issue no 80

| 1

Issue No : 80 3rd February, 2014

Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia | 1


PalestinianPalestinianP CulturalCulturalC Organization MalaysiaMalaysiaM

2 |


Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia

P10

P6

P4

P11

Hamas denies endorsingthe two-state solution

FEATURED STORY

ARTICLE

Israeli official: Israel and the Westdependent on Al-Sisi

The demise of the two-state solution

Jerusalem mayor supports racist candidate for chief rabbi post

P5

Hamas warned of getting along with Kerry’s peace plan

Hamas: We do not interfere in countries affairs

Gaza Gov’t demands rectification and apology from Egyptian paper

| 3



CONTENTS

News of Palestine

Hamas denies endorsing the two-state solution 4Israeli official: Israel and the West dependent on Al-Sisi 5Hamas: We do not interfere in countries affairs 6Shin Bet chief: Israel›s ability to deter enemies is strong, Arab busy with themselves 785 Palestinian refugees die of starvation in besieged Yarmouk camp 86 Palestinians killed in January, 383 arrested 9Israeli scheme to build on Buraq Wall area 9Palestinian Hackers Break into 15 Israeli Army Ministry Computers 10

Articles & Analyses

Palestinian refugees will determine the future of the Middle East 11

Israel Insider

Jerusalem mayor supports racist candidate for chief rabbi post 10

4 |



News of Palestine

28/1/2014

The Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas has denied the claims by Palestinian Au-thority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) that the movement endorses the two-state solution.An official in the movement said on Monday that, “Ab-bas’s frequent statements that Hamas has mandated him to negotiate the establishment of a future Palestinian state on the borders of 1967 re-quires us to explain this issue to the Palestinian people.” The official cited one ex-ample of when Abu Mazen told Israel’s Yedioth Ahro-nothnewspaper that: “There is a formal written agree-ment between us and Hamas where the movement agrees to engage in peace talks with Israel aimed at establishing

a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. The movement has also agreed to adopt peaceful popular resistance.”Contrary to this statement, the official clarified that: “Hamas did not mandate Mr Abbas or anyone else to agree to the two-state so-lution. Hamas affirms its stated position that it will never accept this solution or waiver an inch of Palestinian land.”He further explained that: “In 2006, the Palestinian political parties signed a national recon-ciliation agreement on common issues, including to establish the future Palestinian state on the 1967 borders, to have Jerusalem as its capital and to allow the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes without recognising Israel or its legitimacy on Pales-tinian land, in contrast to what

the PLO agreed to in the Oslo accords. All forms of resistance against Israel will continue; mainly armed resistance, which we believe is the only viable method to achieve the Pales-tinian peoples’ aspirations to liberate their land and to allow the refugees back to their lands. The movement stands firmly behind its stance.”Meanwhile, Member of Hamas’ political bureau Ezzat Al-Resheq warned of the grav-ity of the peace plan proposed by US secretary of state John Kerry and described it as ex-tremely detrimental to the Pal-estinian cause.In a press release on Saturday, Resheq said that Kerry’s solu-tions are biased in favor of the Israeli occupation and is aimed at destroying the Palestinian

Hamas denies endorsingthe two-state solution

Hamas warned of getting along with Kerry’s peace plan

| 5



Israeli official: Israel and the West dependent on Al-Sisi

cause entirely and quietly.The Hamas official called on the Palestinian negotiator not to get along with Kerry’s plan or succumb to its ideas, stress-ing that the US administration has never been a trustworthy mediator in the peace process.He also deplored the Palestin-ian Authority (PA) and the Pal-estine liberation organization (PLO) for not clearly rejecting Kerry’s intended framework agreement that would lead to serious concessions on the Pal-estinian rights and constants.Resheq made his remarks in response to what had been dis-closed on Friday by Yaser Abed Rabbo, the secretary-general of the PLO’s executive commit-tee, about Kerry’s peace plan.Abed Rabbo had told the Lon-don-based Al-Hayat newspa-per that Kerry’s plan stipulates that the Palestinians must rec-ognize Israel as a state for Jews and accept a small part of east Jerusalem as a capital for Pal-estine, and that the issue of the refugees must be addressed ac-cording to former US president Bill Clinton’s vision.According to Kerry’s plan, Is-rael would keep all major set-tlement blocs under its control, rent the other settlements from the PA and control crossings and airspace, Abed Rabbo ex-plained.He added that the plan de-mands the presence of joint military forces from the US, Israel, Jordan and Palestine at some border areas and gives Is-rael the right to launch security raids and pursuits in the future Palestinian state.

