Just Foreign Policy News
October 13, 2011
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I) Actions and Featured Articles
***Action: Press Congress to Oppose the Bahrain Arms Sale
While the U.S. has been vocal about human rights abuses in Syria, it’s been quiet about the crackdown against the democracy movement in Bahrain, a U.S. ally. Victims of the crackdown have demanded the U.S. show consistency and speak forcefully about human rights abuses in Bahrain. But the Pentagon intends to sell $53 million worth of weapons to Bahrain, an action likely to be seen as a U.S. seal of approval on the anti-democracy crackdown.
Rep. Jim McGovern and Sen. Ron Wyden have introduced a resolution of disapproval to block the arms sale. Broad Congressional support for this resolution would increase pressure on the Administration to speak up about human rights in Bahrain.
Ask your Representative and Senators to add pressure on the Administration to change its policy on Bahrain by signing the McGovern-Wyden resolution.
https://www.justforeignpolicy.org/act/bahrainarmsdeal
Seven People Occupying DC Arrested Protesting Wars at House Armed Services Committee
Interrupt Def. Sec. Panetta with "Troops Home" Message
Dozens of people who are part of Occupy DC, camping out in Freedom Plaza and McPhearson Square, packed the line to get into the House Armed Services Committee where Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was testifying.
http://october2011.org/stories/seven-people-occupying-dc-arrested-protesting-wars-house-armed-services-committee
99% Protesters #Occupy the Senate
On Tuesday, protesters made themselves heard in the Senate, calling for the end of the wars and opposing Wall Street-driven trade policy.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/senate-free-trade_b_1007749.html
Countdown to Drawdown
There is no timetable for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan. 62% of Americans wants all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan within two years, but the Pentagon wants to keep them there until at least 2024. We’ve created a website to publicize these facts and track the drawdown to build pressure for a real withdrawal timetable.
http://countdowntodrawdown.org/
Jubilee South Petition: Withdraw MINUSTAH troops from Haiti
Haitian grassroots groups and their allies across Latin America are calling for the withdrawal of the UN peacekeeping mission (known as MINUSTAH) from Haiti.
[More info at the link; you have to sign in to change.org to sign the petition but not to see the info.] http://www.change.org/petitions/withdraw-minustah-troops-from-haiti
Tammy Baldwin: It’s Time to End America’s Longest War
"… we must bring our troops home and end our involvement in Afghanistan on a much more rapid timetable than President Obama has offered… I am calling on him to produce a new plan for ending our involvement in Afghanistan as quickly — and safely — as possible."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-tammy-baldwin/afghanistan-war-10-years_b_998698.html
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II) Summary:
Alleged Iran Plot
1) The Qods Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has a reputation for careful and methodical work, and effective use of local proxies and their pragmatic deployment as covert tools to expand Iran’s influence, the Christian Science Monitor reports. That’s why Iran experts are raising questions about US charges of an Iran-backed bomb plot.
"It’s a very strange case, it doesn’t really fit Iran’s mode of operation," says Alireza Nader, Iran analyst at Rand and coauthor of studies about the Revolutionary Guard. "This [plot] doesn’t seem to serve Iran’s interests in any conceivable way," says Nader. He says it is "difficult" to believe that either Qassim Soleimani – the canny commander of the Qods Force – or Iran’s deliberative supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, would order such an attack that "would put all of Iran’s objectives and strategies at risk."
"This plot, if true, departs from all known Iranian policies and procedures," writes Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University and principal White House aide during the 1979 Iranian revolution and hostage crisis. Sick notes, "it is difficult to believe that they would rely on a non-Islamic criminal gang to carry out this most sensitive of all possible missions."
"[I]t is essentially impossible to believe that the [Islamic Republic of Iran] would act in such a way as to open a major new front against itself," writes analyst Muhammad Sahimi for Tehran Bureau. Sahimi also notes that, even at the height of the regime’s assassinations of opponents in the past, it did not target non-Iranians.
2) U.S. officials conceded that hard evidence is scant that Iran’s supreme leader and the Quds Force covert operations unit were aware of an alleged plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the U.S., Reuters reports.
