Ha’aretz elaborates:

Israel and Hamas have reached a prisoner exchange deal that will secure the release of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, officials at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Tuesday.

Officials in the Prime Minister’s Office said that “a brief window of opportunity has been opened that would possibly lead to Gilad Shalit’s homecoming,” adding: “The window appeared following fears that collapsing Mideast regimes and the rise of extremist forces would make Gilad Shalit’s return impossible.”

The officials’ comment came following a report by Al-Arabiya, according to which a deal has indeed been reached between Israel and Hamas geared at the release of the IDF soldier, in Hamas captivity in Gaza since 2006.

Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are meeting several ministers in the Prime Minister’s Office in order to pressure them into voting for the deal, with Netanyahu aides estimating that the deal will be approved by the cabinet,

Special attention is reportedly being given to Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman no to vote against the deal along with ministers from his Yisrael Beiteinu party. Several Likud ministers who have voiced opposition to freeing terrorists in exchange for Shalit are also being pushed to approve the deal.

Netanyahu called an emergency cabinet meeting scheduled for later Tuesday in which ministers are to discuss the status of talks geared at securing Shalit’s release.

Speaking with Haaertz, one Egyptian official said: “After 64 months of tough negotiations we were able to complete the deal. It was a very difficult task, which included thousands of hours of negotiations.”

Also on Tuesday, top Egyptian officials confimed to Haaretz that there had been significant progress in the attempts to strike a prisoner exchange deal that would lead to Shalit’s release.

The officials confirmed that an Israeli delegation, headed by the head of Shalit negotiations David Meidan, was in Cairo to indirectly discuss the details of a possible deal with the chief of Hamas’ military wing Ahmed Al-Jabari.

Similarly to previous rounds of Shalit talks, the indirect talks are overseen by Egyptian intelligence, headed by intelligence chief General Murad Muwafi and his aides.

Egyptian officials have also said that a the deal which has been reached in recent days also includes accused Israeli spy Ilan Garpal.

According to Al Arabiya, the deal will be implemented in November and chief Hamashole Khaled Meshaal is expected to deliver “an important address” in two hours (the report was already from over two hours ago).

Hamas television has reported that as many as 1,000 Palestinian prisoners would be released as part of the arrangement.

I’m glad Gilad is likely coming home but 1,000 terrorists? Oy gevalt.

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Updates (Israel time; latest from top)

11:40PM: Israel’s army radio, as well as Channels 2 and 10, are reporting that Barghouti and Saadat are NOT on the list of prisoners to be released. Here’s hoping this proves to be true.

10:50PM: Prime Minister Netanyahu’s remarks at the opening of the special cabinet meeting today:

Today, I bring a proposal to the Government for a deal that will bring Gilad Shalit home alive and well; bring him home to his parents Aviva and Noam, his brother Yoel, his sister Hadas, his grandfather Zvi, and the entire people of Israel. Two and a half years ago, when the government was formed, I took upon myself, as my first priority, to bring Gilad home to his people, to his family – to bring him home safe and sound.

At the time, Gilad was already held in captivity for two and a half years, with no visits from the Red Cross, with no visits at all, and we did not know what state he was in. The first step I took, and we approved it here in the Government, was to get a video recording of Gilad, and we all breathed a sigh of relief when we saw it. We saw that he was functioning, physically, mentally and cognitively. We saw that he was functioning well. We knew that he was healthy and that he was alive.  I regarded that tape as an insurance policy, because it obliged the Hamas before the international community to safeguard him, to keep him alive and maintain his health. But that was obviously only the first step.

The most important mission that we had was more challenging – to actually bring Gilad home. To that end we held long and tough negotiations through the German mediator. These negotiations were based on a framework outlined by the previous government. They were long and exhausting and despite all our efforts, a deal was not reached.

I must point out that not a day went by without us trying various ways to bring Gilad home, any way possible, and that didn’t work either. In the last few weeks, the negotiations were renewed in Cairo, this time with the Egyptian government as mediator. My instructions to the team were to adhere to the principles and framework that are important for the security of the State of Israel, which I will detail in the meeting.

There is an inbuilt tension between the desire to bring back an abducted soldier, or citizen, and the need to maintain the security of the citizens of Israel.  This is my dual responsibility as Prime Minister.

The deal I am bringing to the Government expresses the right balance between all of these considerations. I do not wish to hide the truth from you – it is a very difficult decision. I feel for the families of victims of terror, I appreciate their suffering and distress, I am one of them. But leadership must be examined at moments such as this, being able to make difficult, but right, decisions.

I believe that we have reached the best deal we could have at this time, when storms are sweeping the Middle East.  I do not know if in the near future we would have been able to reach a better deal or any deal at all. It is very possible that this window of opportunity, that opened because of the circumstances, would close indefinitely and we would never have been able to bring Gilad home at all.

