Meshaal belt Morsi en biedt hem zijn medeleven en benadrukt de veiligheid van Egypte

 

Voorzitter van het Politiek Bureau van de Islamitische Verzetsbeweging Hamas, Khaled Meshaal

Caïro – De voorzitter van het Politiek Bureau van de Islamitische Verzetsbeweging Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, heeft de Egyptische president Mohamed Morsi gebeld en heeft hem, het Egyptische volk en de families van de slachtoffers zijn oprechte medeleven overgebracht voor het martelaarschap van de Egyptische soldaten.
Volgens een verklaring van het Informatiebureau van de beweging heeft Hamas de misdaad waarbij Egyptische soldaten het leven lieten, scherp veroordeeld. Deze veroordeling gebeurt nadrukkelijk op de wens van Hamas en het Palestijnse volk, die staan voor de veiligheid en stabiliteit van Egypte en die elke poging verwerpen om deze veiligheid te schaden of hiermee te knoeien.
Niet bekende gewapende mannen vielen een controlepost van de Egyptische veiligheidstroepen in de Sinaï aan met gestolen gepantserde voertuigen, waarbij 16 Egyptische soldaten werden gedood. De opzet zou zijn geweest om een aanval uit te voeren op de Israëlische  bezettingsmacht.

(vrij vertaald van een artikel van http://www.safa.ps / 06.08.2012)

State Media Bombing in Damascus; Forces Prepare for Aleppo Ground Assault

Violence continues to rage in Syria where government forces and rebels are clashing in the two main fronts of Damascus and Aleppo. Earlier today, a bombing struck the headquarters of Syria’s state broadcaster, injuring several people. The regime of Bashar al-Assad appears to be preparing a ground assault in Aleppo with reports of some 20,000 troops surrounding the city. At the United Nations, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed concern for Aleppo residents.

Ban Ki-moon: “Aleppo, one of the most ancient and storied cities in the world, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is the epicenter of a vicious battle between the Syrian government and those who wish to replace it. The acts of brutality that are being reported may constitute crimes against humanity or war crimes. Such acts must be investigated and the perpetrators held to account.”

(www.democracynow.org / 06.08.2012)

 

Syria Arrests Turkish Army General in Aleppo

TEHRAN (FNA)- The Syrian Army announced that it has recently apprehended a Turkish general who commanded the terrorists trying to seize control of Aleppo.

According to an informed source in Syria, the Turkish general was arrested during the Syrian Army’s clashes with the terrorists in Aleppo. News reports said that the Turkish general has been taken to Damascus for further interrogations. Earlier, Turkish media also reported that Syria has detained 40 Turkish military officers in different parts of the country, and said that efforts to release them have failed. Turkey along with the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been supporting terrorists and rebel groups in Syria and have practically brought a UN peace initiative into failure to bring President Assad’s government into collapse. Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country. Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes. The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad. In October 2011, calm was eventually restored in the Arab state after President Assad started a reform initiative in the country, but Israel, the US and its Arab allies are seeking hard to bring the country into chaos through any possible means. Tel Aviv, Washington and some Arab capitals have been staging various plots in the hope of increasing unrests in Syria. (english.farsnews.com / 06.08.2012)

Egypt’s Brotherhood blames Israel’s Mossad for deadly Sinai attack

Masked gunmen allegedly killed 16 Egyptian soldiers at a checkpoint along the border with Gaza and Israel on Sunday.

Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood said on its website that the attack on a police station in Sinai on Sunday in which 16 policemen were killed “can be attributed to Mossad” and was an attempt to thwart Islamist President Mohamed Mursi.

The statement said Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, was trying to abort the Egyptian uprising that toppled president Hosni Mubarak last year and that it was “imperative to review clauses” of the agreement between Egypt and Israel.

Earlier, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he hoped the deadly cross-border assault would serve as a “wake-up call” to Egypt, long accused by Israel of losing its grip in the desert peninsula.
Israeli forces subsequently killed eight of the gunmen after they tried to breach the border area, he added.

Addressing a parliamentary committee, Barak praised the work of Israeli forces in thwarting the attack.
“Perhaps it will also be a proper wake-up call to the Egyptians to take matters in hand on their side (of the border), in a firmer way,” he said.

Israel has repeatedly complained about poor security in the Sinai following the overthrow of Egypt’s former president, Hosni Mubarak, last year.