Kenneth Katzman, an Iran specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said there were elements of the alleged plot that did not make sense. "The idea of using a Texas car salesman who is not really a Quds Force person himself, who has been in residence in the United States many years, that doesn’t add up," Katzman said. "There could have been some contact on this with the Quds Force, but the idea that this was some sort of directed, vetted, fully thought-through plot, approved at high levels in Tehran leadership I think defies credulity," he said.
3) Nothing has emerged from Manssor Arbabsiar’s past to suggest that Arbabsiar would be implicated in an international terror plot, the Austin American-Statesman reports. David Tomscha, who owned a car lot with Arbabsiar, said his partner was known for losing car titles, keys and being generally disorganized. Tom Hosseini, who has known Arbabsiar since college, said Arbabsiar was "a joke." "He used to drink, smoke pot, go with the prostitutes," Hosseini said. "This guy is not a mastermind."
Bahrain Arms Deal
4) Angry at a Russian veto of a U.S.-sponsored UN resolution against Syria, US Ambassdador Susan Rice implied that Russia was just acting to protect its arms sales to Syria, Inter Press Service reports. But at the same time the U.S. is planning to sell $53 million of weapons to Bahrain, where unrest has claimed the lives of 34 people, mostly civilians, at least 1,400 others have been arrested, and more than 3,600 dismissed from their jobs for participating in demonstrations demanding a democratic government.
"The U.S. government appears hypocritical when it condemns the use of force against Syrian protestors but condones similar behavior in Bahrain," said Natalie Goldring, senior fellow at the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown. Goldring pointed out that Ambassador Rice said the opponents of the U.N. resolution would rather sell arms to the Syrian regime than stand with the Syrian people. "Transferring weapons to Bahrain leaves the U.S. government vulnerable to the same accusation that we would rather sell arms to the Bahrain regime than to stand with the people of Bahrain," she added.
Afghanistan
5) A report by Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn for the Afghanistan Analysts Network charges that the U.S. has inflated claims of Taliban "leaders" killed or captured in night raids, the Guardian reports. Alex Strick van Linschoten said the US [i.e."US-led coalition" – JFP] definition of the word leader was "so broad as to be meaningless." He said the words leader and "facilitator" were sometimes used interchangeably in US press releases, although facilitator could just be someone whose house an insurgent group was thought to have used. A previous study of night raids had found that many people classified as leaders captured in night raids had subsequently been released by the US.
"The use of the word ‘leader’ is intended to convey the impression that the masterminds of the Taliban are being taking off the battlefield. That’s a misrepresentation," Strick van Linschoten said.
6) A UN report cites evidence of "systematic torture" during interrogations by Afghan intelligence and police officials even as the US and other Western backers provide training and pay nearly the entire budget of the Afghan ministries running the detention centers, the New York Times reports. Detainees are hung by their hands and beaten with cables, and in some cases their genitals are twisted until the prisoners lose consciousness. Such widespread use of torture in a detention system supported by US mentors and money raises serious questions about potential complicity of US officials, the Times says.
7) Secretary of State Clinton signaled the US remains open to exploring a peace deal including the Haqqani network, Reuters reports. Inclusion of the Haqqani network in a hoped-for peace deal — now a chief objective in the Obama administration’s Afghanistan policy — is a controversial idea in Washington, Reuters says. The State Department is facing heat from Capitol Hill for refraining from officially designating the Haqqani group as a terrorist organization.
Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange
8) Israelis and Palestinians welcomed the announcement of a deal to free captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, the BBC reports. Crowds of Israelis took to the streets of Jerusalem in celebration at the news, while similar scenes were played out among Palestinians in Gaza. Under the deal, more than 1,000 Palestinians and Sgt Shalit will be freed, beginning in days.
Israeli settler attacks in West Bank
9) The UN human rights office urged Israel to stop Israeli extremists from attacking Palestinian civilians in the West Bank, AP reports. UN spokesman Rupert Colville said the wave of attacks since September must be properly investigated and victims compensated, adding they were "emblematic of the phenomenon of settler violence throughout the West Bank."
