Israeli Minister: 'Obama's Settlement Freeze Decrees Are Like The Pharaoh's'

"The American demand to prevent natural growth is unreasonable, and brings to mind Pharaoh who said: Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river," Science Minister and Habayit Hayehudi head Daniel Herschkowitz said Sunday, referring to US President Barack Obama's demand to freeze all settlement activity, even that ensuing from natural growth.

SLIDESHOW: Israel & Region | World Speaking ahead of the weekly cabinet meeting, mathematician Herschkowitz furthered his point with a simple equation. "If there is a family that expands from one child to four or five, what should we tell them - to ship the children off to Petah Tikva? This is an unacceptable demand, even if it comes from the Americans, and Israel should reject it decisively," he affirmed.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai said, "The American demand to freeze construction means expulsion for young people living in large locales. I hope the US administration understands that. If not, I don't want to be an apocalyptic prophet saying we're facing struggle and confrontation. The concessions they're demanding of us are a security impediment we cannot withstand."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1243346511682&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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No to Barack Obama Israel Will Continue Building Settlements

JERUSALEM: Israel dismissed on Thursday a blunt US call for a halt to all Jewish settlement building on occupied Palestinian land, the latest sign Washington is hardening its tone towards its close ally.

'Normal life' will be allowed in settlements in the occupied West Bank, government spokesman Mark Regev said, using a euphemism for continuing construction to accommodate population growth.

The fate of settlements 'will be determined in final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and in the interim, normal life must be allowed to continue in those communities,' he said.

His comments marked an effective rebuff to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's declaration that President Barack Obama wants a stop to all settlement activity as he pushes for the revival of stalled peace talks.

'He wants to see a stop to settlements. Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions,' Clinton said.

Another senior Israeli official also played down the comments, saying Clinton 'did nothing but again express the differences that appeared during the May 18 meeting in Washington between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.'

It was the clearest example yet of the rift emerging between the administration of Obama, who has vowed to vigorously pursue the peace process as part of a changed approach to the region, and Netanyahu, presiding over a hardline government largely opposed to many concessions.

'The conflict with the Americans is not on its way, it's already here,' Israeli public radio declared.

Clinton's call came ahead of Obama's White House meeting on Thursday with Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, who has ruled out restarting peace talks with Israel unless it removes all roadblocks and freezes settlement activity.

Netanyahu has said his cabinet would not build any new settlements, but vowed to continue building in existing blocs despite US demands to stop.

'I have no intention to construct new settlements, but it makes no sense to ask us not to answer to the needs of natural growth and to stop all construction,' he told the cabinet on Sunday.

Israeli settlements are among the top obstacles in the stuttering peace process, but are a sacred issue to many on the Israeli right-wing.

And a group of settler rabbis called on Thursday for soldiers and police to disobey orders to dismantle any settlements, including unauthorised outposts that the Israeli government itself considers illegal.

More than 280,000 settlers currently live in settlements dotted throughout the Palestinian territory that Israel captured during the 1967 Six Day War. The international community considers the settlements illegal.

Disagreements over settlement building is just one to have emerged between Israel and Washington since the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, described by some in Israel as the most contentious encounter between the leaders of the two allies in recent history.

One key bone of contention is the principle of a Palestinian state, a bedrock of international peacemaking efforts that Obama supports but Netanyahu has so far refused to publicly endorse.

'Clearly we need to have some reservations about a Palestinian state in a final status agreement,' Netanyahu told ministers on Sunday, using the phrase for the first time since he was sworn in on March 31.

'When we reach an agreement on substance, we will reach agreement on terminology.' Another key issue is Jerusalem. Netanyahu said on his return from Washington that the contested city, whose eastern sector Israel has occupied since 1967 war, would remain under Israeli control.

A State Department spokesman said the fate of the city is 'a final status issue' which Israelis and Palestinians will resolve through negotiations.

Israel calls Jerusalem its 'eternal, undivided capital' while the Palestinians want to make the occupied eastern part the capital of their promised state.

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No Exception on Israeli Settlement: Hillary Clinton Secretary of State

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged Israel in unusually blunt terms Wednesday to completely halt settlements on land that Palestinians claim as part of a future state of their own.

In remarks to reporters at the State Department, Clinton said President Barack Obama had made clear last week during talks at the White House with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that stopping settlements is a key part of moving toward a deal establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

"He wants to see a stop to settlements - not some settlements, not outposts, not 'natural growth' exceptions," Clinton said, referring in the last case to population growth on existing Israeli settlements in the West Bank from births and from allowances for adult offspring of settlers to buy homes near their
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http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1065584.html
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Greek Police and Muslim Rioters Over the Alleged Desruction of Koran 05-22-09

Greek riot police officers fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of Muslims who pelted them with sticks and stones outside Parliament during protests on Friday over what they said was the destruction of a Koran by a Greek policeman. The Muslim Union of Greece says that during police checks at a Syrian-owned coffee shop, an officer took a customer’s Koran, tore it up, threw it on the floor and stamped on it. The police have started an internal investigation. About 30 protesters were arrested, and 4 Muslims were hurt in scuffles, the police said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/23/world/europe/23briefs-brfGREECE.html?_r=1&ref=world

Pope Benedict XVI Expresses Regret about Offending Muslims at Amman, Jordan

The Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday for his expression of regret after a 2006 speech that many Muslims deemed insulting to Islam's Prophet Muhammad.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed The Ultimate Torture

During his first days in detention, senior al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheik Mohammed was stripped of his clothes, beaten, given a forced enema and shackled with his arms chained above his head, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. It was then, a Red Cross report says, that his American captors told him to prepare for "a hard time."

Over the next 25 days, beginning on March 6, 2003, Mohammed was put through a routine in which he was deprived of sleep, doused with cold water and had his head repeatedly slammed into a plywood wall, according to the report. The interrogation also included days of extensive waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/25/AR2009042503122.html?wpisrc=newsletter
Mohammed, according to the memo, resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, saying, "Soon you will know."

The memo, while saying it discussed only a fraction of the important intelligence gleaned from Abu Zubaida and Mohammed, cited three specific successes: the identification of alleged "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla; the discovery of a "Second Wave" attack targeting Los Angeles; and the break-up of the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiya cell, an al-Qaeda ally led by Riduan Isamuddin, better known as Hambali.

"The dates just don't add up," wrote Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent, in an opinion piece in the New York Times last week. Soufan, who questioned Abu Zubaida between his capture in March 2002 and early June of that year, said the detainee gave up Padilla without any physical or psychological duress. He also said Abu Zubaida identified Mohammed as the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks "under traditional interrogation methods."

A number of officials have questioned the viability of the plot in the wake of the changes in airport security after Sept. 11. And President George W. Bush, in a speech in 2007, said the plot was broken up in 2002, before Mohammed's capture in Pakistan on March 1, 2003.

It is absolutely crazy with all the security at the airports after 9/11 that there were any plot to hijack any airplane and crash it on a Los Angeles building.
This is a fabrication nonsense and if any admitted that any torture that was a fabrication so to placate the torture interrogators than a reality.
In the mean time under such barbaric horrendous torture what are the names of the potential hijackers of such Los Angeles plot. Any more details than that? Any one was arrested of these potential imaginary hijackers?
How they were be able to pass the security gates at the airports? with knife cutters? guns? This is absolutely crazy! Why the FBI , the CIA or George W Bush feed the American people such lies and nonsense?