Palestinians take to streets to cheer on UN bid

Palestinians participate a rally in support of the Palestinian bid for statehood recognition in the United Nations in the northern West Bank village of Al-Zababdeh, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2011. Dozens of Palestinian protesters on Thursday have denounced President Barack Obama for his opposition to a bid to win U.N. recognition of a state of Palestine in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem. Photo: Mohammed Ballas / AP

Seattle Post - Palestinians take to streets to cheer on UN bid

By DALIA NAMMARI and DIAA HADID
Associated Press

Published: Friday, September 23, 2011 at 5:32 p.m.

Last Modified: Friday, September 23, 2011 at 5:32 p.m.

RAMALLAH, West Bank - Thousands of jubilant, flag-waving Palestinians, watching on outdoor screens across the West Bank, cheered their president on Friday as he submitted his historic request for recognition of a state of Palestine to the United Nations.

Mahmoud Abbas' defiant stance, pushing for U.N. recognition over strong objections from the U.S. and Israel, has struck a chord with Palestinians increasingly disillusioned after nearly two decades of failed efforts to bring them independence. At the U.N. General Assembly, Abbas' announcement was met by a standing ovation, a stirring sight for Palestinians who felt their plight had largely been forgotten.

In the city of Nablus, thousands packed into the main square, decorated with large Palestinian flags and posters of Abbas. Fathers came with children on their shoulders. Young men climbed onto surrounding rooftops. Elderly women were assisted by younger relatives.

The crowd cheered throughout the speech, roaring ecstatically when Abbas, known as Abu Mazen, announced from the podium of the General Assembly that he had submitted the request for full U.N. membership.

"We are here celebrating because Abu Mazen is making us a state. We want to have our own state, like any other country. All countries must support us," said Reem al-Masri, a 30-year-old schoolteacher, who lost a brother and two cousins in fighting with Israel during the second Palestinian uprising against occupation a decade ago.

"This is our land. We're going to be strong in it until it's liberated. When you have a state all your dreams come true," she said.

In Ramallah, the seat of Abbas' government, a crowd of several thousand cheered, whistled and chanted "God is great" during Abbas' speech. Fuad Ashilla, 50, said it's important Abbas not succumb to American pressure to withdraw his request.

Some Palestinians said they were inspired by the wave of protests across the Arab world calling for political freedom.

"As you saw in the Arab world, when the people go to the street they say what people want," said Ghassan Jabr, 47, at Yasser Arafat Square in Ramallah. "If this is what people want, then this must happen."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly shortly after Abbas, saying he was ready to make painful compromises for peace, but that the Palestinians must take Israeli security concerns seriously. In the West Bank city of Hebron, several spectators threw shoes at an outdoor screen during Netanyahu's speech in a show of contempt.

The joy over Abbas' move was marred by violence just hours earlier. Near the West Bank village of Qusra, Israeli soldiers shot dead a Palestinian man during rock-throwing clashes between the villagers and Israeli settlers, according to witnesses and military accounts.

Earlier Friday, Palestinians supporting the recognition bid clashed with Israeli soldiers in three West Bank locations.

At Qalandiya, a major Israeli checkpoint between the West Bank and Jerusalem, Israeli troops fired tear gas to disperse Palestinian stone-throwers. The confrontations lasted several hours, and by late afternoon, medics said some 70 Palestinians had been injured by rubber-coated steel pellets or suffered tear gas inhalation.

In the West Bank village of Nabi Saleh, demonstrators carried a chair painted in the U.N.'s signature blue to symbolize the quest for recognition. They burned Israeli flags and posters of President Barack Obama, and threw stones before being enveloped by tear gas fired by Israeli troops. Clashes were also reported in the nearby village of Bilin.

Abbas has called for peaceful marches in support of his bid to win U.N. recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem - territories Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast War. Friday night's rallies indicated that his people are heeding that call, though both Israeli and Palestinian officials have expressed concerns that demonstrations could spill over into violence.

Late Friday, the Israeli military said it had gone on high alert for what it called an imminent Hamas attack along its border with Egypt. Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich, an army spokeswoman, said there was "concrete intelligence" that Hamas and maybe other militant groups were trying to infiltrate the border - in a potential attempt to torpedo the Palestinian statehood bid at the U.N., which Hamas opposes.

Last month, militants infiltrated Israel from Egypt, killing eight Israelis. Six Egyptian soldiers were killed as Israel pursued the attackers.

An Egyptian official said he received reports from the Israeli side that there were plans by militants groups to plant a car bomb on the border. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said authorities in Egypt briefly closed the border crossing, but it has since reopened.

