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Mahmoud Abbas Signs Bid to Join ICC

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President Mahmoud Abbas signs Rome Statute to join International Criminal Court after UNSC resolution fails to pass.

abbas

by Ma’an

Ramallah/AFP: President Mahmoud Abbas Wednesday signed a Palestinian request to join the International Criminal Court, seeking a new avenue for action against Israel after a failed UN resolution on ending the occupation.

The Palestinian leadership hopes ICC membership will pave the way for war crimes prosecutions against Israeli officials for their actions in the occupied territories.

But Israel said Palestinian crimes would be exposed to the judgement of the Hague-based court if Palestine joined.

Tuesday’s vote at the Security Council came after a three-month Palestinian campaign to win support for a resolution that would have set a timeframe for ending the Israeli occupation.

Israel hailed the rejection as a victory, saying it dealt a blow to Palestinian efforts to diplomatically “embarrass and isolate” Israel.

The Palestinians denounced as “outrageously shameful” the failure of the text to win the necessary nine votes for passage.

The resolution would have set a 12-month deadline for Israel to reach a final peace deal with the Palestinians and called for a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Palestinian territories by the end of 2017.

Council heavyweights China, France, and Russia were among eight countries voting in favor, while the United States and Australia voted against.

Nigeria, which had been expected to support the resolution, was among five abstentions, which included Britain, Rwanda, Lithuania, and South Korea.

Nigeria had assured the Palestinians it would support them, but abstained after lobbying efforts by Israel and Washington.

The failure to win the nine votes necessary for adoption spared Washington having to wield its veto, which would have caused it embarrassment with key Arab allies.

But it was also a diplomatic blow for the Palestinians, who had counted on the symbolic victory of nine votes, even though the resolution would in all likelihood have vetoed by the United States.

Speaking Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu extended his special thanks to Nigeria and Rwanda.

“This is what tipped the scales,” he said.

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said “the failure of the Palestinian vote at the Security Council should teach the Palestinians that provocations and attempts to force Israel into unilateral processes will not achieve anything — quite the opposite.”

But Russia said the council’s failure to pass the resolution was “a strategic error.”

‘Shameful’

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi expressed regret over the outcome, criticizing the African nations that abstained and pledging to continue “intensive Arab diplomatic activity” in support of the Palestinian cause.

The Palestinians reacted furiously to the vote and pledged to press ahead immediately with an application for ICC membership.

“The UN Security Council vote is outrageously shameful,” said senior PLO official Hanan Ashrawi.

“Those countries that abstained demonstrated a lack of political will to hold Israel accountable and to act in accordance with the global rule of law and international humanitarian law.

The Islamist movement Hamas blamed Abbas for the setback, demanding he make good on threats to cut security cooperation with Israel and join the ICC.

“He is now facing two choices after this failure … he must make good on his threats to end security cooperation with the occupier, and sign the Rome Statute,” spokesman Fawzi Barhum told AFP, referring to the court’s founding treaty.

Senior officials said Abbas would sign the Rome Statute later Wednesday, along with 15 other international conventions, in a move that would be discussed with the leadership at 6:30 p.m.

The ICC can prosecute individuals accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes, and Palestinian plans to become a party to the court have been strongly opposed by Israel and the United States.

Israel warned that joining the court would also expose Palestinians to prosecution.

“The Palestinians will themselves be judged by this court, which will show the world the nature of Palestinian terrorism and the war crimes committed in the name of the Palestinian Authority,” foreign ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon told AFP.

PLO: Israel has detained 1266 Palestinian children in 2014

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Muntasser Bakr, an eleven-year-old Palestinian boy who lost four of his relatives when two Israeli missiles slammed into a beach during the 50-day July-August Gaza war, stands outside his house on December 24, 2014 in Gaza City. AFP / Mahmoud Hams

Muntasser Bakr, an eleven-year-old Palestinian boy who lost four of his relatives when two Israeli missiles slammed into a beach during the 50-day July-August Gaza war, stands outside his house on December 24, 2014 in Gaza City. AFP / Mahmoud Hams

by Al Akhbar

Israeli forces detained over 1,000 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank and annexed Jerusalem in 2014, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said Tuesday.

Abdul-Nasser Farawna, head of Authority of Prisoners’ Affairs, a PLO body, said that Israel detained 1,266 Palestinian children, below the age of 15, in the West Bank and Jerusalem in 2014.

“The vast majority of the arrests happened in the second half of the year,” Farawna said in a statement, adding that at least 200 children are still detained in Israeli jails on various charges.

Israeli forces routinely conduct arrest campaigns targeting Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and annexed Jerusalem on claims they are “wanted” by Israeli authorities.

According to the PLO, more than 10,000 Palestinian minors in the occupied West Bank and annexed Jerusalem have been held by the Israeli army for varying periods since 2000.

“The number of Palestinian children arrested by Israeli forces, especially in annexed East Jerusalem, has sharply risen,” Farawna declared, saying that the number of children detainees had increased by 87 percent over the past three years.

“The majority of the detained children were subjected to beatings and torture by Israeli security personnel while in detention,” he asserted.

Farawna’s statements echoed similar comments last month by another PLO official, Issa Qaraqe, who said that around 95 percent of children detainees were subjected to beatings and torture by Israeli security personnel while in detention, while many were forced to make confessions under duress and undergo unfair trials.

Violent practices by Israeli soldiers as well as settlers against Palestinian children is endemic and often abetted by the authorities.

“Israel does not provide any immunity for children and regularly violates international agreements on children’s rights by humiliating and torturing them and denying them fair trials,” Qaraqe explained.

A report by Defense for Children International (DCI) published in May 2014 revealed that Israel jails 20 percent of Palestinian children it detains in solitary confinement.

DCI said that minors held in solitary confinement spent an average of 10 days in isolation. The longest period of confinement documented in a single case was 29 days in 2012, and 28 days in 2013.

A report by The Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights Israeli forces arrested nearly 3,000 Palestinian children from the beginning of 2010 to mid-2014, the majority of them between the ages of 12 and 15 years old.

