LCCC ENGLISH DAILY NEWS BULLETIN
October 29/15

Compiled & Prepared by: Elias Bejjani
http://www.eliasbejjaninews.com/newsbulletins05/english.october29.15.htm 

Bible Quotation For Today/
Matthew 13/24-30: "Jesus put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to someone who sowed good seed in his field; but while everybody was asleep, an enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and then went away. So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds appeared as well. And the slaves of the householder came and said to him, "Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?" He answered, "An enemy has done this." The slaves said to him, "Then do you want us to go and gather them?"But he replied, "No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them. Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn." ’

Bible Quotation For Today/
First Letter to the Corinthians 07/25-35: "Concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord, but I give my opinion as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. I think that, in view of the impending crisis, it is well for you to remain as you are. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you marry, you do not sin, and if a virgin marries, she does not sin. Yet those who marry will experience distress in this life, and I would spare you that. I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away. I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband.I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord."


Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin analysis & editorials from miscellaneous sources published on October 28-29/15
The politics of Ashura in Nabatieh/Ana Maria Luca/Now Lebanon/October 28/15
MEMRI/Breaking Report: Challenging Khamenei, Rafsanjani Demands That Iran Fulfill Its Obligations Under The JCPOA/A. Savyon, U. Kafash and E. Kharr/October 28/15
Former Iran president, Rafsanjani indirectly admits country sought nuclear weapons/ARIEL BEN SOLOMON/October 28/15
US, Russia edge close to military collaboration in Syria and Iraq/DEBKAfile/October 28/15
Abbas to UN: Protect us from Israel, we need you /TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST.COM STAFF /October 28/15
World Jewish Congress slams Palestinian 'culture of hate/Sam Sokol/J.Post/October 28/15
Iran's New Palestinian Terror Group: Al-Sabireen/Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/October 28/15
The Kurdish Dilemma/Ali Ibrahim/Asharq Al Awsat/October 28/15
The Russians and the Syrian Crisis/Salman Aldosary/Asharq Al Awsat/October 28/15
Iranian officials justify soldier deaths in Syria/Arash Karami//Al-Monitor/October 28/15
How to end the war in Yemen/Bruce Riedel/Al-Monitor/October 28/15

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin for Lebanese Related News published on October 28-29/15
Lebanese Citizens Stranded as Rain Turns Streets into Ponds in Beirut, Suburbs
Al-Rahi Says Salam 'Not Reckless' to Resign, Urges Him to Convene Cabinet
Reports Say Salam Won't Resign as Berri Proposes 'New Ideas' to Resolve Trash Crisis
Lebanon Invited to Join Syria Talks on Friday
Kanaan: LF-FPM Agreement on Nationality Draft-Law Serves All Lebanese
Citizens Stranded as Rain Turns Streets into Ponds in Beirut, Suburbs
Person Seriously Wounded after Being Shot by Israeli Troops in Ghajar
Army Adjutant Escapes Shooting in Tripoli
Report: Deputy CIA Chief Made Secret Visit to Lebanon to Discuss Combating Terrorism
Hizbullah-Mustaqbal Dialogue Urges Activation of Work of Govt., Parliament
Top CIA official in secret Lebanon visit: report
The politics of Ashura in Nabatieh

Titles For Latest LCCC Bulletin For Miscellaneous Reports And News published on October 28-29/15
Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal: I Side with Israel – Not the Palestinians
Saudi Says Vienna Talks to Test if Iran, Russia 'Serious' on Syria
Attempted Stabbing of Israeli Soldier in Hebron, Attacker Killed
Iran to Join Syria Talks as Diplomatic Push Gains Pace
Russia Balks at U.N. Action on Syria Barrel Bombs
U.N. Warns of Israel-Palestinian 'Catastrophe' as More Protests Expected
Syrian rebels oppose Iran talks attendance
U.S. weighs special forces in Syria, helicopters in Iraq
Kofi Annan sees chance of Syria peace in U.S.-Russia talks
Saudi Arabia sets up new labor committees to protect rights
Pentagon investigates Afghan sex abuse cover-up claims
Anti-migrant rhetoric can be deadly, warns U.N.
Military solution ‘impossible’ in parts of Mideast
Obama calls Saudi king to discuss regional issues
Turkey: Ankara bombings were ordered by ISIS
EU urges Abbas, Netanyahu to meet Quartet
Palestinians shot dead for 'stabbing' Israeli soldier

Links From Jihad Watch Site for October 28-29/15
Muslim preacher: “Oh Allah, annihilate the Jews…let us kill them”
Sweden: Journalist stoned while trying to film in no-go zone
Walmart axes IDF Halloween costume under pressure from pro-jihad groups

Lebanese Citizens Stranded as Rain Turns Streets into Ponds in Beirut, Suburbs
Naharnet/October 28/15/Heavy rains and poor infrastructure turned key roads in Beirut and its southern and eastern suburbs into ponds on Wednesday, trapping a lot of citizens in their cars. The tunnels near Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport were blocked in both directions due to the accumulation of water, the Traffic Management Center said. Pictures circulated on social networking websites showed cars partially submerged in floodwater in a number of streets in Dahieh, Hazmieh and Furn el-Shebbak. Water carried sands and rocks with it, which further contributed to the blocking of the drain systems. Floodwater also caused severe traffic jams in the capital, especially in the area from the Saint Georges Hotel in Ain el-Mraisseh to Raouche. Such scenes have become frequent in Lebanon during every rain season. However, a months-long waste collection crisis has brought a new element this year, turning streets in parts of Lebanon on Sunday into rivers of garbage. The floods come three months into a garbage crisis trigerred by the closure of Lebanon's largest landfill in Naameh in July, and the government's failure to find an alternative. The crisis sparked a protest movement led by the "You Stink" activist group, which brought thousands of people into the streets for several weeks of demonstrations. The cabinet in early September approved a plan that involved finding new sites for landfills and temporarily reopening the closed Naameh site for the immediate disposal of already-accumulated waste. But the plan has run into a series of obstacles, including the refusal of residents around Naameh to allow its reopening and protests by people living near prospective new landfill sites. Activists and several ministers have long warned that the arrival of winter, which often brings heavy rains to Lebanon, risked dispersing months worth of trash that has accumulated in open dumps.

Al-Rahi Says Salam 'Not Reckless' to Resign, Urges Him to Convene Cabinet
Naharnet/October 28/15/Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi noted Wednesday that Prime Minister Tammam Salam is “not reckless” to announced his resignation amid the current situation in the country, urging him to convene the cabinet to address the pressing issues. “I doubt that PM Salam will submit his resignation … To whom will he submit it? Who will accept it? Does Lebanon need further crises? At the least the government must stay at the official level and it must convene when it can,” al-Rahi said at the airport upon his return from a trip to Italy. He was referring to the lengthy presidential vacuum that started in May 2014. Salam's government assumed presidential powers after president Michel Suleiman's term expired in that month. “PM Salam is not reckless to submit his resignation and plunge the country into the unknown. This is totally unacceptable,” al-Rahi added, in response to a reporter's question. “We salute him and stand by him and we urge him to preserve the government and convene the cabinet as soon as possible,” the patriarch went on to say. An Nahar newspaper on Wednesday quoted Salam visitors as saying that he will not step down from his post on Thursday as recently claimed by some media reports. “Resignation will not serve the country's interests, especially since the current government is not one of approving decrees, but one of managing the republic in the absence of a president,” his visitors told An Nahar. Media reports had been linking the premier's possible resignation to the ongoing deadlock over resolving the garbage disposal crisis and over the government paralysis due to some forces' boycott of its meetings. They had said that he would step down from his post should a solution fail to be reached by Thursday.

Reports Say Salam Won't Resign as Berri Proposes 'New Ideas' to Resolve Trash Crisis
Naharnet/October 28/15/Prime Minister Tammam Salam will not step down from his post on Thursday, as media reports have been claiming in recent weeks, reported An Nahar daily on Wednesday. It said that the premier “will not give up his political mission even if his personal interests lie in resigning.”
“Resignation however will not serve the country's interests, especially since the current government is not one of approving decrees, but one of managing the republic in the absence of a president,” his visitors told An Nahar.Media reports had been linking the premier's resignation to the ongoing deadlock over resolving the garbage disposal crisis and over the government paralysis due to some forces' boycott of its meetings. They had said that he would step down from his post should a solution fail to be reached by Thursday. Salam had held talks on the crisis on Tuesday with Agriculture Minister Akram Shehayyeb and Health Minister Wael Abou Faour. On Wednesday, the two ministers met with Speaker Nabih Berri in Ain al-Tineh. “Minister Abou Faour and I will conduct some contacts today so that we can reach the shore of safety tomorrow in the deadlocked garbage crisis,” Shehayyeb said after the talks. For his part, Berri's political aide Finance Minister Ali Hassan Khalil, who attended the talks, said the speaker “proposed new ideas that require convening the cabinet within 24 hours.” “The ideas are compatible with the plan” proposed by Shehayyeb and a team of experts, Khalil said. Berri meanwhile told lawmakers during the weekly Wednesday meeting that “finding a decisive solution to the garbage crisis has become a national necessity that cannot withstand any delay.”Following talks with Salam on Wednesday, Defense Minister Samir Moqbel said the premier was awaiting an answer from Hizbullah and the AMAL Movement regarding a possible location for a garbage landfill in the Bekaa region, revealing that some parties in the government “are seriously contemplating the possibility of sending the trash abroad.”Abou Faour, meanwhile, said he formed an emergency panel to evaluate the health risks posed by the crisis and devise “short- and long-term solutions.”“It is expected to finalize its report within two days,” he said. Ministerial sources monitoring the trash file revealed to al-Joumhouria newspaper that the latest efforts to end the case have persuaded Salam to postpone taking “any final stance on the ongoing government paralysis.”Shehayyeb is meanwhile expected to announce on Thursday that he will no longer continue his efforts to resolve the garbage crisis. Such a measure will grant the premier more time to exert political pressure on those hindering an agreement on the minister's proposal, said the sources. Lebanon has been suffering from a trash disposal crisis since July with the closure of the Naameh landfill. Politicians have failed to find an alternative to the landfill, resulting in the pile up of garbage on the streets of the country. Heavy rain on Sunday brought with it flooded streets coupled with waste, as experts warned of the health and environmental impact of the crisis.

Lebanon Invited to Join Syria Talks on Friday
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 28/15/The top diplomats from Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey will hold a second round of Syria talks in less than a week in Vienna Thursday, a Russian diplomatic source said Wednesday. Following the four-way meeting at 1800 GMT Thursday the quartet could be joined for more talks Friday by their counterparts from Iran, Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon "if these countries reply positively" to an invitation from Washington, the source said. The U.S. said Tuesday that it expected a "genuine multilateral invitation" to be made to Iran, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad, to join the talks, despite earlier opposition from Washington and Riyadh. U.S. officials would not say which power would pass the invitation to Tehran and did not know if Iran would accept, but they said it would be welcome to attend if it did. Friday's talks in Vienna are seen as a way to end Syria's civil war by creating an interim unity regime and paving the way for Assad's exit. A meeting last Friday in the Austrian capital between the top envoys from the four countries ended without a major breakthrough, as serious divisions remain over when or if Assad should go. Russia launched air strikes in Syria last month to help forces loyal to Assad battle what it says are Islamic State and other "terrorist" groups. The U.S. and its allies involved in a bombing campaign against Islamic State insist Moscow is mainly targeting moderate groups fighting the Damascus regime.

