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A record number of pilgrims from around the world have gathered in Bethlehem on Christmas Day in the largest celebration this West Bank town has seen in a decade.

Pilgrims were assembling around the Church of the Nativity, built on the site where tradition holds Jesus was born, for prayers Saturday morning.

The Israeli military put the number of pilgrims this year at over 100,000, compared to about 50,000 last year.

Warm weather, a virtual halt in Israeli-Palestinian violence and an economic revival in the West Bank have added to the holiday cheer.

Only one-third of Bethlehem’s 50,000 residents are Christian, down from about 75% in the 1950s. The rest are Muslims.

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Article extracted from usatoday.com

WASHINGTON — With tensions between the United States and Israel flaring again over Jewish settlements, the Obama administration and its allies worked feverishly on multiple fronts Wednesday to put Middle East peace talks back on track.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton reiterated President Obama’s criticism of Israel’s new housing plans in East Jerusalem, calling them “counterproductive” to the peace process. But she discouraged the Palestinian Authority from unilaterally declaring an independent state, an action that Palestinian officials have threatened to take in recent weeks as the talks have remained paralyzed.

“We do not support unilateral steps by either party that could prejudge the outcome of such negotiations,” Mrs. Clinton said to reporters after meeting Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, and its intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman. They discussed ideas for getting the Israelis and Palestinians back to the table.

“Each party has a very strong set of opinions about the way forward,” she said. “There can be no progress until they actually come together and explore where areas of agreement are and how to narrow areas of disagreement.”

Mr. Aboul Gheit also criticized Israel as not doing enough to keep the process alive. He said Egypt, which has been in talks with both sides, was concerned by the deepening impasse and was focused on renewing the talks and keeping them going.

Though he did not disclose Egypt’s proposals, American and Israeli officials said they focused on gestures Israel could make toward the Palestinians, like pulling security forces out of parts of the West Bank or guaranteeing no Israeli incursions in areas where the Palestinians already provide security.

On Thursday, Mrs. Clinton is to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in New York. Israeli and American officials played down hopes for the session, which may end up being yet another attempt to clear the air after the announcement of 1,000 new Jewish housing units for a contested part of East Jerusalem.

While some administration officials seemed eager to tamp down the clash, Mrs. Clinton pointedly raised it just before announcing an additional $150 million in American financial aid for the Palestinian Authority.

“This announcement was counterproductive to our efforts to resume negotiations between the parties,” she said. “We have long urged both parties to avoid actions which could undermine trust, including in Jerusalem.”

Mr. Netanyahu, who was meeting businesspeople in New York, said Tuesday that the dispute was “overblown.” His argument was echoed by at least one senior American official: Senator John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who had his own meetings on Wednesday with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Speaking from Tel Aviv, Senator Kerry said that, based on his discussions, he believed the United States could devise a formula that would persuade the Palestinians to return to negotiations even without an extension of the freeze on settlement construction, which the Palestinians have demanded.

At the same time, he said he did not rule out the possibility that Mr. Netanyahu would extend the freeze for a brief period, despite being constrained by a right-wing coalition that opposes any further halts to building.

“Is it difficult? Yeah,” Senator Kerry said in a telephone interview. “Is it a moment of disagreement? Yes. But it doesn’t have to be a showstopper by any means.”

He added, “There is a way to clarify the road forward, and to meet the needs of both parties,” though he declined to offer details. He made the comments after meeting with the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and Israel’s president, Shimon Peres.

The administration had asked Mr. Kerry to go to the Middle East, amid growing signs of instability in Lebanon as well as the deadlock in the peace talks. He said he told Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, that the United States would watch closely for evidence that Syria was trying to discredit an international tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.

Reports of Syria’s efforts to undermine the tribunal have led lawmakers and even some administration officials to question the wisdom of American efforts to engage Damascus. But Senator Kerry said, “I remain absolutely convinced there is an opportunity to have a different relationship with Syria.”

By nytimes.com

Construction workers in Har Homa, a district of southern Jerusalem where Israel plans about 1,000 new housing units.

Experts attribute calm on northern border to Hezbollah fear of devastating response to attack on Israel that could undermine the group’s standing in Lebanon.

Hamas asked Hezbollah to fire rockets on northern Israel during Operation Cast Lead, but the Lebanese militant group refused, Maj. Gen. (res. ) Dan Harel said on Tuesday.

Harel was deputy chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces during the 2008-2009 military offensive in Gaza.

Harel, who spent most of his career in the Artillery Corps, made the comments at the first international Conference on Fire and Combined Arms in an Urban Terrain, held at the Artillery Association headquarters in Zichron Yaakov.