The report also documented dozens of video recorded testimonies of children arrested during the first months of 2014, pointing out that 75 percent of the detained children are subjected to physical torture and 25 percent faced military trials.

The most excruciating violations are seen in the psycho-physical torture methods, including the act of forcing children to sit on the investigation chair chained hand and foot and covering their entire heads with foul-smelling bags, in addition to depriving them of sleep.

In 2013, the UN children’s fund (UNICEF) reported that Israel was the only country in the world where children were “systematically tried” in military courts and gave evidence of practices it said were “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.”

The UNICEF report said in a 22-page report that over the past decade, Israeli forces have arrested, interrogated and prosecuted around 7,000 children between 12 and 17, mostly boys, noting the rate was equivalent to “an average of two children each day.”

Palestinian children as young as five years old have also been detained in the past.

In 2013, Israeli forces in the West Bank detained four Palestinian children aged five to nine years.

Palestinian activist Murad Ashtiye told AFP at the time that “Israeli soldiers arrest the children and tie their hands behind their backs using plastic strips.”

Meanwhile in Gaza, a 51-day Israeli aggression last August left at least 505 children dead, 20 percent of the total civilian death toll.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees UNRWA said 138 of its students were killed during the assault. The organization’s spokesperson Christopher Gunness said an additional 814 UNRWA students were injured and 560 have become orphans due to the Israeli onslaught.

The worst massacre took place in the Abu Hussein School of the Jabaliya refugee camp in the north killing and injuring dozens even after the agency said that it gave the school’s coordinates to the Israelis more than 17 times so they won’t hit it.

(Anadolu, Al-Akhbar)

Bahrain adopts Israel strategy to alter demographics: activist

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Nabeel Rajab speaks to the crowd in Bahrain regarding the deliberations at Geneva. Photo: Ahmed Al-Fardan

Nabeel Rajab speaks to the crowd in Bahrain regarding the deliberations at Geneva. Photo: Ahmed Al-Fardan

by Al-Akhbar

Prominent Bahraini human rights activist Nabeel Rajab accused Bahrain’s ruling family of seeking to change Bahrain’s demography by adopting a strategy similar to that used by the UK in the creation of Israel.

Talking to Iranian news channel Press TV, Rajab said the systematic naturalization of foreigners and the deportation of locals after revoking their citizenships are proof that al-Khalifa family is implementing the same strategy that Britain implemented in Palestine.

Dozens of Bahrainis have had their citizenship revoked and several have also been deported since Bahrain adopted the Bahraini Citizenship Law last year stipulating that suspects convicted of “terrorist” acts could be stripped of their nationality.

“The Bahraini authorities are running out of arguments to justify repression. They are now resorting to extreme measures such as jail sentences and revoking nationality to quell dissent in the country, rather than allowing people to peacefully express their views,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa deputy director.

“Arbitrarily depriving these Bahrainis of their nationality and forcing them out of Bahrain renders them ‘stateless’ and goes contrary to Bahrain’s international obligations,” said Sahraoui.
Moreover, the Bahraini ruling family have been naturalizing foreigners since 2012 in an attempt to change the demographics of the country.

According to information Al-Akhbar received earlier this year, the Bahraini authorities have granted tens of thousands of people, with certain characteristics and from designated countries, Bahraini citizenship, in an attempt to create a new sectarian majority, which would deny the Shia their rightful representation in the state’s institutions.
These tactics are similar to those used by the West to alter the demography of Palestine.

Khalil al-Tafakji, a settlement and map expert in East Jerusalem, asserted to Al-Akhbar that Israel has been systematically working since 1967 to turn Jerusalem into a city with Jewish features. “In 1967, 70,000 Palestinians and not a single Israeli lived in [East] Jerusalem, whereas today 320,000 Palestinians and at least 200,000 Israelis are residing in the city.”

Tafakji then said that “125,000 Palestinians have been forced by the Israeli occupation forces to live behind the [apartheid] wall, which means only 195,000 Palestinians are currently living in East Jerusalem, making Zionist settlers the city’s majority.”

The roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict date back to 1917, when the British government, in the now-infamous Balfour Declaration, called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Zionist state – a move never recognized by the international community.

Crackdown

Moreover, Rajab, director of the Gulf Center for Human Rights (GCHR) and co-founder of Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR), said that Britain has been supporting the Bahraini authorities, as well as other Gulf states, in their crackdown on pro-democracy protests.

Foreign military presence and military cooperation with Western countries are common in Gulf countries.

Britain said on December 5 it had sealed a deal to open a new military base in Bahrain, its first permanent base in the Middle East since it formally withdrew from the Gulf in 1971, drawing concern from Bahraini opposition groups.

Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid al-Khalifa considered the agreement to be a step that bolstered “growing” cooperation between his country and the UK.

Washington is also a long-standing ally of the ruling al-Khalifa dynasty and Bahrain is home to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

During the Gulf War in 1991, the US military presence became firmly-established with permanent bases and a comprehensive support structure after signing “protective” agreements with all the countries on the Western bank of the Gulf.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf neighbors sent troops into Bahrain in March 2011 and reinforced a crackdown that led to accusations of serious human rights violations.

With Saudi Arabia’s help, Bahrain crushed peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations that began on February 14, 2011.

The small nation has yet to resolve the conflict between the monarchy and the opposition, which argues that the country’s Shia majority population is discriminated against.

Secret flight linking Israel to the UAE reveals 'open secret' of collaboration

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A private jet is covertly flying between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi, which are said to be engaging in high-level trade in the security sector

The aircraft flying between Israel and the UAE lands in Tel Aviv on 18 December (MEE/Oren Ziv)

The aircraft flying between Israel and the UAE lands in Tel Aviv on 18 December (MEE/Oren Ziv)

by Rori Donaghy, Middle East Eye

A private jet is flying between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi up to twice per week, an analysis of publicly available data has revealed.

Analysts said the news lends weight to the “open secret” that the UAE is “actively collaborating” with Israel due to shared concerns about their future in a region racked by conflict.