Kanaan: LF-FPM Agreement on Nationality Draft-Law Serves All Lebanese
Naharnet/October 28/15/Free Patriotic Movement MP Ibrahim Kanaan hailed the agreement with the Lebanese Forces on the nationality draft-law as a “step in the right direction,” reported al-Joumhouria newspaper on Wednesday. He explained to the daily: “This issue is not about the FPM, LF or even Christians, but it serves national strategic interests by bolstering Lebanese capabilities through its expatriates, who are spread throughout the world.”“The agreement is the culmination of coordination between the FPM and LF after they signed the Declaration of Intent” in June, he added. “The agreement will be followed by other steps in the future that will benefit the Lebanese, especially Christians,” revealed Kanaan. The LF and FPM signed on Tuesday a draft-law on allowing expatriates to regain their Lebanese nationality. They hope to include it on the agenda of an upcoming legislative session. The parliament bureau, which had convened on Tuesday to address the agenda, had however failed to include it. It is scheduled to hold another meeting next week. The LF and FPM had intensified over the past week their contacts in order to reach a joint vision over the agenda of the legislative session.

Citizens Stranded as Rain Turns Streets into Ponds in Beirut, Suburbs
Naharnet/October 28/15/Heavy rains and poor infrastructure turned key roads in Beirut and its southern and eastern suburbs into ponds on Wednesday, trapping a lot of citizens in their cars. The tunnels near Beirut's Rafik Hariri International Airport were blocked in both directions due to the accumulation of water, the Traffic Management Center said. Pictures circulated on social networking websites showed cars partially submerged in floodwater in a number of streets in Dahieh, Hazmieh and Furn el-Shebbak. Water carried sands and rocks with it, which further contributed to the blocking of the drain systems. Floodwater also caused severe traffic jams in the capital, especially in the area from the Saint Georges Hotel in Ain el-Mraisseh to Raouche.Such scenes have become frequent in Lebanon during every rain season. However, a months-long waste collection crisis has brought a new element this year, turning streets in parts of Lebanon on Sunday into rivers of garbage.The floods come three months into a garbage crisis trigerred by the closure of Lebanon's largest landfill in Naameh in July, and the government's failure to find an alternative. The crisis sparked a protest movement led by the "You Stink" activist group, which brought thousands of people into the streets for several weeks of demonstrations. The cabinet in early September approved a plan that involved finding new sites for landfills and temporarily reopening the closed Naameh site for the immediate disposal of already-accumulated waste.
But the plan has run into a series of obstacles, including the refusal of residents around Naameh to allow its reopening and protests by people living near prospective new landfill sites. Activists and several ministers have long warned that the arrival of winter, which often brings heavy rains to Lebanon, risked dispersing months worth of trash that has accumulated in open dumps.

Person Seriously Wounded after Being Shot by Israeli Troops in Ghajar
Naharnet/October 28/15/One person was critically injured at dawn on Wednesday after coming under fire by Israeli troops in the occupied town of Ghajar, reported the National News Agency. It said that the soldiers shot at a person, who was attempting to hide behind a sand barrier in the Lebanese section of the town. The victim was not identified. An Israeli infantry unit, backed by several vehicles, soon arrived at the scene and transported the victim to a hospital in the Palestinian territories.

Army Adjutant Escapes Shooting in Tripoli
Naharnet/October 28/15/Unknown assailants opened fire in the northern city Tripoli at a Lebanese army Intelligence Adjutant without injuring him, the state-run National News Agency reported on Wednesday. Adjutant A.M. was subject to gunfire in the area of al-Qobbeh, NNA added. Afterwards, the army carried out patrols and raided several houses including that of fugitive Islamist Shadi al-Mawlawi without finding him. They arrested a man on suspicion of his involvement in the act, and erected checkpoints in several areas of the city mainly in Qobbeh and Bab al-Tabbaneh. In a separate incident, the army arrested fugitive Abdul Rahman Ibrahim al-Ahmed on charges of opening fire and hurling bombs at one of the military positions in Bab al-Tabbaneh in 2014, and for carrying out assaults in coordination with others on military personnel in the said area. He was referred to the related authorities for interrogation.

Report: Deputy CIA Chief Made Secret Visit to Lebanon to Discuss Combating Terrorism
Naharnet/October 28/15/Deputy head of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency David Cohen paid a secret visit to Lebanon over a week ago to hold talks with top security officials, revealed As Safir newspaper on Wednesday. It said that he had held talks on combating terrorism with Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq, Army Commander General Jean Qahwaji, and General Security chief Abbas Ibrahim. He also held talks during his three-hour trip with State Security chief George Qaraa, Army Intelligence chief Edmond Fadel, and Internal Security Forces Intelligence Bureau head Imad Othman. Discussions also addressed the needs of Lebanon's military and security institutions.

Hizbullah-Mustaqbal Dialogue Urges Activation of Work of Govt., Parliament
Naharnet/October 28/15/Hizbullah and al-Mustaqbal movement stressed during their twentieth dialogue session on Tuesday the need to activate the work of the paralyzed government and parliament and continue the implementation of the security plan in all regions. The session was attended by Interior Minister Nouhad al-Mashnouq after media reports said he could be replaced by another Mustaqbal representative. The minister had waged a fierce verbal attack on Hizbullah earlier this month, fueling speculation that his relatively good ties had worsened with the rival party. “The conferees stressed their insistence on clinging to dialogue and maintaining it,” said a terse joint statement issued after the Ain el-Tineh talks. “They underlined the need to create an appropriate atmosphere for activating the work of the government and parliament in order to address the political, economic and social issues,” the statement added. The two parties also called for “enhancing security in all Lebanese regions and continuing the measures that were agreed on in this regard.”Mashnouq had accused Hizbullah of failing to facilitate the implementation of the security plan devised for the Bekaa region.

Top CIA official in secret Lebanon visit: report
Now Lebanon/October 28/15
Deputy Director David Cohen met with top official to discuss counterterror efforts.
BEIRUT – The US Central Intelligence Agency’s second-highest ranking official has made a secret visit to Beirut, according to a Lebanese daily. As-Safir reported Wednesday morning that it “received information” that David Cohen, the deputy director of the CIA, had met with Lebanese officials to discuss counterterror efforts. During the visit, which “lasted about three hours,” Cohen met with Interior Minister Nohad Machnouk, LAF chief Jean Kahwaji and the Director General of General Security Major General Abbas Ibrahim, according to the newspaper’s source. “[Cohen] also held a joint meeting with the Director-General of State Security Major General George Karaa, [LAF] Intelligence chief Brigadier General Edmond Fadel and Information Branch chief Brigadier General Imad Othman,” the daily added. “Discussion during these meetings focused on [what] Lebanon’s military and security institutions [require] to confront terrorism.” Cohen was appointed to his CIA post in early 2015, after serving as the Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence since 2011. During his tenure in the Treasury Department, Cohen visited Lebanon in 2012 to encourage the country’s banking sector to abide by US sanctions and financial regulations.

