Mahmoud Abbas, President of the State of Palestine, speaks during the general debate of the 68th session of the United Nations General Assembly at United Nations headquarters in New York, New York, USA, 26 September 2013. (AFP Photo / Justin Lane)
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Tuesday that the Palestinians are immediately applying for admittance to 15 UN agencies and conventions after Israel failed to release a fourth batch of prisoners in March.
The Palestinian Authority (PA) leader held an emergency meeting in Ramallah late Tuesday, where he signed a document to join 15 UN agencies and international organizations in a televised ceremony.
Abbas said he made the decision after Israel delayed a fourth release of Palestinian prisoners, which had been scheduled for March 29.
“We have nothing against American efforts,” he said, stressing that Israel is procrastinating.
“There was a commitment to a fourth prisoner release by March 29, since then there have been various promises but no results. This despite our leadership’s agreement to refrain from going to the UN for nine months, all in order to secure the release of prisoners,” he said.
Abbas stated that if the prisoners are not released, he will commit the Palestinian Authority to joining 63 international institutions, adding that he has the unanimous backing of the PA leadership.
The move could derail faltering US-mediated peace talks with Israel.
US Secretary of State John Kerry was due to fly to Ramallah for talks to try and extend the three-way negotiations until 2015. However, a US official has said the trip will no longer be taking place.
Peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians resumed last July. In turn, Abbas said he would suspend attempts to join UN agencies, while Israel promised to release 104 Palestinian prisoners in four groups.
Israel has not yet commented on the matter, but it views the move by Abbas as an attempt to avoid further peace talks.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry was close to a deal aimed at rescuing the faltering talks. His formula involved the release of convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in return for freeing hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel.
The deal would also have involved a commitment from Israel to show “great restraint” in the occupied West Bank from building further settlements, but would not have included a complete freeze on settlement building.
The US has been pushing hard to keep the negotiations afloat past the end of the April deadline. The inclusion of Pollard in the deal has been viewed as surprising and a reflection of American desperation to keep the talks moving forward.
Pollard was arrested in 1985 and sentenced to life imprisonment in the US for spying for Israel. He is up for parole in November 2015.
The Palestinians have given a cool response to the US proposals, saying they need a complete halt to settlement construction and that 1,000 prisoners of their own choosing must be freed.
The prisoner release is a difficult political step for Israel, with far-right coalition partners angry at the idea of freeing terrorists who have committed lethal attacks.
But in Palestine, freeing inmates helps increase support for Abbas from popular Islamist groups who are opposed to negotiating with Israel.
"S'ils menacent maintenant (de se tourner vers les institutions de l'ONU), ils doivent savoir une chose: ils le paieront cher", a déclaré à la radio publique le ministre du Tourisme Uzi Landau.
Ce dernier, un faucon de la coalition gouvernementale, n'a pas exclu la possibilité pour Israël d'annexer des portions de territoire palestinien occupé.
"L'une des mesures possibles serait pour Israël d'appliquer sa souveraineté sur des secteurs qui feront clairement partie de l'Etat d'Israël dans le cadre de toute solution future", a menacé Landau, un membre du parti ultra-nationaliste Israël Beiteinou.
Le ministre faisait référence aux secteurs de la Cisjordanie occupée où sont implantés des colons juifs, Israël espérant conserver ces zones après un futur accord de paix. Israël pourrait aussi prendre des mesures de rétorsion économiques en intervenant "pour bloquer leurs aides financières", a-t-il ajouté.
The Syrian Army is trying to retake the Christian majority town of Kessab reportedly seized by al-Qaeda-linked forces. The attack made hundreds of ethnic Armenians flee and caused international outcry with Armenia blaming Turkey for supporting extremists.
Kessab – located in Syria’s Latakia province, near the border with Turkey – fell to rebels sparking a fierce battle in the media as conflicting reports are coming in about the events in the town which is home to over 2,000 ethnic Armenians.
Reportedly, on March 21, extremist groups affiliated with al-Qaeda crossed into Syria from Turkey and seized the town after clashes with Syrian government troops and local self-defense squads.
