In a keynote speech Friday night marking the third anniversary of that war’s end, Hezbollah chief Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah outlined his strategy for Lebanon to deter Israel from launching another offensive. Responding to Israeli threats to flatten southern Lebanese villages and infrastructure, he vowed to attack Tel Aviv if Israel targeted Beirut or its southern suburbs, where Hezbollah’s headquarters are.

“We are now capable of attacking any city or village throughout Israel,” he said, dismissing recent Israeli threats against Hezbollah as psychological warfare. “When Israelis talk a lot, it means that they will do nothing. However, when they are silent like a snake we have to be cautious.” Nasrallah’s comments, delivered via a live video feed to a crowd of flag-waving supporters and invited politicians, were the latest in a month-long barrage of threats from both sides of the Lebanon-Israel border.

The saber-rattling, touched off in mid-July by explosions near an alleged Hezbollah weapons cache here in the hills of south Lebanon, seems driven more by a fear that the other side will take action, than a desire to launch a fresh round of fighting, say analysts and United Nations peacekeepers here.

“Contrary to the talk, the situation on the ground in our area of operations is generally quiet,” says Milos Strugar, senior advisor to the UN peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL, which patrols the southern Lebanon border district. “In our contacts with all the parties, they reiterate to us their interest in upholding the cessation of hostilities.”

Israel, Hezbollah threaten war – again

“Palestinians are encouraged by the commitment President Obama and his administration have shown to Middle East peace,” Saeb Erakat, a Fatah member and the Palestinians’ top official said on Friday.

Erekat said the establishment of a viable Palestinian state and a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem would make the region more secure and stable.

But, he warned “the peace process lives on borrowed time,” saying it would not survive another round of failed negotiations.

“Israel’s failure to implement its obligations under existing agreements has eroded its credibility, while its continued settlement activities are undermining the very viability of the two state solution,” Erakat said.

Hamas reaction

Hamas, however, called the meeting a continuation of Abbas’ “way of begging” to the US and the “Zionist entity.”

Fawzi Barhoum, a Hamas spokesman, said the meeting would “accomplish nothing but more pressure on Abbas.”

He said the US administration would fail to take “any action on the ground” to halt Israeli “aggressions” and realise Palestinian rights.

In the meeting on Thursday Obama called for a stop to Israeli settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and emphasised the two-state solution.

However, Benyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, refused to openly endorse the two-state solution during a meeting with Obama on May 18.

He also rejected the US and Palestinian demand for an absolute freeze in settlement activity.

Netanyahu promised not to build new settlements, but vowed to continue construction in existing ones to accommodate for “natural growth.”

Palestinians differ on US promises

The fact-finding mission appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate rights violations during the Gaza war also renewed a call for Israel to support its investigation.

Richard Goldstone, who heads the four-member mission, stressed that his team would adopt a law-based approach in preparing its report to council in July, and would investigate alleged rights violations by both Israel and Hamas.

“I would like to emphasize that we will focus our investigation not on political considerations, but on an objective and impartial analysis of compliance of the parties to the conflict with their obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law, especially their responsibility to ensure the protection of civilians and non-combatants,” said Goldstone, a former UN war crimes prosecutor in a statement issued on Friday.

“I believe that an objective assessment of the issues is in the interest of all parties, will promote a culture of accountability and could serve to promote greater peace and security in the region,” the South African judge said.

The mission intends to conduct visits to southern Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and has requested the cooperation of the Israeli government.

The other members of the team include Christine Chinkin, professor of international law at the London School of Economics; Hina Jilani, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Pakistan; and Col. (ret.) Desmond Travers of Ireland, a member of the board of directors of the Institute for International Criminal Investigations (IICI).

On Wednesday, President Shimon Peres told reporters that IDF forces did not intentionally aim at civilians or UN facilities during Operation Cast Lead. However, he acknowledged that Israel might have made “some mistakes.”

Speaking after a private meeting with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Peres repeated the government’s position that it would not accept “one word” of the UN report released Tuesday on the attacks on UN facilities during the recent fighting.

The report, commissioned by Ban in February, blamed Israel for failing to take adequate precautions to ensure that UN installations and civilians sheltering in them would be protected from shells or other fire intended for Hamas terrorists.

According to the report, the IDF was responsible for fatalities and damage in six cases, including a strike that killed people sheltering at a Gaza school.

UN team probing Gaza war to visit Strip

The military said in a statement that it had “maintained a high professional and moral level” during the 22-day war, which ended Jan. 18, though it faced “an enemy that aimed to terrorize Israeli civilians whilst taking cover” among Palestinian civilians and “using them as human shields.”

Israel mounted its attack on Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls Gaza, with the stated purpose of preventing rocket fire on southern Israel from Gaza. But the offensive set off international outrage and condemnation as the Palestinian death toll grew, as United Nations facilities and medical teams came under fire and as allegations emerged of improper use of white phosphorus weapons.