Palestine statehood bid
10) A plurality of Americans support recognition of a Palestinian state, according to a Pew Research/Washington Post poll. Forty-two percent said the Palestinians should get recognition as a nation, compared to 26 percent who disagreed, with 32 percent expressing no opinion. A majority of Democrats favor recognition: Democrats favor the idea by 52 percent to 14 percent with 32 percent in the "don’t know" column. Republicans oppose a Palestinian state by 38 percent to 27 percent, with 35 percent expressing no opinion. Independents share the Democrats’ view by 45 percent to 28 percent, with 27 percent answering "don’t know."
Contents:
Alleged Iran Plot
1) Used-car salesman as Iran proxy? Why assassination plot doesn’t add up for experts.
The US has blamed the specialist Qods Force in an Iran assassination plot. But those who track the group say the plot doesn’t reflect the careful planning, efficiency, and strategy the Qods Force is known for.
Scott Peterson, Christian Science Monitor, October 12, 2011
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1012/Used-car-salesman-as-Iran-proxy-Why-assassination-plot-doesn-t-add-up-for-experts
Istanbul, Turkey – How careful is Iran’s Qods Force when it comes to covert operations abroad?
This wing of the Revolutionary Guard was accused by US military commanders in Iraq in 2007 and 2008 of jeopardizing the efforts of more than 150,000 American troops on the ground, of backing militias of all stripes, and of exercising strong influence on Baghdad’s rulers.
Yet how many Iranian Qods Force operatives did that take? One US diplomat posted to Baghdad at the time had the consensus answer: There were just eight Qods Force men in all of Iraq.
Indeed, the Qods Force has a reputation for careful, methodical work – as well as effective use of local proxies, and ultimately their pragmatic deployment by Tehran as covert tools to expand Iran’s influence across a region in flux. That explains why Iran experts are raising questions about fresh US charges of an Iran-backed bomb plot, this time to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington and blow up the Saudi and Israeli embassies.
A criminal complaint filed by US prosecutors on Tuesday charge Mansour Arbabsiar – a naturalized US citizen with an Iranian passport from Corpus Christi, Texas – and Gholam Shakuri, "an Iran-based member of Iran’s Qods Force," with plotting to kill the Saudi diplomat on US soil in an operation "directed by factions of the Iranian government."
[…] But Iran specialists who have followed the Islamic Republic for years say that many details in the alleged plot just don’t add up.
"It’s a very strange case, it doesn’t really fit Iran’s mode of operation," says Alireza Nader, an Iran analyst at the Rand Corp. in Arlington, Va., and coauthor of studies about the Revolutionary Guard.
"When you look at Iranian use of terrorism, it has some very specific objectives, whether it’s countering the United States in Iraq or Afghanistan, or retaliating against perceived Israeli actions," says Mr. Nader.
"This [plot] doesn’t seem to serve Iran’s interests in any conceivable way," says Nader. "Assassinating the Saudi ambassador would increase international pressure against Iran, could be considered an act of war … by Saudi Arabia, it could really destabilize the government in Iran; and this is a political system that is interested in its own survival."
Iran has been trying to evade sanctions, strengthen relations with non-Western partners, while continuing with its nuclear program, notes Nader.
He says it is "difficult" to believe that either Qassim Soleimani – the canny commander of the Qods Force – or Iran’s deliberative supreme religious leader, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, would order such an attack that "would put all of Iran’s objectives and strategies at risk."
That view has been echoed by many Iran watchers, who are raising doubts about the assassination plot allegations.
"This plot, if true, departs from all known Iranian policies and procedures," writes Gary Sick, an Iran expert at Columbia University and principal White House aide during the 1979 Iranian revolution and hostage crisis.
While Iran may have many reasons to be angry at the US and Saudi Arabia, Mr. Sick notes in a posting on the Gulf2000/Columbia experts list that he moderates, "it is difficult to believe that they would rely on a non-Islamic criminal gang to carry out this most sensitive of all possible missions."