According to the Armenian side, the jihadists were supported by Turkish forces. Ankara denied the allegations as “totally unfounded and untrue”.
“We consider the efforts of such circles, moving from these claims, to draw an analogy between the developments in the Kessab region and the painful incidents of the past as confrontational political propaganda attempt and particularly condemn it,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry said in a statement last week.
The relations between Armenia and Turkey have long been strained over Ankara’s refusal to recognize Armenian genocide after WWI.
Hundreds flee
Arman Saakyan, Armenian MP from the Republican Party has recently returned from the Syrian town of Latakia, where he managed to talk to Kessab refugees. He told RT that the armed groups got into Syria’s Kessab from Turkish soil.
“In the early hours on Saturday [March 22] Turkish border guards disappeared and terrorists, representatives of different countries, attacked Kessab from there with the support of artillery,” he said.
With the help of local self-defense forces and the Syrian army the majority of ethnic Armenians managed to flee Kessab and are currently resided on the territory of an Armenian church in the coastal city of Latakia, the parliament member said. Only some elderly people still remain in the town "occupied by militants from the al-Nusra [Front],” he added.
A group of residents found shelter in St. George's Armenian monastery in Latakia, about 60 km from Kessab, according to a stringer for RT video agency Ruptly.
“Everyone gathered and started going towards Al-Nabien to be safe. We along with the army and the national defense forces we saved as many as we could,” Father Maron, a priest from the town told Ruptly.“40 more people remained in Kessab - mostly the old and immobile - but we managed to gather the majority and most of the families came to Latakia.”
The residents of the town managed to escape in the very last moment before “their homes were attacked,” Bugus Kazaryan, the chair of the Armenian Community Council in Latakia told RT. He said around 850 families from Kessab – “not only Armenians, but also residents of other nationalities” – have currently taken shelter in Latakia.
They fled the town in order to let the Syrian Army “destroy the terrorists who only came to Syria to kill, they’ve got no other goals,” Kazaryan said.
“The bombardment started early morning. We struggled to save our son. We were laying on the ground because of the heavy bombing. We could take nothing from our home,” Kessab resident Hrach Chegelian told RT.
“We took nothing with us. No clothes – we just left with what we were wearing at that moment,” Kessab resident Siran Demirchian said.
Refugees from Kassab city on the Syrian-Turkish border have found shelter in the St. George's Armenian monastery in Lattakia, Saturday.
During the past several days a number of reports have been circulating in media and online, claiming violent atrocities by rebels, manslaughter of Armenians in the area. One of the videos is said to show the massacre of Armenians in Kessab by rebels. Extremely graphic footage, picked-up by several media and web blogs, showed unknown people being shot in the heads by unidentified attackers.
However, the footage apparently had nothing to do with Kessab. The video posted online mid-March by Al-Nusra Front allegedly depicts execution of Syrian soldiers in Aleppo last December. So far, there is no confirmed information that any of Kessab’s civilians died due to fighting.
Other reports suggested that rebels desecrated and destroyed historic churches in the area, as they entered the town. The reports are yet to be independently verified. A number of YouTube videos apparently shot by militants showed the deserted town of Kessab, while some churches featured in the videos appeared to be untouched at the moment of filming.
#SaveKessab
During the past weekend, reports about Kessab rapidly spread on social networks with allegations emerging of extremists perpetrating brutal atrocities against ethnic Armenians.
The Twitter storm was also provoked by the news, with Kim Kardashian, Cher and Jared Leto supporting the call for help from the city’s Armenians. A special hashtag #SaveKessab has become one of the most popular.
Ethnic Armenians who fled the area urged Armenian Diaspora to apply “to their government, the UN or any other structures to interfere in this case.”
“All we want is to live. If you ignore our appeal, we will be violently killed by extremists, same as it happened in Aleppo…and other places on the Syrian territory,” says the statement on Facebook drafted by Armenian MP Arman Saakyan.
“Today, on Mother’s Day, our beautiful city was violently attacked from Al-Qaeda and the extremist group Front Al-Nusra, which get the full military and material and technical support from the side of the Turkish government.