Source: Agencies

28/1/2014

Former Israeli Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer re-vealed on Monday evening that Israel is encouraging Egyp-tian Defence Minister Abdul-Fattah Al-Sisi to run for the presidency, even though the occupation authorities are also afraid of his failure later on.Speaking to Israeli radio, Ben-Eliezer explained that: «Al-Sisi›s nomination for president could be a reflexive arrow. If he fails as a president, then the current regime that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood would be dissolved.»According to Ben-Eliezer, the danger of the current regime›s failure is «the return of the Muslim Brotherhood in control of Egypt, stronger and more determined than before.»He added that this would be «bad news for Israel and the West».Ben-Eliezer is one of the most senior Israeli politicians who publicly celebrated the July 2013 military coup that deposed Egypt›s democratically elected government headed by the Muslim Brotherhood.

Source: MEMO

6 |



30/1/2014

The Islamic Resistance Move-ment “HAMAS” called on Arab countries to form a neu-tral fact-finding mission, un-der the auspices of the Arab League and Organization of Islamic Cooperation, on the Egyptian allegations against it.The movement said in a state-ment by Ezzat al-Reshq, a member of Hamas politburo, “Hamas stressed repeatedly that it never ever interferes in the Egyptian affairs before or after the uprising, adding that the stability in Egypt is its con-cern.”

“The besieged Gaza would not destabilize the constancy of a country that is considered its stra-tegic depth and the sole crossing for it to the world” Reshq pointed out.He added, “fabricating crises through indictment and incite-ments deepens the suffering and pain of people trapped for more than eight years.”In a related context, the Palestin-ian government in the Gaza Strip demanded a statement of rectifi-cation and apology from the edi-tor-in-chief of the Egyptian daily “Al-Akhbar” for the publication of false accusations against the

assassinated leader Ahmed al-Ja’abri of messing up Egyptian internal security. The media advisor of the Pal-estinian Prime Minister Taher al-Nono said in a statement posted on his facebook page ”a well-known paper such as “Al-Akhbar” should not slip up to this level.”The Egyptian paper published, on Tuesday on its main page, news accusing Ahmed al-Ja’abri, who was assassinated by Israeli occupation in 2012, of leading a group of terrorists to mess up Egyptian internal se-curity.

Source: Agencies

Hamas: We do not interfere in countries affairs

Gaza Gov’t demands rectification and apology from Egyptian paper

| 7



Shin Bet chief: Israel›s ability to deter enemies is strong, Arab busy with themselves

Palestinian Cultural

Organization Malaysia

27/1/2014

An Israeli military inelegance official said on Wednesday that “Israel’s ability to deter enemies is strong, but on the other hand, terror is still a challenge,”“We call this period in time the “Era of Fire”, in light of the amount of missiles and rockets we face as a constant threat,” JPost quoted the of-ficial Aviv Kochavi .Speaking of the challenges to guarding the bor-ders of the Israeli occupation, he said that “neigh-bouring countries have little interest in war,”“The countries around us are busy with them-selves; they have less funds to start a war. There

is no question that there is a decrease in such threats but they have not given up,” he said.Regarding Egypt, Kochavi proclaimed “any re-treat of the Muslim Brotherhood in the region is significant for Israel.”During the last few days, Israeli war criminals re-peatedly threatened the Gaza Strip with a military action.Dozens of Gazans have been reported injured and killed since the ceasefire agreement following Is-rael’s November 2012 aggression, which left over 171 Palestinians, including 102 civilians, killed and hundreds injured.

Source: ALRAY

8 |



85 Palestinian refugees die of starvation in besieged Yarmouk camp

29/1/2014

The action group for Palestinians in Syria said that 85 Palestinians died of starvation in the Yarmouk refugee camp, south of Damascus, until Wednesday.The group, which monitors and documents daily field events of Palestinian refugees in Syria, said that 39 of those died over the past two weeks.It pointed out that Yarmouk refugee camp has been under siege for 200 days. The siege has led to famine in the camp after foodstuffs and medicines ran out of stock, the group said, add-ing that children and elderly people are the most affected of this siege.The group said that the number of Palestinian victims in the Syrian armed conflict that started almost three years ago had exceeded two thousands.On the other hand, according to statistics collected by the action group, there are a total of 391 Palestinian prisoners in Syria, 355 of them are detained by the Syrian regime.It affirmed that most of the Palestinian detainees in Syria are young men, noting that among those detainees are Palestinian journalists and relief activists.The group also said that it had documented the death of 137 Palestinians under torture in Syria, the vast majority of them were killed inside jails belonging to the Syrian regime.