A demilitarized Sinai is the keystone of the historic 1979 peace deal between the two countries.

But for the past year there has been growing lawlessness in the vast desert expanse, as Bedouin bandits, jihadists and Palestinian militants from next-door Gaza fill the vacuum, tearing at already frayed relations between Egypt and Israel.

Egypt closed its border crossing into the Gaza Strip overnight following the assault, with one Egyptian official saying “Jihadist elements” had infiltrated from the Palestinian coastal enclave, which is run by Hamas Islamists.

Hamas condemned the attack on the Egyptian soldiers.

Israel knew about attack

Israel’s military spokesman says intelligence services had reports of an impending attack from Egypt, adding that they were ready to thwart any such move.

Masked gunmen killed 16 Egyptian soldiers at a checkpoint along the border with Gaza and Israel on Sunday, then burst through a security fence with cars commandeered from the troops to enter Israel.

Israeli military spokesman Brig.-Gen. Yoav Mordechai said Monday that militants blew up one of the vehicles to enter Israel. But he said Israeli intelligence services had information about impending infiltration and sent an aircraft to strike a second car the militants had seized from the Egyptian forces.

Mordechai told Army Radio, “We were prepared for it, therefore there was a hit.”

Like Egyptian officials, he blamed Islamist militants from Gaza and Egypt’s lawless Sinai Peninsula.

Egypt’s official MENA news agency said the gunmen were “jihadists” from inside the Islamist Hamas-run Gaza Strip.

Speaking after an emergency meeting with military officials, the interior minister and the intelligence chief, Egyptian President Mohammed Mursi vowed to retake control of the Sinai after the attack.

“The (security) forces will take full control of these regions,” Mursi said in a television address.

He had given “clear instructions” that Egypt must take “full control of the Sinai,” after the security situation deteriorated markedly following the ouster of longtime strongman Hosni Mubarak early last year.

Mursi, who took the oath of office on June 30 to become the country’s first freely elected leader and its first head of state since Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow, said those who committed the “cowardly” attack and those who worked with them would pay dearly.

“Those responsible for this crime will be hunted down and arrested,” he said.

(english.alarabiya.net / 06.08.2012)

Report: Netanyahu to release prisoners if UN bid scrapped

A majority vote in the 193-member General Assembly would be enough to bestow non-member observer status, bypassing the Security Council - where the United States, Israel’s ally, has a veto.

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered to release 50 prisoners detained before the Oslo Accords if the Palestinian Authority cancels its proposed UN bid, Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv reported Monday.

Netanyahu also offered to meet with President Mahmoud Abbas to resume political negotiations, the newspaper added.

“The bid will be submitted in the right time,” Abbas’ political adviser Nimir Hammad said in response.

All prisoners detained before the Oslo Accords should be released without conditions, Hammad added, saying he refused to link a prisoner release with the UN bid.

In June, Netanyahu’s adviser Yitzhak Molcho promised that Israel would release 25 out of the 123 prisoners detained before Oslo, Maariv said.

The offer was reportedly made when Molcho met with Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.

On Saturday, PA Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki told reporters in Ramallah that the PA would ask to be made a non-member observer state at the UN General Assembly on Sept. 27.

Ron Prosor, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, said any UN bid would find majority support but “will change nothing on the ground.”

(www.maannews.net / 06.08.2012)

Analysts say Sinai attack attempt to strain Egypt-Gaza relations

The Camp David agreement limits the number of soldiers Egypt can deploy to the Sinai.

GAZA CITY (Ma’an) — The attack on a Sinai police station that killed 16 Egyptian officers on Sunday was an attempt to strain relations between Egypt and Gaza, political analysts said Monday.

“What happened in Egypt was a crime and organized terror meant to drive a wedge in Palestinian-Egyptian relations. It is possible that external hands are interfering with Egypt after Muhammad Mursi became president,” Gaza-based analyst Mustafa al-Sawwaf told Ma’an.

Palestinians have no interest in attacking Egyptian forces, but Israel has been unsettled by the improvement in relations between Gaza rulers Hamas and Egypt’s recently elected Muslim Brotherhood president, al-Sawwaf said.

Egypt’s former President Hosni Mubarak, who was overthrown by a citizen revolt in Jan. 2011, had played a key role in maintaining Israel’s siege on the Gaza Strip, but Mursi has pledged measures to ease the blockade and held several high-level meetings with Hamas.

