Devastating bombings hit Syrian capital as the blame game continues

New TV - Two terrorist bombings rocked the Qazzaz area in the southern part of the capital as workers, students and employees were heading to their schools, universities and workplaces. Syria's Interior Ministry confirmed the two bombings were carried out by two suicide bombers driving two booby-trapped vehicles carrying a large amount of explosive materials, estimated at over 1,000 kg. The preliminary outcome of this terrorist act is 55 martyrs, and 372 injured civilians and soldiers.

BBC Arabic - Tens of thousands participated in demonstrations across different parts of Syria on Friday to demand the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad's regime despite the heavy security deployment of regime forces, according to activists and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Meanwhile, condemnations and international reactions to Thursday's two explosions in Damascus continue.

Algeria holds parliamentary elections amid voter apathy

BBC Arabic - Voters in Algeria are headed to the ballot boxes to cast their votes in parliamentary elections described as "fateful" by the authorities. Over 21 million people are registered to vote to elect 462 candidates affiliated with 44 political parties, and a large of number of independent candidates. However, the election campaign that looked weak did not attract much attention from many people.

Al Jazeera - Algeria's interior minister, Dahu Ould Kablia, announced the results of the parliamentary elections, saying the ruling National Liberation Front won 220 of the 462 seats. The National Democratic Rally received 68 seats, and the Islamists received almost 60 seats, including 48 for the Green Algeria alliance, which came in third place.

Israeli settlers burn hundreds of olive trees in West Bank

Palestine TV - Jewish settlers burned hundreds of trees in the villages of Bureen and Jamaeen in Nablus province with the goal of seizing more land from the Palestinians. It is an expression of their deep hatred for the Palestinian land and people. Over 100 trees were burnt in this area, located three kilometers southeast of the town of Jamaeen. The area between the town and the two settlements of Ariel and Tafuh has witnessed torching operations targeting fruit trees. The two settlements have seized vast areas of Palestinian villages in this region.

Egyptian ex-pats begin voting in Egypt's first post revolution presidential elections

Press TV - Egyptian ex-pats in several countries began voting in Egypt's first post revolution presidential elections.  Ex-pats have until May 17th to cast their ballots in Egyptian embassies and consulates.  The election's front runners took part in the country's frist ever presidential debate.  Former member of the Muslim Brotherhood Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh faced former Arab League cheif Amr Moussa over issues regarding Israel and the principles of Sharia law as the main source of legislation.

Thousands of Mauritanians declare readiness to kick out President Aziz

Al Alam - The Mauritanian opposition organized a festival in Nouakchott to demand the departure of President Mohammad Ould Abdel Aziz’s regime. The ruling party's deputy chairman, Oumar Ould Matallah, said the people placed their trust in Ould Abdel Aziz, and the president is continuing the path of reforms and combating corruption. The opposition considered the turnout a new referendum on the legitimacy of the regime. The majority says the only way to topple the president is through the ballot box in about two and a half years. Former Mauritania president, Ely Mohamed Vall, who is one of the most prominent figures supporting this movement, described the regime as a failure and finished.

Image: People run carrying a burnt body at the site of an explosion in Damascus May 10, 2012. Dozens of people were killed or wounded in two "terrorist explosions" which struck a southern district of the Syrian capital Damascus on Thursday, state television said. REUTERS/Sana/Handout

(Al Jazeera English: 1534 PT, May 15, 2011) Several people have been killed and scores of others wounded in the Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, Ras Maroun in Lebanon and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, as Palestinians mark the "Nakba," or day of "catastrophe."

The "Nakba" is how Palestinians refer to the 1948 founding of the state of Israel, when an estimated 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled following Israel's declaration of statehood. Al Jazeera's Nisreen El Shamyleh reports.

Egypt Police Fire Tear Gas at Nakba Protest

(Al Jazeera English: 1707 PT, May 15, 2011) Egyptian police have fired rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters outside the Israeli embassy in Cairo, after a group of demonstrators reportedly attempted to storm the building. Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith reports.

Marking Nakba

(Press TV: 0509 PT, May 16, 2011) Analysis of the Nakba protests from Iran's Press TV.

