Weekend Gazette 080214

Saturday August 2nd 2014

Israel will not attend Gaza truce talks in Cairo, official says

"Hamas is not interested in an accommodation," official says on condition of anonymity; Fatah delegation set to fly to Cairo for talks; following breakdown of Friday truce, Hamas officials from Gaza will not attend.

Israel will not send envoys to Gaza truce negotiations in Egypt on Saturday as planned, an Israeli official said, accusing Hamas of misleading international mediators.
"Hamas is not interested in an accommodation," the official said on condition of anonymity.
An Egyptian-brokered ceasefire on Friday broke down within hours on Friday.
Hamas is responsible for the bloody, swift end to a humanitarian cease-fire with Israel, US President Barack Obama said from the White House on Friday, once again vowing to pursue a temporary truce along the border of Gaza that will end the killing.
"We have unequivocally condemned Hamas and the Palestinian factions that were responsible for killing two soldiers, and capturing a third, almost minutes after a ceasefire was announced," Obama said. "That soldier needs to be unconditionally released, as soon as possible."
Gazan militants emerged on Friday morning from a tunnel into Israeli territory, under deconstruction by the IDF, less than ninety minutes deep into a planned 72-hour cease-fire. One terrorist detonated a suicide vest, killing two Israeli soldiers; another abducted a third Israeli soldier, Hadar Goldin, back through the tunnel into Gaza.

Fresh Gaza strikes amid soldier hunt

Israel has carried out fresh attacks on Gaza and militants have launched more rockets into Israel as a hunt continues for a missing Israeli soldier.

Palestinian officials said 55 people had died in Israeli strikes on Saturday, most in Rafah, where the soldier, Hadar Goldin, went missing.
A series of rocket attacks into Israel was reported on Saturday morning.
Later Israel sent messages to Palestinians in northern Gaza saying that they could return home.
"We have told Beit Lahia residents that they may return to their homes. We advised them to avoid explosives placed by Hamas across the area", the Israel Defence Forces tweeted.
Some 1,655 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and 65 Israelis, all but two soldiers, have died in the conflict.
A Thai worker was also killed in Israel. Some 8,900 Palestinians have also been injured, the health ministry in Gaza says.
A 72-hour ceasefire had been agreed, starting from Friday morning, but collapsed hours later.
Hamas accused Israel of breaking the ceasefire but the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had been forced to respond to militant rocket fire.
On Saturday, Egyptian President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi insisted an Egyptian ceasefire plan offered a "real chance" to end the bloodshed.
Related ; Social Media Jihad: Islamic State ramps up gruesome Internet campaign

Gaza crisis: Netanyahu tells US not to second-guess him on Hamas

Following the quick collapse of the cease-fire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the White House not to force a truce with Palestinian militants on Israel.
Sources familiar with conversations between Netanyahu and senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John Kerry, say the Israeli leader advised the Obama administration "not to ever second guess me again" on the matter. The officials also said Netanyahu said he should be "trusted" on the issue and about the unwillingness of Hamas to enter into and follow through on cease-fire talks.

The Obama administration on Friday condemned "outrageous" violations of an internationally brokered Gaza cease-fire by Palestinian militants and called the apparent abduction of an Israeli soldier a "barbaric" action.
The strong reaction came as top Israeli officials questioned the effort to forge the truce, accusing the U.S. and the United Nations of being naive in assuming the radical Hamas movement would adhere with its terms. The officials also blamed the Gulf state of Qatar for not forcing the militants to comply.
With the cease-fire in tatters fewer than two hours after it took effect with an attack that killed two Israeli troops and left a third missing, President Barack Obama demanded that those responsible release the soldier.
Obama and other U.S. officials did not directly blame Hamas for the abduction. But they made clear they hold Hamas responsible for, or having influence over, the actions of all factions in the Gaza Strip. The language was a distinct change from Thursday when Washington was focused on the deaths of Palestinian civilians.
"If they are serious about trying to resolve this situation, that soldier needs to be unconditionally released as soon as possible," Obama told reporters. He added that it would be difficult to revive the cease-fire without the captive's release.
"It's going to be very hard to put a cease-fire back together again if Israelis and the international community can't feel confident that Hamas can follow through on a cease-fire commitment," he said. His comment reflected uncertainty in the U.S. and elsewhere that Hamas was actually responsible for the incident or if some other militant group was to blame.
At the same time, Obama called the situation in Gaza "heartbreaking" and repeated calls for Israel to do more to prevent Palestinian civilian casualties.
Despite the collapse of the truce, Obama credited Kerry for his work with the United Nations to forge one. He lamented criticism and "nitpicking" of Kerry's attempts and said the effort would continue.