Relying on "at least one amateur and a Mexican criminal drug gang that is known to be riddled with both Mexican and US intelligence agents" appears to be sloppy, adds Sick. "Whatever else may be Iran’s failings, they are not noted for utter disregard of the most basic intelligence tradecraft."
The odd set of details means that the usual cost-benefit calculation that experts often attribute to Tehran’s decisionmaking does not apply here, says Muhammad Sahimi, in an analysis for the Tehran Bureau website.
At a time when pressure is building on Iran over "gross human rights violations," sanctions are showing signs of working, Iran is "deeply worried about the fate of its strategic partner in Syria … tensions with Turkey are increasing … and a fierce power struggle is under way within Iran," says Mr. Sahimi, "it is essentially impossible to believe that the IRI [Islamic Republic of Iran] would act in such a way as to open a major new front against itself."
Sahimi also notes that, even at the height of the regime’s assassinations of opponents in the past, it did not target non-Iranians. "It is keenly aware that it is under the American microscope," says Sahimi, making even less likely Iran embarking "on such a useless assassination involving a low-level, non-player individual."
[…]
2) Officials concede gaps in U.S. knowledge of Iran plot
Mark Hosenball and Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters, Wed, Oct 12 2011
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/12/us-usa-iran-plot-idUSTRE79B7VO20111012
Washington – Iran’s supreme leader and the shadowy Quds Force covert operations unit were likely aware of an alleged plot to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, but hard evidence of that is scant, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
The United States does not have solid information about "exactly how high it goes," one official said.
The Obama administration has publicly and directly blamed Iran’s government for seeking to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, and has warned Tehran it will face consequences. The accusation has heightened tensions in the volatile, oil-rich Gulf.
Tehran has called the accusation a fabrication designed to sow discord in the region.
The U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said their confidence that at least some Iranian leaders were aware of the alleged plot was based largely on analyses and their understanding of how the Quds Force operates.
They said it was "more than likely" that Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and Quds Force commander Qasem Suleimani had prior knowledge or approved of the suspected plot. They insisted it was "not a rogue operation in any way," and was sanctioned and directed by Quds Force operatives in Iran.
But other parts of Iran’s factionalized government may not have known, they said. That included President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who "didn’t necessarily know about this," one said.
[…] Kenneth Katzman, an Iran specialist at the Congressional Research Service, said there were elements of the alleged plot that did not make sense.
"The idea of using a Texas car salesman who is not really a Quds Force person himself, who has been in residence in the United States many years, that doesn’t add up," Katzman said.
"There could have been some contact on this with the Quds Force, but the idea that this was some sort of directed, vetted, fully thought-through plot, approved at high levels in Tehran leadership I think defies credulity," he said.
[…]
3) Local terror plot suspect described as more a ‘joke’ than mastermind
Steven Kreytak, Austin American-Statesman, 11:10 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011
http://www.statesman.com/news/local/local-terror-plot-suspect-described-as-more-a-1910853.html
Manssor Arbabsiar’s neighbors in Round Rock recalled him as unfriendly. Two Austin restaurant owners said they had once asked him to leave their establishments for being rude. And Arbabsiar’s former business associates in Corpus Christi described him as a foundering businessman.
But nothing has emerged from the 56-year-old Iranian-born U.S. citizen’s past – including a small-time criminal record – to suggest that Arbabsiar would be implicated in an international terror plot.
[…] David Tomscha, who owned the car lot with Arbabsiar, said his partner was known at the time for losing car titles, keys and being generally disorganized, according to the newspaper.
Tom Hosseini, an Iranian who has known Arbabsiar since college, told the San Antonio Express News on Wednesday that Arbabsiar was "a joke."
"He used to drink, smoke pot, go with the prostitutes," Hosseini told the newspaper. "This guy is not a mastermind."
[…] Muhammad Kosari, owner of Alborz Persian Cuisine on Anderson Lane, said that he recalls at least one time that Arbabsiar came into his restaurant. "He started talking nonsense about going to Iran and getting Persian girls," Kosari recalled. He said Arbabsiar told him: "Over there you can pay 50 bucks and have a Persian girl."
