Netanyahu endorses Palestinian state

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday endorsed for the first time the creation of a Palestinian state, provided it was demilitarised, after weeks of pressure from Washington.

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But he also said the Palestinians must recognise the Jewish character of Israel, a condition Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has long rejected, and ruled out a halt to all settlement activity as demanded by the United States.

"If the Palestinians recognise Israel as the state of the Jewish people, then we arrive at a solution based on a demilitarised Palestinian state alongside Israel," Netanyahu said.

"The Palestinian territory will be without arms, will not control air space, will not be able to have arms enter, without the possibility of striking alliances with Iran or (the Lebanese Shiite militia) Hezbollah."
Netanyahu also ruled out a complete stop to settlement activity in the occupied West Bank - which the Palestinians have said is a condition for relaunching negotiations - and said Palestinian refugees would not be resettled inside Israel's borders.

"The heart of the (Middle East) conflict has always been the Arabs' refusal to accept the existence of the Jewish state," Netanyahu said. "The withdrawals that Israel has carried out in the past have not changed this reality."

The Palestinians recognised Israel as a state in 1993 as part of the Oslo accords but have refused to recognise it as "Jewish" as doing so would effectively mean giving up the right of return for Palestinian refugees, a key Palestinian demand since Israel was created in 1948.

The Palestinians slammed the speech, saying it was aimed at sabotaging peace efforts.

"This speech torpedoes all peace initiatives in the region," Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP.

"It hobbles all efforts to save the peace process, in a clear defiance of the US administration."

The speech was billed as a response to Obama's address to the Muslim world 10 days ago in which he reiterated Washington's "unbreakable" bond with Israel but also said the Palestinian situation was "intolerable."

Obama has vowed to aggressively pursue a two-state solution and in recent weeks Washington had ramped up pressure on Israel's new government to endorse the idea of a Palestinian state and halt all settlement activity.

The blunt words to Israel from Obama's administration have raised fears in the Jewish state that main ally Washington may ease its support as it tries to improve its relations with the Muslim world.

It has also put Netanyahu in a difficult position, as his heavily right-wing 10-week-old government could collapse if he gives in to too many of Washington's demands.

"It was a brilliant speech but it had one miserable phrase that laid the cornerstone for the creation of a state of Palestine," Likud MP Danny Danon said following the address.

"I will do everything in my power in parliament to prevent this from happening."

Former US president Jimmy Carter told the Israeli Haaretz daily on Sunday that Israel risked a head-on collision with Washington over the settlements.

But a Western diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said the speech "is certainly encouraging and gives us a lot of work with."

"I think everyone understands Israel's concerns and the demand for a demilitarised (Palestinian) state has always been part of the agenda."

Washington provides Israel with 2.4 billion dollars of annual military aid as well as diplomatic support, making the United States its most important ally.

Israel and the Palestinians relaunched their negotiations at a US conference in November 2007, but the talks made little progress and were suspended during Israel's blistering war on Gaza in December and January.

Netanyahu also responded to the elections in Iran, saying the "biggest threat to Israel, the Middle East and the entire world is the crossing of a nuclear weapon with radical Islam."

"During my next trips, I will work in particular toward an international coalition against the nuclear arming of Iran," he said.

Israel, the region's sole if undeclared nuclear power, has accused Iran of racing to develop atomic weapons under the guise of a civilian nuclear programme, allegations vehemently denied by Tehran.
Source : AFP

Obama asks Indonesia to ‘join hands’

Erwida Maulia , The Jakarta Post

US President Barack Obama called his Indonesian counterpart Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono on Friday to express Washington’s willingness to involve Jakarta in tackling , including the environment and the financial crisis.

Obama also told Yudhoyono in the 10-minute phone conversation that he wanted to build “a comprehensive partnership” between the two countries, said Indonesian presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal.

The US president also thanked Indonesia for the “warm” and “friendly” welcome it had extended to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she visited the country last month, Dino said.

“President Obama said he wanted to work together with Indonesia in coping with global issues, such as climate change,” Dino told The Jakarta Post.

“The two leaders also discussed the prospects and preparations ahead of the G-20 Summit in London this April, and they pledged to make it a success.”

Yudhoyono and Obama will attend the annual summit of the group of the world’s largest economies, in which Indonesia and the United States are members.