The politics of Ashura in Nabatieh
Ana Maria Luca/Now Lebanon/October 28/15
Each year, the southern town attracts hundreds of Shiites who mark the commemoration of the Battle of Karbala when Imam Hussein ibn Ali, the grandson of Prophet Muhammad, was killed by the forces of the second Umayyad caliph Yazid I at Karbala, Iraq. Blood flows in Nabatieh during the procession that takes place in the central square of the town. Men, teenagers and even little boys and a few women make a pledge to perform the bloodletting ritual, making an incision with a sword into their foreheads and letting the blood flow on their faces in a sign of mourning. In order to keep the blood flowing, they hit the incision with the flat of the sword, chanting Haidar! Haidar! (Lion! Lion!), the nickname of Imam Ali, Hussein’s father, the son-in-law and cousin of Prophet Muhammad. In religious terms, this is the Tatbir — in slang: “to hit Haidar.” Members of the procession are often rushed from the central square in ambulances.
The 10th day of Muharram was a Saturday this year, but not as many people crowded the alleyways of central Nabatieh as in past years. Security was tight.
Among scores of policemen and Red Cross volunteers, security officers wearing utility vests and black t-shirts with the green Amal Movement logo also supervise everything. The entrances are separate for men and women. The women’s entrance is in a tent, where four women search all the female believers and tourists and carefully go through their purses. Foreign women are also briefly interrogated by the guards covered in abayas. They ask who they are, why they are there and who their friends in town are. If you don’t know anybody, you don’t get in.
Nabatieh is the only place in Lebanon and one of the few places in the world where people still practice the Tatbir. In the southern suburbs of Beirut, Hezbollah organizes a grandiose and clean commemoration with Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah showing up in person to deliver his speech. In Nabatieh, the Party of God does not sanction the controversial Tatbirand insteadorganizes a procession the 13th day of Muharram, the third day after Ashura.
The reason for this is, residents and political analysts say, that Amal Movement and Hezbollah, although political allies, have always had a convention of not mixing their crowds for the religious celebrations. The convention is about tradition and religion but also political struggle to keep a strong grip over the most important Shiite-majority town in the southern region of Lebanon.
The controversy of hitting Haidar in Nabatieh
The first Hussainiya [congregation hall for Shiite Muslim commemoration ceremonies during the Remembrance of Muharram] in the Levant was built in Nabatieh in 1910 by the grandfather of current imam of Nabatieh, Sheikh Abdul Hussein al-Sadiq. At the time, Lebanese Shiites weren’t very permissive concerning Ottoman rule.
“My great-grandparents used to commemorate it in secret, at home,” a resident of Nabatieh told NOW, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Also there was a commemoration in the Hay al-Serail Mosque, but it was also all very much in secret.”. There was no bloodletting ritual in Nabatieh until Iranian doctor Bahij Mirza moved to the town. His house still stands in the city today. Miza moved to Nabatieh just after the ruling Iranian Pahlavi family convinced the Ottomans to allow public Ashura ceremonies in Farsi for the Iranian residents of the town. “The Arabs only watched, never participated,” the resident said. “But they started taking part in the procession after the WWI and the fall of the Ottoman Empire. Gradually, the Iranian influence decreased, Arabic took the place of Farsi. I’m not sure exactly what year that happened — it was a gradual transition.”
The Tatbir is one of the most controversial practices in Shiite Islam. According to residents, Nabatieh Imam of Sheikh Abdel Hussein Sadik cannot be convinced to give up the ritual because he says it is not a sin to shed blood for one day a year to commemorate Imam Hussein. The sheikh enjoys great popularity in Nabatieh. Politically he is closer to Amal circles that he is to Hezbollah. Moreover, he holds an old grudge against the Party of God. Ashura was held in the town’s Hussainiya and it is forbidden to hold it elsewhere. But Hezbollah set up a tent in front of the Hussainiya and only took it down in 2005. Sheikh Sadiq wasn’t pleased. To this day, the Hussainiya of Nabatiyeh is the only place where no image of Sayyed Nasrallah or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei can be found.
A split town
The bloodletting ritual in Nabatieh is still associated with the Amal Movement. That is because the party was there before Hezbollah and even before the Iranian Revolution and Ayattollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s decision to forbid theTatbir. When the Amal Movement was founded as the Movement of the Dispossessed in 1974 by Moussa al-Sadr, it emerged as the only group to represent the Shite community in Lebanon.
“In the ‘70s, there was nothing political about Ashura,” Ali, Nabatieh resident, told NOW. “Amal did not go against the already existing popular beliefs. In part, this is because the Sadiq family, the imams of Nabatieh and Imam Moussa al-Sadr are of the Arab Hawza of Najaf, and do not follow the Iranian Qom doctrine that forbids the bloody practices. Therefore, they were pretty much in agreement.”
But Imam Al-Sadr disappeared, the Lebanese Civil War turned the Amal Movement into a militia, and Islamist Hezbollah emerged. Hezbollah supporters participated in Ashura, but it was obvious that they did not share the same enthusiasm for the Tatbir. Following Ayatollah Khamenei’s decision, Hezbollah forbade its members to perform the ritual and had its people donate blood instead.
“The Amal militiamen turned Ashura into a festival of blood, where they assert their courage and manhood by self-flagellation. Hezbollah was always against any kind of bloodletting. It was obvious that they would never mix as far as these religious practices were concerned,” Ali explained. “I don’t think that Amal and Hezbollah were ever united in celebrating the day of Ashura. Joint marches are rare, to say the least.”
A tale of many commemorations
On Ashura the Nabatiyeh central market closes and the road to Marjayoun is closed up to the Hussainiya. If you look around carefully, you notice how different the groups attending the Ashura ceremonies in Nabatieh are, the woman resident told NOW. The people of Nabatieh, who are not keen on showing their affiliation with any school of thought, march first. The followers of Najaf doctrine, nicknamed ‘Iraqis’ in town, come second. Then there are the Shirazis — the followers of Mohammad al-Shirazi’s teachings. Then the Amal Movement supporters show up. The last group is Hezbollah’s.
“Hezbollah’s women always wear black abayas, while the men have beards and wear black shirts closed at the neck. They flash banners with Ayatollah Khomeini’s sayings, carry pictures of the martyrs and, of course, Hassan Nasrallah and other political leaders,” the resident said. “The Amal groups are much less organized: young men are sometimes topless, women don’t wearabayas and sometimes not even the veil, but they’re dressed in black. Let’s just say that the Ashura march reflects exactly the situation in the party they represent,” she says, smiling.
The agreement
Historically, the massacre of Karbala happened on the 10th day of Muharram. The legend says that the heads of the slaughtered Imam Hussein and his companions were taken to Damascus to Yazid bin Muawiya, the second Umayyad caliph Sayyida Zaynab followed the convoy and recovered the heads from the Umayyad soldiers on the 13th day. This is the day Hezbollah holds a separate march in Nabatieh, the result of an agreement it reached with Amal Movement in 2002.
“The two parties remained at odds well after the war they fought against each other in the 1980s; there was always friction during Ashura, even after they stopped fighting in 1990,” the woman said. “Once, in 2002, they provoked each other. They started throwing stones at each other and the incident remained in the history of Nabatieh as ‘the stone intifada.’ They then agreed to separate the marches: Amal March on the 11th or 12th day of Muharram, and Hezbollah on the 13th day.”
According to journalist and political commentator Qassem Qassir, neither Amal nor Hezbollah leaders want to overlap with the Ashura processions — they simply want to avoid friction. “But it seems that the Amal Movement wants score more points over Hezbollah,” Qassir says, “so they decided to hold processions on the 10th, the 11th and 12th day, while Hezbollah only holds the march on the 13th day. I believe that, despite the political alliance, there is a competition for power in Nabatieh. This is a show of force between Amal and Hezbollah. It turned out that despite the strong political presence of Hezbollah, Amal enjoys some popularity in the south and the party wants to maintain it, so they express it through the marking of Ashura in the most assertive way possible.”
Amin Nasr and Myra Abdallah contributed with translation.
Ana Maria Luca tweets @aml1609

Saudi Prince al-Waleed bin Talal: I Side with Israel – Not the Palestinians
[United with Israel]/Saudi prince al-Waleed bin Talal has stated that in the event of another Palestinian Intifada (uprising) against Israel he would side with the Jewish State, saying that “Saudi Arabia has reached a political maturity to constitute a durable alliance with the Jewish nation.” “I will side with the Jewish nation and its democratic aspirations in case of outbreak of a Palestinian Intifada and I shall exert all my influence to break any ominous Arab initiatives set to condemn Tel Aviv, because I deem the Arab-Israeli entente and future friendship necessary to impede the Iranian dangerous encroachment,” Al Qabas quotes the Saudi media tycoon as saying. The Saudi Prince and entrepreneur posited that his country must reconsider its regional commitments and devise a new strategy to combat Iran’s increasing influence in Gulf States by forging a defense pact with Tel Aviv to deter any possible Iranian moves in the light of unfolding developments in the Syria and Moscow’s military intervention, the Kuwaiti Al Qabas daily reports according to AWD News. “The whole Middle-East dispute is tantamount to matter of life and death for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from my vantage point ,and I know that Iranians seek to unseat the Saudi regime by playing the Palestinian card , hence to foil their plots Saudi Arabia and Israel must bolster their relations and form a united front to stymie Tehran’s ambitious agenda,” Kuwaiti News Agency (KUNA) quoted Prince al-Waleed as saying on Tuesday , adding that Riyadh and Tel Aviv must achieve a modus vivendi, for Saudi policy in regard to Arab-Israeli crisis is no longer acceptable. There have been several reports over the past years of secret Saudi-Israel relations, and specifically on military and intelligence issues. The recent nuclear deal with Iran has led Saudi officials and leaders to voice support of regional cooperation with Israel. [United with Israel]
http://unitedwithisrael.org/saudi-prince-i-side-with-israel-and-not-palestinians/

Saudi Says Vienna Talks to Test if Iran, Russia 'Serious' on Syria
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 28/15/International talks in Vienna this week will test whether Russia and Iran are "serious" about a political solution to the war in Syria, the Saudi foreign minister said Wednesday.
"If they're serious we will know, and if they're not serious we will also know and stop wasting time with them," Adel al-Juberi said at a press conference with visiting British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond.

Attempted Stabbing of Israeli Soldier in Hebron, Attacker Killed
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 28/15/A Palestinian in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron attempted to stab an Israeli soldier on Wednesday and was shot dead, the army and police said. "A Palestinian attempted to stab a soldier at a military position in Hebron," the army said in a statement.
"Palestinian terrorist shot and killed," police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld added on Twitter. Also in the southern West Bank, an Israeli woman was later stabbed and moderately wounded by a Palestinian, the army said in an English-language statement. "The assailant approached her and stabbed her from behind," it said. "The assailant was detained on site."The attacks were the latest in a wave of violence that has seen nine Israelis killed by Palestinians in three weeks of knife attacks and shootings. Sixty Palestinians and one Arab Israeli have also been killed, some of them alleged attackers, while others were shot at anti-Israeli protests. An Israeli Jew and an Eritrean have also been killed after being mistaken for attackers. Clashes erupted in September as an increase in Jewish visitors to Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque compound alarmed Palestinians, who fear Israel is seeking to change rules that forbid Jews from praying there. Since October 3, the violence has spiraled into a wave of near-daily stabbings and shootings.

Iran to Join Syria Talks as Diplomatic Push Gains Pace
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 28/15/Iran confirmed Wednesday that it will take part in international talks aimed at resolving the Syria conflict for the first time as a diplomatic push to end the war gains momentum.
Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif will join his counterparts from Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey in Vienna on Friday for negotiations it is hoped could help staunch almost five years of bloodshed. The inclusion of Iran -- a key backer of President Bashar Assad -- marks a crucial shift after Tehran was excluded from earlier talks mainly because of opposition from Washington and Riyadh. "We have reviewed the invitation, and it was decided that the foreign minister would attend the talks," Iranian foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham said. The Friday talks will follow a meeting between the top diplomats of Russia, the United States, Saudi Arabia and Turkey on Thursday evening, the second in less than a week of the quartet.
Egypt, Lebanon and the European Union have also confirmed they will attend Friday's talks, while Russia said Iraq has also been invited.
'Continue momentum'
After years of international failure to stem the violence in Syria, the talks in Vienna will be the first time all major international players in the conflict will be in the same room as they seek to find a political solution by setting up an interim unity government. But serious divisions remain over when or whether Assad should step down -- and the four-way Russia-U.S.-Saudi-Turkey meeting last Friday in the Austrian capital failed to make a major breakthrough.  On one side are Russia and Iran, which both are backing Assad's forces on the ground and say Damascus must be helped to defeat "terrorism" before a political process can start. On the other are the United States and its key regional allies Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which are backing groups fighting Assad and insist he must go if there is to be any hope of peace. U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that he doubted the upcoming round of talks in Vienna would be "the last chapter."But Secretary of State John Kerry said he felt "progress was being made towards laying down the foundation of what a political transition could look like" after the last talks and wanted to "continue momentum," Kirby said. The dynamic in the protracted conflict shifted after Russia launched an air campaign in support of Assad's forces on September 30 -- allowing Damascus to go on the offensive and overshadowing a U.S.-led coalition bombing Islamic State jihadists. Assad then made a surprise visit to Moscow last week -- his first known foreign trip outside Syria since the start of the conflict. Russia says that its bombing campaign is targeting IS fighters and other "terrorist" groups but Washington and its allies insist that Moscow is hitting more moderate groups battling Assad. Iran is believed to have sent fighters to back up Assad on the ground, and is estimated to have several thousand men -- including from Lebanon's Hizbullah -- under its command in the country. More than 250,000 people have been killed since Syria's brutal conflict broke out in March 2011, sparked by a bloody crackdown on protests against Assad's rule. The Pentagon on Wednesday said it may step up its air strikes and even direct ground attacks by special forces against jihadists seeking to carve out an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria.

