Weekend Wrap: June 3

Haniyeh considers prisoners' plan; ADL blasts Canadian boycott; Construction of new settlement begins.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
weekend wrap 88 (photo credit: )
weekend wrap 88
(photo credit: )
Haniyeh considers prisoners' plan Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, speaking at a Gaza mosque on Friday, indicated a change in his position on the Palestinian prisoners' document. Haniyeh said that the document must be studied and refined before it could gain the approval of the Palestinians. Al-Qaida leader lashes out at Shi'ites The leader of al-Qaida in Iraq urged Sunnis to confront Shi'ites and ignore calls for reconciliation in a new audiotape posted on the Web on Friday, saying Shi'ite militias are killing and raping the Sunni Arab minority. Barakeh: Bil'in protesters didn't attack The weekly demonstration against continued construction of the security barrier in the village of Bil'in resulted on Friday in the injuries of one border policeman and several protesters. Hadash leader Mohammed Barakeh, who was present at Friday's protest, told Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter that he had a videotape on which a Border Police commander was caught instructing his forces to "break protesters' legs," Army Radio reported. IDF probes deaths of 2 Egyptian policemen An investigation was continuing Friday evening into the circumstances of a Friday morning firefight at Mount Sagi on the Egyptian border in which IDF troops shot and killed two Egyptian policemen. The men were were found wearing Egyptian officers' uniforms and in possession of two AK-47 rifles, nine cartridges and a communications device. ADL blasts Canada's anti-Israel boycott The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Thursday labeled as "deplorable and offensive" a call by the Ontario branch of Canada's largest labor unions for a full range of anti-Israel boycott activity. Man shot during anti-terrorist raid in London Police in protective black boiler suits on Saturday searched an east London house raided the previous day by anti-terrorist officers who arrested two men, shooting and wounding one of them. Police, who said Friday's raid was the response to a specific threat of attack, refused to comment on news reports that the men were plotting to use a chemical weapon. Ahmadinejad defiant on int'l package Iranian officials did not directly respond to the package agreed on a day earlier by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, which calls on Iran to suspend uranium enrichment. Details of the offer have yet to be formally presented to Teheran. But Iran's top nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, said Europe should "leave out excuse-seeking and illogical conditions and come back to negotiations and cooperation." Sharansky: Russia not anti-Semitic Anti-Semitism at the state level is not a problem in Russia, Likud MK Natan Sharansky told the Federation of the Jewish Communities of the CIS while visiting Moscow, the group's website reported Thursday. When asked to respond to the "Letter of the 500", a petition calling for Jewish organizations in Russia to be banned, which referred to Judaism as "Satanic," Sharansky said that following the letter's publication, he had met with a number of scholars and officials, and concluded that the initiative was atypical. Construction of new settlement begins At Maskiot in the Jordan Valley, bulldozers have cleared the top of a hill and work crews have laid foundations for four houses. New trees have been planted on the edges of the settlement.