Kosari, who is from Iran, said he considered the statements disrespectful and told Arbabsiar to leave.
[…]
Bahrain Arms Deal
4) U.S. Arms Bahrain While Decrying Russian Weapons in Syria
Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service, Oct 11
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=105422
United Nations – Peeved at Russia’s Security Council veto derailing a Western- sponsored resolution against Syria last week, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice implicitly accused the Russians of protecting the beleaguered government of President Bashar al-Assad primarily to safeguard their lucrative arms market in the Middle Eastern country.
But around the same time, the United States was evaluating a 53- million-dollar weapons contract with Bahrain, where political unrest has claimed the lives of 34 people, mostly civilians, at least 1,400 others have been arrested, and more than 3,600 dismissed from their jobs for participating in street demonstrations demanding a democratic government.
"The U.S. government appears hypocritical when it condemns the use of force against Syrian protestors but condones similar behaviour in Bahrain," Dr. Natalie J. Goldring, a senior fellow with the Center for Peace and Security Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, told IPS.
Sadly, she said, the administration of President Barack Obama is on shaky ground when it lectures other countries about their arms transfers. "Its recent announcement of proposed weapons sales to Bahrain signals business as usual, at a time when we should be doing the opposite," she said.
The proposed arms contract, which has triggered strong protests from human rights groups, includes 44 armoured high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWVs), wire-guided and other missiles and launchers, along with related equipment and training.
Maria McFarland, deputy Washington director at Human Rights Watch, said, "It will be hard for people to take U.S. statements about democracy and human rights in the Middle East seriously when, rather than hold its ally Bahrain to account, it appears to reward repression with new weapons."
Goldring pointed out that Ambassador Rice said the opponents of the U.N. resolution would rather sell arms to the Syrian regime than stand with the Syrian people.
"Transferring weapons to Bahrain leaves the U.S. government vulnerable to the same accusation that we would rather sell arms to the Bahrain regime than to stand with the people of Bahrain." she added.
The Obama administration would be in a much stronger position to influence other countries behaviour if it stopped selling weapons to countries that abuse their citizens’ human rights, Goldring said.
[…]
Afghanistan
5) Nato success against Taliban in Afghanistan ‘may be exaggerated’
Report says kill-or-capture raids are not a surgical tactic as claimed and use of the word ‘leader’ is suspect
Julian Borger, Guardian, October 12, 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/oct/12/nato-taliban-afghanistan-exaggerated
The success of one of Nato’s principal tactics against the Taliban – targeted night raids aimed at killing or capturing leaders of the insurgency – may have been exaggerated to make the military campaign in Afghanistan look more effective, according to a report published on Wednesday.
The study shows that for every "leader" killed in the raids, eight other people also died, although the raids were designed to be a precise weapon aimed at decapitating the Taliban on the battlefield by removing their commanders.
The report notes that in briefings to the US media, aggregate claims made for the number of Taliban leaders killed or detained over a given period were sometimes much greater than the numbers recorded in the daily press releases.
The report, by Kandahar-based researchers Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn, for the Afghanistan Analysts Network, looked at the daily press releases published by the Nato-led International Stability Assistance Force (Isaf) to create a profile of the "kill-or-capture raids" from December 2009 to the end of September this year.
Strick van Linschoten also said Isaf’s definition of the word leader was "so broad as to be meaningless". He said the words leader and "facilitator" were sometimes used interchangeably in the Isaf press releases, although facilitator could just be someone whose house an insurgent group was thought to have used. A previous study of night raids had found that many people classified as leaders captured in night raids had subsequently been released by Isaf.
"The use of the word ‘leader’ is intended to convey the impression that the masterminds of the Taliban are being taking off the battlefield. That’s a misrepresentation," Strick van Linschoten said. "It is meant to be taken as meaning that we are taking out the brains behind the Taliban off the battlefield, but that claim doesn’t really measure up."
The report, entitled A Knock on the Door, echoes a study published last month by the Open Society Foundations. That study said that although Isaf had made strides in reducing the number of civilian casualties, the 12 to 20 raids a night over a sustained period, with thousands of arrests, many of them of non-combatants, were alienating the population and undermining the international coalition’s aims in Afghanistan.