Source: Agencies

391 Palestinian refugees are detained in Syria

| 9



6 Palestinians killed in January, 383 arrested

Israeli scheme to build on Buraq Wall area

1/2/2014The Ahrar center for prisoner stud-ies and human rights said that Israeli occupation forces killed six Pales-tinians and arrested 383 others in January 2014.The center said in its monthly report on Saturday that the six victims fell in Gaza and the West Bank.It pointed out that five of them were killed in Gaza while the sixth was Mohammed Mubarak from Jala-zoun refugee camp, who was killed a few days ago west of Ramallah.

Source: PIC

30/1/2014The Israeli District Committee for Planning and Construction in Jerusalem held a crucial ses-sion on Wednesday to discuss an old scheme to establish building along the outskirts of Buraq Wall(Western Wall).According to the scheme, the building will be built on an archaeological sites along with parts of Buraq Wall area which will be lotted for offic-

es and halls of the so-called “Wall Legacy Fund”. The scheme was approved by the Israeli munici-pality and the committee in 2010.It was supported by mayor of the municipality Nir Barakat, but infuriated the Jewish quarter, ar-cheologists and engineers as the construction will be on the ruins of historic excavations, Maariv Daily Newspaper reported. Source: ALRAY

10 |



Israel Insider

Palestinian Hackers Break into 15 Israeli Army Ministry Computers

Jerusalem mayor supports racist candidate for chief rabbi post

27/1/2014

Hackers broke into an Israeli army ministry com-puter via an email attachment tainted with malicious software that looked like it had been sent by the country’s Shin Bet secret security service, an Israeli cyber security firm said on Sunday.Aviv Raff, chief technology officer at Seculert, said the hackers earlier this month temporarily took over 15 computers, one of them belonging to Israel’s Civil Administration that monitors Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territory.Raff told Reuters that Palestinians were suspected to be behind the cyber attack, citing similarities to a cyber assault on Israeli computers waged more than a year ago from a server in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.While the latest attack was conducted from a server in the United States, experts noticed writing and composition similarities with the earlier attack, he said.Securlet had not determined what the hackers did after the initial infection with “Xtreme RAT” software, Raff said. “All we know is at least one computer at the Israeli Civil Administration was in control of the attackers; what they did we don’t know.”. Source: PNN

29/1/2014

The mayor of Jerusalem, Nir Barkat, has an-nounced his support for Shmuel Eliyahu, cur-rently the chief rabbi of Safed, as chief rabbi of Jerusalem. Eliyahu is well known for his radi-cal views against the Palestinians. He promotes prohibiting Jews from leasing or selling proper-ties to Palestinian students in Safed and even de-manded that the city’s Jewish community expel the students from the city.Eliyahu’s racist statements prompted Israel’s at-torney general to investigate him on charges of incitement, but the police only interrogated him briefly before closing the case. However, the charges did hinder his subsequent attempt to campaign for the post of Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel.Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported that Barkat enjoys very close ties to Eliyahu’s family, especially his father Mordechai Eliyahu, who is the former Sephardi chief rabbi of Israel. During Jerusalem’s last mayoral elections, Mordechai’s widow openly supported Barkat and his aide for office. Barkat has repeatedly stated that he wants a “Zionist rabbi” for the chief rabbi post in Jerusalem.

Source: MEMO

| 11



Articles & Analyses

The demise of the two-state solutionBy: Dr Fayez Rasheed

Even if the Palestinians agree to implement all of Israel’s preconditions for the peace talks, the Israeli government will surely invent new and even more ridiculous terms to delay yet further the establish-ment of a viable state of Pales-tine. This is not surprising giv-en that the then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin said, before his assassination by a Jewish ex-tremist, that he wished that he could wake up one day to find that the sea has swallowed Gaza. His successor Benjamin Netanyahu has since added, “If only the Palestinians would disappear from the face of the earth.” That is the prevailing attitude which frames Israel’s approach to the negotiations.The Israelis do not want the Palestinians to have an inde-pendent state, even if this state has nothing more than the fa-cade of self-governance. Israel does not even want the Pales-tinians to have an independent entity, so how would they ever allow them to have a state, about which the Israelis are ex-tremely sensitive? That is why they continue to create difficult preconditions in an attempt to prolong the “peace process” and delay the establishment of a Palestinian state which, they believe, would be detrimental to Israel’s survival and lead to its eventual demise, even if it is demilitarised and lacks com-plete sovereignty.For this reason, Israel has deemed Jerusalem to be the “undivided and eternal capital