While The World Watched Gaza Crumble, Syria Had One Of Its Bloodiest Weeks Yet

ISTANBUL -- Open most U.S. newspapers this week, or click on the main page of news sites, and you’ll likely see headlines detailing the violence in Gaza and Israel -- at least 1,496 Palestinians killed and an Israeli death toll of more than 60. Or you’ll read lengthy articles on the continued violence in Ukraine -- roughly 800 civilians killed since April as the United States beefs up sanctions against Russia.
But as international attention is focused on these tragedies, other conflicts with massive death tolls and crippling regional impacts have been largely overlooked.
In Syria, a country ripped apart by war for more than three years, the situation on the ground looks bleaker every day. Last week, as the world followed the conflict in Gaza and Israel, more than 1,700 people were killed in the country. It was one of Syria’s bloodiest weeks yet, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Despite a unanimous U.N. Security Council resolution in February banning the use of barrel bombs, the Syrian regime is still using them in full force against civilians, Human Rights Watch said on Wednesday. In Aleppo, which regime forces have been fighting hard to conquer, the civilian population is bearing the brunt of these bombs.
Amid the relentless bloodshed, the U.N. gained a small victory this week: Nine trucks with shelter, food, and water purification supplies entered Syria for the first time on Thursday without the consent of the regime, which routinely denies access.
In Libya, fierce clashes between Islamist militants and government forces have wreaked havoc on the civilian population. Fighting over the past two weeks in the country has been the worst since the 2011 ouster of strongman Muammar Gaddafi.
On Monday, Islamist-led militants took over a special forces base in Benghazi, and local medical workers said 75 bodies were recovered from the area. The U.S., Canadian and French embassies, among others, were evacuated from the country this week and foreign nationals from a handful of countries have been told to leave Libya immediately, some of them evacuated by boat.

Syria villagers drive out Islamic State jihadists

Tribesmen in three villages in eastern Syria have driven out Islamic State (IS) militants, in a rare display of local resistance to the group.

Four days of fighting left nine IS fighters, three tribesmen and five civilians dead, UK-based Syrian opposition activists say.
The jihadists' actions in the Ashara area had bred resentment locally, another activist based in Turkey said.
IS is dedicated to building an Islamist state in Syria and Iraq.
It built on its gains in Syria this summer to sweep through western and northern Iraq with support from local Sunni Muslims, overrunning the city of Mosul and threatening the capital Baghdad.
In recent weeks, it also expanded territory under its control in Syria, capturing parts of the oil-rich province of Deir Ezzor.
Formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (Isis), it has been accused of atrocities in areas under its control, carrying out mass executions of Shia Muslim prisoners and forcing out other non-Muslims such as Mosul's ancient Christian community.