"The raids are a far blunter weapon than we have been led to believe, and they have an indiscriminate impact," said Erica Gaston, a human rights lawyer for the Open Society Foundations and co-author of the report.
"The number one complaint we hear across the country is that all the men in a place where there is a night raid are detained, even if they just have tangential connections to the insurgents, that they gave them food or are related to them. And these raids dominate popular perceptions of the international forces, and of the Kabul government."
Statistics on the number of Taliban "leaders" killed or captured were frequently used by the former Isaf commander, and now CIA director, General David Petraeus, to prove his claims that his forces were making progress on the battlefield.
The use of night raids grew steadily during Petraeus’s time in Afghanistan, from July 2010 to July this year, and tailed off significantly after his departure to take up his new post.
[…]
6) U.N. Finds ‘Systematic’ Torture in Afghanistan
Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times, October 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/world/asia/un-report-finds-routine-abuse-of-afghan-detainees.html
Kabul, Afghanistan – Detainees are hung by their hands and beaten with cables, and in some cases their genitals are twisted until the prisoners lose consciousness at sites run by the Afghan intelligence service and the Afghan National Police, according to a United Nations report released here on Monday.
The report, based on interviews over the past year with more than 300 suspects linked to the insurgency, is the most comprehensive look at the Afghan detention system and an issue that has long concerned Western officials and human rights groups.
It paints a devastating picture of abuse, citing evidence of "systematic torture" during interrogations by Afghan intelligence and police officials even as American and other Western backers provide training and pay for nearly the entire budget of the Afghan ministries running the detention centers.
The report does not assess whether American officials knew of the abuses. But such widespread use of torture in a detention system supported by American mentors and money raises serious questions about potential complicity of American officials and whether they benefited from information obtained from suspects who had been tortured.
[…] Early word of the findings spurred immediate action. After seeing a draft of the report in September, Gen. John R. Allen, the NATO commander here in Afghanistan, halted transfers of those suspected of being insurgents to 16 of the facilities identified as sites where torture or abuse routinely took place.
He has since initiated a plan to investigate the sites, provide training in modern interrogation techniques and monitor the Afghan government’s practices. The American Embassy is now heavily involved in devising a long-term monitoring program for Afghan detention sites, American officials said.
[…]
7) U.S. Open To Afghan Peace Deal Including Haqqani
Warren Strobel, Reuters, Wed, Oct 12 2011
http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/10/12/uk-usa-afghanistan-clinton-idUKTRE79B0GY20111012
Washington – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday signaled the United States remains open to exploring a peace deal including the Haqqani network, the militant group that U.S. officials blame for a campaign of high-profile violence that could jeopardize Washington’s plans for withdrawing smoothly from Afghanistan.
"Where we are right now is that we view the Haqqanis and other of their ilk as, you know, being adversaries and being very dangerous to Americans, Afghans and coalition members inside Afghanistan, but we are not shutting the door on trying to determine whether there is some path forward," Clinton said when asked whether she believed members of the Haqqani network might reconcile with the Afghan government.
"It’s too soon to tell whether any of these groups or any individuals within them are serious," she said in an interview with Reuters.
Inclusion of the Haqqani network in a hoped-for peace deal — now a chief objective in the Obama administration’s Afghanistan policy after a decade of war — is a controversial idea in Washington.
Officials blame the group for last month’s attack on the U.S. embassy in Kabul and a truck bombing that injured scores of American soldiers.
The State Department is facing heat from Capitol Hill for refraining, at least so far, from officially designating the Haqqani group, which U.S. officials say is based in western Pakistan, as a terrorist organisation.
The White House has backed away from assertions from Admiral Mike Mullen, who was the top U.S. military officer until he retired last month, that Pakistani intelligence supported the Haqqani network in the September 13 embassy attack.
[…]
Israel-Hamas prisoner exchange
8) Gilad Shalit: Israel and Palestinians welcome deal
BBC, 12 October 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15273206
Israelis and Palestinians have welcomed the announcement of a deal to free captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Crowds of Israelis took to the streets of Jerusalem in celebration at the news, while similar scenes were played out among Palestinians in Gaza.
