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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (119092)	11/11/2003 4:01:26 AM
From: Eashoa' M'sheekha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

American Red Cross Works For Recognition of Israel's Magen David Adom MDA Update 2002 The American Red Cross remains engaged in ongoing international dialogue to secure full membership for Magen David Adom (MDA) in the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement. On April 9 and October 2, 2002, International Services Vice President Gerry Jones attended meetings of a new international working group that has been tasked with continuing to address the emblem issue. The group consists of representatives from 10 national societies, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (Federation). The American Red Cross supports the working group's decision to proceed with a dual track approach to this issue. The approach encourages governments to move forward with a diplomatic conference to change international law regarding the emblems while simultaneously building confidence and operational collaboration between MDA and various components of the Movement. If governments fail to convene discussions on changes in the law, we hope that MDA's cooperative work will lead the ICRC and the Federation to interpret the rules to extend membership to MDA. The working group has established a process to monitor implementation of the October 2001 Council of Delegates resolution that reaffirms the Movement's support for adopting a Third Protocol to the Geneva Conventions on emblems. Although the original diplomatic conference to adopt this protocol was cancelled in October 2000 due to tensions in the Middle East, the current draft provides a foundation to allow MDA and the Eritrean Red Cross and Red Crescent Society to become members of the Federation with their current emblems intact. The American Red Cross fully recognizes that, at this point, we only have a process for the recognition of MDA and not a guaranteed outcome. We will continue to withhold our dues from the Federation and our voluntary overhead contributions to the ICRC until an outcome is ensured. In the meantime, we have also been working closely with MDA since the fall of 2001 to develop a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between our organizations. This agreement focuses on collaboration in certain areas of activity such as preparedness for Weapons of Mass Destruction attacks, international tracing and family reunification, organizational development and international humanitarian law dissemination. In February 2002, American Red Cross staff traveled to Israel to negotiate the terms of this MOU. In November 2002, MDA Director General Avi Zohar met with American Red Cross President and CEO Marsha J. Evans to discuss the MOU. David McLaughlin, Chairman of the American Red Cross and Yochanan Gur, Chairman of MDA, signed the MOU at MDA's headquarters in Israel on November 18, 2002. The American Red Cross is committed to a close working relationship with MDA and remains steadfast in its support of MDA's quest for full recognition by the Movement and voting membership in the Federation.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (119092)	11/11/2003 4:07:00 AM
From: Eashoa' M'sheekha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Powell sends letter of support to initiators of Geneva Accord By The Associated Press The Geneva Accord peace plan got a significant boost Friday, with a letter of support from U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, organizers said. The U.S. administration's initial reaction to the initiative was dismissive. Washington's recent endorsement of the Geneva Accord could be seen as a veiled rebuke to the government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who has attacked the plan as subversive. "They are trying to send a message to Sharon, without saying so explicitly," said former U.S. mediator Dennis Ross. "It does reflect a deep concern," former Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk said, referring to the virtual halt to any active U.S. diplomacy. Powell's letter was addressed to the leaders of the initiative, former justice minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, the two told a news conference Friday. "Dear Yossi and Yasser," the letter read, according to a Beilin aide. "The president remains committed to a two state solution ... but we also believe that projects such as yours are important for sustaining hope and understanding." The Geneva plan proposes a Palestinian state on nearly all the land Israel captured in the 1967 Six Day War. It would also give Palestinians control of a disputed Jerusalem holy shrine, known to Muslims as the Haram as-Sharif and to Jews as the Temple Mount. In return, Palestinians would give up their demand for the "right of return" of about four million Palestinian war refugees and their descendants to Israel. The plan is being sponsored by Switzerland. Beilin and Abed Rabbo announced Friday that the plan will be launched officially in Geneva on December 1. Paul Patin, a U.S. Embassy spokesman, said the United States remains committed to the road map peace plan, which envisions a Palestinian state by 2005, but does not draw borders. Israelis and Palestinians are deadlocked over implementation of that plan. Patin said Powell's letter was meant to show support for the Geneva Accord, but was not an official endorsement. An Israeli official dismissed the Powell letter as unlikely to have an impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. "They can compliment and praise all they want, but from compliments no real progress has been made," the official said on condition of anonymity. On Wednesday, the plan got the blessing of United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan who called it a "courageous" attempt to break the stalemate on both sides. U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz - the Pentagon's No. 2 official - last week praised another unofficial peace plan drawn up by a prominent Palestinian moderate, Sari Nusseibeh, and the former head of Israel's secret service, Ami Ayalon. Ayalon and Nusseibeh say they have collected 100,000 Israeli and 60,000 Palestinian signatures in three months. Their petition calls for Israel to withdraw to the borders it had before the 1967 war, when it captured the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The document calls for a demilitarized Palestinian state in those territories. In a lecture at Georgetown University, Wolfowitz said the petition's principles "look very much like" the Bush administration's road map to a peaceful, two-state solution. In Friday's news conference, authors of the Geneva plan said they were not trying to usurp the authority of their respective governments but to mobilize public opinion as a tool for change. "We are not taking away the role of anybody," Abed Rabbo said. "We are sending a message to the governments of both sides and to the governments of the world to start official negotiations because there is no alternative to official negotiations."

