NEWS,18.11.2012

Netanyahu: Israel Ready To Widen Offensive

 

Israel bombed Palestinian militant targets in the Gaza Strip from air and sea for a fifth straight day on Sunday, preparing for a possible ground invasion while also spelling out its conditions for a truce.Palestinian fire into Israel subsided during the night but resumed in the morning, with rockets targeting the country's commercial capital Tel Aviv for a fourth day. The two missiles were shot down by Israel's Iron Dome air shield.Speaking shortly after the attack, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel was ready to widen its offensive."We are exacting a heavy price from Hamas and the terrorist organisations and the Israel Defence Forces are prepared for a significant expansion of the operation," he said at a cabinet meeting, giving no further details.Some 51 Palestinians, about half of them civilians, including 14 children, have been killed since the Israeli offensive began, Palestinian officials said, with hundreds wounded. More than 500 rockets fired from Gaza have hit Israel, killing three civilians and wounding dozens.Israel unleashed intensive air strikes on Wednesday, killing the military commander of the Islamist Hamas movement that governs Gaza and spurns peace with the Jewish state.Israel's declared goal is to deplete Gaza arsenals and press Hamas into stopping cross-border rocket fire that has bedevilled Israeli border towns for years and is now displaying greater range, putting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in the crosshairs.Air raids continued past midnight into Sunday, with warships shelling from the sea. Two Gaza City media buildings were hit, witnesses said, wounding six journalists and damaging facilities belonging to Hamas's Al-Aqsa TV as well as Britain's Sky News.An employee of Beirut-based al Quds television station lost his leg in the attack, medics said.An Israeli military spokeswoman said the strike had targeted a rooftop "transmission antenna used by Hamas to carry out terror activity". International media organisations demanded further clarification.Three other attacks killed three children and wounded 14 other people, medical officials said, with heavy thuds regularly jolting the small, densely populated coastal enclave.Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi said in Cairo, as his security deputies sought to broker a truce with Hamas leaders, that "there are some indications that there is a possibility of a ceasefire soon, but we do not yet have firm guarantees".Egypt has mediated previous ceasefire deals between Israel and Hamas, the latest of which unravelled with recent violence.A Palestinian official told Reuters the truce discussions would continue in Cairo on Sunday, saying "there is hope", but that it was too early to say whether the efforts would succeed.At a Gaza news conference, Hamas military spokesman Abu Ubaida voiced defiance, saying: "This round of confrontation will not be the last against the Zionist enemy and it is only the beginning."Israel's military also saw action along the northern frontier, firing into Syria on Saturday in what it said was a response to shooting aimed at its troops in the occupied Golan Heights. Israel's chief military spokesman, citing Arab media, said it appeared Syrian soldiers were killed in the incident.There were no reported casualties on the Israeli side from the shootings, the third case this month of violence that has been seen as a spillover of battles between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces and rebels trying to overthrow him.With tanks and artillery poised along the Gaza frontier for a possible ground operation, Israel's cabinet decided on Friday to double the current reserve troop quota set for the offensive to 75,000. Some 30,000 soldiers have already been called up."If there is quiet in the south and no rockets and missiles are fired at Israel's citizens, nor terrorist attacks engineered from the Gaza Strip, we will not attack," Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon wrote on Twitter.Israel's operation so far has drawn Western support for what U.S. and European leaders have called its right to self-defence, but there was also a growing number of appeals from them to seek an end to the hostilities.Netanyahu, in his comments at Sunday's cabinet session, said he had emphasised in telephone conversations with world leaders "the effort Israel is making to avoid harming civilians, while Hamas and the terrorist organisations are making every effort to hit civilian targets in Israel".Israel withdrew settlers from Gaza in 2005 and two years later Hamas took control of the slender, impoverished territory, which the Israelis have kept under blockade.British Prime Minister David Cameron "expressed concern over the risk of the conflict escalating further and the danger of further civilian casualties on both sides", in a conversation with Netanyahu, a spokesperson for Cameron said.Britain was "putting pressure on both sides to de-escalate," the spokesman said, adding that Cameron had urged Netanyahu "to do everything possible to bring the conflict to an end."Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to President Barack Obama, said the United States would like to see the conflict resolved through "de-escalation" and diplomacy, but also believed Israel had the right to self-defence.Diplomats at the United Nations said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was expected to visit Israel and Egypt in the coming week to push for an end to the fighting.A possible move into the Gaza Strip and the risk of major casualties it brings would be a significant gamble for Netanyahu, favoured to win a January election.The last Gaza war, a three-week Israeli blitz and invasion over the New Year of 2008-09, killed 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians. Thirteen Israelis died in the conflict.The current flare-up around Gaza has fanned the fires of a Middle East ignited by a series of Arab uprisings and a civil war in Syria that threatens to spread beyond its borders.One significant change has been the election of an Islamist government in Cairo that is allied with Hamas, which may narrow Israel's manoeuvring room in confronting the Palestinian group. Israel and Egypt made peace in 1979.In attacks on Saturday, Israel destroyed the house of a Hamas commander near the Egyptian border.Casualties there were averted however, because Israel had fired non-exploding missiles at the building beforehand from a drone, which the militant's family understood as a warning to flee, witnesses said. Israeli aircraft also bombed Hamas government buildings in Gaza on Saturday, including the offices of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and a police headquarters.Israel's "Iron Dome" missile interceptor system has destroyed more than 200 incoming rockets from Gaza in mid-air since Wednesday, saving Israeli towns and cities from potentially significant damage.However, one rocket salvo unleashed on Sunday evaded Iron Dome and wounded two people when it hit a house in the coastal city of Ashkelon, police said.

