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Australia's Foreign Minister said more construction in Jerusalem is not helpful to the peace process. Photo: AJN file

FOREIGN Minister Stephen Smith has criticised Israel’s decision to allow the building of more homes in Ramat Shlomo, an ultra-Orthodox neighbourhood of Jerusalem.

Speaking to <I>Sky News<P> on Thursday, Smith called the decision, made on Tuesday, a “bad” one.

“I share the view that this is a bad decision at the wrong time,” he said. “It’s not a helpful contribution to the peace process. It’s not a helpful contribution to the very hard work that’s been going on behind-the-scenes, including from the United States, to try and get Israel and the Palestinian Authority together for so-called proximity talks.”

Approval for 1600 additional houses in the burgeoning area –  where media reports put the average household at seven or eight people – was given by Israel’s Interior Ministry. It is controversial because the building would be beyond the Green Line, but the Netanyahu Government said it never agreed to halt construction in Jerusalem.

The approval followed closely on the heals of United States Vice President Joe Biden’s express support for new, indirect peace talks during a visit to Israel this week. That support is based on the cessation of settlement building in the Palestinian territories. Read the full story

AHRON SHAPIRO

IT sounds like something out of a spy movie. Hamas arms smuggler Mahmoud al-Mabhouh checks into a Dubai hotel on January 19, supposedly in town to finalise an arms deal.

According to Dubai police, waiting for him that afternoon are a team of 11 assassins who themselves arrived a few hours earlier, and checked into a number of hotels in the area.

Dressed for business meetings or for tennis, they blend in easily with other tourists in the bustling city. Some spend some time at one of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) famous shopping malls. Others take steps to disguise their appearance.

Police have a great deal of footage from surveillance tapes covering the alleged assassins’ movements, but none capture the actual moment when one or more agents gain access to Mabhouh’s room and smother him with a pillow. His body is discovered the following day.
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US special Middle East envoy George Mitchell. Photo: AJN file

WASHINGTON — US special Middle East envoy George Mitchell has announced the start of proximity talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mitchell will broker the indirect talks, which over the next few weeks will have him shuttling between the Palestinian territories and Israel.

“We’ve begun to discuss the structure and scope of these talks, and I will return to the region next week to continue our discussions,” Mitchell, who has been in the area since March 6, said in a statement released Monday afternoon (March 8).

“As we’ve said many times, we hope that these will lead to direct negotiations as soon as possible.”

The Palestinians have refused to engage in direct talks until Israel places a freeze on all settlement construction, including eastern Jerusalem. Israel has only partially frozen settlement expansion.

On March 8 Israel announced approval for the construction of 112 new apartments in a West Bank settlement, a move that angered Palestinians who had just agreed to the new round of indirect talks.

Mitchell addressed the concerns in his statement. Read the full story

United Nations. Photo: AJN file

NAOMI LEVIN

WHILE abstaining from a vote is often not perceived as a noteworthy action, last week, two days after launching an investigation into the alleged fraudulent use of Australian passports by the Mossad, Australia was noted as abstaining from a crucial vote regarding Israel in the United Nations (UN).

The vote in the UN’s General Assembly reiterated a call for both the government of Israel and the Palestinians to conduct independent and credible investigations into “the serious violations of international humanitarian and international human rights law reported by the [Goldstone Commission’s] Fact-Finding Mission”.

Australia had previously voted against the resolution, but changed its vote this time around – a move that was heavily criticised by Zionist Federation of Australia (ZFA) president Philip Chester.

When it comes to General Assembly votes, the practice is for Australia to decide its position as close as possible to the actual vote.

However, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith emphasised that the abstention was not “payback” for allegations that Israel forged Australian passports.
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Dubai. Photo: AJN file

TEL AVIV — Israelis will not be allowed into the United Arab Emirates even if they carry foreign passports, according to Dubai’s police chief.

The ban comes in the wake of the killing of a senior Hamas man in Dubai, blamed by the Emirates authorities on Israel’s Mossad spy agency.

Dubai’s police chief, Lieut. General Dahi Khalfan Tamim, said travellers suspected of being Israeli will not be allowed into the UAE even if they arrive with alternative passports.

