The Jim Bakker Show

Iran’s Rouhani accuses West of exploiting Sunni-Shi’ite rift, raps Israel

By Parisa Hafezi

ANKARA (Reuters) – Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani accused Western powers of trying to exploit differences between the world’s Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims to divert attention from the Israel-Palestinian conflict, state television reported on Friday.

Rouhani’s comments came as tens of thousands of Iranians joined anti-Israel rallies across the country to express support for the Palestinians. They chanted “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” and burned the Israeli flag.

“The global arrogance (the United States and its allies) wants to create discord among Muslims … Unity is the only way to restore stability in the region,” Rouhani said.

“We stand with the dispossessed Palestinian nation.”

Opposition to Israel, which Tehran refuses to recognize, has been a cornerstone of Iranian policy since its 1979 Islamic revolution. Shi’ite Muslim Iran backs Palestinian and Lebanese militant groups who oppose peace with Israel.

“The Zionist regime (Israel) is a regional base for America and the global arrogance … Disunity and discord among Muslim and terrorist groups in the region … have diverted us from the important issue of Palestine,” Rouhani said.

Shi’ite-led Iran has repeatedly called on its Sunni Muslim rival Saudi Arabia to help improve their strained bilateral relations and work for stability in the Middle East.

Arch-rivals for regional hegemony, the two oil producers are on opposite sides in proxy battles in the region, where they back competing factions in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Bahrain.

Ties have worsened since Riyadh’s execution in January of prominent Shi’ite cleric Nimr al-Nimr prompted attacks on the Saudi embassy in Tehran. Saudi Arabia subsequently cut all ties with Iran.

Riyadh is worried that a landmark nuclear deal reached between Iran, the United States and five other major powers in 2015 will help Tehran gain the upper hand in their regional standoff.

MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM

Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) said in March that “the occupied Palestinian territories are within the range of most of the Islamic Republic’s missiles”, Iran’s state television Press TV reported.

A senior IRGC commander said Iran’s new Russian-made S-300 missile defense system would be operational by March.

“Its divisions are being delivered to Iran and the system will be operational by the end of this Iranian year,” the semi-official Tasnim quoted Amir Farzad Esmaili as saying.

Russia delivered the first part of the S-300 missile defense system to Iran in April, one of the most advanced systems of its kind that can engage multiple aircraft and ballistic missiles around 150 km (90 miles) away.

“Hezbollah has 100,000 missiles that are ready to hit Israel to liberate the occupied Palestinian territories if the Zionist regime repeats its past mistakes,” Tasnim quoted IRGC deputy head Hossein Salami as saying.

(Editing by Gareth Jones)

Palestinian stabs 13 year old Israeli girl in her bedroom

Relatives and friends mourn during the funeral of Israeli girl Hallel Yaffa Ariel at a cemetery in the West Bank city of Hebron

By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A Palestinian fatally stabbed a 13-year-old Israeli girl in her bedroom in a settlement in the occupied West Bank on Thursday, the military said, as international sponsors of frozen peace talks prepared to issue a report on the impasse.

Israeli guards in the settlement of Kiryat Arba shot the attacker dead and one member of the civilian armed response team was wounded, a military spokesman and a settler leader said.

The assailant was identified as a 19-year-old male from a nearby Palestinian village. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his home would be destroyed and permits enabling his relatives to work in Israel revoked.

Netanyahu, in a statement, called on Palestinian leaders to condemn the attack and take immediate steps to stop what he described as incitement that Israel has cited as a main factor behind a string of assaults over the last nine months.

“The horrific murder of an innocent girl in her bed sheds light on the bloodlust and lack of humanity displayed by the terrorists we are facing,” he said.

Malachi Levinger, chairman of Kiryat Arba’s governing council, said the assailant climbed a security fence and entered a home where he attacked Hallel Yaffa Ariel, 13. Photos released by the military showed blood on the bed and floor in her room.

Since October, Palestinians have killed 33 Israelis and two visiting U.S. citizens in a wave of street attacks, mostly stabbings. Israeli forces have shot dead at least 198 Palestinians, 134 of whom Israel has said were assailants. Others were killed in clashes and protests.

