Mideast Media Sampler 05/01/2011

From an email from DG:

1) No cash for you

Israel holds up payments to the Palestinian Authority. AP provides some background:

Israel collects some tax and customs fees for the Palestinians under the peace agreements of the 1990s. Israel has held up cash transfers several times in the past decade, citing concerns that the money was being used to fund attacks against Israelis.

There was no immediate Palestinian reaction to the Israeli move.

The Palestinian unity deal announced last week aims at a reconciliation between the Palestinian Authority, the Western-backed government in the West Bank that officially seeks an accommodation with Israel, and the Iran-backed Hamas, which rules Gaza and officially remains committed to Israel’s destruction.

Maybe it's a little thing, but Israel's action is given in context of peace agreements, but not the Palestinian action. Maybe an extra sentence could be added at the end: "This would appear to violate commitments that Fatah made when it signed peace agreements with Israel."


2) Setting an example for Syria

There appears to be an anti-regime movement taking hold in southwestern Iran.

The  "Day of Rage" protest, which spread from Ahvaz to other cities in Khuzestan such as Abadan, Khorramshahr, Hamidieh, Mahshahr and Shadegan, commemorated of the Bloody Friday demonstration that took place on April 15, 2005, and led to the death of 20 Arab Iranians and the arrest of 250 others.

Iranian human rights activists have reported that in the last two weeks security personnel attacked peaceful protesters with live ammunition. Authorities have provided very little information on the situation following the crackdown. Little is known about the dead or injured since the protests began in mid-April. State news agencies have reported that "armed insurgents" were behind the killing of three people, including one officer.

(Bonus: Joe Stork is quoted not condemning Israel.)

I'm not sure that Syria needs the example but it continues to attack its citizens.

Daraa has been without water, fuel or electricity since Monday, when the regime sent in troops backed by tanks and snipers to crush protests seeking an end to President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian rule. Tanks and armored personal vehicles have cut off neighborhoods, and snipers nesting on rooftops throughout the city have kept residents pinned in their homes. Other areas of the country also have come under military control, but Daraa has faced the most serious stranglehold.

The death toll has soared to 535 nationwide from government forces firing on demonstrators — action that has drawn international condemnation and U.S. financial penalties on top figures in his regime.

Later on we read:

On Saturday, Syrian troops killed four people while storming a mosque that became a focal point for protesters in Daraa, and security forces in Damascus kept dozens of women from marching on parliament to urge Assad to end his crackdown on the uprising.

The military raid on the Omari mosque in Daraa came a day after 65 people were killed — most of them in Daraa, a southern city near the border with Jordan.

A siege and an attack on a mosque.

Where's the Turkish flotilla for Syria?



3) No it's not really the Muslim Brotherhood. Sure.

The Muslim Brotherhood announces the formation a political party.

After struggling to form a legitimate political party for more than eight decades, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest and best-organized Islamic movement, has officially established its Freedom and Justice party, the group announced Saturday.

"This party will be independent from the Brotherhood but will coordinate with it," Mahmoud Hussein, the Brotherhood’s secretary general, said at a press conference. The Brotherhood said Mohamed Morsy, a member of the group’s politburo, will lead the new party, with prominent Brotherhood figures Essam Erian and Saad Katatni serving as deputy chief and secretary general, respectively.

Morsy quickly moved to allay fears that Freedom and Justice would be dominated by religious ideology and Islamic conservatism: "The party will not be Islamist in the old understanding," he said.

"coordinating" but "independent?"


4) Staying in Syria and opposed to peace

Though Hamas hasn't been as good a guest as Syria wants, it apparently isn't leaving.

Hamas officials on Saturday denied reports that its top leaders are planning to move from Syria and relocate to Qatar or another Arab country.
“The leadership will remain there," said Hamas spokesman Ismail Radwan. "As far as I know, we were not told to move to any other country.”

And they aren't changing their ideology either:

Meanwhile, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who is based in the Gaza Strip, said his government will resign as soon as the unity deal is signed in Cairo. But he also urged the Palestine Liberation Organization, which is responsible for peace negotiations with Israel, to renounce recognition of the Jewish state.

5) "Gathering the fragments"

Yad Vashem is trying to gather more artifacts from Holocaust survivors.

“Gathering the Fragments” is a project launched by Israel’s Yad Vashem national Holocaust memorial ahead of the country’s annual Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday. The goal is to gather from aging survivors as many artifacts as possible before they — and their stories — are gone forever.

Dozens of Israelis arrived with items that had been stashed away for decades. Researchers questioned them, logged their stories, tagged their materials, then scanned their documents into Yad Vashem’s vast digitized archive. With white gloves, they carefully placed larger items into boxes that were later shipped back to the large Yad Vashem compound in Jerusalem.

Technorati Tag: Middle East and Yom HaShoah