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EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton is pushing for comprehensive guidelines to introduce separate labeling for products made by Jews in Judea and Samaria, Israeli-daily Haaretz reported on Tuesday. According to the report. Ashton sent a letter to European commissioners urging them to draft the guidelines by the end of 2013. The EU last week published guidelines that forbid the 28 members of the bloc from funding or dealing with Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria, eastern Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, alleging that the areas are “illegally occupied.”

JERUSALEM, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Ireland, Fiji and Nepal will send hundreds of troops to bolster the UN peacekeeping force in the Golan Heights, Israeli daily Ha'aretz reported Monday. The latest development comes weeks after Austria withdrew its 380 troops from the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force ( UNDOF), citing deterioration of security situation due to the escalation in Syria's unrest. According to the report, Ireland agreed to send a 150-strong well-trained and equipped infantry unit, which was previously part of the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali; Fiji would dispatch about 500 peacekeepers; and Nepal would redirect some 50 peacekeepers,...

In four months as secretary of state, John Kerry has certainly promised great things. Now he has to deliver. In the Middle East, he has raised hopes his solo diplomatic effort can produce a historic breakthrough ending six decades of Arab-Israeli conflict.(continued)

Are the one-man diplomatic stylings of newly-appointed Secretary of State John Kerry perhaps getting a little too grandiose, even for the White House’s liking? So reports the Associated Press, and it is certainly true that, in just the first four months of his tenure, John Kerry has made for himself a schedule that keeps him all kinds of busy traveling hither and yon. Kerry’s long-term ambitions for the top job at State were hardly ever a secret, and it sounds like he might be taking himself just a bit too seriously in some White House officials’ estimation: Since succeeding Hillary...

On a February trip to the Middle East, Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry (D-MA) told Qatari leaders that the Golan Heights should be returned to Syria, that a Palestinian capital should be established in East Jerusalem as part of the Arab-Israeli peace process, and that he was "shocked" by what he saw on a visit to Gaza. Kerry discussed the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in a visit to Qatar during separate meetings with Prime Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani and the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa, as revealed by the disclosure of diplomatic cables by the website...

TEL AVIV – Thousands of Syrians are currently training in Iran to serve as a force ready to storm Israel’s northern Golan Heights, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials. The officials said between 3,000 and 5,000 Syrian men were being trained in the event Syrian President Bashar al-Assad decides to open a front against the Golan Heights, which borders Syria. The training is being overseen by the Al Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard responsible for the country’s extraterritorial operations, the sources said.

Austria has begun withdrawing some of its 378 UN peacekeepers from the demilitarised zone on the ceasefire line with Syria and the Israel-occupied Golan Heights. Tuesday’s decision comes after opposition rebels briefly seized the Quneitra crossing late last week in an incident that injured two of the peacekeepers. The crossing lies in the demilitarised zone on the Israel-Syria armistice line and is monitored by about 1,000 UN peacekeepers, including the Austrians. Al Jazeera’s Sue Turton in the Golan Heights witnessed armoured personnel-carriers transporting the Austrians to the main UN base on the Israeli side of the ceasefire line. She said...

The Kremlin pointedly disclosed Saturday, June 8, that President Vladimir Putin had talked by phone to Binyamin Netanyahu Friday on the Syrian question. It was their third conversation in a month. In his first call on May 6, Putin administered a dressing down to Netanyahu who was visiting Shanghai on Israel's air strike against Damascus the day before. On June 14th, the prime minister flew to Sochi for an abortive attempt to dissuade the Russian president from consigning advanced S-300 missiles to the Syrian army. There was no comment from Jerusalem on this latest conversation. However, the frequent communications between...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria will withdraw its peacekeepers from the U.N. monitoring force on the Golan Heights given worsening fighting between Syrian government forces and rebels, it said on Thursday. Austrians account for about 380 of the 1,000-strong U.N. force monitoring a ceasefire between Syria and Israel, and their departure will deal a serious blow to the mission. ... It came hours after Syrian rebels seized a U.N.-manned border crossing linking Syria and Israel on Thursday. Israeli security sources later reported Syrian troops had retaken it after heavy fighting.

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad has not received advanced surface-to-air missiles despite reports to the contrary, according to Fox News, which cited two senior United States officials "privy to sensitive intelligence matters" on Thursday.... .....

