Israel Turns Over $100 Million To Abbas

Israel freed $100 million in frozen tax funds and transferred the money to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, an official in Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said Friday.

The transfer, made Thursday night, gives the moderate leader a boost ahead of crucial weekend talks in Damascus with the top Hamas leader. It is the first such Israeli payment since the militant Islamic Hamas won control of the Palestinian government last March.

In another helpful development for Abbas, Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz rescinded a controversial decision to authorize a new West Bank settlement, a ministry spokesman said.

Also Friday, the 10-year-old Palestinian daughter of a Palestinian peace activist, critically wounded by Israeli security forces during a demonstration earlier in the week, died of her injuries in a Jerusalem hospital.

Abbas is to travel to Syria Saturday for talks with Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, aiming at forging a coalition government and ending a punishing international aid boycott. Talks have sputtered for months amid clashes between each side's loyalists which have killed 35 people, but the fact that the two leaders were meeting hinted that an agreement might be finally at hand, though key obstacles remained.

The financial transfer to Abbas was part of tax money Israel collects for the Palestinian Authority under partial peace accords. Israel halted payment of the revenues when Hamas won parliamentary elections and set up its Cabinet.

Israel, the U.S. and the European Union define Hamas as a terror group because of its suicide bombings that have killed hundreds of Israelis and its refusal to recognize the Jewish state.

Since Hamas came to power, its vital international aid has been cut off by foreign donors because of its refusal to renounce violence. The pressure on Hamas has continued to build, as the government for months has only paid partial salaries because of a budget crunch.

The Israeli official said the money would be transferred directly to Abbas for use in humanitarian efforts and to boost his security force. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the decision had not yet been formally announced, said Israel was satisfied by assurances that the money would not go to the Palestinian Finance Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas.

The move to free up the funds did not come with out backlash in Israel. CBS News correspondent Robert Berger reports some critics say easing the boycott will free up money for Hamas to buy weapons and fund terrorism.
Meanwhile, Peretz ordered plans for the Maskiot settlement frozen indefinitely "in order to look carefully at the implications," Defense Ministry officials said Friday, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity. The officials said Peretz had ordered the freeze "several weeks ago."

Berger says the decision came after the U.S. described the project as a violation of the internationally-backed roadmap peace plan, which bans construction of new settlements. Israel claimed that it was simply resurrecting an existing settlement that had been abandoned, but with the U.S. pushing for renewed peace talks, Israel froze the settlement plan.

Israel's announcement in December that it had approved the construction of the new settlement in the Jordan Valley region of the West Bank, to house settlers removed from the Gaza Strip in Israel's 2005 pullout, drew international condemnation. Maskiot was the first new West Bank settlement officially approved since the early 1990s, when Israel promised to halt settlement construction as part of the Oslo peace process.

In response to the December announcement, which came shortly after a long-delayed summit meeting between Olmert and Abbas, the EU said such moves were "illegal under international law and threaten to render the two-state solution physically impossible to implement."

Israel has been trying to boost Abbas in his struggle with Hamas, which rejects the existence of a Jewish state in an Islamic Middle East. However, such efforts can backfire, as Palestinians of all stripes try to distance themselves from the Israelis. A recent report that Israel had approved an arms shipment for Abbas' forces drew angry denials.

The scheduled Abbas-Mashaal meeting would be the first between the two in years. Abbas' Fatah and Hamas are bitter enemies — their efforts to form a unity government must overcome deep ideological and political divides.

Only the hardships caused by the Western aid cutoff have pushed them together, forcing them to look for formulas each party could live with — while satisfying Western demands that the Palestinian government recognize Israel, renounce violence and accept previous peace accords. So far Hamas has refused.

Friday's positive news for the Palestinians was marred by the death in Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital of 10-year-old Abir Aramin.

She was struck on the head by a stun grenade thrown by Israeli security forces during a demonstration against Israel's separation barrier in the West Bank town of Anata, near Jerusalem, on Tuesday, declared clinically dead Thursday and taken off life support early Friday morning, hospital spokeswoman Yael Bossem-Levy said.

Her father, Bassam Aramin, was among the founders of Combatants for Peace, a group of former Israeli and Palestinian fighters who work for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He could not be reached for comment Friday morning.

Israeli police spokesman Moshe Fintzy said an internal investigation into the girl's death has been opened.