We woke up long before sunset, horrified by the sounds of the missiles which were falling on our city. Thousands of terrorists reached the border of our city. The Turkish side conducts the policy of destroying our beautiful Kessab exactly on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide in the Osman Empire,” Armenians said in the statement.
“They killed Armenians three times in the same location: in 1909, 1913, and now in 2014,” Ja’afari added, stressing that Turkish tanks and artillery cover the rebel forces and help them.
Armenia-Turkey-Syria standoff
The attack on Kessab was reportedly carried out by fighters from the Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group in Syria, and the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham brigade, part of the Islamic Front alliance. Militants posing with brigade's flag near Kessab border-crossing are seen in the photo below, which was likely taken shortly after the seizure of the checkpoint.
An amateur video circulated on the internet appears to show armed men freely strolling through the Kessab checkpoint, apparently at the Turkish-Syrian border, with no border guards seen on either side.
"We saw them coming with huge groups. We were told not to fire. The rebels were backed by Turkish soldiers. When they reached our village, we started to shoot. But we couldn’t do any more. There were only seven of us. So we escaped and came back through the forest. We woke up the people of Kessab and they started to leave the town," Kessab resident Gevorg Nazarian told RT.
Earlier in the week, the Syrian army launched an operation to force the militants out of the town, located in a region of strategic importance for Damascus. In the course of the three year civil war, Assad's army has already lost control of most border crossings. It had though held on to Kessab, a gateway to the province of Latakia which has remained an Assad stronghold. By seizing the town, militants got their first outpost on the Mediterranean Sea.
Echoing claims coming from Yerevan, Syrian authorities also pointed the finger at Ankara for providing “cover for this terrorist attack,” cited Reuters.
Adding fuel to the fire, on March 23 Turkey shot down a Syrian Air Force jet at the Kessab crossing. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the plane was intercepted after it violated his country’s airspace.
Damascus in response accused Ankara of “blatant aggression,” saying the fighter jet had been over Syria. The Syrian pilot said that a Turksih aircraft fired a missile at him while he was pursuing terrorists within Syrian territories, SANA agency reported.
Moscow expressed concern over the attack on Kessab, saying that the activities of the rebel forces are aimed at wrecking the chemical demilitarization of Syria.
“The seizure by extremists of the town of Kessab elicited a broad response in Armenian communities throughout the world. A demonstration took place in front of the UN office in Yerevan with the demand for the persecution against ethno-confessional minorities by illegal armed units to be put an end to in Syria. Simultaneously, the leadership of the Republic of Armenia expressed its gratitude to the Syrian government for the defense of the Armenian population,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, quoted the Voice of Russia.
Washington said it was “deeply troubled” by the events.
“We are deeply troubled by recent fighting and violence that is endangering the Armenian community in Kessab, Syria and has forced many to flee,” said State Department Deputy Spokesperson Marie Harf.
“All civilians, as well as their places of worship, must be protected,” she said, “We have long had concerns about the threat posed by violent extremists and this latest threat to the Armenian community in Syria only underscores this further,” Harf added.
Des Palestiniens agitent leur drapeau en direction de la frontière israélienne avec la Bande de Gaza, le 30 mars 2014.REUTERS/Suhaib Salem
Les négociations de paix israélo-palestiniennes ont été fragilisées par le refus d'Israël de libérer un nouveau contingent de prisonniers palestiniens. Mais ce dimanche, les consultations se sont intensifiées pour tenter de sauver le processus. Selon un responsable palestinien, Israël a proposé au président de l'Autorité palestinienne Mahmoud Abbas un projet d'accord pour relancer les négociations.
Avec notre correspondant à Jérusalem,Michel Paul
Le sort des négociations de paix avec les Palestiniens sera tranché dans les jours qui viennent, affirme Benjamin Netanyahou. Et le Premier ministre israélien s’explique : ou bien le problème se résoud, ou bien le processus explose.
Ce qui est certain, en tout cas à ce stade, c’est qu’Israël refuse toujours de procéder à la libération de la quatrième vague de prisonniers, 26 détenus en tout, auteurs d’attentats meurtriers contre des Israéliens, remontant à la période qui a précédé l’accord d’Oslo en 1993. Quatorze de ces détenus sont des Arabes israéliens.
