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NOVANEWS

Bahrain names Jewish woman to parliament

King Hamad of Bahrain on Thursday appointed a Jew and a Christian among four women to the 40-member upper chamber, following a parliamentary election last month, state media reported.

The king kept 30 members of the outgoing Shura, or consultative, council including the speaker, Ali Saleh al-Saleh, according to a royal decree published by BNA news agency.

Nancy Khadhori joined the chamber after a fellow Jew, Huda Nono, left the house to take the role of Bahrain’s ambassador to the United States.

“I am very happy to receive the royal trust. I hope I will be up to the responsibility,” said Khadhori, one of only 37 Bahraini Jews who originated from Iraq.

Meanwhile, Hala Qarrisah entered the house as fellow Christian Alice Samaan, who was deputy head of the council, exited the parliament.

Bahrain’s Christian community numbers around 1,000.

The Shiite opposition emerged as the largest single bloc in Bahrain’s lower chamber following the parliamentary election on October 23.

The Shura Council has the authority to over-rule parliamentary decisions in the Shiite-majority archipelago which is ruled by a Sunni dynasty.

 

Iran helps rebuild Gaza

While settlements halt and resume construction, Gazans building in full speed. Strip’s current real estate hit is Hamas’ flagship project: New multi-story buildings for young couples, families of ‘shahidim’

Gaza’s residents are no longer complaining about a coriander shortage. Israeli snacks are flowing into the Strip as well, through the Kerem Shalom crossing – at the approval and under the full supervision of the Hamas government.

The lifting of the siege in June gave the Gazans room to breathe. With the money in the Strip – and there is quite a lot of it in dollars, dinars, and even shekels – they can buy whatever they want.

Report by BBC’s Arabic network broadcasted ahead of Eid al-Adha documents sophisticated animal smuggling apparatus using electric elevators from Egypt into Gaza Strip 
Full story 
 
Food and other products flow into Gaza with hardly any restrictions. What doesn’t come from Israel, because the price is too high, continues to flow in through the Rafah tunnels.

“There are a slew of products here, and beautiful restaurants. Is this the Gaza we have been hearing about?” A Sudanese official, who arrived in the Strip about a month ago with hundreds of visitors from Arab countries on the “Viva Palestina” aid convoy, was quoted by Palestinian news agency Maan as saying.

“Where is the siege? I don’t see it in Gaza. I wish Sudan’s residents could live under the conditions of the Gazan siege,” he reportedly added.

One of the main characteristics of the economic change in the Strip is the renovation and construction drive. Buildings are being built in every corner. Hamas is renovating the public buildings destroyed in Israeli air raids during Operation Cast Lead, including the bombed Legislative Council building on Omar al-Mukhtar Boulevard and the police headquarters.

But the renovation of public buildings is nothing compared to Hamas’ flagship project: The building of 25,000 new housing units in the city, some on lands of the former Gush Katif settlements.

The goal is not only to overcome the huge apartment shortage – which stems mainly from the natural growth, the damages of the war, and the halt in construction in the past three years – but mainly to benefit the people, whose support Hamas seeks in order to establish its rule.

The plan is to construct multi-story buildings (“we have no land to spare,” explains a Gaza housing ministry official) and neighborhoods built as independent residential areas. A mosque will be set up at the center of each neighborhood, alongside shopping centers, schools and kindergartens. Access roads will be paved and even playgrounds for children.

Bulldozers have begun clearing the land and preparing it for the new residential neighborhoods, some of which have already been named.

The neighborhood in the northern Gaza Strip, west of the town of Beit Lahiya, will be named after the residence of the 72 virgins waiting in paradise. The al-Buraq neighborhood, named after the horse Prophet Muhammad rode from Mecca to the al-Aqsa Mosque, will be built on the lands of Gush Katif. The Andalus neighborhood is aimed at reminding the Muslims of their days of glory in Spain.

Only one neighborhood, set to be built near the Netzarim Junction, remains nameless. The Gazans will likely keep its original name, Juhor ad-Dik.

Who are the apartments for? Hamas’ housing minister Yousef Alamanti announced recently that the new homes would be sold in full transparency, according to a series of criteria of social justice.