The deal was announced on Tuesday by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
Under the terms, more than 1,000 Palestinians and Sgt Shalit, held since 2006, will be freed, beginning in days.
Sgt Shalit, aged 19 at the time, was snatched in a cross-border raid by Hamas militants who tunnelled from Gaza into Israel.
On-off negotiations for his release have taken place for several years.
At an emergency meeting on Tuesday night, Israel’s cabinet voted overwhelmingly to accept a final deal.
"This is a tough decision," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "I believe we reached the best deal we could at this time of turbulence in the Middle East. I do not know if in the foreseeable future we will be able to reach a better deal, or any deal at all."
In Jerusalem, hundreds of young Israelis – many carrying pictures of Sgt Shalit – danced and sang in the streets following the surprise announcement.
[…] In Gaza, Hamas said tens of thousands of people took to the streets in celebration over the imminent Palestinian prisoner release. Witnesses described jubilant crowds firing guns into the air and honking car horns.
[…] Under the deal, Israel will free 1,027 Palestinians in two stages – 450 initially, then 577 in two months’ time, following Gilad Shalit’s release. The process is likely to begin early next week.
Israeli settler attacks in West Bank
9) UN rights chief urges Israel to ‘protect Palestinian civilians’ from settler attacks
Spokesman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says attacks since beginning of September show upsurge of violence in West Bank.
Associated Press, 12:03 11.10.11
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/un-rights-chief-urges-israel-to-protect-palestinian-civilians-from-settler-attacks-1.389329
The United Nations human rights office urged Israel on Tuesday to stop Israeli extremists from attacking Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.
Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva that Israel has a legal obligation "to protect Palestinian civilians and property in the occupied Palestinian territory."
Colville said that the wave of attacks occurring since September must be properly investigated and victims compensated, adding that they were "emblematic of the phenomenon of settler violence throughout the West Bank."
Colevile specifically cited the uprooting of 200 olive trees in the West Bank village of Qusra village on October 6, and the shooting death of a Palestinian civilian by an Israel Defense Forces soldier two weeks prior, as examples of incidents that should be brought for investigation.
Israel Police suspect extremist Jews to be behind a series of attacks against Arabs in Israel proper over the last few weeks, including the torching of a mosque in the North and the desecration of Muslim and Christian graves in a Jaffa cemetery.
The attacks were allegedly carried out as a "price tag" operation, a policy initiated by Israeli extremists intended as revenge attacks for any freeze or demolition of West Bank settlements.
Palestine statehood bid
10) Plurality of Americans Favor Recognition of Palestinian State, But Many Have No Opinion
Bruce Drake, Poll Watch Daily, September 20, 2011 at 6:00 pm
http://www.pollwatchdaily.com/2011/09/20/plurality-of-americans-favor-recognition-of-palestinian-state-but-many-have-no-opinion/
The drama at this year’s annual meeting of the United Nations General Assembly is focused on the Palestinian Authority’s decision to asked the Security Council to approve full membership in the U.N. for a Palestinian state – a move the Obama administration has arduously tried to head off, and has promised to veto if it passes.
But the American public appears far from transfixed by the issue and the results are mixed when asked if the Palestine should be recognized as an independent nation, according to a Pew Research Center/Washington Post poll conducted Sept. 15-18.
Forty-two percent said the Palestinians should get recognition as a nation, compared to 26 percent who disagreed, with a large number of those surveyed (32 percent) expressing no opinion.
Republicans oppose a Palestinian state by 38 percent to 27 percent, with 35 percent expressing no opinion; Democrats favor the idea by 52 percent to 14 percent with 32 percent in the "don’t know" column; and, independents share the Democrats’ view by 45 percent to 28 percent, with 27 percent answering "don’t know."
Most of those surveyed (50 percent) said they had heard a little about the story and 37 percent said they had heard nothing about it. Another 37 percent said they had heard a lot. Forty-seven percent of those who said they have heard a lot oppose recognition of Palestine.
[…]
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