Harel said the massive firepower the IDF employed against Hamas infrastructure and positions led Hamas to entirely change its “battle rationale” during Cast Lead.

“It simply avoided conflict, and IDF forces found it very difficult to locate and fight the enemy because of the force of firepower employed,” Harel said.

He said the IDF learned then that “Hamas had asked Hezbollah twice to fire rockets at the northern border, but Hezbollah decided to stay out of it.”

Hezbollah has not fired rockets at Israel since the end of the 2006 Second Lebanon War. IDF experts attribute the relative calm on the country’s northern border to Hezbollah’s fear of a devastating response to any attack on Israel that could undermine the group’s standing in Lebanon.

Harel said those who plan the military operations are more attuned than ever to the effects of warfare on civilian populations, and that Cast Lead was the first time in his military career in which operational planning included extended consideration of “legality and legitimacy.”

That planning, which involved legal experts, gave greater priority than ever before to avoiding inflicting damage upon civilian populations, he said, even though Israel was widely criticized for harming civilians during the operation.

Outgoing IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi said the first wave of IDF aerial attacks, which began December 27, 2008, destroyed more than 60 percent of Hamas’ rocket launch sites. He attributed the IDF’s heightened operational ability to an “inter-war readiness” based on precise information about Hamas infrastructure.

Still, he said, sound intelligence and long-range strikes will not be enough to win future wars, and the army will have to enhance its ability to “integrate firepower methods with ground maneuvers.”

By haaretz.com

A cloud of smoke billows over Gaza after an Israel Defense Forces strike during the 2009 war.

Israel seemed to have led Palestinian peace talks to the brink of collapse on Monday after it unveiled plans to build 1,300 new homes for Jewish settlers in predominantly Arab East Jerusalem.

The surprise announcement earned the immediate condemnation of the Palestinian leadership and dealt a serious blow to hopes for reviving peace talks, frozen for the past six weeks because of a row over settlements.

It also represented a spectacularly poor piece of timing since Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, was on a visit to the United States. The announcement revived memories of a bitter diplomatic dispute with the US that erupted in March when plans to build 1,600 settler homes in a different part of East Jerusalem emerged. The earlier announcement coincided with a trip to Israel by Joe Biden, the US vice president, who was trying to resurrect peace talks.

Monday’s announcement prompted a furious reaction from the chief Palestinian negotiator. “We thought that Netanyahu was going to the United States to stop settlement activity and restart negotiations but it is clear to us that he is determined to destroy the talks,” Saeb Erakat said. “He has shut all the doors to negotiations and we hold him responsible for destroying them.”

The White House made no immediate response and it is not known whether US officials were briefed on the matter in advance.

Mr Netanyahu’s government was unrepentant. It defended its right to build in “Jewish neighbourhoods” that it insisted would remain part of Israel under any deal with Palestinians over territory. “Building in these neighbourhoods in no way contradicts the desire to move ahead for peace based on a two-state solution,” an Israeli government official said.

The Palestinian leadership had agreed to give the US until later this month to try to persuade Mr Netanyahu to extend a partial settlement moratorium. The decision to build anew was evidence, Palestinians said, that Mr Netanyahu was playing “a game of deceit”.

“It’s just another nail,” said Husam Zomlot, a senior Palestinian official. “We’ve tried to buy time and give more space to international players – particularly the United States – to change Israeli policies but the Israelis are adamant that they will continue the land grab and choose settlements over peace.”

Israel’s interior ministry sought to play down the development, saying the decision to build had actually been taken six months ago. Its disclosure was only forced because of a legal requirement, a spokesman said.

But the explanation is unlikely to have much sway, Israeli observers said. “Legally it’s possible, diplomatically it’s foolish and politically it’s suicidal,” said Alon Pinkas, a former senior Israeli diplomat with close ties to the United States.

Critics also pointed out that the decision to build was still taken after Israeli assurances were widely assumed to have been given to avoid further construction in East Jerusalem.

The announcement overshadowed Mr Netanyahu’s attempts to use his American trip to switch the diplomatic focus from settlements to Iran. The prime minister called on the US to threaten military action against Iran after asserting that sanctions had failed to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear programme.

By telegraph.co.uk

A Palestinian man sits in front of a construction site in the Jewish neighbourhood of Har Homa in east Jerusalem Photo: AP

Israeli warplanes launched two raids on the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, Palestinians said, wounding one person hours after militants in the enclave fired a rocket into southern Israel.

Officials of the Islamist Hamas movement in Gaza and witnesses said one air raid was on the Khan Yunis area and the second targeted tunnels at Rafah used by smugglers under the territory’s border with Egypt.

One Palestinian was wounded in his home by shards of broken glass from a blast in the second raid, the sources said.