 

EU in trouble as summit faces collapse

The European Union looks set for fresh trouble this week as an extraordinary summit called to agree a long-term trillion-euro budget heads for an ugly showdown, possibly even failure.Already weakened by three years of economic crisis, the 27-nation bloc of half a billion people faces new trauma at the two-day summit starting Thursday after weeks of talks that have exposed stark divisions between pro- and anti-austerity nations, as well as between the haves and have-nots."It's a lose-lose summit," said a senior EU diplomat. "Absolutely no one will leave this summit content if by chance we reach a solution.""We don't exclude a breakdown," another diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.Europe's leaders begin the talks on the EU's next seven-year budget at 19:00 Thursday, with Britain's premier David Cameron in the role of leading spoiler though most governments are putting national interest well above shared concerns."Cameron will come with a big knife to get spending cuts and to defend the British rebate," said an EU diplomat.In the face of Britain's austerity-minded determination to secure a cut of up to €200bn in the 2014-2020 budget, EU president Herman Van Rompuy, who will broker the talks, last week suggested a €75bn cut to the proposed €1.047 trillion budget. But that made no one happy.Spain said it would lose €20bn of EU aid, Italy complained of losing €10bn.And a group of Nobel laureates flew to Brussels waving a petition signed by dozens of Nobel winners urging Van Rompuy and other EU officials not to strip funds for research and innovation."Fortunately, we only have these summits every seven years," Van Rompuy said Friday after coming under fire from all sides.His plan left Britain having to pay in part for its cherished yearly rebate of €3.6bn, while diminishing Sweden's rebate, and failing to address Denmark's demand to have a discount too.The three are among the 11 net contributors to the EU budget who in times of economic strain and domestic cutbacks are tired of bearing the brunt of the financial burden.Eight of the net contributors Austria, Britain, Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Netherlands and Sweden have banded together to demand spending cuts, though they are far from being on the same page on what should go or by how much.France for instance, along with Italy, is refusing any decrease whatsoever in the budget's biggest item, the subsidies paid to farmers, big and small."There can be no question of withdrawing even one euro from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)," said French Premier Jean-Marc Ayrault, whose government is pushing for the EU to raise new revenues through new taxes, such as one on financial transactions.In the other corner are 15 nations from Europe's east and southern fringe who are net recipients, most often of the so-called "cohesion funds" used to help poor regions catch up economically and socially with the rest. This is the second biggest budget item after the CAP.Chaired by Poland and Portugal, the group includes Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and most recently, once mighty Spain.Cameron, who is under intense euro-sceptic pressure to wrest an agreement in Brussels, has been shuttling back and forth to raise support, travelling to the Netherlands, Italy and Germany in search of allies.Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, which is the biggest contributor to the EU budget, has promised to do her utmost to ensure the summit would not end in collapse."Even if we are net contributors and people could perhaps think that we can live with a non-agreement, that is not our goal," Merkel said. "We want an agreement and we will talk exactly in this spirit with all countries."Meanwhile, there is a growing exasperation with France, whose recently elected Socialist President Francois Hollande has urged Brussels to push for growth, rather than austerity, but whose obsession with maintaining the CAP will lead to cuts in programmes to help growth."He wanted to re-orient Europe towards employment and growth. It's a political choice. He must be consistent," said an EU official who asked not to be named.

