Palestinian Authority Arabs rioted Thursday in Hevron, where they hurled rocks and bottles at Israeli soldiers. IDF troops responded with mob control methods that included the use of tear gas.
A damaging video of Israeli soldiers fleeing from rock-throwing terrorists has inspired an IDF review of the limitations being placed on the nation's troops.
Several Israeli soldiers have charged that officers' concerns about media photos have recently forced them to retreat in the face of PA Arab mob attacks.
Several Israeli soldiers have charged that officers' concerns about media photos have recently forced them to retreat in the face of PA Arab mob attacks.
For the first time in five years, Hamas held a mass rally in the West Bank city of Nablus Thursday, signaling improving relations between the Islamist movement and its rival Fatah, whose leader Mahmoud Abbas controls the West Bank.
Some 10,000 Hamas supporters marched from Al-Nasr Mosque to Martyrs’ Square in downtown Nablus following afternoon prayers, where a mass rally was held to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the movement’s establishment, under the name “Shale Stones [the name given by Hamas to Operation Pillar of Defense] — the road to liberation.”
The Hamas rally was broadcast live on national Palestinian television and a number of Fatah officials, including the governor of Nablus, participated in it.
The Israeli government needs to be prepared for the Palestinians to take action against it at the International Criminal Court, Israel’s top US envoy said Wednesday afternoon, as tensions mount between the parties over settlement construction in the West Bank.
Disagreements between the Palestinian Authority and Israel have been intensifying in the wake of PA President Maahmoud Abbas’s successful bid for non-member state recognition at the UN last month. That recognition gives the Palestinians the ability to try to take Israel to the ICC.
Oren expressed disappointment not only with the Palestinians for going to the UN, but with the European countries who didn’t oppose their move, and said that was particularly because the Palestinian step violated the Oslo Accords to which the Europeans were witnesses.
Palestinian Authority officials confirmed Thursday that they were studying the possibility of establishing a confederation with Jordan, but stressed that this would take place only after the creation of an independent Palestinian state within the pre-1967 lines.
The officials were commenting on a report in the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper that claimed that Abbas had asked senior Fatah leaders to prepare for the formation of a confederation between a Palestinian state and Jordan.
Abbas reportedly met with seven top Fatah and PA figures and discussed with them the idea, the report said, adding that the PA president had asked that the meeting remain confidential.
The report quoted an informed Palestinian source as saying that Abbas told participants that the confederation plan would come soon "and we must be prepared for it."
While the UN vote was widely hailed as a “symbolic” victory for the Palestinians, it was a major setback for the Middle East peace process. After all, the 1993 Oslo Accords stipulate that the Palestinians must negotiate their statehood with Israel. Thus, every country that either endorsed recognition or abstained from voting was effectively encouraging the Palestinians to disregard their Oslo obligations and continue harboring dangerous delusions.
Moreover, the vote was a massive triumph for Hamas, which remains committed to Israel’s destruction. Even Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad, a member of the rival Fatah faction, acknowledged that UN recognition had vindicated the Hamas strategy of using violence rather than peaceful diplomacy. “Hamas delivered,” he said after the vote. “Hamas has won.”
Not surprisingly, Hamas foreign minister Mahmoud Zahar was happy to crow about his organization’s growing credibility among Palestinians. “The most important fact that has emerged from this is Hamas’s ability to convince all Palestinians of our way,” he declared. “We gave Fatah a full opportunity to implement its way, and it failed.”
By emboldening a terrorist group and convincing Palestinians that Hamas-style violence produces results, the UN vote made it more likely that Israel will soon find itself fighting another war in the Gaza Strip, which has been controlled by Hamas since 2006 and used as a launching pad for thousands of rocket attacks against Israel.
Two lingering headaches in America’s foreign policy took on new dimensions this week as North Korea fired a missile over Japan and launched a satellite and the U.S. formally recognized the Syrian opposition in its battle against President Bashar al-Assad.
Retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely was deputy commanding general for the Pacific and also returned from consultations with military officials from the Syrian opposition. He told WND Assad’s days are numbered.
“Assad will fall. The information I got from the Syrian generals is that he’ll either be evacuated with his family to Russia or probably most likely to Iran,” said Vallely, who estimates Assad will be gone within 30-60 days.
He said the rebels are successfully attacking airfields and have essentially shut down the main airport in Damascus, although Iranian planes are still getting in to provide much needed supplies to the beleaguered regime.
The Islamists are at the sharp front edge of the rebel force battling for control of the Syrian army’s biggest chemical weapons store at Al Safira, near Aleppo. Thursday morning, Dec. 12, they were just a kilometer from the base’s northwestern perimeter fence and advancing fast. By week’s end, Jabhat al-Nusra jihadis may have smashed into the base and seized control of the chemical stocks and Scud D planes standing there armed with chemical warheads.
