Palestine – Breaking News

Picture: (AFP/Jonathan Nackstrand)
The country marked Yom Kippur — the Day of Atonement — the most sacred observance in the Jewish calendar.

The Haaretz newpaper reported today that cars and stores were damaged as Jews and Arabs clashed in the Israeli city of Acre after an Arab man was assaulted for driving during Yom Kippur.

The unrest erupted around midnight, several hours after Jews began marking Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest observance in the Jewish calender, when Israel comes to a virtual standstill.

A group of Jewish youths assaulted an Arab man who was driving his car, in an incident that touched off large-scale rioting between Jews and Arabs, resulting in extensive damage to dozens of cars and shops.

Police used force to disperse the crowd of several hundred peoples, the newspaper said, citing police officials.

About one third of Acre’s population of almost 50,000 residents is Arab.

Arab MPs have for years asked security forces to take tougher action to prevent Jews from stoning cars driven by Arabs on Yom Kippur.

One of them, Abbas Zkoor, said such attacks occurred frequently.

Zkoor said "Despite numerous complaints filed in police stations, officers were not sent to disperse the racist gatherings".

He called on religious authorities to condemn such behaviour, which he said "surely contravenes the basic principles of the Jewish religion."

Israel came to a virtual standstill as the country marked Yom Kippur, which started at sunset on Wednesday and was to end this evening.

Sapa-AFP

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It was an image for the history books. At least that’s what the five world leaders would like to have thought as they strutted down the red carpeted hall of the White House recently with their heads held high. Forming a well-choreographed and symbolic flying "V," the US president led the way, flanked by his counterparts representing Israel, Palestine, Jordan and Egypt. These men in suits wanted to show the world that they’re ready to plow through any and all obstacles that stand in the way of peace in the Middle East.

It’s a picture that bears a striking resemblance to one taken a decade and a half earlier when then US President Bill Clinton led the same nations’ representatives down the the same red-carpeted hall at the White House. All one needs to do is replace those leaders with their successors, save the Egyptian president who was present in both. Another historic image — although one most have probably forgotten — that also sought to send the message that peace is on its way.

And yet here we are, 16 years later, with the highly anticipated peace still on its way, or so we’re told. A closer look at the five representatives in the picture should help explain why it’s yet to arrive. Read More »Washington peace talksdemocracy need not apply

By Naom Chomsky

(source: Information Clearing House)

Washington’s pathetic capitulation to Israel while pleading for a meaningless three-month freeze on settlement expansion—excluding Arab East Jerusalem—should go down as one of the most humiliating moments in U.S. diplomatic history.

In September the last settlement freeze ended, leading the Palestinians to cease direct talks with Israel. Now the Obama administration, desperate to lure Israel into a new freeze and thus revive the talks, is grasping at invisible straws—and lavishing gifts on a far-right Israeli government. The gifts include $3 billion for fighter jets. The largesse also happens to be another taxpayer grant to the U.S. arms industry, which gains doubly from programs to expand the militarization of the Middle East. U.S. arms manufacturers are subsidized not only to develop and produce advanced equipment for a state that is virtually part of the U.S. military-intelligence establishment but also to provide second-rate military equipment to the Gulf states—currently a precedent-breaking $60 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia, which is a transaction that also recycles petrodollars to an ailing U.S. economy.

Israeli and U.S. high-tech civilian industries are closely integrated. It is small wonder that the most fervent support for Israeli actions comes from the business press and the Republican Party, the more extreme of the two business-oriented political parties. The pretext for the huge arms sales to Saudi Arabia is defense against the “Iranian threat.”

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