News Brief: U.S. offers Israel a 90-day settlement deal

U.S. offers Israel a 90-day settlement deal
Israel is mulling over an incentive package from the United States which would involve a 90-day settlement freeze in the West Bank, in order to jump-start stalled peace negotiations with the Palestinians. In exchange, the United States promised it would not ask for another settlement freeze after the 90-day expiration, and the freeze wouldn’t include settlement construction in East Jerusalem. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told Al Jazeera that the U.S. had not informed the Palestinian Authority about the proposition. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the proposal is not yet final and that the details were still being formulated by both the Israel and American teams. “Every proposal will consider the security needs of the state of Israel, both immediate needs and threats in the coming decade,” he said. A senior Israeli intelligence official says if the Palestinian leadership falls apart without significant steps toward peace with Israel, it would be a major setback for Israel.

• Egyptian police are accused in a new torture case.
• Jerusalem council drops the debate on a contentious construction plan.
• Saudi Arabia blocks Facebook over moral concerns.
• A Baghdad blast kills an Iraqi policeman and wounds seven others.
• Nearly 3 million Muslims start their hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.
• A Jordanian bookstore devotes itself to forbidden titles.
• Iran to hold air defense war games.

Daily Snapshot

Muslim pilgrims arrive to pray at Mount Arafat, southeast of the Saudi holy city of Mecca, on November 15, 2010. Pilgrims flooded into the Arafat plain from Mecca and Mina before dawn for a key ritual around the site where prophet Mohammed gave his farewell sermon on this day in the Islamic calendar 1,378 years ago. Pilgrims spend the day at Arafat in reflection and reading the Koran or Muslim holy book (MUSTAFA OZER/AFP/Getty Images).

Arguments & Analysis
Sunni Arabs return to parliament but Shiite-Kurdish ascendancy holds’ (Juan Cole, Informed Comment)
Last week’s move to government formation in Iraq was not without immediate drama: the Allawi-led Sunni bloc walked out of parliament within a day of the agreement. As things have returned to a degree of normalcy over the weekend, however, what’s ultimately clear is that Washington has been the primary loser in all of this. Bottom line: “Talabani is relatively close to Iran, and he is president, not Allawi, as Obama had apparently wanted. The American dream of stripping al-Maliki of his control of the security forces on suspicion of being too close to Iran will be difficult to achieve, as Allawi recognized with his cynical comments on the power-sharing deal being dead. The Iraqiya is just very unlikely to be able effectively to block Iranian interests in Baghdad or to place effective constraints on al-Maliki. Talabani clearly still sees the Iraqiya as Baathism lite, and he will use his powers as president and the powerful Kurdistan Alliance to promote al-Maliki as long as the latter is seen as the lesser of two evils. That Nujayfi is now the face of the Iraqiya in parliament doesn’t actually bode well for its relations with the Kurdistan Alliance. (The Kurds would like to annex Kirkuk Province and parts of Ninevah Province, perhaps even the major city of Mosul, to their Kurdistan Regional Government, and Nujayfi asserts Arab rights over that territory).”

‘Why Iraqi Christians are running scared–in Sweden’ (Vivienne Walt, Time)
One of the largely untold stories of the Iraq war has been the large scale displacement of refugees to other countries–and not just in the region. Sweden is recognized as one such country that absorbed a high proportion of fleeing Iraqis and made quite liberal social welfare provisions for them. Yet this state of affairs is changing, with a government policy of deportation back to Iraq winning the argument in many places like Sweden. This is especially troubling for Iraqi religious minorities in these countries who, given the massacre of Christians in Iraq two weeks ago, have taken to extraordinary measures to avoid the government authorities for fear of forced repatriation.

‘Iran sanctions: all pain, no gain’ (D. Parvaz, Al-Jazeera English)
Sanctions on Iran is one of the preferred policy options in many Western circles and it has won many plaudits from those who see the policy as a success in affecting Iranian behavior. Yet as with sanctions in other countries in the past, the current Iranian policy often ends up hurting the very people whose help will be paramount if Iran is to moderate its government internally. And rather than helping to primarily check Iranian bellicosity, the policy of sanctions often encourages an ever increasing reality of mutual distrust and an unwillingness to compromise.