First in line will be the families of ‘shahidim’ (martyrs), prisoners and casualties of war. Next in line will be young couples who have no apartment of their own and whose family doesn’t own a plot they could build on. They will be followed by families whose homes were destroyed by Israel, especially during Operation Cast Lead, which cannot be rebuilt. The remaining apartments will be handed out according to a housing ministry raffle.

And what about the prices? Apartments in the new neighborhoods will cost $25-40,000, a significant sum in Gaza. Buyers who have a safe and regular job, like Palestinian government workers, will be entitled to a bank loan. The rest will be able to take mortgages provided by Islamic associations. Islamic charity organizations will help the families of shahidim and prisoners.

A similar apartment in the nearby southern Israeli city of Ashkelon, by the way, costs a bit more: About NIS 500-600,000 ($135-163,000) for a new three-room apartment, and some NIS 800,000 (almost $220,000) for a four-room flat.

Hamas has allotted tens of millions of dollars to the building project. There is apparently no shortage of money. Generous donations are flowing in from Iran, Islamic associations across the Arab worlds, and governmental elements in Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Western elements.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who has been mercilessly pursuing Hamas in the West Bank, is aiding Gaza with millions of dollars, boasting that 57% of the Palestinian Authority budget is directed at the Strip.

Abbas pays the salaries of 70,000 government workers from the post-Hamas era, maintains the health and education systems, and even funds some of Gaza’s electricity production expenses.

International organizations are also operating in Gaza in full force. Since the Turkish flotilla, Israel has approved – through the Civil Administration – 70 projects of building infrastructure for the health, education and sanitation systems by international elements.

At the request of the United Nations secretary-general, Defense Minister Ehud Barak has approved the transfer of building materials – including gravel – for the construction of a large residential neighborhood for refugees in Khan Younis.

In addition, Hamas has been implementing a new tax system: 14% value added tax, 8% income tax. For each liter of gas flowing into the Strip from Gaza and sold for about NIS 2 (50 cents), the government charges 60 agorot (16 cents). A fee is imposed on all goods arriving from Israel. Each new motorcycle smuggled through the tunnels carries an NIS 300 ($82) tax.

In order to settle the contradiction between the new taxes and the laws of Islam, which state that the only taxes which can be collected are 10% of the Muslim’s income which must go to charity, Hamas says it is working to create a social justice system.

And so, in measured steps, without a siege and with a lot of foreign aid, Gaza’s economy is starting to recover, as is the agriculture and some of the industries. The Hamas government has recovered from Operation Cast Lead, emerged from the financial distress and is now focused not only on improving its military capabilities, but also on strengthening its hold of the government and imposing an Islamic rule in Gaza.

It’s safe to say that the Turkish flotilla has only benefitted Gaza. It led to the end of the siege imposed on the Strip as a means to pressure Hamas to release kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit. Israel gave into international pressure and opened the crossings to put an end to global complaints of shortage and hunger in Gaza.

Global pressure on Egypt following the deadly flotilla raid led to the opening of the Rafah crossing, which now gives Gazans direct contact with the world. The land crossing has been open to passengers and goods since then, and long aid convoys have been flowing into Gaza from Algeria, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, and even Indonesia and Malaysia.

The naval convoys, aimed at aiding Hamas and de-legitimizing Israel, continue. At least three or four flotillas are expected to set sail in the coming months.

“In Gaza, the days are counted according to events,” Yusef Najar, a Gazan merchant, says in phone conversation. “The Turkish flotilla is such an event. Before it happened we experienced very difficult times. After the flotilla everything changed; things are much better.”

Civil Administration officials, who supervise the crossings, admit that all the goods entering Gaza are in the volumes required by the Palestinians, and all are brought in through Israel – apart from cement, iron and gravel, the basic building materials, which Israel prohibits for fear that they would be used by Hamas to build posts and bunkers.

But the Gazans have quickly adjusted to the situation. Cement and iron are smuggled into the Gaza City and Khan Younis markets like the new cars, televisions, sunglasses and Viagra pills, as well as rockets, missiles, and other weapons – through the tunnels.

