President Barack Obama urged Israel on Thursday to open its borders with Gaza.

The plea came in a speech that signalled the new US administration’s shift from Bush-era policy on the Middle East and the world as a whole. In a high-profile address on his second day in office, just hours after he signed an executive order to close the centre at Guantánamo Bay, Mr Obama proclaimed that the US would “actively and aggressively seek a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians” in the wake of this month’s Gaza war.

“The outline for a durable ceasefire is clear: Hamas must end its rocket fire: Israel will complete the withdrawal of its forces from Gaza: the US and our partners will support a credible anti-smuggling and interdiction regime, so that Hamas cannot re-arm,” the US president said.

“As part of a lasting ceasefire, Gaza’s border crossings should be open to allow the flow of aid and commerce, with an appropriate monitoring regime, with the international and Palestinian Authority participating.”

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From Reuters

A video released by an Israeli human rights group has sparked a military investigation into the abuse of a Palestinian protester by an Israeli soldier.

The video released by B’Tselem this weekend shows a soldier firing a rubber-coated bullet near the foot of a West Bank man whose hands were bound and whose eyes were blindfolded. The man, Ashraf Abu Rahmeh, said Monday he was lightly hurt by the riot control weapon and treated at the scene. Abu Rahmeh said he was arrested at a demonstration after troops imposed a curfew on the town of Naalin in an attempt to quell protests against the West Bank separation barrier Israel is building nearby. Soldiers took him to an army jeep and seized his ID card. Then, he said, “They shot me in the foot, in the toe.”

B’Tselem obtained the videotape from a Palestinian girl who said she filmed the incident from her home on July 7, spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli said. She demanded that the military take steps against the soldier and an officer who is seen holding Abu Rahmeh’s arm when the soldier fired. In a statement sent to the AP on Monday, the military called the incident a “stark violation” of its rules of conduct and safety, and said military police were investigating.

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Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Under federal law, a Presidential Finding, which is highly classified, must be issued when a covert intelligence operation gets under way and, at a minimum, must be made known to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and to the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees—the so-called Gang of Eight. Money for the operation can then be reprogrammed from previous appropriations, as needed, by the relevant congressional committees, which also can be briefed.

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