Boucle du 23 septembre

France

- Vive émotion à Sarcelles après l'attaque d'une épicerie casher (AFP, Vidéo 1mn29)
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtqatu_vive-emotion-a-sarcelles-apres-l-attaque-d-une-epicerie-casher_news?search_algo=2
   "Une épicerie casher a été attaquée mercredi 19 septembre à Sarcelles, faisant un blessé léger et suscitant une vive émotion dans cette commune populaire du Val-d'Oise qui abrite une importante communauté juive."

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Israël

- Les juifs d'Israël s'apprêtent à célébrer la fête du Yom Kippour (AFP, Vidéo 40 secondes)
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtsgid_les-juifs-d-israel-s-appretent-a-celebrer-la-fete-du-yom-kippour_news?search_algo=2
   "Les juifs du monde entier s'apprêtent à célébrer la fête religieuse du Yom Kippour, considérée comme la plus sainte de l’année juive, et qui aura lieu le 26 du mois. En préparation pour le "Jour du Grand Pardon", des orthodoxes juifs ont pris part jeudi à la cérémonie des Kapparot dans le quartier de Mea Shearim à Jérusalem. Ce rituel consiste à faire tournoyer un poulet au-dessus de la tête des fidèles, afin de les débarasser de leurs pêchés, avant de l'abattre selon le rite casher."

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Judée-Samarie

- Les femmes palestiniennes vont au front elles aussi (AFP, Vidéo 1mn23) - ou comment l'endoctrinement des filles contre toute présence juive commence très jeune, dès 11 ans.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtsi6q_les-femmes-palestiniennes-vont-au-front-elles-aussi_news?search_algo=2

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"Processus de paix"