Russia Balks at U.N. Action on Syria Barrel Bombs
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 28/15/Russia on Wednesday threw cold water on a proposed draft U.N. Security Council resolution aimed at stopping barrel bomb attacks in Syria, saying it could jeopardize international peace talks. Britain, France and Spain have drafted a measure that would condemn the use of barrel bombs and threaten sanctions against the Damascus regime which is accused of dropping the crude explosives on civilian targets. Asked whether Russia backed Security Council action on barrel bombs, Russian Deputy Ambassador Petr Iliichev said "no, especially at this very delicate moment.""We should not jeopardize efforts that are being undertaken," he told reporters. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is due to join his counterparts from the United States, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and, for the first time Iran, for talks in Vienna on Friday on ending the four-year war.
Egypt, Lebanon and the European Union have also confirmed they will attend Friday's talks, which comes as Russia's air campaign in Syria enters its second month. France had hoped to circulate the draft resolution in the coming days, despite doubts that Russia, a veto-wielding Security Council member and Syria's ally, would endorse the measure. Under discussion for months, the draft text would demand that Syrian authorities immediately cease the use of barrel bombs and threaten further measures against those who violate the measure.The draft resolution is being drafted under chapter 7 of the UN charter, which authorizes the use of force or sanctions. Human rights groups say barrel bombings by the regime are the number one killer in the four-year war, claiming more civilian lives than IS attacks. Syrian leader Bashar Assad has denied using barrel bombs, but the West charges that the explosives are dropped from helicopters. Only the regime has helicopters. More than 250,000 people have died in the conflict, and nearly 12 million people -- half of the country's population -- have been driven from their homes.

U.N. Warns of Israel-Palestinian 'Catastrophe' as More Protests Expected
Agence France Presse/Naharnet/October 28/15/The United Nations warned Wednesday that a deadly surge in violence between Israelis and Palestinians was headed toward "catastrophe" as fresh protests were expected in the volatile West Bank.A wave of anger has gripped the city of Hebron where hundreds demonstrated Tuesday night to demand the return of "the bodies of martyrs" -- youths behind a wave of unrest that has seen nine Israelis killed in knife attacks and shootings. Withholding the bodies of attackers is one of a series of measures approved by the Israeli government to try to dissuade the attacks against Jews, which began in early October as tensions over the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem boiled over. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein warned that the latest flare-up in violence in the six-decade-old conflict was "dangerous in the extreme."
"The violence between Palestinians and the Israelis will draw us ever closer to a catastrophe if not stopped immediately," he said during a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. Also at the meeting, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on the United Nations, "more urgently than any time before, to set up a special regime for international protection for the Palestinian people, immediately and urgently."He accused Israel of carrying out "extrajudicial killings of defenseless Palestinian civilians."
Bodies withheld
The West Bank city of Hebron has been a hotbed of the recent unrest, with near-daily clashes with Israeli police where protesters are often left with bullet wounds or dead. Many of the youths behind the attacks are also from the city.
Palestinian organizations say the bodies of 25 attackers have not been returned to families.They are among 59 Palestinians and one Israeli Arab killed since October 1. Palestinian medics say some 2,000 Palestinians have been injured since the outbreak of violence. "The terrorist's family makes his funeral a show of support for terrorism and incitation to murder and we cannot allow it," Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan said in mid-October when the measure was announced. He said the bodies would be buried in cemeteries reserved for attackers, "as has been done in the past."The move infuriates Muslims who have strict religious rules on how burials should take place. The Israelis "want to put pressure on us... they know that it is more than a red line for us: they execute them and then they try to crush our dignity," said Jihad Irshaid, the father of 17-year-old Dania who was shot dead on Sunday while allegedly trying to stab soldiers. Amnesty International on Tuesday accused Israel of a series of "unlawful killings of Palestinians using intentional lethal force without justification" in east Jerusalem and the West Bank.
'Inciting and provoking'
The latest violence erupted in September with clashes over access to the al-Aqsa mosque compound. Tensions rose over a long-running Palestinian fear that Israelis are planning to change the rules governing the site that is sacred to both Muslims and Jews, and lies in annexed east Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly denied seeking to allow Jews to pray at the compound, which they refer to as the Temple Mount. Only Muslims are allowed to pray within the compound, while non-Muslims can visit but not pray there. After an intense diplomatic drive to defuse the tensions, Israel and Jordan -- the custodian of the holy site -- agreed Saturday to allow surveillance cameras at the compound, but this has run into trouble as the two lock horns over the installation. Further straining the situation, an Israeli Arab lawmaker on Wednesday visited the mosque compound, defying a ban by Netanyahu on visits by lawmakers and government ministers, to avoid provoking Muslim anger. "Israel does not control who is banned from entering the mosque, and continues to change the status quo," Basel Ghattas, a Christian member of the Israeli parliament for the Arab Joint List coalition, wrote on his Facebook account. Erdan, the internal security minister, slammed Ghattas' visit. "The vile provocation of the deputy Basel Ghattas only highlights his inadequacy as a representative of the public. His initiative could incite violence and lead to death," he wrote on Twitter. On Tuesday, Deputy Foreign Minister Tzipi Hotovely said it was her "dream to see the Israeli flag flying" over the holy site, prompting Netanyahu to order government ministers to follow the party line.

Syrian rebels oppose Iran talks attendance
By Reuters, Washington Wednesday, 28 October 2015/A senior member of Syria’s Western-backed political opposition came out on Wednesday against Iranian participation in Syrian peace talks in Vienna, saying their presence would undermine the political process.The United States has said that Iran, the main regional ally of President Bashar al-Assad, would be invited to Friday’s talks and the semi-official Iranian news agency ISNA said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and his deputies would attend. About a dozen participants are expected including Russia and Saudi Arabia, which back Assad and his opponents, respectively. Hisham Marwa, Vice-President of the Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition, criticized any participation in the talks by Tehran but stopped short of saying it would refuse participation itself if Iran was involved. “Iran doesn’t believe in the Geneva Communiqué. Involving it (Iran) in talks undermines the political process,” he told Reuters, speaking of an internationally agreed document setting out guidelines for Syria’s path to peace and a political transition. Asked whether the Coalition would refuse to take part in talks, he said, “What’s important now is not to refuse talks, it is important to express our concern. Iran has only one project - to keep Assad in power... they don’t believe in the principle of the talks.”In January 2014 the opposition body refused to attend political talks in Switzerland unless the United Nations retracted its invitation to Iran. ISNA news agency quoted foreign ministry spokeswoman Marzieh Afkham as saying that deputy foreign ministers Hossein Amir Abdollahian, Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht Ravanchi would accompany Zarif to Vienna. Fars news agency said separately that Zarif had discussed Iranian participation in the talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov by phone on Tuesday. The Turkey-based Coalition has little influence over rebels fighting to overthrow Assad in a conflict that has been complicated by the successes of rival hardline Islamist groups, many of whom have their own political networks. Its critics say the exiled group fails to represent the Syrian people and its decisions are dictated by its two main backers - Saudi Arabia and Qatar - which compete for influence. Russia intervened militarily in Syria’s civil war at the end of last month in support of Assad, and the Syrian army is also supported by Iranian fighters. Russia and Iran say Assad must be part of any transition and that the Syrian people will decide who governs them. The United States has said it could tolerate Assad during a short transition period, but that he would then have to exit the political stage.

U.S. weighs special forces in Syria, helicopters in Iraq
Reuters, Washington Wednesday, 28 October 2015/The United States is considering sending a small number of special operations forces to Syria and attack helicopters to Iraq as it weighs options to build momentum in the battle against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), U.S. officials said on Tuesday.
President Barack Obama, deeply averse to over-committing American troops to unpopular wars in the Middle East, could view some of the options as more viable than others as he approaches the final stretch of his presidency. Still, Obama’s administration is under pressure to ramp up America’s effort, particularly after the fall of the Iraqi city of Ramadi to ISIS in May and the failure of a U.S. military program to train and arm thousands of Syrian rebels.
Two U.S. officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity to discuss ongoing deliberations, said any deployments would be narrowly tailored, seeking to advance specific, limited military objectives in both Iraq and Syria.
That option includes temporarily deploying some U.S. special operations forces inside of Syria to advise moderate Syrian opposition fighters for the first time and, potentially, to help call in U.S. air strikes, one official said. Other possibilities including sending a small number of Apache attack helicopters, and U.S. forces to operate them, to Iraq, as well as taking steps to bolster other Iraqi capabilities needed to claw back territory from ISIS. The deliberations come as the United States looks to Syrian opposition fighters it supports to put pressure on Raqqa, ISIS’ stronghold, and for Iraqi forces to retake Ramadi after the city fell to the militants earlier this year. The options appeared to stop short of deploying American troops in any direct ground combat roles, something Obama has so far ruled out. One of the officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the proposals were still in a conceptual stage - meaning that even if any were approved in the coming days, a U.S. military deployment could still be weeks or months away. The Pentagon and White House declined comment on the options, which were also reported by the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal.

Kofi Annan sees chance of Syria peace in U.S.-Russia talks
Tom Miles, Reuters Geneva Wednesday, 28 October 2015/Talks between Russia and the United States may produce a chance of peace in Syria, Kofi Annan, the former U.N. secretary-general who tried unsuccessfully to forge a deal to end the war in 2012, said on Tuesday. "In this situation the role of Russia and the U.S. are key. If the two of them find a way of working effectively together and working with the others, we will find a solution. "No war goes on forever," Annan told a packed audience of students and diplomats, including Lakhdar Brahimi, who succeeded him as the Syria mediator, but also quit after failing to forge agreement between the warring sides. The United States and Russia will hold talks on Syria in Vienna on Friday, and have invited Iran, which is widely seen as a key part of any peace deal but which the United States refused to have at the table when Annan was presiding in 2012. The key to ending the four-and-a-half-year war, which has killed more than 250,000, was getting "governments who are funding the war, who are giving money and arms to the parties responsible" to work together, Annan said. "Perhaps it was too early in 2012, maybe it wasn’t ripe. But today we see contacts that were not possible in 2012 or even a year ago, where you are seeing meetings between the Russians, the Saudis, the Americans and the Turks, trying to find a common solution." The only way to bring peace was if the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, possibly working with Germany, worked together with the regional powers - Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Qatar, he said. Those governments would be able to rein in the armed opposition groups fighting in Syria, which would have to be part of any peace deal, he said. "Eventually you will deal with them, you will talk to them, but you have to organize it in such a way that those who are pulling the strings, that those who have influence on them, that those who have funded the war, will come together to say ‘this is it, we’re not going to fund it any more’."

Saudi Arabia sets up new labor committees to protect rights
Saudi Gazette, Jeddah Wednesday, 28 October 2015/New labor committees at companies in Saudi Arabia should ensure amicable relations between management and workers and protect labor rights, according to labor experts.
The membership of such committees, called for under new amendments to the Labor Law, will include selected workers and an administrator to represent employees during negotiations with management. Companies have been instructed to set out an internal law, approved by The Labor Ministry, to be followed by all workers.Under the new amendments, companies that fail to publish the internal law would be fined SR50,000 ($13,300). The internal law permits companies to fine employees who violate regulations, with the money collected through fines to be used for worker welfare, as reported by the Arabic daily Okaz. “The new labor law amendments are beneficial to workers, as it helps them receive their legitimate rights,” consultant and management trainer, Abubacker Baashen, said. “It will contribute to increasing productivity of workers and improving condition of firms.”Baashen said he believes that the new labor committees will help stop the departure of highly qualified workers from companies, and ensure manpower stability. The chairman of the Chartered Accountants Committee, Abdullah Bakudah, said the fines received from workers would not be added to the company’s revenues, but used for improving the performance of workers, with labor committees deciding how fines from workers are to be spent. “The labor committee will work as a link between a company’s employees and management,” he said. The ministry has increased the fine on companies that fail to publish internal laws from SR5,000 ($1,300) to SR50,000 ($13,300). Lawyer Talal Al-Amri said the labor committees would have a positive impact on workers’ performance in their companies. “It gives them assurance that their demands would reach the top management of the company and this will boost workers’ morale,” he said. “It will have a positive impact on the Saudi labor market. It will also correct some of the past mistakes.”This article first appeared in the Saudi Gazette on Oct. 28, 2015.

