Today's Situation

DAMASCUS AND BE'ER SHEVA , June 07, 2007

The Israeli media was full of offers, proposal, requests and suggestions on Thursday. According to both Haaretz and The Jerusalem Post, Fateh has asked Israel to allow it to bring arms and ammunition - armored vehicles and rocket-propelled grenades - into Gaza, to help it in its continuing battle against Hamas.

According to the report, Israel has not officially responded to the request, which includes dozens of armored cars, hundreds of armor-piercing RPG rockets, thousands of hand grenades and millions of rounds of ammunition for small caliber weapons. Abbas was quoted as saying during a closed meeting on Wednesday that he is 'very frustrated by the fact that Israel is not permitting the transfer of arms and ammunition for his men.  The legal organs of the Palestinian Authority have become weaker than the militias due to the lack of equipment,' Abbas added.

The need to arm Fateh was driven home on Thursday morning, when a gun battle in the southern Gaza Strip left one Fateh member dead - the first casualty in internal fighting in the past two weeks.

The Middle East Quartet, meanwhile, has invited Israeli and Palestinian leaders to a summit meeting in Egypt at the end of the month, according to Israel Radio. The report adds that representatives of the Arab League will also attend the gathering. The Prime Minister's Office said that it had not yet received a formal invitation to the meeting.

All the papers cover comments by Olmert at Wednesday's meeting of the diplomatic-security cabinet, which convened to discuss the situation on the border with Syria. Olmert used the opportunity to send out calming messages to Damascus, and called for free and open talks, without preconditions, between Jerusalem and Damascus.

Yedioth Ahronoth leads Thursday with a report that Hizbollah, which has apparently replenished its stock of arms from the Second Lebanon War, is now equipped with a Fateh-110 missile which has enough range to hit the southern Israeli city of Be'er Sheva. The Iranian-made surface-to-surface rocket has a reported range of at least 200 kilometers.

Meanwhile, the abrupt cancellation of the planned meeting between Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert - scheduled for Thursday in Jericho - is the subject of spat between Israeli and Palestinian officials, according to stories in the Israeli media.

While the Palestinian side claimed the meeting was canceled over Israel's refusal to agree in advance to releasing tax funds held by Israel and to free Palestinian prisoners in a goodwill gesture,

Elsewhere, Maariv reports that Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz, who is head of an Israeli delegation conducting negotiations with the U.S. administration in Washington within the framework of the strategic dialogue forum between the two countries, says that, should the United Nations Security Council fail to agree on stricter sanctions against Iran in the near future, the U.S. and Europe must initiate their own move to punish Tehran for its nuclear weapon's program.

In political news, polls released by Yedioth Ahronoth and Haaretz show that support for Labor Party leadership frontrunner Ami Ayalon suffered as result of the public backing he got from Defense Minister Amir Peretz. According to Haaretz, Ayalon still leads the race against former PM Ehud Barak, while Yedioth has them tied.

Finally, Israel Radio reports on comments by an Egyptian official, who told London-based newspaper al-Hayat that Israel could have made a deal for the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit long ago, had it been willing to compromise. According to the official, Hamas lowered the number of terrorists whose release they demand from 1,000 to 400, and is only demanding the release of those who are serving life sentences.

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