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Newsletter : 1fax0209.txt
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>Israel Faxx
>JN Feb. 9, 2001, Vol. 9, No. 24
Election Statistics by Arutz-7 News
Ariel Sharon: 1,618,110 valid votes or 62.5%
Ehud Barak: 967,760 valid votes or 37.4%
Number of Eligible Voters: 4,504,769
Total Ballots Cast: 2,664,255 (59.1%)
Invalid Ballots: 78,385
Valid Votes: 2,585,870
Palestinian Group Takes Responsibility for Explosions
By Laurie Kassman (VOA-Jerusalem)
Two explosions rocked the Jerusalem ultra-orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim Thursday. Police say at least two-people were injured and several others suffered from shock. The Palestinian Popular Resistance Forces claimed responsibility.
Large groups of residents immediately gathered in the street to protest, some calling for death to the Arabs. Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon called the explosion a tragic event that demands Israelis to unite against terror. Sharon told reporters the attack only reaffirms his pledge not to renew peace talks with the Palestinians until the violence ends. Palestinian radicals had threatened to carry out terrorist attacks inside Israel if Sharon was elected.
Sharon Says He'll Talk Peace if Palestinians Stop Attacks
By VOA News
Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon is telling the Palestinians they must stop attacks and violence if they want peace talks to resume.
Before Thursday's blast in Jerusalem, Sharon sent a letter to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat spelling out his demands for new talks. The letter responded to a congratulatory note Arafat sent the new prime minister after his election victory Tuesday.
A Sharon advisor rejected a Palestinian call to adhere to the informal agreement reached at emergency talks in Taba, Egypt late last year. Both sides said then that peace talks should continue to be based on Israel continuing to give up captured Arab land in exchange for peace. The advisor says no accord was reached in Taba and anything discussed there is not binding on the new prime minister.
Syria: Peace Talks Only If Israel Agrees to Return Golan
By VOA News
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has reaffirmed that his government is ready to resume peace talks with Israel only if the Jewish state agrees to withdraw from occupied Arab land.
In remarks published Thursday in an Arab newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat, Assad said there has been no change in Syria's position since his late father, Hafez al-Assad, laid out the goal of a "just and comprehensive peace."
President Assad said that Syria's goal remains a "land-for-peace" agreement, under which Israel gives up all occupied land. He said Syria can only sign a peace deal that guarantees the rights of "all Arabs, with no exceptions."
Syria has demanded that Israel commit to a total withdrawal from the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau Israel captured from Syria during the 1967 Middle East war, before there can be a resumption of peace talks.
Israeli Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon repeatedly said during his election campaign that for security reasons he does not favor returning the Golan Heights to Syria.
Palestinian Refugees: Part 1 of 8
By Gil Butler (VOA News)
More than three million Palestinians are officially designated by the United Nations as refugees. There are perhaps 40,000 Palestinians in Kuwait, one-tenth of the number in the country before the Gulf War. Lebanon will not give citizenship to the 400,000 refugees there, nor are they allowed to work in some 70 job categories. More than 300,000 Palestinian refugees are in Syria, under firm Syrian government control.
The largest number of Palestinian refugees, about two million, is in Jordan, where they make up more than one-half the population. There are 10 official United Nations Palestinian camps in Jordan and they have been here a long time, some since 1948.
The simplest definition of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute is that two opposing forces claim the same pieces of property. That simple fact becomes clear whether you talk to Israelis or Palestinians.
Seven-year-old Mahmoud, whose parents were born in a refugee camp in Lebanon and whose grandparents were only infants when the family left what is now northern Israel, insists he is a Palestinian who wants to go to live there.
A Palestinian who lives in Jordan and works for the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says Israel's Ben Gurion airport is built where his family lived before 1948. But he still favors what Palestinians call the "right of return." He wants a choice, even if he chooses to stay in Jordan.
The military commander at Ein el Helweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon says if the Knesset in Jerusalem is built on Palestinian land, even it must be removed. He says the Palestinian struggle will continue into the next generation.
An angry Palestinian aid worker in Beirut says the Polish, Russian, and American Jews who immigrated to Israel should be sent back to their original homes.
Whether - and in what number - Palestinian refugees would be allowed the choice of moving back to what is now Israel is perhaps as intractable an issue as sovereignty over the Jerusalem holy site called Haram al Sharif by Arabs and the Temple Mount by Jews.
Privately, some Palestinians living in Arab countries say even if they were granted the right of return, they would think long and hard before returning to a Palestinian state. Meanwhile, many cheer on the Palestinian Intifada that has resulted in hundreds deaths and thousands of injuries since September.
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