desperate one aimed at anchoring Palestinians in Jerusalem, Israelis have argued that this is proof that Jerusalemites prefer Israel over Palestine. The few Palestinians holding any sort of symbolic leadership position, such as members of the Palestinian Legislative Council, or religious leaders are regularly hauled to the Israeli police station for questions, short-term arrests and are sometimes forbidden to enter Islam's third holiest mosque, Al Aqsa Mosque. Four Jerusalemites elected to the Palestinian legislature are fighting for their right to stay living in Jerusalem. As a result of this systematic Israeli effort to deny Palestinians any form of recognized local leadership, various forms of alternative, often unknown, groups have sprouted to fill the vacuum left because of the absence of genuine leaders, often along tribal or family structures.
At times, thugs and hooligans reign in certain areas earned often by these gangs through physical turf wars in which switchblades and sheer physicality decide who wins. The attacks on Al Aqsa have also encouraged newly unrecognized leaders of sorts. The Tahrir Party is now one of the strongest in terms of sheer presence in the mosque. Another group that has drawn the attention and anger of the Israelis is the Islamic movement from the north of Israel, which is headed by Sheikh Raed Salah. He is often imprisoned or denied for months entry or even proximity to the Old City of Jerusalem. While Israel regularly denies it, these Judaization attempts are synchronized by the Israeli government, police, courts, Jewish settlers, radical groups and Knesset members, with each group doing its part. Israel and its supporters (sometimes using U.S. tax exempt foundations) use the carrot and the stick to takeover Palestinian people's houses through suspicious deals, turning the lives of those who refuse to sell are made hell while vigilante settlers and their supporters are constantly protected. Housing permits are routinely denied because they are not part of a zoning plan. Arab East Jerusalem neighborhoods have purposely not been planned, leaving the local communities to build illegally and then to suffer regular house demolitions for violating city laws. At the same time Israel builds settlements in East Jerusalem in violation of international law. Meanwhile, a nine-storey building, built illegally (by Israeli law) in Silwan continues to house rowdy Jewish settlers without any attempt to execute equal justice. The Israeli high court denied in 1978 a Palestinian, Mohammad Burqan, the right to repurchase his own house in the Moghrabi quarter, adjacent to the Jewish quarter, because the now expanded Jewish quarter has "special historical significance" to Jews, and this "supersedes all other claims by non-Jews".Of course, Jews now live in all quarters of the Old City and in all Palestinian neighborhoods outside the walls. And it was exactly in one of those homes that Ariel Sharon had bought in the Al Wad neighborhood just outside al Aqsa mosque that the initial stabbing took place on September 13th. The violence that is taking place today in Jerusalem is one result of the Israeli policy of denying Palestinians their rights and refusing to include Jerusalem in serious talks. Israel's policy of creating facts on the ground and quietly changing the status quo of Al Aqsa Mosque will not work because when pushed, people have their own ways of survival. The answer to the Jerusalem question is political and doesn’t need any more counterproductive security solutions or collective punishments.

Saudi diplomacy distances Iran from Horn of Africa
Hassan Al Mustafa/Al Arabiya/October 23/15/
The hospitality extended toward the leaders of Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea during their recent state visits to Riyadh was not just about protocol. It reflects a Saudi goal of strengthening relations with countries in the Horn of Africa, which Iran has used to expand its influence to the rest of the continent. In recent years, Tehran fortified its naval fleet in international waters near the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb. It also cultivated strong security relations with Sudan, which Iran used to supply weapons to Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip via the Sinai Peninsula. These expanded relations beyond the Middle East have political and security dimensions, especially amid Iranian expansion toward Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. Sudan’s participation in the Arab alliance to support the legitimate Yemeni government, including sending soldiers to Yemen, came after agreements between Riyadh and Khartoum that resulted in Sudan decreasing its military and political cooperation with Tehran.Observers believe solid diplomatic ties between Riyadh and countries in the Horn of Africa can enhance regional and naval security in the Strait of Bab al-Mandeb, limit piracy and the movement of terrorist groups by sea, and control arms-smuggling to Yemen and other conflict zones in the Middle East.
Yemen is important vis-a-vis Riyadh’s relations with these countries, especially that Saudi Arabia is geographically close to Yemen, and there are historical, cultural and commercial ties between them. In addition, many Yemenis reside in Saudi Arabia as merchants or refugees who fled ongoing conflict in their country. Djibouti’s President Ismail Omar Guelleh told Al-Riyadh daily: “The role of our country has been made clear since day one as we support Operation Decisive Storm and Renewal of Hope in Yemen. Our stance in supporting the legitimate Yemeni government represented in President Abdrabbu Mansour Hadi [had been made clear] before Decisive Storm was even launched.”
South East Asia
According to African sources, Riyadh will also host Somali and Chadian official visits. South East Asian Muslim countries are another vital zone of Saudi interest. In the past few days, Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir visited Indonesia and Malaysia - the two countries with the largest Muslim populations - as well as Singapore. A Saudi analyst says Indonesia and Malaysia are regionally important, and Riyadh is presenting itself as an economic partner and investor in mutually beneficial developmental and industrial projects. Riyadh has offered the same to the countries in the Horn of Africa. According to the analyst, this policy is based on equality and respect. These expanded relations beyond the Middle East have political and security dimensions, especially amid Iranian expansion toward Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. These countries provide geopolitical depth to Tehran.
However, they suffer from unrest, as well as economic and sectarian problems. Therefore, some analysts say Riyadh’s efforts to develop ties with more stable countries will allow the kingdom to achieve its goals of official partnerships based on international law.

