Palestinian Pundit

بقلم: د.إبراهيم حمّامي

"تكالبت مرتزقة عبّاس ممن يتسمون بحرس الرئاسة على اقتحام الجامعة الإسلامية وتدميرها وحرق كتبها وسرقة محتوياتها في عملية همجية بربرية غير مسبوقة في التاريخ إلا عند سقوط بغداد بأيدي المغول الذين دمروا وحرقوا وهدموا، تماماً كما يفعل مغول القرن الواحد والعشرين اليوم في غزة.

همجيتهم وحقدهم لم يكن لها حد، حتى أنهم أعادوا الكرة أكثر من مرة لاستكمال ما قد يكون فاتهم من تدمير وعربدة، لكن لماذا الجامعة الإسلامية في غزة تحديداً؟ ولماذا أصدر عبّاس أوامره لمرتزقته بتدميرها ليتباكى عليها من خارج فلسطين ويقول: "اتقوا الله في غزة" وهو المسؤول الوحيد عن كل ما يجري ليضيف لسجل المخازي الخاص به وصمة عار جديدة وليسجل التاريخ أن محمود رضا عباس عباس هو أول فلسطيني يأمر بتدمير صرح تعليمي فلسطيني يشهد القاصي والداني بتفوقه وإبداعه، لكن مرة أخرى لماذا؟ لماذا هذا الحقد؟

بالتأكيد ليس السبب أن دحلان الذي كان طالباً فاشلاً في الجامعة الإسلامية وتعرض للضرب المبرح على أيدي الطلبة عام 1985 لسلوكه المشين -وسبحان الله ما أشبه اليوم بالبارحة فهو ذاته صاحب ذات السلوك-، وبالتأكيد ليس السبب أن رابين سبق وأن قال: من أخطائنا في غزة أننا سمحنا بإنشاء الجامعة الإسلامية، وبالتأكيد ليس السبب تفوقها وتقدمها الذي أقر به المسؤول الأول عن الجريمة محمود رضا عباس عباس الذي امتدح ذات يوم الجامعة لتقدمها العلمي ودُهش مما رأى من تقدمها وتطورها؟ لماذا كل هذا الحقد والكره ضد هذا الصرح؟ لماذا؟

لن أتناول تاريخ الجامعة الإسلامية التي يكرهها هؤلاء بسبب كره أسيادهم في تل أبيب لها، ولن أتناول طوابير العلماء والأبناء النجباء والقادة الذين تخرجوا منها، ولن أتناول دورها في تعزيز صمود الشعب الفلسطيني ورفع مستوى الوعي والثقافة، ولن أتناول دورها العلمي المميز كأقدم جامعات القطاع والتي تحتضن اليوم 20 ألف طالب اعتدى عليهم المجرم محمود رضا عباس عباس من خلال إصدار الأوامر لمرتزقته بتدميرها، نعم هو مجرم، بل أبشع المجرمين هذا الذي يدمر ويقف ليتفرج على نتائج أفعاله دون أن يرف له جفن.

ما صرح به المصدر العباسي الدحلاني الأمني ظهر يوم 02/02/2007 يكشف بعضاً من أهداف التيار المجرم في الهجوم على الصرح العلمي، ولنقرأ سوياً تصريح الناطق باسم المرتزقة وكلاء الاحتلال حسب ما ورد:

"أعلن مصدر أمني فلسطيني ظهر اليوم "أن عناصر من حرس الرئاسة الفلسطينية تمكنوا من العثور على مصنع ومختبر لتصنيع صواريخ القسام والقذائف والعبوات الناسفة داخل أنفاق تحت مباني الجامعة الإسلامية بمدينة غزة".

وأكد المصدر "أن العثور على المصنع الذي يعود لكتائب القسام التابعة لحماس كان في أنفاق أسفل مباني الجامعة حيث تم العثور على عدد كبير من الأنفاق تحت مبني المختبرات والإدارة ومبني طبيبة داخل الجامعة".

وأكد المصدر أن الأجهزة الأمنية تحكم سيطرتها بشكل كامل على مباني الجامعة بالإضافة إلى السيطرة بشكل جيد على مبنى وزارة الداخلية القريبة من الجامعة مؤكدا أن عناصر الأمن الفلسطيني مازالت تقوم بعمليات تفتيش لأنحاء الجامعة والمنطقة المحيطة بها للبحث عن أنفاق أخرى ومصانع للأسلحة".

ترى هل كان هم عبّاس وهو يصدر أوامره باقتحام الجامعة الاسلامية هو الأسلحة والأنفاق؟ وهل باتت هذه في عرف أشباه الرجال جريمة تستوجب التباهي باكتشافها وتدميرها؟ ربما كانت كذلك تطبيقاً لخارطة الطريق التي يتخذها عباس ودحلان قرآناً منزلاً لا حياد عنه، فالخارطة في مرحلتها الأولى تتحدث عن تدمير البنى التحتية للإرهاب! ربما كانت الأنفاق هي ما تحت التحتية في نظر أشباه الرجال، لكن مع ذلك كان هناك هدف آخر لهذه الحملة البربرية العباسية الاجرامية.

لا يوجد ما يبرر هذه الهجمة إلا ما تسرب من أنباء أنه وصل لعبّاس وطغمته الفاشية أن جلعاد شاليط محتجز في الجامعة الاسلامية، ولهذا ترك دحلان الآمر العسكري الأوحد لقوات لحد في قطاع غزة كل المواقع الملتهبة التي تشهد اشتباكات، وأمر مرتزقته بالتوجه للجامعة الاسلامية، أملاً في العثور على شاليط وتسليمه دون مقابل كما وعد الشهر الماضي.

