GAZA — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has invited a senior Egyptian mediator to Jerusalem on Sunday, raising speculation that Israel is about to make its latest response to the Islamist group Hamas for a major prisoner swap.

Israeli police officers detain a Palestinian protester in front of the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City December 17, 2009, after a march marking the last day of Jerusalem’s tenure as the Arab League’s “capital of Arab culture”. Israeli police detained nine protesters on Thursday while dispersing an illegal gathering organized by the Palestinian Authority, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.               REUTERS/Ammar Awad

Egypt and Germany are trying to mediate the prisoner exchange, which would set free a captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in a deal to release nearly 1,000 Palestinians of the 11,000 held in Israeli jails.
The freeing of Shalit, who was snatched by Hamas in a raid on the borders of the Gaza Strip more than three years ago, has been a political priority for Netanyahu as it was for the government that preceded his, led by Ehud Olmert.

“The prisoner swap deal will reach its conclusion in the coming days,” said one Palestinian official close to the talks. “Either it takes place or there’s another snag and a delay.”

An exchange would be the first significant sign of a thaw between Israel and Hamas since Israel launched a military offensive on December 27 in which at least 1,000 Gaza Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in three weeks of heavy conflict.

The United Nations and Western powers hope a successful swap will open the way to a relaxation of Israel’s blockade of Gaza, where 1.5 million Palestinians are dependent on food aid and smuggled goods for daily survival.

Negotiations over the list of Palestinians to be released in return for Shalit have proceeded slowly, with Israel balking at allowing men convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis to go free and return to the Palestinian territories.

An official, who declined to be identified, said Egypt’s mediator, Chief of Intelligence Omar Suleiman, would visit Israel on Sunday — when Netanyahu holds his weekly cabinet meeting.

“Certainly there will be many issues on the table and the prisoner swap negotiations will be an important issue at the talks,” the official said.

The source also confirmed that the German mediator who deals with Hamas, and whose identity is secret, was expected to meet Hamas officials in their Gaza Strip enclave on Thursday, possibly to relay Israel’s latest bid.

–Reuters

Israeli settlers attack mosque

Israeli settlers in the occupied Palestinian West Bank have vandalized a mosque, torching its library and spraying hate messages in Hebrew on the building.

The attack blamed on hardline Jews on Friday may be linked to plans that seek to curb their illegal settlement activity on land taken from Palestinians.

Clashes erupted as villagers hurled stones at Israeli troops sent to investigate the incident at the mosque in the northern West Bank’s Yasuf village. The security forces responded with teargas.

One of the Hebrew language slogans sprayed on a wall read: “Get ready to pay the price.” Another read: “We will burn you all.”

Village councillors and Palestinian security officials blamed Israelis from a nearby settlement for the attack.

The area is home to some of the most hardline settlers who advocate a “price tag” policy under which they target Palestinians in retaliation for any Israeli government measure they see as threatening Jewish settlements.

The Israeli military said “it appears that the suspects wrote hate-filled messages in Hebrew in addition to burning bookshelves and a carpet.”

It assured the Palestinian Authority that it “views the incident gravely” and that security forces are working to locate the perpetrators, the statement said.

Last week, a house and three vehicles were set on fire in another village, also near the West Bank city of Nablus. The owner of the house told police he saw three Jewish settlers start the fires.

Settlers have expressed outrage over the government’s decision to impose a 10-month moratorium on new building permits for Israeli homes in the occupied West Bank, outside annexed Arab east Jerusalem.

Many settlers consider they have a God-given right to live in the Biblical Land of Israel, which includes the West Bank.

Israel rejects UK war crimes warrant for Livni

TEL AVIV — Israel on Tuesday warned of a chill in its ties with the United Kingdom – a relationship with significant historic and strategic weight – after a British court issued an arrest warrant for former foreign minister Tzipi Livni for her role in alleged war crimes during Israel’s offensive in Gaza that began almost a year ago.

The countries have close bilateral cooperation in the West’s drive to block Iran from gaining nuclear arms. Moreover, British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan face similar dilemmas of asymmetric war as Israel in the Palestinian territories.

But Ms. Livni is the fourth Israeli official since 2004 to be targeted in British courts for alleged infractions of international law in the Gaza Strip. At the same time, British trade and academic unions have pushed for boycotts of the Jewish state.

“The British government has been very cooperative on strategic issues because they share the same threat perceptions – Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan,” said Gerald Steinberg, a political science professor at Bar Ilan University. “But the newspapers, trade unions, and universities are the hothouses for these cases specifically to embarrass Israeli officials like Tzipi Livni.”

Britain’s Foreign Office said it is looking into the implications of the case and stressed that Israeli leaders need to be able to visit for talks with the British government.

Former Syrian president dies

Former Syrian President Amin al-Hafez died in Aleppo, Syria, the city of his birth, at the age of 88 on Thursday of cancer.

Hafez originally was brought to power by a military coup in Syria in 1963 before being overthrown three years later by radical members of the Baath Party.

Hafez fled to Lebanon and later lived in exile in Iraq following the overthrow before returning to Syria in 2003 after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

A Lebanese soldier and rescue workers help a survivor of a sunken Panama ship after he was rescued off the port of Tripoli in northern Lebanon, December 17, 2009. Dozens of people were missing on Thursday after a ship carrying livestock sank in the Mediterranean off Lebanon in stormy weather, Lebanese naval sources said. REUTERS/ Mohamed Azakir

Ship sinks off coast of Lebanon
BEIRUT – Dozens of people were still reported missing on Thursday after a ship sank in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Lebanon in the middle of a storm, according to Lebanese naval sources through Reuters news service.

Three U.N. peacekeeping ships, including one Italian and two German, along with Lebanese army rescue boats and British ships based in Cyprus were all in the area attempting to save the crew of the ship Danny II, which flew a Panamanian flag and capsized early in the night about 11 miles off the north Lebanese coast near Tripoli.

Nineteen people had already been rescued but 64 others were still missing as of Thursday night from the ship’s crew. The ship’s mission was to transport more than 40,000 sheep from Uruguay to Tartous in Syria and the crew members were mostly from the Philippines and Pakistan.