Libya unrest 'worse than under Gaddafi'

Libya is descending into a civil war spiral that is "much worse" than the unrest that toppled its dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, residents fleeing the country say.
"We have gone through [war] before, with Gaddafi, but now it's much worse," Paraskevi Athineou, a Greek woman living in Libya, said on Saturday.
"Chaos reigns. There is no government, we have no food, no fuel, no water, no electricity for hours on end," she said.
Athineou was part of a group of 186 people evacuated from Tripoli by a Greek navy frigate which reached the port of Piraeus early on Saturday.
In addition to 77 Greek nationals, there were 78 Chinese, 10 Britons, 12 Cypriots, seven Belgians, one Albanian and a Russian.
Among them were several diplomats, including the Chinese ambassador to Libya.
Libya has suffered chronic insecurity since Gaddafi's overthrow in 2011, with the new government unable to check militias that helped to remove him and facing a growing threat from Islamist groups.
"So many people died to make the country better. But now we started killing each other in a civil war," said Osama Monsour, a 35-year-old employed at a non-governmental organisation in Tripoli.
Fighting between rival militias in Tripoli has forced the closure of the city's international airport, while Islamist groups are also battling army special forces in the eastern city of Benghazi.
"War is in the city ... and we civilians are under fire from both sides," Athineou said.
"It is worse than 2011," said Ali Gariani, a Libyan married to a Greek woman.
"That time were were being bombed by NATO. But now we are being bombed by the Libyans themselves, and that is really shameful," he said.

Syria troops kill at least 50 jihadists near Lebanon

BEIRUT: Syrian troops backed by Hezbollah fighters have killed at least 50 jihadists from the Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front groups near the border with Lebanon, a monitor said on Saturday.

The clashes raged through the night and into the morning on Saturday in the border region of Qalamun, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Among the dead were at least seven pro-regime fighters, including government soldiers and members of Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite militant group that backs Syria's President Bashar al-Assad.

Regime forces recaptured most of the Qalamun region in April, with many rebel fighters withdrawing from the strategic area or slipping across the border in Lebanon.

But pockets of opposition fighters, including jihadists, have remained in the mountainous region.

Though the Islamic State and Al-Nusra Front both have roots in al-Qaida, IS has formally broken with the group, while Nusra is its official branch in Syria.

Despite ideological similarities, the two groups are opposed and in conflict with each other in other parts of Syria, particularly in the north.

But in Qalamun, their fighters battled the regime and Hezbollah forces alongside each other, with support from some smaller Islamist rebel groups, the Observatory said

Afghan election recount stalls again

A recount of votes in the Afghan election has been suspended again, despite being scheduled to restart on Saturday after the Muslim Eid holiday.

The breakdown came despite late night phone talks between US Secretary of State John Kerry and candidates Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani.
A spokesman for Mr Abdullah said that the UN had not taken his concerns into account.
Both candidates accuse each other of electoral fraud.
It was Mr Kerry's intervention last month in three days of talks in Kabul that led to agreement to carry out a full audit of votes.
The current dispute is over how to deal with ballot boxes found to contain invalid votes.

Six dead after quake sparks panic near Algerian capital

At least six people died after a magnitude 5.5 earthquake hit southeast of the Algerian capital on Friday, shaking buildings and sending panicked families rushing into the streets of Algiers, authorities said.
The United States Geological Survey said the quake had struck nine miles southeast of Algiers and its epicentre was recorded at a relatively shallow depth of 6.2 miles.
There were no reports of major damage, according to Algerian state television. But four people died trying to jump from windows or escape their buildings in panic and another two died of heart attacks, a health official said.
Many Algerians still have strong memories of 2003, when Algeria’s strongest earthquake in years – measuring 6.7 – struck the capital and surrounding areas, killing at least 2,000 people and crumbling buildings in nearby towns.

Some Rebels In Ukraine Vent Frustration With Putin

DONETSK, Ukraine, July 30 (Reuters) - Western leaders may be Vladimir Putin's biggest critics over the conflict in east Ukraine but the Russian leader is also facing criticism from some of the rebels they accuse him of arming.
The European Union and the United States have imposed new sanctions on Russia because they say Putin has not done enough to persuade the pro-Russian separatists to stop fighting and is supplying them with weapons.
But there is also frustration with Putin among some of the fighters, even though a rebellion that began with assault rifles, hunting guns and old weapons now has multiple rocket launchers, self-propelled howitzers, armored vehicles and tanks.
Squeezed by the Ukrainian army into their last two strongholds, the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, the rebels complain they are outnumbered and outgunned.
"Oh, how we would like to see the Russian army here," said a fighter who gave his name only as Pavel, standing outside the rebel headquarters in Donetsk, an industrial city about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of the nearest border crossing with Russia.

