Gil Hoffman
Shas's Council of Torah Sages will convene at the home of party mentor Rabbi Ovadia Yosef in Jerusalem's Har Nor neighborhood on Sunday night to consider leaving Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's coalition over the diplomatic negotiations with the Palestinians.
The council is not expected to authorize leaving the coalition at this stage, but the rabbis will likely decide to empower Yosef and Shas chairman Eli Yishai to leave the government when they see fit, without another meeting of the council.
Yishai will brief the rabbis about his meeting with Olmert last week and report what he hears from the Prime Minister's Office following Olmert's meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas earlier Sunday.
"The council meeting is a step on the way to leaving the coalition, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it will happen soon," a Shas official said Saturday night.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni will meet at her Jerusalem office with representatives of the bereaved families and reserve soldiers who have repeatedly called upon Olmert to quit. Livni asked the group not to bring with them any politicians connected to them such as Tafnit leader Uzi Dayan.
"There is no political significance to the meeting," ...   more »

Justice for Jews from Arab Countries
January 17, 2008 - (New York, NY) Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC) is pleased that President George Bush raised the issue of Jews from Arab countries while on his official visit to Israel in early January. In an article headlined, "Bush aware of Jewish Refugee' Plight," The Jerusalem Post said the U.S. President was "very conscious" that Jewish refugees fled to Israel from Arab lands after the 1947-49 war, and that one of the points that came up in Bush's discussion was the number of Jewish refugees that were created in the period after 1948.
This report of President Bush's interest in the plight of Jews from Arab countries, comes after the December visit to the White House by Maurice Shohet, a long time member of JJAC's International Steering Committee. Joining Mr. Shohet at the White House were Professor Judea Pearl and Ruth Pearl, parents of slain Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, all of whom spoke to President Bush on the plight of Jewish refugees from Arab counties. This followed the recent Annapolis Peace Conference, where JJAC issued a declaration which stated, inter alia: "The exclusion and denial of rights and ...   more »

by Gerald A. Honigman
Ever since the reign of Pharaoh Thutmose III (1479-1425 B.C.E.), Gaza has been a major invasion route for Egyptians into the land of Canaan/Israel. Shoshenk I recorded the cities he crushed in Israel.
It appears that the Pharaohs accepted, for one reason or another, the settlement of the area along the coast between Egypt and Canaan by "the Sea Peoples," the Philistines--the Plishtim of the Hebrew Bible, non-Semitic immigrants from the Aegean Sea area around Crete whom the Jews called "the uncircumcised ones." Five cities in that coastal area, including Gaza, became their domain, for long a major headache for the Jews. David slew the warrior Goliath from another one of those cities, Gath; Samson had Philistine girlfriend problems; and so forth. The Hebrew Prophet Amos (9:7) proclaimed, "Are ye not as the children of the Ethiopians unto Me, O children of Israel? saith the LORD. Have not I brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor (Crete)…? "
That last sentence above is especially interesting. If you really want to know the essence of Hebraic monotheism, read the Hebraic Prophets…such as the one above. So much for the Jews' ...   more »

Defense officials decide to seal off tourist sites near Egyptian border due to Palestinian breach of Egypt border; on Thursday, the army closed down borderline highwaynet
Hiking trails and tourist sites near the Egyptian border will be closed down as of Saturday night as a result of the Gaza border breach that saw Palestinian masses enter the Sinai, the IDF Spokesperson's Office said.  
On Thursday, the army sealed off Highway 10 along the border.     
The decision to temporarily seal off the area was taken by defense officials in order to boost the level of security in the area and better protect Israeli citizens. The defense establishment is concerned that terrorists may have taken advantage of the Gaza border chaos to cross into Egypt.  
The army called on Israelis to refrain from arriving at the areas closed off as a result of the heightened security threat.  
Sinai abductions feared
In addition to Thursday's road closure, the IDF adopted several other measures in order to boost the level of security along the border, military officials said.   
Security officials from the various defense establishment branches have been consulting to assess the situation, while the IDF has maintained contacts ...   more »

