* In Gaza: Hamas threatens Fatah supporters in special messages with “price tag”. Al-Quds)
*Fayyad: the day on which Palestinian conferences will be held in our capital Jerusalem shall come. We need US and Arab funds that are designated to supporting the PA spending in 2012. (Al-Quds)
* Settlers continue their campaign against olive trees. Israeli forces disperse by force the weekly march in Beit Ummar. The population of Beit Ula and solidarity activists repel attempts to confiscate their lands.      (Al-Quds)
* A sit-in and a march in Jerusalem in support of prisoner Hana and all prisoners of freedom. A popular campaign launched in Europe to garner supporters to the Palestinian cause. (Al-Quds)
* 38 people including 15 soldiers killed in clashes between Syrian forces and militants. (Al-Quds)
* A public poll: in the presidential election, 43 percent will vote to Abbas, 18 percent to Haniyyeh, 12 percent to Mustafa al-Barghouthi and 7 percent to Fayyad. (Al-Quds)
* Israelis protest in Tel Aviv against the beating of drums of war with Iran. (Al-Ayyam)
*B`Tselem warns: settlement related plans in Jerusalem would isolate its neighborhoods from the West Bank. Al-Ayyam)
*The “Shabak” is trying to break prisoner Shalabi`s strike for fear of increasing solidarity with her. (Al-Ayyam)
* Fayyad stresses the necessity of hold the election rapidly and hopes for disbursement of the Arab financial pledges to the PA. (Al-Ayyam)
* New Israeli secrets about the siege on Yasser Arafat. (Al-Ayyam)
* An Israeli association unveils a plan by the occupation to expel the Bedouin populations from “C” areas. (Al-Ayyam)
* Syria: the opposition is advancing towards military and political unification and the regime`s troops continue its campaign and scores have been killed. (Al-Ayyam)
* Egypt: the Liberals boycott the selection of the constitution committee in rejection to the hegemony of the Muslim Brotherhood” and the Salafis. (Al-Ayyam)
* Al-Maleki says nine Arab leaders likely to participate in Baghdad summit meeting. (Al-Ayyam)
*One citizens wounded in settlers` assault against Burqah village and 85 olive trees uprooted in Bethlehem. (Al-Hayat al-Jadida)
* Unveiling Iranian funding to blow up an Israeli ship in the Suez Canal (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida)

Al-Quds: 1) Jerusalem- Citizens carrying prisoner Hana` Shalabi`s photos during a protest for her release.
Al-Ayyam: 1) Jerusalem- scores of prisoners` relatives in sit-in at the Damascus Gate yesterday in protest against the prisoners` difficult conditions in “Nafhah” prison in the Negev; 2) Fayyad speaking to journalists on the margins of the Laborers` Union Conference yesterday; 3) Late president Yasser Arafat.  
Al-Hayat Al-Jadida: 1) Citizens carrying their relatives of prisoners` photos during a solidarity sit-in with prisoner Shalabi at the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem Old City.

The West Bank: Minister of prisoners and ex-prisoners Issa Qaraqei` says number of Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike has climbed to 30.  Qaraqei` added that prisoner Thaer Halahleh has been evacuated to a hospital following deterioration in heath condition as he has been on hunger strike for 25 days.
Early Sunday, Israeli occupation forces arrested six Palestinians in Nablus and Ramallah.
“Ofer” military court will look today into indictments against eight Palestinian children from Beit Ummar, north of Hebron.  