Prolongation d'un an
Pour les Israéliens, la balle est maintenant dans le camp des Palestiniens. « Pas question de libérer qui que ce soit, affirme un responsable israélien, si dans quelques jours la partie adverse proclame que c’est la fin du dialogue israélo-palestinien et le retour à un soulèvement violent. »
Israël voudrait obtenir la prolongation du processus pour une durée d’au moins un an, en échange de quoi, selon un mini-accord non confirmé pour l'instant, l’Etat hébreu pourrait décider de libérer, en plus de ceux qui étaient prévus, plusieurs centaines de détenus palestiniens de droit commun, pour la plupart des voleurs de voitures.
US Secretary of State John Kerry is heading back to the Middle East for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders, as peace talks hit a critical point.
The State Department said Kerry will travel to Israel and the Palestinian territories on Monday amid a flurry of diplomatic activity by American mediators, who have been holding urgent talks with the two sides in hopes of salvaging the troubled negotiations and getting them to extend the talks beyond a current late-April deadline.
With the parties unable to agree on the terms of a promised Israeli prisoner release, the negotiations risk collapse in the coming weeks.
Kerry is currently in Paris, where he met Sunday with Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, about the Ukraine crisis.
Le secrétaire d'Etat américain John Kerry a assuré à la partie russe que les Etats-Unis s'opposaient à la livraison de lance-missiles sol-air portables en Syrie, a déclaré dimanche soir le ministre russe des Affaires étrangères Sergueï Lavrov.
"Nous avons posé une question sur les informations parues dans les médias, selon lesquelles le président Barack Obama, lors de sa visite en Arabie saoudite, aurait évoqué la livraison de lance-missiles sol-air portables à l'opposition syrienne. John Kerry a clairement confirmé que Washington y était opposé", a indiqué le chef de la diplomatie russe à l'issue d'entretiens avec son homologue américain John Kerry à Paris.
Selon le ministre russe, ceci était tout à fait conforme aux ententes russo-américaines selon lesquelles les lance-missiles sol-air portables ne devaient pas être livrés dans les régions en proie aux conflits.
Se référant à des sources au sein du gouvernement US, l'agence AP a annoncé vendredi que l'administration du président Obama examinait la possibilité de lever l'interdiction de livrer des missiles antiaériens à l'opposition syrienne. Hostile initialement à cette idée, le président Obama pourrait changer d'avis suite aux récentes victoires enregistrées par les troupes gouvernementales syriennes dans leur lutte contre la rébellion.
Samedi, Barack Obama a confirmé son inquiétude face à l'intention de l'Arabie saoudite de fournir des missiles antiaériens et antichars aux rebelles anti-Assad.
The US is paying the cost of supporting the House of Saud as cracks begin to appear
World View: It has helped to restore authoritarian rule in the Middle East, but the costs are becoming clear
President Obama flew to Saudi Arabia to patch up relations with King Abdullah at the end of last week in his first visit in five years. The alliance had been strained by Saudi anger over US negotiations with Iran on its nuclear programme and Obama’s refusal to go to war in Syria to overthrow Bashar al-Assad last year. For its part, the US is upset by Saudi Arabia covertly supporting al-Qa’ida-type movements in Syria and elsewhere.
The US-Saudi relationship is a peculiar one in that it is between a reactionary theocratic monarchy – it is the only place in the world where women are not allowed to drive – and a republic that claims to be the chief exponent of secular democracy. The linkage is so solid that it was scarcely affected by 9/11, though al-Qa’ida and the hijackers had demonstrably close connections to Saudi Arabia.
The Saudis want to persuade the US to make a greater effort to overthrow Assad in Syria. Saudi Crown Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz told the Arab League in Kuwait last week that “the legitimate Syrian resistance has been betrayed by the international community and left easy prey to tyrant forces”. This is a bit rich, coming from the potential ruler of a state in which every expression of dissent is being crushed, and the number of political prisoners could be as high as 30,000. Minor criticism of the state on Twitter is enough for Saudis to be called in by the security services.