Regarding bilateral relations between Indonesia and the United States, Dino said Obama agreed with Yudhoyono’s proposal on a comprehensive partnership between the two countries, and was willing to realize it.

The partnership was proposed by Yudhoyono during their first phone conversation in November last year. Yudhoyono was on a stopover in Seattle on his way back home from the APEC Summit in Lima when he received then president-elect Obama’s phone call.

Secretary Clinton said during her visit to Jakarta that “building a comprehensive partnership with Indonesia is a critical step on behalf of the United States’ commitment to smart power”.

“The partnership is welcomed by President Obama, who wants to realize the proposal,” Dino said.

He added Obama still maintained his fluency in pronouncing Indonesian words.

“When President [Yudhoyono] began with, ‘Apa kabar?’ [How are you?], Obama answered in Indonesian, ‘Baik-baik’ [I’m fine],” Dino said.

But he said the two leaders did not specifically discuss relations between the United States and the Muslim world.

Vice President Jusuf Kalla touched on this issue when he met with his US counterpart Joe Biden in Washington in early February.

Kalla said during the meeting that Indonesia hailed the changes Obama had initiated, but was curious to see if they would have an impact on relations between the West and the Muslim world, which took a hammering under the administration of former president George W. Bush.

Kingdom will attend Cairo meet on Gaza

Arab News

JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia will participate in an international conference to be held in Cairo on March 2 to mobilize fund for the reconstruction of Gaza.

Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal will lead the Saudi delegation, which will include Finance Minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf and Yousuf Al-Bassam, deputy chairman and managing director of Saudi Fund for Development.

“The Kingdom’s participation in the conference comes in line with its continuous support for the Palestinian cause,” an official source told the Saudi Press Agency. Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah has offered $1 billion for Gaza reconstruction.

Meanwhile, the US government plans to offer some $900 million to help rebuild the Gaza strip following Israel’s December-January military incursion, the New York Times reported yesterday.

The aid will be provided through United Nations and nongovernmental organizations, the Times reported, citing unnamed administration officials.

Washington considers Hamas, the group which has ruled Gaza since June 2007, a terrorist organization, and avoids any direct contact with them.

Apologies over, Obama throws down gauntlet

Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama warned yesterday that failure to act on an economic recovery package could plunge the nation into a long-lasting recession that might prove irreversible, and made a fresh call to a recalcitrant Congress to move quickly.

Last week he struggled to deal with mounting anger regarding the excesses of the wealthy on Wall Street, he criticized “greed and irresponsibility,” then declared that the Wall Street bonuses — $18 billion paid out in Wall Street bonuses last year — were “shameful.”

This week, he announced that companies getting future bailout funds would have to cap executive compensation at $500,000 and place limits on stock options.

Condemning a “culture of narrow self-interest and short-germ gain at the expense of everything else,” Obama said that while “we believe success should be rewarded... what gets people upset, and rightfully so, are executives being rewarded for failure.”

In his first op-ed piece as president, Obama wrote in The Washington Post yesterday that each day without his stimulus package, Americans would lose more jobs, savings and homes.

“This recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose five million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse,” Obama wrote.

His message came as congressional leaders struggled to control the huge stimulus bill that’s been growing larger by the day in the Senate. The addition of a new tax break for homebuyers Wednesday evening sent the price tag well past $900 billion.

Obama, meanwhile, has grown combative since his apologies this week over his administration’s chief performance officer withdrew her nomination because of unpaid taxes, and, on the same day, the president’s choice to be secretary of health and human services withdrew his nomination, also because of his unpaid taxes.

Making matters worse, Tom Daschle and Nancy Killefer pulled announced their resignations just hours before Obama was to hold a host of individual interviews with major broadcast networks.

His sessions with the news anchors turned into a series of ‘mea culpas’: “I messed up,” he told CBS’s Katie Couric.

“I screwed up,” he told NBC’s Brian Williams.

“This is self-induced injury,” he told ABC’s Charles Gibson.

His most thoughtful response was with CNN’s Anderson Cooper: “I campaigned on change in Washington, bottom-up politics, and I don’t want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards — one for the powerful people and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying taxes.”

Having apologized earlier this week, Obama has now grown combative. Americans voted for him, not the other guy, he told Americans, and demanded that lawmakers “put aside politics” and start working together — a statement aimed mainly at the Republican lawmakers who prefer tax cuts to a new spending to bounce Americans out of its financial mess.