Therefore, for all of these reasons, I instructed the team to put their initials on the deal last Thursday, and today it was finalized and signed by both sides. I thank my Military Secretary Maj. Gen. Yohanan Locker, the Chief of the Shin Bet Yoram Cohen, my personal envoy to the negotiations, David Meidan and his predecessor Hagai Hadas. I thank the team that has accompanied them all these years.

I thank the IDF, the security forces for doing everything they could regarding Gilad Shalit. I also wish to thank the German mediator, and the Chancellor Angela Merkel who supported his mission all along. A send a special thanks to the Government of Egypt and the Egyptian Intelligence Services for providing much assistance in mediating and helping us reaching this agreement.

This morning I Invited Noam Shalit to my residence, and I spoke on the phone with the mother Aviva and the grandfather Zvi. I told them that I am keeping my promise and I’m bringing their son and grandson home. I told them, “I’m bringing your boy back.” I am happy that I succeeded in fulfilling the Jewish decree of redeeming captives, and if all goes as planned, Gilad will be back in Israel in the next few days with his family and his people.

The Nation of Israel is a unique people. We are all mutually responsible for each other, as our Sages said: “He who saves one soul, it is as though he saved an entire world.” Tonight, I bring the Government a proposal to save Gilad Shalit, to finally bring him home to Israel after five years.

10:45PM: Ynet adds:

The exchange would include Amina Mona, a young woman who lured a lovestruck Israeli teenage boy to a Palestinian city over the Internet, only to have him killed by waiting militants, according to Mohammed al-Barem, a leader of the Popular Resistance Committees, one of the groups that captured Shalit. He gave no other names, but said it included 300 prisoners serving life sentences.

10:42PM: Among the terrorists reportedly to be released: Marwan Barghouti, the popular Fatah (according to Israeli reports, he will be required to accept exile from the West Bank), as well as Hamashole Abdullah Barghouti (no relation), serving 67 life sentences for building bombs used in suicide attacks.

10:40PM: More from the Hamas website:

Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas Political Bureau, said in a press conference, that the deal will be executed in two parts, the first part in a week and the second will be after two months.

The total number of the liberated detainees is 1027, he added.

Meshaal said that No Palestinian women will be in the Israeli Jails, all of them will liberate in the deal and their number is 27.

“This is a national achievement for the Palestinian people, we tried to include all Palestinian detainees in the Israeli jails, and we promise the rest of the Palestinian detainees to liberate them.”

“My words to the fathers and mothers who did not included in the deal, do not be sad, your sons will be liberated soon.”

“My Appreciations to Ezzedeen Al Qassam Brigades and the Palestinian factions which managed to capture the Israeli soldier Shalit, My thanks to the Palestinian people in Gaza Strip and the West Bank for their steadfastness against the Israeli siege, also my thanks to the Egyptian role in accomplishing this deal.”

In the end he said “This deal is a national achievement, Palestinian people who accomplished this deal is capable to get more achievements as Right of Return and reconciliation etc.”

9:30PM: Hamas announces the deal on its web site:

Ezzedeen Al-Qassam, the military wing of Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas, announced that the detainees exchange deal has accomplished, the Brigades and Palestinian factions who participated in capturing Shalit announced that the deal will be within days.

The Brigades said in an exclusive press statement for Al Qassam website “An honorable exchange deal has accomplished, whereby Palestinian detainees will be freed for the release of the Zionist soldier Gilad Shalit.”

The Brigades also confirmed that the deal criteria accomplished for the first time in the history of the Palestinian resistance.

9:25PM: Recently retired blogger Challah points to a tweet by a BBC journalist indicating arch terrorist Marwan Barghouti is one of the 1000 to be freed.

‘U.S.-Israel relations at their worst in 35 years’
Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, has told the country’s diplomats there that U.S.-Israeli relations face their worst crisis in 35 years, despite attempts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office to project a sense of “business as usual.”

I hate Mondays.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

11:10PM: Quote of the day:

“You who are opening Hurva are heading towards ruin. Wherever you have been you’ve been sent to your destruction. You’ve killed and murdered your prophets and you have always dealt in loan-sharking and destruction.”

- Head Hamashole Mahmoud al-Zahar demonstrating that Hamas is not antisemitic, just anti-Israel

8:45PM: BREAKING NEWS: Backbone sighted.

8:32PM: The palestinians have gotten their panties in a bunch over the latest Israeli “provocation.”

Rededicating a synagogue destroyed by the Jordanians 60 years ago.

AP

Personal status courts in the West Bank and Jerusalem will strike Monday and Tuesday in protest over the rededication of the Hurva Synagogue, officials announced.

The ceremonies at the synagogue, 330 meters away from the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, have been called a “provocation” in the wake of an Israeli raid on the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the declaration of two Palestinian mosques as “Israeli heritage sites” on 21 February.

“The synagogue is not located near the Temple Mount compound,” an Israeli government news release replied to the accusations.

