1 of 4. Labour party candidates Itzik Shmuli (R) and Stav Shaffir attend a mock election at a high school in Ramat Gan near Tel Aviv December 6, 2012.

TEL AVIV | Thu Jan 3, 2013 7:31am EST

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - They are young and they are driven. They got half a million Israelis out on the streets demanding social justice. Now they want their votes.

The leaders of a grassroots social protest movement that swept Israel in 2011 have shot to the top of a rejuvenated Labour party that polls say will at least double its power in a January 22 general election that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing Likud is forecast to win.

"The next stage is to continue what started in the streets, to bring that to the ballot ... so that we can translate it into achievements in budgets, laws and a change of policy," said 32-year-old Itzik Shmuli, who as head of the student union was one of the most prominent leaders of the protest movement.

It began with a handful of youngsters who pitched tents along Tel Aviv's luxurious Rothschild Avenue to protest against high housing costs. Eventually, hundreds of thousands of Israelis demonstrated weekly across the country.

Inspired also by the Arab Spring that swept the region, the protesters, chanting "the people demand social justice", dominated headlines in Israel in the summer of 2011, and posed a new challenge to the government.

Political parties soon saw potential vote magnets in the movement's leaders, who were often portrayed in the media as idealists with just the right mix of innocence and savvy to promote a message of hope and change.

Shmuli quit the student union this year to win the number 11 spot on Labour's list of parliamentary candidates, running a distant second to Likud in the upcoming election.

"The answer the government gave was a thin, cosmetic and cynical one. They did not want to truly deal with the problems raised by the protest," Shmuli said.

Israel has a relatively low unemployment rate of 6.7 percent and a growing economy, but business cartels and wage disparities have kept many from feeling the benefit.

In parliament, Shmuli and his allies hope to push affordable housing, reform the education, welfare and health systems and to narrow the gap between rich and poor in Israel, which the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has said is among the highest in developed countries.

In response to the protest, Netanyahu, a free market champion and fiscal conservative, vowed to revamp the economy and lower living costs. Some of the government's steps have eased the pain for the middle and lower classes.

But other measures are moving slowly or have had no major effect. With rising food and fuel prices, few feel significant change in the cost of living since the protest.

"It means that we were mistaken when, as a young generation, we thought we could avoid sitting in the places where we make the most important decisions," said Stav Shaffir, 27, another of the movement's leaders.

Shaffir is now eighth on Labour's list. Polls show that like Shmuli, she will be a member of Israel's next parliament, with her party winning about 16 to 20 of the 120 Knesset seats.

"There is something pure and beautiful about a popular protest," Shaffir told a group of students in December. "But the change it brings comes only after generations ... and we don't have that time if we want to change policy."

UNDER THE TANKS

Shaffir lives with four roommates in a Jaffa apartment. Shmuli moved to the run-down town of Lod last year to set up a student community outreach program. Both say they have no intention of changing their dwellings after becoming lawmakers.

At the protest's peak, Shmuli addressed about half a million people at one of the biggest rallies ever held in Israel. He spoke to the cheering crowd about "The New Israelis", who will fight for a better future and social equality.

But that was in September 2011. The question now is whether the "New Israelis" who cheered for Shmuli will turn up to vote for him.

The summer of 2011 marked one of the only times that social-economic issues consistently topped the agenda in a country whose population of 7.8 million is usually preoccupied with matters of war and peace.

Yariv Ben-Eliezer, a media expert at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, a college near Tel Aviv, says those issues have once more taken a back seat.

In November, Israel carried out an eight-day offensive in Gaza with the declared aim of ending Palestinian rocket fire into its territory. The same month the Palestinians relaunched their statehood bid at the United Nations and won great support.

"Before the (Gaza) operation, Labour was rising in the polls and Likud was sliding. There was a feeling that the social protest should be moved into politics. But the main issue has gone back to being defense," Ben-Eliezer said.

Shmuli disagrees. Called up to the Gaza border for reserve duty during the offensive, he took shelter with fellow soldiers under their tank when rockets from Gaza hailed down.

"While all these missiles were flying over us, we had to find a way to pass those 10 minutes under the tank - and what did we talk about? About housing and about the high living costs."

Many of the protesters came from the middle class, which bears a heavy tax burden and sustains the conscript military.

"We will always be there for our country - whenever it needs us, but the big question is, when we are out of our uniforms, will the state be there for us?" Shmuli said.

Tamar Hermann at The Israel Democracy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank, said a Netanyahu election win would not spell defeat for the social protest movement.

"Now we see the social-economic issues taking a much more significant role in the discussion over the future of the country," Hermann said. "All the parties feel obliged to relate to the issues that were raised by the protest movement."