Palestinian street attacks no longer occur on a near-daily basis but even less frequent incidents, such as a shooting that killed four people in Tel Aviv on June 8, have kept Israelis on edge.

Palestinian leaders say assailants have acted out of desperation over the collapse of peace talks in 2014 and Israeli settlement expansion in occupied territory that Palestinians seek for an independent state. Most countries view the settlements as illegal. Israel disputes this.

Israel says incitement in the Palestinian media and personal problems at home have been important factors that have spurred assailants, often teenagers, to launch attacks.

Tensions over Jewish access to a contested Jerusalem holy site, revered by Muslims as Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) and Jews as Temple Mount, have also fueled the violence.

Spurred by the bloodshed and diplomatic stalemate, the “Quartet” of sponsors of Middle East peace negotiations – the United States, European Union, United Nations and Russia – were expected to issue a report before the weekend recommending “confidence-building steps” towards a two-state solution.

Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, have said the report would be critical of Israeli settlement building and anti-Israeli incitement and violence by Palestinians.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Israel, Turkey restore ties in deal spurred by energy prospects

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu looks on during a meeting with his Italian counterpart Matteo Renzi at Chigi Palace in Rome, Italy June 27, 2016.

By Ercan Gurses and Jeffrey Heller

ANKARA/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel and Turkey announced on Monday they would normalize ties after a six-year rupture, a rare rapprochement in the divided Middle East driven by the prospect of lucrative Mediterranean gas deals as well as mutual fears over growing security risks.

Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said the two countries would exchange ambassadors as soon as possible.

The mending in relations between the once-firm allies after years of negotiations raises the prospect of eventual cooperation to exploit natural gas reserves worth hundreds of billions of dollars under the eastern Mediterranean, officials have said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it opened the way for possible Israeli gas supplies to Europe via Turkey.

The move also comes as the Middle East is polarized by Syria’s civil war and as the rise of Islamic State threatens regional security, leaving both countries in need of new alliances.

Relations between Israel and what was once its only Muslim ally crumbled after Israeli marines stormed an aid ship in May 2010 to enforce a naval blockade of the Hamas-run Gaza Strip and killed 10 Turkish activists on board.

Speaking after meeting U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry in Rome, Netanyahu said the agreement was an important step. “It has also immense implications for the Israeli economy, and I use that word advisedly,” he told reporters.

Kerry welcomed the deal, saying, “We are obviously pleased in the administration. This is a step we wanted to see happen.”

Turkey expelled Israel’s ambassador and froze military cooperation after a 2011 U.N. report into the Israeli raid on the Mavi Marmara largely exonerated the Jewish state. Israel and NATO member Turkey, which both border Syria, reduced intelligence sharing and canceled joint military exercises.

Netanyahu made clear the naval blockade of Gaza, which Ankara had wanted lifted under the deal, would remain in force, although humanitarian aid could continue to be transferred to Gaza via Israeli ports.

“This is a supreme security interest of ours. I was not willing to compromise on it. This interest is essential to prevent the force-buildup by Hamas and it remains as has been and is,” Netanyahu said.

But Yildirim said the “wholesale” blockade of Gaza was largely lifted under the deal, enabling Turkey to deliver humanitarian aid and other non-military products.

A first shipment of 10,000 tonnes would be sent next Friday, he said, and work would begin immediately to tackle Gaza’s water and power supply crisis.

“Our Palestinian brothers in Gaza have suffered a lot and we have made it possible for them to take a breath with this agreement,” Yildirim told a news conference in Ankara.

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas by phone on Sunday night and told him the deal would improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza, sources in his office said. They said Western-backed Abbas, who lost control of Gaza to Hamas in fighting in 2007, had expressed satisfaction.

ENERGY TIES

Restoring relations with Ankara is a linchpin in Israel’s strategy to unlock its natural gas wealth. It is looking for export markets and is exploring a pipeline to Turkey as one option, both for consumers there and as a connection to Europe.

“This is a strategic matter for the state of Israel. This matter could not have been advanced without this agreement, and now we will take action to advance it,” Netanyahu said.

Gas, he said, had the potential to strengthen Israel’s coffers “with a huge fortune”.

