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Prepared for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in association with the Fairness Project by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
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To contact the Presidents Conference: [email protected]
In-Depth Issue:
Jordanian Prince Hasan: The Next King of Iraq? - Sami Moubayed
(Gulf News - UAE)
The Hashemite monarchy in Iraq was toppled in 1958, yet there remains one Hashemite with the intelligence, ambition, and stature to serve as leader of Iraq - Prince Hasan, the former Crown Prince of Jordan.
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News Resources - USA and Europe:
President Bush declared on Thursday he was "furious" at American deaths in a Palestinian bombing in Israel. "I'm just as angry as Israel is right now," he told reporters in the Oval Office a day after a bombing at a Jerusalem university cafeteria killed seven people, including five Americans. "I'm furious that innocent life was lost." (Reuters) See also Who Were the Victims? (Jerusalem Post)
Study in Israel? Each year, so many families send high school graduates or college juniors to Israel - for study both secular and religious - that it has become a proud rite of passage in some circles, almost as predictable as a bar mitzvah. On the college level, thousands of American students spend their junior year abroad at one of a half-dozen Israeli campuses; until the violence of the past two years, the number at Hebrew University alone was 1,000. For the past two years it has been 150. (New York Times) The Pentagon has determined that the Hamas terrorist organization has been conducting research in the use of chemical weapons for suicide bombers. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Marshall Billingslea told the Senate International Security subcommittee on Monday, "Hamas is working with poisons and chemicals and an effort to coat suicide bomber fragments." Billingslea said Hamas and other groups could be obtaining help from Iran, Iraq, and Syria, who are themselves pursuing weapons of mass destruction programs. "These countries give wide latitude to terrorist groups that operate within their borders," Billingslea said. 'Terrorists are able to establish training and research camps where they are free to develop WMD and to perfect their plans for delivery." Terrorist "groups are aggressively trying to procure the necessary materials to conduct such an attack." (WorldTribune.com) A former senior intelligence officer told the Forward, "The U.S. is seriously considering a preemptive strike against Iran because it fears Iran might give product from the soon-to-be on line nuclear plant to Hizballah," on Israel's northern border. "The concern is driving policy talks at the Defense Department and at the National Security Council about the value of a preemptive strike and I understand that the Pentagon is arguing quite strongly for an attack on the nuclear power plant that is still under construction....The operational planning is quite advanced." However, Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that while "some people in the administration are thinking about a strike, it is very vague and it will have very little effect on the Iranian nuclear program" since most of it is likely developed in secret locations elsewhere in Iran. (Forward) A Canadian man accused of organizing a plot to blow up U.S. and Israeli embassies in Singapore is being held in a secret location in the United States, where he is cooperating and revealing information about terrorists' plans, U.S. officials said. The man, Mohammed Mansour Jabarah, 20, a native of Kuwait, was arrested in the Persian Gulf state of Oman and is being held at a military base in the northeastern United States as a material witness, U.S. officials said. Authorities allege that the operation, involving members of the militant Jemaah Islamiah group, had significant logistical support from Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. (Washington Post) Despite deep doubts by the CIA and FBI, the White House is now backing claims that Sept. 11 skyjacker Mohamed Atta secretly met five months earlier with an Iraqi agent in the Czech capital, a possible indication that President Saddam Hussein's regime was involved in the terrorist attacks. On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told a news conference that Iraq had "a relationship" with the Al Qaeda terrorist network, but he declined to be more specific. "I mean, we're not on the ground" in Iraq, he said. "But are there Al Qaeda in Iraq? Yes. Are there Al Qaeda in Iran? Yes. Are there Al Qaeda in the United States? Yes." (Los Angeles Times)
News Resources - Israel and Mideast: IDF infantry and armor entered the West Bank city of Nablus Friday morning and took over the Casbah (Old City), meeting light resistance. Military sources said the army would remain in the city for several days in an attempt to damage the infrastructure of the militant Hamas organization, uncover bomb laboratories, and apprehend Palestinians on the IDF's wanted list. IDF sources believe that groups based in the Casbah carried out several of the latest terror attacks. The IDF also destroyed two homes belonging to families of suicide bombers in Tulkarm and Hebron. IDF troops are preparing to demolish several other homes in the West Bank and to make sweeping arrests of family members of suicide bombers. If proof is found connecting them to a terrorist organization, the aim is to expel them to Gaza. (Ha'aretz) Suicide bombers on their way into Israel had second thoughts and decided not to complete their missions on at least two occasions recently because of reports of Israeli intentions to demolish the homes of the families of terrorists, Shin Bet security service sources say. (Ha'aretz) The head of the military wing of Hamas in Tulkarm, Abas el-Sayyad, planned to use cyanide to carry out of a mass terrorist attack inside Israel, according to an indictment submitted against him Thursday in Tel Aviv District Court. Sayyad was allegedly behind the suicide bombing attack at the Park Hotel in Netanya on Seder night, March 29, in which 29 people were killed and 160 wounded, and the bombing outside the Netanya mall on May 18, when five people were killed and 86 wounded. Sayyad is also charged with receiving large amounts of funds from the Hamas leadership in Syria to purchase guns and ammunition. (Jerusalem Post/Itim) Around 700 Palestinians have been stranded in Jericho for up to three weeks, waiting for Jordanian permission to cross the border. According to Palestinian sources, 