ISRAEL: Olmert's intriguing swan song

The Jewish new year celebration Rosh Hashana, which started Monday and ends Wednesday night, is meant to be a time of self-reflection and atonement for prior sins.

Outgoing Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert seems to be taking that requirement quite seriously lately.

Olmert, who resigned about 10 days ago but remains as a caretaker until a new government forms, has been on a self-reflection and atonement kick lately.  In the process he has issued harsh critiques of Israeli political psychology and confessed to the wrongness of some of the policies he held dear during a 35-year political career.

In an interview published Monday in the Yediot Aharanoth newspaper, Olmert flatly stated that Israel  would have to give up the vast majority of the occupied West Bank and accept the division of Jerusalem in order to achieve peace with the Palestinians.

Calling it "a decision we have been refusing for 40 years to look at open-eyed,” Olmert all but apologized for his long-standing opposition to any division of Jerusalem. “For a large portion of these years, I was unwilling to look at the reality in all its depth.”

He went on to state that Israel should give the Golan Heights back to Syria in order to achieve peace there and spoke out harshly against any local sentiment to preemptively attack Iranian nuclear sites.

LEBANON: Bomb design repeat of previous blast

The bomb that killed five people Monday morning in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli employed the same design as an August 13 attack on a bus in the same city that killed at least 12, most of them soldiers.

That's according to a ranking security official in northern Lebanon. He spoke to the Los Angeles Times on condition of anonymity.

He said the weapon was a small explosive charge surrounded by nails and ball bearings, meant to inflict maximum casualties. The official said the explosive charge was concealed under a civilian vehicle and likely activated by remote control, just like the August blast.

“The perpetrator is one,” he said. "The same exact method and technique was used in the previous attack."

IRAN: If no sanctions and no war, then what?

Iran has managed to escape sanctions, but it didn't walk away completely unscathed from the latest United Nations General Assembly meeting.

The U.N. Security Council over the weekend passed a largely symbolic resolution against Iran for its refusal to stop producing enriched uranium, a key step in a certain type of nuclear weapons program, as well as in producing fuel for peaceful power generation.

The five-paragraph resolution reaffirmed four previous resolutions containing three sets of sanctions and urged Iran to comply with U.N. demands "without delay."

Of course Iran was flabbergasted.

Its office at the U.N. issued a news release calling the unanimous move "unfortunate" and an "unpleasant surprise" for the whole world. Iran downgraded its participation in an International Atomic Energy Agency conference set to begin today, a reminder that it could also boot U.N. arms inspectors out of the country if it's pushed too hard.

But the resolution fell far short of the harsh punitive sanctions the U.S. and Israel wanted. With veto-wielding Russia virtually ruling out the possibility of even mild sanctions, it was the best deal they could get, affirming the Bush administration's ninth-inning conversion to the type of painstaking multilateral consensus-building it decried during its first years in power.

SYRIA: Bomb blast continues to rattle region

The shock waves from the biggest terrorist attack in Syria in more than two decades continue to rattle the region.

Diplomats from all over the world, including United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon and the U.S. State Department, condemned the Saturday morning car bomb explosion, which left at least 17 people dead and 14 injured near a security and intelligence office in a crowded residential neighborhood that is also along the way to an important Shiite Muslim shrine.

London's Asharq Alawsat newspaper, a less-than-credible mouthpiece for Saudi Arabia's royal family, said the bombing took place near a building identified as the Palestinian branch of Syrian military intelligence. It cited unnamed sources as saying that one victim, and perhaps the target, was a high-ranking intelligence officer. The report was quoted by Israeli media.

But even a Syrian opposition group prone to espousing conspiracy theories discounted that possibility on Sunday, saying that the "chance that a high-ranking officer may have been killed in the blast is very slim."

EGYPT: Editor Ibrahim Issa sentenced to prison

One of Egypt’s most outspoken newspaper editors was sentenced to two months in prison today for publishing rumors in 2007 that President Hosni Mubarak was ill and near death.

Ibrahim Issa, a bespectacled editor with a sharp tongue, said he was ready to begin his jail term. It wasn’t clear when that might occur; the Journalists Syndicate has filed a petition asking that the sentence be delayed until the case has been heard by Egypt’s highest appeals court.

“The verdict opens the door of hell,” said Issa. “It deals a blow to all illusions of a free press.”

The editor of the independent Al Dustour, Issa is a colorful, puckish critic of Mubarak’s nearly 27-year regime and of the ruling National Democratic Party. His writing has chafed the business and political elite for years, and his time has often been divided between his editor’s office and Cairo’s musty courtrooms.

Issa articles in 2007 suggested that Mubarak’s health was deteriorating, that he slipped into comas and that he traveled to France for medical treatment. Issa was charged with “publishing false information and rumors” that threatened national security and spurred an investor flight of hundreds of millions of dollars from the Egyptian economy.

EGYPT: Sunni scholar Yusuf Qaradawi reignites sectarian tensions

By questioning the faith of Shiites and warning against their attempts at invading Sunni countries, prominent religious scholar Yusuf Qaradawi reignited a new sectarian war of words across the Middle East.

Earlier this month, the Egyptian-born scholar said in an interview with a local newspaper: "Shiites are Muslims, but they are heretics. The threat they pose lies in their attempts to invade the Muslim world."