Relations between Israel and the Gulf states are sensitive due to the ongoing occupation of the Palestinian territories, popularly opposed by Gulf nationals, and none of the monarchies have official diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv.

Israeli daily Haaretz first reported a plane flying between Israel and an unspecified Gulf state earlier in December. After initially not responding to requests for comment, the article’s author told MEE he “cannot go into why” the newspaper did not publish the UAE as being the destination.

The Tel Aviv-Abu Dhabi route

The flight between Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi International Airport is operated by the Geneva-based private airline PrivatAir, on an Airbus A319 registered with the tail-number D-APTA.

The plane leaves Tel Aviv on flight number PTG 315, with Jordan as the stated destination, although the Queen Alia Airport in Amman does not list its arrival. Jordan is one of the few Arab countries to have diplomatic ties with Israel.

While online flight radars have showed the flight departing Tel Aviv, and stopping briefly at Amman, they then depart for Abu Dhabi.

While online flight radars have showed the flight departing Tel Aviv and stopping briefly at Amman, they then depart for Abu Dhabi.

The private jet leaves Amman under the callsign – a plane identification number – of PTG 126 but its arrival in the UAE is not listed on Abu Dhabi International Airport’s website.

A recent trip saw an outbound flight take place from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi on 16 December. The plane returned from Abu Dhabi on 18 December using the callsign PTG 124 until Amman but then arrived at Ben Gurion on flight number PTG 313.

The PrivatAir jet approaches Amman from Abu Dhabi on 18 December (Planefinder.net)

The PrivatAir jet approaches Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on 18 December (Planefinder.net)

Neither the departure from Abu Dhabi nor the arrival at Amman is listed on each respective airport’s website.

Only Ben Gurion acknowledges the plane’s arrival and departure – the next flight is due to depart Tel Aviv at 10pm local time (2000 GMT) on 27 December using flight number PTG 315.

PrivatAir registered the Airbus A319 under their ownership on 5 March 2014 and made the first trip from Tel Aviv two days later.

The plane can hold up to 56 passengers, according to PrivatAir’s website, and is kitted out with eight business class seats around two tables at the front.

When contacted by MEE PrivatAir said they could not divulge any information about the identity of their client.

“Unfortunately the information you have requested is confidential as it concerns a private client,” a spokesperson said. “We have to remain discreet and cannot provide you with any details regarding this operation.”

The private airline did not answer whether AGT International – a Geneva-headquartered company owned by Israeli businessman Mati Kochavi – was their client.

Israel-UAE relations

A 2012 report by the French Intelligence Online website said AGT International had signed a contract worth $800 mn to provide Abu Dhabi’s Critical National Infrastructure Authority with “surveillance cameras, electronic fences and sensors to monitor strategic infrastructure and oil fields.”

The corporate intelligence website described AGT’s owner Kochavi as “the Israeli businessman most active in Abu Dhabi.”

Among diverse services AGT International offers “critical asset management”, described on its website as:

“Innovative oil and gas solutions [that] deliver real-time situational awareness which ensures the safety and security of people, critical assets and operations, superior control of incidents, emergencies and crises, and business continuity.”

Israeli entrepreneur Kochavi first made his fortune in property before moving into the security field. He has reportedly employed “dozens” of former Israeli army and intelligence officers, according to Haaretz, and recently launched media outlet Vocativ.

When contacted by MEE, AGT International said they did not have a press office and would not comment on whether they were PrivatAir’s client on the Tel Aviv-Abu Dhabi flight.

Political approval

Trade between Israel and the UAE must be approved by the political leadership on both sides, according to political economy experts on the region.

“The relationship is high-level and the business has to be done with the blessing and participation of state actors but, of course, nobody admits this – the trade is conducted entirely through third-party channels,” said Yitzhak Gal, professor of political economy at Tel Aviv University.

“Nobody has any statistics because the trade is covert but I estimate there to be around $1bn per year, possibly more, with between a third and half of this business taking place in the security sector – it’s not a small amount but it’s only a fraction of the potential trade.”

While Israeli citizens are officially barred from entering the UAE, a leaked diplomatic cable by Wikileaks from 2009 revealed positive high-level ties between political leaders from both countries.

“[UAE ] Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah [bin Zayed al-Nahyan] has developed good personal relations with [then Israeli] Foreign Minister [Tzipi] Livni, but the Emiratis are ‘not ready to do publicly what they say in private’,” read a briefing by Marc Sievers, then political advisor to the US embassy in Tel Aviv.

The cable also detailed relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, as well as describing how covert Israeli ties with Qatar had soured due to the latter’s support for the Palestinian movement Hamas.

“Gulf Arabs believe in Israel’s role because of their perception of Israel’s close relationship with the US but also due to their sense that they can count on Israel against Iran,” the cable read.

“They believe Israel can work magic.”

Secretive Israeli-Emirati ties – including the sale of security equipment to Abu Dhabi – may have been aided by the presence of exiled Palestinian strongman Mohammed Dahlan in the UAE.

Dahlan lived in the UAE since being chased out of the West Bank in 2011, accused by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas of financial embezzlement and acting as an Israeli agent involved in assassination attempts on the late Yasser Arafat.

Dahlan is said to have helped foster valuable relations between the UAE and Serbia and was allegedly involved in shipping Israeli-made arms to former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

After initially agreeing to be interviewed by MEE, Dahlan declined to comment on UAE-Israel relations.

The secret is out

The flight between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi has not been specifically reported on until now but airline industry experts said there can be no doubt other Gulf states will have been aware of it taking place.

The journey involves the private jet flying through Saudi, Qatari, and Bahraini airspace after departing from its brief stop in Amman.

“They [Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Bahrain] definitely would know where the plane has come from,” a private jet pilot, who asked to remain anonymous, told MEE.

The pilot told MEE it was “very common” for private airlines to operate covert flights between countries who publicly deny having relations, explaining that “aircraft operators can get special dispensation depending on which kind of person is flying – perhaps a politician or influential businessman.”

“We sign so many confidentiality agreements – you’re dealing with extremely powerful people. Phones get tapped and all sorts of things go on when you’re flying these people. Operators have to be very careful.”

