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Newsletter : 1fax0125.txt
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>Israel Faxx
>JN Jan. 25, 2001, Vol. 9, No. 13
Israel To Resume Palestinian Peace Talks
By VOA News Staff
Israel will resume peace talks with the Palestinians in Egypt Thursday. Senior Palestinian negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo told reporters that Israeli officials had contacted the Palestinian negotiating team and said they would return to Taba. Israel Radio also reported the resumption of talks, but the Israeli government has not yet commented.
Israel suspended the talks and recalled its negotiators Tuesday, following the murder of two Israelis near the Palestinian-controlled town of Tulkarem in the West Bank. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have been working this week to reach a peace agreement before Israel elects a new prime minister Feb. 6.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak issued a statement denouncing the killings as horrendous. The bodies were identified as belonging to the co-owners of a trendy restaurant in Tel Aviv.
Friends of the victims said they had gone to Tulkarem with an Israeli Arab friend to shop for flower pots for their restaurant. The Arab man with them was later freed by the killers.
The cousins - Moti Dayan, 27, and Etgar Zaituna, 34 - were abducted from a restaurant in Tulkarm, where they were dining with an Israeli-Arab friend, and taken to an open field near Israeli territory. There, the terrorists killed them with many shots to the head and chest.
An anonymous phone caller told an international news agency the Izzadin Kassam brigade of Hamas carried out the murders. But Palestinian reports from the West Bank indicated the killers could have been members of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat's Fatah movement. Others suggested it could have been a spontaneous revenge attack for the murder last month of a Palestinian activist from Tulkarem.
The Palestinian Authority has issued a statement deploring the killings and promising help in the investigation and arrest of those found guilty.
Israel's deputy defense minister, Efraim Sneh, has blamed the Palestinian Authority for not doing enough to curb the violence. But he says the marathon peace talks in Taba should resume soon, despite the murders.
Palestinians: What's the Big Deal?
By Arutz-7 News
Palestinian sources say they don't understand what Israel is all
excited about: "The Israeli soldiers kill Palestinians all the
time, and we don't stop the talks because of it."
An IDF spokesman dismissed the comments with disdain: "The Palestinians kill out of pure hatred and cruelty, while the Israeli soldiers act only from self-defense. Any such equation is totally out of place."
Likud Knesset member Yehoshua Matza said: "Israel is being humiliated - we argue amongst ourselves whether to resume the talks tonight or tomorrow, while meanwhile there are more and more funerals... There has never been a time like this in Israel, that on Israeli roads and in Jerusalem people are kidnapped and killed - and I'm not talking history, but rather about these very days...The absolute first thing is to restore the security, and then we'll be able to set clear lines for negotiations."
Palestinians Receive Multi-Million Dollar EU Grant
By Doug Bakshian (VOA-Luxembourg)
The European Commission, the executive body of the European Union, says it is making an emergency grant to the Palestinian Authority. The commission says it has authorized the transfer of up to $28 million (30 million euros) to help the Palestinian Authority meet urgent expenses, including salaries and costs relating to health and education.
Commission spokesman Gunnar Wiegand says the money is needed because Israel has, in recent months, stopped making monetary transfers to the Palestinian Authority that it agreed to several years ago. Under a 1994 Israeli-Palestinian protocol, Israel said it would transfer to the Palestinians the proceeds collected from certain indirect taxes and customs duties that Palestinians pay to Israel.
The European Union is the biggest source of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians. Since 1995, the European Investment Bank alone has provided more than $210 million for road, water, and other projects in the West Bank and Gaza.
Aliyah Trips to Israel Available
By Arutz-7 News
Following its successful immigration-to-Israel program last year, the homegrown initiative Aliyah B'Simcha - Happy Immigration - is back in business.
The town of Ma'aleh Levonah - 30 minutes north of Jerusalem - is arranging an Aliyah pilot-trip package during the week of Purim, between March 6 and March 11. Families interested in immigrating to Israel will be hosted at low cost, and will be treated to housing and jobs seminars, meetings with residents and school representatives, and tours of Yesha and other areas. The organizers will even reimburse the families for the costs of the flights - if they make Aliyah by this summer and buy a home in Ma'aleh Levonah or the vicinity. The program is being arranged by Eric Wiseberg, <"eriklita@netvision.net.il">.
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