Pentagon investigates Afghan sex abuse cover-up claims
AFP, Washington Wednesday, 28 October 2015/U.S. defense officials said they were opening an investigation into allegations of child sex abuse by Afghan security forces and reports that U.S. personnel deliberately overlooked it. The probe by the Pentagon's inspector general comes on Tuesday, after The New York Times last month reported that U.S. troops in Afghanistan had been instructed by their superiors to overlook cases of Afghan police or commanders sexually abusing teenage boys, even if it took place on military bases. The practice is known as "bacha bazi," which means "boy play" in local languages. "Is there -- or was there -- any guidance, informal or otherwise, to discourage reporting by DoD (Department of Defense) affiliated personnel?" a memo from the inspector general's office asks. "What training on identifying and responding to alleged child sexual abuse... has been conducted or planned?"The memo, sent to leaders across the U.S. military, also asks for information on the number of cases of child sex abuse alleged against Afghan government officials that were reported to U.S. or coalition forces. The Times based its report on accounts from multiple soldiers and the father of a marine who was killed in 2012. The report said a former U.S. special forces captain beat up an Afghan militia commander for keeping a boy chained to his bed as a sex slave, and afterward was stripped of his command and withdrawn from Afghanistan. The Afghan Interior Ministry has rejected reports that it was not addressing the practice of bacha bazi, which it called a "heinous and indecent act" that is illegal under Afghan laws. The Afghan government has in the past tried to crack down on the ancient and outlawed practice of child abuse, which is prevalent across rural parts of the country.

Anti-migrant rhetoric can be deadly, warns U.N.
Tom Miles, Reuters Geneva Wednesday, 28 October 2015/Politicians who use derogatory language about refugees and migrants may ultimately be responsible for causing violence, racism and bigotry, U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein warned on Tuesday. "Once you classify people along lines such that they pose a threat – that these are ‘hordes’, that we are being ‘invaded’, that there are ‘swarms’ of people coming, you have started the process of dehumanizing them as we know from history," he said.
Speaking to a packed audience of students and diplomats at Geneva's Graduate Institute, Zeid said politicians may feel they were exercising their freedom of expression responsibly, but such language was not okay, even in the mildest form. "Someone is going to pick up on this term, and down the line in some village somewhere, a family will be murdered because someone thought they had license to visit violence on this particular family because the politician stigmatized them," Zeid said. Politicians should be free to express their wishes and their will freely, he said, but they should do so "with due regard given to history, and some responsibility"."For the bigot, the chauvinist, the racist, it really doesn’t matter how many people turn up. Even one family that is different or foreign is enough to make an issue out of it. We have to be so careful that we don’t give ground to people like that." Zeid did not name any countries, but British Prime Minister David Cameron attracted criticism earlier this year for referring to migrants as a "swarm".Zeid also suggested the European Union should "absolutely forget" about economic revival if it insisted on obsessively checking every person crossing every one of its borders.
Many countries claimed to be leading a war on human trafficking, but they showed little regard for the victims and made it impossible for migrants to enter their labor markets even if they were crying out for workers, he added. "If xenophobia and demagoguery are allowed to set the governance agenda, what we will see is more deaths and greater brutalization of society as a whole, with communities that are cleaved from one another and prospects for greater violence." People were forced to leave countries such as Syria, Eritrea and Myanmar because of war, oppression and persecution, but the leaders of some of the world's most prosperous and privileged countries greeted them with "hate-filled rhetoric and even action", or detained them for long periods, Zeid said.

Military solution ‘impossible’ in parts of Mideast
AFP, Washington Wednesday, 28 October 2015/A military solution is “impossible” in parts of the Middle East, U.S. CIA chief John Brennan said, arguing that it was hard to picture effective central governments in some countries as they exist today. Brennan, who spoke at an intelligence conference in Washington on Tuesday, was joined by other security officials and industry experts. “When I look at Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen,” Brennan said, “it’s hard for me to envision a central government in those countries that’s going to be able to exert control or authority over the territory that was carved out post World War II.” “A military solution is just impossible in any of these countries,” he added. “You need to be able to bring down the temperature, try to de-escalate the conflict, build up some trust between the parties that are there, that are seriously interested by a peace settlement” he said. Bernard Bajolet, head of France’s DGSE external intelligence agency, said the region was not likely to return to its old self following the current conflicts. “The Middle East we have known is over, I doubt it will come back,” he told the conference. “We see that Syria is already divided on the ground, that the regime is controlling only a small part of the county, only one-third of the country which was established after WWII” he said. “The north is controlled by the Kurds.” “We have the same thing in Iraq” Bajolet said, adding that “I doubt really that one can come back to the previous situation.”Nonetheless, he said he was “confident” that the region would one day stabilize again.

Obama calls Saudi king to discuss regional issues
By Staff writer Al Arabiya News Tuesday, 27 October 2015/Saudi King Salman received a phone call from U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday, the Saudi state news agency SPA said. The leaders discussed "bilateral relations, the situation in the region, in addition to developments in the regional and international arenas,” SPA said. Meanwhile, the White House said in a statement that both leaders welcomed a commitment by the parties in Yemen's civil war to a second round of United Nations talks. "The two leaders pledged to remain in close contact on these and related issues, and reaffirmed the strong and enduring strategic partnership between the United States and Saudi Arabia," it said.

Turkey: Ankara bombings were ordered by ISIS
AFP, Ankara Wednesday, 28 October 2015/A massive twin bomb attack in the capital Ankara this month that killed 102 people was ordered by the militant Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group, prosecutors said Wednesday. "It is understood that a terrorist organization in (the southeastern) Gaziantep province planned attacks inside Turkey after taking direct orders from Daesh in Syria," Ankara prosecutors said in a statement, using an alternative name for the extremist group.

EU urges Abbas, Netanyahu to meet Quartet
AFP, Strasbourg Wednesday, 28 October 2015/EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini on Tuesday urged Israel Premier Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to meet Quartet representatives “within days” in the hope of kick-starting stalled peace talks. “I have asked both Netanyahu and Abbas to receive the Quartet envoys in the coming days, not weeks,” Mogherini said, stressing the need for speed if an upsurge in violence between Israelis and Palestinians is not to spiral out of control. The Quartet comprises the United States, the United Nations, the European Union and Russia and was set up in 2002 to promote what is known as the Middle East Peace Process. The peace talks, always difficult, stalled completely in 2014 despite the best efforts of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry but he has returned to the fray in recent weeks against a backdrop of worsening Israeli-Palestinian violence and Russia’s direct intervention in the bloody Syrian conflict. Mogherini warned the European parliament that there is a risk the Israeli-Palestinian dispute could get caught up in new conflicts in the region if the parties do not make an effort now to secure peace based on a two-state solution. “This is a risky time for Israelis and Palestinians alike... it is not business as usual in managing the old conflict,” she told the parliament in the eastern French city of Strasbourg. “If anyone believes we can just contain this... they are wrong. Every cycle of violence is going to be worse (than the previous one),” she said. Mogherini said it was essential to build confidence, to show the two sides by concrete actions on the ground that “they have a future in their lands”. Mogherini met Abbas in Brussels on Monday and Netanyahu last week in Berlin as part of efforts to revive the peace process.

Palestinians shot dead for 'stabbing' Israeli soldier
By Jeffrey Heller Reuters, Occupied Jerusalem Wednesday, 28 October 2015/Two Palestinians were shot dead after allegedly stabbing and wounding an Israeli soldier in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday. 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. The Israeli military said that soldiers had approached two Palestinians they found acting suspiciously at a junction near a Jewish settlement. When the suspects stabbed and wounded one of the soldiers, they were shot and killed, a military spokesman said. Their families said they were 17 and 22 years old. Since Oct. 1, at least 58 Palestinians, 31 of whom Israel has said were armed assailants, have been shot dead by Israelis at the scene of attacks or during protests in the West Bank and in Gaza. Many of those carrying out attacks have been teenagers. Palestinians are angry over what they see as excessive use of force by Israeli police and soldiers. Israel says it is justified in using lethal force to meet deadly threats. Amnesty International said on Thursday that it has found some of the killings of Palestinians have been unjustified and that Israeli forces were using "extreme and unlawful measures." In a statement the rights group said it has documented at least four cases in which Palestinians were deliberately shot dead without posing an imminent threat, "in what appear to have been extrajudicial executions." The number of Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks rose to 11 after the death of American-Israeli Richard Lakin, 76, who had been wounded in a Palestinian stabbing and shooting attack on a Jerusalem bus.
Cameras
Lakin, a former school principal in Glastonbury, Connecticut, moved to Israel in the early 1980s. A Facebook page that appeared to have been set up by his family said that in Jerusalem, he had taught students of an Arab-Jewish school which is a rare example of co-existence in the city.Lakin was stabbed and shot in an Oct. 13 assault that killed two other bus passengers. His death was announced by Jerusalem's Hadassah hospital, and on Twitter, the U.S. ambassador to Israel called it "devastating news". Israeli security forces, responding to the bus attack, shot dead one of the assailants and captured the other, police said. While tensions remain high, the focus of the Palestinian attacks appears to have shifted over the past few days from Jerusalem and cities across Israel to the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and their frequency has also declined. But there has been no apparent action toward implementing a Jordanian proposal, promoted by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, to try to stem the bloodshed - by installing cameras to monitor Jerusalem's flashpoint al-Aqsa mosque compound. Increasing numbers of religious Jews visiting the compound - which is Islam's holiest site outside Saudi Arabia and revered in Judaism as the location of two destroyed biblical temples - have led to Palestinian allegations that Israel is violating a "status quo" under which Jewish prayer there is banned. Israel has pledged to abide by the long-standing arrangement. In a statement on Tuesday, the Palestinian Authority complained of "continued assaults on sacred sites" and said Palestinians would press on with what it termed a "peaceful uprising" until Israel's occupation of land captured in a 1967 war ends. In a speech on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledged to continue to fight what he called Palestinian "incitement and terrorism." On Tuesday, a Jerusalem District court sentenced Israeli-Arab Sheikh Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement's northern section to 11 months in jail for incitement to violence over comments he made in a 2007 sermon. Netanyahu has accused the Islamic Movement's northern section of stirring up the violence and has moved to have it outlawed.

