Here are glimpses of the press at work — covering the summit meeting today in Sharm as-Sheikh between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Egyptian President Husni Mubarak:
Tag: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert
Israeli Prime Minister ready to talk to Mahmoud Abbas — it's up to the Palestinians, Olmert says
At a news conference with foreign journalists in
He indicated that he was not sure such a meeting could be held before U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice arrives again in the region on 28 March – one reason, Olmert said, is that President Abbas is traveling.
Olmert said: “We want to try to reach an understanding with the Palestinians, and I believe Mahmoud Abbas wants to reach an agreement with us. Palestinians will have to implement all the conditions for the Road Map, and I’m fully aware of what we have to do (as well), and I don’t deny it. In the meantime, we have to talk”.
He added: “While we still fight with the Palestinians, we talk with them in a way we never did in the past”.
The Israeli Prime Minister told the press that “What we are trying to reach this year is a very accurate outline and definition of all basic issues”.
Yes, he said, he wanted to see an agreement this year. “If we do not reach agreement this year, it will take time for any new (American) administration to get into all the complexities, so the sooner the better”.
Olmert maintained that “Any agreement is subject to implementation of the Road Map”. Yet, he said, dealing with the settlements “will be the outcome of negotiations. It’s very obvious that the negotiations will define in a very accurate way all our borders”.
But, Olmert cited the
He said that this had been made very clear at the outset of the present
Recent Israeli announcements of a number of new housing tenders for Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem and one in the West Bank (Givat Ze’ev), were made immediately after the recent attack by an East Jerusalem Palestinian on the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva, which killed eight students there (four of whom were children under the age of 18).
On Givat Zeev, Olmert brushed off any criticism. “Most of the apartments approved are already built, and paid for, for many years”, he said.
In an opinion piece published in Haaretz today, a former Palestinian Authority Minister of State Kadura Fares, one of the young Fatah leaders who also was a signatory to the Geneva Initiative, wrote that “Housing Minister Ze’ev Boim explained away the construction of 750 new housing units in the settlement of Givat Ze’ev by saying that the permits had been issued in 1999, but that construction had stopped due to, as he put it, the ‘outbreak of violence’. That is, the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising. According to Boim, the contractors went to court, and as a result of their petition, the government ordered the construction’s approval. Boim was talking, it seems to me, to Israelis and overseas leaders critical of the renewed construction. He did not notice that Palestinians were also listening to him. I am one of those who listened, and I understood from his statements that Boim is inviting us – the Palestinians – to start another intifada. Boim’s statements reminded me how, at the end of the last decade, at the height of the peace talks, when we were closer to the finish line than ever before, the Israelis continued unremittingly to build settlements. That is the case today: After Annapolis, the Paris conference, and the renewal of talks on the highest level, Israel is once more expanding its settlement construction. The conclusion: Only when we launch an uprising does construction in the settlements cease; under the umbrella of negotiations, the settlement enterprise is revived. This, despite the fact that every Palestinian and every Israeli knows that the settlements are the main obstacle to a peace treaty”…
Haaretz added: “The writer is a senior member of the Fatah movement, and a member of the Palestinian peace coalition”. The full opinion piece by Kadura Fares can be read here .
Male journalists drop pants to attend Cheney-Olmert briefing
Dion Nissenbaum, McClatchy newspaper group’s bureau chief in Jerusalem has explained it in a post today on his Blog: Checkpoint Jerusalem.
In Dion’s account, he explains that he complied with an order to drop his pants for a security check before the Saturday night press conference in Jerusalem of Israel’s Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney.
Dion does not seem traumatized by the scandalous security procedure. He says he is only insulted that journalists were not allowed to ask questions, after dropping their pants.
If there were any travelling press corps with Cheney, they wouldn’t have had to do this.
And journalists in Israel go through a rigorous accreditation process — they are not total unknowns. So this should never have happened.
What would have happened if they all had refused?
Dion wrote: “Security in Israel — from the airport to the Israeli parliament — is exceptionally tight, and getting into Olmert’s official residence was especially intrusive. First came the normal procedure of being pulled out of the line and questioned: How long have you lived here? Where do you live? Do you live alone? Do you have family here? Do you speak any Hebrew? Why do you travel to Jordan and Egypt? Have you been to Syria and Lebanon? Do you have friends in those countries? Etc. etc. etc… This process seemed to drag on especially long and a photographer who has lived here nearly a quarter century, has two kids and is married to an Israeli, stormed off after being held at the entrance for more than an hour. Once you make it past the first check, (if you make it through the first check) there’s the routine metal detector and x-ray machine, followed by the side trip behind the curtains for a body search. Only, this time, I was asked to drop my pants. ‘Really?’ I asked the security officer, who seemed slightly embarrassed by it all, though, since he does it all the time, I suspect he wasn’t really… The security guard said he needed to check the zipper of my jeans, though security also made other international reporters in normal pants strip before getting into the press conference. Strippin’ for Cheney might have been worth it – had we been given the chance to ask a question or two of the vice president. Instead, at the last minute, apparently, Cheney decided not to take questions … Fine. Lesson learned. That’s the last time I drop my pants for the vice president”.
Dion’s revelations were posted on 24 March on his Blog: Checkpoint Jerusalem here .
[Interesting: Dion doesn’t explain what happened to female journalists (if any)… I was told that this was a pool event, not open to the entire corps of accredited journalists]