Shorts: Mideast

Saudi Arabia: no relations with Israel for now

jerusalem (jta) | Saudi Arabia will not follow the lead of other Arab nations in exploring ties with Israel, its foreign minister said.

Prince Saud al-Faisal praised Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for pulling out of the Gaza Strip this month, but said his follow-up was inconsistent.

"He does something and then immediately goes to the United Nations and makes a speech saying, 'I am not going to do this, I am not going to do that,'" Saud said last week.

Other Arab nations in recent weeks have explored new or expanded ties with Israel in the wake of the Gaza withdrawal. Saud accused Sharon of hypocrisy for demanding the dismantling of terrorist groups after Palestinian Authority security forces suffered losses during the intifada.




Report says U.S. put arms embargo on Israel

jerusalem (jta) | The United States imposed a limited arms embargo on Israel in the first year of the intifada, a former Israeli intelligence official said.

Avi Dichter, former chief of Israel's Shin Bet security service, said the embargo was imposed on helicopter parts because of their use in Israel's targeted killing of terrorist leaders, but that U.S. officials resisted calls for a wider arms embargo. The United States opposed targeted killings at the time.

Dichter was speaking at the Saban Institute in Washington, where he now is a fellow. The embargo ended after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and the United States used helicopter-launched missiles to assassinate an al-Qaida terrorist leader in Yemen in 2002. President Bush later said he could not keep Israel from carrying out an anti-terror strategy that he himself favored.




American Jew held for alleged Sharon plot

jerusalem (jta) | An American Jew was arrested in Israel on suspicion that he planned to assassinate Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Police said they planned to deport Shen'or Zalman Hatzkolevitch, a fervently Orthodox Jewish man from Brooklyn.




Israel holds off on aid request

jerusalem (jta) | Israel's request for additional assistance from the United States to resettle evacuees from the Gaza Strip pullout is off the table for now, a senior Israeli official said.

President Bush had expressed interest in assisting Israel following the withdrawal, but "with one disaster after another, the momentum we had before the disengagement" has been lost, Yossi Bachar, the director general of Israel's Finance Ministry, said last week.

He cited the massive costs the United States faces this hurricane season.




Rabbi gives 'reason' for Rita

jerusalem (jta) | A former Israeli chief rabbi described the Gulf Coast hurricanes as divine punishment for President Bush's support for the Gaza Strip withdrawal.

"Two million Americans have become refugees because the Gush Katif exiles have become refugees," the Israel daily newspaper Ma'ariv quoted Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu as saying over the weekend, in reference to the former main Gaza settlement bloc.

The United States may have endured Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, but if it wants to avert further disasters Bush should apologize to the former Gaza settlers, said Eliahu, a former Sephardi chief rabbi.

"Then the curse will disappear," he said.




Assad boosting Palestinian terror?

jerusalem (jta) | Syrian President Bashar Assad reportedly has instructed Palestinian terrorist groups to step up attacks on Israel.

Citing Palestinian sources, Israel's Army Radio said this week that Assad convened representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Damascus earlier this month. According to the report, the Syrian president told the terrorist groups to mount new attacks as a means of distracting from international scrutiny on his regime's alleged support for the Iraqi insurgency and involvement in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.




Israel's population grows to 6.8 million

jerusalem (jta) | Israel's population rose by nearly 1.8 percent in 2004 to more than 6.8 million.

Some 5.2 million Israelis are Jewish, with 1.3 million Arabs and 300,000 others, according to figures released this week by the Central Bureau of Statistics. The growth rate among Muslims was 3.3 percent, more than double the rate among Jews.




Israeli Arabs on hunger strike

jerusalem (jta) | Israeli Arab lawmakers declared a hunger strike to protest a Justice Ministry decision not to prosecute police who killed 13 Arab rioters in October 2000.

The lawmakers, led by Ahmed Tibi, staged a sit-down protest outside Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's office in Jerusalem on vowing to fast until next week. They are demanding that police officers who shot and killed rioters be prosecuted.

Israel's top prosecutor closed the case earlier this month, saying there was not enough evidence to win convictions against individual policemen.