This month, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed an internationally renowned judge, Richard J. Goldstone, to lead a high-level mission to investigate allegations of war crimes during the Gaza war.

Though Mr. Goldstone, a former judge in South Africa and a former United Nations chief prosecutor for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, has said he will investigate possible violations by both Israel and Hamas, officials in Jerusalem have said it is unlikely that Israel will cooperate with the mission.

Gaza health officials said more than 1,300 Palestinians died during the war, but Israel disputes Palestinian claims that most of them were noncombatants. By the Israeli military’s count, 1,166 people were killed, of whom 295 were noncombatants, 709 were what it called Hamas terrorist operatives and 162 were men whose affiliations remain unidentified.

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights in Gaza put the number of dead at 1,417: 926 civilians, 236 combatants and 255 police officers. Israel says that about 400 Gazans die of natural causes every month, possibly accounting for the discrepancy in numbers.

Thirteen Israelis were killed during the fighting, among them 10 soldiers and 3 civilians.

Maj. Gen. Dan Harel, the Israeli military’s deputy chief of staff, told reporters on Wednesday that the army “discovered a small number of mistakes, not many, among the dozens of incidents we investigated, and we have already examined them and learned lessons from them.”

General Harel added that the army had “not found a single case of an Israeli soldier deliberately hurting innocent Palestinian civilians, whether from the land, air or sea.” If any such case was discovered, he said, it would be treated with the full severity of the law.

Describing the mistakes as “unfortunate” and ascribing them to “intelligence or operational errors,” the military said such incidents “were unavoidable and occur in all combat situations, in particular of the type which Hamas forced” on the army “by choosing to fight from within the civilian population.”

Three separate investigations whose conclusions were presented on Wednesday dealt with specific events that were brought to the army’s attention by the news media or other means. Two others examined general subjects, namely the use of weapons containing phosphorus and the destruction of infrastructure and buildings by ground forces.

In one case, where Israeli shells killed up to 40 Palestinians outside a United Nations school in the Jabaliya refugee camp, north of Gaza City, on Jan. 6, the soldiers were responding, according to the military, to mortar shells fired by militants in the vicinity of the school. Israel says that 12 to 17 Palestinians were killed, 5 of whom were militants.

Soon after the shelling, however, Palestinian hospital officials in the Jabaliya area told a reporter for The New York Times that 40 people had been killed, among them 10 children and 5 women. At a mass funeral in Jabaliya the next day, the reporter was unable to count the bodies in the press of the mourning crowd but described seeing the bodies of the children laid out in a long row on the ground. One of the mourners, Huda Deed, said she had lost nine members of her extended family, ages 3 to 25.

Another case investigated by the military involved the Daia family, 21 of whom were killed when their home, in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, was hit in an Israeli strike on Jan. 6. Expressing regret for the attack, a senior military official said the army had intended to hit the house next door, which was a weapons storage site; the Daia home was struck because of an “operational error.”

Israel has already come under heavy criticism for its use of white phosphorus in heavily populated Gaza. White phosphorus is a standard, legal weapon in armies, long used as a way to light up an area or to create a thick white smoke screen to obscure troop movements. But it can cause horrific burns, so using it against civilians, or in an area where many civilians are likely to be affected, can be a violation of international law.

Last month, Human Rights Watch issued a report citing six cases of improper use ofwhite phosphorus by Israel and calling them evidence of war crimes.

The military said it used two types of munitions containing white phosphorus, incendiary shells for marking and range-finding, which it said were used in limited quantities, and nonincendiary types of munitions used to create smoke screens. But officials said that both types were used in open areas only, in accordance with the limitations of international law.

The military noted that these investigations, conducted by officers with the rank of colonel, were not a replacement for the central operational army investigation of the entire campaign, which will be concluded by June.

The findings are not exhaustive. For example, the case of the Samouni family, some 30 of whose members were killed when the building in which they had sought shelter in Zeitoun was hit on Jan. 5, remains unresolved. Maj. Avital Leibovich, a military spokeswoman, said that the case was still being examined, and that it was not yet clear if the Samounis were killed by Israeli fire.

Israeli and international human rights groups rejected the Israeli military’s internal investigations as inadequate. Human Rights Watch called Wednesday’s statement by the military “an insult to the civilians in Gaza who needlessly died.” The army leadership, the group said, is “apparently not interested, willing, or able to monitor itself.”

NYTimes.com

“The two Qassam-type devices were fired from the northern Gaza Strip and landed in the western Negev,” a military spokeswoman said, referring to the crude, homemade rockets used by Palestinian armed groups.

Gaza militants have fired more than 160 rockets and mortar rounds on Israel since the end of a massive Israeli offensive at the turn of the year aimed at halting the projectiles, shaking the ceasefires that ended the fighting.

