Israel News
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July 14, 2008
Arad Family Says Info Not Enough
Jerusalem
The family of missing Israeli airman Ron Arad says the information provided by Hezbollah is not enough. The information, including previously unseen photos and a journal written by Arad, was transferred to Israel and given to the family Saturday. It was part of a United Nations-brokered deal to bring back to Israel two soldiers captured two years ago in exchange for five Lebanese terrorists and the bodies of about 200 Arabs who attempted to infiltrate Israel.
The Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Elded Regev, are widely believed to be dead. They were captured by Hezbollah on the northern border, sparking the 2006 war with Lebanon. Defense Minister Ehud Barak echoed the Arad family in a statement released by his office.
“The report on Ron Arad, as passed by Hezbollah, does not give a clear answer on the fate of Ron Arad and does not resolve the issue,” the statement said.
“We are compelled to continue to work to discover what happened to him.” Israel said Sunday that the exchange will take place Wednesday at the Rosh Hanikra Lebanon-Israel border crossing. The Israel Prison Service said it would release Samir Kuntar, who caused the death of four Israelis in a 1979 terror attack, as well as four other Lebanese terrorists—Khaled Zidan, Maher Kurani, Mohammed Sarur and Hussein Suleiman.
Israel Has ‘Amber Light’ on Iran Attack
President Bush has given Israel an “amber light” to prepare for a military strike against Iran, a Pentagon official said. Britain’s Sunday Times reported that a senior Pentagon official said the U.S. president told Israel that he would back a military strike on Iran’s main nuclear sites if diplomatic talks fail.
“Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you’re ready,” The Times quoted the official as saying. But amber will not turn to green without a workable military proposal from Israel and proof that Iran is planning to launch an attack of its own, the official said.
The report adds that Israel cannot expect to receive any help from U.S. troops and will not have access to U.S. military bases nearby in Iraq for refueling or other support. “It’s really all down to the Israelis,” the official told the Times. “This administration will not attack Iran. This has already been decided. But the president is really preoccupied with the nuclear threat against Israel and I know he doesn’t believe that anything but force will deter Iran.”
Pentagon officials are opposed to a strike on Iran, in part out of concern that it will put U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan in danger. The Times reported that there has been speculation that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who is facing a major corruption scandal at home, would order an attack on Iran to take attention away from his problems. The Times quoted one of Olmert’s closest friends as saying that “in three months’ time it will be a different Middle East.”
No Handshake for Olmert, Assad
Ehud Olmert and Bashar Assad did not shake hands at a Paris conference, but Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas met to advance peace. Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and Assad, the president of Syria, sat at the same table during the conference, though Assad was not present during Olmert’s speech to the gathering. Olmert and Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, met Sunday in Paris on the sidelines of a meeting of 43 foreign leaders to launch the Union for the Mediterranean, which is designed to bring the countries of the region into closer cooperation.
“It seems to me that we have never been as close to the possibility of reaching an accord as we are today,” Olmert told reporters during a joint news conference with Abbas and French President Nicolas Sarkozy following the meeting. Abbas said “it is in all of our interests to reach” peace.
“We should achieve peace for the people of the Middle East in general, but also for peace in the world.” Following the news conference, Sarkozy told journalists that in his meeting the day before with Assad, he discussed the Syrian leader’s potential contribution to the freeing of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, also a French citizen, who has been held by Hamas since 2006. Sarkozy also told reporters that he asked Assad to “bring him proof” that Iran was not planning to build nuclear weapons.
Earlier Sunday, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni addressed a meeting of foreign ministers. The Syrian foreign minister left the conference hall before Livni could begin her speech, Y-net reported, but representatives of other Arab countries that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel remained.
“I know that part of the conference participants view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an obstacle on the way to promoting joint projects, but I do not accept this,” Livni said. “Cooperation and joint ventures contribute to the leaders’ ability to make decisions. We have more common challenges in the region than conflicts.”