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Prepared for the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
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To contact the Presidents Conference: click here In-Depth Issues:
Palestinians Release Kidnap Training Video - Ali Waked (Ynet News)
Fears Mount for Missing BBC Reporter - Yaakov Katz (Jerusalem Post)
Arabs in Israel Vote with Their Feet - Ben-Dror Yamini (Maariv-Hebrew, 2Apr07)
Israel Has Higher Fertility Than Europe - Meital Yasur-Beit Or (Ynet News)
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News Resources - North America, Europe, and Asia:
A recent wave of arrests of Hamas militants in the West Bank town of Kalkilya, linked to a truck packed with 220 pounds of explosives and driven to the Tel Aviv area, provided evidence that Hamas members there are primed to resume attacks in Israel, the Israeli internal security service Shin Bet asserted Tuesday. The Shin Bet statement warned that Hamas operatives in Kalkilya "continue to work on the planning and execution of significant attacks, including ones in the immediate future." There has been a hiatus in Hamas suicide attacks since August 2004, but a senior Israeli army commander said recently that there are "some groups in the military wing of Hamas that don't like the cease-fire or the unity government." David Baker, an official in the office of Prime Minister Olmert, asserted that Hamas "continues to target Israeli civilians." "Terrorism is a cornerstone of the new Palestinian government, a government that should be shunned," he said. (New York Times) David Albright, a physicist and former UN nuclear inspector, is president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington. "Iran has installed about a thousand centrifuges underground, distributed in six or seven 'cascades,' and Ahmadinejad is declaring today that this is 'industrial-scale' enrichment. A year ago, they were saying the goal was 3,000 centrifuges, so he has changed the benchmark somewhat," said Albright. "They're still a couple of years away, in a worst-case scenario, from being able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons...but this has exceeded the expectations put forward in the [U.S.] National Intelligence Estimate that Iran couldn't have a nuclear weapon until 2010 to 2015." "They're probably going to need to install 3,000 centrifuges to have the capability to produce nuclear weapons....They'll probably need another year to do that. That will be enough to make enough highly enriched uranium to make one bomb, or perhaps two bombs, a year." (Newsweek) See also Doubts Remain Over Iran's Nuclear Claims - George Jahn Exaggerating the number of centrifuges gives the Iranians more room to negotiate with world powers - and possibly allows them to hold out and keep some vestige of a nuclear enrichment program. "This is a country that routinely lies about conventional weapons developments and production," said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Diplomats in Vienna familiar with an International Atomic Energy Agency probe of Iran's nuclear program said Tuesday that Iran was running only about 650 centrifuges in series - and the machines were running empty, with none producing enriched uranium. (AP/Washington Post) See also Jerusalem Dismisses Iran's Nuclear Boasting - Herb Keinon Senior officials in Israel brushed off Ahmadinejad's claim that Teheran had begun enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges, sufficient to produce a nuclear weapon, as "nuclear boasting." "He is a dangerous man," one official said, "but let's not downplay the fact that what he is trying to do is convince the Europeans that there is nothing they can do to stop him because he has already passed the nuclear threshold. He is not there." The official said Israel knows that Ahmadinejad "does not have what he is boasting about." Israel's assessment is that Iran has still not passed the "preliminary threshold, and that Ahmadinejad can still be stopped. Sanctions are effective, and need to be continued," the official said. (Jerusalem Post) See also IAEA Predicts Iran Could Make Bomb Within Six Years (RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty) The U.S. will provide $59 million in aid to boost security forces loyal to Mahmud Abbas after members of Congress dropped their objections to the deal, officials said Tuesday. $43 million would go to train and equip the Palestinian Presidential Guard, which answers directly to Abbas, and another $16 million would be spent to improve security and infrastructure at the main cargo crossing between Israel and Gaza. A State Department official said strict controls would be placed on the aid and that "none of this assistance will benefit Hamas or other terrorist organizations." (AFP/Yahoo) News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:
After discussions by senior officials, the Prime Minister's Office issued a statement Tuesday expressing "disappointment and reservations" over the list of prisoners whose release Hamas is seeking in exchange for kidnapped Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit. (Prime Minister's Office) See also Hamas May Not Deliver Soldier - Herb Keinon and Yaakov Katz There is no guarantee that the Durmush clan in the southern Gaza Strip, believed to be holding kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, will free him even if the Egyptians succeed in brokering a swap for Palestinian security prisoners, government officials in Jerusalem said Tuesday. The sources said there was no certainty the clan would obey Damascus-based Hamas head Khaled Mashaal if he told them to release Shalit. Durmush was behind the abduction of two Fox News workers in Gaza in August. They were released - after two weeks - when Hamas agreed to pay Durmush $1 million. Sources in Jerusalem say Durmush was also involved in the kidnapping of BBC journalist Alan Johnston on March 12, and that although Mashaal would like to see him released, he has been unable to arrange it. (Jerusalem Post) An Israeli civilian was moderately wounded Tuesday at a bus stop west of Kedumim by a bullet fired from a passing Palestinian vehicle. (Ha'aretz) Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):
Abdullah Alshayji, a professor of international relations at Kuwait University, says the Iranian leader strikes a balance that resonates in the Arab world: candid and outspoken in his criticism of the West and Israel, while appearing as a humble man of the people. "What we see is Iran gaining the hearts and minds by standing up to the major powers, so it is likely the masses in the Arab street, or maybe the Muslim street, look at Iran as the only country that can play head to head with these powers," Alshayji says. (Financial Times-UK) Suppose for a moment that the single most influential religious leader in the Muslim world openly says, "I am for Israel." Abdurrahman Wahid, 66, a former president of Indonesia, is the spiritual leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), an Islamic organization of some 40 million members. In the early 1960s, Wahid, whose grandfather founded the NU in 1926 and whose father was Indonesia's first minister of religious affairs, won a scholarship to Al-Azhar University in Cairo, which for 1,000 years had been Sunni Islam's premier institution of higher learning. Wahid hated it. "These old sheikhs only let me study Islam's traditional surras in the old way, which was rote memorization," he recalls. In 1966 he left Cairo for Baghdad University, where he encountered much the same thing. "Right now, the fundamentalists think they're winning," he once told a friend. "But they're going to wake up one day and realize we beat them." (Wall Street Journal) Observations: Detente with Tehran? - Ilan Berman (Washington Times)
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