The air strikes came after Gaza-based militants fired a rocket into southern Israel earlier on Saturday, without causing either casualties or damage.

The projectile exploded in an open field near the Gaza border, an Israeli military spokeswoman said.

An Israeli army spokeswoman told AFP that the two attacks had been launched in response to the rocket fire.

Around 180 rockets and mortar shells had been fired from the Gaza Strip towards Israel since the beginning of the year, she said.

By france24.com

A Hamas policeman guards a site in Gaza City after Israeli warplanes bombarded it in October 2010. Israeli warplanes launched two raids on the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday, Palestinians said, wounding one person hours after militants in the enclave fired a rocket into southern Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu traveled to Egypt Monday to discuss with President Hosni Mubarak plans to resume Mideast peace talks later this week.

The two leaders met in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. No details were released about the 90-minute meeting. A statement from Mr. Netenyahu’s office says it took place “in a positive and constructive atmosphere.”

The discussions were expected to focus on preparations for the beginning of indirect U.S.-brokered peace talks with the Palestinians.

Monday’s meeting comes ahead of a visit by U.S. special envoy George Mitchell, who is due to arrive in the Middle East this week. He will meet separately with Israeli and Palestinian officials with the goal of getting both sides to agree to direct negotiations.

The U.S. has called on Arab countries to help restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, saying Palestinians must have a state of their own. The Arab League has expressed support for such negotiations.

Direct negotiations stopped after Israeli forces entered the Gaza Strip in December, 2008 to stop cross-border rocket attacks by Palestinian militants.

A plan to begin U.S.-brokered indirect talks in March collapsed when Israel announced plans to build new housing for Jews in East Jerusalem, an area captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, right, meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the red sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt, 3 May 2010.

Recent Palestinian attacks have ratcheted up tensions.

GAZA - Israeli warplanes bombed the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip on Friday, following a rocket attack on southern Israel a day earlier.

Three children were reported injured by flying debris after the air raids that came in the early hours of Friday in eastern Gaza City, al-Jazeera reported.

The Israeli military said the air strikes targeted four weapons factories, BBC News reported. There was confusion about the number of strikes with reports ranging from seven to 13.

Reuters witnesses said four of the air strikes took place near the central town of Khan Younis, the site of a deadly clash last week between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen. A fifth air strike rocked Gaza City.

Hamas security officials said 10 sites were hit: a cheese factory, a movie-making complex built by the territory’s Islamic militant Hamas rulers and open areas where militants train.

Rocket fire
The Israeli military said the air strikes came in response to a rocket attack Thursday, which caused no injuries.

“The strikes are in response to the rocket firing on Thursday,” the Israeli Defense Forces said in a statement on its Web site.

“Nearly 20 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel from the Gaza Strip during March, killing one man … and doubling the number of rockets fired this year.”

More than 40 rockets and mortars were fired at Israel since the beginning of the year, the IDF statement said.

A string of recent Palestinian rocket attacks on southern Israel has ratcheted up tensions. Last year, Israel conducted a bruising war in Gaza after years of rocket attacks.

A Palestinian man walks through a destroyed workshop at the scene of an overnight Israeli airstrike in Gaza City on Friday.

A German court on Tuesday convicted an 88-year-old man of murdering three Dutch civilians as part of a Nazi hit squad during World War II, capping six decades of efforts to bring the former Waffen SS man to justice.

Heinrich Boere, No. 6 on the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s list of most-wanted Nazis, was given the maximum sentence of life in prison for the 1944 killings.

“These were murders that could hardly be outdone in terms of baseness and cowardice — beyond the respectability of any soldier,” presiding judge Gerd Nohl said.

Boere sat in his wheelchair, staring at the floor and showing no visible reaction as the verdict was announced.

During the trial, which began in October, Boere admitted killing a bicycle shop owner, a pharmacist and another civilian in 1944 as a member of the “Silbertanne” hit squad — a unit of largely Dutch SS volunteers responsible for reprisal killings of their countrymen.

He said he had no choice but to follow orders to carry out the killings.

“As a simple soldier, I learned to carry out orders,” Boere testified in December.

“And I knew that if I didn’t carry out my orders I would be breaking my oath and would be shot myself.”

But the prosecution argued that Boere was a willing member of the fanatical Waffen SS, which he joined shortly after the Nazis had overrun his hometown of Maastricht and the rest of the Netherlands in 1940.

Though sentenced to death in absentia in the Netherlands in 1949 — later commuted to life imprisonment — Boere has managed to avoid jail until now.

One German court refused to extradite him because it ruled he might have German nationality as well as Dutch. Another would not force him to serve his Dutch sentence in a German prison because he was absent from his trial, having fled to Germany.