Full U.N. membership can only be bestowed by the U.N. Security Council, where Abbas' request will almost certainly be derailed - either by a failure to win the needed nine votes in the 15-member body or by a U.S. veto if the necessary majority is obtained.

The Palestinians say they are seeking full U.N. membership to underscore their right to statehood, but have left open the option of a lesser alternative - a nonmember observer state. Such a status would be granted by the General Assembly, where the Palestinians enjoy broad support.

Siding with Israel, Obama has said a Palestinian state can only be established as a result of negotiations, and that there is no short-cut to independence.

Abbas has said negotiations remain his preference, but that he will not resume talks - frozen since 2008 - unless Israel agrees to the pre-1967 frontier as a baseline and freezes all settlement construction on occupied land. The Palestinian demands are widely backed by the international community, including the U.S., but Obama has been unable to persuade Israel's hardline prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to agree to them.

Netanyahu says he wants to negotiate without preconditions and accuses the Palestinians of missing an opportunity for peace. Abbas says settlement expansion pre-empts the outcome of negotiations by creating facts on the ground.

Abbas enjoys broad popular support at home for his recognition bid, but his main political rival, the Islamic militant Hamas, opposes it. Hamas has ruled the Gaza Strip since seizing it from Abbas in a violent takeover in 2007.

Gaza's Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, said Friday that Abbas was giving up Palestinian rights by seeking recognition for a state in the pre-1967 borders.

On Friday evening, several Hamas officials watched the speech at an office in Gaza City, taking notes and exchanging text messages with leaders of the movement in Syria and Lebanon.

Hamas' founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel and a state in all of the territory between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River.

"The Palestinian people do not beg the world for a state, and the state can't be created through decisions and initiatives," Haniyeh said. "States liberate their land first and then the political body can be established."

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Hadid reported from Nablus. Associated Press writers Aron Heller in Ramallah, Nasser Shiyoukhi in Hebron, Ibrahim Barzak in Gaza City and Sarah El Deeb in Cairo contributed to this report.

Israel, Egypt try to stem damage from embassy riot

Protesters are seen among flaming vehicles outside the building housing the Israeli embassy in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, Sept. 9, 2011. Hundreds of Egyptian protesters, some swinging hammers and others using their bare hands, tore down parts of a graffiti-covered security wall outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo on Friday. Thousands elsewhere protested for the first time in a month against the country's military rulers.

Miami Herald - Israel, Egypt try to stem damage from embassy riot

By MAGGIE MICHAEL and DIAA HADID
Associated Press

Israel and Egypt's leadership tried Saturday to limit the damage in ties after protesters stormed Israel's embassy in Cairo, trashing offices and prompting the evacuation of nearly the entire staff from Egypt in the worst crisis between the countries since their 1979 peace treaty.

The 13-hour rampage deepened Israel's fears that it is growing increasingly isolated amid the Arab world's uprisings and, in particular, that Egypt is turning steadily against it after the fall of Hosni Mubarak, the authoritarian leader who was a close ally.

In Israelis' eyes, the scene of cars burning outside the embassy and the tale of six Israeli guards trapped inside for hours in a steel-doored safe room underscored their view that anti-Israeli sentiment in Egypt was running free after decades of being contained by Mubarak's regime. The ousted leader's powerful security forces never would have let a protest get near the Nile-side embassy.

Egypt's new military rulers, in turn, appear caught between preserving key ties with Israel - which bring guarantee them billions in U.S. military aid - and pressure from the Egyptian public. Many Egyptians are demanding an end to what they see as too cozy a relationship under Mubarak, who they feel knuckled under to Israel and the U.S., doing nothing to pressure for concessions to the Palestinians.

Egyptian security forces did nothing as hundreds of protesters massed Friday outside the Nile-side high rise residential building where the Israeli Embassy is located and tore down a concrete security wall Egyptian authorities erected there only weeks earlier. Many protesters saw the wall as a symbol of the government's willingness to protect Israelis but not Egyptians, since it was put up to keep back protests after Israeli forces chasing militants accidentally killed five Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula.

Police and military also did little initially when a group of around 30 protesters after nightfall climbed in a third-story window and raced up to the embassy floors, broke into an office and began throwing Hebrew-language documents to the crowd below. The protesters ransacked parts of two floors of the embassy for hours until police finally managed to clear them out in the early hours Saturday.

Frantic Israeli calls to President Barack Obama brought American intercession to help ease the violence.

An Egyptian security official said the ruling military did not order the police to clamp down on the protests outside in order to "avoid a massacre." They couldn't move more quickly to clear out protesters inside the embassy because the fervent crowd outside "considered them heroes," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to talk to the press.

