Reports: Kerry to return to Mideast this week

Source : Maan News Agency

JERUSALEM (AFP) -- US Secretary of State John Kerry is to return to the Middle East later this week to resume efforts to draw Israel and the PLO back into direct negotiations, reports said on Sunday.

According to the top-selling Yediot Aharonot daily and the left-leaning Haaretz, Kerry was to arrive in Israel towards the end of the week on what would be his sixth visit to the region in as many months.

On his previous visit, a four-day trip which ended on June 30, Kerry held hours and hours of intensive talks with both sides in a mission which he said had achieved "real progress."

But PLO officials said there had been "no breakthrough" that could lead to a resumption of direct negotiations following a hiatus of nearly three years.

"John Kerry is on his way back: the US secretary of state is expected to arrive in Israel for the sixth time towards the end of the week, in order to try and get the negotiations with the Palestinians to move forward," said Yediot.

In his absence, Kerry left behind two aides to continue his work. Frank Lowenstein, his senior adviser on the peace process, has been meeting "almost daily" with Israeli negotiators Tzipi Livni and Yitzhak Molho as well as with chief PLO negotiator Saeb Erakat, Haaretz said.

"Lowenstein is trying to get the parties to agree to a document that would contain the principles for the renewal of talks but no agreement has emerged," the paper said.

Several days after Kerry's departure, a Palestinian official told AFP that the US top diplomat had presented the two sides with "an initiative to resume direct and intensive negotiations for a duration of six to nine months in order to reach a peace agreement."

Under the proposal, the talks would be based on a 2011 speech by US President Barack Obama in which he called for a Palestinian state on the basis of the lines which existed before the 1967 Six Day War, but there would be no specific reference to a settlement freeze, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Similar details emerged on Saturday in a report by the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper which quoted Western diplomatic sources as saying the talks would take place within a framework of six to nine months, during which there would be a building freeze outside the major settlement blocs.

It also said Israel would agree to the staggered release of 103 Palestinian prisoners who have been held since before the 1993 Oslo Accords, and would allow the Palestinians to develop projects in Area C of the West Bank, around 60 percent of the territory which is currently under full Israeli control.

Israeli officials were not immediately available to comment on either report.

US-brokered direct talks broke down in September 2010 just weeks after they were launched with the two sides locked in a dispute over settlement building. Multiple diplomatic efforts to bring about a renewal of negotiations have so far failed.

Egypt army closes Gaza border

Source : Maan News Agency

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- The Egyptian army on Friday closed the Rafah crossing on the Gaza border until further notice due to unrest in Sinai.

Egyptian military officials informed the Palestinian side of the closure, said Maher Abu Sabha, Palestinian director of crossings and borders.

Due to Israel's blockade, the Rafah crossing is the only exit for most Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The Egyptian director of the Rafah terminal, Sami al-Mitwali, said the crossing was closed due to security unrest.

An Egyptian soldier was killed early Friday in coordinated rocket and machinegun attacks by Islamist militants on army checkpoints and a police base in Sinai.

Militants also attacked a military intelligence building in Rafah, witnesses said.

Two other soldiers were wounded when Islamist militants fired on an army checkpoint near the north Sinai village of al-Gura. Elsewhere, militants attacked a police base with rockets, security sources said.

Some militants in Sinai had threatened a violent response after Egypt's army toppled Islamist President Mohammad Mursi on Wednesday.

Chief justice Adly Mansour, 67, was sworn in as interim president on Thursday until new elections, at a ceremony broadcast live from the Supreme Constitutional Court.

The Islamists accuse the military of conducting a brazen coup against Mursi, Egypt's first democratically elected but controversial president, following massive protests calling for the Islamist's ouster.

Mursi's Musim Brotherhood movement has called for peaceful protests on Friday against the "coup," as police continue to hunt its leaders.

Egypt's military appealed for conciliation and warned against revenge attacks, as police rounded up senior Islamists.