**Fatah`s: Nabil Shaath: Member of Fatah Central Committee.
Q: Hamas sent messages to Fatah supporters in Gaza threatening them with “price tag” similar to threats made by settlers. How would you comment on this?
They are trying to export their internal crisis and their rejection to implement the Cairo agreement and Doha Declaration. This matter is totally unacceptable on all fronts including Palestinian, Arab and international.
While we were very close to reaching reconciliation and implementing practical measures on this regard, Hamas refused to implement the agreement in the Gaza strip. It is trying to export and hide its rejection through pretexts and inconclusive statements in addition to arrest, investigations and incitements.
Hamas should immediately go back to implementing the agreement we reached and to a quick negotiations round in order to resolve all recently emerged problems.    
Q: in wake of the rhetoric of accusation of treason, do you think that a new reconciliation agreement is necessary now?
I hope that Hamas is now ready for a new reconciliation agreement; however, its behavior in the past few days does not carry good news.
I spent all my life in pursuit for national unity, before Hamas (foundation) and afterwards, and I am one of those who believe that we would never defeat our occupier unless with national unity.   Therefore, I appeal to all Hamas leaders and to all those who could influence Hamas to change this behavior and to adhere instead to the agreements we reached together.
Q: Israel is mulling ways to penalize the PA for turning to the UNHRC that decided to dispatch a fact-finding mission on settlements. One way is freezing the PA tax revenues.
This is really amazing. Apparently, we are living at a time when one turns to an international agency to complaint against occupier, a criminal, a rapist and a violator one is penalized by this occupier for that. I cannot comprehend this. Is appealing to the UN Human Rights Council a matter that obliges being penalized for? I cannot understand how the US remains silence on this regard? I can defiantly understand that one should be panelized for breaching an international law, yet I am totally incapable of comprehending that we should face the threat of being penalized simply because we complained against the Israeli violations? This matter necessitates a very speedy international response.  

Hana highlights Israeli repression
Palestinian on hunger strike is protesting against policy of administrative detention
Gulf News Editorial (http://gulfnews.com/opinions/editorials/hana-highlights-israeli-repression-1.999181)

Hana Shalabi is close to death, wasting away in an Israeli jail, where she is on a hunger strike against being held without being formally charged. This case highlights the punitive, repressive and arbitrary policy used by the Jewish state to intimidate the Palestinian people and usurp their basic human rights.
For the past 1,000 years, the right to habeas corpus is a principle which has been enshrined in jurisprudence. Yet the Israelis openly flout this fundamental tenet of normal behaviour by administrative detention of hundreds of Palestinians without charge or accusation.
Since her arrest on February 16, Hana has taken only water. Hana's administrative detention is supposed to end in three month's time. Her hunger strike against this illegal and inhuman policy is a sad but necessary process to highlight the human rights abuses of the Jewish state.
Indeed, one would imagine that the Jews, who endured such actions by Nazis, would have learnt that illegal arrests and detention without trial, simply on the basis of beliefs, is morally repugnant. But that is a lesson which is forgotten as some 300 of the 6,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails face such repressive and repugnant sanctions.


Palestinians are forgotten in a preoccupied world
By: Abdulhwahid Al-Humaid (http://arabnews.com/opinion/columns/article594713.ece)

Do you notice how news about Palestine is being ignored to the extent that we barely even remember this issue? This is really an irony as the Arabs had for a long time been calling it — “The great issue of the Arabs”!
This thought came to mind when I was listening to a report by the “BBC-London” radio station, which is still my favorite radio station despite the mushrooming of stations on FM radio. Though there are plenty of news outlets on the radio, none are to my liking as most of them bombard us with pointless noise day and night.
The report from the BBC was about the sufferings the people of Gaza are enduring due to lack of fuel and no electricity. Apart from the lack of these to necessities that sustain the wheels of life, the report also highlighted how the Palestinians suffer difficulties in obtaining the most basic requirements of daily life.
Just a few days back, the Israelis had attacked the Gaza Strip and as usual the attack resulted in a large number of dead and wounded. But that did not bother anyone because the whole world is busy with other news. America itself is busy with the race among Republican candidates, who are competing with each other to get the Republican nomination to run against President Barack Obama.
There is no doubt that this atmosphere is perfect for the Israeli Likud government to do what it wants. If Israel always got what it wanted from America in the past, at this time it's much more able to do what they want. At the same time, US President Obama looked really humble in front of “AIPAC,” which is the main Israeli lobby in the United States. Obama did not actually give a presidential speech in the true sense, but rather he was begging for Jewish votes to support him for the renewal of his mandate.
Since the early events of the “Arab Spring” a year ago, there is no time to shed light on what is happening in the Palestinian territories.
All satellite TV channels only carry news about the Arab Spring states, the Iranian nuclear crisis, and the problem of the euro and the European sovereign debt. In the midst of these events the Republican candidate “Gingrich” came out with a statement denying the existence of the “Palestinian people”, claiming that these people were just an “invention”!
And what makes matters worse, is the internal Palestinian conflict, which causes more harm than anything else, a conflict that is absurd and that has resulted in the loss of lots of enthusiastic supporters for the Palestinian cause.
In the past it was said that both Arabs and Jews had been betting that time would resolve the dispute in their favor.
The Arabs were more enthusiastic in their bets based on the demographic factor in the higher birthrate of the Palestinians compared to the Israelis. However, by one clever move, Israel has been able to turn the equation by attracting more Jewish immigrants after the fall of the former Soviet Union. The number of new immigrants during the past two decades reached nearly two million up to the year 2010.
In a speech delivered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said that he would work harder to attract a further one million new immigrants from Russia, the countries of Eastern Europe, the United States, Western Europe, Latin America and Ethiopia. Thus, with all that has been mentioned above, it begs the question: Shall we say goodbye to the Palestinian cause and declare our mourning for it?

