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| Israel-Palestine-Jordan |
| Israel considers pullout from Lebanon border village |
| 2009-05-04 |
| Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu favours an Israeli withdrawal from a village on the Lebanese border and will discuss the issue with cabinet ministers this week, a government source said on Sunday. Israel's Haaretz newspaper said the United States was pressing Netanyahu for a pullout from Ghajar, which straddles the border between Lebanon and territory Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. The United States, the newspaper said, believes Israel's withdrawal from Ghajar would be a goodwill gesture towards Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora and could bolster moderates in Lebanon before its June 7 general election. The government source said Netanyahu, who meets US President Barack Obama in Washington on May 18, would discuss the matter with cabinet ministers later in the week. Netanyahu, the source said, "viewed favourably" a pullout from Ghajar. Israel annexed Ghajar in 1981 along with the occupied Golan Heights in a move that has not won international recognition. A pullout from Ghajar could also open a broader debate about the nearby Shebaa Farms, a stretch of territory controlled by Israel that Lebanon claims as its own but which the United Nations recognises as belonging to Syria. Mark Regev, a spokesman for Netanyahu, declined to comment on the issue. Envoy: Meanwhile, Netanyahu has chosen an American professor and historian as the next ambassador to Washington, Israeli media reported on Sunday. The nomination of Michael Oren, a Columbia and Princeton-educated historian who is currently a guest lecturer at Georgetown University, is expected to be announced before Netanyahu leaves for a mid-May meeting with President Barack Obama. In a lecture at Georgetown last month, Oren said Israel must unilaterally withdraw from the occupied West Bank, an idea rejected by Netanyahu, according to a report last week in the Haaretz newspaper. "The only alternative for Israel to save itself as a Jewish state is by unilaterally withdrawing from the West Bank and evacuating most of the settlements," he was quoted as saying. Oren, 54, hold both American and Israeli passports but will have to renounce his US citizenship to assume the post, it said. |
| Posted by:Fred |