Israel has previously had trade missions in Gulf states, including in both Qatar and Oman during the 1990s, however both were closed down due to bloody Israeli army offensives in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Earlier this year, in the absence of official diplomatic relations, Israel opened a Twitter account to engage with Gulf citizens. @IsraelintheGCC has been used to open “dialogue with people” from the Gulf monarchies, a spokesperson for Israel’s foreign ministry told the Financial Times.

Analysts responded to news of a regular flight between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi by suggesting it provided further evidence of a good relationship borne out of shared interests.

“It seems to lend more weight to the now open secret that a number of Gulf states, most notably the UAE, are actively collaborating with Israel, especially in the field of high-tech security,” said Christopher Davidson, reader in Middle East Politics at the UK’s Durham University.

“As unpalatable as this may be to many pious and well-meaning Gulf citizens in the wake of this summer’s Gaza massacres, this is doubtless a symptom of declining trust in the UAE and Israel’s mutual US security guarantor.”

Davidson added that Israel, the UAE, and other Gulf states see a need to “band together as they face an increasingly turbulent future.”

The US has long been a vital ally for both Israel and the Gulf states. For the Gulf monarchies, with their resource-driven wealth, they have invested heavily in the American arms industry in a quid pro quo deal for diplomatic and security protection.

Both Israel and Gulf monarchies have expressed concern over the recent US détente with Iran and are said to be worried about being left exposed to security threats in a distinct period of tumult in the Middle East and North Africa.

Israel destroys 1,000 Arab homes in Negev region

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A bulldozer demolishes a house in Jabel Mukaber, a Palestinian suburb of East Jerusalem, on February 5, 2014. | Photo: Reuters

A bulldozer demolishes a house in Jabel Mukaber, a Palestinian suburb of East Jerusalem, on February 5, 2014. Photo: Reuters

by teleSUR

Demolition policy has long been used by Israel to intimidate Palestinians and their families.

Israeli authorities have destroyed 1,000 Arab homes in the southern region of the Negev in 2014 alone, according to news reports on Monday.

“Israeli security institutions destroyed Arab houses in order to put pressure on Arabs to leave their lands,” said Usama al-Uqaibi, the head of the Islamic Movement in South Israel. “They destroy the Palestinians and their properties,” he added, according to the Turkish news agency Anadolu and the Middle East Monitor.

Israel has long had a demolition policy used to intimidate Palestinians and their families by destroying their homes. It was last officially in effect over a decade ago during the Second Intifada when, according to Israeli officials, it discouraged acts of “extremism,” such as suicide bombing, by threatening to retaliate against their families.

However, the Israeli defense minister stopped employing the policy as a means to address such actions in 2005, after violence receded and people began to question the legitimacy and efficacy of the demolitions, according to The New Republic.

According to Palestinian officials, the practice of demolitions have remained, particularly in towns across the Negev region. However the practice is being used instead to intimidate Arabs off what Israel considers to be its land, even though many Palestinians have been living there for over 60 years.

Al-Uqaibi said the Palestinians in Negev would continue their resistance against Israeli forces and remain on their land.

Demolitions were also used earlier this year after two Palestinian men entered a synagogue in Jerusalem and stabbed several worshipers. Though the assailants were killed by police at the scene of the crime, officials also demolished the homes of their families the next day. This has raised concerns that the controversial deterrence policy would officially resume.

At the beginning of the month, the Israeli Supreme Court heard arguments demanding an end to the demolitions, but it has yet to rule on the matter.

Tensions have increased again in the region after Israel broke a ceasefire agreement on Friday and fired into Gaza, reportedly hitting Hamas targets. Israeli officials said the airstrikes were in response to rockets launched from Gaza into an uninhabited region in the south of Israel.

On Monday, Israeli officials reported that more rockets were fired out of Gaza into the Mediterranean Sea.

In latest attack on Palestinian heritage, Israel reopens museum in old mosque

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Palestinians praying under a mosque in Gaza destroyed in the 51-day Israeli summer offensive. Photo: Anadolu

Palestinians praying under a mosque in Gaza destroyed in the 51-day Israeli summer offensive. Photo: Anadolu

by Al Akhbar

In the latest Israeli efforts to stifle Palestinian culture, authorities in the Israeli-occupied city of Beersheba recently converted a historical mosque into an Islamic museum, despite the fact that 10,000 local Palestinian Muslims have nowhere to pray, locals said.

Locals told Ma’an news agency that an exhibit showcasing a collection of Muslim prayer rugs was recently opened in the building that was formerly the Great Mosque of Beersheba, which was once used regularly as a house of worship before the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their land in 1948.

The exhibit, which locals say has no Arab or Muslim member on the technical supervisory team, will continue until June 2015.

The move comes after decades of protest from the area’s 10,000-strong Palestinian Muslim community, composed primarily of local Bedouins whose ancestors survived the Israeli expulsions as well as Palestinian with Israeli citizenship who have moved to the city from other parts of the country.

Representatives of the community have long petitioned Israeli authorities to allow them to open the mosque for daily prayers or at least once a week for Friday prayers. However, their demands were repeatedly rejected.

The Great Mosque of Beersheba, a town originally known as Bir al-Sabaa, was built in 1906 during the Ottoman era with donations collected from the Bedouin residents of the Negev.

It remained an active mosque until the Israelis occupied the city in 1948 and turned it into a detention center and headquarters for a magistrate court, following the expulsion of Beersheba’s approximately 6,000 Palestinian residents, most of whom fled to Gaza.

Thousands of Jewish immigrants were subsequently brought in to populate the city, while the Palestinian refugees were never allowed to return, despite many of them living only kilometers away.

In 1953, the Israeli authorities turned a portion of the mosque into a museum, which was recognized in 1987 by the Israeli department of archeology as the Negev Museum.

In 1992, the museum was shut down because the building had become vulnerable. However, it was retrofitted recently, paving the way for its reuse.

On December 10, Israel resumed excavations in a Muslim graveyard in West Jerusalem as part of the “Museum of Tolerance” project.