His statement provoked ripostes from top Shiite clerics in Lebanon and Iran. In the meantime, the sectarian rift was furiously played out in cyberspace. On the website of the Arabic Radio of Iran, several respondents voiced their outrage.

"You should incite Muslims against American and Israeli invasions and western hegemony over the Muslim world rather than incite them blindly against fellow Muslims. I pity you and would like to give you a piece of advice: Don't be a puppet in the hands of the Americans and the Israelis. Be more attentive to the Ummah's interests," wrote a respondent who identified himself as Mahmoud M. on the forum.

A Saudi respondent who identified himself as Hussein wrote: "May God reward our respected Shiekh."

On the website of the pan-Arab, Saudi-owned Al Sharq al Awsat daily, some Arabs hailed the statement made by the Qatar-based sheik. "You did a great job, may God bless you for your smart stand. Shiite doctrines pose the most serious threat to Islam," wrote Abdullah from Qatar.

— Noha El-Hennawy in Cairo

Photo: Yusuf Qaradawi  Credit: BBC

IRAQ: Troubled bridge over (algae-clogged) waters

When the Marines and Navy Seabees erected a floating bridge over the Euphrates River near the farming community of Baghdadi in May, it was hailed as a leap forward for the U.S. and the Iraqis.

And a thumb in the eye to the insurgents who want to keep communities in Anbar province isolated from each other.

With the Walid Bridge open, commerce could flourish and Iraqi security forces could respond to problems on either side of the river. Otherwise, the closest bridge was 40 miles away.

But heavy algae in the Euphrates soon caused the new bridge's supports to sink. The bridge developed a wobble and a curve. It could still be used but not as it was planned.

So Marines from the Camp Pendleton-based Regional Combat Team 5, along with Iraqi army engineers, were back at the bridge this week, using an excavator and a backhoe to dig holes to provide additional anchors.

While the algae was the enemy of the day, thoughts of insurgents were not far away. Marines with M-16s provided security for the flak-vest-wearing Marines and Iraqis working on both sides of the river.

-- Tony Perry, San Diego

Photo: Marines at the repair job on the Walid Bridge. Credit: Lance Cpl. Paul Torres

SYRIA: Mystery assassination stalls nuclear probe

The chief of the United Nations arms control agency dropped a bomb about Syria today at the end of a big week-long meeting in Vienna.

Mohamed ElBaradei, chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency, told his board of directors that the nuclear inspectors' pointman in Syria had been assassinated, according to two sources, a diplomat and an IAEA official, attending the meeting.

ElBaradei's cryptic comment came at the end of his presentation, when he suddenly said the agency's "interlocutor" in Damascus had been killed. He didn't elaborate, But his statement implied that this killing had slowed down the IAEA's investigation into U.S. and Israeli allegations that Syria was building a plutonium factory out in its eastern hinterlands with the help of North Korean engineers.

According to the diplomat, nobody in else in the room appeared surprised by the announcement about the assassination. Speculation in Vienna was that ElBaradei must have been talking about the assassination of Brig. Gen. Mohammed Suleiman, at a beach resort in the northern port city of Tartus, in early August. 

IRAQ: Former Marine Justin Sharratt sues Rep. John Murtha over Haditha killings

A former Marine lance corporal exonerated in the investigation into the killing of 24 civilians in Haditha, Iraq, has filed a slander suit against Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) for allegedly saying that the Marines "killed innocent civilians in cold blood."

Lawyers for Justin Sharratt, 24, filed the lawsuit today in federal court in Pittsburgh. Sharratt's family lives in Murtha's district.

Murtha, a former Marine and vocal opponent of the Iraq war, made his comments at a news conference in 2006, before Sharratt and seven other Marines were charged for the November 2005 killings.

After a preliminary hearing at Camp Pendleton, charges against Sharratt were dismissed in August 2007. In an unsworn statement at the hearing, Sharratt said he opened fire on three Iraqi brothers after being confronted by a man pointing an AK-47 at him.

A suit has also been filed against Murtha by Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich. That suit is on hold while an appeals court deals with Murtha's appeal of a lower-court order that he must sit for deposition.

Of the eight Marines initially charged in the case, charges have been dismissed against seven. Wuterich's court-martial is delayed by legal wrangling over his interview on CBS' "60 Minutes." Also, prosecutors are appealing a judge's ruling that charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani should be dismissed.

ISRAEL: Professor wounded in Jerusalem bomb attack

At 1 a.m., Zeev Sternhell went out to the lock his garden gate when a pipe bomb exploded, causing him minor injuries. An unknown organization claimed responsibility and leaflets were found in the area calling for the establishment of "the Judean Kingdom" and a halachic state (based on Jewish, not secular law) in Judea and Samaria. The leaflets also offered a 1.1 million NIS reward (about $333,600) for killing a member of the left-wing organization Peace Now.

Hebrew University Professor Emeritus Sternhell, 73, was granted last year's Israel Award for political science. The judges described his work as innovative, impacting the field's approach to ideological movements, in particular radical movements. A very outspoken critic of Israel's policies involving the settlements and treatment of the Palestinians, the judges wrote that Sternhell's criticism is "said out of a deep commitment to the country and society in Israel."

Many disagree.