(Al Jazeera English: 0806 PT, May 11, 2011) The Jerusalem District Court says the lands of Lifta should not be offered for sale to real estate developers, but Israel's Land Authority could act otherwise

(Mosaic Video Alert: March 24, 2011) New TV reports on the Israeli airstrikes over the Gaza Strip  which targeted the neighborhoods of al-Shuja'eiya and al-Zaitoun and killed nine people, including several children. The public held funerals for the martyrs on what the government called the "day of mourning their souls." The mourners believe that Israel "carefully and deliberately" chose the timing of the attacks, as the world is preoccupied with the revolutions occurring throughout the Arab world.

(Euronews: 1330 PST, February 16, 2011) Two Iranian warships are headed towards the Suez Canal en route to Syria with Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman hinting the Jewish state may respond. Lieberman said in a speech: "Israel cannot forever ignore these provocations."

Israel has long accused Iran and Syria of providing weapons to Islamist groups seeking its elimination. Iran's state news agency said the two ships had been dispatched on a year-long traning mission in the Mediterranean Sea.

U.S. special envoy George Mitchell has been frantically shuttling between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem in order to salvage the month-old direct negotiations. The European Union's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has also been recruited to throw the weight of the EU behind the peace efforts. Even President Obama himself has been personally involved, trying to find "common ground between the parties."

In fact, in order to secure Israel's support for a sixty-day settlement building moratorium extension, the Obama administration, in a draft letter, has offered a string of assurances to Israel ranging from current peace and security matters to future weapons deliveries in the event that peace-related security arrangements are reached. The details of the letter were published on the Washington Institute for Near East Policy website by senior researcher David Makovsky. According to Haaretz, The United States is reportedly incensed over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rejection of the draft letter.

Equally incensed is the head of the Palestinian negotiation team, Saeb Erekat, who said on Wednesday that "there are no half-way solutions on the settlements issue." Erekat and other PA officials have been recently hinting at a Palestinian walk out on the negotiations if Israel refuses to stop building settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. This decision could happen as early as Saturday when the Palestinian leadership meets, and be officially announced at the Arab League meeting in Cairo next week.

To make matters worse, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who lives in a West Bank settlement, revived his plan for "population exchange" before the UN General Assembly.

Lieberman, who heads the second largest party in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition, called for an "intermediate" accord with the Palestinians because it will take "a few decades" to establish the trust needed for a so-called final-status agreement. He suggested ceding parts of Israel with large Arab populations to a future Palestinian state in exchange for Israel keeping large settlement blocs in the West Bank, a proposal which has been part of his party's platform.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has distanced himself from the speech, but many Palestinians believe that this is part of a well-coordinated 'good cop, bad cop' strategy. They also regard the remarks as incitement and advocacy of ethnic cleansing.

A recent poll released by the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center revealed that fifty-four percent of respondents said that the direct talks serve the national interests of the Palestinians. However, 58% said they believed the Palestinian leadership agreed to hold the talks because of external pressure, and more than 55% said they did not expect the talks to produce major changes in the status quo.

But there are rapid changes happening on the ground. Israeli building crews have already resumed work the day after the settlement freeze expired at several settlements, such as Ariel, Oranit, Tekoa and Adam. The building has actually never stopped in many other settlements. In the West Bank, there are more than 300,000 Jewish settlers living in around 100 settlements built adjacent to Palestinian towns and villages and are protected by the Israeli army. Approximately, 2.5 million Palestinians live in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Jewish settlers account for just one percent of the population of the West Bank, according to Dutch cartographer Jan de Jong, but are claiming 60 percent of the land.

"They are just one percent of the whole West Bank population, but they are claiming 60 percent of the land. The settlements are actually just built-up pockets, but the settlers include huge tracts of land around them by laying down barbed wire. So in effect it's more like estates, containing just a few houses."

De Jong who has been monitoring changes on the ground through satellite imagery and other means, says that construction was going on in the settlements even during the 10-month building moratorium which has just expired. "There was building work every day, except on Jewish holidays. That's why I call it a virtual moratorium."

The way things are progressing now, should the "direct talks" continue, a virtual Palestinian state might be the end result.

