Jerusalem – Five Kassam rockets and four mortar shells were fired yesterday morning from the Gaza Strip into Israel.

That morning, five rockets were fired: One landed in Palestinian territory, while the remaining four reached their targets, landing in the Sderot area. Later, four mortar shells were fired; two landed in the Kibbutz Mefalsim area north of Gaza, and two south of that, near Kibbutz Nahal Oz, to the west of Gaza.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told journalists on Friday that the number of soldiers on the Egyptian border with the Gaza Strip should be increased from 700 to 3,000 in an effort to prevent arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip.

He said that this was Egypt’s response to charges that it has no control over the border.

He added that the number of soldiers at the border had been determined in the peace agreement with Israel and therefore Israel had to agree to the change.

War Between Israeli Government A And Government B

Recently fired Israel Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh was asked by a prominent Israeli journalist why Israel has not one government but two.

“Not two governments,” Sneh responded. “Twenty. Olmert is on his own, as are Peretz, Tzipi, Mofaz, and Lieberman – and there are more.”

In his eight months in office, Sneh remarked that he met five times with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and nearly every week with Saeb Erekat, who holds the Palestinian portfolio of negotiations with Israel.

Sneh did not report his meetings to the Prime Minister’s Bureau, just as the Prime Minister’s Bureau did not report its meetings with Abbas to the defense minister and his deputy.

Olmert learned of the content of the meetings from secret intelligence material that came to his attention.

According to Sneh, Israeli Defense Ministry officials were convinced that the Prime Minister’s Bureau knows nothing about security affairs.

Meanwhile, Sneh reports, officials in the prime minister’s office were convinced that the defense minister’s bureau knew nothing about such matters.

Arab League Delegation To Meet With Olmert This Week

Just one month after Hamas seized control in the Gaza Strip, a delegation of high-ranking Arab League officials is expected to arrive in Jerusalem on Thursday to hold their first meeting ever with an Israeli prime minister.

Although the Arab League remains at war with Israel since the Jewish state was formally recognized in 1948, the senior members of the delegation will be Jordanian Foreign Minister Abdel Ilah al-Khatib and Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. Jordan and Egypt are the only members of the Arab League to have signed formal peace treaties with Israel. It is unclear whether any other representatives will enter Israel for the meeting.

No meetings have been scheduled for them on the Palestinian side, even though the Palestine Liberation Organization was established in 1964 under the auspices of the Arab League’s 1948 war against Israel. The Arab Boycott, which was declared by the Arab League in its earliest days in 1945, still exists.

The Israeli prime minister’s office issued a statement Sunday night that Prime Minister Olmert had invited the senior Arab League officials to Israel at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit that was held two weeks ago.

The arrival of the Arab League delegation is expected to revitalize the Saudi initiative, which is based on full Israeli surrender of territories gained by Israel in the 1967 war, along with allowing Arabs who left 531 Arab villages during the 1948 war to return to their homes, even if they have been replaced by Israeli cities and collective farms.

The Arab League’s visit in Israel this week contrasts with the Khartoum, Sudan, summit that the Arab League convened after the Six-Day War in 1967. Out of that summit came the famous “three nay” resolution: no to recognizing Israel, no to negotiating with Israel and no to signing any peace agreements with Israel.

David Bedein can be reached at Media@actcom.co.il. His Web site is www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com

©The Bulletin 2007

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David Bedein
David Bedein
David Bedein is an MSW community organizer and an investigative journalist.   In 1987, Bedein established the Israel Resource News Agency at Beit Agron to accompany foreign journalists in their coverage of Israel, to balance the media lobbies established by the PLO and their allies.   Mr. Bedein has reported for news outlets such as CNN Radio, Makor Rishon, Philadelphia Inquirer, Los Angeles Times, BBC and The Jerusalem Post, For four years, Mr. Bedein acted as the Middle East correspondent for The Philadelphia Bulletin, writing 1,062 articles until the newspaper ceased operation in 2010. Bedein has covered breaking Middle East negotiations in Oslo, Ottawa, Shepherdstown, The Wye Plantation, Annapolis, Geneva, Nicosia, Washington, D.C., London, Bonn, and Vienna. Bedein has overseen investigative studies of the Palestinian Authority, the Expulsion Process from Gush Katif and Samaria, The Peres Center for Peace, Peace Now, The International Center for Economic Cooperation of Yossi Beilin, the ISM, Adalah, and the New Israel Fund.   Since 2005, Bedein has also served as Director of the Center for Near East Policy Research.   A focus of the center's investigations is The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). In that context, Bedein authored Roadblock to Peace: How the UN Perpetuates the Arab-Israeli Conflict - UNRWA Policies Reconsidered, which caps Bedein's 28 years of investigations of UNRWA. The Center for Near East Policy Research has been instrumental in reaching elected officials, decision makers and journalists, commissioning studies, reports, news stories and films. In 2009, the center began decided to produce short movies, in addition to monographs, to film every aspect of UNRWA education in a clear and cogent fashion.   The center has so far produced seven short documentary pieces n UNRWA which have received international acclaim and recognition, showing how which UNRWA promotes anti-Semitism and incitement to violence in their education'   In sum, Bedein has pioneered The UNRWA Reform Initiative, a strategy which calls for donor nations to insist on reasonable reforms of UNRWA. Bedein and his team of experts provide timely briefings to members to legislative bodies world wide, bringing the results of his investigations to donor nations, while demanding reforms based on transparency, refugee resettlement and the demand that terrorists be removed from the UNRWA schools and UNRWA payroll.   Bedein's work can be found at: www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com and www.cfnepr.com. A new site,unrwa-monitor.com, will be launched very soon.

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