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Thursday, August 17, 2006
Some headlines and summaries from JTA
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Peres: Syria talks a no-go
Shimon Peres expressed skepticism that Israel’s war with Hezbollah would open the door for renewed negotiations with Syria.
The window for peace talks “is open from the Israeli side and closed from the Syrian side,” Israel´s deputy prime minister told reporters Thursday in New York. Earlier this week, Israel’s defense minister, Amir Peretz, said Israel should lay the groundwork for negotiations with Syria.
Peres said Israel had made overtures toward Syria numerous times over the years, but added, “on all these occasions, they say no.”
Peres also downplayed the notion that Israel had lost the media war during the conflict. “It’s better to win the war on the battlefield than win the war on television,” he said.
Israel wants Turkish embargo on Iran
Israel reportedly wants Turkey to impose an air and ground embargo on Iran to prevent weapons from flowing through Turkish territory to Hezbollah.
Israeli security sources told Reuters on Thursday they believed that nearly all of Hezbollah’s heavy weapons passed through Turkish ground or airspace en route to Syria and then Lebanon.
The sources, who spoke anonymously because talks with Turkey were in the earliest stages, said Turkey had become a critical arena after alternative arms routes through Jordan and Iraq were blocked.
Representative reassures angry Jewish leaders
A Democratic congressman reassured local Jewish leaders after criticizing the Bush administration and Israeli policy on Lebanon.
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) told the leaders in a Maryland suburb last week that he still supported Israel despite his July 30 letter to the U.S. secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, arguing that a “continuation of the bombing campaign as it is being carried out is against the interests of Israel and the United States.”
Van Hollen also called for an immediate cease-fire, while suggesting that the U.S. should have asked Israel to limit its attacks to “clear, identifiable Hezbollah military assets.”
Petition wants U.N. reparations for Israel
Pro-Israel advocates launched a petition calling on the United Nations to provide reparations to Israel for damage caused by Hezbollah.
The petition says the “U.N. Security Council failed to discharge its obligation. It allowed Hezbollah to entrench itself in southern Lebanon and to spread its terror to the people of Lebanon.”
As of Thursday afternoon, the petition had garnered more than 34,000 signatures.
Lebanon toll shows pioneer spirit
Israeli fatalities in Lebanon included a disproportionately high number of settlers and kibbutz members, a military study found.
According to the study published Thursday, 42 percent of the 116 soldiers killed in the war on Hezbollah were from kibbutzim, moshavim or West Bank settlements, even though these communities constitute only 11 percent of Israel’s general population.
By contrast, 25 percent of the fatalities were from cities, which make up 60 percent of the population.
The figures suggested that volunteering for combat duties is something more common to Israel’s “pioneering” communities than to more urban and mainstream society.
Maj. Gen. Elazar Stern, the military manpower chief, made this case in an Army Radio interview Wednesday, only to be rebuked by Tel Aviv residents who served during the monthlong war in Lebanon.
http://www.jta.org/
posted by Somebody @ 10:41 PM Permanent Link
 
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