—-

The Palestinian Higher Judicial Council, headed by Supreme Judge Sheikh Tayseer Tamimi, released a statement calling on “Palestinian people everywhere, especially those who live in Jerusalem and in other cities inside Israel,” to head to Jerusalem to protect the Al-Aqsa Mosque from Ultra-Orthodox Jewish groups, which the statement said planned a raid on the compound following the synagogue rededication.

Tamimi accused Israeli leaders of plotting to lay the cornerstone of the “Third Temple,” following the rededication, in what he called the first move in the planned destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

Meanwhile, Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yona Metzger responded to this accusation.

“Pay no attention to malicious slander. All we are doing is resurrecting the ‘Hurva,’ which was destroyed 60 years ago. We have no intention of rebuilding the temple, not this week – unless the Almighty God descends it from the heavens,” said the chief rabbi during the inauguration ceremony.

“All the rumors that suggest we will later march on Temple Mount are just that – rumors. A media spin by anti-Semites that wish us harm.”

5:26PM: Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin and Brazilian President Lula da Silva embrace during the latter’s visit to the Knesset today.

Reuven Rivlin: I can’t quite get my arms around you.

Lula da Silva: I know the feeling.

4:25PM: Wall Street Journal op-ed on the latest US-Israel crisis (via Ynet):

In response, the Wall Street Journal op-ed wrote that the Obama administration “has endorsed ‘healthy relations’ between Iran and Syria, mildly rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad for accusing the US of ‘colonialism,’ and publicly apologized to Muammar Gadhafi for treating him with less than appropriate deference after the Libyan called for ‘a jihad’ against Switzerland.”

However, when it comes to Israel, “the administration has no trouble rising to a high pitch of public indignation,” wrote the article entitled “Obama’s Turn Against Israel.”

“Repeated apologies from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prevented Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—at what White House sources ostentatiously said was the personal direction of President Obama—from calling the announcement ‘an insult to the United States,’” stated the opinion piece.

“Since nobody is defending the Israeli announcement, least of all an obviously embarrassed Israeli government, it’s difficult to see why the Administration has chosen this occasion to spark a full-blown diplomatic crisis with its most reliable Middle Eastern ally… If Israel senses that the Administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations, it will care much less how the US might react to a military strike on Iran.’

The financial newspaper took an opposite stance on West Bank settlements than that adopted by the Obama administration: “As for the West Bank settlements, it is increasingly difficult to argue that their existence is the key obstacle to a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew all of its settlements from Gaza in 2005, only to see the Strip transform itself into a Hamas statelet and a base for continuous rocket fire against Israeli civilians.”

“This episode does fit Mr. Obama’s foreign policy pattern to date: Our enemies get courted; our friends get the squeeze. It has happened to Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras and Colombia. Now it’s Israel’s turn,” quipped the Wall Street Journal.

12:25PM: What I did last night.

12:10PM: Oh, the horror of the treatment of palestinians in Israeli prisons!

Dr Evil

Jailed Fatah official Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in prison for his role in attacks that killed and wounded several Israelis during the second intifada, has completed his doctorate in political science, his supporters said over the weekend.

Barghouti, 50, is one of several hundred Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons who enroll in studies at universities around the world, including in Israel.

According to his supporters, Barghouti was accepted by the University of Cairo and the Arab Academy for Research and Studies in the Egyptian capital back in 1999, three years before he was arrested by the IDF.

Barghouti’s doctoral thesis is titled “The Legislative and Political Performance of the Palestinian Legislative Council and its Contribution to the Democratic Process in Palestine from 1996 to 2008.”

The 341-page document will be brought on Tuesday for discussion before a special panel headed by Prof. Ahmad Yussuf, dean of the Arab Academy for Research and Studies.

Barghouti was able to complete his thesis with the help of hundreds of books and documents that Israeli authorities allow inmates to bring into prison.

Hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are currently enrolled as students with the Open University of Israel, which facilitates their studies by allowing them to sit exams in jail.

Barghouti, who is also a Fatah member on the Palestinian Legislative Council, completed his high school exams while in Israeli prison in 1980. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history/ political science and in international relations, respectively, from Bir Zeit University, north of Ramallah. His master’s thesis dealt with Palestinian-French relations from 1967 to 1997.

On May 20, 2004, he was convicted of five counts of murder – including authorizing and organizing the Sea Food Market attack in Tel Aviv in which three civilians were killed. He was acquitted of 21 counts of murder in 33 other attacks for “lack of sufficient evidence.” On June 6, 2004, he was sentenced to five life sentences for the five murders and 40 years imprisonment for the attempted murder.

The only doctorate I wish he had completed in prison is his doctorate in Bubba science (specialization in soap retrieval from prison shower).

11:50AM: Here’s the report mentioned in my previous update, which refutes every claim of the Goldstone report and proves Hamas’ use of children as human shields (hat tip: Barry).