دخل المغول الهمج الجامعة الاسلامية بحثاً عن جلعاد فلما لم يجدوه فعلوا فعلتهم وجريمتهم النكراء، عادوا بخفي حنين بعد أن دمروا وأحرقوا، وخرجوا برواياتهم الطفولية عن الجنرالات الايرانيين وفتيات المتعة وهو ما نفاه عزام الأحمد رئيس كتلتهم النيابية في التشريعي، عادوا يجرون أذيال الخيبة والعار من فعلتهم، لكن عبّاس لم يكتف ودحلان لم يشبع، فكانت الأوامر بإعادة الهجوم مرة ثانية، ومرة ثالثة، لكن شاليط لم يكن هناك!!!

وبعد كل ذلك يخرج إمعتهم المسخ ليطالب حماس و"إسرائيل" بوقف اعتداءاتهم على مراكز الأمن!! أي وقاحة تلك وأي صفاقة هذه التي تنطلق من أبواقهم المأجورة التي أضحت وبجدارة أبواق المحتل بلسان عربي، أكاذيب اشاعات أباطيل هي ما يجيدون، ولا يضيرهم انكشاف كذبهم، ولا يعيبهم افتضاح أمرهم، ولا يهمهم خزيهم طالما حصلوا على بركات المحتل سيدهم وصاحب الأمر والنهي عندهم.

إحراق الجامعة الإسلامية بغزة وتدمير مبانيها ومختبراتها العلمية وتدميرمبانيها جريمة بشعة لا توازيها جريمة على الإطلاق، ويتحمل وزر هذه الجريمة النكراء الاحتلال الذي أعد خطة منذ نحو سنة لتدمير المؤسسات التعليمية والخيرية والخدماتية للشعب الفلسطيني بحجة تدمير البنى التحتية للإرهاب، وكذلك أذناب ووكلاء الاحتلال الذين يأتمرون بأوامره وينفذون مخططات ليعفوه من المسؤولية عن تلك الجرائم وعلى رأسهم محمود رضا عباس عباس ومحمد يوسف شاكر دحلان وباقي زمرة الفساد والإفساد.

إليك يا مغولي القرن الحادي والعشرين إليك يا محمود رضا عباس عباس، لو كان لديك ذرة كرامة واحدة، واحدة فقط لاغير، لتركت منصبك واستقلت على الفور، بعد أن دخلت التاريخ من مزبلته وأنت تدمر أكبر صرح تعليمي للشعب الفلسطيني، وبعد أن قبلت أن تكون وكيلاً للإحتلال الذي يغدق عليك عشرات الملايين من الدولارات والأسلحة والذخائر عبر المعابر التي يسيطر عليها وبإشرافه المباشر، لتشهرها في وجه شعبك الذي تشارك في تجويعه.

لكن هيهات هيهات أن تكون من صنف الرجال، وهيهات هيهات أن تهتم لمصلحة الشعب الفلسطيني، فهو شعب بنظرك حقير لا يستحق أن نتباكى على عذاباته، وهو شعب أقل من أن تعتذر له كما اعتذرت لدول العالم كبيرها وصغيرها، وهو شعب لا يستحق أن تلغي اجتماعاً مع ذابحيه كما فعلت بعد مجزرة شاطيء السودانية، وما قمت به من جريمة نكراء لا يستحق أن تعود من أجله لأرض الوطن لتتحمل مسؤوليتك المباشرة وتقدم للعدالة كمجرم مارق استغل منصبه في تدمير مقدرات الشعب بدلاً من الحفاظ عليها، هيهات هيهات يا محمود رضا عباس عباس!

لا بارك الله فيك ولا وفقك ولا سدد خطاك، وجعل جريمتك النكراء اليوم بتدمير الجامعة الإسلامية عذاباً دائماً مقيماً وخزي لك في الدنيا والآخرة، آمين يا رب العالمين.

ولا نامت أعين الجبناء. "

"A PRIZE-WINNING Iranian nuclear scientist has died in mysterious circumstances, according to Radio Farda, which is funded by the US State Department and broadcasts to Iran.
An intelligence source suggested that Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, a nuclear physicist, had been assassinated by Mossad, the Israeli security service.

Hassanpour worked at a plant in Isfahan where uranium hexafluoride gas is produced. The gas is needed to enrich uranium in another plant at Natanz which has become the focus of concerns that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons.

According to Radio Farda, Iranian reports of Hassanpour’s death emerged on January 21 after a delay of six days, giving the cause as “gas poisoning”. The Iranian reports did not say how or where Hassanpour was poisoned but his death was said to have been announced at a conference on nuclear safety.

Rheva Bhalla of Stratfor, the US intelligence company, claimed on Friday that Hassanpour had been targeted by Mossad and that there was “very strong intelligence” to suggest that he had been assassinated by the Israelis, who have repeatedly threatened to prevent Iran acquiring the bomb.

Hassanpour won Iran’s leading military research prize in 2004 and was awarded top prize at the Kharazmi international science festival in Iran last year....."

The New Iraq

A Palestinian man walks through a damaged building next to graffiti reading, "The Presidential guard walked through here" inside the Islamic University after it was attacked in Gaza, 3 February 2007.

An Excellent Article
By Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 3 February 2007

".....In the fevered minds of Bush administration ideologues, Palestine has become another front in what they conceive of as a new Cold War against "Islamofascism." They see Iran as the central target and proxy battles are being waged against a phantom enemy from Afghanistan and Pakistan, through Iraq into Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia and ever onwards wherever Arabs and Muslims are to be found. In every case, local conflicts with specific histories are being escalated and marshalled into this grand narrative .