- September: Time for High Holy Days, PA statehood bid, Herb Keinon (JP) - "True, it may give the Palestinians standing to bring charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court, but jurists are not even sure about that."
http://www.jpost.com/Features/FrontLines/Article.aspx?id=285748
   "Here we go again. When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas takes to the UN podium after a speech by the representative of Jamaica next Thursday, he is expected – once more – to blast Israel.
    According to assessments in Jerusalem, he will blame Israel for a litany of crimes against the Palestinians, bewail the stalemated diplomatic process and then – as a result of that stalemated process for which he bears not a small amount of responsibility –request that the UN General Assembly sometime during its 67th session admit “Palestine” as a non-member observer state. This status would give the PA kinship with the Vatican, which also enjoys this UN designation.
    If Abbas’s speech last year, when he unsuccessfully but dramatically sought full UN membership for a Palestinian state, is any indication – and it probably is – he will accuse Israel of everything from ethnic cleansing to waging a “war of aggression” against Gaza to killing at checkpoints and blocking the horizon of peace through expanding “racist” settlements.
    He is not expected to say anything about Hamas, or about how that organization has usurped control of Gaza; nor about the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo that has given a backwind to Hamas and made his own position more precarious. Failure of the Arab world to provide promised financial support for the fiscally strapped PA? Not likely to be mentioned.
    Abbas, however, will not bring a formal resolution for statehood status Thursday to be voted on in the GA. This he will only do after the US presidential elections on November 6. The Palestinians – it is widely assumed – do not want to do anything that could complicate reelection prospects for US President Barack Obama, and a vote in the UN to give “Palestine” non-member observer state status could do just that, as the Republicans would jump all over the move as an example of how Obama has, indeed, as Republican candidate Mitt Romney said at his party’s nominating convention last month, thrown Israel “under the bus.”
    If the Palestinians didn’t like Romney after his July visit to Jerusalem where he spoke of the city as Israel’s capital and talked about cultural differences as being a reason for wide economic disparities between Israel and the West Bank, they like him even less now after he was secretly taped this week telling a group of donors in Florida that the “Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace.”
    That argument – that the Palestinians are not interested in peace – will be used by Israel to combat the effort by the Palestinians in the GA once it is brought to a vote. The main argument will be that such a move will endanger any prospects of future diplomatic talks, because if the UN GA accepts “Palestine” as a non-member state within the 1967 lines, with east Jerusalem as its capital, future negotiations will be doomed. No Palestinian leader would ever be able to negotiate on the basis of anything less, and no Israeli leader would be willing to negotiate with those as the starting terms of reference.
    Beyond ruining negotiations, Israel will argue that this measure also contravenes widely accepted frameworks for peace, such as UN Security Council Resolution 242, the road map, and the Oslo Accords, which all stipulate that the borders of a future Palestinian state need to be worked out through negotiations. For instance, Yasser Arafat’s letter to prime minister Yitzhak Rabin from September 1993 stated clearly that “the PLO commits itself to the Middle East peace process, and to a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the two sides and declares that all outstanding issues relating to permanent status will be resolved through negotiations.”
    Will these arguments have any impact on the GA vote and keep the Palestinians from getting their resolution passed in that body? No. If Iran was able to get 120-members of the Non- Aligned Movement to go to a summit there last month, the Palestinians will be able to garner 129 states in the GA for their statehood bid. It is simple math. Indeed, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said in the past that the UN body is so stacked against Israel that if the Palestinians brought a resolution saying the world was flat to the GA, it would pass.
    So what is Israel’s strategy? The strategy is two-fold. First it is to keep the world’s so called “quality” states – the developed democracies – from voting for the move. A resolution passed on the strength of countries like Bangladesh, Iraq and Cuba is not the same as one that also includes Canada, Japan and Australia. And the second is to get states with an influence on the Palestinians – namely some of the EU countries and even some Arab states – to talk them out of actually going ahead with the step, arguing that it would boomerang against them and run counter to their interests.
    According to this argument, if the Palestinians do indeed go through with such a step, it will lead to an Israeli reaction that could range from withholding the transfer of tax revenues to the fiscally strapped PA to annexing the Jordan Valley and major settlement blocks. Also, runs this reasoning, even a post-election Washington is likely to oppose such a move and might – as a result – cut off all economic aid and close the Palestinian mission in the US.
    And all of that for a move that will have little real effect on the Palestinian reality. Or, as Obama said last September during a briefing with Hispanic journalists, “What happens in New York City can occupy a lot of press attention but is not going to change actually what is happening on the ground until the Israelis and Palestinians sit down.” What was true then is equally true now.
    The significance of acceptance as a nonmember observer state in the GA would be more symbolic, and rhetorical, than anything else. True, it may give the Palestinians standing to bring charges against Israel at the International Criminal Court, but jurists are not even sure about that. On paper, getting the non-member statehood designation should enhance the Palestinians’ efforts to gain admittance as a state in some 16 UN organizations – it already gained admittance to UNESCO in November – but that is only on paper. [...]
    It is precisely because the world’s attention is elsewhere, according to assessment in Jerusalem, that the Palestinians are once again trying to shine the light on themselves at the UN. The degree to which the world has lost interest can be illustrated by the fact that in only one of six North American television interviews Netanyahu has given since the end of July did a question having to do with the Palestinians even come up. [...]"