6:06AM: According to a new report being released by the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (Malam), Hamas used children as human shields, and established command centers and Qassam launch pads in and near more than 100 mosques and hospitals during Operation Cast Lead.

Ok, nothing new there, but it contains hundreds of declassified photographs, videos, prisoner interrogations and Hamas-drawn sketches as part of an effort to counter the criticism leveled at Israel in the Goldstone Report. In essence, it is “the first real, aggressive Israeli response to the Goldstone Report, taking it apart piece-by-piece and explaining the true nature of the conflict against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.”

Israel already released its preliminary response to the Goldstone Report over a month ago.

5:45AM: Australia’s ABC news deals with this latest US-Israel rift. Notice how White House Official David Axelrod calls the timing of Israel’s announcement of new housing units “calculated,” clearly not accepting Israel’s explanation it was accidental.

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Good.

Meanwhile, Hamas has rejected suggestions that they have rejected Israel’s latest offer. But they haven’t denied threatening to kidnap more soldiers.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

11:10PM: Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon gets right to the facts.

The recent statements by the European Union’s new foreign relations chief Catherine Ashton criticizing Israel have once again brought international attention to Jerusalem and the settlements. However, little appears to be truly understood about Israel’s rights to what are generally called the “occupied territories” but what really are “disputed territories.”

That’s because the land now known as the West Bank cannot be considered “occupied” in the legal sense of the word as it had not attained recognized sovereignty before Israel’s conquest. Contrary to some beliefs there has never been a Palestinian state, and no other nation has ever established Jerusalem as its capital despite it being under Islamic control for hundreds of years.

The name “West Bank” was first used in 1950 by the Jordanians when they annexed the land to differentiate it from the rest of the country, which is on the east bank of the river Jordan. The boundaries of this territory were set only one year before during the armistice agreement between Israel and Jordan that ended the war that began in 1948 when five Arab armies invaded the nascent Jewish State. It was at Jordan’s insistence that the 1949 armistice line became not a recognized international border but only a line separating armies. The Armistice Agreement specifically stated: “No provision of this Agreement shall in any way prejudice the rights, claims, and positions of either Party hereto in the peaceful settlement of the Palestine questions, the provisions of this Agreement being dictated exclusively by military considerations.” (Italics added.) This boundary became the famous “Green Line,” so named because the military officials during the armistice talks used a green pen to draw the line on the map.

After the Six Day War, when once again Arab armies sought to destroy Israel and the Jewish state subsequently captured the West Bank and other territory, the United Nations sought to create an enduring solution to the conflict. U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 is probably one of the most misunderstood documents in the international arena. While many, especially the Palestinians, push the idea that the document demands that Israel return everything captured over the Green Line, nothing could be further from the truth. The resolution calls for “peace within secure and recognized boundaries,” but nowhere does it mention where those boundaries should be.

It is best to understand the intentions of the drafters of the resolution before considering other interpretations. Eugene V. Rostow, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs in 1967 and a drafter of the resolution, stated in 1990: “Security Council Resolution 242 and (subsequent U.N. Security Council Resolution) 338… rest on two principles, Israel may administer the territory until its Arab neighbors make peace; and when peace is made, Israel should withdraw to “secure and recognized borders,” which need not be the same as the Armistice Demarcation Lines of 194.”

Lord Caradon, the British U.N. Ambassador at the time and the resolution’s main drafter who introduced it to the Council, said in 1974 unequivocally that, “It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967, because those positions were undesirable and artificial.”

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N. at the time, former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg, made the issue even clearer when he stated in 1973 that, “the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories without defining the extent of withdrawal.” This would encompass “less than a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from occupied territory, inasmuch as Israel’s prior frontiers had proven to be notably insecure.”

Even the Soviet delegate to the U.N., Vasily Kuznetsov, who fought against the final text, conceded that the resolution gave Israel the right to “withdraw its forces only to those lines it considers appropriate.”

After the war in 1967, when Jews started returning to their historic heartland in the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, as the territory had been known around the world for 2,000 years until the Jordanians renamed it, the issue of settlements arose. However, Rostow found no legal impediment to Jewish settlement in these territories. He maintained that the original British Mandate of Palestine still applies to the West Bank. He said “the Jewish right of settlement in Palestine west of the Jordan River, that is, in Israel, the West Bank, Jerusalem, was made unassailable. That right has never been terminated and cannot be terminated except by a recognized peace between Israel and its neighbors.” There is no internationally binding document pertaining to this territory that has nullified this right of Jewish settlement since.

And yet, there is this perception that Israel is occupying stolen land and that the Palestinians are the only party with national, legal and historic rights to it. Not only is this morally and factually incorrect, but the more this narrative is being accepted, the less likely the Palestinians feel the need to come to the negotiating table. Statements like those of Lady Ashton’s are not only incorrect; they push a negotiated solution further away.

