Pro-Israel News

Iran could produce enough weapons-grade uranium to build a nuclear bomb in as little as a month, according to a new estimate by one of the USA's top nuclear experts.

Israel is expected to release a second group of 30 Palestinian prisoners on October 29 as part of ongoing peace efforts, Palestinian and Israeli sources told The Times of Israel Monday.

The batch will include more members of the group of 104 pre-Oslo Peace Accords inmates Israel has pledged to release, contingent on progress in the talks. Twenty-six prisoners were released in the first wave on August 13, just after talks started.

The most dangerous prisoners would be banished to the Gaza Strip, Yedioth Ahronoth reported. The government still has not approved the release, the paper said.

The Prime Minister’s Office declined to confirm the reports, but said a public notice would be sent out before any prisoner release and it would not be done in the dead of night.

Israel agreed in July to a four-stage release of 104 prisoners, many of whom were convicted of brutal murders, serving sentences for acts of terror committed before the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993.

The agreement was intended as a sign of good faith ahead of the renewed American-brokered peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority and the United States had asked Israel to release the prisoners in time for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha last week, but Israel denied that request, according to a report earlier in the month.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced pressure from hawkish ministers to delay or cancel the prisoner releases in the wake of a series of violent incidents in the West Bank in recent weeks, including the killing of two IDF soldiers and an attack that wounded a nine-year-old girl in the settlement of Psagot.

Netanyahu has resisted the pressure from the right and plans to release the prisoners on schedule, the prime minister’s representative in the peace talks, attorney Yitzhak Molcho, assured Palestinian and American officials in recent days.

According to an initial report from the IDF, Younis Obaidi from Beit Hanina drove the tractor towards a base near Al-Ram, southeast of Ramallah, ramming the mechanical digger through a gate in the base's perimeter fence.

"A Palestinian ... posed an immediate life threat to soldiers nearby. They opened fire towards the suspect and reported a direct hit," an IDF spokeswoman said.

An IDF soldier was lightly injured by the tractor. 

Obaidi's brother, Mir'i Radeideh, also attempted to carry out a terrorist attack with a tractor, in March 2009. Radeideh attempted to run over two policemen in a police car in Jerusalem in March 2009. He was also shot to death.

Obaidi arrived at the base and directed his vehicle towards the IDF soldier guarding its entrance, according to a Channel 2 report. 

The guard entered into the base to ask if the tractor had authorization to enter. 

At this point, Obaidi took advantage of the guard's absence and drove through the entrance barrier of the base and started driving quickly inside the base. 

The guard began to chase the tractor and yelled for him to stop but Obaidi continued, recklessly hitting vehicles parked inside the base. 

An officer joined the first soldier and the two fired at the tractor driver, seriously injuring him. Obaidi passed away from his wounds shortly thereafter. 

The IDF was investigating the circumstances of the attack.

Reuters contributed to this report.

October 15, 2013, 3:34 a.m.

JERUSALEM — With talks between Iran and six world powers set to resume in Geneva on Tuesday, Israeli leaders issued a stern warning to the so-called P5 Plus One diplomatic group: don't ease pressure on Iran.

There will be no peace with the Palestinians until they recognize the Jewish right to a homeland in Israel, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said Sunday night at Bar-Ilan University.

“A necessary condition to getting a true solution [to the Israeli-Palestinian] conflict was and remains clear as the sun: ending the refusal to recognize the right of the Jews to a homeland of their own in the land of their fathers,” he said. “That is the most important key to solving the conflict.”

Netanyahu’s words came at the start of a conference marking 20 years since the founding of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, the site of Netanyahu’s famous “Bar-Ilan speech” from four years ago where he stated his willingness for a two-state solution.

Those who anticipated that he might use the same venue to again break new ground on the Palestinian issue were disappointed.

Rather then present a “vision” speech of where he thought the negotiations with the Palestinians were headed, Netanyahu used the opportunity to emphasize that a Palestinian recognition of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people was a necessary condition to any agreement.

Since the first Arab attack on a home housing Jewish immigrants in Jaffa in 1921, the root of the conflict has not been the “occupation,” the “territories” or the settlements, but rather an Arab refusal to recognize the Jews’ right to a sovereign state in their historic homeland, he said.