by Hillel Fendel
(IsraelNN.com) Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the legal status of Jerusalem, has concluded: "Jerusalem belongs to the Jews, by international law."
Gauthier has written a doctoral dissertation on the topic of Jerusalem and its legal history, based on international treaties and resolutions of the past 90 years.  The dissertation runs some 1,300 pages, with 3,000 footnotes.  Gauthier had to present his thesis to a world-famous Jewish historian and two leading international lawyers - the Jewish one of whom has represented the Palestinian Authority on numerous occasions.
Gauthier's main point, as summarized by Israpundit editor Ted Belman, is that a non-broken series of treaties and resolutions, as laid out by the San Remo Resolution, the League of Nations and the United Nations, gives the Jewish People title to the city of Jerusalem.  The process began at San Remo, Italy, when the four Principal Allied Powers of World War I - Great Britain, France, Italy and Japan - agreed to create a Jewish national home in what is now the Land of Israel. 
San Remo
The relevant resolution reads as follows: "The High Contracting Parties agree to entrust... the administration of Palestine, within ...   more »

By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent, and Reuters
NEW YORK - Under pressure from Syria, Libya is withholding support for a Security Council draft declaration which includes an unprecedented condemnation of Palestinian rocket fire from Gaza into Israel.
The draft presidential declaration devised by the United States gained approval of 14 out of 15 member states that comprise the Security Council.
Sources at the UN told Haaretz that all 15 states were minutes from signing the non-punitive declaration which for the first time ever condemns ongoing Qassam fire at southern Israel from Gaza, when Syria pressured Libya's ambassador to the UN, Giadalla Ettalhi, who this month assumed the rotating presidency of the Security Council, to reconsider the bill at the last minute.
A decision on the draft statement is expected to be reached when the Security Council reconvenes on Monday. UN sources said Libya has requested time to discuss the declaration with other Arab states. The statement would also condemn other terrorist activities against Israel.
Sources at the UN headquarters in New York said the U.S. proposed the draft after a third day of discussions Thursday failed to produce agreement on a presidential statement about the situation in Gaza.
The draft ...   more »

President Pervez Musharraf has said that Pakistan's success in fighting terrorism is critical and any failure could impact on the West.
In an address to a British think tank, he called for support and encouragement not "criticisms and insinuations".
He outlined his strategy for defeating al-Qaeda and the Taleban, and securing Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.
The president reiterated that delayed elections now due next month would be "free, fair, transparent and peaceful".
In his speech to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London, he said: "I would ask anyone to give me how [the polls] can be rigged, and if anyone gives me any suggestion, I would be too glad to pass it onto the chief election commissioner for implementation."
 We have to win because if we lose I think it will have an impact on the region and the world, maybe in the streets of Europe
President Musharraf 
Parliamentary polls planned for January were postponed until 18 February after the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, was assassinated at a campaign rally.
The president insisted that his country was capable of carrying out a full investigation into her death.
He said that the assistance of detectives from the UK had ...   more »

By Caroline B. Glick      
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had his first reported telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Their conversation was a sign of the rising intimacy in Egyptian-Iranian relations in the wake of November's US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear weapons program. According to media reports, the two men discussed the situation in Gaza.
Their conversation brought immediate results. Wednesday Mubarak allowed Hamas to take control of the international border between Egypt and Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of Gazans streamed across the border. Mubarak maintained his faith with Ahmadinejad even after the US Wednesday afternoon began demanding that he reassert Egyptian control over the border. Wednesday evening Mubarak said that the border will remain open.
Wednesday's border takeover by Hamas was but the latest escalation of the Palestinian campaign for control over the international border. This campaign has been ongoing since Israel withdrew in 2005 and was sharply escalated after Hamas seized control over Gaza last June.
Many claim that Hamas's aim of attaching Gaza to the rest of the Arab world by opening its border with Egypt is good for Israel because it allows Israel to disengage completely from Gaza. And there is ...   more »