Weekend Wrap, May 20

Labor leader Ben Aharon dies; Iran denies that new law targets minorities.

By JPOST.COM STAFF
weekend wrap 88 (photo credit: )
weekend wrap 88
(photo credit: )
Peres to join Livni for meeting with Abbas Amid growing internal tension in the Palestinian territories between Hamas and Fatah, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Vice Premier Shimon Peres will meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas at an economic summit in Egypt on Sunday, while the government pushes forward with a humanitarian aid proposal to transfer needed medicine to the Palestinians, officials said Friday. Hamas man caught smuggling $1 million President Mahmoud Abbas has asked the Palestinian attorney general to investigate a senior Hamas official who was caught trying to smuggle nearly 1 million dollars into the Gaza Strip, a senior Abbas adviser said Friday. "President Abbas has sent the money and the file to the attorney general," said the Abbas adviser, legislator Saeb Erekat. "It has become a legal case that requires an investigation." Labor founding father Yitzhak Ben Aharon dies Three days before the Labor primaries, Amir Peretz, at that point still the underdog in the race, appeared before a group of Kibbutzniks at Ein Shemer. He was accompanied by a former Labor MK and veteran educator who told them breathlessly of the visit they made earlier that day at Yitzhak Ben Aharon's house in Givat Haim. "He's blind but his mind is as clear as crystal and he held Amir's hands." Iranian dress code law requires Jews to wear yellow band Iranian officials on Saturday denied a report published by the Canadian National Post on the previous day, claiming that a new dress-code law was passed in Iran this past week, which mandates the government to make sure that religious minorities - Christians, Jews and Zoroastrians - will have to adopt distinct color schemes to make them identifiable in public. Jordan to Bush: Restart peace process Jordan's King Abdullah II, in a letter to US President George Bush, appealed to the United States to restart negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. The Jordanian king expressed concern that violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories may spill into his kingdom. In another sign of tension between Hamas and the Hashemite Kingdom, King Abdullah specifically mentioned that negotiations should be conducted with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. PA intelligence commander wounded in Gaza explosion An explosion in a Palestinian intelligence headquarters elevator in Gaza on Saturday killed one person and wounded ten others, including chief intelligence officer Gen. Tareq Abu Rajeb. The circumstances of the blast were not immediately known, but suggestions of an accident and an assassination attempt were raised. Abu Rajeb was an associate of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, and has been accused in the past of collaborating with Israel.