But in a Saturday evening television address, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu avoided any condemnations and instead stressed the need to maintain its strategic relationship with Egypt, whose peace with Israel - though sometimes chilly - has been a vital peg of stability for the Jewish state.

"We will continue to keep the peace with Egypt it is an interest of both countries," Netanyahu said.

He thanked Egyptian commandos for rescuing the six trapped embassy guards, saying they "prevented a tragedy without a doubt" and stressed that Israeli officials had been in touch with Egyptian counterparts throughout the unrest.

Still, he and his Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman hinted the American intervention prompted Egyptian authorities to act. Both profusely thanked President Barack Obama for helping.

"I asked him to help, it was a decisive moment, I would even say fateful, he said he would do everything he could to help and he did so. He deployed all means and influence and I think we owe him a special thank you," Netanyahu said.

Lieberman said that after Netanyahu's call to Obama, "we immediately felt a change, a little more movement on the Egyptian side and I think that without elaborating the U.S. representatives did extraordinary work and they deserve the credit."

Both said Israel would send back its ambassador once conditions are right. The ambassador and the entire embassy staff except for one deputy ambassador were evacuated overnight from Egypt along with their families.

From the Egyptian side, the ruling military council and civilian government underlined in a statement read on state TV that Egypt is committed to international conventions and the protection of diplomatic missions.

They also vowed to crack down on future protests at the embassy, warning that Egypt was experiencing a "real predicament that threatens the very body of the state that requires decisive actions." To "safeguard the state," they said they would re-invigorate parts of hated emergency laws, which for months the military has promised to abolish in a concession to demands for reform.

Mubarak was a close ally of the Israelis, building economic ties and cooperating with them on security, particularly helping in the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip. Since his Feb. 11 fall, ties between the two countries have steadily worsened as Egypt's new military rulers ease off his pro-Israeli policies, including opening the border with the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Anger flared last month after the deaths of the five Egyptian police officers in Sinai, killed by Israeli forces chasing Gaza militants who carried out a deadly attack in Israel. Mass protests flares in Cairo, demanding the expulsion of the Israeli ambassador. The military nearly pulled Egypt's ambassador to Israel in protest. Calls have even grown in Egypt for ending the historic 1979 peace treaty with Israel.

The deterioration with Egypt comes as Israel has also been hit by a major downturn in ties with longtime Turkey. After Israel refused to apologize for its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla last year that killed eight Turks and a Turkish-American, Turkey expelled several senior Israeli diplomats, suspended military cooperation with Israel and boosted naval patrols in the eastern Mediterranean in response.

Israel is also feeling the heat from Palestinian plans to unilaterally seek recognition of an independent state at the United Nations this month amid a long stalemate in the peace process. Israelis also fear that the Arab spring could bring rising influence to Islamic fundamentalists in the region.

For Egypt, the rioting could worsen ties between the ruling military and young protest activists, who are sharply critical of its handling of the post-Mubarak transition. Increased use of emergency laws is likely to anger many.

Clashes outside the embassy lasted for hours when police and military finally moved in, leaving three people dead, more than 1,000 hurt and 30 arrested. Police and army troops fired tear gas and shot live ammunition in the air trying to disperse the crowd of thousands, as cars, police vehicles and trees on the streets were set ablaze.

Saturday morning, the streets around the embassy were littered with debris and charred cars. Dozens of police vehicles and armored troop carriers lined up the streets leading to the embassy and the nearby police headquarters in Giza.

Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/09/10/v-print/2399504/egypt-police-on-alert-after-israeli.html#ixzz1XijOXGbO

Egypt Troops Save 6 Israelis at Embassy

Time - Egypt Troops Save 6 Israelis at Embassy
By AP / IAN DEITCH and DIAA HADID Saturday, Sept. 10, 2011

(JERUSALEM) — The Israeli guards drew their handguns, convinced it was their final moments as they hid in a barricaded safe room from Egyptian rioters just outside the door, ransacking rooms of the embassy.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials depicted a tense stretch of hours as they watched on security cameras and listened in on conference calls with six Israeli embassy guards caught in the facility as protesters rioted on the streets outside — and broke in. In the end, Egyptian commandos made their way in and rescued the six after flurried phone calls between Israeli, American and Egyptian officials to try to resolve the unrest.
(See why the attack signals Israel's 'diplomatic tsunami.')

In a speech late Saturday, Netanyahu said one of the six, the embassy security chief named Yonatan, spoke by phone to an operations room in Jerusalem from their hiding place. "The rioters had penetrated the building, penetrated the office, and only one door separated between the rioters and Yonatan and his friends," Netanyahu said. Yonatan told the officials in the operations room, "If something happens to me I ask you tell my parents face to face and not over the phone."