China Factory Explosion Kills More Than 40

BEIJING (AP) — At least 65 people were killed Saturday by an explosion at an eastern Chinese automotive parts factory that supplies General Motors, state media reported.
The blast at the factory in the city of Kunshan in Jiangsu province also left more than 100 people injured, with many suffering severe burns, the official Xinhua News Agency said. Kunshan is about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) southeast of Beijing.
State broadcaster CCTV showed footage shot by residents of large plumes of thick, black smoke rising from the plant. News websites posted photos showing survivors or victims being lifted onto the back of large trucks, their bodies black presumably from burns or being covered in soot.
Some survivors were seen sitting on wooden cargo platforms on the road outside the factory, their clothes apparently burned off and skin exposed or being carried into ambulances.
The factory is operated by the Zhongrong Metal Products Company, a Taiwanese enterprise that according to its website was set up in 1998 and has a registered capital of $8.8 million. Its core business is electroplating aluminum alloy wheel hubs, the website says, while it supplies GM and other companies.
There were more than 200 workers at the site when the blast occurred, Xinhua cited the city government as saying. More than 120 people who were injured have been sent to hospitals in Kunshan and the nearby city of Suzhou.
A preliminary investigation has shown that the blast was likely a dust explosion, Xinhua said. Such an explosion is the fast combustion of particles suspended in air in an enclosed space. The particles could include dust or powdered metals such as aluminum. They would have to come into contact with a spark, such as fire, an overheated surface, or electrical discharge from machinery.

House revives, approves border crisis bill – as Obama vows to ‘act alone’

The House late Friday revived and approved a Republican-authored border crisis bill after GOP leaders hurriedly resolved an internal battle that scuttled the vote a day earlier – but with the Senate on recess and the House soon to follow, there’s little chance of any bill reaching President Obama’s desk until the fall.
The president now is vowing to act unilaterally to address the illegal immigration issue.

The House legislation was approved on a 223-189 vote. The new version of the bill adds additional funding for the National Guard and includes policy changes meant to speed deportations of illegal immigrant children surging across the southern border.
"It's dealing with the issue that the American people care about more than any other, and that is stopping the invasion of illegal foreign nationals into our country," said Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn. "And we got to yes."
However, a separate Senate bill died on a procedural vote a day earlier, and no more votes in that chamber are scheduled until early September.Even if the Senate were somehow to approve the House bill, Obama vowed Friday he would veto it.
In the absence of any legislation that all sides can agree on, the president threatened to act on his own to address immigration challenges, potentially during the five-week recess.
"I'm going to have to make some tough choices to meet the challenge, with or without Congress," Obama said Friday, speaking to reporters in the White House briefing room.

Meriam Ibrahim, Sudan Woman Who Faced Death Over Faith, Receives Hero's Welcome In U.S.

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — A Sudanese woman who refused to recant her Christian faith in the face of a death sentence arrived Thursday in the United States, where she was welcomed first by the mayor of Philadelphia as a "world freedom fighter" and later by cheering supporters waving American flags in New Hampshire.
Meriam Ibrahim flew from Rome to Philadelphia with her husband and two children, en route to Manchester, where her husband has family and where they will make their new home. Her husband, Daniel Wani, his face streaked with tears, briefly thanked New Hampshire's Sudanese community on his family's behalf and said he appreciated the outpouring of support.
Earlier in Philadelphia, Mayor Michael Nutter said people will remember Ibrahim along "with others who stood up so we could be free." He compared her to Rosa Parks, who became a symbol of the U.S. civil rights movement when she refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, touching off a bus boycott.
Nutter said it was only fitting Ibrahim landed first in Philadelphia, a city founded as a place open to all faiths. He gave her a small replica of the Liberty Bell, a symbol of American independence, which he said she understood.
"Meriam Ibrahim is a world freedom fighter," he said.