Trying to evade investigation
by Musa Keilani (http://jordantimes.com/trying-to-evade-investigation)

Israelis are up in arms against European Union Foreign Affairs Commissioner Catherine Ashton over comments she made on Tuesday, condemning Monday’s attack on a Jewish school in Toulouse, in which one adult and three children were brutally killed.
Triggering that was an Israeli interpretation that she compared the Toulouse attack to Israel’s operations in the Gaza Strip.
What exactly did Ashton say? Speaking on the sidelines of a meeting with Palestinian youths in Brussels on Monday, Ashton said: “When we think about what happened today in Toulouse, we remember what happened in Norway last year, we know what is happening in Syria, and we see what is happening in Gaza and other places.”
Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defence Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and Opposition chairwoman Tzipi Livni, described the comment as “outrageous” and demanded that she retract it without delay.
Ashton was forced to issue a formal statement saying that she “strongly condemns the killings at the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse and extends her sympathies to the families and friends of the victims and to the people of France and the Jewish community”.
The statement said Ashton’s comments at a meeting of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency were “grossly distorted by one of the news agencies”.
Ashton was “referring to tragedies taking the lives of children around the world and drew no parallel whatsoever between the circumstances of the Toulouse attack and the situation in Gaza”.
There could not be any such parallel, but not the way Israel interprets it. The irony is that Ashton could have indeed meant just the opposite of what her statement said. The absence of an apology or expression of regret in her statement could probably imply that.
The British diplomat could have meant that the children of Gaza live in perpetual terror on a daily basis, the Jews of France live in tight security, with no fears for their lives.
The Toulouse attack was an isolated incident that does not fall into a pattern of violence against Jews per se.
The entire population of the Palestinian enclave is exposed to daily Israeli attacks that kill and maim innocent civilians, including children.
There can be no comparison between the situation in Gaza and that in Toulouse, or the rest of France or any other country.
Israeli leaders grabbed Ashton’s original comments as a pretext to counter European Union pressure on it to soften its hardline approach to peace negotiations with the Palestinians.
They put the comments on par with European criticism of Israel’s apartheid practices and its settlement policy in the occupied territories. They are also upset that EU officials have been calling for boosting Arab control in occupied Jerusalem.
Ashton went on Israel’s watchlist when she started calling for a two-state solution in Palestine and spoke in favour of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians. What Israel understands is that it can no longer take Europe for granted on the basis of “responsibility” for the holocaust.
The last brush Europe had had with Israel was when the latter said it was very upset that Hamas leader Ismail Al Ashqar spoke before some members of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva this year.
Israel was further angered when the UN council endorsed, last week, a resolution ordering an investigation into how Israel’s West Bank settlements may be in violation of the Palestinians’ rights. European members of the council did not vote the way Israel would have wanted them. No European country voted against the resolution, which was adopted with 36 votes in favour and 10 abstentions. Spain and Italy abstained, and the United States was the only one to vote against the resolution.
Responding to the resolution, Netanyahu slammed the UN council and whipped out the Hamas card he had stored away.
“This is a council that should be ashamed of itself. The UN Human Rights Council has no connection to human rights,” he said.
“This council has proven once more that it is detached from reality, by inviting a member of Hamas — an organisation whose creed advocated the murder of innocent people, to speak before it,” he said. Netanyahu’s words highlighted Israel’s human rights record although he meant otherwise.
“This is a hypocritical council with an automatic majority against Israel,” Netanyahu said.
“Until today, the council has made 91 decisions, 39 of which dealt with Israel, three with Syria and one with Iran,” he said.
Well, the Ashton episode — she continued to receive harsh criticism — should be yet another pointer to Europe and the rest of the world of how Israel remains ever alert for any opportunity to put Europe and others on the defensive and seeks to exploit the resulting situation.
Israel’s critical response to the UN resolution calling for investigation into its settlement policy and its attack on the UN council are made to ensure that it comes under no pressure to cooperate with the inquiry.
The Toulouse incident is a crime that should be condemned by all those who respect the innocence of childhood and value human life. The fact that Israeli bombers killed many Palestinian children does not justify the atrocity at Ozar Hatorah.