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Direct talks between Palestinians and Israelis are scheduled to commence in Washington on September 2, a decade after the last real final-status talks, and nearly two years after the last direct talks. Mahmoud Abbas and Benjamin Netanyahu will come face to face for dinner and talks in Washington as guests of President Obama after 18 months of shuttle diplomacy and indirect "proximity talks" headed by Special Envoy for Middle East Peace George Mitchell.

President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan, along with Tony Blair, the special representative of the Middle East Quartet are also due to join the inaugural session in Washington.

While much hope has been placed on these

talks culminating in an agreement within a year, most Palestinians and Israelis remain skeptical of their success. More importantly, hopes and expectations have been inflated in some media reports, adding confusion and creating myths about what might turn up only to be yet another photo op in DC.

Here are some of the myths:

Myth No.1- They're not talking

Although Abbas and Netanyahu have not sat face to face for the past eighteen months, contacts and cooperation between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli government have not ceased on several fronts, most notably in commerce and security.

Salam Fayyad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian National Authority, spoke at the Herzliya Conference in February alongside Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak at a time when his boss, President Mahmoud Abbas was insisting on a

total halt to settlement construction before peace talks could resume. Also, Shin Bet and Israel Defense Forces senior officials have made several visits to Ramallah for meetings with senior PA officials and members of the Palestinian security services. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Shin Bet security service head Yuval Diskin recently spent a day in the West Bank city of Jenin as a guest of the Palestinian Authority's security service.

This is Diskin's second visit of this kind to Palestinian Authority territory in recent months, the aim of which is to coordinate security ties between Israel and the PA. The first visit was to Ramallah.

Myth No. 2- Settlement Freeze

Settlement construction is "business as usual" in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Although a few projects were pushed back, construction on existing projects continues unabated. Close to half a million Israeli Jews live in more than 100 settlements built since Israel's 1967 occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. More importantly, settlers have accelerated their activities taking over Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem, in Arab neighborhoods in Sheikh Jarrah, Shu'fat, and Silwan. Furthermore, in 2010, more than 240 Palestinian homes have been destroyed in Area C of the West Bank compared to 182 in all of 2009.

Myth No. 3- Security Fears

Israel's concern over security in the West Bank is exaggerated. Today the Palestinian Authority is policing the West Bank on behalf of the IDF. Very few Israeli deaths, only two in 2010, have been registered due to attacks in the West Bank. In comparison, far more Palestinians have been killed and injured by settlers and the IDF in 2010. Rocket attacks from the Gaza Strip have also subsided. Israel's main security concern these days is Iran.

"The threat that Iran poses is very grave for the state of Israel, for peace in the Middle East and the whole world," Netanyahu said in November 2009, repeating variations on this statement on several occasions.

Myth No. 4- Abbas & Netanyahu can deliver peace

Neither Prime Minister Netanyahu nor President Abbas have the mandate to deliver a peace agreement. Netanyahu would face strident opposition from within his Likud party and fierce opposition from his own foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman who has the ability and influence to unravel his fragile coalition.

Abbas also faces a complex problem of legitimacy. His term as President has expired, and under his watch, Palestinian unity was fractured when Hamas managed to route out his forces from Gaza.

Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal said recently that Abbas was too weak to stand up to Israel and negotiate a just deal at the talks in Washington.

"If the talks succeed they will succeed to Israeli standards and liquidate the Palestinian cause. They'll give us parts of 1967 lands. They'll draw the borders as they want and they'll confiscate our sovereignty," said Meshaal

Myth No. 5- No preconditions

Prime Minister Netanyahu insisted for many weeks that he was ready to come to the negotiating table in Washington, but without "preconditions." In fact both he and President Mahmoud Abbas have already announced preconditions, raising expectations and laying the groundwork for failure.

Among the preconditions laid out by Netanyahu for peace with the Palestinians is recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Palestinians consider this condition as a non-starter, instead they'd like to delve into sensitive areas such as the construction of Jewish settlements on occupied territory, the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a future Palestinian state and the right of return, issues that will be difficult to overcome.

Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas has declared that he will withdraw from negotiations if settlement activity resumes. The settlement moratorium is due to expire on Sept. 26. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, seems unlikely to extend it.