Obama admits CIA 'tortured some folks' but stands by Brennan over spying

• President says US ‘crossed a line’ after 9/11 attacks
• Obama supports CIA director under fire over Senate report

• CIA admits spying on Senate staffers
• Trevor Timm: Brennan lied, so fire him

President Barack Obama on Friday starkly criticised the CIA’s past treatment of terror suspects, saying he could understand why the agency rushed to use controversial interrogation techniques in the aftermath of 9/11 but conceding: “We tortured some folks.”
In some of the most expansive and blunt remarks on the CIA’s programme of rendition and detention he has made since coming to office, Obama said the country “crossed a line” as it struggled to react to the threat of further attacks by al-Qaida. However, he also said it was important “not to feel too sanctimonious”, adding that he believed intelligence officials responsible for torturing detainees were working during a period of extraordinary stress and fear.
Obama’s comments come on the eve of the release of a widely-anticipated Senate report that will criticise the CIA for brutally abusing terrorist suspects in its custody in a covert programme that, the report is expected to conclude, did not yield any life-saving intelligence.
Obama banned the use of torture – which the CIA prefers to call “enhanced interrogation techniques” – shortly after he took office in 2009; a promise to do so was part of his first presidential election campaign.
Friday was not the first time since he came to the White House that Obama has used the word “torture” to describe the CIA’s methodology. In 2009, for example, he said he believed that “waterboarding”, one of several controversial interrogation methods used by US intelligence agencies during George W Bush’s administration, constituted torture, and that “whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake”.
However his latest comments, made at a White House press conference, expanded on his thoughts about CIA tactics, which he said “any fair-minded person would believe were torture”. US officials have historically avoided using the word “torture”, because of its potential legal ramifications.

US Senate unanimously approves $225m funding for Israel's Iron Dome

Lawmakers reached an agreement overnight to pass the missile defence system funding measure

The US Senate unanimously passed legislation on Friday to provide $225m in emergency funding for Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system.
An earlier version of the funding plan had failed on Thursday when Senate Republicans blocked a broader spending bill that was largely intended to provide money to handle the current immigration crisis at the US-Mexico border.
But lawmakers reached an agreement overnight to pass the missile funding measure.
To become law, the funding plan must still pass the House of Representatives and be signed by President Barack Obama. Given US lawmakers’ traditionally strong support for Israel, it is not expected to encounter significant resistance in the House.
Israel’s Iron Dome missile interceptor system, which was partly funded by the United States, has shot down most of the rockets fired at its cities by militants in Gaza during the current three-week conflict.

Ebola outbreak: 2 infected aid workers flying to Atlanta for treatment

When two U.S. aid workers infected with Ebola arrive in Atlanta from Africa, they will be whisked into one of the most sophisticated hospital isolation units in the country.
The specialized unit at Emory University Hospital was opened a dozen years ago to care for federal health workers exposed to some of the world's most dangerous germs.
Now it's being pressed into service for the two seriously ill Americans who worked at a hospital in Liberia, one of the three West Africa countries hit by the largest Ebola outbreak in history.
One of the aid workers is due to arrive Saturday, and the second a few days later, according to officials at the hospital. They are travelling in a private jet outfitted with a special, portable tent designed for patients with highly infectious diseases.
It will be the first time anyone infected with Ebola is brought into the country. U.S. officials are confident they can be treated without putting the public in any danger.
The Emory hospital unit is located just down a hill from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It is one of about four such units around the country for testing and treating people infected with dangerous, infectious germs.
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