MAKING POLITICS SEXY

Israel's election had been set for late 2013 but the government failed to agree on a state budget, which it said would require harsh austerity steps.

Netanyahu called an early vote in what commentators said was an attempt by the prime minister and partners in his governing coalition to avoid the risk of going to the polls after imposing unpopular cuts.

Labour has focused its campaign almost entirely on social and economic issues, and its projected gains in parliament are largely attributed to the protest movement.

If Netanyahu, against the odds, chooses to include Labour in his next government, some of the movement's demands will undoubtedly be part of that deal, said Yossi Yonah, a Labour candidate who has advised social protest leaders.

Labour chief Shelly Yachimovich, an advocate of a welfare state, has not ruled out serving in a Netanyahu administration. But the option seems remote given their opposing economic views.

Looking ahead to likely budget cuts after the election, Yonah predicted such steps could revive and bolster the protest movement, if it combines civil action on the streets with a combative parliamentary opposition to Netanyahu.

"The protest's impact cannot be judged after only one year," Yonah said. "Eventually something must give."

Both Shaffir and Shmuli hope to draw young people who are disillusioned with politics to come vote.

"Our parents brought us up to believe that if we work hard, study and try then everything will be okay, we will succeed. But when we grew up, when we were released from the army, we looked around and this society we were told about was gone," Shaffir said.

Instead, she said, they found corrupt politicians who were not looking out for young people's interests.

The tents that Shaffir helped pitch are long gone and life has returned to normal on Rothschild Avenue, which is lined with banks, shops and cafes.

"We need to make politics sexy again," Shaffir said, sitting on a bench on the trendy avenue filled with people walking their dogs and riding bicycles.

(Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Jeffrey Heller and Janet McBride)

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Residents run along a street after an air strike by a fighter jet loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo's al-Marja district December 31, 2012.

AZAZ, Syria | Thu Jan 3, 2013 8:50am EST

AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - Rebels battled on Thursday to seize an air base in northern Syria, part of a campaign to fight back against the air power that has given President Bashar al-Assad's forces free rein to bomb rebel-held towns.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in the 21-month-old uprising and civil war, the United Nations said this week, sharply raising the death toll estimate in a conflict that shows no sign of ending.

After dramatic advances over the second half of 2012, the rebels now hold wide swathes of territory in the north and east, but are limited in exerting control because they cannot protect towns and villages from Assad's helicopters and jets.

Hundreds of fighters from rebel groups were attempting to storm the Taftanaz air base, near the northern highway that links Syria's two main cities, Aleppo and the capital Damascus.

Rebels have been besieging air bases across the north in recent weeks, in the hope this will reduce the government's power to carry out air strikes and resupply loyalist-held areas.

A rebel fighter speaking from near the Taftanaz base overnight said the base's main sections were still in loyalist hands but insurgents had managed to infiltrate and destroy a helicopter and a fighter jet on the ground.

The northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the base.

The government's SANA news agency said the base had not fallen and that the military had "strongly confronted an attempt by the terrorists to attack the airport from several axes, inflicting heavy losses among them and destroying their weapons and munitions".

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the opposition-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict from Britain, said as many as 800 fighters were involved in the assault, including Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra, a powerful group that Washington considers terrorists.

Taftanaz is mainly a helicopter base, used for missions to resupply army positions in the north, many of which are cut off by road because of rebel gains, as well as for dropping crude "barrel bombs" of explosives on rebel-controlled areas.

"WHAT IS THE FAULT OF THE CHILDREN?"

Near Minakh, another northern air base that rebels have surrounded, government forces have retaliated by regularly shelling and bombing nearby towns.

In the town of Azaz, where the bombardment has become a near nightly occurrence, shells hit a family house overnight. Zeinab Hammadi said her two wounded daughters, aged 10 and 12, had been rushed across the border to Turkey, one with her brain exposed.

"We were sleeping and it just landed on us in the blink of an eye," she said, weeping as she surveyed the damage.

Family members tried to salvage possessions from the wreckage, men lifting out furniture and children carrying out their belongings in tubs.

"He (Assad) wants revenge against the people," said Abu Hassan, 33, working at a garage near the destroyed house. "What is the fault of the children? Are they the ones fighting?"

Opposition activists said warplanes struck a residential building in another rebel-held northern town, Hayyan, killing at least eight civilians.

Video footage showed men carrying dismembered bodies of children and dozens of people searching for victims in the rubble of the destroyed building, shouting "God is greatest". The provenance of the video could not be independently confirmed.

In addition to their tenuous grip on the north, the rebels also hold a crescent of suburbs on the edge of Damascus, which have come under bombardment by government forces that control the center of the capital.