Shares in Turkey’s Zorlu Energy <ZOREN.IS>, which has activities in Israel, rose 11 percent on news of the agreement. Israeli energy stocks also rose in Tel Aviv.

Yildirim was more cautious.

“Firstly let normalization begin and, after that, the level to which we cooperate on whatever subject will be tied to the efforts of the two countries,” he said. “There is no point in talking about these details now.”

Israel, which had already offered its apologies for the 2010 raid on the Mavi Marmara activist ship – one of Ankara’s three conditions for a deal – agreed to pay out $20 million to the bereaved and injured. The deal requires Turkey pass legislation protecting Israeli soldiers against related lawsuits.

A senior Turkish official described the agreement as a “diplomatic victory”, even though Israel pledged to maintain the Gaza blockade it says is needed to curb arms smuggling by Hamas, an Islamist group that last fought a war with Israel in 2014.

“Israel comes out on top here,” said Louis Fishman, assistant professor of history at Brooklyn College in New York, who specializes in Turkish and Israeli affairs.

“From the start it believed that a deal could be worked out where Turkish aid was able to enter the Gaza Strip under Israeli supervision. It seems this is what was struck.”

(Additional reporting by Warren Strobel in Rome, Dan Williams in Jerusalem, Daren Butler and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Israeli troops say kill Palestinian attacker in West Bank

Israel security after the death of a Palestinian attacker in the West Bank

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian woman who rammed a vehicle into a parked car near an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank on Friday, injuring two people sitting inside, the army said.

“Forces on site responded and fired toward the attacker, resulting in her death,” a military spokeswoman said.

Palestinian officials had no immediate comment.

Palestinian knife, shooting and car ramming attacks have killed 32 Israelis and two visiting U.S. citizens over the past eight months. Israeli forces have shot dead at least 198 Palestinians, 135 of whom Israel has said were assailants. Others were killed in clashes and protests.

Religious and political tensions over a Jerusalem site sacred to both Muslims and Jews have fueled the worst wave of Israeli-Palestinian violence since the 2014 Gaza war.

Confrontations have been exacerbated by Palestinians’ frustration over Israel’s 48-year occupation of land they seek for an independent state and the expansion of settlements in those territories which were captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Andrew Heavens)

Abbas says some Israeli rabbis called for poisoning Palestinian water

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accuses rabbis of poisoning the water

By Robin Emmott and Dan Williams

BRUSSELS/JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday accused Israeli rabbis of calling for the poisoning of Palestinian water, in what appeared to be an invocation of a widely debunked media report that recalled a medieval anti-Semitic libel.

Abbas’s remarks, in a speech to the European parliament, did not appear on the official transcript issued by his office, suggesting he may have spoken off the cuff as he condemned Israeli actions against Palestinians amid stalled peace talks.

“Only a week ago, a number of rabbis in Israel announced, and made a clear announcement, demanding that their government poison the water to kill the Palestinians,” Abbas said.

“Isn’t that clear incitement to commit mass killings against the Palestinian people?”

Israeli officials did not immediately respond to the remarks, which were made as Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, made a parallel visit to Brussels.

Rivlin’s office said Abbas had turned down a European proposal that the two meet there. A spokesman for Abbas said any such meeting would require more preparation.

Israeli-Palestinian peace talks collapsed in 2014.

Abbas, who received a standing ovation from EU lawmakers after his speech, gave no source for his information — and there has been no evidence over the past week of any call by Israeli rabbis to poison Palestinian water.

MASSACRES

Reports of an alleged rabbinical edict emerged on Sunday, when the Turkish state news agency Anadolu said that a “Rabbi Shlomo Mlma, chairman of the Council of Rabbis in the West Bank settlements”, had issued an advisory to allow Jewish settlers to take such action.

The same day, the Palestinian Foreign Ministry, on its website, cited what it said was a water-poisoning call from a “Rabbi Mlmad” and demanded his arrest.

Reuters and other news outlets in Israel could not locate any rabbi named Shlomo Mlma or Mlmad, and there is no listed organization called the Council of Rabbis in the West Bank.