Netanyahu said he told him, "Yonatan, hang in there," promising Israel would do everything it could to get them home.

The 13 hours of rioting that lasted into the early hours Saturday was the worse incident between Egypt and Israel since the two neighbors signed a 1979 peace treaty. The Israeli ambassador, staffers and their families were forced to flee on military planes back to the Jewish state before dawn Saturday. Israel kept one diplomat in Cairo — albeit in hiding.

The protest began on Friday when hundreds of demonstrators massed outside the Israeli embassy, located on the top floors of a Cairo high-rise overlooking the Nile River. They tore down a concrete security wall that Egyptian authorities erected outside the building after previous protests last month. For several hours, the protesters pounded it with sledgehammers and tore off chunks.

After nightfall, some climbed into the building through a third-floor window and raced up the stairs to the embassy, said 28-year-old protester Mustafa Sayid, who said he was among those who broke in. The group then took several hours to break through several security doors, he said. Then about 30 burst into an apartment that had been converted into reception offices for the embassy and began trashing its rooms, throwing documents in Hebrew out the balcony to the thousands in the crowd below. Sayid showed a reporter cell phone video footage he said he recorded inside of young men ransacking one of the rooms.

Israeli television stations, citing Israeli officials, said the protesters eventually gained access to two floors of the three-floor embassy, as Netanyahu and other officials in Jerusalem watched the events on surveillance cameras. On one of the floors, the six Israeli embassy guards huddled behind the steel door of a safe room, drawing their handguns when they heard the protesters outside fearing they would break in.

The protesters, who were unarmed, spotted one Israeli man in the area of the reception apartment, said the protester Sayid. They chased him and began beating him up, but by that time some Egyptian police had reached the area. The police pushed the protesters off the Israeli and took him away, Sayid said. The Israeli was apparently not one of the six. The Netanyahu aide said no Israelis were injured in the night's events, so it appeared the man was not seriously harmed.

Several hours later, Egyptian commandos reached the Israeli guards, the aide said. An Egyptian security official said the commandos were sent after the Israeli ambassador, Yitzhak Levanon, spoke by phone with a member of Egypt's ruling military council and asked for help in evacuating the personnel. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2092695,00.html#ixzz1XiiqNetk

In grim Gaza, rise of middle class rankles

Post Gazette - In grim Gaza, rise of middle class rankles

Saturday, August 27, 2011
By Diaa Hadid, The Associated Press

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- A budding middle class in the impoverished Gaza Strip is flaunting its wealth, sipping coffee at gleaming new cafes, shopping for shoes at the new tiny shopping malls and fueling perhaps the most acrimonious grass-roots resentment yet toward the ruling Hamas movement.

This middle class, which has become visible at the same time as a mini-construction boom in this blockaded territory, is celebrating its weddings in opulent halls and vacationing in newly built beach bungalows. That level of consumption may be modest by Western standards, but it's in startling contrast to the grinding poverty of most Gazans, who rely on U.N. food handouts to get by.

Some of the well-off are Hamas loyalists. That rankles many Gaza residents because the conservative Islamic movement gained popularity by tending to the poor -- through charitable aid, education and medical care -- along with its armed struggle against Israel.

"Hamas has become rich at the expense of the people," fumed a 22-year-old seamstress, Nisrine, as she stitched decorative applique onto a dress. She wouldn't disclose her family name, not wanting to be seen criticizing the militant group.

Gaza's Hamas government denies its loyalists have gotten wealthy since the group came to power.

Corruption "doesn't touch us," said Hamas official Yusef Rizka.

But others -- even those close to Hamas -- say the militant group must pay attention.

"There is a nouveau riche that has followed the rise of the government," said Alaa Araj, a former Gaza economic minister and businessman considered close to Hamas. "We must sound the alarm. [Resentment] is growing in Gaza."

Some two-thirds of Gaza's 1.6 million people live in poverty and rely on U.N. food aid. About half the work force is unemployed. Many employed Gazans are paid miserly wages, keeping them struggling.

Hamas has always had a small core of prominently wealthy loyalists. But it appears another small group has seen its fortunes rise since the Hamas came to power, primarily investors and high-level civil servants in Gaza's 24,000-strong bureaucracy.

The territory also has an established middle class of old merchant families, senior aid officials and loyalists of Fatah, a Palestinian group that rivals Hamas. But there's less resentment toward them -- perhaps because they are not in power.

"I feel like our society has been divided," said Siham Liqtati, whose taxi driver husband earns $8 a day to support their family of six.

"There are those who are high up, and the rest of us are nothing," she lamented.