Tamim said a team of at least 26 people used European and Australian passports to enter the country in January and kill Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in his hotel room, before fleeing the country.

The UAE will now “deny entry to anyone suspected of having Israeli citizenship,” Tamim said at a security conference in Abu Dhabi on March 1.

It was unclear if the measure would also apply to Israeli athletes competing in international sports events being held there.

YNETNEWS

NAOMI LEVIN

AUSTRALIAN police officers are expected to land in Tel Aviv on Tuesday (March 2) to begin investigating allegations that Israel committed passport fraud.

Following the discovery last week of three Australian passports, which were alleged to have been forged by Israeli security service Mossad, Australian Federal Police officers will continue their investigation on Israeli soil.

The officers, who are conducting the investigation alongside the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Passport Office, will speak to the three dual Australian-Israel citizens caught up in the fraud.
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Israeli singer Ivri Lider. Photo: AJN file

SAMANTHA MIMERAN

IVRI Lider did not dream of becoming a singer when he was growing up. By all accounts he was very shy, and planned to stay in the background writing music and scoring movies.

But for the artist who last year was named one of 10 people with the most significant impact on the Israeli music industry by Timeout Tel Aviv – Israel’s premier entertainment magazine – it seems singing found him.

“Actually, it’s a funny story,” he told The AJN from Israel, ahead of his first tour of Australia. “I wanted to go to UCLA to study film scoring but my parents didn’t have enough money… so I stayed [in Israel and] started working. At the same time I sent some demos to record companies. They called back and said let’s make a record, so we did and the record did really well. And then I became a singer,” he adds matter-of-factly.

The 36-year-old singer/songwriter made his debut Australian tour last week with concerts in Melbourne and Sydney.
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A Palestinian militant clashes with an Israeli policeman in Jerusalem's Old City on February 28. Photo: Isranet

JERUSALEM — Israeli police have entered the Temple Mount compound after Palestinians began throwing stones during rioting in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Police entered the Temple Mount compound on Sunday morning (February 28) to remove Palestinians youths who had barricaded themselves in the Al-Aksa Mosque on Saturday night and on Sunday began throwing rocks at police and non-Muslim visitors to the site.

The police reportedly surrounded the mosque but did not enter it. At least eight Palestinians in the mosque reportedly were hurt by tear gas.

Two police and two border guards were injured in the streets of the Old City by stones thrown by Palestinian youth. Seven protesters were arrested.

Since Saturday night, police have restricted entry to the mosque to men with Israeli identity cards over the age of 50 and to women of all ages. Visits to the Temple Mount by Jews and non-Jews continued on Sunday.

The Wakf and Islamic organizations called on Muslims to gather at the Temple Mount, saying that “radical Jewish organizations” have called on followers to lay a cornerstone for a temple on the site.
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Beirut, Lebanon.

BEIRUT — Three Lebanese have been indicted on charges of spying for Israel.

The indictment, the result of a year-long investigation and the arrest of at least 27 suspects, was handed down on February 24.

The three are charged with giving Israel information on important civil and military sites and on political officials, Reuters reported.

One of the alleged spies was indicted in absentia. The accused could face the death penalty.

Arrests in the investigation began last April 2009 and included former military officers.

JTA

Israeli gay icon Ivri Lider.

AMANTHA MIMERAN

SINGER Ivri Lider is touring around Australia this week under the auspices of the Embassy of Israel in Canberra.

In looking for a way to promote Israel’s open and inclusive society, the embassy decided to bring out the prominent gay performer for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Lider will lead a discussion entitled “Queer Tel Aviv” as part of Queer Thinking, the opening event at Mardi Gras. He will talk about the devastating shooting at a gay youth event in Tel Aviv in August last year.

Since revealing his sexuality publicly in an interview with Ma’ariv newspaper in 2002, he has become a gay icon of Israel.

“I wanted to be true to my fans, I wanted to be able to write whatever I wanted to write about without barriers. So I decided to come out and … it was actually great,” he told The AJN ahead of his trip to Australia.
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