Gulf News, in a report on Sunday, said a number of rabbis had issued the purported advisory. It attributed the allegation to Breaking the Silence, an Israeli organization of veteran soldiers critical of the military’s treatment of Palestinians.

A spokesman for Breaking the Silence told Reuters the group had not provided any such information.

For Jews, allegations of water poisoning strike a bitter chord. In the 14th century, as plague swept across Europe, false accusations that Jews were responsible for the disease by deliberately poisoning wells led to massacres of Jewish communities.

(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ali Sawafta; editing by Ralph Boulton)

Israel’s Netanyahu aims to head off criticism with diplomatic blitz

Benjamin Netanyahu Israel Prime Minister in meeting

By Luke Baker

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will fly to Rome on Sunday to try to fend off pressure from the United States and Europe over his settlements policy and opposition to a French-led effort to forge peace with the Palestinians.

Beginning three days of intense diplomacy, the right-wing premier will meet U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, in the Italian capital, followed by talks with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in Jerusalem.

One of Netanyahu’s immediate concerns is a forthcoming report from the Middle East Quartet, a mediation group made up of the United States, EU, United Nations and Russia, that is expected to use unusually tough language in criticising Israel’s expansion of settlements on occupied land that the Palestinians seek for an independent state.

Diplomats confirmed that the current language in the report is strong, on the one hand condemning Israel’s unchecked building of settlement homes, which is considered illegal under international law, and on the other persistent Palestinian incitement against Israel during a recent wave of violence.

What is unclear is whether the wording may be softened before the report is issued, probably next week, although its publication has already been delayed several times.

“As it stands, the language is strong and Israel isn’t going to like it,” said one diplomat briefed on the content. “But it’s also not saying that much that hasn’t been said before – that settlements are a serious obstacle to peace.”

Netanyahu spoke by phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin this week as part of his efforts to keep the Kremlin closely updated on developments in the region. The leaders have met face-to-face four times in the past year, with one Israeli official saying the two had developed a good understanding.

As well as a desire to defang the Quartet report, there are a series of issues Netanyahu needs to broach with Kerry, including how to conclude drawn-out negotiations with Washington on a new, 10-year defence agreement.

There is also the looming issue of a peace conference organised by the French that is supposed to convene in the autumn, although it may no longer take place in Paris.

Israeli officials oppose the initiative, seeing it as side-stepping the need for Israel and the Palestinians to sit down and negotiate directly. They argue that it provides the Palestinians a chance to internationalise the conflict, rather than dealing with the nitty-gritty on the ground.

Israeli President Reuven Rivlin, who addressed the European Parliament on Wednesday, said Israel was feeling impatience with Europe and now was not the right time to push for peace.

“Currently, the practical conditions, the political and regional circumstances, which would enable us to reach a permanent agreement between us — the Israelis and the Palestinians — are failing to materialise,” he said.

Many diplomats also question whether the French initiative can inject life into an all-but-defunct peace process, which last broke down in 2014, but they are willing to try.

A nagging concern for Israel is that the conference will end up fixing a time frame for an agreement on ending Israel’s 49-year-old occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem and reaching a two-state solution with the Palestinians.

If that doesn’t emerge from the French plan, it remains possible that a resolution along similar lines could be presented to the United Nations Security Council before the end of the year. That is another reason why Netanyahu will be eager to sit down with Ban for talks on Tuesday.

(Writing by Luke Baker; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Israel eyes law to remove online content inciting terrorism

By Tova Cohen

TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Israel’s Justice Ministry is drafting legislation that would enable it to order Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media to remove online postings it deems to be inciting terrorism. “We are working on draft legislation, similar to what is being done in other countries; one law that would allow for a judicial injunction to order the removal of certain content, such as websites that incite to terrorism,” Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked said.

“There should be some measure of accountability for Internet companies regarding the illegal activities and content that is published through their services,” Shaked told a cybersecurity conference in Tel Aviv this week.

Israel blames a wave of Palestinian attacks which erupted in October last year on incitement to violence by the Palestinian leadership and on social media. Palestinian leaders say many attackers have acted out of desperation in the absence of movement towards creating an independent Palestinian state.

