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JERUSALEM (WJC)—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had already investigated 26 accusations contained in the controversial Goldstone report, "because we are a democratic country." In an interview with the ‘Washington Post’, Netanyahu said Israel was looking into setting up an independent inquiry not because of Goldstone, "but because of our own internal needs."
"We have investigated people for wrong behavior. We have put people on trial in the past because we are a functioning democracy. We will do it in this case, too. But what the Goldstone report actually accuses Israel of is deliberately targeting civilians, which is patently false," the prime minister told the newspaper. Following the publication of the interview, the Prime Minister's Office put out a clarification of Netanyahu's remarks regarding the establishment of an independent commission of inquiry. "The flow of the interview makes it clear that Prime Minister Netanyahu intended to say that Israel is already examining the events according to existing internal procedures, not that it is 'considering' investigating the course of events themselves by other means," it said. The newspaper Haaretz reported that Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak had decided to appoint a small task force to advise how best to react to the Goldstone report.
In the interview, Netanyahu also called for changing the international laws of war to adapt to global terrorism. "The best way to defuse this issue is to speak the truth because Israel was defending itself with just means against an unjust attack," he said. "Serious countries have to think about adapting the laws of war in the age of terrorism and guerrilla warfare. If the terrorists believe they have a license to kill by choosing to kill from behind civilian lines, that's what they'll do it again and again. What exactly is Israel supposed to do?"
Meanwhile, senior Democratic and Republican leaders in the US Congress are calling on the Obama administration to quash the Goldstone report. A non-binding bi-partisan resolution introduced last week by Howard Berman, the chairman of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee, and Ileana Ross-Lehtinen, the committee's ranking Republican, "calls on the President and the Secretary of State to strongly and unequivocally oppose any further consideration of the [Goldstone report] and any other measures stemming from this report in multilateral fora."
Kouchner predicts Israel will bomb Iran if no nuke deal
LONDON (WJC)--Israel will launch a military strike against Iran's nuclear program if the West does not reach a deal with Tehran on uranium enrichment, France's foreign minister has warned.
The Israelis “will not tolerate an Iranian bomb," Bernard Kouchner told the British newspaper ‘Daily Telegraph’. "We know that, all of us. So that is an additional risk and that is why we must decrease the tension and solve the problem.
Hopefully we are going to stop this race to a confrontation."
World powers are still awaiting an official Iranian response to a IAEA-drafted deal for Tehran to send low-enriched uranium abroad for further processing. During an official visit to Lebanon, Kouchner stressed that time was running out in the negotiations. "There is the time that Israel will offer us before reacting, because Israel will react as soon as they know clearly that there is a threat," he was quoted as saying.
Tehran denied the existence of a deadline of last Friday, saying that Mohammed ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), had only “requested” to get an answer by Friday. The IAEA proposal was still under consideration, Iranian officials said. Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said his country could either buy nuclear fuel for a reactor abroad or agree to the plan and send its uranium abroad for further processing.
"Iran's decision on the provision of necessary fuel for the Tehran reactor will be announced in the next few days," the official IRNA news agency quoted Mottaki as saying.
A four-member team from the IAEA arrived in Iran early Sunday to inspect the nuclear facility near the city of Qom whose existence was revealed only last month by Western intelligence services.
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Several Western diplomats told the news agency ‘Reuters’ that intelligence agencies agreed that Tehran would need at least 18 months to build an atomic weapon if it decided to make one.
Turkey's Erdogan calls Ahmadinejad a 'good friend'
ISTANBUL—Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has accused Western countries of treating Iran unfairly over its nuclear program. Erdogan told the British newspaper ‘The Guardian’ that speculation about an Iranian atomic bomb were merely "gossip". The Turkish leader is due in Tehran this week for talks with both President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Erdogan said the West was applying a double standard in its approach as many of the states which objected to Iran’s nuclear program, including the permanent members of the UN Security Council, possessed nuclear weapons themselves. He also called Ahmadinejad “a good friend” and said that "As a friend so far we have very good relations and have had no difficulty at all."
On Turkey’s fraught relations with Israel, Erdogan insisted that the strategic alliance between the two countries remained alive. However, in the interview he accused Israel’s Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, of allegedly having threatened to deploy nuclear weapons against Gaza. Lieberman’s office called Erdogan’s allegations “nonsense”.
Meanwhile, advisers to Erdogan told an Israeli Knesset member visiting Istanbul that Syria would accept only Turkey as a mediator in peace talks with Israel. Recently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had voiced doubts that Ankara could continue in the role. Following the crisis in relations between Israel and Turkey last week, Netanyahu said he objected to Turkey resuming its role as mediator and did not see how the country could remain "an honest broker."
Haifa professor says Israel not immune from tsunamis
HAIFA (Press Release) —
"There is a likely chance of tsunami waves reaching the shores of Israel," says Dr. Beverly Goodman of the Leon H. Charney School of Marine Sciences at the University of Haifa following an encompassing geo-archaeological study at the port of Caesarea. "Tsunami events in the Mediterranean do occur less frequently than in the Pacific Ocean, but our findings reveal a moderate rate of recurrence," she says.
Dr. Goodman, an expert geo-archaeologist, exposed geological evidence of this by chance. Her original intentions in Caesarea were to assist in research at the ancient port and at offshore shipwrecks. "We expected to find the remains of ships, but were surprised to reveal unusual geological layers the likes of which we had never seen in the region before. We began underwater drilling assuming that these are simply local layers related to the construction of the port. However, we discovered that they are spread along the entire area and realized that we had found something major," she explains.
Geological drilling - in areas of 1-3 meters in length and at various depths - enabled Dr. Goodman to date the underwater layers using two methods: carbon-14 dating and OSL (optically stimulated luminescence). She found evidence of four tsunami events at Caesarea: in 1500 BC, 100-200 CE, 500-600 CE, and 1100-1200 CE. In an article published in Geological Society of America, Dr. Goodman explains that the earliest of these tsunamis resulted from the eruption of the Santorini volcano, which affected the entire Mediterranean region. The later, more local tsunami waves, Dr. Goodman assumes, were generated by underwater landslides caused by earthquakes. "'Local' does not necessarily imply 'small'. These could have been waves reaching 5 meters high and as far as 2 km onshore. Coastal communities within this range would have undoubtedly been severely damaged from such a tsunami. While communities onshore clear the ground after such an event and return to civilization, tsunami evidence is preserved under the water," she explains.
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