The only thing missing is gravel. The Gazans have yet to find a way to transport it through tunnels, and the Strip does not have stony mountains which gravel could be grinded from. Without gravel, one cannot build houses and establish new neighborhood.

The Strip’s residents won’t despair, however. The infrastructure in sandy Gaza is built on layers of gravel, as in the case of the Dahaniya Airport in the southern Strip. It was built by former Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat as one of the Palestinian national symbols, the Americans and Europeans help set up modern concrete runways, and all on a layer of gravel.

The same applies for the roads and infrastructure of buildings in the large Erez industrial zone, and the hundreds of homes destroyed in the recent war. All they have to do is dig in deserted construction sites and reuse the gravel.

And so gravel has become Gaza’s white gold and a source of income for thousands of Gazans. One ton of gravel is sold today for NIS 500 ($662) – five times more than before the siege, and there are those who are willing to pay even more. Everyone – men, women, elderly people and children – search for gravel with simple work tools in their hands.

The Dahaniya Airport is no longer visible. The gravel collectors have completed the crushing of the runways. The concrete platforms were dismantled and underwent a grinding process. Millions of tons of gravel have already been removed from the sand, sifted and transferred to Gaza’s construction markets.

The ruins of the Strip’s houses are worth a lot of money today. There are even gravel contractors, who buy the right to collect the gravel from the owners of the destroyed homes. One of these contractors is the Abu Varda family from the northern Strip, which has forcibly created a monopoly for removing the gravel from the old Erez industrial zone.

The gravel miners dismantle one building after another, dig under roads, grind the concrete and sift the sand of gravel. Their problem is the Israel Defense Forces, which shoots every time one of them approaches the border fence. Not one day passes without a gravel miners getting hurt.

“Gravel has turned into a leverage for moving Gaza’s weak economy forward,” says Ahmed Hamid, a Khan Younis merchant. “The gravel miners benefit from it, the owners of destroyed houses get money, and the contractors will build the new neighborhoods and employ many laborers. Gaza’s unemployment rate will drop, there will be more money, and perhaps, God willing, we’ll be slightly happier.”

 

Official: Mossad behind Egypt riots

Following clashes in Cairo between Christian Copts and Muslims, chairman of Foreign Affairs Committee in Egypt’s People’s Assembly says Israel ‘wants to undermine security and stability in country’

Who’s responsible for this week’s riots in Egypt, which left one man killed and dozens injured? Chairman of the Egypt People’s Assembly’ Foreign Affairs Committee Dr. Dr Mostafa El Feki on Thursday accused the Israeli Mossad of being behind the recent clashes between Christian Copts and Muslims.

Recently there have been a number of incidents between the Copts and the Muslims, which forced the involvement of Egyptian security forces.

One man was killed and dozens were injured on Wednesday in clashes between the Copts and security forces in the Giza area of Cairo after he local governor revoked a construction permit for a building adjacent to the church which was meant to serve the community’s needs.

At a conference in Ain Shams University El Feki said, “It is very clear that Western fingers are disrupting our nation’s capabilities and taking advantage of the election period to carry out their plans, to agitate the security and stability in Egypt.

“It is almost certain that the Mossad is involved in these events. The State is dealing with dangerous events that could not have succeeded without external intervention with Israel at its head.”

Christian Copts make up ten percent of Egypt’s population of 79 million. They claim that the Egyptian regime discriminates against them and harasses them over their religious beliefs. They are protesting the fact that unlike the Muslims, they must request permission to construct any community buildings, whereas the Muslims are allowed to build freely.

 

Syria warns Israel: Evading peace will lead to Mideast war

Syrian FM Walid Moallem says window of opportunity for Mideast peace is slowly closing, warns that new war could cause great damage due to advanced military technology.

In an interview with the Russian newspaper Moscow News, Moallem accused Israel of evading peace and said that the window of opportunity for a peace deal is slowly closing.

“The possibility of war always exists in our region since Israel almost always scandalously evades the commitment to peace,” said Moallem. “There is no doubt that closing the horizons to peace could lead to war,” he said.