So far in 2014, Israel has demolished more than 543 Palestinian structures and displaced at least 1,266 people, according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).

The Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions estimates that Israeli authorities have demolished about 27,000 Palestinian structures in the West Bank since 1967.

A recent statement from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s Negotiation Affairs department said that “despite its small size, Palestine has an abundance of historical, religious and cultural heritage sites. Every inch of this land has a story to tell, every hill the scene of a battle, and every stone a monument or a tomb. One cannot understand the geography of Palestine without knowing its history and one cannot understand its history without understanding its geography.”

But Israel has systematically tried to obliterate, annex and confiscate Palestinian sites as it seeks to strip the land it occupies of its Palestinian identity.

Palestinians accuse Israel of heritage theft as Israeli authorities, besides taking over Palestinian lands and properties, deliberately target sites that have historical importance and provide evidence of Palestinian heritage and culture.

Following Israel’s summer offensive against Gaza, many of Strip’s ancient sites, including houses of worship, tombs and cemeteries, were left in ruins.

Gaza’s historic mosques, dating back to the time of the first Islamic caliphs and the Ottoman Empire, were the worst affected.

According to the Palestinian Ministry of Endowments and Religious Affairs, Israel targeted mosques on purpose, partially damaging 130 mosques and completely destroying 73.

The destruction of Gaza’s ancient mosques has brought the total losses incurred by the religious affairs ministry to an estimated $50 million.

Gaza’s only three churches were also damaged during the latest conflict, including the oldest church in the Gaza Strip, the Orthodox Church of Saint Porphyrius, which dates back to the 1150s.

Moreover, settler violence against Palestinians and their property is also systematic and often abetted by Israeli authorities, who rarely intervene in the violent attacks or prosecute the perpetrators.

On November 12, a group of Israeli settlers broke in and torched a mosque in the Palestinian village of al-Mughayyir near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank. Witnesses, who went to the mosque at around 4:40 am to perform dawn prayers, said the settlers burnt 12 copies of the Qur’an, Islam’s holy book, and set the carpets of the first floor of the two-story building on fire.

According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there were at least 399 incidents of settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank in 2013.

Israeli authorities have also allowed Zionist settlers to take over homes in Palestinian neighborhoods both in annexed East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and announced plans to build thousands of settlements strictly for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem while ignoring Palestinian residents.

In addition, Israeli settlers and military forces also regularly sabotage, burn and uproot hundreds of thousands of olive trees, which are highly symbolic for the Palestinian community.

In order to build its apartheid wall and infrastructure for Israeli-only settle­ments, Israeli bulldozers plowed down more than 800,000 olive trees in the West Bank, the equivalent of bulldozing all of New York City’s Central Park 33 times.

Israeli tourism

Besides destroying historical sites, Israel encroaches on Palestinian spaces and heritage in the name of tourism.

Following its expulsion of Palestinians in 1948, Israel rewrote maps, changed the names of Palestinian towns and streets, and tailored their own versions of history very early on so as to counter future generation of Palestinians.

On Sunday, the Israeli parliament’s finance committee voted through $3.3 million to build a tourist center in a settlement in the occupied West Bank, a statement said.

The money is for a project at the Barkan settlement in the north of the Palestinian territory, the Knesset statement said.

According to the Palestinian Authority (PA), besides it being an effective tool in oppressing the Palestinian narrative and rewriting history, tourism is one of the basic grounds upon which the Israeli economy is built.

Palestinian tour guides or transportation companies haven’t been able to enter the Israeli-occupied territories since 2000. From over 240 tourist guides licensed to work all over Palestine before occupation, only 42 have permits to guide in Israel, which are renewed periodically and without guarantee.

In the West Bank town of Bethlehem, the PA says Israel collects about 90 percent of revenue related to pilgrims and tourists.

Sunday’s vote came less than three months before a snap general election on March 17 backed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but denounced by the opposition.

Centrist Yesh Atid party leader Yair Lapid, sacked by Netanyahu as finance minister on December 2, called Sunday’s finance committee vote “electoral corruption.”

“Netanyahu wants to please the settler lobby before the elections,” he told the private television station Channel 10.

The expansion of Israeli settlements remains a major stumbling block to peace with the Palestinians. According to international law, settlements on occupied land are illegal.

In November, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that Israel will never agree to limit its illegal settlement building in annexed East Jerusalem, a day after the PLO said in a statement on Independence Day that the “possibility of a two-state solution is quickly fading away” because of Israel’s settlement plans.

According to the PLO, between 1989 and 2014, the number of Israeli settlers on Palestinian land soared from 189,900 to nearly 600,000. These settlements, meanwhile, are located between and around Palestinians towns and villages, making a contiguous state next to impossible.

While major Palestinian cities have boomed in the past 26 years, Israeli confiscation of land in border regions has continued unabated.

According to a UN report published in early December, the PA lost at least $310 million in customs and sales tax in 2011 as a result of importing from or through Israeli-occupied territories.

Last year, the World Bank estimated that Israeli control over Area C – the 61 percent of the West Bank under full Israeli military control – costs the Palestinian economy around $3.4 billion annually, or more than one-third of the Palestinian Authority’s GDP.

The roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict date back to 1917, when the British government, in the now-infamous “Balfour Declaration,” called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Zionist state – a move never recognized by the international community.

In November 1988, Palestinian leaders led by Arafat declared the existence of a State of Palestine inside the 1967 borders and the State’s belief “in the settlement of international and regional disputes by peaceful means in accordance with the charter and resolutions of the United Nations.”

Heralded as a “historic compromise,” the move implied that Palestinians would agree to accept only 22 percent, believed to have become 17 percent after massive Israeli settlement building, of historic Palestine in exchange for peace with Israel.

On the 26th anniversary of the treaty’s signing, the PLO said in a statement in November that despite the 1988 ‘“compromise,” Israel had since failed to be “a partner in peace,” adding that the Israeli expansion and colonization of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip has dimmed the prospect of a two-state solution.

“Israel responded by colonizing more of our land and entrenching its control over the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. The possibility of a two-state solution is quickly fading away,” the statement read.