On Wednesday, according to opposition activists, dozens of people were incinerated in an inferno caused by an air strike on a petrol station in a Damascus suburb where residents were lining up for precious fuel.

The civil war in Syria has become the longest and bloodiest of the conflicts that rose out of uprisings across the Arab world in the past two years.

Assad's family has ruled for 42 years since his father seized power in a coup. The war pits rebels, mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority, against a government supported by members of Assad's Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect and some members of other minorities who fear revenge if he falls.

The West, most Sunni-ruled Arab states and Turkey have called for Assad to leave power. He is supported by Russia and Shi'ite Iran.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman and Dominic Evans in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

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Smoke is seen rising from a mountain in Kachin state in this still image taken from a video dated December 27, 2012.

YANGON | Thu Jan 3, 2013 6:38am EST

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military has used jets to attacks rebel fighters in northern Kachin state, the government said on Thursday, its first admission of an intensification of a conflict that has raised doubts about its reformist credentials.

Rebel sources have reported aerial bombings, shelling and even the use of chemical weapons since December 28 after the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) ignored an ultimatum to stop blocking an army supply route in the hilly, resource-rich state where more than 50,000 people have been displaced.

Official newspapers said that air support was used on December 30 to thwart KIA fighters who had occupied a hill and were attacking logistics units of the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar's military is known.

"The Tatmadaw troops cleared Point-771 hill and its surrounding areas where the KIA troops were attacking the Tatmadaw logistic troops," the New Light of Myanmar, a government mouthpiece, said. "The air cover was used in the attack."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced concern on Wednesday over reports of helicopters and fighter jets being used in the state bordering China. The KIA said the attacks were intended to clear the path for an assault on its headquarters in Laisa.

Ban called on Myanmar's government to "desist from any action that could endanger the lives of civilians" and reiterated demands for humanitarian aid groups to be granted access, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said in a statement.

President Thein Sein's quasi-civilian administration insists it wants a ceasefire and political dialogue. It says troops have acted only in self-defense and on Thursday denied having plans to seize the KIA's stronghold.

DOMINANT MILITARY

The escalation of fighting has raised doubts about the sincerity of the reformist ex-generals running the government and the extent of their power in a country the size of Britain and France plagued by decades of internal conflict.

Some analysts and diplomats say central government is either not fully committed to peace with the KIA or unable to assert control over the military, which still dominates politics and the economy despite formally ceding power in March 2011.

Colonel James Lum Dau, a Thai-based spokesman for the KIA's political wing, said Kachin officials on the ground had reported up to 300 people killed in air strikes.

"We are in a defensive position. Right now more people are suffering not only bombings, but shelling and spraying of chemical weapons with helicopter gunships and jets," he said. "Only god knows what to do. We are praying."

It is difficult for journalists to independently verify accounts from the two sides.

Fighting erupted in Kachin in June 2010, ending a 17-year truce, and has continued even as government negotiators have agreed ceasefires elsewhere with ethnic Shan, Chin, Mon and Karen militias after decades of fighting in border areas.

Mistrust runs deep between the military and the KIA, which was once backed by China, and multiple rounds of talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire have gone nowhere. Analysts say a history of bad blood and a battle for control of resources, including highly lucrative jade, could be stoking the unrest.

Zaw Htay, a senior official in Thein Sein's office, told Reuters no air strikes had taken place but K-8 trainer jets had provided cover fire to protect ground troops from rebel attacks. The military, he said, had no intention of seizing the KIA's headquarters.

"The president has said this and at the same time he has invited KIA leaders to come and talk with him in Naypyitaw, but they still haven't responded," Zaw Htay said.

(Additional reporting by Paul Carsten in Bangkok; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Alan Raybould)

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JERUSALEM | Thu Jan 3, 2013 8:44am EST

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli forces raided the West Bank city of Jenin on Thursday in search of a suspected Palestinian militant, touching off clashes with residents who threw rocks and petrol bombs at them, an Israeli security source said.

It was the second time this week that Israeli forces had entered the Jenin area to detain suspects.

On Tuesday, Israeli soldiers disguised as Palestinians raided the village of Tamoun, arresting a member of the Islamic Jihad group. Several dozen Palestinians were injured in ensuing clashes, medical officials said.

In the latest raid, the soldiers clashed with some 500 Palestinians, forcing them out of Jenin, the security source said. An elderly Palestinian woman was slightly injured by a dog used by Israeli forces during the operation.

The city is under the control of the Palestinian Authority, which exercises limited self-rule in the West Bank under interim peace accords with Israel.