- Why are the Palestinians so desperate to avoid peace talks?, Robin Shepherd (The Commentator) - "Depressingly, it all smacks of the same old rejectionist strategy that the Palestinians have adopted since refusing a two-state solution all those decades ago".
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/1678/why_are_the_palestinians_so_desperate_to_avoid_peace_talks_
   "Perhaps the most famous remark ever attributed to an Israeli official about Palestinian unwillingness to forge a lasting peace was made in 1973 by one time Foreign Minister Abba Eban. The Palestinians, he said, “never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity“.
    Even then it was a sad statement of the obvious. Having rejected the United Nations partition plan of November 29, 1947, which was accepted by Israel and which would have provided for a two-state solution right at the inception of the Jewish state's existence, the Palestinians had largely put their faith in frightening the Israelis out of their state through guerilla warfare, outright terrorism and the prospect of invading Arab armies doing the job for them. 
    With today’s announcement from chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in mind, that last thought about other people doing the job for them is worth reflecting on. Erekat has added more detail to Palestinian plans for recognition of a Palestinian state on 1967 lines at the UN General Assembly later this month. The Jerusalem Post is reporting that he believes the resolution would set “the terms of reference for Palestinian negotiations with Israel“. Erekat was quoted as saying that: “No-one is talking about cancelling the peace process“.
    This is, frankly, delusional. For one thing, the Israelis are rightly suspicious of practically anything directed at them from the General Assembly or its affiliated institutions. The idea that they will merrily accept imposed conditions for peace talks from a body that it is heavily populated by people who dream of the country’s destruction is a non-starter.
    Similarly, the 1967 lines are indefensible. They were not even borders; merely the armistice lines where soldiers rested up for the night at the cessation of hostilities following the Israeli War of Independence.   Even with the much vaunted land swaps that would accompany any real world scenario for a two-state solution, the notion that the 67 lines, rather than “defensible borders“, should form the basis for a peace agreement is ludicrous.
    But let me return to the point referred to above. Why are the Palestinians so intent on getting someone else to set the terms of peace negotiations for them? Israel, after all, is practically begging them to sit down and talk directly, without preconditions. Why are they so desperate to avoid this? Whatever Erekat says, the Palestinians, more than anybody, must know that efforts to set the terms of any negotiations through the UN make meaningful talks much less likely, if not impossible. So what is their game?
    Depressingly, it all smacks of the same old rejectionist strategy that the Palestinians have adopted since refusing a two-state solution all those decades ago. If there’s an opportunity to be missed, they miss it. If there’s a diversion to be found, they find it. These days (some of) their leaders do talk the talk about two states living side by side in peace and security. But when it comes down to it they never quite manage to walk the walk. A devastated Bill Clinton was brought face to face with this reality after Yasser Arafat rejected, while Israel accepted, a two-state solution during his ill-fated efforts to broker a peace in 2000 and 2001.
    There’s always a reason to say “no“; always a way of avoiding the business of sitting down to meaningful talks; always some pretext for not bringing this conflict to a close. Now why could that be, one wonders...?"

