Arab

RAMALLAH, West Bank (AP) -- Israel apologized Wednesday for disrupting the visit of Vice President Joe Biden with its announcement of 1,600 new homes in disputed east Jerusalem, but made clear it had no intention of reversing the order that has cast a shadow over the latest U.S. push for Mideast peace.

As Biden held talks with top Palestinian leaders in the West Bank, Israeli Interior Minister Eli Yishai, whose office announced the new construction on lands Palestinians claim for a future state, said the problem was about timing, not substance.

The Inter-Parliamentary Union is considering sending representatives to oversee the legal proceedings against Hadash chairman Mohammed Barakeh, charged with assaulting a police officer during an anti-separation fence rally in the West Bank.
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After a year of grandiose declarations on Mideast peace prospects and a gazillion trips to the region by US Envoy George Mitchell, the Obama administration has come up with this?

"Proximity Talks." Look it up in the Dictionary of Realpolitik and you will find the following: "Negotiations going nowhere fast. Wear seatbelts lest the speed of self-destruction spins you off the earth's axis."

(Videos recorded by Rachel Tabachnick; more videos coming shortly.)

Recently, I attended the burial of an important friend. My friend was a Rabbi. Rabbi Avner Bergman was an extraordinary guide and, even though I am Muslim, I considered him to be my very own Rabbi. At the encouragement of a Jewish American friend in DC and an Israeli friend in LA, I wrote about the impact of his loss in the Jerusalem Post because I wanted to show through our relationship, there is a special plane, a dimension in which Muslims and Jews can share a mutual love.

The people of Gaza appear to have been the recent victims of the arrogance (or what some believe to be the bias) of the NY Times. The stubbornness of Bill Keller, the executive editor of the NY Times, in refusing to relocate his Jerusalem reporter has caused a considerable drop in the paper's coverage of Gaza. The Times has refused to relocate their reporter covering Israel and Palestine after the appearance of a conflict of interest surfaced.

The Talmud describes Jews as rachmanim b'nei rachmanim: a compassionate people who are sensitive to human suffering. They are unable to sit by and ignore the terrible drama of human misery. Instead, they get up and do something about it.

Israeli police lifted restrictions on Muslim worshipers at the Temple Mount two days after Arab youths hurled rocks down on Jews praying at the Western Wall.

Throughout his life, one of Yasser Arafat's favorite themes was that there was no historical Jewish connection to Israel.

He would assert that there never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, that the Western Wall has no Jewish significance, and even that Abraham himself wasn't a Jew.

Indeed, he went so far as to reject the Jewish link to Jerusalem in the presence of President Bill Clinton during the Camp David talks, evoking outrage from the American leader and offering insight into why the negotiations were doomed to fail.

Israeli and Palestinian activists protest eviction of Arab families.