200 to 300 people are camping in the Jericho terminal, where the temperature reaches 45 (over 110 F) during the day. Whereas previously Jordan issued as many as 5,000 passes per day to Palestinians, most of whom possessed Jordanian passports, since June 12 they have issued 1,200 per day, only 300 of which are honored, claim Palestinian Authority officials. Until hostilities erupted almost two years ago, there were up to 12,000 daily crossings in the summer months. Jordanian officials began to withhold entrance permits last month, causing the human gridlock near the Allenby Bridge. Jordanian sources say that the country, whose population is already about 70 percent Palestinian, fears another mass immigration that will upset the delicate balance of its society. (Jerusalem Post) The French weekly L'Express reports Foreign Minister Shimon Peres as saying in a private conversation, "In order to get out of the present situation, Arafat needs to be shot and killed, but certainly not from our bullets." Peres visited Paris earlier this week on his way to the U.S., and had spoken with government officials and reporters. (Maariv) European Foreign Affairs Commissioner Chris Paten detailed the new conditions for the resumption of ten million Euros in monthly aid in a letter to Palestinian Minister of Finance Salam Fayad. In the letter, Paten said the money would be paid through one account handled by an employee of the International Monetary Fund. Paten also demanded a new internal accounting system to be founded in every ministry and to appoint an external auditor to check the Palestinian budget. In addition, Brussels has demanded that each Palestinian ministry provide a detailed monthly list of expenses, beginning in September 2002. (Jerusalem Times/IMRA) "The Ba'ath Party and the Arab Liberation Front held a big rally in Jenin to honor relatives of martyrs and to distribute President Saddam Hussein's gifts amounting to $10,000 for each martyr and $25,000 for each suicide martyr. The hall was decorated with pictures of President Saddam Hussein, Iraqi and Palestinian flags, and slogans hailing the unity between the two nations." (Al-Quds - Jerusalem) "Saddam Hussein's grants were distributed among 48 families of the intifada martyrs in Khan Yunis and Rafah....The celebration included speeches honoring Saddam's support of the Palestinian revolution...and the crowds shouted slogans in support of Iraq and its leader." (Al-Thawra -Iraq) (MEMRI)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis
(Best of U.S., UK, and Israel): The proper response by President Bush in this situation is the same as it was when the World Trade Center was attacked, or if the American Embassy in Israel had itself been targeted. It is the same response that President Reagan undertook against Libya when that country set off a terrorist bomb in a Berlin nightclub and killed one American serviceman. Mr. Reagan said then, "When our citizens are abused or attacked anywhere in the world, on the direct orders of a hostile regime, we will respond, so long as I'm in this Oval Office." Mr. Reagan ordered the bombing of Colonel Gadhafi's home and offices in Tripoli on April 14, 1986. The Libyan residential neighborhood of Bin Ashur was struck in an attack that killed 37 people and wounded 93, many of them civilians. Among the casualties at Gadhafi's home were his 15-month-old daughter Hana, who was killed, and two of his sons, ages 3 and 4, who were wounded. How many more Americans must die before Mr. Bush and all Americans join this war with the rapid, sustained, and all-consuming effort required to attain the sweeping and decisive victory that is necessary? The war will cost the lives of American soldiers. Not as many as the pessimists warn. But each one is precious. The troops, though, are at least armed and trained and enlisted to fight for freedom. Which is more than can be said for the traders and secretaries and firefighters and, yesterday, university students who are being slaughtered afresh each day that the offensive is delayed. (New York Sun) Many of us who once opposed occupying the territories now agree that we have no choice but to destroy the terrorist state-in-the-making nurtured by Yasser Arafat. We draw strength from the realization that we are the front line in a global war against a new barbarity. Not surprisingly, the Jews once again find themselves the primary targets of those intent on world domination. As history has repeatedly proved, what begins as a threat to the Jews ends with a threat to civilization. (Los Angeles Times) Using proxy servers in Saudi Arabia, the authors attempted to access approximately 60,000 Web pages. When Saudi-installed filtering systems prevented access to certain requested Web pages, 2,038 blocked pages were tracked. Such pages contained information about religion, health, education, reference, humor, and entertainment. Substantial amounts of non-sexually explicit Web content popular elsewhere in the world are inaccessible to most Saudi Arabians. (Harvard Law School) A new UN- and EU-sponsored Mideast peace plan being pieced together behind closed doors calls for thousands of international advisors to be sent to train the Palestinians in areas ranging from security to good governance. This new plan calls for their security experts to train PA forces to make them more effective. More effective at what? Shooting Israelis? Good governance needs time and cannot be imposed from the outside. The days of colonial rule in the Middle East are over, and the belief that concepts such as democracy, healthy civil society, and effective state bureaucracies can be taught belongs to the age of Lawrence of Arabia, not to the 21st century. It is a damning indictment of both the UN and EU that they can do no better than this. Let the Palestinians put their own house in order. It may take longer, but is a much less dangerous path than letting the outside world do it for them. (National Post - Canada) The U.S. may well be moving toward launching the first major pre-emptive war in its history. It will go to war because Iraq is led by a tyrant who is too dangerous to tolerate by containment and because he is covertly building up his capability to deliver chemical and biological weapons, and may be able to acquire nuclear weapons. No one can predict today whether the bill for such a war will be astoundingly low or all too high. The only thing that is predictable is that Iraq will become a steadily more dangerous proliferator so long as Saddam is alive. (Washington Times) Talking Points:
Sharon's Strategy - Aluf Benn (Salon.com)
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