- Israel urges Ban Ki-moon to place plight of post-1948 Jewish refugees on UN agenda, Haviv Rettig Gur (Times of Israel) - "By highlighting the largely-forgotten history of Jewish refugees from Arab lands, the campaign’s advocates hope to reframe discussions on Palestinian refugees in the context of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks."
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-urges-ban-ki-moon-to-place-plight-of-post-1948-jewish-refugees-on-un-agenda/
   "Israel’s ambassador to the UN called on the world body on Friday to “establish a center of documentation and research” under its auspices “to tell the 850,000 untold stories of Jewish refugees from Arab countries.” The issue of the plight of Jewish refugees who fled or were expelled from Arab lands after 1948 has been ignored for too long, Ambassador Ron Prosor told the Times of Israel on the sidelines of a Friday morning event at UN Headquarters in New York that sought to highlight the history of Middle Eastern Jewish refugees. “The United Nations has a clear duty to take responsibility for this historic wrong,” Prosor said at the event. “It must take the first step in the right direction today. Open the doors of this institution to the Jewish refugees. Listen to their firsthand accounts. Collect the evidence to preserve their history.”
    The global campaign for recognition of the suffering of Jewish refugees from Arab lands was bolstered Friday as diplomats from some two dozen countries, along with Jewish groups and senior Israeli officials gathered at the UN headquarters in New York to call for “justice” after six decades of ignorance. “We are 64 years late, but we are not too late,” said Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon, who also urged UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon to “place the issue of Jewish refugees on the agenda of the UN and its affiliated forums.” “For many reasons, This issue was never emphasized enough,” Ayalon noted. “Without too much mea culpa for the government of Israel, this was not brought up enough. We have decided to bring it up, to flush out the truth.”
    The campaign entitled “Justice for Jews from Arab Countries,” or JJAC, was founded by the New York-based Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. Its purpose, according to organizers, is to gain recognition and acknowledgement from the international community about the plight and suffering of what it says were over 800,000 Jews who fled Arab states due to riots, pogroms and discrimination in the wake of Israel’s establishment in 1948. The Friday event marks a significant achievement for the campaign. Diplomats from the United States, the European Union, Germany, Canada, Spain, Hungary and about a dozen other countries were in attendance, together with refugees and their families, activists and journalists. Irwin Cotler, a Canadian MP and former justice minister, and a well-known advocate on the issue, spoke at the event, as did Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz and others.
    Between speeches by diplomats and activists, attendees heard testimonies from refugees and the children of refugees such as Baghdad-born businessman Edwin Shuker, who recalled living in fear in Baghdad as a wave of anti-Semitism and violence swept Arab states in the wake of Israel’s establishment. “We do not want to go back there. My family members do not have good memories from that place,” said Israeli journalist Shalom Yerushalmi, son of Jewish refugees from Damascus. “This is not just about politics,” said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chair of the Conference of Presidents. “We owe to those who have waited so long and the many who are no longer here, [we owe it] to justice, that we speak for them.”
    But the campaign is also about politics, and has a goal more immediate than commemoration, according to Dan Diker, the secretary-general of the World Jewish Congress, one of the organizers of the Friday event. “This is an argument to create finally the moral and legal backbone for a solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict,” said Diker. By highlighting the largely-forgotten history of Jewish refugees from Arab lands, the campaign’s advocates hope to reframe discussions on Palestinian refugees in the context of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. [...]
    But it is also intended to tell the international community, and particularly Western states eager to revive the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, that peace cannot be achieved through the denial of Jewish rights as refugees or Jewish rights as an indigenous people of the Middle East. “Now is the time in the midst of the greatest turbulence in the modern Middle East that the Jewish people can say, ‘We’re the oldest community in the Middle East, and card-carrying members of the Middle East,’” said Diker. “It’s time to begin to solve the problem” of Palestinian refugees, “instead of deepening the problem,” as the international community has done in the past, he added.
    Would such a campaign convince Palestinians to surrender their demand for returning refugees into Israel? “Palestinians will be convinced when there is a weight of moral responsibility placed on their shoulders by Western powers and the Arab League,” Diker said. [...]"

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Iran

- La guerre d'Israël contre l'Iran "finira par arriver", selon un chef militaire iranien (AFP) - "Cette tumeur cancéreuse qu'est Israël cherche à lancer une guerre contre nous. S'ils commencent (l'agression), cela conduira à leur destruction".
http://fr.news.yahoo.com/guerre-disra%C3%ABl-contre-liran-finira-arriver-selon-chef-094327965.html
   "La guerre d'Israël contre l'Iran "finira par arriver", a déclaré aujourd'hui le général Mohammad Ali Jafari, commandant en chef des Gardiens de la révolution (Pasdaran), affirmant que son pays était prêt et détruirait l'Etat hébreu.
   "La guerre finira par arriver mais il n'est pas certain quand et où elle aura lieu", a dit le chef de l'armée d'élite du régime islamique, cité par les agences Isna et Fars. "Cette tumeur cancéreuse qu'est Israël cherche à lancer une guerre contre nous. Mais on ne sait pas quand elle se produira. Ils (les Israéliens) considèrent désormais la guerre comme le seul moyen de nous affronter, mais ils sont tellement stupides que leurs maîtres (les Etats-Unis) devraient les stopper", a ajouté le général Jafari. "S'ils commencent (l'agression), cela conduira à leur destruction", a-t-il encore déclaré. [...]"