The military said "exceptional and autocratic measures against any political group" should be avoided in a statement on its spokesman's Facebook page.

"The armed forces believe that the forgiving nature and manners of the Egyptian people, and the eternal values of Islam, do not allow us to turn to revenge and gloating," the army statement added.

Police arrested the Brotherhood's supreme leader Mohammed Badie "for inciting the killing of protesters", a security official told AFP.

Former supreme guide Mahdi Akef was also arrested, state television reported.

Mursi himself was "preventively detained" by the military, a senior officer had told AFP early Thursday, hours after his overthrow the night before, suggesting the ousted president might face trial.

UK grants judicial immunity to Israel army chief suspected of war crimes

Source : Al Akhbar English

Israel’s army chief arrived in the United Kingdom on Tuesday, after the European nation decided to grant him judicial immunity during his official visit, Ma’an news agency reported.

Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, the chief of staff of the Israeli Occupation Forces, is the first Israeli army chief to visit the UK since 1998. According to The Times of Israel, Gantz is to meet with UK Chief of the Defense Staff General David Julian Richards and othersecurity chiefs to discuss military cooperation.

The British government granted Gantz's trip the status of “special mission,” thus giving him immunity from prosecution by the UK's criminal justice system, according to a statement by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

Gantz is suspected of involvement in the commission of war crimes, particularly in the November 2012 assault on the Gaza Strip, codenamed Operation Pillar of Defense, PCHR said.

The eight-day attack on Gaza led to the death of 162 Palestinians and 5 Israelis.

“The Palestinian Center for Human Rights and Hickman & Rose Solicitors, who represent the victims of Lieutenant General Gantz’s actions, condemn the decision to grant immunity to a suspected war criminal. This decision sends the dangerous message that political considerations will be placed ahead of the rule of law,” PCHR’s statement read.

According to the center, “the UK is under a binding legal obligation to search for and prosecute those suspected of committing war crimes, including before their own national courts.”

"Credible evidence exists indicating Mr. Gantz's involvement in the commission of war crimes: these allegations should be investigated and, if appropriate, Mr. Gantz should be prosecuted," PCHR added.

"He should not be pre-emptively granted immunity by the UK Government, circumventing normal criminal justice procedures."

A week earlier, the UK government also extended special mission status to the visit of Israeli Major General Doron Almog, a retired army official suspected of war crimes, similarly shielding him from British judicial enquiries.

Almog canceled his scheduled UK visit at the last minute for unknown reasons.

In 2005, a British court issued an arrest warrant for Almog in relation to the 2002 destruction of 59 Palestinian homes in the Rafah refugee camp as part of a sustained policy of house demolitions in Gaza, PCHR said.

British police were preparing to arrest Almog on suspicion of war crimes after he and his wife flew to the United Kingdom in 2005, but he refused to leave his plane at Heathrow airport following a tip-off about the arrest warrant and was allowed to return to Israel.

The decision to grant immunity to both Israeli officials "sends the clear message that Israel can commit war crimes in the Gaza Strip with impunity," PCHR said.

There is a risk, the group said, that special missions will be used to protect allies of the government and undermine the "basic principle of equal application of the law and the UK’s international legal obligation to seek out and prosecute suspected war criminals."

(Ma’an, Al-Akhbar)

Official: Israel fires at fishing boats off Gaza coast

Source : Maan News Agency

GAZA CITY (Ma'an) -- Israeli gunboats on Thursday opened fire toward Palestinian fishing boats off the coast of the Gaza Strip, a local official said.

Israeli forces opened fire at the boats off north-west Gaza as the fishermen as approached the three-mile limit Israel imposes along the coastline, said Mahfouth Kabariti, head of a federation for fishermen and water sports.

No injuries were reported, Kabariti told Ma'an.

Israel's army announced in February that the fishing zone for Palestinians in Gaza would be reduced from six to three miles following a rocket attack.

The zone had been extended to six miles as part of an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that ended an eight-day conflict between Israel and Hamas in November.