10:18PM: Hamas has claimed it uncovered a plot by Israel to gather information about the location of Gilad Shalit, imvolving former security officers belonging to Fatah.

A senior Hamas official said that Israel had recruited a number of officers who used to serve in the Fatah-dominated security forces before the Islamist movement seized control of the entire Gaza Strip in the summer of 2007.

Abu Abdullah, who serves with Hamas’s Internal Security Service, said that the officers had been entrusted with the mission of locating the place where Schalit was being held by his captors.

“The Shabak is very interested in obtaining any information about the whereabouts of Schalit through various methods,” Abu Abdullah said, referring to Israel’s Security Agency (Shin Bet). “One of these methods was the last war [Operation Cast Lead], whose goal was to break Hamas and obtain information about the location of Schalit to rescue him.”

The Hamas security official revealed that his men arrested “a number of collaborators” who had rented an apartment and vehicles in the eastern area of the Gaza Strip.

He claimed that the “collaborators” were planning to kidnap a senior member of Hamas’s armed wing, Izaddin al-Kassam, and hand him over to Israel for interrogation about the location of Schalit.

Abu Abdullah did not name the top operative who was supposed to be abducted. However, he told a Hamas-affiliated Web site that his men managed to foil the alleged scheme in the last minute.

He said that the alleged Israeli operation was similar to an earlier incident where undercover IDF soldiers are said to have detained another senior Hamas operative, Muhawesh al-Qadi, from the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip more than a year ago.

Abu Abdullah reiterated Hamas charges that former security officers belonging to Fatah were working with the IDF and other Israeli security branches to undermine the movement and free Schalit. He also claimed that these “collaborators” had also provided the Israelis with information about Hamas men who fired rockets into Israel.

4:52PM: Ma’an News reports:

The UN relief agency UNRWA said on Tuesday that Gaza had been “bombed back, not to the Stone Age, but to the mud age,” because the agency was reduced to building houses out of mud due to Israel’s ban on construction materials entering the Strip.

Little known historical fact: During the Mud Age, man was apparently able to produce and fire rockets.

6:55AM: Israeli magician Hezi Dayan is attempting to break David Blaine’s 58-hour world record for remaining inside an ice cell, by remaining inside for 64 hours.

6:05AM: Fatah Central Committee member Sultan Abul Enein stated the blast in Beirut that killed two Hamas members was an accident.

He said in an interview with Voice of Palestine radio that the explosion resulted from a “misuse of arms,” and had no security or political significance.

He did not say on what basis he made these assertions. Abul Enein served as one of Fatah’s senior leaders in Lebanon for years before moving to the West Bank in August.

The two Hamas members were buried on Tuesday. Hamas has not publicly accused anyone of carrying out the apparent bombing.

Speaking at the funeral on Monday, Hamas’ top leader in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan declined to speculate on who was responsible.

Also on Monday Lebanon’s official National News Agency reported that the blast had been caused by 15 kilograms of TNT.

My money’s still on premature explodation, although I’m now beginning to think Fatah may have had a hand in it.

6:00AM: Hassan Nasrallah speaks of his respect for the US and desire for peace once Israel withdraws from the northern part of the village of Ghajar.

5:55AM: Lebanese Druze leader Walid “Mr Burns” Jumblatt yesterday urged Israeli Druze not to serve in the IDF.

Speaking to Nazareth-based Radio A-Shams, Jumblatt said that all Druze are Arabs who follow the Druze religion, and thus ties between Druze in different countries and between Druze and other Arabs were only natural.

The Druze leader, who was visiting Cyprus, met recently with a delegation of Israeli Druze dignitaries led by MK Said Naffaa (Balad) and clergymen from Mount Carmel and the Galilee. He said his ties with Israeli Druze began in Amman in 2001 and have been developing ever since.

Jumblatt noted that there was an increasing awareness of such ties among young Druze in Israel and said that many of them were already refusing to join the military. “The fact that the number of Druze avoiding military service has risen from 5 percent to almost 60 percent is proof enough of the importance of this connection,” he said.

The percentage of Druze that join the military has long been contested by both sides of the ideological debate. At a conference in the Druze village of Julis attended by then-prime minister Ehud Olmert, Dr. Yussuf Hassan of Tel Aviv University presented a survey stating that 94 percent of Israeli Druze see Israeliness as an important part of their identity. IDF Col. Ramez a-Din told the conference that 83 percent of young Druze join the military, compared to only 72 percent of Jewish youths.

Jumblatt rejected criticism that he was intervening in another community’s internal affairs. “There were voices that I can only describe as primitive who attacked our initiative, but we’ve proven that maintaining this relationship strengthens the Arab Palestinian identity of community members in Israel, and especially the young,” he said. “The rising numbers of conscientious objectors show the Druze will no longer be border guards for the State of Israel.”