- Syrie : les preuves de l'implication militaire iranienne s'accumulent, Christophe Ayad & Assal Reza (Le Monde) - "Depuis le début du soulèvement syrien, l'Iran ne ménage pas son soutien à son meilleur allié dans le monde arabe : l'alliance, tissée en 1980 et renforcée depuis l'émergence du Hezbollah libanais, ne s'est jamais démentie".
http://www.lemonde.fr/proche-orient/article/2012/09/22/syrie-les-preuves-de-l-implication-militaire-iranienne-s-accumulent_1763978_3218.html
   "[...] Le corps d'élite des pasdarans est en première ligne dans l'aide iranienne à la Syrie. Leur commandant en chef, Mohammad Ali Jafari, a confirmé ce secret de Polichinelle, le 16 septembre, précisant – sans convaincre – qu'il s'agissait d'une aide non militaire. Lors de cette conférence de presse, le responsable iranien a menacé d'une intervention de Téhéran aux côtés de Damas si les "circonstances" le nécessitaient. Un message on ne peut plus clair à l'attention de l'Arabie saoudite, du Qatar et de la Turquie, qui aident et financent les insurgés syriens, sur les limites à ne pas franchir. [...]
    Deux jours plus tard, le chef de la diplomatie iranienne, Ali Akbar Salehi, était à Damas pour rendre visite au président syrien Bachar Al-Assad et l'assurer à nouveau du soutien de Téhéran. Les émissaires iraniens se succèdent à un rythme soutenu dans la capitale syrienne. Depuis le début du soulèvement syrien, l'Iran ne ménage pas son soutien à son meilleur allié dans le monde arabe : l'alliance, tissée en 1980 et renforcée depuis l'émergence du Hezbollah libanais, ne s'est jamais démentie.
   "Dans un premier temps, l'aide iranienne a consisté à donner des moyens de détection et de surveillance téléphonique et Internet, résume David Rigoulet-Roze, chercheur à l'Institut français d'analyse stratégique (IFAS). Puis, quand les choses sont devenues plus sérieuses, en mai 2011, Téhéran a fourni son savoir-faire en matière de répression urbaine." Ahmad Reza Radan, numéro deux de la police antiémeute à Téhéran et impliqué dans la répression des manifestations de juin 2009, aurait fait le voyage de Damas. "A la fin de 2011, quand l'Armée syrienne libre a commencé à vraiment émerger, on a basculé dans l'aide militaire."
    Le général Qassem Souleimani, chef de la force Al-Qods, chargée des opérations extérieures au sein des pasdarans, serait venu à Damas au mois de janvier. L'Iran aurait alors offert d'entraîner l'armée syrienne, mais aussi proposé des tireurs embusqués, qu'elle a formés en grande quantité, tout comme elle produit des fusils de précision Dragonov en grande quantité sous licence russe. [...]
    Selon l'Organisation des moudjahidines du peuple iranien (OMPI), un groupe d'opposition radical en exil, le soutien de la République islamique va plus loin et touche quasiment à tous les aspects du conflit : la protection des frontières pour empêcher l'approvisionnement en armes et en combattants, la surveillance par des drones, la protection des hautes personnalités, l'assistance technique à l'artillerie. L'OMPI a identifié le général de brigade iranien Hossein Hamedani comme le principal officier de liaison iranien à Damas. C'est elle qui avait identifié le général Abedine Khoram parmi les 48 otages iraniens, une information confirmée depuis par le "mouvement vert" (opposition) en Iran.
    Cette aide iranienne, renforcée par le Hezbollah libanais et la milice chiite irakienne Badr, coïncide avec un effort particulier de la Russie dans les secteurs de l'aviation, des radars et de la sécurisation des télécommunications. D'où les progrès récents de l'armée syrienne, qui a entrepris un bombardement systématique des quartiers d'Alep et des localités du Nord tombés aux mains des insurgés."

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USA

- Pakistan : un drone américain tue trois insurgés islamistes (AFP) - comme toujours, lestués sont ici a priori caractérisés comme "insurgés islamistes".
fr.news.yahoo.com/pakistan-attaque-drone-américain-fait-au-moins-trois-054640035.html
   "Au moins trois insurgés islamistes ont été tués samedi par les missiles d'un drone américain dans une zone tribale du nord-ouest du Pakistan, principal sanctuaire d'Al-Qaïda dans le monde et repaire des talibans pakistanais et afghans, ont indiqué des responsables de sécurité. [...]"