Mahmoud Abbas and Gaza warlord Muhammad Dahlan have become the willing proxies for the Palestine franchise of this wider project, as their tactics and loyalists' statements reveal......

Yet the fact that the Presidential Guard is receiving arms via Israel is common knowledge to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and has been talked about openly in the Israeli media for months. Since October, eight truckloads of AK-47 rifles and machine guns and several million rounds of ammunition have entered Gaza from Israel through the Nahal Oz and Kerem Shalom crossings, according to a high-ranking officer of the Force-17 Fatah militia who conveyed this information to Hebron-based journalist Khaled Amayreh. Not all these guns go solely to the Presidential Guard; many are sold on to the highest bidder.

And just days ago, President Bush announced that he would transfer $86 million dollars in the near future to further boost Abbas.

In order to change the subject from the scandal of the Palestinian "presidency" receiving US arms through Israel to use against the Palestinian people, the Presidential Guard launched a counterattack against the Islamic University in Gaza shelling, burning and destroying parts of it. Abbas' officials claimed that their forces had arrested seven Iranian weapons experts working for Hamas, and labelled Hamas leaders "extremists" and "putschists." Fatah and Fatah-backed local radio even accused Hamas of burning down the Islamic University themselves in order to blacken Fatah's 'glorious image.' The allegations about Iranians were universally dismissed but they revealed the extent to which Abbas officials have adopted the Israeli and American paradigm as their own.

In several recent demonstrations, Dahlan loyalists have shouted "Shia, Shia," at Hamas supporters. This was perhaps supposed to draw attention to Iranian support for Hamas (the movement, like the rest of the Palestinian Muslim community, is Sunni) but this hateful sectarian incitement, hitherto unknown in Palestinian society, serves (for now) the wider strategic agenda of Abbas' and Dahlan's sponsors.

After Hizbullah defeated Israel last summer, the Lebanese Shia movement, backed by Iran, gained enormous prestige among the region's people, especially Palestinians, as an Arab nationalist and pan-Islamic movement, standing firm against Israeli aggression, in contrast to toothless, unpopular and corrupt governments. Hence the active promotion of Sunni fear of their Shia brethren is designed to limit the influence of Iran -- and serve up a good old-fashioned dose of divide and rule.....

Abbas is at last doing what Arafat was always urged to do, while Israel and the US watch with glee. As Ha'aretz explained, Israel felt no need to launch a large scale revenge operation against Gaza following the January 29 Eilat bombing: "When Fatah and Hamas are so good at killing each other, why should Israel intervene and spur them to close ranks against the common enemy?".....

The Quartet even "welcomed" US arming of the Presidential Guard, though in diplomatic doublespeak this was euphemized as "efforts to reform the Palestinian security sector and thus to help improve law and order for the Palestinian people."......

Israeli and American propaganda, now also adopted by the European Union, attempts to obscure the basic understanding that Palestine is the struggle of a colonized people for liberation. The policy of supporting a quisling group to fight as a proxy on behalf of empire, colonizer and occupier will only increase the bloodshed. But it will ultimately fail in Palestine as it did before in Northern Ireland, Southern Africa and Central and Southern America, and as it is failing in Iraq."

Congress Has the Power, Do They Have the Will?

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN
CounterPunch

"Aside from winning, there aren't that many ways of ending wars. Governments pay attention when the troops mutiny, when there are riots outside recruiting offices, when there's revolution on the home front, when the money runs out.

In Vietnam the troops mutinied. Units shot their officers in the back or threw grenades into their tents. Navy ratings pushed aircraft off the side of aircraft carriers. In 1971 the Pentagon counted 503,926 "incidents of desertion" over the previous five years and reckoned that more than half of US ground forces openly opposed the war. At Christmastime in 1971 Vietnam Vets Against the War seized the Statue of Liberty, draping it with a banner demanding Bring our Brothers Home.


On the home front people fought the draft or simply fled it. In 1967 Maj. Gen. William Yarborough, assistant chief of staff for Army intelligence, observed the great antiwar march from the roof of the Pentagon and concluded "the empire is coming apart at the seams." He reckoned there were too few reliable troops to fight the war in Vietnam and hold the line at home.

The elites, always prone to panic in such matters, thought revolution was around the corner. The left, in those days prone to optimism, thought the same thing. In the end, Congress cut off the money. Between 1970 and 1973, Congress enacted five restrictions on funding of U.S. military operations in Indochina......

So here we are, coming up on four years of war in Iraq. There's not going to be any significant mutiny among the troops. They are volunteers, furious though they may be at their extended tours of duty. There has been some good work against Army recruitment, but not at a level to panic anyone. The campuses are quiet. The churches? They might be protesting torture, but the vocations are dying. We need more nuns!

The respectable old antiwar "movement"-as opposed to real rabblerousers like Cindy Sheehan, Medea Benjamin and Kathy Kelly-stirs into action once in a while for pleasant outings like last Saturday's in Washington, DC. For sure there was no chieftain in Army intelligence standing on the roof looking at the those marchers and thinking the Empire was on the verge of collapse.

The people don't like the war but this doesn't mean it won't go on so long as there's money to fund it. This brings us to Congress......

It's easy for Bush to veto a one-page bill decreeing no money for any troops above, say, 140,000. On February 5, Congress also begins to consider the half-trillion-dollar FY 2008 Defense Appropriations bill. If Congress installs curbs on the war in Iraq there, Bush can only veto the entire bill.