“In the past few days I’ve heard criticisms of this plan that echo the very same failed theories that help lead us into this crisis — the notion that tax cuts alone will solve all our problems,” the president said at the White House Wednesday.

“I reject that theory, and so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.”

Senate Democratic leaders hope for passage of the legislation by Friday at the latest, although prospects appear to hinge on crafting a series of spending reductions that would make the bill more palatable to centrists in both parties.

With the Senate preparing to vote on its version of the economic stimulus package, Obama has stepped up his sales pitch to put public pressure on lawmakers to approve it.

His latest plea came on the same day the economy dealt with another dose of bad news: A massive jump in jobless claims and another round of weak retail sales.

Initial jobless claims rose to 626,000, a 26-year high, the Labor Department said. And the number of claims by people continuing to apply for unemployment benefits reached a new record of nearly 4.8 million.

The housing tax break was the most notable attempt to date to add help for the crippled industry and gave Republicans a victory as they work to remake the legislation more to their liking.

Iran says will not halt nuclear work despite U.S.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will never halt its nuclear work and expects the United States to change its "failed" carrot-and-stick approach to solving the atomic row with Tehran, the Foreign Ministry said on Monday.

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama said on Sunday he was prepared to offer Iran economic incentives to stop its nuclear program, which Washington says is aimed at making bombs. But he warned that sanctions could be toughened if it refused.

"When they stick to their past view regarding suspending uranium enrichment, our answer will be: Iran will never suspend uranium enrichment," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hassan Qashqavi told reporters.

Washington, which cut ties with Tehran after the 1979 revolution that ousted the U.S.-backed shah, has been pushing hard to isolate Iran over its nuclear plans.

Iran, the world's fourth largest oil producer, insists it wants to master nuclear technology to generate electricity so it can save more of its oil and gas reserves for exports.

Enrichment is the part of Iran's program that most worries the West because, if uranium is enriched much more, it can make warhead material as well as being used to make fuel for power plants.

"If their (Washington's) new stance is to remove concerns about Iran's nuclear activities, we are ready for that. But our new expectation is ... that they should recognize our right to nuclear technology," Qashqavi said.

"The old policy was carrot and stick. This needs to change and transform into an interactive policy," he said.

During a presidential debate with Republican rival John McCain in October, Obama said his administration would work to restrict gasoline imports to Iran, which cannot make enough refined fuel to meet all domestic needs and has to import some.

Speaking on Sunday, Obama told a U.S. broadcaster: "We are willing to talk to them directly and give them a clear choice and ultimately let them make a determination in terms of whether they want to do this the hard way or the easy way."

Obama takes office on January 20.

"When they talk about change, everyone expects a changed policy to entail something very different to what President (George) Bush was following," Qashqavi said, adding everyone should "wait and see" what approach Obama would take in office.

Iran said last week it did not believe U.S. policy would change under Obama. Its refusal to stop enrichment, has drawn three rounds of U.N. sanctions since 2006, as well as separate U.S. measures.

(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Michigan's first Muslim woman state lawmaker

