DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Palestinians Attack International Mission in Hebron (AP/Ha'aretz)
    About 300 Palestinians, some throwing stones and bottles, attacked an international observer mission in the West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday, smashing windows and trying set one of its buildings afire to protest Danish cartoons seen as insulting Islam.
    Sixty members of the mission were inside at the time, said Gunhild Forselv, a spokeswoman for the Temporary International Presence in Hebron (TIPH).
    Eleven Danish members of TIPH left more than a week ago.
    The protesters initially chased away outnumbered Palestinian police stationed outside, who were then reinforced.
    TIPH, made up of unarmed observers from Scandinavian and other European countries, was established in 1994 to help reduce friction between the city's Jewish and Palestinian residents.

New Wave of Terror at Israel's Door - Yaakov Katz (Jerusalem Post)
    Israel is on the verge of a new round of Palestinian violence, security officials told the Jerusalem Post Tuesday.
    This week the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) recorded 55 terror alerts, compared with less than 50 last week.
    "We don't expect them [Hamas] to suddenly turn peaceful," one official said.
    "They say things as they are, they don't lie to you, and if they hate you they tell it to your face as opposed to other Palestinian leaders who hate you in private and pretend to love you in public."

Israel Has Little Say at Gaza-Egypt Border Crossing - Amos Harel (Ha'aretz)
    The deal Israel reached with the PA and Egypt on operating the Rafah border terminal does not allow Israel to prevent the entrance of terrorists from Egypt into Gaza.
    Senior security officials confirmed that Israel has virtually no say in who crosses the border.
    In practice, this means terrorists can pass through unhindered.
    Indeed, not a single Palestinian has been stopped at the border since the Rafah agreement was reached in mid-November.
    See also EU Welcomes 100,000th Crossing at Rafah (Kuwait News Agency)

Castro Invites Ahmadinejad to Cuba (Gulf Daily News-Bahrain)
    Iranian President Ahmadinejad has accepted an invitation to visit Cuba from President Fidel Castro, in gratitude for Cuba's support of Iran's nuclear program, and will attend the September 11-16 Non-Aligned Summit in Havana.
    On Saturday, Cuba, Venezuela, and Syria voted against a resolution of the International Atomic Energy Agency to refer Iran to the UN Security Council.

Russia Seeks Gas Route from Turkey to Israel (AP/Moscow Times)
    A pipeline carrying Russian natural gas to Turkey will be extended to Israel and Lebanon, Turkish energy minister Hilmi Guler said Friday.
    The underwater Blue Stream pipeline has been running for more than two years, stretching from southern Russia under the Black Sea to the Turkish port city of Samsun.

News Resources - Israel and the Mideast:

Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis (Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):

Observations:

A Caricature of Respect - Sara Bjerg Moller (Los Angeles Times)

• After the publication of 12 cartoons, all of Europe is on high alert. The questions raised by the caricatures have been asked with increasing frequency in European capitals recently: How much does a society have to change to welcome immigrants from different cultures and religions, and how much must newcomers have to change in order to become members of that society?
• How, the newspaper's editor wanted to know, was Islam affecting traditional Danish values such as freedom of expression and tolerance? In the eyes of many Europeans, the problem is the immigrants' refusal to assimilate or compromise with Western culture and values.
• Europe's strategic interest in retaining access to Middle East oil demands that governments soothe Islamic ire. But European politicians' interests lie in insisting that Muslim immigrants assimilate and in standing tough against censorship by standing up to Muslim mobs.
• At issue is whether two cultures can coexist if Muslims refuse to accept one of the basic tenets of liberalism: the right of others to express their views, however offensive, without the threat of violent reprisal. The Muslims who torched embassies, and the governments that did not condemn them, have shown themselves incapable of understanding what pluralistic societies are all about.
• It's not the decision by Jyllands-Posten and other European newspapers to publish the cartoons that is appalling, it's the response from the Muslim world. If the Muslim outrage is really about demanding respect for others' beliefs (a valid argument), Arabs should be insisting that their own media stop the almost-daily depictions of Jews and Christians as bloodthirsty cannibals and murderers of children.
• The real issue is not that some of the cartoons portrayed Islam unflatteringly but that the prophet's image was drawn at all. While Muslims are prohibited from depicting Muhammad, and doing so is considered blasphemy, this prohibition should not apply to non-Muslims. Demanding that non-Muslims abide by such a religious edict is tantamount to ordering them to follow an Islamic halal diet or cover their women's hair. In a world with more than a dozen major religions, no faith can prescribe such behaviors to others.

  The writer, a native of Denmark, is a graduate student in security studies at Georgetown University.