MEMRI/Breaking Report: Challenging Khamenei, Rafsanjani Demands That Iran Fulfill Its Obligations Under The JCPOA, And Reveals: We Had Nuclear Option In Iran-Iraq War
By: A. Savyon, U. Kafash and E. Kharr/On October 26, 2015, Hashemi Rafsanjani, the head of Iran's Expediency Council and the political rival of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, gave a comprehensive interview to the website "Iranians' Nuclear Hope."[1] In the interview, he says that, during the Iran-Iraq war, Iran kept the nuclear option in case it felt threatened or required this option, but chose not to act in this direction. Rafsanjani also personally comes out against Khamenei's directives regarding the JCPOA by calling on Rohani's government to meet Iran's obligations under this agreement from July 14, 2015. This, in direct defiance of Khamenei, who on October 21, 2015 ordered Rohani's government to delay meeting these obligations until nine new conditions he has added to the JCPOA have been met.[2] Rafsanjani stresses in the interview that the majority of the Iranian people, some 80-90 percent, support the JPCOA as it was presented in July, thus creating a potential for fermenting a civil uprising against Khamenei. Furthermore, Rafsanjani admits that both he and Khamenei were personally in charge of the development of Iran's secret nuclear program: he during his term as the Majlis speaker and later as president, and Khamenei during his presidency and later during his service as Supreme Leader. In fact, Rafsanjani reveals that, during his presidency, he sought to develop the Arak heavy water facility, in the plutonium track, and invested resources in it, though at another point in the interview he rebuts domestic criticism by explaining that Iran's concessions regarding the Arak facility do not harm Iran's national interest since the main use of the plutonium track is "for military purposes." By these statements Rafsanjani confirms suspicions that Iran tried to establish a military nuclear project.
By the very act of calling to meet Iran's commitments under the JCPOA and thereby gain international legitimacy for Iran's peaceful nuclear program, Rafsanjani exposes Khamenei as one who insists on the military nuclear option and challenges him to relinquish this option so as to let Iran take its rightful place in the international arena.
A comprehensive translation of excerpts from Rafsanjani's interview will be published by MEMRI shortly.
*A. Savyon is Director of MEMRI's Iran Media Project; U. Kafash and E. Kharrazi are research fellows at MEMRI.

Former Iran president, Rafsanjani  indirectly admits country sought nuclear weapons
ARIEL BEN SOLOMON/10/28/2015/Former Iranian president Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani indirectly admitted that his country started a nuclear weapons program during the Iran-Iraq war. According to interviews Rafsanjani gave to Iranian media in recent days, he and supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei personally wanted to meet the man behind Pakistan’s nuclear bomb, Abdul Qadeer Khan. The Iranians held talks with the scientist. “The regime was looking to acquire [a] nuclear bomb when it initiated its nuclear program and has never abandoned the idea,” said the Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) in an article posted late Tuesday on its website. It included key points from the interview Rafsanjani gave state news agency IRNA on Monday. The NCRI said that the former Iranian president acknowledged that from the beginning there was a comprehensive clandestine nuclear plan. “At the time that we started, we were at war and we were looking to have this capability [the nuclear bomb] for the day that our enemy would want to resort to the nuclear bomb,” said Rafsanjani in the interview. “Our basic doctrine was peaceful usage of the nuclear technology although we never abandoned the idea that if one day we are threatened and it is imperative, we would have the capability for going the other path [to a nuclear weapon] as well.” The NCRI report also mentioned Khamenei’s reported fatwa banning nuclear weapons, saying that it was for “foreign consumption.’ “This fatwa has never been put in writing by the regime and it deceives no fool but those who are looking for a pretext to justify trade with this bloodthirsty tyranny,” it said. US Secretary of State John Kerry said last year in an interview with the Voice of America’s Persian service, that he and President Barack Obama were “grateful” that Iran’s leader had issued a fatwa banning nuclear weapons. According to the Washington-based Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei never issued an official fatwa against nuclear weapons, at least not one for which there is any official record. According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies Iran Project, Rafsanjani gave a separate interview to Etemad, also discussing the history of the country’s nuclear program. “At some point, we lost faith in the Germans and began thinking of alternative approaches. We had talks with the Pakistanis, a scientist called Mr. Abd al-Qadir Khan [A.Q. Khan].” “At any rate, it was agreed that they should help us a bit – for example, by delivering second-hand first-generation centrifuges, along with some designs – so that we could build it ourselves,” said Rafsanjani. He also said that at the beginning of their enrichment work, they used Pakistani equipment and placed “a workshop next to it in order to build the components ourselves.”Asked if anyone had told him to try to build a nuclear bomb, Rafsanjani answered: “All those [who] loved Iran were engaged in nuclear activities [and] engaged in the work because of the non-military advantages of the project. Because of their Islamic ethics, they were opposed to building of the nuclear bomb and we knew that it had no other results but mass destruction.” “Apart from this, the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] was engaged in inspections,” he continued. Rafsanjani has had a tense relationship with Ayatollah Khamenei and political hardliners after two of his children expressed support for the opposition after a disputed presidential election in 2009. Despite the setback, Rafsanjani has not been shut out of the Iranian political landscape: he is the head of the Expediency Discernment Council, a body that advises the Supreme Leader and also resolves disputes between the Guardian Council and the parliament. Reuters contributed to this report.

US, Russia edge close to military collaboration in Syria and Iraq
DEBKAfile Special Report October 28, 2015/Washington and Moscow appear close to agreeing to their armed forces teaming up for war operations in Syria and Iraq. Nothing definite has so far emerged about this potential collaboration, or even if it is to be conducted covertly and experimentally ad hoc or seriously and out in the open. A comment suggesting that the Obama administration was ready for a new direction on Syria came from US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter Tuesday, Oct. 27. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he said, “we won't hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL...or conducting such mission directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground."According to Pentagon sources, the US intends to deploy small units of Special Operations forces in Syria and “special advisers” in Iraq, which too are believed to be special operations units under another name. However, debkafile’s military sources point out that small-scale military ventures in open-ended war situations tend to extend beyond the scale originally intended. Therefore, it is more than likely that both the US and Russia will find themselves committing increasing numbers of air and ground troops if the conflicts in the two countries continue. The way matters are going now, the plan for Iraq is for US forces to join Iraqi and Iranian units in launching an offensive to recover Ramadi, capital of the Western province of Anbar, 110 km West of Baghdad, which ISIS captured in May. In Syria, American troops plan to work with the northeastern Kurdish PYD-YPG militia for marching on Raqqa, the Islamic State’s headquarters in that country. At the Senate hearing, Carter pointed to last week’s rescue operation in northern Iraq near Kirkuk, in which US Delta commandos and Kurdish peshmerga special forces stormed a prison held by the Islamic State and freed dozens of Kurdish prisoners. After it was over, the US Defense Secretary said the military expects “more raids of this kind.”This joint US-Kurdish raid brought forth a furious response from Turkey.The Turkish military twice directed machine gun fire at the Syrian Kurdish PYD force in the Syrian town of Tal Abyad Sunday, Oct. 25. debkafile’s military sources note that Tel Abyad is the closest point to Raqqa to have been reached by America’s Kurdish allies. Ankara is vehemently opposed to the US partnership with the Kurds of Syria and Iraq, and puts its campaign against their separatist trends ahead of its commitment to the anti-ISIS coalition. However, the Obama administration appears to have finally come down in favor of a combined operation with the Kurdish forces, even at the expense of its ties with Ankara, another pointer to the up-and-coming US ground operations in Syria. Neither Washington nor Moscow has commented on their possible military cooperation for the fight to vanquish ISIS. But straws in the wind point in that direction. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeated: “I have no plans to put ground troops in Syria,” indicating that Moscow would confine itself to air strikes. The US Defense Minister Tuesday explicitly mentioned “…direct action on the ground” as well as, ”supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against ISIL."debkafile’s military sources find common elements in the American and Russian modes of action. Whereas the Americans plan to deploy ground troops for fighting with Kurdish forces, the Russians will stick to aerial attacks in conjunction with certain Syrian rebel groups. Moscow’s plan unfolded on Monday, Oct. 26, when a delegation of the Free Syrian Army, which is backed by the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia, turned up in Moscow seeking to coordinate its military operations with the Russians. It is hard to tell if US-Russian military cooperation in the Syrian and Iraqi wars actually ripens into a productive effort or proves ephemeral. Israel’s concerns and its responses to the fast-moving, explosive situation on its northern borders are scheduled to be thrashed out in the talks Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon is holding this week in Washington with Defense Secretary Carter.

Abbas to UN: Protect us from Israel, we need you
TOVAH LAZAROFF, JPOST.COM STAFF /10/28/2015
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas addressed the UN Human Rights Council on Wednesday, saying that Israel's actions against the Palestinian people have led to the current "explosion" of violence by Palestinian youth and that the time has come for the international community to move from words to actions to stop Israel's violations of international law. Abbas accused Israel of carrying out extrajudicial killings, detaining corpses, terrorizing people, applying collective punishments and carrying out illegal house demolitions. "Israel acts as a state above the law, undeterred, unpunished and without accountability," he charged. "I have warned for years of the consequences of what has been happening in Jerusalem and its surroundings," he said in reference to the wave of violence against Israel. He accused successive Israeli governments in power since the year 2000 of systematically seeking to change Jerusalem's historical and demographic character. Israel is "tightening the noose around the necks of the population by different means in order to drive them out of the holy city. I have warned that the pressure will cause an explosion," he said. He accused Israel of trying to alter the status quo on the Temple Mount compound in Jerusalem, saying that this threatened to change the conflict from a political one to a religious one. He called for strong and decisive intervention by the UN and its member states, particularly the UN Security Council. The Palestinians do not want to continue fruitless negotiations for the sake of negotiations, he said. "The Security Council must shoulder its responsibilities and protect the Palestinian people. We can no longer bear the attacks by the settlers and the Israeli army. Protect us, we need you," he said. He reiterated his vow made in his speech last month at the UN General Assembly in New York, that the Palestinians would not continue to be bound unilaterally by the Oslo Accords. "If Israel fails to commit to them, we will also not commit," he said. Israel must bear all its responsibilities as an occupying power, the status quo can not continue, he said. "We will start to implement this declaration by all peaceful means," he said.
Abbas invited the Israeli people to a "rights and justice-based peace." Peace is still within reach if the occupation of Palestinian land is ended and settlement expansion is ceased, he said. "The formula is actually very simple."This might be the last chance for the two-state solution, he warned. "After that who knows what the winds of change will bring." He added that security cannot be obtained through occupation, but only through recognition of the other. He attacked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for "justifying Israel's crimes against the Palestinians" with his comments last week in which he said that Palestinian leader Haj Amin al-Husseini had given Adolf Hitler the idea to kill Jews in the Holocaust.