Report: Israeli aircraft flew over Iran on attack test flight in 2012
Ynetnews/October 23/15
Israeli aircraft entered and left Iranian airspace in 2012 as part of a test flight for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facility at Fordow, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday. The report stated that "nerves frayed at the White House after senior officials learned Israeli aircraft had flown in and out of Iran in what some believed was a dry run for a commando raid on the site." As a result, the US sent a second aircraft carrier to the area and put fighter jets on alert. The newspaper wrote a comprehensive investigative report on the crisis of confidence that developed between the US and Israel under President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. As part of the investigation, intelligence officials and analysts that spoke with the newspaper revealed the Israeli flight over Iran.
One official said that the US monitored Israeli military activity and eavesdropped on Israeli bases in 2012 after they learned about the flight. New information came in every day but US officials said that some of the information was classified and US security agencies were unable to receive the majority of the messages. The report states that US Air Force analysts came to the conclusion that Israel did not have the necessary armament and aircraft to demolish the Iranian reactors. This conclusion was transferred to the Israelis, who in response gave the Americans an outline of its own plan: transport aircraft would land in Iran with commando teams to blow the front doors of the nuclear plant at Fordow and sabotage it. Pentagon officials thought it was a suicide mission and pressured Israel to give early warning to the United States, but Israel did not commit itself to doing so.
US intelligence agencies intensified their satellite tracking of IAF planes according to the report. They found out that pilots were put on alert to attack on dark nights without moonlight. They tracked the IAF training for combat missions, including examinations of Iran's air defense system in an attempt to trick it.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) which cited senior White House and Pentagon officials, wrote that in 2012 there was a sense that Israel was about to attack and the White House felt that there was an urgent need to promote a diplomatic solution. The White House, the report noted, decided to leave Prime Minister Netanyahu in the dark regarding secret negotiations that were being conducted by the US with Iran in Oman. The fear was that Netanyahu would leak the existence of the talks and undermine them. Obama's aides had very little good will towards Netanyahu who was perceived as a supporter of Republican candidate Mitt Romney during the 2012 elections. Obama left a meeting with Netanyahu with a sense that he wanted to attack on the eve of the presidential elections.
The WSJ cited defense sources in Washington who stated that Israeli officials discussed with their US counterparts the possibility of obtaining weapons for a possible attack. Topping the list was the V-22 Osprey, a plane-helicopter which fits in well with the Israeli plan to land commandos. Israeli officials were also interested in the possibility of procuring the Massive Ordnance Penetrator designed by the US to destroy bunkers at the Fordow facility. Netanyahu wanted “somebody in the administration to show acquiescence, if not approval” for a military strike, said Gary Samore, who was Obama's top adviser on the Iran nuclear issue during his first term. But the Americans replied that this was a serious error and the administration refused to supply Israel with military equipment required for attack. The US tried hiding from Israel the first Oman conversations, revealing them only once Hassan Rouhani became president of Iran. Samore believed that it was wrong to leave Israel out of the picture for so long. The State Department's nuclear expert Robert Einhorn said that it had a negative impact on Israel's attitude towards the talks. It was reported that following the incident the US government decided to send a second aircraft carrier to the region and put fighter jets on alert in case an Israeli attack will led to a regional war. However, the government now admits that the exceptional flight over Iran made them draw mistaken conclusions.

News Bulletin Achieves Since 2006 Click Here to go to the LCCC Daily English/Arabic News Buletins Archieves Since 2006

News Bulletin Achieves Since 2006
Click Here to go to the LCCC Daily English/Arabic News Buletins Archieves Since 2006