Moallem warned of the ramifications of a new Middle Eastern war emerging, saying that in a new war everyone will lose due to the existing advanced military technology which could cause great damage even for the side with the greater military might.

On Tuesday, Syria condemned an Israeli bill that sets tough requirements for any withdrawal from the Golan Heights or East Jerusalem, saying it was further proof that the Israeli government was not interested in peace.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday the bill makes a mockery of international laws and UN Security Council resolutions.

Syria lost the Golan Heights to Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War, and has demanded its return as the foundation of any peace agreement.

 

Lebanon PM: Netanyahu doesn’t believe in peace

In Washington Post interview, Saad Hariri accuses Netanyahu of destroying Oslo Accords, says ‘there is no leadership in Israel.’

Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri criticized on Friday Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s will to continue negotiations with the Palestinians, saying that he “doesn’t believe in peace.”

In an interview with the Washington Post, Hariri said that in order to achieve a peace deal in the Arab-Israeli conflict, there must be strong leadership, something that Israel lacks.

“There is no leadership in Israel,” he said. “At one point you had [Prime Minister Yitzhak] Rabin who wanted peace. He’s the one who believed in the peace in the region, but Netanyahu doesn’t believe in peace.”

Hariri accused Netanyahu of destroying the Oslo Accords and said that he is “somebody who is not willing to talk about real peace in the region.”

Moreover, he stressed that Israel can only have security if comprehensive peace was achieved between the Palestinians and the Israelis, and between Israel and the Arab world – which includes Syria and Lebanon.

“[Netanyahu] takes the issue of security as the basis of his whole political platform but you will only have security if you have peace,” he said.

On Monday, Hariri met with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyep Erdogan, who declared that Israel is endangering world peace by using exaggerated force against the Palestinians, breaching Lebanon’s air space and waters and for not revealing the details of its nuclear program.

  

Israel police under fire for abusing east Jerusalem children

 

JERUSALEM (AFP) – Israeli police were accused of “flagrant violations” of the law Thursday over their harsh and at times violent treatment of Palestinian children suspected of stone-throwing in east Jerusalem.

The allegations were detailed in a letter sent to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by a group of 60 Israeli professionals, among them experts in medicine, psychology, education, social work and law — all of whom work with children.

But Israel police flatly denied the allegations, with a spokesman telling AFP they “operate within the bounds of the law.”

The letter expresses concern about the growing number of testimonies submitted by Palestinian minors who have been arrested by police in occupied and annexed east Jerusalem, notably in the flashpoint neighbourhood of Silwan.

“We are writing … to express our deep concerns about the physical and emotional welfare and proper development of children and young people in east Jerusalem in the light of police behaviour during the investigation and arrest of minors in this area,” it said.

“Over the last few months, there has been a growing number of testimonies of minors and their families which point to flagrant violations of the rights of detained minors, and of the use of violence during the investigation of children and young people who are suspected of throwing stones in Silwan.”

Youngsters have testified how they were dragged out of bed in the dead of the night, cuffed and taken for investigation without being accompanied by their parents — and sometimes without their family even being informed, it said.

During the investigation, “they suffered threats and humiliation at the hand of the investigators .. which sometimes involved substantial physical violence,” it said, noting with concern the arrests of children under the age of 12.

Under Israeli law, the minimum age of criminal responsibility is 12 years, and a child below the age of 14 is not eligible to receive a custodial sentence.

“Despite their young age, they weren’t spared difficult and harmful interrogation conditions,” it said, citing one case where police had interrogated an eight-year-old for four hours.

Police figures indicate that over the past year, more than 1,200 minors from east Jerusalem have been investigated for throwing stones, the letter said.

Questioned by AFP, Israel police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld denied investigators were flouting the laws governing the rights of minors, although he did admit that police had questioned children under the age of 12.

“We operate within the bounds of the law,” he said.

“All the interviews are recorded and we never investigate children under 12 without the presence of a family member. Most of those arrested are older than that.”

Testimonies collected by the rights group Defence For Children International (DCI) showed that in the four-week period from October 8 to November 3, 21 minors were arrested in Silwan, two of them under the age of 12.