World Jewish Congress slams Palestinian 'culture of hate'
Sam Sokol/J.Post/October 28/15/The World Jewish Congress issued a scathing rebuke of the Palestinians on Tuesday, lamenting what it termed a “culture of hate in the Palestinian media, in schools and on social networks.”In a resolution passed during the organization’s Governing Board meeting in Rome, the international Jewish representative body both reaffirmed its endorsement of a two-state solution while casting blame for a recent escalation of violence on the Palestinian leadership. “The series of attacks against Jews in Israel is the direct result of incitement by radical elements who call upon Palestinian youth to murder Jews,” the board asserted. The WJC urged Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, along with the leaders of regional Arab states, to refrain from the spreading of “malicious claims against Israel, especially using inflammatory rhetoric.”Such rhetoric is used to “treat terrorists as heroes.”
Radical Islamists who brought weapons to the Temple Mount were singled out as “endangering this holy site and attempting to turn it into a battlefield,” while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s efforts in “maintaining the status quo” and decision to prevent Knesset members from ascending the mount were lauded. The WJC also condemned UNESCO, both for its recent statements on the Temple Mount, which it termed a “litany of demonstrable falsehoods,” and for its description of both the Tomb of Rachel in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron as being exclusively holy Muslim sites.
The group did, however, describe UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova as having shown “great courage” for repudiating her body’s “flagrant distortion of history.” While the WJC said it felt great concern over Abbas’s apparent repudiation of the Oslo Accords during his recent appearance at the UN General Assembly, it did state that “two-states for two peoples is the only workable, realistic basis for a true and lasting peace,” and called for the immediate resumption of direct negotiations. WJC General Counsel Menachem Rosensaft said “it was a very well attended meeting representing Jewish communities from literally around the world and President Lauder stated his view that the two-state solution was the only viable option, essentially reaffirming what he wrote in his opinion piece in The Jerusalem Post and he stated his reasoning was this was his strongly held view and the governing board adopted a resolution reaffirming the position of the World Jewish Congress in support of a two-state solution.” Writing in the Post on Sunday, Lauder called for a swift resumption of talks, stating that “Rather than lay blame for what has caused this recent outbreak of violence, I am keenly focused on where we go from here.
“As we speak, Israelis are living in a constant state of fear. And lone, disaffected Palestinians are taking matters into their own hands, carrying out brutal acts. Some would say that there is no way to have constructive talks in this environment, but I believe now is precisely the time for dialogue,” Lauder wrote.
He called upon Abbas to reign in extremists while also stating that Netanyahu must “reach across boundaries with magnanimity and generosity to acknowledge the fact that President Abbas is the commanding voice for the Palestinian people, which deserves a state of its own.”
Earlier this year WJC President Ronald Lauder met with Abbas in Amman. The pair had previously met in London in 2012. While Lauder recently told attendees at The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference in New York that “no serious discussion about peace for the Jewish people of Israel can take place without a strong agreement for a viable two-state solution,” he has also been a consistent critic of Abbas. Speaking with the Post last year, Lauder said Abbas does not want peace. The Palestinian leader “could not have done more to destroy the peace process,” he said.
The leadership of the WJC is slated to meet with Pope Francis on Wednesday to mark the 50th anniversary of the Nostra Aetate declaration, a papal document that, which among other decrees, absolved the Jews from culpability in the death of Jesus.

Iran's New Palestinian Terror Group: Al-Sabireen
Khaled Abu Toameh/Gatestone Institute/October 28/15
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/6774/palestinian-sabireen
The Iranians are also believed to have supplied their new terrorist group in the Gaza Strip with Grad and Fajr missiles that are capable of reaching Tel Aviv.
The leader of Al-Sabireen, Hisham Salem, is a former commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. His activities and rhetoric have worried many in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who fear that his group is beginning to attract many of their followers.
Salem has been accused by many Palestinians of helping Iran spread Shia Islam inside the Gaza Strip, where all Muslims belong to the rival Sunni denomination.
This, of course, is bad news for [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas, who is now watching as many of his former loyalists have come onto Iran's payroll and are sharing its radical ideology.
Many Palestinians and Arabs in the region are already voicing concern. The last thing Abbas, Egypt's President Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah need is another Iranian terror group such as Hezbollah in the Middle East.
It now remains to be seen whether the Obama Administration and other Western powers will wake up and realize that the Iranians are continuing to fool them, not only regarding Tehran's nuclear program, but also concerning its territorial ambitions in the Middle East.
Unless the U.S. and Western powers realize that Iran remains a major threat to world peace, Al-Sabireen and other terrorist groups will one day manage to establish a UN-recognized Palestinian state that would pose an existential threat to Israel and destabilize the entire Middle East.
The nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers has paved the way for the Iranians to resume their efforts to spread their influence throughout the Middle East.
As the Obama Administration and the rest of the international community choose to look the other way, Iran evidently feels that this is the appropriate time to meddle in the internal affairs of Arabs and Muslims
Iran's main goal, from all appearances, is to dominate the entire Middle East by destroying Israel and most of the Arab and Islamic regimes that are considered too "moderate" and "pro-West." So far, thanks to the indifference of the Obama Administration and most Western countries, the Iranians seem to be marching in the right direction toward achieving their goal.
Iran is already deeply involved in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. In recent months, the Iranians have also returned to the Palestinian arena, this time through a new group called Al-Sabireen Movement For Supporting Palestine. Translated into English, Al-Sabireen means "The Patient One."
The new Iranian-backed Al-Sabireen was established in wake of tensions between Iran and its two former allies in the Gaza Strip: Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis four years ago, relations between Tehran and Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been strained. The refusal of Hamas and Islamic Jihad publicly to support Iran's ally, President Bashar Assad, in his fight against the Syrian opposition, has resulted in the expulsion of Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders from Syria. It has also prompted the Iranians to cut off financial aid to the two groups, an abandonment that has left them facing a severe and unprecedented crisis -- the worst in more than two decades.
Al-Sabireen, whose emblem is identical to that of another Iran proxy, Hezbollah, so far has about 400 followers in the Gaza Strip. Each one receives a monthly salary of $250-$300, while the senior officials of the group get at least $700.
Although Al-Sabireen has been operating in the Gaza Strip for several months now, its name surfaced two weeks ago when one of its top military commanders was shot and killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The man, Ahmed Sharif Al-Sarhi, was responsible for a series of shooting attacks on Israel before he was fatally shot by IDF snipers along the border with the Gaza Strip.
Al-Sabireen commander Ahmed Sharif Al-Sarhi (left) was responsible for a series of shooting attacks on Israel before he was fatally shot two weeks ago by IDF snipers along the border with the Gaza Strip. The Iranians are also believed to have supplied their new terrorist group in the Gaza Strip with Grad and Fajr missiles (right) that are capable of reaching Tel Aviv.
Palestinian sources said that most of the Al-Sabireen terrorists are former disgruntled members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The sources said that Iran has been supplying Al-Sabireen with various and new types of weapons that are being used to attack Israel. According to the sources, Al-Sarhi was killed by the IDF while he was trying to fire from a new Steyr HS .50 long-range sniper rifle he had recently received from the Iranians.
The Iranians are also believed to have supplied their new terrorist group in the Gaza Strip with Grad and Fajr missiles that are capable of reaching Tel Aviv.
The leader of Al-Sabireen, Hisham Salem, is a former commander of Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip. His activities and rhetoric have worried many in Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, who fear that his group is beginning to attract many of their followers.
Two weeks ago, unidentified assailants stabbed and moderately wounded Salem shortly after he gave a newspaper interview in the northern Gaza Strip. Although no group has claimed responsibility, it is widely believed that the assailants belong to either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Salem has been accused by many Palestinians of helping Iran spread Shia Islam inside the Gaza Strip, where all Muslims belong to the rival Sunni denomination.
Al-Sabireen is also believed to have succeeded in recruiting scores of militiamen belonging to President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction in the Gaza Strip. These militiamen have gone to the Iranian-backed group mostly for financial considerations. This, of course, is bad news for Abbas, who is now watching as many of his former loyalists have come onto Iran's payroll and are sharing its radical ideology.
Iran's presence in the Gaza Strip -- this time through Al-Sabireen -- is bad news not only for Israel, but also for many Palestinians and Arabs in the region. The Egyptians, who have been waging a relentless war on Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip and Sinai, are already voicing concern over Iran's new Palestinian proxy. The last thing Abbas, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Sisi and Jordan's King Abdullah need is another Iranian terror group similar to Hezbollah in the Middle East.
It now remains to be seen whether the Obama Administration and other Western powers will wake up and realize that the Iranians are continuing to fool them, not only regarding Tehran's nuclear program, but also concerning its territorial ambitions in the Middle East. Iran's Al-Sabireen group states that its main goal is to "eliminate the Zionist entity."On its way to achieving its goal, the group will also kill Arabs and Muslims who do not share its objectives and ideology. It also seeks to kill Israel's Western friends, especially those living in the U.S. and Europe. Unless the U.S. and Western powers realize that Iran remains a major threat to world peace, Al-Sabireen and other terrorist groups will one day manage to establish a UN-recognized Palestinian state that would pose an existential threat to Israel and destabilize the entire Middle East.

The Kurdish Dilemma
Ali Ibrahim/Asharq Al Awsat/October 28/15
The joint operation by US and Kurdish Peshmerga forces to free 20 Iraqis captured by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in Iraq has created much controversy, given that it is the first ground operation carried out by the Americans in Iraq since the decision to withdraw all US forces from the country. It was an operation that carried some risk, and that was clear when reports and statements confirmed that the US had lost one soldier during the raid to free the hostages from ISIS, which was intent on executing them. But the operation was also noteworthy because it was the first the US had carried out in coordination with any foreign forces on Iraqi territory since the end of the Nuri Al-Maliki era, during which the US had decided against having any permanent military presence in the country. There has certainly been coordination between the Americans and the Kurds before. But this happened in Kobani, in Syria, where Kurdish forces reached out to the Americans after they were surrounded by ISIS forces. The US then hit the extremist group’s targets in the area with airstrikes, while the Kurdish forces on the ground assaulted ISIS positions with a ferocity that ended up inflicting heavy losses on the extremists and drove them out of the area. By contrast, Iraqi forces fighting ISIS have not held their ground at all. We saw this most recently in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, which the extremist group captured in May using tactics combining suicide bomb attacks and booby-trapped vehicles. In Syria, meanwhile, the picture remains murky, especially after Barack Obama’s recent announcement that Washington would be reevaluating its support for the moderate Syrian opposition after many of them were captured by ISIS and ended up handing over their US weapons to the extremist group. Then came the Russian military intervention in Syria, which reveals a much more pragmatic strategy for working with forces on the ground fighting ISIS. However, we must bear in mind that the Russian plan sees Assad’s army as its main partner against ISIS and the most likely candidate for defeating the group in Syria. This is of course a problem for those opposition fighters that both support the Syrian revolution against the Assad regime and are also fighting ISIS on the ground. They view the Assad regime as the problem and not the solution and want revolutionary forces to establish themselves on the ground in Syria and also drive out ISIS from the country so that its fighters can return to the various countries from which they came. Until now, though, the Kurds have been the only fighting force that has proven its worth against ISIS, whether in Iraq or in Syria. But the Kurds also have political aims—and they have not been coy about them—to gain international backing for the establishment of their own autonomous state in the region. This has indeed been a sticking point for efforts seeking both to find a resolution to the Syrian conflict and drive ISIS out of Iraq. It is a serious political problem, because anyone who would support such aims would put themselves at odds with Turkey, Iran, and other domestic factions. When it finally comes time for all to sit at the negotiating table and find political solutions to these crises, there would need to be a clear vision for solving this Kurdish dilemma. As things stand, there isn’t one, and this makes it extremely difficult to find any solutions to the current problems. We can put it like this: Turkey considers Kurdish calls for autonomy more dangerous to its national security than the threat of ISIS.

