CAN THE PALESTINIANS HOLD NEW ELECTIONS?

KHALED ABU TOAMEH

Hamas, Islamic Jihad welcome Abbas’s plan to hold elections

PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY President Mahmoud Abbas. (photo credit: OSMAN ORSAL/REUTERS)

Hamas and Islamic Jihad have welcomed Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s intention to call for a general election upon his return to Ramallah from New York, where he delivered a speech on Thursday before the UN General Assembly.

The Palestinian Central Elections Commission said on Saturday it was ready to hold new elections, and that a date would be set for holding the election as soon as Abbas issues a “presidential decree” regarding the vote.

Palestinian political analysts, however, expressed skepticism over the prospects of holding an election, especially in the wake of the continued rivalry between Abbas’s ruling Fatah faction and Hamas.

Abbas said in his speech that he has decided, upon his return to Ramallah, “to announce a date for the holding of a general election in Palestine – in the West Bank, including east Jerusalem and Gaza Strip.” He called on the UN and international organizations to monitor the election, and warned that he will “attribute full responsibility to those who may attempt to prevent it from happening on the date determined.”

Noting that the last Palestinian parliamentary election was held in 2006, Abbas said “this democratic process was paralyzed by the coup of Hamas in 2007,” referring to the terror group’s violent takeover of the Gaza Strip that year.

Welcoming the call for holding the long overdue election, Hamas called on Abbas to renounce the Oslo Accords with Israel to ensure the success of the vote.

Hamas said Palestinians need to reach agreement on a “comprehensive strategy to face US-backed Israeli schemes to liquidate the Palestinian cause.”

Islamic Jihad senior official Nafez Azzam also welcomed Abbas’s call for holding an election, and said it would contribute to achieving Palestinian unity.

Elections for the PA presidency and Palestinian parliament, Azzam said, represent a “partial solution” to the problems facing the Palestinians.

A senior PA official in Ramallah predicted that Israel will not allow the Palestinians to hold an election in east Jerusalem. Israel permitted Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem (who are not Israeli citizens) to cast votes at post offices in the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, which resulted in a Hamas victory.

“I doubt if Israel will allow Palestinians in east Jerusalem to participate in the election, when and if they are held,” the official said. “This will be one of the obstacles to holding the election.”

He also said that he does not believe that Hamas is interested in holding a new election.

Ibrahim Milhem, spokesperson for the PA government, said on Saturday that east Jerusalem “must be included in a new election, like the Gaza Strip.” He said that the PA government was planning to ask the international community to intervene to allow the Palestinians to hold an election also in east Jerusalem.

Palestinian political analysts pointed out that it was unclear what Abbas meant when he talked about holding an election.

“President Abbas was not clear,” said one analyst. “He didn’t say whether he meant presidential or parliamentary elections, or elections for the PLO’s parliament, the Palestine National Council.”

Another analyst said he believes Abbas was only referring to an election for the Palestinian parliament, the Palestinian Legislative Council. “I don’t believe we will see a presidential election in the near future,” he said.

The last presidential election was held in January 2005, when Abbas was elected for a four-year-term.

The analysts said that the chances of holding any election were slim in light of the continued dispute between Fatah and Hamas, adding that the gap between the two rival parties remains as wide as ever.

Since 2006, several attempts to hold an election have failed to materialize after Fatah and Hamas were unable to reach agreement on the implementation of their reconciliation accords.

They said that in order for the election to succeed, Fatah and Hamas need to reach agreement on the implementation of previous reconciliation agreements they reached in the past 12 years.

U.S. SENATE COMMEMORATES 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF ARGENTINE JEWISH CENTER BOMBING

MARCY OSTER / JTA

The resolution also recognized the efforts of Alberto Nisman, the Jewish prosecutor who investigated the bombing.

AMIA Buenos Aires bombing. (photo credit: Esteban Alterman)

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved a resolution to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the terrorist bombing of the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires.

The resolution honored the victims and reiterated the Senate’s “strongest condemnation” of the 1984 attack, which left 85 people dead and hundreds injured and remains the deadliest terrorist attack in Argentina’s history. It also expressed “serious concern about Iran’s influence networks in the Western Hemisphere.” Several Iranian nationals are suspects in the case.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Sens. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland; Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Tim Kaine, D-Virginia; and Todd Young, R-Indiana.

“Today’s passage shows our continued commitment to finding justice for victims of terrorist attacks across the world,” said Bob Menendez, D-New Jersey, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “I look forward to working with my colleagues as we continue to support the government of Argentina in their investigation into the event. Our world has no place for anti-Semitic acts, not then, not now, and not ever.”

The resolution also recognized the efforts of Alberto Nisman, the Jewish prosecutor who investigated the bombing. Nisman was found dead hours before he was to testify about the efforts of Argentina’s president to cover up alleged Iranian involvement in the bombing.