Meanwhile, a Palestinian man in Silwan on Thursday told AFP that his seven-year-old son Adam had been beaten in the legs and around the face by border police in the street after coming out of school.

A shopkeeper tried to intervene along with other passers-by and the boy had managed to run home, covered with bruises, said his father, Mansur Resheq, who took him to be examined at Sharei Tsedek hospital in west Jerusalem.

The crumbling neighbourhood of Silwan is the focal point of regular clashes between locals and hardline settlers, with police frequently rounding up youngsters on charges of stone-throwing.

The Palestinians see east Jerusalem as the capital of their promised state but Israel considers all of Jerusalem to be its “eternal and indivisible” capital, a status not recognised by the international community.

 

Ex-Israel PM doesn’t deny air strike on Syria

(AP) Israel’s former prime minister said Thursday that he can’t deny ex-President George W. Bush’s claim in a new book that Israel destroyed a suspected nuclear reactor in Syria.

It was Ehud Olmert’s first public comment on the mysterious September 2007 incident, which happened while he was in office.

At the time, Syria announced that its airspace had been invaded by Israel but said nothing about what had been hit. The Israeli government has remained silent.

In Bush’s new memoir, the former president claimed the target was believed to be a Syrian nuclear reactor being built with North Korean assistance.

He said that Israel first asked the U.S. to bomb the site, and after the U.S. turned down the request, Israel carried out an attack itself. Bush also suggested that he approved the mission.

The strike came about a year after Israel’s inconclusive war against Hezbollah, in which Lebanese guerrillas battled Israel’s powerful army to a stalemate. The poor performance raised questions about Israel’s deterrent capabilities.

“Prime Minister Olmert’s execution of the strike made up for the confidence I had lost in the Israelis during the Lebanon war,” Bush wrote, adding that the Israeli leader rejected a suggestion to go public with the operation.

“Olmert told me he wanted total secrecy. He wanted to avoid anything that might back Syria into a corner and force (Syrian President Bashar) Assad to retaliate. This was his operation, and I felt an obligation to respect his wishes,” Bush wrote.

Speaking to foreign journalists Thursday, Olmert said Israel took a position that “we will never comment on it.”

He said he has not read Bush’s book, but had seen this section. “I can only say that I don’t want (to), and I can’t deny it,” he said.

Olmert served as prime minister from 2006 until 2009.

 

Locals: Israel Demolishes Long-Standing West Bank Mosque

As Settlement Construction Continues, Palestinian Buildings Razed

by Jason Ditz, antiwar.com

The Israeli government is continuing to expand the construction of settlements in the occupied West Bank, but perhaps even more deleterious to the stalled peace process is that the Israeli army is continuing to demolish Palestinian buildings in the region including, apparently, a local mosque.

Locals in the village of Khirbet Yarza reported today that among the several buildings demolished by the Israeli military was a long-standing mosque, which they insisted had been located on the site since long before the 1967 occupation began.

Israel denied being aware that any of the buildings were a mosque, describing the buildings destroyed as “temporary” structures built without the permission of the Israeli military. They insisted the demolitions were aimed at saving the Palestinians from a possible fire.

Yet photos from the site of the mosque appear to show a structure of stone and cement, not the temporary animal pens that the Israeli military’s official reports described. The Palestinian Authority condemned the destruction of the buldings, saying they were part of concerted effort of “state destruction” by the Israeli government.

Franco Frattini is either a fool or ignorant, or possibly both
 

By Khalid Amayreh in occupied Jerusalem

During his recent visit to Israel and the Gaza Strip, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini revealed rather brazenly his low intellectual capacity, a scandalous lack of honesty as well as stunning ignorance of the situation in this part of the world. He made many strident statements which can be described as, inter alia, hasty, inaccurate, mendacious and ignorant.

While in the small Israeli town of Sderot, a conspicuously complacent Frattini told a group of Israeli jingoists and right-wingers, “You are victims of this extreme entity that is taking hostages its own people and attacking you.”