Israel has reserved the right to carry out its own operations against militants in the West Bank.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Louise Ireland and Jeffrey Heller)

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House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) arrives to speak to the media on the ''fiscal cliff'' on Capitol Hill in Washington, December 21, 2012.

WASHINGTON | Wed Jan 2, 2013 11:13pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In the wake of bruising fights in their own ranks over the "fiscal cliff" and aid for victims of superstorm Sandy - Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives open a new Congress on Thursday more divided than ever.

While their leader, Speaker John Boehner, seems in no danger of losing his position because of the divisions, his ability to speak for his membership in the House appears greatly diminished.

That could not come at a worse time for Republicans as they prepare for their next attempt to get more spending cuts out of President Barack Obama. They will try to use the debt ceiling - and Obama's request to raise it - as leverage, as they did in 2011.

But if the final days of this Congress were indicative of things to come, Republicans will have a rough time effectively using their majority in the House against Obama, who even Republicans acknowledge is at the top of his game following the Democrat's re-election in November.

The fiscal cliff battle to avert steep tax hikes and spending cuts that were due to kick in at the start of this year proved gut-wrenching for Republicans.

Obama's demand for a tax hike on the rich challenged a core principle that has guided Republicans for decades: No new taxes. Ever.

Yet, late on New Year's night, 85 Republicans in the House did just that, voting to raise income taxes on household income of more than $450,000 a year.

Some of the Republican Party's biggest stars were among the 85 - including Boehner and Paul Ryan, the 2012 Republican vice presidential candidate, who is seen as a conservative anchor.

But 151 House Republicans stood in defiance, leaving Boehner in the unenviable position of having to rely on opposition Democrats to pass major legislation.

Earlier in the fiscal cliff fight, Boehner suffered a humiliating defeat when his "Plan B" solution - which would have limited the tax hikes to income of $1 million a year or more, got so little support he had to cancel the vote.

No sooner had the fiscal cliff battle ended than Boehner found himself in trouble with other Republicans over aid for victims of Sandy, the second costliest storm in U.S. history, which smashed New York and New Jersey coastal communities in late October.

Legislation providing disaster relief to New York, New Jersey and other East Coast states was delayed. A House Republican aide said that given Republicans' frustration with the fiscal cliff bill and its lack of significant spending cuts, "it was not a good time to immediately vote on $60 billion in new spending."

"I don't enjoy saying this. I consider myself a personal friend of John Boehner's," said Republican Representative Peter King of New York. "It pains me to say this, but the fact is that the dismissive attitude that was shown ... toward New York, New Jersey and Connecticut typifies, I believe, a strain in the Republican Party."

Earlier, King had condemned House inaction on Sandy as a "knife in the back."

Republican Representative Michael Grimm, also of New York, said of Boehner's refusal to bring the disaster bill to a vote: "There was a betrayal. There was an arrogant judgment that is going to cost I think the trust of the American people."

Ironically, Grimm first won his seat in Congress in 2010 with the help of conservative Tea Party activists who sometimes show displeasure with disaster aid spending.

By midday on Wednesday, Boehner had changed course, promising a House vote by week's end on a $9 billion down payment in storm assistance, with a second bill providing $51 billion to be voted on January 15.

TEA PARTY EFFECT

Paul Light, a New York University professor and a specialist on Congress, said the vote on the fiscal cliff bill could mark the start of a "major realignment" in the run-up to the 2014 congressional elections and the 2016 presidential race.

Republicans who voted for the legislation "are going to have to find a home. They're not going to find it with the Tea Party," Light said.

He said that Republicans who were uncomfortable with the Tea Party could begin aligning themselves more closely with a dwindling band of centrist Democrats.

Congressional Republicans, especially in the House, have been buffeted for two years by the Tea Party, which helped them win control of the House in 2010.

Boehner had to navigate Tea Party demands throughout the 2011 fight over raising U.S. borrowing authority or risking a historic government default.

In rapid succession, Tea Party-fueled battles were waged over infrastructure investments, farm subsidies, payroll tax cuts and the fiscal cliff.

At the core of the disputes was whether the government should be made smaller, forcing Boehner to balance that demand with the need to govern and keep the federal government operating in an orderly way.

For all the heartache over the past several weeks as Republicans fought with one another over whether to let taxes on the rich go up, many see better days ahead.

"By and large, people are probably happy to have it behind them. This was obviously the worst part of the fiscal debate," said one House Republican staffer, referring to the tax hikes.

The staffer added, "Republicans get to point out that we still have a $1 trillion deficit and ask Democrats what kind of spending cuts, entitlement reforms they are willing to do to fix it."

Republicans feel that will be an easier lift for them - one that they can sell to the American public as they move on to the fight over the debt ceiling.

(Editing by Fred Barbash and Peter Cooney)

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