(Al-Akhbar, AFP, Ma’an)

EU court orders Hamas removed from terror list

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Court delays implementing the ruling to allow appeals, drawing ire from Israeli PM Netanyahu and praise from Hamas as a ‘human rights’ victory.

eu-hamas

by Barak Ravid, Haaretz

The General Court of the European Union in Luxembourg accepted the petition by Hamas in which it sought to have itself removed from the EU’s list of terrorist organizations.

The court postponed implementing the ruling for three months to allow for the EU commission or one of the EU’s 28 member states to petition the decision, which drew praise from Hamas and condemnation from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The hearing in the European court was technical and procedural, and did not stem from a change in the EU’s position regarding Hamas.

Although Foreign Ministry officials in Jerusalem played down the importance of the EU decision, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked it vociferously.

Netanyahu said Israel is not satisfied with EU explanations that removing Hamas from the list of terrorist organizations is solely a technical matter.

“The burden of proof is upon the European Union, and we expect them to immediately put Hamas back on the list, as anyone understand that it is an inseparable part of it,” said Netanyahu. “Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization, which states in its charter that its goal is to destroy Israel. We will continue to fight in with determination and strength so that it will never achieve its goal.”

A senior Hamas official, Izzat al-Rishq, tweeted that the court decision is “a legal victory for Palestinian rights.” According to the Twitter post, the decision rights an injustice done to the Hamas movement, “which is a national liberation movement.”

The Palestinian terrorist group asserted in its petition that the decision to put it on the EU terror list was carried out without giving it an opportunity for a hearing and without sufficient evidence being presented. The European court accepted the petition based on the precedent of a similar case of the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka.

The court ruled in its decision that most of the evidence used to put Hamas on the list of terrorist organizations were from open sources – mainly press publications. The court made it clear that the ruling does not say anything substantial about the status of Hamas or the character of the organization’s operations.

Likewise, the three-month postponement also means that Hamas assets within the EU will remain frozen as well as sanctions against its members. During this period EU institutions or member states will be able to appeal the ruling or make a new decision within the council of EU foreign ministers, which would define Hamas as a terror organization based on stronger evidence.

The EU ambassador in Israel, Lars Faaborg-Andersen, met Wednesday with the director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, Nissim Ben-Sheetrit, who expressed great disappointment from the EU court’s decision, and demanded the EU act swiftly to reclassify Hamas as a terrorist organization.

The ambassador made it clear in the meeting that there is no change in EU policy regarding recognizing Hamas as a terrorist organization, and that the EU intends to use all means to reinstate the group on the terrorist list. The ambassador also stressed that the court’s decision has no immediate validity, and that there will be no change regarding freezing Hamas funds in Europe.

The EU also issued a special statment in response to the court ruling.

“This legal ruling is clearly based on procedural grounds and it does not imply any assessment by the Court of the substantive reasons for the designation of Hamas as a terrorist organisation,” read the statement. “It is a legal ruling of a court, not a political decision taken by the EU governments. The EU continues to uphold the Quartet principles.”

The statement continued, “The EU institutions are studying carefully the ruling and will decide on the options open to them. They will, in due course, take appropriate remedial action, including any eventual appeal to the ruling. In case of an appeal the restrictive measures remain in place.”

Israel detains Palestinian student, child as house demolitions continue

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Debris of a Palestinian building demolished by Israeli forces in annexed East Jerusalem on December 01, 2014. Anadolu / Salih Zeki Fazlıoğlu

Debris of a Palestinian building demolished by Israeli forces in annexed East Jerusalem on December 01, 2014. Anadolu / Salih Zeki Fazlıoğlu

by Al Akhbar

Israeli forces detained a 17-year-old student and an 11-year-old child in Jerusalem, witnesses told Ma’an news agency Wednesday, as Israeli demolition orders could leave 70 Palestinians homeless.

That same day, Israeli soldiers arrested a former Palestinian prisoner who had been previously been released as part of a prisoner swap deal.

According to witnesses, Israeli forces detained Dalia Murad Mohammed Qarawi, 17, while she was on her way home from school in annexed East Jerusalem.

Israeli forces claimed Qarawi sprayed “a substance” on a police vehicle and was thus taken for interrogation at an Israeli police station on Salah al-Din street.

Meanwhile, 11-year-old Baraa Issam Shahin was detained by Israeli forces on Ein al-Luza street in the Silwan neighborhood of annexed East Jerusalem and was taken to the Russian Compound detention center in West Jerusalem for interrogation.

It is still unclear why Shahin was detained.

Early December, Israeli forces detained two Palestinian children, 8 and 12, also in Silwan.

Unrest has gripped Jerusalem and the West Bank on an almost daily basis for the past five months, flaring up after a group of Zionist settlers kidnapped and burned a young Palestinian to death because of his ethnicity, and worsened by the deadly Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip in July and August.

In late November, executive director of the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) Abdullah al-Zaghari said Israeli forces detained nine-month-old Balqis Ghawadra and two-year-old Baraa Ghawadra during a visit to see their jailed father. The two children were released the following day.

At least 600 Palestinian children have been arrested in annexed Jerusalem alone since last June.

According to a recent report by the Palestinian Prisoners Club (PPC), nearly 40 percent of these children have been subjected to sexual abuse during arrest or investigation by the Israeli authorities.

At least 300 minors are currently behind bars.

Around 95 percent of detained children were subjected to beatings and torture by Israeli security personnel while in detention, while many were forced to make confessions under duress and undergo unfair trials, said Issa Qaraqe, the head of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) committee on detainees.

More than 10,000 Palestinian minors in the occupied West Bank and annexed Jerusalem have been held by the Israeli army for varying periods since 2000, a PLO official said last month.

According to the UN children’s fund (UNICEF), over the past decade, Israel has detained “an average of two children each day.”

In its 2013 report, UNICEF added that Israel was the only country in the world where children were “systematically tried” in military courts and gave evidence of practices it said were “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment.”