So Congress can deny Bush the money he wants to escalate the war or even continue it, through either of the two legislative routes described above. I doubt the resistance in Iraq is counting on it. They no doubt think it's up to them to get the troops out, and that's probably a realistic assessment."

A Good Article

"ALGIERS, Algeria — First the Pentagon plugged the movie, now President Bush is reading the book. The subject is Algeria's war of independence against France, in which a Western power struggled with an insurgency and international opposition.

Some see disturbing parallels between Algeria in 1957 to Iraq in 2007. Others say they are different, but that there are lessons to be learned from the war that hastened the end of France's empire.

Bush says he is reading A Savage War of Peace, British historian Alistair Horne's celebrated 1977 account of the war. And shortly after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon was recommending its commanders see Gillo Pontecorvo's 1966 movie, The Battle of Algiers.

A key difference between the two wars, historians agree, is that the Algerians did not have Iraq's sectarian divisions. Another difference is that France treated Algeria as an integral part of its territory, with almost a million European settlers, most of whom vigorously opposed any French withdrawal.


Parallels start with the urban terror campaign launched by the FLN, Algeria's National Liberation Front. As in Iraq, local police and administrators made easier targets. "After the first month of the war the FLN realized they couldn't beat the French army so they concentrated on soft targets," said author Horne in a telephone interview. "It meant the French army, instead of going on the offensive, had to protect the police, and both of them — the army and the police — were to some extent neutralized. And I think this is exactly what's happening in Iraq."

Zohra Drif Bitat, now 70 and a member of the Algerian Senate, planted bombs for the independence movement in the capital, Algiers. But that, she insists, did not make her a terrorist. Instead, she regards herself and her former comrades as freedom fighters — and so she fails to see what U.S. officials fighting terrorism in Iraq can learn from the Algerian experience. "They want to understand how one becomes a terrorist," Drif Bitat said. "But that's the fundamental mistake they have made because we were combatants on the same level as the GIs in the American army. We were members of the National Liberation Army."

Drif Bitat joined the FLN's underground Algiers network as a 20-year-old law student in 1955. The group was led by Saadi Yacef from the Casbah, then the densely populated Arab quarter of Algiers.

On Sept. 30, 1956, Yacef sent Drif Bitat with two other women to place bombs in places frequented by Europeans. The event is depicted in Pontecorvo's movie, in which Yacef starred as himself. "They were reluctant at first, saying to us that civilians are going to die," Yacef, 79 and also a senator, recalled. He then reminded the women of an attack claimed by settlers which left more than 70 Algerians dead. "At that point they agreed to plant the bombs."

Drif Bitat's bomb did the most damage, killing three and wounding more than 50. "What was unfortunate, what troubled me at the end of it all, was to see a boy or a girl with a severed leg or arm," said Yacef. "But blood calls for blood ... I told myself that the French landed in Algeria by force and they must be pushed out by force."

As the rebellion gathered pace, France sent paratroopers into the capital on Jan. 7, 1957, and the Battle of Algiers began.

Yacef continued to direct attacks from hiding until he and Drif Bitat were finally arrested in September 1957, near the battle's end. But the French army's claim of victory was to prove premature. Gen. Charles de Gaulle, the World War II hero who became France's president in 1958, decided that his country's time in Algeria was up, and in 1962 it withdrew. But not fast enough, says Horne. "De Gaulle got out with nothing. He lost everything because he let it drag on too long and this to my mind is the big danger in Iraq," said Horne. "I just don't see how the Americans can get out now because the effect of total chaos would be devastating. On the other hand they can't stay too long."

Then, as now, the stakes were regarded as bigger than just one country. The Soviet Union was vying with the West for influence in North African states, and oil had been discovered in the Algerian Sahara in 1956. Today, the fear is that a withdrawal from Iraq will destabilize the entire Middle East.

The French security forces' use of torture caused an international outcry, echoed when the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq became public. The legacy of the Algerian war continued to poison French politics. Pontecorvo's acclaimed documentary-style movie did not appear until 1966 and was banned for years in France, in part because of its graphic torture scenes. "Certainly the use of torture helped them win the battle of Algiers but I think it cost them the war," said Horne.

Drif Bitat says that because of the brutal French tactics, "those who could have hesitated or collaborated with the French said to themselves, 'I'm returning to my own people."' "We had will and determination," she said. "You kill us but I know that my brother and sister will arrive and continue the fight. That is what is happening in Iraq."

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who recommended A Savage War of Peace to Bush, said recently on PBS' Charlie Rose Show that he did not believe "that the French experience could be applied precisely to the United States."

"But I thought there were enough similarities and enough complexities and enough tragedy for the president to gain a perspective on his own period.""

By Kurt Nimmo

".....However, in the context of the impending Iran attack, correcting the deliberate and thus tactical misrepresentations attributed to Ahmadinejad would be nothing less than an exercise in futility, as the political establishment and the corporate media continue to “broadcast this false statement to the masses,” as Norouzi explains, “on an almost daily basis.”

For instance, consider Hillary Clinton’s recent speech, delivered to the AIPAC gathered.

“Calling Iran a danger to the U.S. and one of Israel’s greatest threats, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday that ‘no option can be taken off the table’ when dealing with that nation,” reports the Washington Post. “U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal: We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. In dealing with this threat … no option can be taken off the table,” including the “option” of slaughtering Iranian innocents. In addition to repeating the nuclear bomb canard, Clinton exploited the baseless accusation of Holocaust denial. “To deny the Holocaust places Iran’s leadership in company with the most despicable bigots and historical revisionists,” the latter prosecuted and imprisoned in Europe for the crime of historical research, now considered “despicable” bigotry if it questions the Holocaust orthodoxy.