Israel has in turn launched several air strikes at suspected militants, weapons caches, and smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border.

On Thursday Hamas said the “resistance movements” had nothing to do with the recent rocket fire and vowed to combat such activities, saying they came at a “bad time.”

Egypt has been struggling since the war ended in January to mediate a more lasting ceasefire between Israel and Hamas and a prisoner exchange to return an Israeli soldier seized by Gaza militants in June 2006.

The Islamist movement has ruled Gaza since June 2007, when it violently drove out forces loyal to the Western-backed president Mahmud Abbas.

Two Gaza rockets hit Israel: military

Hamas security forces also reported Saturday’s strikes. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

The Israeli air force struck two “smuggling tunnels” on the southern Gaza border and one “weaponry storage site” in Gaza City, a military spokesman told CNN.

“In all strikes, a hit was identified,” the spokesman said, adding that the strikes were in response to six rockets targeting Israeli since Saturday morning.

According to the Israeli military, more than 100 rockets, mortar shells and missiles have been fired at Israel by Palestinian militants in Gaza since Hamas leaders announced a cease-fire on January 18.

Israel also announced a cease-fire and pulled its troops out of Gaza in January, ending a three-week military campaign that the Israeli military said was aimed at halting the rocket fire.

Egypt has been trying to broker a broader cease-fire agreement between Hamas and Israel. Israel is demanding that Hamas release kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit before it fully reopens the border crossings with Gaza.

Hamas has rejected discussing Shalit’s release as part of any cease-fire negotiation.

Israel launches airstrikes into Gaza – CNN.com

Fayyad is an internationally respected economist and politician. Salam Fayyad received his MBA from St. Edward’s University in 1980. Fayyad has a PhD in economics from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a student of William Barnett and did early research on the American Divisia Monetary Aggregates, which he continued on the staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Fayyad began his career teaching economics at Yarmouk University in Jordan, before joining the World Bank from 1987 – 1995. He subsequently became the International Monetary Fund representative to the Palestinian National Authority until 2001, when he accepted the offer to become its finance minister.

Upon resigning as finance minister, Fayyad ran as founder and leader of the new Third Way party in the legislative elections of 2006 alongside Hanan Ashrawi and Yasser Abd Rabbo. Fayyad and Ashrawi won their seats.

He is seen as pro-Western and was predicted to be offered prime minister by both Fatah and by the winner of the elections: the List of Change and Reform. In response to the offer, Fayyad presented several conditions to becoming prime minister, including that Hamas would recognise Israel, which Hamas declined.

On 17 March 2007, Fayyad was again appointed finance minister, this time within the Fatah-Hamas coalition government. On 15 June 2007, following the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip, Fayyad was appointed prime minister of a new “independent” government (without any Fatah or Hamas members) which is supported by the Fatah, Israel and the West.

This appointment has been challenged as illegal, because while the Palestinian Basic Law permits the preseident to dismiss a sitting prime minister, the appointment of a replacement requires the approval of the Legislative Council. The law provides that after removal of the prime minister (in this case, Ismail Haniyeh), the outgoing prime minister heads a caretaker government. The current Legislative Council, in which Hamas holds a majority of seats, has not approved the appointments of Fayyad or the balance of his new government. Fayyad’s appointment was never placed before, or approved by the it. Haniyeh continues to operate as prime minister in Gaza, and is recognized by a large number of Palestinians as the legitimate acting prime minister. Anis al-Qasem, a constitutional lawyer who drafted the Basic Law, is among those who publicly declared the appointment of Fayyad to be illegal.

On 17 October 2008, while visiting the University of Texas in Austin, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award before the Texas-Missouri football game, presented by the Ex-Students’ Association of the University of Texas.

On 7 March 2009, Salam Fayyad submitted his resignation to President Mahmoud Abbas.

Links

• Salam Fayyad – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Salam Fayyad – Election Updates

But Hamas officials quickly rebuffed Mr Fayyad’s announcement, casting doubt on whether or not his gesture would help lead to reconciliation between the sides.

The main goal of such a government would be to end the current situation in which the militant Hamas movement rules the Gaza Strip and Fatah, considered more moderate and supported by the West, rules the West Bank.

”This government did not work for the sake of the Palestinians, it worked for its own agenda. This end was expected for a government that was illegal and unconstitutional,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said.

Mr Fayyad was appointed as prime minister after a violent showdown between the factions in June 2007 in which Hamas seized control of Gaza.

Mr Fayyad said he was resigning in hopes that a unity government between the sides might follow.

The two factions held their first reconciliation talks last week and have agreed to form a caretaker government that would then lead to new elections for both the president and the parliament.