We are now waiting for Hamas to respond.Senior Hamasholes are expected to meet within a few days to discuss the proposal, and a deal is likely to take several more days or even weeks. Assuming there is a deal at all. On one hand, a number of senior Hamasholes reportedly said they want to advance the negotiations and would seriously consider Israel’s proposal, in part due to heavy pressure exerted by families of palestinian prisoners. On the other hand, our demand to deport dozens of prisoners indefinitely, as well as our refusal to release Marwan Barghouti, Ahmed Sadat, and jailed Israeli Arabs, are “too much” for Hamas to accept.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

11:15PM: Now there are reports that Hamas has agreed to the deportation of 123 palestinian terrorists from the West Bank to a number of destinations.

9:02PM: So long, Captain.

8:42PM: Separated at Birth? A palestinian man dressed as Santa, and deceased comedian Richard Pryor.

8:35PM: Farfur the mouse, supposedly martyred, has been spotted.

Again.

And this time, he’s hanging out with one of the good guys.

A Palestinian boy poses for a picture with people wearing elephant, mouse and Santa Claus costumes during a children Christmas parade near the Church of the Nativity, the site revered as the birthplace of Jesus, in the West Bank town of Bethlehem December 23, 2009. Christian visitors coming to Bethlehem this week to celebrate the birth of Christ will encounter a concrete wall with watchtowers, built by Israel between nearby Jerusalem and the Church of the Nativity.

3:36PM: Senior Hamashole Mahmoud “Wart” Zahar has said the German mediator met with his negotiating team and relayed Israel’s latest proposal on a prisoner/terrorist exchange deal to secure the release of Gilad Shalit. Hamas will study the offer and issue its response within several days.

But according to Ynet, senior Hamasholes stated Israel’s response was “unacceptable.”

12:38PM: Fossilized Elder of Moron Jimmy Carter wants everyone to know that his sudden apology to US Jews for any contribution he may have had to Israel’s negative image has absolutely nothing to do with his grandson’s decision to run for the Georgia state senate.

Jimmy Carter is asking the Jewish community for forgiveness — and insists it’s not simply because his grandson has decided to launch a political career with a run for the Georgia state Senate.

Jason Carter, 34, an Atlanta-area lawyer, is considering a run to fill a seat covering suburban DeKalb County should the incumbent, David Adelman, win confirmation as President Obama’s designated ambassador to Singapore.

The seat, which is university heavy — Emory, among others, is situated there — also has a substantial Jewish community.

The senior Carter outraged Jewish leaders with his book “Palestine: Peace not Apartheid,” and they strongly criticized the former U.S. president for what appeared to be his likening of Israel’s settlement practices to apartheid and seeming to place the brunt of the blame for a lack of peace on Israel.

On the subsequent book tour, Carter further enraged many Jews by intimating that the pro-Israel lobby inhibited an evenhanded U.S. policy.

Such bad blood could potentially translate into problems for Carter’s grandson as he considers launching a political career.

But in an interview with JTA, Carter insisted that ethnic electoral considerations were not reason enough to reach out to the Jewish community, although he did not outright deny that it was a factor.

“Jason has a district, the number of Jewish voters in it is only 2 percent,” he said, chuckling.

In a statement issued through his campaign manager, the younger Carter said the statement was not connected to his campaign.

“While I was very happy to see my grandfather’s letter, it was completely unrelated to my campaign. The letter is a product of discussions with some of his friends in the Jewish community that have been going on for a long time.  I, like many others, see this as a great step towards reconciliation,” Jason Carter said in the statement.

—-

It seemed clear, however, that Jason Carter saw the apology, issued earlier this month through JTA, as a means of outreach. The younger Carter has been trying for days to reach Liane Levetan, a former state senator and CEO of DeKalb County, and as soon as they connected Tuesday, he directed her to the JTA Web site to read the letter.

“I wanted to let Jason know that I really and truly understand his position that he loves his grandfather, but you can love someone and not agree with their points of view and actions in certain areas, and Israel is my area,” Levetan told JTA in an interview after her conversation with the younger Carter.

Looks like Jimmy has honed his lying skills while spending all of that time with his Hamas friends.

11:42AM: The worms are licking their chops with the death of another Hamashole on a “Jihad mission.”

5:54AM: Introducing the video clip to the new palestinian hit song “Check out our weapons, including our new anti-aircraft gun, with which we will kill Jews.” Number 1 with a bullet.

• A review of the 36 “most serious” cases of alleged war crimes cited in the Goldstone Report, concluding that 30 of them are “baseless accusations,” while the other 6 related to genuine instances, where operational errors and mistakes were involved.
• A chapter on the humanitarian efforts that the IDF made during Operation Cast Lead

While the IDF has not yet decided what it will do with the report and whether it will be released to the public, it has already launched a diplomatic campaign to present some of the results of its probe.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

12:24PM: In an interview with CNN, jailed palestinian terrorists Marwan Barghouti expects to be part of a Shalit-for-terrorists exchange deal.