The Russians and the Syrian Crisis
Salman Aldosary/Asharq Al Awsat/October 28/15
Russia did not wait long after its entrance into the Syrian conflict to bolster its position. Since its military action began, Moscow has backed it up with a frenzied slew of political moves. The standout maneuvers here are Moscow’s proposed solutions to the crisis in Syria, details of which were covered by Asharq Al-Awsat on Saturday. Moscow has been able to take advantage of Western ambivalence on the Syria issue, which has created a space for President Vladimir Putin to rise to the occasion and allows the Kremlin to assume the role of an implacable international player in the crisis—one that has, at the same time, now also become indispensable to its solution. Bashar Al-Assad’s departure has always been at a crucial part of proposed international solutions on the Syria issue. But recently there have been a series of signs from Washington to London to Paris to Berlin, as well as other Western capitals, that they are changing tack on the issue, accepting Assad’s remaining in power perhaps for a brief period—a change that has come perhaps as a result of the influx of thousands of Syrian refugees into Europe. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Turkey—true friends of the Syrian people—have not budged from their positions on the Assad issue, assuming the role of isolated refuseniks who must now reluctantly deal with this international change of heart—one which, of course, benefits Russia. Neither country wants Assad to remain in power, even for a brief period; but neither has also objected to the recent international U-turn on the issue, as both wish to find a viable solution to this crisis whose problems grow ever more complex as time goes on. Whilst we cannot say that the Russian proposal is the best put forward thus far, it is certainly the “best of the worst” solutions that have been offered. The West has failed to adequately stand by the Syrian people, leaving the space open for the Russian Bear to step in and fill the vacuum. As the conflict has gone on, the world has slowly abandoned the Syrian people, until only Riyadh and Ankara are now left to swim against the current of international malaise on Syria, even after the U-turns on the Assad issue, which was, once upon a time, a red-line for the international community. The truth is that it is quite likely Assad will not leave after 18 months as has been proposed. We may well find that after three or four or even 10 years that the crisis remains ongoing, still inflamed, and Assad remains at the head of the ruling regime, even if he only controls a small part of the country’s overall territory. This is likely in light of the political and military support he continues to receive from Moscow. The dilemma now is how Assad can be kept as far away as possible from the political process in Syria during the coming period—and whether Moscow is truly capable of offering real guarantees that the current regime will not rise once again, in new form, like a phoenix from the ashes. Unfortunately, the absence of a positive role from the US, which was previously a leader in the talks and has now become a follower, hacks away at any confidence that the Russian plans will generate a genuine solution free of booby-trapped tactical moves from Moscow. This is especially true in light of the Syrian opposition’s concerns regarding Russia’s seriousness about reaching a genuine political solution. Last week’s meetings in Vienna on the Syrian crisis showed Washington acquiescing to Russia’s vision, as well a lack of any real desire from the White House to to assume a leading position on the issue. There is now nothing left for Washington to do except go through the motions pertaining to this new role it has adopted. Hopefully it will be able to secure some internationally sanctioned balance that will temper this new, terrifying Russian drive. The bitter reality is that Moscow is now pointing the way for everyone else to abandon Syria, while at the same time not being able guarantee there will be a Syria left at all, now that everyone has actually jumped ship.

Iranian officials justify soldier deaths in Syria
Arash Karami//Al-Monitor/October 28/15
When Russian airstrikes began Sept. 30 against Syrian armed opposition fighters, they were reportedly accompanied by Syrian troops and Iranian advisers on the ground. However, after more than a dozen Iranian soldiers died in less than a month, including the highest-ranking Iranian general to be killed in the 4½-year-old civil war, Iranian authorities and media have been put in the position of explaining the death toll. In an interview on Iranian television Oct. 26, the deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Gen. Hossein Salami, spoke about the latest developments in Syria. When asked about the number of recent IRGC deaths, Salami said that a few months ago the Syrian government requested advisers to help rebuild its army for “a large [military] operation.” To give effective advice, IRGC soldiers had to visit the front lines and become familiar with the reality of the battlefields, Salami said. It wasn't possible “for them to sit in a room and help the Syrian army.” While some estimates have put the recent IRGC deaths as high as 20, Salami said, “The number of [deaths] is not high, but in comparison with the past it appears to be more.” Iranian officials rarely explain how IRGC soldiers are killed.
Hassan Shamshadi, a reporter for Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting who appears to have firsthand access to the battles in Syria and is often the first to report the deaths of Iranian soldiers, wrote on his Instagram page Oct. 25 in response to questions about the number of deaths.
Shamshadi first explained the importance of the latest developments in Syria for both the government and Shiites, writing that the current battle around Aleppo and Latakia took five months to plan. He said the operation resulted in the Syrian government taking back 62 square miles of land it had not held for years. The army plans to extend the operation to Al Fu’ah and Kefraya, two towns with a Shiite population of 30,000 surrounded by “terrorists who have promised to commit genocide when they enter the two towns,” Shamshadi said.
Iranians are playing “an important and determining role in this battle,” he said, adding that the larger presence of Iranians “will naturally result in an increase of the number" of dead and wounded.
Despite the number of deaths, Iranian officials do not seem deterred. In the television interview, Salami said Syria’s and Iran’s national security are tied together, and Iran’s presence in Syria, “in addition to [religious] aspects, has strategic aspects.” Iranian soldiers killed in Syria are described as “defenders of the Shrine" of Zeinab, which is just outside Damascus and important for Shiites. Salami, repeating a long-held Iranian position, said the plan to overthrow the Syrian government is part of a larger US plan that includes going after Lebanon next, presumably meaning Iran’s ally in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Rather than viewing Iran’s efforts as propping up President Bashar al-Assad’s government, Salami said Syria is “the front line against the American and Zionist regimes.”Salami also views political developments in Syria positively, saying the Syrian government is currently “restoring its political situation.” Assad visited Moscow on Oct. 20 to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his first foreign trip since the civil war began. On Oct. 26, Omani Foreign Minister Yousef Bin Alawi met with Assad in Damascus.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/10/irgc-deaths-syria.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+[English]&utm_campaign=f9105abc92-October_28_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-f9105abc92-102494681

How to end the war in Yemen
Bruce Riedel/Al-Monitor/October 28/15
The tragic war in Yemen needs a political solution urgently. UN Security Council Resolution 2216 provides a one-sided path forward. A better solution would outline a path forward for all the parties. All parties involved need to back off their extreme positions. Some creative imagination needs to be given to this crisis sooner rather than later. The war expands and grinds on as the Saudi-led coalition brings in more troops from Sudan, Mauritania and elsewhere and prepares for an assault on Sanaa. Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State are growing more potent. Aden, the southern port recovered by the Saudi coalition, is a chaotic, broken city — not a symbol of restored law and order. There is little sign a real cease-fire is in the works. Talks planned to take place in Oman failed. Appeals for $1.6 billion in international aid have gone unfulfilled. Millions of Yemenis are suffering. The current peace effort is based on a formula decided hastily by the Security Council to satisfy Riyadh. Only Russia demurred. A better approach would be to determine who needs to exit the Yemen equation, who needs to reconsider their posture, a new regional agreement for the Arabian Peninsula and a better role for Washington.
At the top of the list to go is the man who has done so much to ruin the Arab World's poorest state. Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh needs to retire permanently and thoroughly from Yemeni politics and take his sons with him into exile. More than any other figure, Saleh is responsible for the tragedy of today's Yemen. After 33 years of misrule, he refused to accept the results of the Arab Spring and systematically undermined efforts to build an inclusive broad national government. Saleh needs to go. It can be a comfortable retirement, but his departure should be the commonly agreed upon basis of a deal.
Two other parties don't need to lose but do need to be sobered by the events of the last year. The Zaydi Shiite Houthi rebels have cost themselves and Yemen a humanitarian catastrophe by their arrogant pursuit of power. They need to be part of a national reconciliation process but not the sole or dominant power broker. The government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi was elected in a legitimate process, even if he proved a very weak leader, as many expected. He can step down gracefully and let a government of national unity come forward that includes the Houthis. The UN should mediate its formation.
The Zaydis also need to recognize Iran is an unreliable and ineffective ally who did little or nothing to help Yemen or them. Iran meddled in Yemen solely to frustrate Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the other Gulf states. It has not been a responsible party in this crisis.
Saudi Arabia needs sobering, as well. Its hasty decision to begin airstrikes and a blockade (before even consulting some of its own allies such as Pakistan) plunged the region into war. The blockade has created a horrific humanitarian disaster for Yemenis. Both sides have caused terrible acts of violence, but the kingdom is a state that aspires to lead the Islamic world and must be held to a high standard.
Saudis in the border region have also paid a high price for the war, and all Saudis and their Gulf partners should have to foot the enormous bill for reconstruction in Yemen. The kingdom needs a more thoughtful and judicious foreign policy than the one that went to war this year.
Offering Yemen full membership in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) would be an excellent start, and some prominent Saudis have already suggested the idea. A GCC with Yemen would contain 70 million people. It would unite the peninsula. Bringing Yemen into the rich Gulf club would emulate the European Union's positive approach of bringing in poorer European states to help them transition to a stable and prosperous future. It will mean the Saudis, Emiratis, Qataris and others take on the task of rebuilding Yemen at their (considerable) expense. The alternative is to leave a festering open wound in the peninsula that will bleed them as Yemenis seek revenge for this war for a generation to come.
Of course bringing in Yemen means dealing with many complex issues involving currency, internal migration, internal security arrangements and many others. Riyadh and Abu Dhabi should lead the way in developing urgent and equitable ways forward on these issues. Not all or even most need to be fully resolved before Yemen gains admission to the GCC's summits and top decision-making. It is long past time to treat Yemenis as equal partners in the peninsula. In the long term, a bigger GCC, perhaps also including Jordan, could be a transformational mechanism for income redistribution and political reform.
Finally, Washington needs some second thoughts. It facilitated a war it has no vital interest in and let several allies operate callously. It has done far too little to secure a cease-fire and lift the blockade. It should be much more engaged at a much higher level in resolving this war than it has been to date.
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/10/yemeni-endgame.html?utm_source=Al-Monitor+Newsletter+[English]&utm_campaign=f9105abc92-October_28_2015&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_28264b27a0-f9105abc92-102494681