The imminence of this peril forced Bashar Assad’s hand into sending Scud jets against rebel-held areas in an effort to stop their advance on the base.
The imminence of this peril forced Bashar Assad’s hand into sending Scud jets against rebel-held areas in an effort to stop their advance on the base.
This al Qaeda affiliate is also better armed and equipped than any other Syrian rebel force, thanks to the generous financial and logistical aid laid on by Persian Gulf sources, especially in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.
If Assad fails to stop the al Qaeda fighters from reaching Al-Safira and its poison gas stores - and an al Qaeda affiliate succeeds for the first time in arming itself with chemical weapons - the United States will have to mount an air assault – not on Assad’s army but on the Syrian rebel forces fighting him, because if they do manage to seize control of the base, rebel fighters may decide to send the chemicals-tipped missiles against Assad regime centers in Damascus.
The fall of al Safira would then transform the Syrian civil conflict into a chemical missile war.
Syria's chemical weapons could be used at "a moment's notice" and the international community should not accept any assurances from Syrian officials that they will not be used, US House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said on Wednesday.
Rogers, a Republican, told Reuters in an interview that the Syrian government's activities related to chemical weapons were a shift in posture and a major concern.
"I believe that they have put elements of their chemical weapons program in a condition of which they could be used at a moment's notice, which is very different from before," Rogers said.
EU finance ministers have agreed a landmark deal establishing the European Central Bank (ECB) as the single supervisor of the European banking sector, beginning in 2014.
The agreement reached in the early hours of Thursday morning (13 December) is a significant breakthrough as the EU bids to break the link between indebted banks and sovereign bonds nearly five years after the start of the financial crisis.
Meanwhile, the existing European Banking Authority (EBA) - itself only established in 2010 - will remain responsible for developing the single rulebook and policing implementation of EU supervisory rules.
Yes, a single supervisor for all of the banks.
Eurozone leaders agreed Thursday to begin laying the groundwork for a full-fledged banking union and to give Greece yet another bailout. The measures, approved by European finance ministers, ended weeks of haggling over ways to deal with the three-year financial crisis.
The gathering of eurozone ministers came just hours after a pre-dawn meeting of finance ministers from all 27 EU countries, including non-euro countries such as Britain and Poland, agreed to create a single supervisor for the region’s banks.
It was a key component of what many hope will eventually become a full-fledged banking union
“Piece by piece, brick by brick, the banking union will be built on this first fundamental step today,” said Michel Barnier, the EU Commissioner responsible for the monitoring of financial markets.
Providing it is approved by the European Parliament early next year, the European Central Bank will take on the single supervisory role. The ECB will have direct oversight for the largest and most significant banks in the eurozone and any other country in the EU that wants to opt in.
The Prime Minister will travel to Brussels for a summit with European leaders on Thursday to discuss a proposed two-year timetable to a political union in which countries lose the right to set their own budgets.
Over the next 12 months, the plan would see eurozone banks become regulated by the European Central Bank, rather than financial watchdogs in individual countries.
EU officials now believe that a new Treaty to establish the new framework is “inevitable”.
However, eurosceptics, including Mr Johnson, are likely to object to the plans which will see eurozone countries surrendering economic sovereignty to the EU.
And lastly (if the above wasn't enough):
SAN FRANCISCO, United States, Wednesday December 12, 2012 -Geologists in the United States have warned that deadly tsunamis threaten the Caribbean and are an overlooked hazard in the region.
Scientists attending the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) here noted that the Caribbean's beautiful tropical islands and coral reefs are strung along the junction of several major and minor tectonic plates.
They said many of the islands sit above a subduction zone, where two plates meet and one “slides protestingly under the other, down into Earth's mantle”.
Scientists attending the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) here noted that the Caribbean's beautiful tropical islands and coral reefs are strung along the junction of several major and minor tectonic plates.
They said many of the islands sit above a subduction zone, where two plates meet and one “slides protestingly under the other, down into Earth's mantle”.
The scientists warn that more than 40 nations and territories in the region could suffer damage from a tsunami from the subduction zones. They said landslides from volcanoes falling into the sea are another hazard.
In addition, the scientists cautioned that “Haitian-style strike-slip earthquakes” can trigger submarine landslides, stating that the 7.0-magnitude earthquake in 2010 in Haiti had caused a local tsunami on the south shore.
In addition, the scientists cautioned that “Haitian-style strike-slip earthquakes” can trigger submarine landslides, stating that the 7.0-magnitude earthquake in 2010 in Haiti had caused a local tsunami on the south shore.
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