“I am part of the list that Hamas is negotiating over, and I have high hopes and expectations to be released in this deal.”

6:44AM: It looks like someone at the palestinian Ma’an News has a sense of humor.

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Amid a flurry of media reports that after more than three years of deadlock, Hamas may agree this week to release St.-Sgt. Gilad Schalit, President Shimon Peres told reporters in Cairo on Sunday that progress had been made toward a prisoner swap.

“There are negotiations between the two sides. I do not think that I need to elaborate. We all know there is progress. I hope that it will lead to a positive conclusion,” Peres said.

Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi warned that the media reports on progress in the talks “could harm the efforts” to release Schalit.

“We have a deep commitment to release Gilad and this is a joint effort by everyone, but it needs to stay behind the scenes,” he said. “This is what will contribute to his returning home quickly.”

Despite his words, the Israeli, international and Arab media churned out headlines throughout the day on an imminent agreement.

Fox News reported that a deal had taken “another important step” forward and that Israel has approved a Hamas list of 70 additional names that met its criteria for release.

Israel originally had reservations about 70 names on a Hamas list of 450 security prisoners it demanded in exchange for Schalit, 22, who has been held by Hamas in Gaza since June 2006.

According to Al-Arabiya satellite news, senior Hamas officials will arrive in Cairo on Monday for talks with Egyptian officials and Gaza-based Hamas officials.

Usama Mazeini, a Hamas official involved in the German-brokered negotiations over Schalit, told Hamas newsletter Al-Risala on Saturday that the remaining “obstacles” are closed to being resolved.

He gave no further details, but the publication quoted anonymous Hamas officials as saying a deal is “reaching completion.”

Germany’s new Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle arrives in Israel on Monday for a pre-arranged visit.

Some reports have speculated that a deal, or at least its first stage, will be carried out by Friday in conjunction with the Id al-Adha Muslim holiday.

Schalit’s father, Noam, is set to speak on Monday with Israeli mediator Hagai Elias, at a meeting that was previously scheduled. Afterwards he is expected to head to the Knesset to lobby parliamentarians on his son’s behalf.

He told the media on Sunday that he had received no officials reports of any progress.

“At this moment, there is nothing new,” he said.

The deal would need to be approved by the cabinet and would be brought for a vote before its implementation, possibly as early as this week.

On Sunday, Al-Arabiya reported that Israel could release as many as 1,000 security prisoners in exchange for Schalit.

The Dubai-based broadcaster said that if the deal goes through, Schalit would return to Israel via Egypt.

The report said that the list of prisoners included Fatah-Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti, as well as other prisoners with “blood on their hands,” who had been involved in terrorist attacks that killed Israelis.

Hamas’s announcement on Saturday that it was reining in all of the Gazan factions to prevent rocket fire is viewed as a step toward an agreement, since Hamas understands that a rocket attack with casualties could set back a deal indefinitely.

Meanwhile, three bereaved fathers who lost their children in a terror attack on a bus in Haifa are protesting “the serious censorship on any detail regarding the deal for the release of terrorists.”

According to the fathers, “The lack of knowledge and the lack of time due to the censorship are causing us great suffering and a feeling of contempt towards the moves taken and the punishments imposed by the legal system on the murderers of our children and the collaborators responsible for our children’s murder.”

The three parents are threatening to turn to the court “in order to receive reliable information, in real time, about the impending deal, including a list of the prisoners slated to be released from Israeli jails.

Updates (Israel time; most recent at top)

10:05PM: Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has indicated that no Shalit-for-terrorists deal has been struck yet.

8:32PM: I guess they won’t be exchanging Chanukah gifts.

5:38PM: There are reports that arch Fatah terrorist Marwan Barghouti may be released in an upcoming Shalit-for-terrorists exchange, as well as PFLP terrorist Ahmed Sadat.

If Barghouti is released, I predict he will be elected as the new PA President, to replace Mahmoud Abbas.

5:15PM:  Ahmad Aweidah, head of the Palestine Securities Exchange, is advocating a one-state solution in which palestinians are the majority and the Jews are a “protected minority.”

Asked of Israelis who would resist his vision out of fear for the end of the Jewish state, he said: “But it would be the birth of the Jewish canton. Don’t worry, we will be good to them. They will be treated as a protected minority. We are not interested in oppressing them. Historically, we don’t have a problem with Jews. Anti-semitism is not an Arab or Muslim thing, it’s primarily been a Christian thing.”

Sounds good to me. Sign me up!

</sarcasm>

4:55PM: Ma’an news reports:

The head of the Muslim-Christian Commission, an interfaith Palestinian organization, expressed regret on Saturday that the Arab and Muslim world was more focused on soccer than protecting Jerusalem.

Speaking at the commission’s new headquarters in Jerusalem, Secretary-General Hasan Khater said he was disappointed by the enthusiasm soccer players demonstrated last week in Sudan compared to their support for holy sites in Jerusalem.