This, of course, is far from the truth; the people of Gaza are victims of the clear genocidal policies of Israel and Israelis. The Zionist state claims that it withdrew from the Gaza Strip in 2005. In reality, Israel has maintained absolute control of the coastal enclave’s skies, territorial waters and border crossings. Furthermore, Israel imposed a draconian blockade on that territory, inflicting one of the harshest human tragedies in modern history with its collective punishment of the people of Gaza.

Israel claims that the siege was imposed in response to projectiles fired from Gaza on nearby Israeli colonies. However, the truth is that the siege was an established Israeli policy and the Zionist state has violated ceasefire agreements with Hamas consistently.

In brief, Israel wants to retain the “right” to murder and maim as many innocent Palestinians as possible with absolute impunity and without any response from the victims. Various statements from Israeli rabbis – never disowned by Israel’s political elite – demonstrate that racism is rife in Israel and non-Jews are regarded as inferior beings.

It is tempting to ask how the Italian Foreign Minister could refer to the people of Sderot as victims and the people of Gaza as aggressors when Israel has killed and maimed thousands of Palestinian civilians; 1,400 alone (one-third of them children) were killed during Operation Cast Lead last year; 13 Israelis were killed. It is safe to assume that Frattini wasn’t told by his Israeli hosts that Sderot was built on the ruins of the Palestinian town of Najd from which the Arab population was driven out by Jewish militias on 13th May 1948.

Are Palestinian lives that worthless? Or is Frattini indoctrinated in classical Italian fascism, albeit laminated with a thin veneer of pseudo-liberalism? Frattini told the settlers that Hamas “is taking hostage its own people and attacking you.” Even Israel acknowledges that Hamas has been preventing attacks by some splinter groups.

Does the Italian politician know – or care – that Hamas won the parliamentary election in the occupied territories in 2006, an election that was monitored closely by the international community, including the European Union (EU) and US, Israel’s guardian-ally? And that the election was declared to be “free and fair”?

It is true that the EU and US rejected the election outcome once it became clear that Hamas, not the western-backed secular puppets, was the winner. The blame for this does not lie with Hamas; it is and remains an expression of western hypocrisy, moral duplicity and false commitment to true democracy.

One of the most incredible statements uttered by Franco Frattini was that “the Israeli government wanted peace”. Is the man blind? Does he read the newspapers? Wasn’t he briefed by his diplomats before the visit? If he was, and was in possession of the facts of the situation, his statement would be even more scandalous than those made by someone steeped in ignorance.

How can a government that keeps building illegal settlements on occupied territories really want peace? How can a government that makes withdrawal from occupied territories contingent on the outcome of a referendum, in utter contempt of international law, be a true seeker of peace? How can a government be truly interested in peace when it gives heavily-armed, ultra-right wing Jewish settlers carte blanche to attack unarmed Palestinian farmers and vandalise their property? How can a government that includes in its coalition far-right parties whose spiritual leaders claim openly that non-Jews, presumably including Frattini, are merely donkeys and animals, view peace with its non-Jewish neighbours as a prime objective?

To cap it all, Frattini referred to the “danger” facing the whole world from Iran. What was the man talking about? Has Iran ever said that it seeks world domination if it acquires nuclear weapons? There is one aggressor and aggressive state in the Middle East which already possesses a nuclear arsenal; why didn’t Franco Frattini ask the Israelis about that?

Perhaps the Italian minister and his neo-colonial mindset still thinks that Muslims have to be pacified and kept under control, at the mercy of a nefarious Zionist state. When people like Frattini represent the West on visits to the Middle East, it is a clear demonstration that it is futile for anyone, least of all the Palestinians, to expect Western politicians to do anything to achieve peace with justice for the people in historic Palestine. In any case, as long as their Foreign Minister thinks that the Israelis want peace and Palestinians don’t, Italians can have no constructive role in the region.

ZIO=NAZI  Settlers Spray Arab Town with Gunfire

 

(palestine-info.co.uk) QALQALIA, (PIC)– A gang of Jewish settlers opened heavy fire on Palestinian homes on Wednesday in the village of Kafr Qadoum, east of Qalalia, the West Bank.

When the settlers neared the villagers’ homes they sprayed random machine gun bullets at the homes with the intent of scaring locals from the village, locals said.

