23/11/09; (3 Items)
Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak has told his Israeli counterpart construction work on land taken from Palestinians in 1967 must stop if there is to be peace. Speaking at a press conference following their meeting on Sunday, Mubarak said he had made it clear to Shimon Peres that settlement in occupied lands, including East Jerusalem, was a major obstacle to any final peace agreement. “I say peace is still possible. But there is a need for the political will in Israel … [it] realises the dangers of losing this peace opportunity. It needs to take courageous decisions,” he said. Egypt and other Arabs have blamed the US administration for not doing enough to press Israel to stop building on occupied territory.
See: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/11/2009112213204255147.html
Peres: Israel to halt settlements once peace talks begin
Jonathan Lis; 23/11/09
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has pledged to halt West Bank settlement construction once peace talks with the Palestinians are renewed, President Shimon Peres said on Sunday during an official visit to Egypt. “The minute we shall start to negotiate there won’t be new settlements, there won’t be confiscation of land,” Peres said at a joint news conference in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, adding that the settlements issue was being blown out of proportion. “Unfortunately, it’s a marginal issue; it is some building of houses that became a central issue for the wrong reasons. My answer is even this issue can be settled by negotiations and agreement,” Peres said, calling for a swift restart to talks.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1129820.html
Why is Israel laying claim to an Arab home in Jaffa?
Dana Weiler-Polak; 23/11/09
Tziona Tajer Street in Jaffa, off the main thoroughfare, Yefet, begins with a lush park and ends in a narrow picturesque alleyway bounded by refurbished old homes. One of these houses, behind a heavy blue gate, belongs to the Shaya family. Hanging by the entrance is a large portrait of the family patriarch, Salim Khoury Shaya, a priest who served in the 1920s as the spiritual leader of the Christian Arab (Greek Orthodox) community. Around that time he also built the house on a hill in Jaffa. Salim Khoury Shaya died at age 90 in 1963. His daughter-in-law, Fadwa Shaya, who married his son George, is now the eldest resident of the house, where she has lived since 1947 and where her children and some of her grandchildren grew up. In the guest room, surrounded by hand-carved dressers and ornate 1930s-era mirrors, she tells the story of the Shaya family, at least the three generations she knows. Salim Khoury Shaya’s seven children, she says, lived in the house their father built. In 1948, three of them went to visit relatives in Lebanon, where they got stuck when Israel’s War of Independence broke out and weren’t able to return. The other four siblings – George, Evelyn, Awda and Claire Shaya – remained in the house; their children are now in their 40s.
See: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1129744.html; http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1129821.html