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Saturday, June 03, 2006
Some headlines and summaries from JTA
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PLO lobbies against pullout
PLO officials lobbied in Washington against Israel’s conditional plan to unilaterally withdraw from parts of the West Bank.
Four officials from the Palestine Liberation Organization’s negotiations unit met last week with U.S. officials and outlined their objections to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s plan to pull out from parts of the West Bank.
They said the plan would undermine the viability of a Palestinian state because it would cut Palestinians off from one another and from social services.
Olmert won conditional endorsement of the plan from President Bush last month. Bush first wants Olmert to exhaust all possibilities of getting the Palestinian Authority government, led by the Hamas terrorist group, to recognize Israel and renounce terrorism.
Legal action filed against Israeli official
Legal proceedings against an Israeli Cabinet member got under way in a U.S. court.
Hearings opened Wednesday in the class-action lawsuit filed by Palestinians against Avi Dichter, Israel’s internal security minister.
The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based group that has won suits against government officials from Latin America, Asia and the former Yugoslavia, presented oral arguments in a New York courtroom on behalf of survivors and families of those killed in an Israeli bomb attack on a Gaza City neighborhood in July 2002.
Lawyers for Dichter also presented arguments, saying he is immune from prosecution as a foreign official.
As the head of the Shin Bet at the time, Dichter helped plan the attack, which killed Salah Shehada, a top Hamas terrorist who had masterminded a large number of suicide attacks. Another 14 people, including children, were killed in the attack, and about 150 were injured.
‘Realignment’ in one stage
Israel’s unilateral West Bank withdrawal, if implemented, will take place in one stage, Ehud Olmert said.
The prime minister told Yediot Achronot on Thursday that he wanted his “realignment plan” to be over in one swoop, rather than in several stages, as some government officials have advised.
Last year’s Gaza Strip withdrawal took place over two weeks. But questions have been raised about the possibility of a similar time frame in the West Bank, where seven or eight times as many settlers are earmarked for evacuation.
Olmert has said the plan, whereby Israel would leave some parts of the West Bank and annex others, could be scrapped if the Palestinian Authority embraces peace talks.
http://www.jta.org/
posted by Somebody @ 11:24 PM Permanent Link
 
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