A spokeswoman for Shaked said it was too early to say what measures or sanctions might be included in the law, which would need parliamentary approval, but that it was likely to be similar to those introduced in France.

France has made far-reaching changes to surveillance laws since the attacks on Charlie Hebdo last year. It has taken steps to blacklist jihadi sites that “apologize for terrorism”, but stopped short of using such laws to censor major Internet services. “The legislation … will focus on removing prohibited content, with an emphasis on terrorist content, or blocking access to prohibited content,” Shaked’s spokeswoman said.

Governments around the world have been grappling with how to block online incitement to criminal activity, while major Internet services have stepped up campaigns to identify and remove Web postings that incite violence. Facebook, Google and Twitter are working more aggressively to combat online propaganda and recruiting by Islamic militants while trying to avoid the perception they are helping the authorities police the Web. Turkey has regularly censored YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in domestic political disputes. In 2015, more than 90 percent of all court orders for Twitter to remove illegal content worldwide came from Turkey, the company has reported.

Russia has used anti-terrorist laws to censor independent web sites, media organizations and global Internet sites, while China’s tightly controlled Internet blocks what it considers terrorist propaganda under general laws against incitement to criminal activity.

Shaked said governments and Internet services need to find ways to cooperate so that companies can quickly take down content deemed criminal that has been published on their platform. “We are promoting cooperation with content providers, sensitizing them as to content that violates Israeli law or the provider’s terms of service,” Shaked said. A spokesman for Facebook in Israel declined to comment. Google’s YouTube subsidiary has clear policies that prohibit content like gratuitous violence, hate speech and incitement to commit violent acts, a company spokesman said. “We remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users. We also terminate any account registered by a member of a designated ‘foreign terrorist organization’,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Eric Auchard in Frankfurt; Editing by Dominic Evans)

In Jerusalem’s cramped Old City, Christians feel the squeeze

Christian man sitting in Jerusalem's Old City

By Sleiman Jad

JERUSALEM, June 21 (Reuters) – – When hundreds of Jewish nationalists marched through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City this month, waving banners and chanting songs in what has become an annual ritual, it wasn’t only Muslims watching warily. Christians were, too.

Religious tension is nothing new in a city that has been the home of three faiths for centuries. But the outlook for the Christian minority, squeezed inside the ancient walls of the Old City and caught in the midst of a months-long wave of violence involving Muslims targeting Jews, has seldom looked tougher.

While the Muslim population rises steadily, now making up 75 percent of the 38,000 residents in the city’s alleys, and the Jews increasingly make their presence felt via the annual march and their settlements beyond the Jewish Quarter, the number of Christians has not risen in 50 years, hovering around 7,000.

“If a thousand Muslims leave Jerusalem, that’s one thing,” said Jamal Khader, head of the Latin Patriarchate Seminary near Bethlehem. “But if a thousand Christians leave, you threaten the identity of Jerusalem as a city of multiple faiths.”

That concern is clear to Basil Saed, 28, the owner of a gym in the Christian Quarter. After an attempted stabbing by a Muslim in the Old City several weeks ago, Saed came face-to-face with an Israeli military policeman hunting for the suspect.

“He was trembling he was so terrified,” said Saed, a prize-winning weightlifter who wears a large gold cross around his neck. “In an instant he could have shot and killed me.”

To Saed, both Israel’s tight security and the Muslim unrest make him uneasy, and raise questions for his community.

“If we weren’t strong, we’d all be gone by now,” he said.

SQUEEZED OUT

In the narrow, cobbled streets of their quarter, Christian families have been running arts and souvenir shops for generations, earning money from the steady flow of religious and other tourists who flock to sites like the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the site where Jesus is believed to have been buried.

With the surge in violence that Jerusalem and surrounding areas have experienced since last October, tourism has become more erratic. Anecdotally, locals and tour guides say visitor numbers have dropped off sharply, hurting trade.

Residents like Youseph Shbeita, 35, the third generation owner of a religious icon shop near the Holy Sepulchre, are determined to hang on, seeing no option. But they can understand why younger Christians would want to leave.

“When you’re in the minority, you have to go with the flow,” he said, expressing a sense of responsibility for trying to preserve a Christian presence in the city where Jesus preached. “We just hope for calm, always for calm.”

Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli lawyer and activist who closely follows the community, said he feared it was being squeezed out by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with its tendency to focus on the Jewish and Muslim narratives.

“Since much of the epicenter of this round of violence has been in and around the Old City, it has increased their vulnerability,” he said, pointing to the lack of political and social institutions for Christians to depend on.

“I think it’s safe to say there are more Christian Palestinians in Chicago today than there are in Jerusalem.”

Most of the Christians in Jerusalem are Palestinians. Historically, the community has played a prominent role in the opposition to Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank, putting it at odds with Israel.

Inside the walls of the Old City, however, there is still a degree of mutual dependence – Muslim merchants run stores on land owned by the Christian church, and Israeli Jews stop to buy fruit or a felafel from Muslim and Christian stallkeepers.

Even so, Saed, the weightlifter, doesn’t feel confident.

“For now, the Muslims and Jews are fighting each other,” he said. “But when they stop they’ll both look at us.”

(Reporting by Jad Sleiman; Editing by Luke Baker/Mark Heinrich)

After Deadly Tel Aviv attack, Israel suspends Palestinian permits

An injured man is taken into emergency room following a shooting attack that took place in the center of Tel Aviv

By Luke Baker and Jad Sleiman

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – The Israeli military on Thursday revoked permits for 83,000 Palestinians to visit Israel and said it would send hundreds more troops to the occupied West Bank after a Palestinian gun attack that killed four Israelis in Tel Aviv.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the assault by two gunmen on Wednesday in a trendy shopping and dining market near Israel’s Defence Ministry, but Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups were quick to praise it.

The assailants came from near Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. They dressed in suits and ties and posed as customers at a restaurant, ordering a drink and a chocolate brownie before pulling out automatic weapons and opening fire, sending diners fleeing in panic.

Two women and two men were killed and six others were wounded. The attack followed a lull in recent weeks after what had been near-daily stabbings and shootings on Israeli streets. It was the deadliest single incident since an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue in November 2014 that killed five.

The Tel Aviv gunmen, cousins in their 20s who security experts said appeared to have entered Israel without permits, were quickly apprehended. One of them was shot and wounded.

“It is clear that they spent time planning and training and choosing their target,” Barak Ben-Zur, former head of research at Israel’s Shin Bet domestic security agency, told reporters.

“They got some support, although we don’t know for sure who their supporters are,” he said, adding that they appeared to have used improvised automatic weapons smuggled into Israel.

The attack, as families were enjoying a warm evening out at the tree-lined Sarona market, took place a few hundred yards from the imposing Defence Ministry in the center of Tel Aviv, a city that has seen far less violence than Jerusalem.

After consultations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the military said it was rescinding some 83,000 permits issued to Palestinians from the West Bank to visit relatives in Israel during the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

At an emergency meeting, Israel’s security cabinet discussed punitive measures against attackers, including destroying their homes more quickly, and efforts to bolster the number of security guards in public places, an official said.

The army announced that two battalions would be deployed in the West Bank to reinforce troops stationed in the area, where the military maintains a network of checkpoints and often carries out raids to arrest suspected militants. Israeli battalions are comprised of around 300 troops.

Such measures, including restrictions on access to Jerusalem’s Aqsa Mosque compound, the holy site in the heart of the Old City that Jews refer to as Temple Mount, have in the past lead to increased tension with the Palestinians.

After the attack, fireworks were set off in parts of the West Bank and in some refugee camps people sang, chanted and waved flags in celebration, locals said.

Hamas spokesman Hussam Badran called it “the first prophecy of Ramadan” and said the location of the attack, close to the Defence Ministry, “indicated the failure of all measures by the occupation” to end the uprising.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas issued a statement saying he rejected “all operations that target civilians regardless of the source and their justification”.

During the past eight months of violence, Israel’s government has repeatedly criticized Palestinian factions for inciting attacks or not doing enough to quell them.

The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the largest group in the Palestine Liberation Organization after Abbas’s Fatah, described the killings as “a natural response to field executions conducted by the Zionist occupation”.