A report by Defense for Children International (DCI) published in May 2014 revealed that Israel jails 20 percent of Palestinian children it detains in solitary confinement.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces on Wednesday arrested Ibtisam al-Issawi, 46, during a raid on her home in the Jabal al-Mukkabir neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem.

The head of a Palestinian committee dedicated to prisoners’ and detainees’ families, Amjad Abu Asab, told Ma’an that Israeli forces raided Issawi’s house before arresting her and taking her to the Russian Compound detention center.

Abu Asab added that Issawi was released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange deal after spending 10 years in Israeli jails, and that she is married and has six children.

Issawi is one of more than 70 former prisoners released in the 2011 exchange that have been re-detained by Israel since the summer.

The deal traded Shalit, an Israeli soldier captured by Hamas fighters on the Gaza Strip border in 2006, for 1,027 Palestinians and Palestinian with Israeli citizenship being held in Israeli jails.

The detention and retrial of the released prisoners is a breach of the deal and could potentially have wide-reaching consequences for other freed detainees.

More than 6,500 Palestinians are currently held in Israeli jails.

On Wednesday, the Palestinian Prisoner’s Society (PPS) said 21 Palestinian women, including three minors, are currently held in Israeli jails.

Israel threatens to demolish 62 percent of Silwan houses

Also in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, Israeli forces delivered Wednesday demolition orders to 11 Palestinian houses, some as old as 30 years, saying they have been built “without permits.”

Fakhri Abu Diab, a member in the committee for the Defense of Silwan Lands and Estates, told Ma’an that at least 70 people will become homeless if the houses get demolished.

Abu Diab said that in the past few days more and more orders have been delivered, and even in some cases to houses that were built before the 1967 occupation of Jerusalem.

Moreover, Abu Diab accused the Israeli authorities of seeking to displace Palestinian residents in order to take over the neighborhood, adding that over 62 percent of houses in Silwan are under the threat of demolition.

So far in 2014, Israel has demolished more than 543 Palestinian structures and displaced at least 1,266 people, according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA).

Local and international watchdogs have widely criticized Israel’s home demolition policy, saying that it contributes to a cycle of violence and merely inflicts collective punishment on family members.

Besides demolishing Palestinian properties, Israeli authorities have allowed Zionist settlers to take over Palestinian homes, have announced plans to build thousands of settlements strictly for Israeli settlers, and have generally looked the other way at rising violence by Zionist settlers against Palestinians.

According to Abu Diab, many Israeli settlers build houses without permits but none received demolition orders.

More than 500,000 Israeli settlers live in settlements across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, in contravention of international law.

Jerusalem Palestinians also face discrimination in all aspects of life including housing, employment, and services, and although they live within territory Israel has unilaterally annexed, they lack citizenship rights and are instead classified only as “residents” whose permits can be revoked if they move away from the city for more than a few years.

Similarly, Palestinians in the occupied West Bank suffer from the demolition policy.

In May, the European Union missions in Jerusalem and Ramallah urged Israel to halt home demolitions in Area C of the occupied West Bank, describing such actions as “forced transfer of population.”

Israeli authorities rarely grants Palestinians permits to build in the Israeli-occupied areas, including in Area C, which amounts to 80 percent of the total land area.

The World Bank estimated in 2013 that Israeli control over Area C costs the Palestinian economy around $3.4 billion annually, or more than one-third of the Palestinian Authority’s GDP.

According to the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, the Israeli authorities have demolished at least 27,000 Palestinian structures in the West Bank since 1967.

The roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict date back to 1917, when the British government, in the now-infamous “Balfour Declaration,” called for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.”

Israel occupied East Jerusalem and the West Bank during the 1967 Middle East War. It later annexed the holy city in 1980, claiming it as the capital of the self-proclaimed Zionist state – a move never recognized by the international community.

(Al-Akhbar, Ma’an)

U.S feels the heat on Palestine vote at UN

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US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Villa Taverna in Rome, Dec. 15, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Evan Vucci)

US Secretary of State John Kerry (L) meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Villa Taverna in Rome, Dec. 15, 2014. (photo by REUTERS/Evan Vucci)

by Jonathan Cook

Nazareth: The floodgates have begun to open across Europe on recognition of Palestinian statehood. On Friday the Portuguese parliament became the latest European legislature to call on its government to back statehood, joining Sweden, Britain, Ireland, France and Spain.

In coming days similar moves are expected in Denmark and from the European Parliament. The Swiss government will join the fray too this week, inviting states that have signed the Fourth Geneva Convention to an extraordinary meeting to discuss human rights violations in the occupied territories. Israel has threatened retaliation.

But while Europe is tentatively finding a voice in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, silence reigns across the Atlantic. The White House appears paralysed, afraid to appear out of sync with world opinion but more afraid still of upsetting Israel and its powerful allies in the US Congress.

Now there is an additional complicating factor. The Israeli public, due to elect a new Israeli government in three months’ time, increasingly regards the US role as toxic. A poll this month found that 52 per cent viewed President Barack Obama’s diplomatic policy as “bad”, and 37 per cent thought he had a negative attitude towards their country – more than double the figure two years ago.

US Secretary of State John Kerry alluded to the White House’s difficulties this month when he addressed the Saban Forum, an annual gathering of US policy elites to discuss the Middle East. He promised that Washington would not interfere in Israel’s elections.

According to the Israeli media, he was responding to pressure from Tzipi Livni, sacked this month from Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, triggering the forthcoming election, and opposition leader Yitzhak Herzog, of the centre-left Labor party.

The pair recently made a pact in an effort to oust Netanyahu. Their electoral success – improbable at the moment – offers the White House its best hope of an Israeli government that will at least pay lip service to a renewal of peace negotiations, which collapsed last April. They have warned, however, that any sign of backing from the Obama administration would be the kiss of death at the polls.

US officials would like to see Netanyahu gone, not least because he has been the biggest obstacle to reviving a peace process that for two decades successfully allayed international pressure to create a Palestinian state. But any visible strategy against Netanyahu is almost certain to backfire.

Washington’s difficulties are only underscored by the Palestinians’ threat to bring a draft resolution before the UN Security Council as soon as this week, demanding Israel’s withdrawal by late 2016 to the 1967 lines.

