By Bill Wilson, KIN Senior Analyst
WASH—Oct 8—KIN-- A confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is now saying that Israel will turn over part of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority and allow the organization to make its capital somewhere in East Jerusalem. Vice Prime Minister Haim Ramon told Army Radio that in return, Israel would receive the recognition of the international community, including Arab states, of its sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods and the existence of its capital in Jerusalem. Ramon said the Palestinians could establish the capital of a future state in the sector of the city, which Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day war.
This is an Israeli proposal that essentially has the backing of the political parties on the Israeli side, according to Ramon. Under the proposal, Israel would not transfer sovereignty of the Holy City to the Palestinians, but some sources are saying that there are details in the proposal that would relinquish control of some of the most contentious sites—translated, the Temple Mount. Ramon said that the most important objective of the plan is to "preserve the state of Israel Jewish and democratic." One wonders if the political parties in Israel supporting ...   more »

Officials in the Bush administration are divided over the significance of intelligence provided by Israel that led to last month's strike inside Syria on a reported nuclear facility, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
According to the Times, at issue is whether intelligence presented by Israel months ago to the administration that Syria had begun work on a nuclear weapons program was conclusive enough to justify military action by Israel, and subsequently, a rethinking of American policy toward the two nations.
US Vice President Dick Cheney and other conservatives in the administration are portraying the Israeli intelligence as credible and argue that it should cause the US to reconsider its diplomatic overtures to Syria and North Korea.
By contrast, the Times reports, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her allies in the White House said they do not believe that the intelligence presented so far merits any change in the American diplomatic approach.
During a breakfast meeting on October 2 at the White House, Rice and chief North Korea negotiator, Christopher Hill, told Bush that the US faced a choice: to continue with the nuclear pact with North Korea as a way to bring it back into the diplomatic fold ...   more »

By DPA    
The Israeli government has granted official residency status to 3,500 Palestinians who in the last decade entered the West Bank on Israeli-issued visitors' visas but never left, Palestinian officials said Wednesday.
Israel however did not grant official residency status to another 1,500 Palestinians residing illegally in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
"After Israel had declared the Gaza Strip as a hostile entity, it decided to postpone any decision regarding its [illegal] citizens," Hussein al-Sheikh, the head of the Palestinian Authority Civil Affairs Department in Ramallah, told Voice of Palestine Radio.  
The move is an Israeli response to a request made by Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas during one of his recent meetings with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ahead of the U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference scheduled to take place in Annapolis, Maryland next month.
The Palestinians demand that Israel grant permanent residency status to all Palestinians who entered the West Bank and Gaza Strip after the 1993 interim Oslo peace accords and have since stayed illegally. There are currently some 55,000 Palestinians who fall under this category.
Many who have family in the Palestinian Authority or have since married have applied for official documents on the basis of ...   more »

The Israeli government now believes that German and Dutch warships patrolling the Lebanese coast as part of a UN peacekeeping force are behind disturbances experienced over the past month by Israel's one million satellite television customers.
Israel's sole satellite television provider, Yes, has been inundated with complaints of fuzzy and frozen television images since early September, and warned the government that it would face bankruptcy if the source of the disturbances was not found. After weeks of searching, Israel's Ministry of Defense said it was fairly certain that monitoring equipment aboard the UN ships was causing the problem. The UN is believed to have significantly increased its surveillance of Israel following the alleged September 6 Israeli air raid on a suspected nuclear facility deep inside neighboring Syria.
Israeli Foreign Ministry Spokesman Mark Regev told Agence France-Presse that Israeli diplomats have "approached people in charge of the international peacekeeping mission in New York and communications specialists will work on the issue."
Original Source
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