On 3 February, King Abdullah promulgated a decree that made Saudi jihadis fighting abroad liable to 20 years in prison on their return. The idea is to choke off the supply of Saudi recruits volunteering to fight in Syria, said to number 2,500 at present. Previously, Saudis were able to reach Syria with ease, a sign that the government was turning a blind eye, but now it is saying it will jail them if they come back.
The U-turn may not work: fighting in Syria has popular support in Saudi Arabia; Wahhabism, a puritanical and intolerant variant of Islam, is the ideology of the Saudi state which regards Shia and Sufi Muslims as heretics little different from Christians and Jews. Having stoked hostility to Iran and Shia Islam for so long, the government may not find it easy to demonise and punish Saudis who fought against them.
The criminalisation of the jihadis is designed in part to persuade the Americans that Saudi Arabia is not encouraging Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), both al-Qa’ida-type groups, to take over northern Syria and western Iraq. On the contrary, the Saudis say they want to fund and supply a third military force in Syria that will fight both President Assad and the anti-Assad jihadi forces.
Given that the Syrian army is on the offensive in and around Damascus, Homs and Aleppo, any Saudi and American backed “third force” operating from Jordan is not going to turn the tide on the battlefield in the foreseeable future. If the Americans go along with this plan, then they are saying, in effect, that they are prepared to conduct a long proxy war in Syria, contrary to all the hypocritical outpourings in Washington and Riyadh about ending the suffering of the Syrian people.
For its part, the US establishment has never taken on board that, when it backed the anti-Assad rebels in Syria, it automatically destabilised Iraq. This is sometimes attributed to the departure of US troops, but it was inevitable that an uprising centred on the Sunni majority in Syria, would energise and radicalise the Sunni minority next door in Iraq. Three years after the protests started in Syria, the whole Euphrates valley from, to Jarabulus, on Syria’s border with Turkey, is in the hand of Isis and Jabhat al-Nusra. In the past week, Jabhat al-Nusra fighters have for the first time broken through to the Mediterranean coast north of Latakia.
A problem for the Saudi government is that it has always used jihadis as an arm of its foreign policy, believing that it could disclaim responsibility for their actions. Private donors and jihadi preachers were allowed to operate unhindered. But the disadvantage of this hands-off approach is that, in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria and Iraq, the jihadis were not under total Saudi government control. Those battling in Syria and Iraq today will not be pleased to learn that Riyadh has decided that they have suddenly become outcasts. In recent months, jihadi websites and messages on Twitter have begun to attack the Saudi royal family, one showing a picture of King Abdullah giving a medal to George W Bush with the caption: “medal for invading two Islamic countries”. Another shows trucks packed with armed gunmen with a caption saying they are heading for northern Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi government is showing signs of nervousness. It has backed a counter-revolutionary wave across the Middle East that, in many places, has succeeded. Democratic protesters in Bahrain were crushed in a Saudi-backed clampdown in 2011. In Egypt, it is financially supporting the military regime that overthrew the democratically elected President Morsi in 2013. In Syria, it has ensured that the political opposition is dominated by Islamists and is funded and largely directed by itself.
But, along the way, the Saudi royal family is making a lot of enemies. They range from members of the Muslim Brotherhood in the Gulf who find they are being targeted as “terrorists” despite being peaceful. There are jihadis in Syria who feel they were encouraged and then betrayed. Saudi liberals, who like the new anti-terror laws when applied to jihadis, find that innocuous tweets may land them in jail, and a mildly progressive publisher at the Riyadh International Book Fair this month had its display smashed up, probably by the religious police.
American, British and other foreign visitors to Saudi Arabia usually behave with fawning respect towards their hosts in the belief that it is in their national interest to do so. In the case of President Obama, there are $87bn (£52bn) in proposed US defence sales, including $29bn for F-15s and $31bn for helicopters, to consider. But the Obama visit has brought together a strange alliance in Congress of conservative Christian Republicans and liberal Democrats, 52 of whom signed a letter asking Obama to raise with King Abdullah and other officials the fact that “Saudi Arabian authorities have harassed, intimidated, and imprisoned almost all the country’s leading independent human rights activists”. It mentions Mohammad al-Qahtani and Abdullah al-Hamid, serving long sentences for setting up a local human rights organisation. The letter concludes that “the Government of Saudi Arabia must end its ban on public gatherings, lift restrictions on social media, stop the use of torture, and reform the new so-called ‘anti-terror’ laws that practically criminalise all forms of peaceful dissent”.