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Will it be a strike against Iran by the U.S. and or Israel? Will there be political upheaval in Egypt after Mubarak's reign? And will Israel invade Lebanon or Gaza? These are some of the questions that can be heard on the streets of Cairo, Amman, and Beirut.

2010 is far from over, yet we have witnessed a series of close encounters in the Middle East that created major tensions and pushed everyone to the edge: a war on the Yemeni Saudi border, rapid deterioration of relations between Israel and Turkey over the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, skirmishes between Israel and Lebanon over the cutting of a tree, and the looming prospect of an attack on Iran to mention a few. But what's really troubling is how fast attitudes have changed towards President Obama from a year ago; specifically in the period after newly-elected Barack Obama delivered his "New Beginning" speech to the Arab and Muslim worlds from a podium at the University of Cairo in Egypt.

Just yesterday, on Thursday, August 5, a poll released by the Brookings Institute in conjunction with Zogby International revealed a substantial change in the assessment of President Obama, both as President of the United States and of Obama personally. According to the poll, early in the Obama Administration, in April and May 2009, 51% of the respondents in six Arab countries (Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Jordan, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates) expressed optimism about American policy in the Middle East. In the 2010 poll, only 16% were hopeful, while a majority - 63% - were discouraged.

The poll's results show another dramatic shift in public opinion on Iran's potential nuclear weapons status. While the results vary from country to country, the weighted average across the six countries is telling: in 2009, only 29% of those polled said that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would be "positive" for the Middle East; in 2010, 57% of those polled indicate that such an outcome would be "positive" for the Middle East.

So what's wrong with earlier assessments that Arab countries were "freaked out" by a nuclear Iran?

Unfortunately the US government, and to a larger extent western reporters, have been spoon-fed this information by intelligence apparatuses of certain despotic Arab regimes. No one bothered to ask the average person on the street this question.

Although the poll was conducted before Obama's recent confirmation of the end of all combat operations in Iraq by the end of August, Arabs believe that the troubles of Iraq are far from being over. July has been a very deadly month in Iraq.

Recently, Saddam Hussein's former deputy prime minister, Tareq Aziz, has accused the US president of "leaving Iraq to the wolves."

Last but not least: "Palestine is still the issue" to borrow from John Pilger's title. The poll leaves little doubt that the major decline in Obama's popularity has a lot to do with the disappointment in the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Arabs have lost hope that President Obama will be able to deliver on his promises.

I've been in and out of the Middle East five times this year, and if tension could be described as a cloud, you'd need a knife to cut through the one created by recent political events in the region. Everyone seems edgy and expecting war. President Obama must act fast to bring back some of the magic he had early on in the region with his messages of "hope" and "change". Now he needs to deliver on real promises before it is too late.

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First came the clash at Davos in January 2009, when Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan walked off the stage after an angry exchange with the Israeli president, Shimon Peres during a panel discussion on Gaza at the World Economic Forum. Then came the surprise uranium deal with Tehran, undermining Western pressure on Iran to come clean about its nuclear program, followed by the Israeli assault on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, which sailed under Turkish flags, sending shockwaves throughout the world. Most recently, Turkey and Brazil have become the only countries that voted against UN sanctions to impede Iran's progress toward nuclear weapons capabilities.

There was a time when Turkey had looked west and never looked back. Some say that the drift began in 2002, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP), rooted in the country's Islamist movement, came to power. But others, like the US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, lay the blame for Turkey's increasing independence squarely on European states opposed to Turkey's EU accession process, which has ground to an almost complete halt since it kicked off in 2005.

"I personally think that if there is anything to the notion that Turkey is, if you will, moving eastward, it is, in my view, in no small part because it was pushed, and pushed by some in Europe refusing to give Turkey the kind of organic link to the West that Turkey sought," he said.

This assessment has merits; the reality is that some EU member states - notably France, Germany and Austria - have become openly hostile to Turkish membership in recent years. France's President, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, have stated that they would prefer Turkey to be granted what they call a 'privileged partnership' with the EU, instead of full membership. This came as a shock and an insult to the Turkish government and people, who had witnessed Eastern European countries, once hostile to the West ascend to the EU.