Given the current climate, the Palestinians are hopeful of winning the backing of European states, especially the three key ones in the Security Council – Britain, France and Germany – and thereby isolating the US. Arab foreign ministers met Kerry on Tuesday in an effort to persuade Washington not to exercise its veto.

The US, meanwhile, is desperately trying to postpone a vote, fearful that casting its veto might further discredit it in the eyes of the world while also suggesting to Israeli voters that Netanyahu has the White House in his pocket.

But indulging the Israeli right also has risks, bolstering it by default. That danger was driven home during another session of the Saban Forum, addressed by settler leader Naftali Bennett. He is currently riding high in the polls and will likely be the backbone of the next coalition government.

Bennett says clearly what Netanyahu only implies: that most of the West Bank should be annexed, with the Palestinians given demilitarised islands of territory that lack sovereignty. The model, called “autonomy”, is of the Palestinians ruling over a series of local councils.

The Washington audience was further shocked by Bennett’s disrespectful treatment of his interviewer, Martin Indyk, who served as Obama’s representative at the last round of peace talks. He accused Indyk of not living in the real world, dismissively calling him part of the “peace industry”.

Bennett’s goal, according to analysts, was to prove to Israeli voters that he is not afraid to stand up to the Americans.

Given its weakening hand – faced with an ever-more rightwing Israeli public and a more assertive European one – Washington is looking towards an unlikely saviour. The hawkish foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman used to be its bete noire, but he has been carefully recalibrating his image.

Unlike other candidates, he has been aggressively promoting a “peace plan”. The US has barely bothered examining its contents, which are only a little more generous than Bennett’s annexation option, and involve forcibly stripping hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Israel of their citizenship.

Lieberman, however, has usefully created the impression that he is a willing partner to a peace process. At the weekend he even suggested he might join a centre coalition with Livni and Herzog.

Lieberman is cleverly trying to occupy a middle ground with Israeli voters, demonstrating that he can placate the Americans, while offering a plan so unfair to the Palestinians that there is no danger voters will consider him part of the “peace industry”.

That may fit the electoral mood: a recent poll showed 63 per cent of Israelis favour peace negotiations, but 70 per cent think they are doomed to fail. The Israeli public, like Lieberman, understands that the Palestinians will never agree to the kind of subjugation they are being offered.

The Israeli election’s one certain outcome is that, whoever wins, the next coalition will, actively or passively, allow more of the same: a slow, creeping annexation of what is left of a possible Palestinian state, as the US and Europe bicker.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net.

A version of this article first appeared in The National, Abu Dhabi.

Palestine to submit UN resolution for ending Israeli occupation

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PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat (right), is due to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry within the coming days to discuss ending Israeli occupation. (AFP/File)

PLO negotiator Saeb Erekat (right), is due to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry within the coming days to discuss ending Israeli occupation. (AFP/File)

by Ma’an News Agency

PLO chief negotiator Saeb Erekat said Sunday that a resolution to end the Israeli occupation will be submitted to the UN Security Council “in the coming few hours, or maybe on Monday.”

Erekat told the official Palestinian radio station that he would meet US Secretary of State John Kerry in a European capital in the coming two days.

“We want a clear and specific resolution for a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders with Jerusalem as its capital, resolving all the final status issues, releasing all detainees and refugees and labeling settlement activity illegal and should be stopped immediately, including in Jerusalem,” Erekat said.

Kerry left early Sunday for a series of meetings in Europe seeking to head off an end-of-year UN showdown over the Palestinian bid for statehood.

His first stop was to be Rome where he will meet separately with both Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Diplomats say negotiations on a UN resolution to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace prospects are making little headway, with Europeans waiting for a US response to proposals.

Jordan last month circulated a draft Palestinian text to the Security Council setting November 2016 as a deadline for the end of the Israeli occupation.

But the text ran into opposition from the United States, which has veto power, and other countries that felt it lacked balance, diplomats said. It was never put to a vote.

France stepped in last month to try to cobble together along with Britain and Germany a resolution that would win consensus at the 15-member council.

And the Palestinians have said they would like a draft resolution to go to a vote before the end of the year.

The text would call for a return to negotiations with a view to achieving a two-state solution by which Israel and a Palestinian state would co-exist.

Negotiations have hit hurdles over whether to include a two-year deadline for talks on a final settlement to be completed.

France is also proposing to host an international conference to launch the new peace track.

Window of opportunity

Supporters of a UN resolution are now hoping to win US backing or at least ensure Washington will not oppose the measure — which would be the first text adopted by the council on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 2009.

“There is a window of opportunity,” said a European diplomat. “There is a willingness from the Americans to consider options at the UN.”

Kerry led dogged efforts earlier this year to try to reach an Israeli Palestinian peace deal, but the bid collapsed amid bitter recriminations by both sides.

Relations between the US and Israel have been uneasy since, amid a series of spats and behind-the-scenes name-calling.

Kerry is due to meet Lavrov on Sunday, shortly after arriving in Rome. Talks with Netanyahu follow on Monday, after which the top US diplomat is expected to travel on within Europe although no stops have yet been announced.

Russia responded angrily on Saturday to news that US senators had passed a bill calling for fresh sanctions against Moscow and the supply of lethal military aid to Ukraine.

The eight-month conflict in Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russian separatists has left at least 4,634 dead and 10,243 wounded, while displacing more than 1.1 million people, according to the United Nations.

Deputy Russian foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said however the main focus of the Rome meeting — the 17th between the two diplomats this year — would be the Middle East.

The talks come as European parliaments in Britain, France, Spain, Ireland and Portugal have asked their governments to recognize Palestinian statehood — a move that would bypass negotiations.

And the campaign for snap Israeli elections in March is also complicating the regional political landscape.

“There are a lot of different folks pushing in different directions out there, and the question is can we all pull in the same direction,” Kerry said Friday, when asked about his meeting with Netanyahu.

“We’re trying to figure out a way to help defuse the tensions and reduce the potential for more conflict, and we’re exploring various possibilities to that end.”

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