Netanyahu said that the Arab revolutions of the past two years – which he called the most significant events in the region in 20 years – have laid to rest the “sacred cow” that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the heart of the instability in the Middle East.

Today, he said, it is “tough to say this without sounding absurd.”

It is now also the time, he said, to kill the “sacred cow” that the “occupation” was the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Netanyahu spent a number of minutes during his address, which lasted some 30 minutes, discussing the links of the head of the Palestinian national movement in the pre-state days – Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini – with the Nazis. He reminded his listeners that the mufti visited Adolf Hitler in 1941 and promised his aid in getting Muslims to enlist in the SS in the Balkan states, and in the Nazi propaganda efforts.

Husseini, he said, is still an admired figure among Palestinians.

“That is what needs to be uprooted,” he said.

Netanyahu brought up the mufti, however, more to refute comments Iranian President Hassan Rouhani made in New York two weeks ago than to slam the current Palestinian leadership.

During a television interview, Rouhani acknowledged Nazi crimes against Jews, though he would not use the word “Holocaust.”

Netanyahu pointed out that Rouhani then quickly pointed out that it was forbidden to let the Zionists exploit the Nazi crimes to oppress the Palestinians.

“Despite what Iranian representatives and others say,” the prime minister said, “Zionist leaders did not use the Holocaust to destroy the Palestinian national movement.

The opposite is true. The leader of the Palestinian movement at that time, Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, is the one who preached and worked to carry out the Holocaust to destroy the Zionist movement.

“And it almost worked,” Netanyahu said. “European Jewry was destroyed, with the help of the mufti, but Zionism was not destroyed; Israel was established.”

The goal of Iran today was to control the Middle East and beyond, and to “destroy the State of Israel. That is not speculation, that is the goal,” he said.

Repeating arguments he made last week at the UN, Netanyahu dismissed the notion that Iran was merely seeking nuclear energy for peaceful means, saying that countries that want to harness nuclear energy for civilian needs do not insist on enriching uranium and building plutonium reactors, elements not needed for civilian nuclear purposes but only to build nuclear weapons.

“The international community’s position toward Iran needs to be: We are willing to come to a diplomatic solution – but only one that will dismantle from Iran its capabilities to develop nuclear weapons. That means no centrifuges for enriching uranium and no plutonium reactor,” he said.

Earlier in the day, at the weekly cabinet meeting, Netanyahu stressed he was not against diplomacy with Iran, but rather wanted to ensure that negotiations with Iran will lead it to a halt of uranium enrichment.

Netanyahu, in his first meeting with his cabinet since meeting US President Barack Obama in Washington and saying a day later at the UN General Assembly last week that Israel would “stand alone” against Iran if need be, said he had a long, in-depth conversation with Obama about Iran and that they agree on the need to halt the Islamic Republic’s uranium enrichment.

“Iran claims that it wants this capability for nuclear energy for peaceful needs,” he said. “Seventeen countries in the world produce nuclear energy for peaceful needs without one centrifuge or enriching uranium.”

Netanyahu, who only recently began publicly saying that the sanctions on Iran were making a serious dent, said that the sanctions were “working,” and were “just a moment before achieving their goal.”

Sanctions must not be removed before Iran dismantles its enrichment capabilities, he said.

Andrew Gombert/AP

Aides say the meetings focused on coordinating Israeli and US policy aimed at preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons

It was Mr. Rouhani’s second major speech this week at the United Nations, where he has been engaged in a near-breathless series of appearances and interviews with the Western news media. He appears to want to send the message that he is a reasonable, practical leader who differs from his bombastic predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and who wants urgently to solve Iran’s protracted disputes with the West, most notably the nuclear issue.

Israel, which regards Iran as an existential threat, has repeatedly warned that it may take military action to strike at Iran’s uranium enrichment centers and other nuclear facilities that the Israelis say are part of an Iranian scheme to build a weapon.

The Iranians have frequently pointed out that they have publicly renounced nuclear arms and that — unlike Israel — Iran is a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear monitor. The Iranians also have countered that Israel is believed to already have an arsenal of nuclear weapons, which it refuses to confirm or deny.