TRUMP ON RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN US ELECTIONS – US ALSO DOES IT

JERUSALEM POST STAFF, REUTERS

According to the Washington Post report the opinion voiced by Trump led to the notes from the meeting being restricted.

U.S. President Donald Trump . (photo credit: KEVIN LAMARQUE/REUTERS)

US President Donald Trump said in 2017 to top officials in the Russian government that he is not worried about possible Russian interference in US elections as the US itself, he allegedly claimed, did so in other countries.

The statement led to the summery of the meeting being restricted, the Washington Post reported on Saturday. 

Trump’s special representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, resigned on Friday, CNN reported, after being named in a whistleblower complaint relating to a July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukraine’s president.

According to the whistleblower complaint from within the intelligence community, Volker spoke with Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to try to “contain the damage” from his efforts to press Ukraine to investigate Trump’s political rival Joe Biden.

Volker’s resignation was first reported by the State Press, a student-run publication at Arizona State University, which backs a think tank where Volker serves as executive director.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday said the controversy over a phone call between US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been blown out of proportion and dismissed a suggestion that Russia was behind it.

“(U.S. House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi said today that behind the incident – that is being blown out of proportion – around the telephone conversation between President Trump and President Zelenskiy, that it was Russia behind it all,” he told reporters at the United Nations. “It’s paranoia.

Democrats in the House of Representatives have launched an impeachment inquiry after a whistleblower complaint that Trump solicited a political favor from Ukraine’s president during the phone call that could help the Republican get re-elected.

In an interview on Friday, Pelosi suggested Russia may have been behind the matter. “By the way, I think Russia has a hand in this,” Pelosi told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program on Friday

In his 2007 book Legacy of Ashes: The history of the CIA Tim Weiner writes how the American intelligence community was supporting right wing parties in Italy and Japan during the post-war years to prevent Communist parties wining elections in such key countries during the Cold War. 

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Reveals Plan To Annihilate Israel – TV7 Israel News 01.10.19

  TV7 Israel News

Outpouring of Online Antisemitism in Poland After Reports of Tense Meeting Between Country’s President and US Jewish Leaders

Ben Cohen

Polish President Andrzej Duda. Photo: Agencja Gazeta / Dawid Zuchowicz via Reuters.

Reports of an argument between Polish President Andrzej Duda and a group of American Jewish leaders on the fringes of the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week provided the cue for a torrent of antisemitic abuse on Polish websites on Friday.

Hundreds of comments on the popular Wiadomości news website drew on both ancient antisemitic stereotypes and more modern hostility to the State of Israel, as one poster after another attacked Jews.

“I used to feel sorry for the Jews, but having observed Israel’s actions over the last year, I now understand that they are guilty,” read one typical contribution.

The context for Friday’s outpouring of hatred was a meeting on Wednesday between Duda and a delegation of prominent US Jewish figures. Over the last two years especially, Polish-Jewish relations have soured over the passage of the IPN Act, a Polish law that criminalizes discussion of Polish collusion with Nazi Germany during World War II — a period when three million Polish Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and millions of Poles perished under both the German and Soviet Russian occupations of their country.

One particularly tense moment came in Feb. 2019, when Israel’s then-acting foreign minister, Israel Katz, opined that Poles “suckle antisemitism in their mother’s milk.”

Katz’s comment, in a TV interview, resulted in a furious response from Duda and other top Polish officials.

The alleged heated exchange at Wednesday’s meeting in New York was said to have occurred during a discussion of Katz’s February remark. Polish media reported that Duda had expressed disappointment with the lack of condemnation or remorse in Israel for Katz’s statement, and that he had also complained about an “act of aggression” against Marek Magierowski, Poland’s ambassador to Israel, who was accosted by a protester in Tel Aviv in May.

However, an initial media report that Duda had explicitly blamed Israel for sparking antisemitism among Poles during Wednesday’s meeting was firmly denied by the Polish president’s office. “President Duda never said that ‘Israel is responsible for recent antisemitic attacks in Poland,’” his spokesman, Blazej Spychalski, said in a statement released through the Polish Embassy in Washington, DC. “All participants of the said meeting can corroborate this.”

That unverified report was nonetheless enough for Poland’s online antisemites to vent their fury. “Poles don’t like Jews because Jews exploit Poles with privatization, they rob Poles because they are cunning and better-organized, and they own newspapers like the New York Times that slander Poles,” said one comment.

“You have to be out of your mind to enter into any relationship with these people,” said another. “There are thousands of examples over thousands of years.”

Ironically, another commenter warmly praised Duda for making the very same observation that his office later denied. “Finally, we have a President who isn’t afraid of the truth,” the comment read. “Yes Jews — draw your own conclusions from this.”