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (119092)	11/11/2003 4:10:29 AM
From: Eashoa' M'sheekha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Can the bloody stalemate be broken? Nov 6th 2003 \| JERUSALEM From The Economist print edition A FAINT flurry of diplomacy, a lull in the suicide bombings and a slight let-up in the military blockades have produced a glint of hopeful expectation after months of gloom and ominous escalation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ahmed Qurei (also known as Abu Alaa) is soon likely to win parliamentary approval to head a new and more permanent Palestinian government after running a temporary emergency cabinet for several weeks. Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, says he will then meet Mr Qurei and resume the negotiations that collapsed with the fall of his predecessor, Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) two months ago. Other Israeli officials, sniffing the wind, are conferring with key Palestinians. The defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, has seen the Palestinian finance minister, Salaam Fayed. The director of Shin Bet, Israel's security service, met Jibril Rajoub, a former top Palestinian security man who has recently returned to favour with Yasser Arafat, the ever-durable Palestinian leader. Israel's foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, says he too will hobnob with top Palestinians.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (119092)	11/11/2003 4:12:21 AM
From: Eashoa' M'sheekha	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

His army chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Moshe Yaalon, caused a stir last week when he called in journalists to say that the government was courting disaster by trying to hold down the Palestinians in a vice-like grip without offering any realistic prospect of a peace deal. Israel, said the general, had been harsh and niggardly to Mr Abbas during his short-lived premiership. It should not behave in the same short-sighted way towards Mr Qurei. In an initial burst of fury, Mr Sharon demanded General Yaalon's apology or his head. But on cooler reflection the prime minister was apparently persuaded that the general's words, albeit constitutionally improper, reflect deep distress in the army high command and far beyond. “My door is always open to him,” an expansive Mr Sharon said this week. The prime minister faces other pressures at home. His Likud party took a drubbing in local elections last week. Party workers reported a worrying countrywide lassitude. An economy in recession, with Israel hovering this week on the brink of a general strike, is also sapping the Likud's strength and Mr Sharon's popularity. Investigations into his election finances and the business dealings of one of his sons may further undermine him. Watch your back The party's largest coalition partner, the centrist Shinui Party, is drafting a proposal for the evacuation of the Jewish settlement of Netzarim, in the heart of the Gaza Strip, where three soldiers, two of them women, were shot dead in their beds by a Palestinian infiltrator last month. Mr Sharon previously spurned any talk of “withdrawal under fire”. Now, sounding more tolerant, he says, “Let them present it, then we'll see”. Mr Sharon has expressed only fury, with no such hint of tolerance, for the “Geneva accord”, an unofficial blueprint for peace recently agreed among a group of Israeli and Palestinian politicians led by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abbed Rabbo, both former ministers and official negotiators. Their effort, discreetly backed by the Swiss (hence its name) and other Europeans, has produced, in exhaustive detail after many months of wrangling, a much more specific deal than is offered, for instance, by the “road map” charted by President George Bush. The Geneva accord proposes a Palestinian state on almost all of the West Bank, with minor land swaps to let Israel annex certain Jewish settlements. Jerusalem would be partitioned and become the “capital of two states”. The Palestinian refugee problem would be comprehensively resolved through compensation and resettlement in the state of Palestine, with some modest resettlement (without an open-ended “right of return”) in Israel. Mr Sharon has condemned this idea as a betrayal. But an opinion poll found that two out of five Israelis would support it. Mr Beilin and his colleagues, among them some prominent Labour Party MPs, plan a big campaign to win over more minds. A similar unofficial accord worked out earlier this year by Ami Ayalon, a former director of the Shin Bet, and Sari Nusseibeh, a leading Palestinian moderate, has reportedly rounded up some 90,000 Israeli signatories and, more significantly, 60,000 Palestinian ones. Both these accords have won support from governments and commentators abroad. Both flow from the premise that time is running out for a two-state solution—and hence for Israel's survival as a Jewish state. Soon there will be more Palestinians than Israeli Jews living between the Jordan river and the Mediterranean. If the current stalemate persists, more Palestinians may stop aspiring to an independent state alongside Israel and start demanding one man one vote in a single state—where they would be the majority.

To: Nadine Carroll who wrote (119092)	11/11/2003 4:12:37 AM
From: Eashoa' M'sheekha	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Is time for two states running out? In an editorial last week the New York Times agreed that “with every passing year of increased Jewish settlement in [Palestinian] occupied areas, the possibility of cleanly dividing the land between two peoples fades. That is why there is such urgency to gaining support for the new peace initiatives...” That sense of urgency may at last be seeping into Israel's public debate. More commentators and politicians in the peace camp speak of the demographic danger threatening Israel as a Jewish democracy. Mr Sharon, though, still pooh-poohs it. The solution, he says, lies in getting more Jews to immigrate to Israel. As to the current impasse, he says, the road map is still the way forward. Drawn up last year by the Americans, the European Union, Russia and the UN, it provides for a ceasefire and a settlement freeze, then the creation of a Palestinian state with “provisional” borders, and then a rather vague process for negotiating a final agreement. Beset by troubles in Iraq (see article), America may be losing interest in the road map. But Mr Sharon, rattled by the growing support at home for the two unofficial accords that he likes much less, is embracing the nebulous map with renewed, if belated, enthusiasm.