The Saudi royal family survived the 2011 uprisings without domestic upheaval. It has since gone a long way to restore the old status quo of authoritarian regimes in the Middle East, but the kingdom itself is becoming ever more divided and unstable.
Les Palestiniens ont marqué dimanche la "journée de la Terre", qui commémore chaque année la mort en 1976 d’Arabes israéliens lors de manifestations contre la confiscation de terrains par Israël. Dans la ville d’Arrabeh, dans le nord, où était programmée la principale manifestation, près d’un millier de personnes se sont réunies en brandissant des drapeaux palestiniens, a constaté un photographe de l’AFP. Un autre rassemblement s’est tenu dans le sud du pays, à Sawawil, une localité bédouine non reconnue par les autorités israéliennes, dans le désert du Néguev. Les rassemblements se sont déroulés sans incident majeur. Les commémorations de la "journée de la Terre" ont lieu chaque 30 mars en souvenir de la mort de six manifestants arabes israéliens tués par la police lors d’une vague de protestations en 1976 contre l’annexion de terres arabes en Galilée, dans le nord d’Israël. La communauté des Arabes de 48, descendants des 160.000 Palestiniens restés sur leur terre après la création d’Israël en 1948, compte aujourd’hui plus de 1,4 million de personnes, soit 20% de la population totale. Elle est victime de discriminations, notamment en matière d’emploi et de logement. A Jérusalem-Est annexée, environ 70 manifestants se sont retrouvés à la porte de Damas, au pied des murailles de la Vieille Ville. La police israélienne a rapidement dispersé la manifestation et interpellé un protestataire à la suite de jets de pierres, a-t-elle indiqué dans un communiqué. La veille, la police avait violemment dispersé un début de rassemblement au même endroit, faisant plusieurs blessés, dont un photographe de l’AFP, et arrêtant six Palestiniens. A Gaza, des manifestations ont été organisées à Jabaliya, dans le nord de l’enclave palestinienne, à l’initiative du mouvement islamiste du Hamas au pouvoir, et à Khan Younès (sud). "Nous attendrons le temps qu’il faudra mais nous reviendrons sur nos terres", promettaient des banderoles. Le "droit au retour" des réfugiés forcés à l’exil en 1948 reste au coeur des revendications palestiniennes dans les négociations avec Israël. Des rassemblements et sit-in ont également eu lieu en Cisjordanie, notamment à Hébron (sud) en présence de militants étrangers pro-palestiniens.
Des proches de prisonniers palestiniens manifestent en faveur de leur libération à Ramallah, le 27 mars 2014. (Photo Abbas Momani. AFP)
Le gouvernement s'était engagé à libérer un quatrième groupe de Palestiniens incarcérés avant les accords d'Oslo.
Le gouvernement israélien est revenu sur son engagement à libérer un quatrième et dernier contingent de prisonniers palestiniens comme prévu samedi, a affirmé vendredi un dirigeant palestinien. «Le gouvernement israélien nous a informés via le médiateur et parrain américain du processus de paix, qu’il ne se conformerait pas à la libération du quatrième contingent de prisonniers prévue samedi 29», a déclaré Jibril Rajoub au lendemain d’une rencontre entre le président palestinien Mahmoud Abbas et l’émissaire américain Martin Indyk. Interrogés par l’AFP, des responsables israéliens se sont refusés à tout commentaire dans l’immédiat.
SUR LE MÊME SUJET
Libération de prisonniers palestiniens : Israël fait marche arrière
«Israël a refusé de respecter la liste des noms de prisonniers qui était convenue», tous incarcérés dans les prisons israéliennes avant les accords d’Oslo en 1993, a précisé Jibril Rajoub, membre du Comité central du Fatah, le mouvement de Mahmoud Abbas, dénonçant une «gifle à l’administration américaine», qui parraine les négociations de paix.