The group called it a challenge to Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s new defense minister, who must decide how to respond to the violence, possibly with tighter security across the West Bank. Lieberman said he would act, but didn’t say how.

The United Nations’ special coordinator for the Middle East, Nickolay Mladenov, condemned the shootings and expressed alarm at the failure of Palestinian groups to speak out against the violence. The European Union did the same.

Netanyahu visited the scene minutes after arriving back from a two-day visit to Moscow. He described the attacks as “cold-blooded murder” and vowed retaliation.

“We will locate anyone who cooperated with this attack and we will act firmly and intelligently to fight terrorism,” Netanyahu said.

(Writing by Luke Baker, additional reporting by Dan Williams and Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem and Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza; editing by Dominic Evans)

Netanyahu frequents Russia as U.S. influence in mideast recedes

Israeli PM Netanyahu inspects honour guard during welcoming ceremony upon his arrival at Moscow's Vnukovo airport

By Dan Williams and Denis Dyomkin

JERUSALEM/MOSCOW (Reuters) – With the Obama administration in its final months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been a more frequent and feted visitor to Moscow than Washington, his eye on shifting big-power influence in the Middle East.

No one expects Netanyahu, who was hosted by Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday for the third time in the last year, to break up Israel’s bedrock alliance with the United States. But he is mindful of Putin’s sway in the Syrian civil war and other Middle East crises as the U.S. footprint in the region wanes.

“Netanyahu’s not defecting, but what we see here is a bid to maneuver independently to promote Israel’s interests,” said Zvi Magen, a former Israeli ambassador to Russia now with Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies.

With Russian forces fighting alongside Iran and Lebanese Hezbollah guerrillas to keep Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in power, Putin is the closest thing to a guarantor that Israel’s three most potent enemies will not attack it from the north.

He is also the first port of call for Netanyahu’s argument that Assad’s loss of central control vindicates Israel’s de facto annexation of the Golan Heights in 1981, a move never recognized internationally. Israel took the area in a 1967 war.

Netanyahu can offer Putin reciprocal Israeli restraint in Syria, where Russia maintains a strategic Mediterranean base, and a chance to play a greater role in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking that has long been dominated by the United States.

With the Obama administration and France hinting they might back a future U.N. Security Council resolution against Israeli settlements on occupied Palestinian land, Netanyahu also has an interest in sounding out the views of veto-wielding Russia.

Moscow’s guest-list suggests mediation may be under way.

When Netanyahu last came, in April, it was three days after a visit by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. On Wednesday, when Netanyahu departs, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is scheduled to host Palestinian counterpart Riyad al-Maliki.

FRIENDLY FIRE

Yaakov Amidror, one of Netanyahu’s former national security advisers, played down the scope of Israeli-Russian relations. He said they focused on preventing the sides accidentally trading fire over Syria and were underpinned by Netanyahu’s personal rapport with Putin – hence their meetings every few months.

By contrast, while Netanyahu and Obama have feuded on Iran and the Palestinians and are wrangling over a new memorandum of understanding (MOU) for future U.S. defense aid to Israel, their countries’ partnership ticks over thanks to a network of military, diplomatic and parliamentary channels, Amidror said.

“In Syria, there is liable to be a clash tomorrow morning that neither we nor the Russians want,” said Amidror, now with the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University and the U.S. think-tank JINSA, alluding to the risk of a friendly-fire incident.

“It’s not like the MOU, which we can spend months discussing with the Americans and be assured a resolution will be found.”

Russia has been closed-lipped about any wider statecraft initiatives it may have in store for Israel. The two countries “each express their positions in a pretty constructive manner, and all of this contributes to this rather frequent and intensive communication”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

“But of course, there cannot be any talk of the intensity of these contacts reflecting any kind of rivalry with anyone,” he added, alluding to Washington, where Netanyahu was last hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama in November. A trip expected in March was canceled given the difficult MOU talks.

That’s different from the dignified optics Netanyahu can be assured of in Russia. This time, he will leave with state gifts likely to buoy Israeli public opinion: an Israeli army tank captured by Syrian forces during battles in Lebanon in 1982 and recovered by Russia, and Moscow’s agreement to pay pensions to tens of thousands of Russian immigrants to Israel.

(Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow; Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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