No one was injured in the onslaught because the incident happened at night while residents were sleeping, the sources added.

Jewish settlers in the region are notorious for criminal assaults against Palestinians under direct protection by the Israeli army, which covers their tracks after each attack.

The incident was one of a series of organized settler activities in the West Bank targeting Arabs in villages near Jewish settlements.

 

West Is Ineligable to Discuss Human Rights

 

 

Iranian MP Mohammad Hossein Nejad-Fallah

(presstv.com) An Iranian lawmaker has slammed a UN resolution accusing Iran of violating human rights, saying Washington and Zionist leaders are the ones to stand trial.

“White House and Zionist leaders are not defendants of human rights,” IRNA quoted Mohammad Hossein Nejad-Fallah as saying on Thursday.

“Those whose hands are stained with the blood of thousands of the world’s innocent people cannot accuse others of violating human rights,” he noted.

The US must be held accountable for the lives of thousands of civilians, including women and children in Afghanistan, Iraq and the occupied Palestinian territories, the Iranian MP urged.

On November 18, the Third Committee of the UN, in a draft resolution, accused Iran, North Korea, and Myanmar of violating human rights.

The resolution, yet to be approved by the UN General Assembly, was sponsored by the US, the European Union, Canada, and other Western countries.

Nejad-Fallah questioned the sincerity of international rights groups for turning a blind eye to Israel’s blatant crimes against 1.5 million impoverished Palestinians who live under severe conditions under a crippling blockade imposed by Tel Aviv.

“International organizations should take these war criminals to court,” the Iranian lawmaker insisted.

He criticized the West for “accusing independent nations, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, through massive media propaganda campaigns of violating human rights.”

“But there is not the slightest reference to the disasters in Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the Western media,” he went on to say.

Nejad-Fallah said White House leaders must be answerable for the inhuman conduct in the CIA-run prisons in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

The US, Britain, and their sympathizers are not eligible to comment on human rights and thus cannot decide policies for other nations, he concluded.

‘Pakistan no launch pad for Iran attack’‎

 

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari says Islamabad will never allow terrorists to use the country as a launch pad for attacking the Islamic Republic.

(presstv.com) The government of Pakistan will never allow the terrorists to use Pakistani soil to launch terrorist attacks on Iran, Zardari said on Thursday.

The remarks were made during a meeting with visiting Iranian Interior Minister Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar on the sidelines of trilateral anti-narcotics summit with Afghanistan on Thursday.

Zardari also expressed his gratitude to the Iranian government and nation for their aid to Pakistan’s flood victims, IRIB reported.

Mohammad-Najjar relayed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s message to Zardari and announced Tehran’s readiness to dispatch more humanitarian aid for the displaced people of Pakistan.

The floods — the worst in Pakistan’s recorded history — started in July, caused by heavy torrential monsoon rains, and claimed lives of more than 1, 700 people and left five million people homeless.

Iran was among the first countries to send aid to Pakistan and has announced its readiness to participate in reconstructing the country’s flood-ravaged regions.

More than 150 Iranian rescue workers have helped Pakistan’s flood victims and nearly 100,000 flood-stricken Pakistanis have been sheltered in 14,000 tents set up by the Iranian Red Crescent Society.

Iran’s last relief convoy to Pakistan consisted of 2,700 tons of goods carried by 150 trucks.

Mohammad-Najjar arrived in Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad on Wednesday to attend the 4th trilateral summit of Iranian, Pakistani and Afghan ministers aimed at fighting drug trafficking.

Iran was the initiator of the trilateral summit and the first such meeting was hosted by Tehran last year.

Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki also announced earlier this month that Tehran is ready to host a three-way counterterrorism summit with Pakistan and Afghanistan on fighting terrorism in the region.

 

India test-fires nuclear-capable missile

  

(presstv.com) India has conducted a successful test of a short-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile during a military exercise in the state of Orissa, officials say.

The upgraded Agni-I, with a 435-mile (700-kilometer) range, was fired from a testing range on an island off the eastern state of Orissa.

“The missile followed the trajectory perfectly and reached the designated spot in the Bay of Bengal, where ships witnessed its detonation,” said Ministry spokesman Sitanshu Kar, quoted by the Associated Press.