Al-Sawwaf said some parties within Egypt and at an international level were uncomfortable with Hamas’ friendly relations with Mursi. Hamas has condemned the Sinai attack and vowed not to let anyone threaten Egypt’s security.

Faysal Abu Shalha, a Fatah MP in Gaza, said he hoped Mursi would still implement his pledges to aid Palestinians in the besieged enclave.

But Akram Atallah, a political analyst based in Bethlehem, said he feared residents of Gaza could pay a heavy price for the deaths of the Egyptian officers, particularly if militants in Gaza were involved in the attack.

Mursi had promised to extend the opening hours of the Rafah crossing but Egyptian security officials said the Egypt-Gaza border was indefinitely closed in the wake of the attack.

Attallah told Ma’an he suspected Israel was involved in the attack. He said Israel knew about the raid and noted that it had advised its citizens to leave Sinai days earlier.

He added that Israeli forces assassinated a man in Gaza earlier on Sunday claiming that he was involved in a plot “to execute a terror attack against Israeli civilians via the Israel-Egypt border.”

Hamza Abu Shanab, a Gaza-based analyst, said the Sinai attack was an opportunity for Mursi to cancel Egypt’s 1979 peace agreement with Israel.

The Camp David agreement limits the number of soldiers Egypt can deploy to Sinai, Abu Shanab noted, and so Mursi must ask Israel’s permission to enlarge its force in the peninsula.

An Israeli refusal would be embarrassing as Tel Aviv has called on Cairo to tighten its grip on Sinai, Abu Shanab added.

(www.maannews.net / 06.08.2012)

Palestinian prisoners’ club releases statistics about Palestinians held by Israel

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club released statistics on Monday concerning Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

According to the report, Israel is currently holding 167 children between the ages of 16-18 and 43 children under the age of 16. The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club stated that “international organizations need to put an end to the detention of children and take responsibility for their release.”

As of 31 July 2012, Israel was holding 250 prisoners in administrative detention, i.e. detention without charges or trial. At the end of 2011 Israel was holding 320 Palestinians in administrative detention, and the drop in numbers is due to the hunger strike conducted by Palestinian prisoners earlier this year.

(www.alternativenews.org / 06.08.2012)

Spokesman: Former Syria PM who defected will head to Qatar

BEIRUT (Reuters) — Syrian former Prime Minister Riyad Hijab, who defected on Monday will leave Jordan and head to Qatar, al-Arabiya news channel said, quoting his spokesman.

An official source in the Jordanian capital Amman confirmed that Hijab had gone over to the opposition seeking to topple President Bashar Assad after fleeing across the border with his family.

(www.maannews.net / 06.08.2012)

Syrian prime minister sacked

Damascus, Aug. 6 (Petra) – Syrian state-run television announced that Prime Minister Riad Hijab has been sacked from his post as head of the Syrian Cabinet.

President Bashar al-Assad appointed Hijab, a former agriculture minister, as prime minister in June, following parliamentary elections in May.

(petra.gov.jo / 06.08.2012)

New Regulation Bars Palestinians and Immigrants from Using Israeli Courts

Israeli Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman has enacted a new regulation that effectively limits the ability of Palestinians and immigrants to file lawsuits in Israeli courts.

Israeli Justice Minister, Yaakov Neeman.

According to the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, the new regulation would require anyone filing a claim in Israeli courts to provide their Israeli ID number or foreign passport number. Palestinians from the occupied territories or stateless individuals without passports would effectively be banned from filing grievances with the courts when this order goes into effect on September 1.

Ha’aretz stated that people without a passport would have their cases referred to a judge, but in practice, warned Oded Feller, a lawyer for the Association for Civil Rights in Israel, individuals without a passport would be barred from filing as court clerks refused to accept documents that are incomplete and forms missing passport numbers could be deemed as such.

Palestinians often file lawsuits in Israeli courts against Israeli Occupation Soldiers for misconduct and damages, which would be affected by this regulation. It would also hamper the ability of Palestinians from the occupied territories or migrants from other countries without passports from filing suit in labor courts against unscrupulous employers, from recovering damages if injured in a car accident, or even from filing appeals against the Israeli Interior Ministry if it decided to deport them.

(www.imemc.org / 06.08.2012)