Mahmoud Abbas, lors d’une rencontre mercredi à Amman avec le secrétaire d’Etat américain John Kerry sur ces libérations, avait refusé «tout compromis» et toute discussion sur d’autres sujets jusqu’à ce qu’elles interviennent, a indiqué jeudi un responsable palestinien sous le couvert de l’anonymat.
L’accord qui a permis la reprise en juillet des négociations après trois ans de suspension prévoit la libération, en quatre contingents, de 104 prisonniers incarcérés par Israël avant les accords israélo-palestiniens de 1993, en contrepartie de la suspension de toute démarche palestinienne pour adhérer aux organisations internationales, y compris les juridictions à compétence mondiale.
Si les trois premiers contingents de 26 prisonniers chacun ont été relâchés, le gouvernement du Premier ministre israélien Benjamin Netanyahu a indiqué qu’il pourrait annuler la quatrième vague, compte tenu de la dégradation du climat entre les deux parties, à l’approche de l’échéance des pourparlers le 29 avril. Le contentieux porte également sur la liste des prisonniers, parmi lesquels 14 appartiennent à la minorité arabe israélienne, que le gouvernement Nétanyahou renâcle à relâcher, pour des motifs de souveraineté nationale. Il existe néanmoins des précédents, notamment en 2011 lors de l’échange d’un millier de détenus contre le soldat Gilad Shalit.
Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Sabah al-Khaled al-Sabah (R) and Secretary General of the Arab League Nabil al-Araby (L) speak to the Emir of Kuwait Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Jaber al-Sabah during the 25th Arab League summit at Bayan palace in Kuwait City on March 26, 2014 (AFP Photo / Yasser Al-Zayyat)
The Arab League has refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state, backing Palestine’s stance on the issue. The demand by Israel threatened to destabilize US-Palestinian peace talks, according to Arab leaders.
“We express our total rejection of the call to consider Israel as a Jewish state,” said the declaration, issued at the close of the two-day long meeting which has been taking place in Kuwait City. The leaders also criticized “the continuation of settlements, Judaization of Jerusalem and attacks in its Muslim and Christian shrines and changing its demographics and geography.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that the necessity for Israel to be recognized as a Jewish state is at the forefront of the peace talks. He states that both Palestinian Arab dismissals of the plans are the “root of the conflict”.
Palestinians recognized Israel at the beginning of the peace talks some two decades ago. However, Netanyahu wants the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel as a “national homeland” – a move which would obliterate the right of return for Palestinians.
The problem is considered closely connected to the fate of Palestinian refugees who were forced from their homelands in 1948, and they regard Netanyahu’s demands as a means by which to address the question of Palestinian internally displaced persons.
The Palestinian Solidarity Committee-Seattle claims that the international community "has already recognized the Palestinian right of return. There is no reason that this right should not be fully recognized by the State of Israel.”
Their right of return, they argue, is entrenched in both the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Article 13, 2) and The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (Article 1, C).
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the summit Tuesday that during the previous eight months of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Israel has only been working to throw obstacles in the way of peace.
Netanyahu told visiting world leaders in January:
“The root of the conflict is not the settlements. The root of the conflict is not and has never been the lack of a Palestinian state. The root of the conflict is the consistent refusal to accept the existence of an independent nation state for the Jewish people.”
Arab League leaders rejected the recognition of the Jewish State earlier this month in a statement in Cairo.
"The council of the Arab League confirms its support for the Palestinian leadership in its effort to end the Israeli occupation over Palestinian lands, and emphasizes its rejection of recognizing Israel as a Jewish state,” Arab foreign ministers said.
The US has already requested that Abbas make the move of recognition as a framework agreement is negotiated.
“In recognizing the Jewish state [the Palestinians] would finally make clear that you are truly prepared to end the conflict,” Netanyahu stated in a concurrent speech to the pro-Israel AIPAC lobby.
Abbas has been clear in stating that he will not recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
Des Palestiniens agitent leur drapeau en direction de la frontière israélienne avec la Bande de Gaza, le 30 mars 2014.REUTERS/Suhaib Salem 
Opposition syrienne armée de missiles sol-air: Moscou préoccupé
