President Carter: US Support of Unity can Help Palestinian Democracy and Establish a Unified State

Ex-Us president Jimmy Carter called for international support to the Palestinian national unity and reconciliation deal signed today in Cairo by Palestinian groups.

This is a decisive moment. Under the auspices of the Egyptian government, Palestine’s two major political movements — Fatah and Hamas — are signing a reconciliation agreement on Wednesday that will permit both to contest elections for the presidency and legislature within a year. “Carter wrote in an opinion article published on Wednesday by the Washington Post.

On the international support to the Palestinian unity deal Carter said” If the United States and the international community support this effort, they can help Palestinian democracy and establish the basis for a unified Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza that can make a secure peace with Israel. If they remain aloof or undermine the agreement, the situation in the occupied Palestinian territory may deteriorate with a new round of violence against Israel. Support for the interim government is critical, and the United States needs to take the lead.”

Last week Hamas and Fatah leaders meet in Cairo and announced that they have reached a deal to end division. This week Palestinian factions joined Hamas-and Fatah officials and signed the deal on Tuesday and today announced the deal in a calibration that took place in Cairo.

The Islamic movement Hamas was at loggerheads with Fatah, headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, since Hamas won the parliamentary elections in January of 2006.

Hamas took control of the Gaza Strip ending months of bloody conflict with Fatah allied security forces. Egypt and other Arab countries attempts of reaching a reconciliation deal between the two largest Palestinian factions have failed in the past four years.

http://www.imemc.org/article/61183

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Tear down this Israeli wall

The Palestinian advocates of a boycott asked that I visit the occupied Palestinian territory to see the wall for myself before I made up my mind. I agreed.

Under the protection of the United Nations I visited Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw that day. The wall is an appalling edifice to behold. It is policed by young Israeli soldiers who treated me, a casual observer from another world, with disdainful aggression.

If it could be like that for me, a foreigner, a visitor, imagine what it must be like for the Palestinians, for the underclass, for the passbook carriers. I knew then that my conscience would not allow me to walk away from that wall, from the fate of the Palestinians I met: people whose lives are crushed daily by Israel's occupation. In solidarity, and somewhat impotently, I wrote on their wall that day: "We don't need no thought control."

Realising at that point that my presence on a Tel Aviv stage would inadvertently legitimise the oppression I had seen, I cancelled my gig at the stadium in Tel Aviv and moved it to Neve Shalom, an agricultural community devoted to growing chick peas and also, admirably, to co-operation between different faiths, where Muslim, Christian and Jew work side by side in harmony.

Against all expectations it was to become the biggest music event in the short history of Israel. Some 60,000 fans battled traffic jams to attend. It was extraordinarily moving for us, and at the end of the gig I was moved to exhort the young people gathered there to demand of their government that they attempt to make peace with their neighbours and respect the civil rights of Palestinians living in Israel.

Sadly, in the intervening years the Israeli government has made no attempt to implement legislation that would grant rights to Israeli Arabs equal to those enjoyed by Israeli Jews, and the wall has grown, inexorably, illegally annexing more and more of the West Bank.

For the people of Gaza, locked in a virtual prison behind the wall of Israel's illegal blockade, it means another set of injustices. It means that children go to sleep hungry, many chronically malnourished. It means that fathers and mothers, unable to work in a decimated economy, have no means to support their families. It means that university students with scholarships to study abroad must watch the opportunity of a lifetime slip away because they are not allowed to travel.

Full Story at Source : http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/mar/11/cultural-boycott-west-bank-wall

Clashes mark Jerusalem Day of Rage

Palestinians have clashed with Israeli police in two areas of occupied East Jerusalem after Palestinian groups called for a "day of rage" over the reopening of a synagogue in the Old City.

Palestinians threw stones at Israeli police who responded with stun grenades in the Shuafat and Essawiyya neighbourhoods early on Tuesday.

At least 90 people were wounded in the clashes, the Palestinian Red Crescent said, with around 15 people seriously hurt by rubber-coated steel bullets, teargas inhalation and at the hands of Israeli police.

Israel security forces said about eight police officers were lightly injured in clashes that ended with up to 60 arrests.

About 3,000 police officers had been deployed in East Jerusalem and nearby villages after Hamas and other Palestinian groups called for action in response to the reopening of the Hurva synagogue.

The Hurva, considered by some people to to be one of Judaism's most sacred sites, reopened for the first time in 62 years on Monday in the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem's Old City.

The walled Old City is at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which makes the reopening of the synagogue controversial.

Moreover, al-Aqsa, Islam's third holiest site, and the Hurva are about just 700 metres apart.

'Extremely tense'

Al Jazeera's Sherine Tadros, reporting from Essawiyya, said Palestinian protesters hurled stones at the Israeli border guards, who responded using stun grenades.

"It is an extremely tense standoff. Police want to patrol the situation using as little force as possible, they told us, but they are wearing full riot gear," she said.

"From our vantage point we can only see about 20 Palestinian protesters, hurling stones, which they have been doing throughout the night and into the morning.

"It seems a few number of protesters against a large number of border guards."

Adnan al-Husseini, the governor of East Jerusalem, told Al Jazeera from al-Aqsa mosque that only a few people had been able to attend prayers because of restrictions placed on movement by Israeli authorities.

"Also many police are at the entrance of the Old City and the mosque and on the streets of the Old City. So movement is very difficult and very tense.

"People are trying to come to the mosque, the shops, their houses. And unfortunately the Israeli police are stopping them."

Israeli officials have limited access to al-Aqsa for the fifth consecutive day for security reasons.

Palestinian men under the age of 50 have not been allowed to enter the mosque.

Micky Rosenfeld, the Israeli police spokesperson, told Al Jazeera: "Throughout the morning we have been dealing with local disturbances. A group of 50 to 60 Palestinians who are causing riots.

"The rest of Jerusalem itself is absolutely quiet. The Temple Mount is closed to visitors and tourists.

"Our units are responding to small incidents in and around East Jerusalem."

Hamas warning

The previous day, Khaled Meshaal, Hamas' political chief who is exiled in Syria, strongly condemned the ceremony.

"We warn against this action by the Zionist enemy to rebuild and dedicate the Hurva synagogue. It signifies the destruction of the al-Aqsa mosque and the building of the temple," he said at a meeting of Palestinian groups' leaders in Damscus on Monday.

He urged Palestinians in Jerusalem to "take serious measures to protect al-Aqsa mosque from destruction and Judaisation".

Meshaal also said that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank should "launch a campaign to protect Jerusalem and Islamic and Christian holy sites there".

The Hurva synagogue, first built in 1694, was destroyed in 1721 and then demolished during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

The nearby al-Aqsa site is revered by Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif (the Noble Sanctuary), comprising al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock. It is known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

An Israeli government decision to include two West Bank religious sites in a Jewish national heritage plan has already angered Palestinians and raised tensions in recent weeks.

The announcement last week of Israeli plans for new settler homes near East Jerusalem has also contributed to the unrest.

Message from Abbas

Against this backdrop of escalating tensions, Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, left for Moscow on Tuesday to present the Quartet - which includes the US, Russia, the EU and the UN - with Palestinian conditions for starting peace negotiations with Israel.

Al Jazeera has gained exclusive access to the content of letters that Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, despatched with Erekat, in which he accuses Israel of exploiting Palestinian and Arab goodwill.

Abbas says Israel's stepped-up settlement activity, especially in East Jerusalem, threatens to "permanently derail peace talks".

In the letter, he also calls on the Quartet to take "effective" steps against Israel

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