One cannot help but ask if Clinton is running for political office in the United States or Israel. But then, as Wesley Clark made the mistake of stating during an interview with Arianna Huffington in response to a United Press International column by Arnaud de Borchgrave, “New York money people” are providing “office seekers” with an infusion of cash. “The phrase ‘New York money people’ struck unpleasant chords with many pro-Israel activists. They interpreted it as referring to the Jewish community, which is known for its significant financial donations to political candidates,” writes Nathan Guttman.....

Since 1987, AIPAC—formerly the American Zionist Committee for Public Affairs—has increased its influence to such a degree that it runs the foreign policy of the United States, particularly in relation to issues concerning the Middle East. As the parade of above mentioned Democrat and Republican presidential hopefuls before the “money people” of AIPAC demonstrates, the lobby not only “has gained power to influence a presidential candidate’s choice of staff,” but indeed has the influence to decide presidential elections with the persuasive rattle of its “ATM for American politicians.”....."

"Gaza - Feeling the heat of the popular disgruntlement over the storming and burning of the Islamic University at the hands of the PA presidential guards Friday, Fatah faction retracted the story it had fabricated on Iranian presence in the University to justify the heinous attack.

PA presidential guards and Fatah faction alleged that they arrested seven Iranian officers in the attack on the University and that an eighth had committed suicide.

Azzam Al-Ahmed, the head of Fatah bloc in the Palestinian legislator alleged, “No official statement from Fatah or the office of the PA chief had mentioned the presence of the Iranians”, and described the news as mere “rumors”.

Ahmed’s statement reflects the volume of confusion amidst the mutiny trend in Fatah faction.

Meanwhile, Hamas Movement urged its cadres and the Palestinian public to defend local mosques and worshippers in Gaza Strip at all costs.

Elements of the mutiny trend stormed a number of local mosques and shelled others, killing and wounding tens of worshippers over the past few days, including the massacre of Al-Hedaya Mosque last week that disgusted the Palestinian public.

“Hamas along with Islamic and national factions in the Palestinian arena will relentlessly block those mischievous groups, and will stand up for the defense of the mosques at all costs”, a statement issued by the Movement and a copy of which was faxed to the PIC affirmed.

A number of mosques in Khan Younis district, south of Gaza Strip, were attacked by those hooligans, killing a number of pious Palestinian citizens who attempted to block them.

In a related matter, Palestinian citizen Khaled Al-Najjar, a cadre of the executive force of the PA interior ministry, was kidnapped and tortured at the hands of the PA security forces loyal to Abbas. He is reportedly detained and interrogated in one of those forces’ headquarters in Gaza.

In Nablus city, Fatah vandals calling themselves “Fatah executive force” kidnapped Palestinian citizen Fayez Al-Bishtawi, 30, Saturday noon. Bishtawi owns a computer store in the city."

Reuters

An Explosive Story

"The United States will expand assistance to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to include about 8,500 members of his national security forces and possibly 1,000 Fatah fighters based in Jordan, U.S. documents show.

Providing non-lethal equipment and training to units of Abbas's National Security Forces, and possibly the Jordan-based Badr Brigade could increase Washington's role in the power struggle between Abbas's Fatah faction and the governing Hamas movement.

U.S. assistance has largely been limited until now to around 4,000 members of Abbas's presidential guard. But documents obtained by Reuters on Saturday showed that the U.S. government's $86.4 million security assistance program could cover at least 13,500 troops loyal to Abbas.

The National Security Forces (NSF) is the largest security force under Abbas's control and is viewed by many Palestinians to be the equivalent of an army, though it is poorly trained and equipped compared to the smaller presidential guard.

Under the U.S. security program, $76.4 million will fund "projects to transform and strengthen elements of the Palestinian Authority's security structure, specifically the National Security Forces and Presidential Guard in an effort to improve public order and fight terror in the West Bank and Gaza," the documents said.


"These projects have been developed in coordination with the office of the PA president (Abbas), and the overall plan enjoys the support of the government of Israel," said the documents, marked "sensitive but unclassified."

Another $10 million would fund security improvements at the Karni commercial crossing between Israel and Gaza.

Western officials involved in the program said security service members who participate in the U.S.-funded program will undergo a vetting process to ensure they are qualified and have no ties to militant groups.

Hamas has denounced U.S. security assistance as part of a coup against its government. Hamas gunmen on Thursday attached a truck convey in Gaza that it said was meant to resupply Abbas's presidential guard, triggering a wave of fighting.

U.S. officials say they will only provide training and non-lethal equipment to forces loyal to Abbas. Guns and ammunition are being supplied by key U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt, with Israeli approval, Israeli officials say.

Under the $86.4 million U.S. program, $35.5 million will be used to provide non-lethal equipment, including riot gear and communications equipment, to about 8,500 members of Abbas's National Security Forces.

Another $15 million in U.S. funds would provide at least one NSF unit, estimated to have 668 members, with an initial six months of training to counter "civil disorder," most likely at a facility in Jordan, the documents say.

The funds will be used "in support of NSF deployment throughout the West Bank and Gaza so that the NSF may establish a visible public presence, improve public order and help improve border security," the documents said.

The United States expected other donors to provide extra training, the documents said, but gave no further details.

Palestinian officials estimate that the National Security Forces have as many as 40,000 members. Western diplomats say the number of active members is closer to 20,000.

BADR BRIGADE

The $86.4 million also includes $25.9 million to provide non-lethal equipment to Abbas's elite presidential guard, which is expected to grow to 4,700 members with U.S. help near-term. Palestinian officials say the force could eventually top 10,000.