According to the Arms Control Association, a nonproliferation group in Washington,Israel is suspected of having 100 to 200 nuclear warheads. Israel has said it will “not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.”

Mr. Rouhani said in his speech on Thursday that the total elimination of nuclear weapons should be the goal, particularly in his part of the world.

“Almost four decades of international efforts to establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East have regrettably failed,” Mr. Rouhani said in a translated version of his speech, furnished by Iran’s United Nations Mission.

“Urgent practical steps toward the establishment of such a zone are necessary,” he said. “Israel, the only nonparty to the nonproliferation treaty in this region, should join thereto without any further delay. Accordingly, all nuclear activities in the region should be subject to the I.A.E.A. comprehensive safeguards.”

Mr. Rouhani said nothing about Iran’s own dispute with the I.A.E.A., which wants access to some restricted military sites in the country to verify that Iran’s nuclear intentions are benign. He also made no reference to Iran’s stalled negotiations with the so-called P5-plus-one countries, the permanent members of the Security Council — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — plus Germany, on the larger dispute over uranium enrichment.

He said in the speech that the establishment of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East would “constitute a contribution to the objective of nuclear disarmament” and called for a conference to establish such a zone, “without any further delay, with the participation of all countries in the region to avoid unwanted consequences.”

Mr. Rouhani commended Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for convening the conference. “No nation should possess nuclear weapons; since there are no right hands for these wrong weapons, as you, Mr. Secretary General, have rightly put it,” he said.

Israel has taken the leading role among foreign countries in aiding and advising Kenyan forces after al-Shabaab Islamist extremists attacked the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, according to security and intelligence sources.

A host of other countries have also offered help, including Britain, which has resident MI6 officers in Kenya and special forces training their counterparts in the country.

Metropolitan police anti-terrorist officers are in Kenya to try to monitor the activities of suspects including Samantha Lewthwaite, the widow of the 7/7 London suicide bomber Germaine Lindsay.

The CIA also has officers in Kenya. However, counter-terrorist officials pointed to Israel as the country that has built up extremely close security co-operation as well as commercial ties with Kenya over more than a decade.

Israeli officials kept a public silence about possible involvement in the mall standoff. However, a defence ministry official told the Guardian that a team from Israel's elite counter-terrorism unit had assisted the Kenyan authorities in handling the hostage crisis.

An Israeli border police unit known as Yamam is specially trained in civilian hostage rescue operations.

An Israeli army spokeswoman responded to questions on Israeli involvement with a formula previously used with reference to covert Israeli activities, such as recent air strikes in Syria. "We don't comment on foreign reports," she said.

Reuters news agency quoted an Israeli security source as saying Israeli advisers were helping Kenya with the "negotiating strategy" to help end the siege.

"There are Israeli advisers helping with the negotiating strategy, but no Israelis involved in any imminent storming operation," said the source, who asked not to be identified.

The Israeli foreign ministry said later four of its nationals were in the mall at the time of the attack, and that two fled while two others were rescued. One was lightly wounded, treated and released. The upmarket Westgate shopping complex is part Israeli-owned.

In London on Monday, the defence secretary, Philip Hammond, chaired a meeting of the government's Cobra emergencies committee, as David Cameron cut short a visit to Balmoral to chair a second meeting later in the day.

Downing Street said the prime minister – who has spoken to the Kenyan president, Uhuru Kenyatta – offered help in terms of "policing, intelligence collaboration and other related kinds" of assistance.

UK staff from Addis Ababa in Ethiopia travelled to assist local officials with the efforts in Nairobi and a rapid deployment team was sent from London, the Foreign Office said.

There was no confirmation of any Britons being among those who carried out or planned the Kenya attack, though UK-based individuals, at one time estimated to number 50, have gone to Somalia to join al-Shabaab, the terror group believed to be behind the atrocity.

Intelligence sources said it was clear the attack had been carefully planned over a long period with the help of a network of al-Shabaab sympathisers in Kenya.

The Labour leader, Ed Miliband, offered his support to the government and said: "Those who carried out this attack will be condemned across the globe. The cold-blooded killing of innocent women, children and men is as despicable as it is shocking."