But why shouldn't Turkey look east?

Trade between Turkey and all 22 members of the Arab League has more than doubled over the past five years to just under $30 billion a year, still a fraction of its trade with the EU. However, since the recent global economic downturn, coupled with the collapse of the Euro, Turkish economists have been urging the government to expand its trade with the Middle East and the Far East.

Turkey recently signed a deal with Arab neighbors Syria, Jordan and Lebanon to establish a cooperation council to create a zone of free movement of goods and people. Although the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said that the deal should not be seen as an alternative to the European Union, he invited all other interested countries to join.

In addition, with Turkey having no energy resources of its own, Iran is its second biggest source of energy imports after Russia, supplying roughly one-third of Turkey's total natural gas consumption last year, 10 billion cubic meters.

The West's loss of Turkey has frightening strategic consequences, as was evident in Turkey's stance on Iran. Its stance against Israel has also embarrassed U.S.-allied Arab states such as Egypt, which have shied away from confronting Israel despite popular demands to do so. Since his Justice and Development party (AKP) came to power in 2002, Erdogan has been accused by his detractors that he is trying to reclaim the former "grandeur" of Turkey's Ottoman Empire era. Did he succeed?

Perhaps not, but in Egypt, a reader of al-Masry al-Youm newspaper dubbed Erdogan as the "Caliph of the Muslims" in comments posted on its website, and his namesake is now popular with newborns in Gaza.

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As thousands of outraged demonstrators poured into the streets of Ankara and several capitals across the globe in the aftermath of Israel's bloody attack on an aid flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip early Monday, an Israeli sergeant stood in front of reporters claiming that the activists on board "were armed with knives, scissors, pepper spray and guns." He said he was armed only with a paintball rifle.

"It was a civilian paintball gun that any 12-year-old can play with," he said; yet, at least nine activists were killed, including a 19-year-old American who was shot in the head four times, and scores were injured.

Soon after, a video was released on the official website of the Israel Defense Forces and was made available to the media. It showed Israeli paratroopers jumping onto the international Gaza aid flotilla; a clip showing IDF commandos being beaten as they boarded the ship and one thrown overboard was looped endlessly. The military video did not show how and when the activists were shot, although the Israeli helicopters' infrared cameras would have easily recorded the flashes caused by gun discharge. Instead, the IDF has selectively released only a portion of the tape that showed its commandos under attack but has omitted the killings. Both Al Jazeera and reporters from Turkish TV news channels were reporting that the Marmara was under gunfire.

The "lynch" scenario came next. The victims were not the nine dead activists, nor the dozens of internationals who were beaten, humiliated, and dragged against their will to the Israeli port of Ashdod, instead they were the IDF's finest. What a departure from the days of Entebbe, when Hollywood made legends out of Israeli commandos.

Israel's Foreign Ministry then started showing pictures of sticks, knives, slingshots, and bottles which they said were the activists' weapons. The message is that several hundred activists gathered from all over the world to confront one of the best equipped and trained militaries in the world with these. But we are then told that the activists weren't really activists at all, but rather terrorists with ties to Hamas and al-Qaeda.

Yediot Ahronoth, one of Israel's most widely circulated papers broke with the headlines, "A Brutal Ambush at Sea." Arutz Sheva, the official news site of the settler movement attacked Associated Press for its "biased" reporting with an article entitled "Media War on the Flotilla Clash: AP Anti-Israel Bias Exposed." And the IDF website had this blaring story: "Attackers of the IDF soldiers are found to be Al Qaeda mercenaries," later to be reported in the Jerusalem Post as, "IDF: Mercenaries to blame for violence."

Israel's hasbara at its best. But is it working?

"Hasbara is only succeeding in Israel," says veteran journalist David Michaelis.

Michaelis believes that there is a disconnect between the way Israel sees itself and its actions, and the way they are viewed by the rest of the world.

"That was not a love boat. That was a boat of hatred," said Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A nice sound bite for FOX News, and headlines for the New York Post but this time hasbara is not working...not after the War on Lebanon, Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, and a Mossad assassination caught on tape in Dubai.

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