The truce is dead

The Palestinian Ma’an news agency reports Saturday on an interview it conducted with the head of the military wing of Islamic Jihad in Gaza, Abu Ahmad.

Abu Ahmad announces that “the temporary truce (Tah’dia) with the forces of occupation is now dead; it died the minute their first missile hit Gaza.”

This is a reference to the Israeli strike that killed the head of the Popular Resistance Committees, Zuhair al-Qaissi in Gaza City on Friday. Abu Ahmad elaborates: “It is futile to renew the truce after the missile attack which led to the death of the head of the PRC and the persistent continuation of the policy of targeted assassinations on members of the Islamic Jihad in Gaza.”

When pressed by the interviewer about the possibility of renewing communications with Israel to try and reinstate the truce, Abu Ahmad remained resistant: “It is too early to discuss renewed talks of Tah’dia given the recent aggression.”

More talk in and on Syria

The pan-Arab London-based publication Al-Hayat today highlights the recent Arab and international efforts to achieve a resolution to the Syrian conflict. It starts in Syria, where it reports that “former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan arrived in Damascus in an effort to negotiate between the government and the opposition.” The Syrian people, however, evidently have their doubts about Annan’s potential efficacy, it indicates, quoting the deputy head of the Syrian People’s Council: “Annan’s call for a diplomatic solution is very disappointing and it doesn’t give the Syrian people much to hope for.”

The Arab League, for its part, held another meeting Friday to discuss potential courses of action. A notable guest in those deliberations was the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who has recently become a key player in the Syrian conflict after the Russian veto in the Security Council on concerted UN action. The Arab League’s spokesman tells Al-Hayat: “We were very heartened that Lavrov had decided to join in on the League’s deliberations as we believe that this indicates a willingness to show more flexibility with regards to the Syrian matter.”

But still, for now, there’s plenty of talk, but precious little action as the daily death toll mounts.

On the Turkish front, the same paper reports, a government official in Ankara announced that Turkey has “granted asylum to four officers who defected from the Syrian military – as part of a group of 234 refugees that have made it to Turkey during the last couple of days.” This defection by the Syrian officers was lauded by the White House, which called it “a positive and courageous step which indicates that the Syrian regime is cracking from within.”

Al-Hayat notes that “Since the beginning of the conflict last March, Turkey has offered asylum to more than 12,000 Syrian refugees.”

Al-Quds cautions Israel about the futility of an attack on Iran

The East-Jerusalem publication Al-Quds conveys advice in a Saturday editorial entitled: “Israel should learn the lessons of Osirak.”

In the piece, the paper harkens back to the 1981 Israeli air strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor, and carefully delineates the differences that would render such an attack nowadays on Iran’s nuclear facilities less successful: “The attack indeed caused a major setback to Iraq’s nuclear program, but as one Iraqi scientist who worked at Iraq’s Osirak facility tells Al-Quds, the Iraqi program was both unorganized and unfocused at the time of the attack – it was still a long ways away from making any major developments in the realm of nuclear energy, and so, the attack didn’t really prevent any imminent threat.”

Iran’s nuclear program, the paper reports, “is much more advanced, but still it is unclear if it is in Iran’s best interest to develop enriched weapons-grade uranium, being that such a move will undoubtedly incur much more severe sanctions from the international community – a reality which (Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali) Khamenei would want to avoid given the considerable harm inflicted upon the Iranian economy from the present round of sanctions.”

The op-ed then moves to the physical difficulties that an Israeli strike might come across: “The Iraqi facility was a single building above ground located hundreds of miles away from Israel. The Iranian facilities, on the other hand, are spread out throughout the country, mostly underground, and are located thousands of miles from Israel – which would make a smooth attack extremely difficult.”

Pakistani Taliban threatens retaliatory actions against Pakistani officials

Al-Jazeera reports online on threats issued by the head of the Pakistani Taliban, Ihsan Allah Ihsan: “Ihsan warned the Pakistani government that if Osama bin-Laden’s three widows aren’t released from prison, his organization will deploy a series of suicide bombings against top Pakistani officials.”

The Pakistani Minister of the Interior, Rahman Malik, doesn’t address the threat directly but maintains an administrative business-as-usual tone: “Bin-Laden’s three widows will be tried under the charge that they, along with husband Osama bin-Laden, entered the country and set up residence in it illegally.”

Al-Jazeera makes a point of mentioning that retaliatory actions by the Taliban have been taking place ever since the assassination of bin-Laden last year, pointing to “attempts to bomb the American embassy as well as several attacks against Pakistani security forces.”

Smoke up

Al-Ahram, Egypt’s leading daily publication, highlights an astronomic rise in the number of smuggled cigarettes coming into Egypt. The publication quotes a study conducted by Egypt’s national health organization stating that “Smuggling into the country has risen so much in 2012 that illegal smuggled cigarettes now account for 20% of the cigarette market – up from a miniscule 0.03% in 2010.”

Its explanation: “New taxes on the domestic sale of cigarettes during the last two years, as well as a lack of economic regulation, have left the market wide open for the import of cheap merchandise.”