Negative Blogs

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.