The documents said up to $8 million of these funds may be used to provide equipment to the Badr Brigade, a Fatah-dominated force, "in the event of a deployment in Gaza." Badr would fall under the presidential guard's operational command.

The United States and Israel have backed a proposal by Abbas to let about 1,000 members of the Badr Brigade, into the Palestinian territories, though no date has been set.

Diplomats say Abbas's military build-up was meant to counter strides by Hamas in smuggling more powerful weapons into Gaza for its fast-growing "Executive Force" and armed wing.

Some analysts have warned that fighting between Hamas and Fatah could turn into a proxy war, with the United States supporting Abbas and Iran backing Hamas."

By John Pilger

"The United States is planning what will be a catastrophic attack on Iran. For the Bush cabal, the attack will be a way of "buying time" for its disaster in Iraq. In announcing what he called a "surge" of American troops in Iraq, George W. Bush identified Iran as his real target. "We will interrupt the flow of support [to the insurgency in Iraq] from Iran and Syria," he said. "And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq." "Networks" means Iran.....

As the American disaster in Iraq deepens and domestic and foreign opposition grows, "neocon" fanatics such as Vice President Cheney believe their opportunity to control Iran's oil will pass unless they act no later than the spring. For public consumption, there are potent myths. In concert with Israel and Washington's Zionist and fundamentalist Christian lobbies, the Bushites say their "strategy" is to end Iran's nuclear threat. In fact, Iran possesses not a single nuclear weapon nor has it ever threatened to build one; the CIA estimates that, even given the political will, Iran is incapable of building a nuclear weapon before 2017, at the earliest......

The "threat" from Iran is entirely manufactured, aided and abetted by familiar, compliant media language that refers to Iran's "nuclear ambitions," just as the vocabulary of Saddam's non-existent WMD arsenal became common usage. Accompanying this is a demonizing that has become standard practice......

The one piece of "solid evidence" is the threat posed by the United States. An American naval buildup in the eastern Mediterranean has begun. This is almost certainly part of what the Pentagon calls CONPLAN 8022, which is the aerial bombing of Iran. In 2004, National Security Presidential Directive 35, entitled Nuclear Weapons Deployment Authorization, was issued. It is classified, of course, but the presumption has long been that NSPD 35 authorized the stockpiling and deployment of "tactical" nuclear weapons in the Middle East.....

The well-informed Arab Times in Kuwait says Bush will attack Iran before the end of April. One of Russia's most senior military strategists, General Leonid Ivashov says the US will use nuclear munitions delivered by Cruise missiles launched in the Mediterranean. "The war in Iraq," he wrote on 24 January, "was just one element in a series of steps in the process of regional destabilization. It was only a phase in getting closer to dealing with Iran and other countries. [When the attack on Iran begins] Israel is sure to come under Iranian missile strikes. Posing as victims, the Israelis will suffer some tolerable damage and then an outraged US will destabilize Iran finally, making it look like a noble mission of retribution . . . Public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian hysteria, leaks, disinformation etcetera . . . It remains unclear whether the US Congress is going to authorize the war."......

Can this really be happening again, less than four years after the invasion of Iraq which has left some 650,000 people dead? I wrote virtually this same article early in 2003; for Iran now read Iraq then. And is it not remarkable that North Korea has not been attacked? North Korea has nuclear weapons. That is the message, loud and clear, for the Iranians......"

Please spare me the word 'terrorist'

By Robert Fisk

"So it was back to terror, terror, terror this week. The "terrorist" Hizbollah was trying to destroy the "democratically elected government" of Fouad Siniora in Lebanon. The "terrorist" Hamas government cannot rule Palestine. Iranian "terrorists" in Iraq are going to be gunned down by US troops.

My favourite line of the week came from the "security source" - just how one becomes a "security source" remains a mystery to me -- who announced: "Terrorists are always looking for new ways to strike terror... There is no end of the possibilities where terrorists can try to cause terror to the public." Well, you could have fooled me.

Lebanon is as good a place as any to find out what a load of old tosh the "terror" merchants talk. For here it is that the hydra-headed monster of Iran is supposedly stalking the streets of Beirut, staging a coup against Mr Siniora and his ministers.

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, is the man Israel spent all last summer trying - vainly, of course - to kill, his black-bearded, turbaned appearance on Hizbollah's own TV station a source of fury to both Ehud Olmert and - nowadays - to Siniora's men in government.

Now it's true that Nasrallah - an intelligent, former military commander of Hizbollah in southern Lebanon - is developing a rather odd cult of personality. His massive features tower over the Beirut airport highway, a giant hand waving at motorists in both directions. And these days, you can buy Hizbollah T-shirts and Nasrallah key chains. But somehow "terror" is not quite the word that comes to mind.

This is partly because the tens of thousands of Shia Muslims whom Hizbollah represents are staging a social revolution rather than a coup, a mass uprising of the poor who have traditionally been ignored by the great and the good of Lebanese society.


The men in their tent city downtown are a powerful symbol in Lebanon. They are smoking their hooker pipes and playing cards and sleeping rough next to the shining new city which Rafiq Hariri rebuilt from the ruins of Beirut - a city to impress foreigners but one in which the south Lebanese poor could not afford to buy a cup of coffee.

Hariri's theory - or at least this is how he explained it to me before his murder - was that if the centre of Beirut was reconstructed, the money which it generated would trickle down to the rest of Lebanon.

But it didn't trickle. The bright lights of downtown Beirut were enjoyed by the rich and purchased by the Saudis and admired by the likes of Jacques Chirac but they were not for the Shia. For them, Hizbollah provided the social services and the economic foundation of its part of Lebanon as well as the military spearhead to strike at Israel and demand the return of Shebaa Farms.