“We welcome the conviction, we welcome the sentence and this is again another proof that even at this point it is possible to bring Nazi war criminals to justice,” Efraim Zuroff, the top Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, said by telephone from Jerusalem.

“It also underscores the significance of the renewed activity on the part of the German prosecution,” he said.

Dolf Bicknese — the son of pharmacist Fritz Hubert Ernst Bicknese, one of the victims — also voiced satisfaction.

“I’m happy that the judge made a good decision,” he said.

Defense lawyer Gordon Christiansen said he would appeal to a German federal court. Boere will remain free until the appeals process is complete.

Boere was born in Eschweiler, Germany — on the outskirts of Aachen, where he lives today. The son of a Dutch man and a German woman, he moved to the Netherlands when he was an infant.

Boere has testified that he decided to join the SS at age 18 after the Germans had overrun the Netherlands and he saw a recruiting poster signed by Heinrich Himmler that inspired him.

After fighting on the Russian front, Boere ended up back in the Netherlands as part of “Silbertanne” — a death squad believed to be responsible for 54 killings in Holland. Hard money training.

Hamas claimed Friday that two ex-officers from the rival Fatah organization were involved in the assassination of a Hamas operative in Dubai, and Fatah shot back by insinuating Hamas members were the ones who collaborated with the killers.

The slaying of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a luxury Dubai hotel room last month has widely been blamed on Israel’s Mossad spy agency but it also has sparked bitter recriminations among the rival Palestinian factions, which have long competed for influence in the Palestinian territories.

Dubai police unveiled 11 suspects — 10 men and one woman — who apparently traveled to Dubai on European passports with real names and authentic data, but possibly altered photos.

Dubai also said police had two Palestinians in custody for alleged involvement in the murder of al-Mabhouh, whose body was found on Jan. 20. The two were arrested in Jordan shortly after the killing, then sent back to Dubai.

A Hamas Web site, the Palestine Information Center, said those two men were former Fatah security officers and current employees of a senior Fatah official, who was not identified. Dubai authorities have not identified the two Palestinians and would not comment Friday.

Hamas stopped short of accusing Fatah of collaborating with the Mossad, however. Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’ leadership in Damascus, told The Associated Press on Friday that Hamas is “not accusing any party” other than Israel, though he said the agents might have used “small collaborators for logistic issues.”

The Hamas Web site identifies the two men as Anwar Shheibar and Ahmad Hassanain. It says they served in Fatah’s security services in Gaza, fled the territory in 2006, and currently work for a construction company owned by a high-ranking Fatah official, Mohammed Dahlan.

Fatah denies connection
Dahlan denied any connection to the men or to the killing.

“I don’t have any companies in Dubai and I don’t know these people,” he told The Associated Press by telephone from Amman, Jordan.

“Only Hamas knew he (al-Mabhouh) was in Dubai, so it’s their fault, not the Palestinian Authority’s,” he said. “For political reasons Hamas is blaming us for its own internal problems.”

A Fatah spokesman also denied the charge. “Hamas is trying by these accusations to cover up the security flaws in the first lines of its leadership,” said Adnan Damiri, a spokesman for Palestinian security forces in the Fatah-ruled West Bank. “Hamas is the only one to know the movement of Al-Mabhouh, and from there the information went to the Israelis.”

Officials of the Fatah-affiliated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank city of Ramallah said the two men are former members of Fatah who later joined Hamas security forces in Gaza. They said the men were sent to Dubai on Hamas business last month but had no further details. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been given permission to comment publicly.

Israel mum
Israel has refused to comment on accusations it was behind the killing, with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman saying Wednesday that “Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies.”

Hamas and Fatah have been trading accusations over the affair for days, but Friday’s allegations were the first time names were used. Each side has made attempts to tone down the rhetoric — perhaps to avoid destroying prospects for reconciliation between the rivals who control separate territories on opposite sides of Israel.

The Western-backed Fatah and the Islamic militant Hamas fought a bloody civil war in 2007 that left Hamas in charge of Gaza and Fatah in control of the West Bank. Palestinians hope to establish a state in both areas. Hard money training.

It was supposed to be a pleasant surprise, but turned into the shock of a lifetime.

A woman in Tel Aviv, Israel, gave her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise gift, throwing out the old tattered bed her mother had slept on for decades. The gesture ended up bankrupting Annat’s mother, who had stuffed her savings of nearly $1 million inside her old bed for decades, Annat told Israel Army Radio.

A massive search is under way at the city dump, where security has been beefed up to keep out treasure-seekers who have heard Annat’s story in Israeli media.

Annat, who did not want to reveal the rest of her name, told Israel Army Radio that she woke up early Sunday to get a good deal on a new mattress as a surprise for her mother.