of Israel” and it also rejects com-pletely the Palestinian refugees’ right of return. When the propos-al was made by the then Presi-dent Bill Clinton to allow a lim-ited return of refugees through family reunification, which has been adopted recently by US Secretary of State John Kerry, it was rejected by the Israelis. Fur-thermore, Israel has proposed a land swap of an area known as the Triangle, home to the majori-ty of Palestinians living in Israel, for large settlement blocs in the West Bank. Israel is well aware that most of its Palestinian citi-zens would reject this proposal and that the Palestinian Author-ity would not accept it under any circumstances because it would mean that Palestinians agree to transfer fellow Palestinians from their homes.Israel has a list of the settlement blocs (all illegal under inter-national law) which it intends to annex under any agreement with the Palestinians. Netanyahu has told Kerry of this. The four blocs in question house a total of 400,000 settlers.

The latest condition imposed by Israel is to keep troops in the Jordan Valley, which is the border between the West Bank and the Hashemite Kingdom. Netanyahu’s government has rejected Secretary Kerry’s pro-posal that American or interna-tional troops could be based in this area to allay security fears; this suggests that Israel will be able to enter Palestinian terri-tory whenever it sees fit. This is not fiction, nor is it a “what if” scenario. We saw how Ariel Sharon justified his invasion of the Palestinian Territories in 2002; Israel will not need any excuse to reoccupy any Pal-estinian territory which may become part of the new state. In other words, if Israel leaves Palestine through the front door, it will find a way back in through the window.Land issues aside, Israel also insists on Palestinian recogni-tion of it as “the Jewish state”. Acceptance of the false Israeli narrative about this would threaten, by necessity, the se-curity of the Palestinians in

12 |



Israel; hence, the scenario of Palestinians having to approve the transfer of other Palestin-ians from their land. Palestinians must also accept that Palestine is the Jews’ historic homeland and that Palestine “was a land with-out a people for a people without a land”, with no Arab or Islamic history.Although they were meant to be dealt with in the so-called “final status talks” dictated by the Oslo Accords, the Israelis are bent on killing-off the negotiations be refusing to compromise on two critical issues: the status of Je-rusalem and the refugees’ legal right of return to their land. Ac-cording to Israeli law, any current or future head of state or govern-ment official is prohibited from discussing or negotiating these two issues without the approval of the Knesset (parliament). Due to the changing nature of Israeli politics, as it heads further to-wards political extremism, this more or less means that, as things stand, these issues will never be on the table for discussion.Israel annexed Jerusalem in 1967, illegally, and since this date it has refused to broach this subject in any talks; it remains off-limits, regardless of what was agreed in Oslo. If the Knesset re-fuses to move on this issue, it is

quite possible that it will become impossible to discuss and Israel’s adamant refusal to talk about the very nature of a two-state solu-tion will lead to the demise of the peace process. Furthermore, Israel’s insistence on preserv-ing the “Jewishness of the state” makes it impossible for Israel to be a truly democratic state. It could be Jewish or it could be democratic; it could not be both.The demise of the two-state solu-tion has not happened by chance; it was the result of many of the factors mentioned above. These make it impossible to establish a contiguous and integrated Pal-estinian state because settlement expansion continues to confis-cate Palestinian land under the pretext of Israeli security, the government’s main excuse for not allowing the establishment of an independent and viable Palestine. Bizarrely, despite this, Palestinians and Arabs are still calling for a two-state solution, ignoring the obvious impossi-bility of this being realised. The two-state solution has become nothing more than an illusion. The Palestinians need to move on and not be bound by the in-tractable current situation.

This is a translation by MEMO of the Arabic text published by Al Quds newspaper on 29 January, 2014

Palestinians and Arabs are still call-ing for a two-state solution, ignoring the obvious im-possibility of this being realised

”

”

| 13


Palestinian Cultural Organization Malaysia | 13


PalestinianPalestinianP CulturalCulturalC Organization MalaysiaMalaysiaM

issue no 80

Documents

future palestinian state

palestinian people

inch of palestinian

palestinian hackers

palestinian political

state solutionjerusalem

hamas afrms

israel insiderjerusalem