The Lebanese government may have its troops mixed in with the new UN force in the south but no one doubts that Hizbollah remain in their villages, as powerful and as influential as ever. Harirism, it seems, failed and now Hariri's old friend Siniora - who, by the way, was never elected (he was appointed to the prime minister's job although you'd never know if from watching Western television) - has returned from Paris with millions of dollars to sit once more in his little "green zone", surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers and, outside the gates of his serail, by the poor of southern Lebanon and the suburbs of Beirut.

Hizbollah's electoral partners are also interesting. General Michel Aoun - whom the Americans have not yet got round to calling a "terrorist" - is the Christian leader who allows Nasrallah to claim that the opposition is non-sectarian. Aoun's supporters were involved in pitched battles with Samir Geagea's Phalangists last week and what was striking was how poor many of Aoun's Christian supporters also appeared to be. Indeed, Aoun was himself born in the same southern slums of Beirut which is Hizbollah's power base and his constant refrain - that the government is corrupt - is beginning to take hold among the disenfranchised Christian communities in the east of Beirut.

The fact that Aoun is also a little cracked does not change this. Even when this week he produced a doctored photograph supposedly showing an armed Phalangist on the streets - the image was of a Hizbollah gunman, originally taken during last summer's war but stuck on to a photograph of crowds on a north Beirut roadway - his loyal supporters did not desert him. Nestling beside their tents in central Beirut are canvas homes containing Lebanese communists - how friendly the old hammer and sickle seems these days - and a host of lesser groups which may or may not come under Syria's patronage.

Of course, the crisis in Lebanon is also about Iran and Syria, especially Iran's determination to damage or destroy any Middle East government which has earned America's friendship. In the growing, overheated drama being played out between Washington and Tehran (and Israel, of course), Lebanon is another board game for the two sides to use. America thus lined up to defend Lebanon's democracy - though it didn't care a damn about it when Israel bombarded the country last summer - while Iran continues to support Hizbollah whose government ministers resigned last year, provoking the current crisis.

Nasrallah is said to have been personally shocked by the extent of the violence and hatred manifested in last week's miniature civil war in which both Sunni and Shia Muslims used guns against each other for the first time.

But they too emerged from the slums to do battle with their co-religionists and I rather suspect that - when this latest conflict is over - there will have to be a serious evaluation of the explosive nature of Lebanon's poverty belts, a re-examination of a country whose super-wealthy launder the money which never reaches the poor, whose French restaurants and Italian designer shops are for the princes of the Gulf, whose government - however democratically elected (and Washington still doesn't seem to understand that sectarian politics mean that Lebanon cannot have a normal democracy) - seems so out of touch with its largest religious community.

But as the story of Lebanon continues, please spare me the word "terrorist"."

By Naser Jafari

By Layla Anwar

"......Mayssaloon, my very close relative, a beautiful young woman whose name means gaiety, got married three years ago to a nice shi'a boy. They were happy until...
Mayssaloon gave birth 3 days ago at home in Al Azamiyah ( a predominantly sunni neighborhood - here we go again...)
When she told us the good news about her pregnancy, our faces dropped.
My first reaction was " How could you ?" but I bit my tongue and said nothing.
Then I realized how "nazi" it was of me to even think that way. She is newly wed and she wants a family. For her life has to go on and she had hopes ...until... until little Hassan was born.
Like many women in Iraq and in Baghdad in particular, any pregnancy has to end in a forced cesarian in a hospital (if you can call it a hospital that is - only God knows the rate of septicemia after surgeries today in Baghdad) or deal with it alone at home.
Al Azamiyah has been under very heavy shelling for the past four days, shelling from the iranian backed militias in their rabid campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Again , no water, no electricity, no food. Mayssaloon gave birth at home, she was hemorrhaging..no midwife available. Someone finally brought in a nurse. She said take her to the hospital now.
Again, her father braved the mortar deadly shells and took her to the nearest hospital.
Impossible, they said . No beds available, too many injured already...go home.
Mayssaloon and little Hassan made it home , but Hassan was too pale and hardly breathing and Mayssaloon was heavily bleeding. They also noticed a strange looking growth on his tiny body.
Grandpa took him to a doctor, who ran some blood tests, but by then it was too late...Hassan eclipsed like a frail small flame...Hassan is gone for ever...and Mayssaloon is still bleeding...
He uttered a tiny cry and went.
Mayssaloon sits in bed all day and all night in the cold and in the darkness , her silence is deafening and when she speaks , she just cries loudly, sighs and goes back to mute .
And so it goes ...for the silent voices in Iraq.

Postscript : As I was writing this, I remembered a letter received from a western friend of mine. She just go pregnant and was looking foward to feel her birth pangs , an affirmation of her feminity. She checked herself in into a very special clinic so she can give birth in a warm cosy water pool, the natural way,hence diminishing the traumas of childbirth to her and her child.
I can't but manage an ironic smile now.
Where is Condi Rice, the midwife of the New Middle East? We just had Death Birth pangs here...in a pool of warm blood."

The Islamic University In Gaza After "Liberation" By Abbas' Contras.
Mohammad Pinochet Dahlan Demanded More Liberation.

US and Other Countries Should Help Resettle Refugees

"Syria should immediately reopen its border to Iraqi Palestinian refugees fleeing deadly attacks against their community, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called on the international community, and the United States in particular, to provide financial assistance to Syria to help it host the Palestinian refugees, and to share the burden of this refugee problem by offering third-country resettlement opportunities to Palestinian refugees in Syria.