Even if the sides find a way to share power it is not clear the international community will be supportive. The European Union, for example, refused to directly aid the previous and short-lived Palestinian unity government after Hamas failed to adhere to several peacemaking principles, among them recognising Israel’s right to exist.

Palestinian PM Salam Fayyad resigns – Election Updates

An air strike in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza on Thursday killed three militants and wounded two others, medics said.

An army spokesman said the raid targeted a group who had fired an anti-tank shell at an army unit on the Israeli side of the border.

Late Wednesday, an Israeli air raid killed a senior Islamic Jihad military commander as he drove through the Jabaliya refugee camp near Gaza City.

Israel launched four strikes on the Gaza Strip Thursday evening in response to rockets and mortar shells being fired, a military spokesman said.

"Our aircraft struck four tunnels dug under the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, close to Rafah," he told AFP.

"In all eight rockets and two mortar shells have been fired at Israel on Thursday."

In a statement published in Gaza, the Al-Quds Brigade, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Thursday claimed responsibility for 10 rocket attacks on Israel.

No casualties were reported from the rockets in Israel, according to the Israeli army and medical services.

It was the latest blow to the tenuous ceasefire Hamas and Israel declared on January 18 to end Israel’s 22-day devastating war on the tiny coastal strip. Egypt has been brokering talks to turn the ceasefires into a durable truce but has so far failed to clinch any agreement.

Israeli leaders have repeatedly warned of tough action to try to stamp out the rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, which Israel withdrew from in 2005 after 38 years of occupation.

The latest violence erupted just hours after Clinton left Israel on Wednesday after wrapping up her first trip to the Middle East since being appointed by US President Barack Obama.

"The United States aims to foster conditions in which a Palestinian state can be fully realised," she said after talks with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in the occupied West Bank. "Time is of the essence."

She called for Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, which was devastated by the war that Israel launched on December 27 in response to rocket fire and that ended up killing more than 1,300 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.

Israel sealed the impoverished territory to all but humanitarian goods in June 2007 when Hamas, an Islamist group pledged to Israel’s destruction, seized power in the enclave booting out forces loyal to moderate Abbas.

"We have obviously expressed concerns about the border crossings. We want humanitarian aid to get into Gaza in sufficient amounts to alleviate the suffering of the people in Gaza," Clinton said.

Gaza is one of the world’s most densely-populated places. More than half of the 1.4 million population is under 18 and the vast majority of residents depend on foreign aid.

Clinton slammed Israel’s plans to raze houses in east Jerusalem that were built without building permits, notoriously difficult to obtain for the city’s Palestinian residents.

"Clearly this kind of activity is unhelpful and not in keeping with the obligations entered into under the roadmap," Clinton said, referring to a blueprint for peace talks adopted by the international community in 2003.

Israeli raids kill Gaza militants after Clinton visit

Javier Solana toured Gaza ahead of a donor conference next week aimed at raising funds to rebuild Gaza after Israel’s devastating three-week military campaign against Hamas, which ended last month.

Separately, the European Commission said Friday it will pledge about $552 million in recovery aid to Gaza at next week’s conference in Egypt.

The Palestinian Authority is seeking $2.8 billion at the meeting to rebuild Gaza.

Meanwhile, talks on forming a unity government in Israel ended without agreement, increasing the likelihood that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will end up heading a hardline coalition, including right-wing and religious parties opposed to peace talks with the Palestinians.

Mr. Netanyahu said Friday he intends to continue peace talks, but he did not say what approach he would take.

His rival, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, said after the coalition talks that the two sides had failed to agree on issues she considers fundamental. She singled out her support for the two-state solution, with Palestinian and Israeli states side-by-side.

Mr. Netanyahu and his Likud party have been tasked with forming the next Israeli government, putting him in line to recapture the prime minister’s job if he can form a coalition. Mr. Netanyahu still has five more weeks to cobble together a coalition, and has said he would prefer a broad-based deal that includes Livni’s centrist Kadima party.

The political wrangling in Tel Aviv comes as the Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas have been trying to heal their own rift and re-create a Palestinian unity government, as well as a flurry of diplomacy aimed at forging a truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said the EU aid to Gaza will focus on removing rubble and unexploded ordinance. It also will include assistance to children and a “cash for work” program.

On Thursday, rival Palestinian factions, including Fatah and Hamas, signed a deal in Cairo aimed at creating a national unity government.

Senior Fatah official and former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei said the two sides set up committees to work out details on forming a unity government, presidential and parliamentary elections, and a new security force for Gaza and the West Bank.

Meanwhile, U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell is due to meet Friday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad of Fatah in the West Bank. He has no plans to meet with Hamas, which the United States considers a terrorist group.

Mitchell met Thursday with Mr. Netanyahu and with Foreign Minister Livni. It is his second trip to Israel since taking office last month.

VOA News – Solana Visits Gaza as EU Promises $552 Million in Aid