The missile, developed in India, has been tested several times in the past as well.

According to the ministry, Pakistan was informed ahead of Thursday’s test as part of a “standard practice.”
Nuclear-capable India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars, two over the disputed Himalayan territory of Kashmir, routinely carry out missile tests but normally notify each other in advance under an agreement.

India and Pakistan have also occasionally tested conventional and unconventional weapons since their independence.

Both neighbors have refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and other treaties that restrict developing or testing nuclear weapons.

 

Italian FM: Iran attack ‘catastrophic’

 

(www.presstv.com) Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini has warned Israel against any military attack on Iran, saying it would lead to a full-blown catastrophe for the whole world.

Frattini, who was in Israel on a four-day tour of the occupied Palestinian territories, sought to caution the Israeli government about the dire repercussions of any military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities as the Tel Aviv regime continues with its rhetorical attacks against Iran’s civilian nuclear work, IRNA reported on Thursday.

“Any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear installations will have catastrophic consequences not only for Israel, but for the whole world as well,” said Frattini in an interview with Israel’s Channel 10 TV following his meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Defense Minister Ehud Barack.

Early in November, Netanyahu urged the US administration to intimidate Iran with a military action on the off chance that the Islamic Republic would submit to halting its civilian nuclear work under such pressure. The US, however, flatly rejected the suggestion.

The remarks come against the backdrop of the US and Israeli-led allegations that Iran may be pursuing a military diversion in its civilian nuclear program.

Tehran has fiercely denied such charges as entirely baseless and argues that as a long-term member of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, it has every right to utilize peaceful nuclear technology.

The Israeli regime, however, is widely believed to be the sole possessor of a nuclear arsenal in the Middle East with over 200 undeclared nuclear warheads.

The Italian foreign minister further called on the Israelis to steer clear of any possible military action against Iran, noting, “I will tell you that going to war [against Iran] would be catastrophic as the first target in this war would be Israel itself, and the entire world will be jeopardized as a result of such action”

The remarks come days after the Islamic Republic launched its largest nationwide air defense maneuvers aimed at upgrading the country’s defense capabilities in case of any foreign military attacks on its territory.

Iranian officials have repeatedly cautioned against any military action targeting anything within its territory, emphasizing that any such measure will trigger a rapid and rigorous response by the Islamic Republic that will encompass targets far beyond the immediate Middle East region.

 

‘Road to Hope’ aid convoy enters Gaza

 

  

(Presstv.com) A humanitarian aid convoy carrying aid supplies for the people of the besieged Gaza Strip has entered Gaza through Egypt’s Rafah border crossing.

The convoy, known as “Road to Hope”, left London on October 10 and arrived in Gaza on Thursday. It comprises of 30 vehicles and 101 humanitarian aid workers that include eight survivors of the Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla in May that killed nine people onboard.
The Egyptian negotiators first allowed three members of the convoy, including its leader, to enter the territory, Press TV correspondent, who was present at the Rafah border crossing, reported late Thursday.

The convoy leader told Press TV that the aid fleet crossed France, Spain, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Libya on its way to Gaza. In Libya, he said, “we were supposed to take delivery of the ‘Al-Quds Five’ part of the convoy, but, unfortunately, it was not ready”.
Moreover, Libya failed to grant permission for the transit of the aid convoy through Egypt by land, leaving it stranded for nine days at the Libya-Egypt border.

“Then, because we were not able to go by road, we hired a Greek ship to go to El Arish port in Egypt”, he said.
Greek commandos boarded the ship after the captain brought the group against their will to the port of Piraeus. “The captain ‘kidnapped’ the aid workers, accusing them of being illegal immigrants”, he said. The aid workers later said that they were treated like terror suspects by the Greeks.

The convoy leader also said that the aid content included roughly USD 1 million worth of vehicles, medical aid, equipment for handicapped schools, educational material, blankets as well as toys for children.

Speaking from London, convoy spokeswoman Leyla-Rubaina Hyda said that only 37 members of the convoy had been allowed to enter the Gaza Strip.

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