The Media Line Friday News Headlines
The White House meeting between President Bush and Mahmoud ‘Abbas, the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, followed expectations and produced no surprises. It did, however, feature a gesture by the President aimed at making up for what P.A. officials had called the ‘humiliation’ of seeing one quarter of the recent American aid allocation for Palestinians being channeled through Israel. The President announced a direct grant of $50 million to the P.A., the first time money has not been routed through non-governmental channels since three U.S. security guards were killed in an attack on an American convoy traveling in the Gaza Strip. According to Israeli sources, President Bush rejected a plea by Chairman Abbas to move Israel-Palestinian negotiations directly into the final status phase rather than proceeding to phase two of the Road Map peace plan. That calls for the creation of a Palestinian state with temporary borders. But the Palestinian leader nevertheless walked away with significant American largesse. In addition to the $50 million in emergency aid, President Bush reiterated his demand that all building in post-1967 areas cease – this time including a specific reference to Jerusalem. Bush also backed a key Palestinian demand: that any change in the borders from the 1949 armistice line must be mutually agreed upon by the Israelis and Palestinians. Media Line analysts point out that President Bush’s specific reference to Jerusalem chips away further at the spin Ariel Sharon developed in the aftermath of receiving the April 2004 letter from the President, implying American approval for developing what Sharon calls “settlement blocs” in post-1967 areas.
Half of the residents of Israel’s largest Gaza Strip community, Neve Dekalim, have decided to move en masse to a tent city as a means of protesting Israel’s scheduled unilateral withdrawal from Gaza. The decision was taken at a meeting on Tuesday. 250 of 490 families will make the move together. The community’s chairperson told the newspaper Haaretz that the government “has no solution for us.” The operation is being planned to be reminiscent of Jewish immigration efforts under the British Mandate. A second Gaza community had previously announced plans to pitch tents in the middle of a nature preserve.
Britain’s Association of University Teachers has voted overwhelmingly to rescind last month’s decision to boycott Israel’s Bar Ilan and Haifa universities. The two-thirds in-favor vote left the original sponsors unbowed. The anti-Israel faction said it would bring a new resolution at next year’s meeting and reminded members that there is still a union decision in place that was passed two years ago to calling for a moratorium on scientific cooperation with Israel.