WASHINGTON — Rashida Tlaib, 32, has made history by grabbing a seat in the Michigan legislature, becoming the first Muslim woman ever to serve in the state legislature.
"Allah had chosen me for this job which I did not know before," Tlaib, the eldest daughter of Palestinian immigrant parents, told IslamOnline.net in an exclusive interview.
Tlaib, a lawyer and community activist who had never thought of coming into politics, easily won a seat in Michigan House of representatives on November 4, the day of the historic White House elections. She defeated her Republican opponent by a 9 to 1 margin in her southwest Detroit district, largely populated by blacks and Hispanics.
"My parents had taught me the importance of hard work, honesty and commitment. And those values today paid me in the form of being electing to the prestigious position of Michigan State Legislature, representing a diverse community of Latino, African American and Arabs," Tlaib said proudly.
Born in Michigan, she is the eldest of her 13 siblings of Palestinian parents who migrated to the US in the early 1970s. Her father was born in Beit Hanina, a suburb of Al-Quds, while her mother was raised in Beit Ur El Foka, near the West Bank city of Ramallah.
"I had to take care of all of younger brothers and sisters because I was the first in my family to have earned a high school degree," she recalls.
"It was a tough task to continue my studies while working full-time."
She also feels indebted to outgoing Democratic Rep. Steve Tobocman, the majority floor leader.
"I would have never been here today, if my Jewish boss and predecessor Steve Tobocman had not encouraged me to venture into politics," he said.
"I got my inspiration from Tobocman who insisted that I must take part in the elections."
Tobocman had recruited Tlaib years ago to serve as part of his House staff in recognition of her passion for social justice and ability to work with people across the political aisle. He encouraged her to run for his seat because he could not couldn't seek re-election over term limits.
• Myths
Tlaib, who earned her political science bachelor degree in 1998 and law degree in 2004, believes her election to the State Legislature debunks many myths.
"There was a lot of propaganda against me in some of the local press that she is a Muslim extremist and that her election to the state legislature will send negative signals and that she will work only for the rights of Muslim community," she remembers.
"But I didn't care and never attacked any of my seven opponents. I just kept working work. I campaigned door-to-door, and I think it was my aggressive door-knocking campaign of around 8000 families that paid me back a lot."
Tlaib said the voters were interested in her commitment for the social service and not to her religious or ethnic background.
"There were only 2 percent Arab Muslims in my constituency. Majority of the voters were Latino who made 40 percent and African Americans who were 25 percent," she explained.
"But ninety percent of them voted me, which is a great signal of optimism for American Muslims.
"If any Muslim or even a woman want to achieve something, she needs only a hard work and honesty."
According to the American Muslim Alliance, only nine Muslims were serving in state legislatures nationwide before Tuesday's elections. Tlaib insists that as a Democratic Representative for Michigan State Legislature, she will be pursuing policy change in the larger interest of the community.
"As a lawyer and social activist, I was already working for social justice, immigrant and civil rights for people in the Southwest Detroit."
She used to provide social and advocacy services to thousands of Southwest Detroit families through the Latin Americans for Social & Economic Development (LASED), the Arab Community Center for Economic & Social Services (ACCESS), the International Institute of Metro Detroit and the Neighborhood Tax Center.
• Proud Muslim
Tlaib is a mother of three-year-old Adam.
Though she is living happily with her husband Fayez, she is still taking care of some of her siblings, providing them proper education and guidance.
"Though I don't wear hijab but I am a practicing Muslim, performing five times prayers daily and will be carrying along my prayer rug to my office in Lansing," she told IOL referring to the headquarters of the Michigan legislature.
"I am sure wearing hijab or following Islam is not an obstacle here in achieving one's goals, provided there is commitment and persistent efforts," she said emphatically.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Tlaib had to struggle hard for the rights of immigrant families in her community especially Arab Muslims. But finally she succeeded in getting back their civil liberties and restoring their image and confidence.
In 2007, Tlaib was selected as fellow by Michigan Center for Progressive Leadership in recognition of her leadership skills.
"Like many other immigrant Americans, my family too had an American Dream, and today it got materialized," she told IOL.
"I fee myself fortunate enough to serve the community where I grew up and which shaped me in a Muslim representative woman that I am today."
Source : Islam Online

CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY TEACHING THE U.S. TREASURY ABOUT ISLAMIC FINANCE 101!

Sheild of the US Treasury.

The Treasury Department has announced it will teach “Islamic finance” to U.S. banking regulatory agencies, Congress and other parts of the executive branch today in Washington, D.C. – but critics say it is opening a door to American funding of Islamic extremism.

‘Islamic Finance 101′

According to its announcement, the “Islamic Finance 101″ forum is “designed to help inform the policy community about Islamic financial services, which are an increasingly important part of the global financial industry.”

The Treasury Department has collaborated with Harvard University’s Islamic Finance Project to coordinate the event. The department says it expects about 100 people will attend the seminar.

Some speakers include Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Neel Kashkari, senior adviser to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Jr.; Harvard Business School professor Samuel Hayes; Mahmoud El-Gamal, chair of Islamic economics, finance and management at Rice University and Islamic finance adviser to the Treasury Department; Sarah Bell of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Yusuf Talal DeLorenzo, Shariah adviser and Islamic scholar; Michael McMillan, chair of the Islamic Legal Forum at the American Bar Association and professor of Islamic finance; and Rushdi Siddiqui, global director for the Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes and vigorous advocate for Islamic finance.
Source : Shariah Finance Watch