Spain rejects proposed budget cut

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Saturday rejected as "unacceptable" a proposal from EU President Herman Van Rompuy to cut the bloc's 2014-2020 budget by €75bn."The government does not like this budget and we have made that known to the (European) institutions and we hope that there will be another proposal that will be more reasonable," Rajoy said.Rajoy said Spain objected to Van Rompuy's proposed spending cuts to agriculture funding, money for Spain's regions and the EU's development budget, known as the Cohesion Fund.Spain stands to lose almost €20bn in funds from Brussels in the next budget, with a 30% cut in funding for its regional governments and a 17% cut in its agriculture funding, according to an EU source.Van Rompuy on Wednesday proposed hefty budget cuts including €29.5bn from Cohesion Fund payments and €25.5bn from agriculture spending proposals already rejected by several countries, including France, Poland and Romania.

Owner, union talks go down to wire

The troubled Scandinvian airline says that negotiations between owners and unions have so far failed to yield an agreement that could save the troubled carrier from bankruptcy.Owners and creditors of the tri-nation SAS have drafted a program to slash costs and jobs, but the plan needs the approval from pilot and cabin crew unions.The airline said Sunday talks over the past week were "intense" and would continue in the hope of reaching an agreement before a key board of director meeting scheduled later Sunday.SAS managers are hoping to renegotiate employment terms and pensions for its staff and slash about 800 jobs as part of a $440m annual saving plan. Thousands of other jobs would be outsourced.

Chinese house prices on the rise

More Chinese cities reported rises in house prices in October than in September, data showed Sunday, the first gain in three months as the government works to keep the property market in check.Prices in 35 out of 70 cities tracked by the government rose month-on-month, the National Bureau of Statistics said in a statement, up from 31 cities in September, and the first increase since July.Prices of new homes dropped in October in 17 cities and remained unchanged in the remaining 18 cities, it said.China has implemented measures to control property prices for more than two years, including prohibitions on buying second homes, requiring higher minimum down-payments and levying property taxes in some cities.Officials have said that property control measures are aimed at bringing down home prices to a "reasonable" level.China's slowing economy has recently exhibited signs of a turnaround, with exports, retail sales and industrial production data all showing renewed vigour.Expansion in the world's second-largest economy has slowed for seven straight quarters through the end of September, but economists are expecting growth to accelerate during the current three-month period through December.Beijing expects gross domestic product to grow 7.5% in 2012, a marked slowdown from the 9.3% recorded in 2011 and 10.4% in 2010.The government is aiming to rebalance China's economy away from reliance on exports and more towards domestic demand in coming years in hopes it can steer growth onto a stable and sustainable track.