The threats emanating from Syria have become downright frightening. For the past several days, Homeland Security Minister Gilad Erdan has been warning repeatedly that it is certain that Israeli population centers will be hit by Syrian ballistic missiles and that we have to be prepared for the worst case scenarios, including Scud missile launched chemical weapons attacks on Israel's metropolitan centers. Wednesday, Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel spelled out Israel's concerns from a military perspective. The chance of war breaking out at any time is extremely high. Syria has a massive arsenal that includes advanced anti-aircraft missiles, anti-ship...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Austria may pull its peacekeeping troops from the Golan Heights, evacuating the U.N. buffer zone, its defence minister warned on Tuesday, as Syria and Israel exchanged fire across a long dormant frontline now inflamed by civil war. Vienna's warning was aimed at Britain and other allies which want to help Syrian rebels by lifting an EU arms embargo - doing so, minister Gerald Klug told Reuters, would rob Austrian troops of their neutrality in a Syrian conflict that has already seen foreign peacekeepers come under fire and some even held hostage. He stopped short of saying an...

... Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, said the Israeli army vehicle had been patrolling on the Israeli side of a border fence when it came under repeated fire. "They fire on it once. They fire on it twice. They fire on it a third time, from a clear Syrian position," he said in a speech. "One time, okay. Two times, okay. Three times, too many. The position was destroyed."

A New Zealand Defence Force peacekeeper has been released after a five-hour abduction in a contentious Israeli border area. The army officer, one of eight New Zealanders serving as a United Nations military observer, was abducted from an observation post on the Golan Heights, on the border between Israel and Syria.

MANILA — The Philippines said Friday it may quickly withdraw from a United Nations peacekeeping force in the Golan Heights because of security concerns, following the abduction of four Filipino troops. Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario said he had made a recommendation to President Benigno Aquino to pull out the more than 300 troops from the area. "As soon as he says go, we will undertake to do that as soon as possible," del Rosario told reporters. Syrian rebels seized the four Filipino peacekeepers at an observation post in the Golan Heights on Tuesday, two months after 21 Filipino...

Pathetic. Last year Barack Obama repeatedly warned that chemical weapons use by the Syrian regime against its own people would be a “game changer.” But since evidence was found that the Assad regime used chemical weapons so far Obama has not acted. Today he blamed Bush for his inaction. “We have evidence that there has been the use of chemical weapons inside Syria. But, I don’t make decisions based on ‘perceived.’ And, I can’t organize coalitions around ‘perceived.’ We tried that in the past, by the way, and it didn’t work out well.” It’s Bush’s fault.

Wounded Syrians are being treated by a large field hospital in the northern Golan Heights. (Israel)—Israel has reportedly established a large field hospital in the northern Golan Heights to treat Syrian's wounded in their country's ongoing civil war. Israeli field hospital In recent weeks, 11 Syrians have crossed into Israel after being wounded in fierce gun battles between rebels and those forces still loyal to dictator Bashar Assad. (Photo: Israel Today) Until now, the wounded have all been taken to Ziv Hospital in the northern town of Safed. Eight have been successfully treated and returned to Syria, while three remain...

Syrian rebel forces have seized a 25-kilometer (15 mile) buffer zone stretching from the Jordanian border to the Golan Heights. According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog agency, “Fighters loyal to Al Nusra Front, Al Yarmuk Brigade, Al Mutaz Billah Brigade and others took control of Al Rai military checkpoint” east of Sahem al-Golan, in the Dara'a province. snip The rebel forces referred to in the statement are part of the radical jihadist group known as the Islamic Front for the Liberation of Syria, which despises what it considers the rival Western-backed Syrian National Council, the larger...

The map of the Middle East displayed in an Obama administration video released days before President Barack Obama’s visit to Israel shows the Jewish state dispossessed of substantial parts of its current territory, including its capital. The map of Israel, displayed repeatedly during the video, shows the Golan Heights, Jerusalem, northern Israel, and areas surrounding what is currently the West Bank as non-Israeli territory. The Golan Heights is shown as part of Syria; Jerusalem is shown as part of the West Bank; and northern Israel is shown as part of Lebanon. The itinerary on the White House website also implies...

Israel paid Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend of Sadat. Israel paid Syrian President Bashar Assad’s grand-uncle $100 million for the Golan Heights before the Six-Day War in 1967, says a former close friend to assassinated Egyptian president Anwar Sadat. Dr. Mahmoud Jame’ said Sadat was briefed on the deal, according to the Jordanian-based Albawaba website. Jame’, a member of the first Consultative Council in Egypt, said, “One morning Sadat took me with him in private and without a guard to the (Syrian part of the) Golan...