A regretful Collapse of the Palestinian Reconciliation
“Al-Quds Al-Arabi” Editorial (http://www.alquds.co.uk/index.asp?fname=data\2012\03\03-23\23qpt999.htm&arc=data\2012\03\03-23\23qpt999.htm)

The Palestinian arena has been witnessing these days an unprecedented rhetoric war between Fatah and Hamas movements, the two poles of the Palestinian political equation, and that has reached its peak in mass popular marchers that the Islamic Movement organized in the Gaza under the barren of the “Friday of lightening Gaza and uncovering the conspiracy”.

Hamas movement accuses the PA in Ramallah, as one of its leaders Mr. Khalil a-Hayyeh articulated, of “conspiring” with Israeli, US and Arab leaders to tighten the siege on the Gaza strip with the purpose of ousting its government. Al-Hayyeh stressed that his movement has official incriminating documents on this “conspiracy” and that Hamas would published them to the Palestinian public in the near future.

The war of accusations between Fatah and Hamas movements is not new; however, the new thing this time is that it has exploded few weeks after signing the Doha agreement which consecrate reconciliation between the two sides and provides the formation of a national unity government chaired by President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah chairman and the president of the PA.

Since several weeks, the Gaza strip has been living in pitch dark and suffers from paralyzed daily life due to power cuts as a result of shortage in fuel that is necessary for the operation of the central power plant. Limited amounts were expected to come from Israel via Erez crossing yesterday to partly resolve the crisis.

We are unaware of whether the PA has been a “collaborator” in the conspiracy of cutting electricity from two million people in the Gaza strip as Mr. Al-Hayyeh claimed in his speech during eth five marches in the Gaza strip yesterday.  This is not because the PA spokesperson denied the accusation but because the documents that could convict the PA have not yet been released.

Nevertheless, the conclusion one may draw from the accusations and the counter-accusations between the two movements is that the Egypt-brokered Palestinian reconciliation that was signed in Cairo amidst media celebrations has totally collapsed, and that the gap in the dispute between Fatah and Hamas is now wider than it was before the signing.

The Palestinian people who have warmly welcomed the reconciliation and considered it as a lifeline which could put an end to the division and fragmentation in the Palestinian arena will suffer the greatest disappointment in light of this depressing Palestinian scene.

What is most dangerous is probably that this people, or most of it, will distrust every future reconciliation agreements and will not deal seriously with statements by officials from both factions on reconciliation and on holding presidential and legislative elections.

Any collaboration with the siege on the Gaza strip should be condemned in the strongest terms because the ordinary people are those who suffer its consequences not Hamas leaders alone. Yet, accusations should not be articulated aimlessly but should rather be backed with evidences.

The PA in Ramallah is indeed involved in security coordination with the Israeli occupation, and persists with secret and public negotiations with its representatives and without turning first to the Palestinian institutional reference. Nevertheless, it is also true that Hamas movement has made up with this PA that committed these sins during the daylight.

We said and continue saying for a hundred times that reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas movement is a mere illusion, and in the best case a “card” that the two sides uses for maneuvers to exit a “certain impasse” and to eventually deceive the Palestinian people.

Reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas is like mixing oil and water. Eventually, the oil will remain oil and the water will remain water regardless who this oil represents and who this water represents.