“I thought the Arab and Muslim countries were in a coma, unable to get excited about anything, but the match between Egypt and Algeria proved there is incredible potential… unfortunately it’s being used for everything but furthering the nation’s interests and real concerns,” he said.

He asked how soccer fans could become so “hysterically excited” over a match, but not when “Israeli soldiers hunt down and arrest Palestinian worshipers in Al-Aqsa’s courtyards … Has the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Jerusalem become less relevant than football?”

Or perhaps this is indicative of what Jerusalem really means to the average Arab and Muslim.

1:18PM: Alan Dershowitz has ripped Richard Goldstone a new one, for the latter’s refusal to debate him.

Jewish-American legalist, Prof. Alan Dershowitz accused Judge Richard Goldstone, the author of the UN report  investigating Operation Cast Lead, of dodging an intellectual confrontation with him and of choosing to speak with relatively less incisive interviewers in order to spread lies against the Israeli government.

In a conversation with Ynet, Dershowitz claimed that Goldstone preferred to give interviews to public television over debating him. Dershowitz said that it isn’t appropriate for Goldstone to filter whom he debates, saying that he chose to speak with Bill Moyers and People magazine, but refused to sit at the same table as him.

Dershowitz, a Harvard University law professor who gained fame through a number of highly publicized court cases, including that of OJ Simpson, invited Goldstone to a debate on the home turf of the report’s author in front of his students at Fordham University, where he is a visiting lecturer. Goldstone turned down the invite.

Dershowitz said that he tried to confront Goldstone, but that Goldstone clearly showed that he is uninterested in debating people who have access to information and have read his report meticulously and with a critical eye. Dershowitz, not hiding his dismay with Goldstone, said that the judge used very poor judgment, and noted that judges are not above the law or morality, and nor are they above criticism or debate.

Dershowitz demanded that Goldstone provide explanations of the sources that led him to his final conclusion in the report, which asserted that Israel’s policy in Operation Cast Lead was to kill as many Palestinian civilians as possible.

Dershowitz said that this is an utter lie and that Goldstone must be ashamed for coming to such a conclusion, saying that while Goldstone now denies such allegations in interviews, this indeed is the bottom line of the report written plainly in black and white.

The world-renowned legalist expressed his dismay for the wave of court cases issued against senior Israeli military and political officials in Europe on the backdrop of the Gaza offensive.

According to him, it is absurd that some like Ehud Barak, who, in his words, tried to bring peace and give the Palestinians a state, is currently under threat of being arrested in London while Hamas’ Khaled Mashaal can roam the city’s streets free of concern. He said that something is deeply wrong with international law and order when such is the case.

However, Dershowitz said that he does not expect Israel to suffer much damage in the US following the report. He asserted that the Americans understand that the Human Rights Council is a farce and its conclusions not taken too seriously. Dershowitz claimed that Israel can breath easily in academic circles as well, saying that students in the US can think for themselves and will not believe that Israel decided intentionally to kill Palestinian civilians.

About two months ago, Dershowitz contacted Barak in a bid to help Israel quash the Goldstone Report, continue fighting terrorist organizations, and protect IDF officers in the legal arena. The Barak’s office reported that Dershowitz provided the names of four American international lawyers to join the legal forum Barak is forming for just this purpose.

10:15AM: Meet the IAF’s most female battalion.

6:08AM: Tongue-twister of the day: Syrian soap superstars

Syrian soap superstars enter Gaza

Syrian soap opera superstars were among a delegation of actors that entered the Gaza Strip on Sunday on a solidarity visit to the besieged enclave.

Meanwhile, I feel a Separated at Birth coming on.

5:55AM: Tawfiq Al-Tirawi, Security Chief for our “peace partners” the PA, claims Israel recruits palestinians to sexually harass their sisters and mothers.

I assume that is when these palestinian men are not murdering their sisters and mothers in “honor killings.”

The George Hamilton wannabe on the left is Ahmed Saadat, Secretary-General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who allegedly organized the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi.

The smiling shrimp in the middle is Marwan Barghouti, leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and Tanzim, who was convicted of five counts of murder and sentenced to five life sentences and forty years imprisonment.

The boofhead on the right is Samir Kuntar, a Palestine Liberation Front terrorist who has been in prison for almost 30 years after murdering a 28 year-old man, his four year-old daughter, and two Israeli policemen. (You can read more about him here).

They look like they’ve been subjected to horrendous conditions, don’t they? Especially Kuntar, who’s idea of a hunger strike seems to be not eating the second steak (although when comparing Barghouti’s head size to Kuntar’s, there could be reason to believe that the former was subjected to some kind of Zionist head-shrinking^TM).

So the next time you hear of the supposed ill-treatment of palestinian prisoners, recall this picture and call bullsh*t.

Update: Did I mention that Kuntar got married, received conjugal visits from his wife, and earned a college degree all while in prison?