Since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government, Palestinian refugees in Iraq have increasingly become targets of violence and persecution, with abductions of scores of Palestinian men in the past week. In recent months, Shi`a militant groups have murdered dozens of Palestinian refugees and have repeatedly leafleted Palestinian neighborhoods threatening further killings unless the Palestinians leave.

The Syrian government, however, has refused to allow the Palestinians entry into the country, leaving the refugees stranded at the border. Hundreds more are expected to attempt to make the journey.

“It’s hard to understand why Syria has provided refuge to nearly a million Iraqi refugees but is shutting the door on hundreds of Palestinians also fleeing Iraq,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “The Syrian government’s mistreatment of these Palestinian refugees contrasts sharply with its declarations of solidarity with the Palestinian people.”

Under customary international law, Syria has a legal obligation not to return refugees to persecution or serious harm, and to allow asylum seekers fleeing widespread human rights abuses and generalized violence to enter the country, at least temporarily, to be screened for refugee status. Human Rights Watch urged Syria to abide by its legal duty to admit immediately the stranded Palestinians at its border.

Consistent with respect for the right to return, Israel should respect requests by the UNHCR to allow those Palestinian refugees from Iraq with origins in Gaza to return to the Gaza Strip.

Finally, Human Rights Watch called on the Iraqi government and the US-led Multi-National Forces in Iraq to take immediate steps to improve security for Palestinian refugees in Iraq and end discriminatory and abusive practices by Iraqi officials......"

***

More hypocrisy from a cynical and despicable regime.

Life and death are in the hands of the checkpoint, yet everyone is just following rules.

By Gideon Levy

"There's no question about it - everything was done by the book. The gate was locked at 7 P.M. and 16,000 people, residents of the villages of Beit Furik and Beit Dajan, were imprisoned behind it until 6 A.M. That's the procedure. A woman who wants to cross the checkpoint at night has to go on foot, to wait until a female soldier comes to do a body check, even if she is about to give birth; that, too, is procedure. And only cars with permits are allowed to enter Nablus, even if dying people are sitting inside them; that is also according to procedure. No soldier deviated from the procedure, everything was done by the book, the book of the occupation.

That is how it happened that a cancer patient was delayed for about an hour and a half at the Hawara checkpoint, until he died in a taxi that was not allowed to enter Nablus, a taxi in which he was trying to get from the hospital to his home, his final request. That is also what happened when the young woman in labor was forced to stand in the cold and the rain for about half an hour and to make her way on foot for several hundred meters while in labor. That's the procedure......"

بعد أن تم تفريغ حمولتها بالكامل
مصادر مقربة من "القسام": مئات البنادق والقذائف والعتاد حمولة الشاحنات التي ضبطت

"غزة - المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

أفادت مصادر مقربة من "كتائب الشهيد عز الدين القسام"، الذراع العسكري لحركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس" إن الشاحنات الثلاث، التي ضبطتها الكتائب، أمس الخميس (1/2)، كانت محملة بمئات قطع الرشاشات من نوع "إم 16" المطورة، التي يستخدمها الجيش الصهيوني، كما شملت مئات صناديق الذخائر، بالإضافة إلى مئات قذائف "آر بي جي" المطورة.

وقالت المصادر لـ "المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام"، إن الشاحنات التي تم تفريغها بالكامل احتوت أيضاً على عتاد عسكري، شمل سترات واقية من الرصاص وأحذية ومعدات عسكرية مختلفة.

يذكر أن الشاحنات الثلاث، التي تم ضبطها هي جزء من أحد عشر شاحنة، وصلت من إحدى الدول الخليجية كمساعدات عسكرية لتقوية قوات محمود عباس رئيس السلطة الفلسطينية، ومليشيات ما يُعرف بالتيار الانقلابي في حركة "فتح"، الذي يشار إلى محمد دحلان باعتباره أبرز قادة التيار، لمواجهة حركة حماس.

من جهة أخرى؛ أفادت مصادر مقربة من حركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس" أن كتائب القسام والقوة التنفيذية، التي سيطرت على عدد من المواقع الأمنية والمقرات التابعة لقوات عباس، ضبطت كميات كبيرة من الأسلحة والذخائر كانت معدة لمواجهة حركة حماس. "

What A Sweetheart!

U.S. loses fourth copter in Iraq in two weeks

"BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- A U.S. Apache helicopter went down in Iraq on Friday, Pentagon officials said, the fourth helicopter to crash in two weeks.

The U.S. officials could not say whether the AH-64 crashed or was brought down by insurgent fire or whether there were casualties.

An official with Iraq's Interior Ministry, however, said earlier Friday that Iraqi soldiers in Taji, about 12 miles north of Baghdad, reported a U.S. helicopter was seen going down after coming under insurgent fire.

Witnesses later told The Associated Press that the wreckage was spotted near a fuel storage complex in Mashhada, near Taji, and that U.S. troops had sealed off the area.

Nineteen Americans were killed in the three previous incidents....."

Smoke rises from a building within the Islamic University, affiliated to the Hamas movement, which was hit during factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah in Gaza City, Friday, Feb. 2, 2007.(AP)


Smoke rises from a building inside the Islamic University in Gaza February 2, 2007. REUTERS


Smoke is seen after an explosion shook the Islamic University in Gaza City. Fighting between warring Palestinian factions was raging across the Gaza Strip, torpedoing a truce aimed at bringing an end to violence that has left 21 people dead in 24 hours.(AFP)


A youth watches as black smoke billows following an explosion at the Islamic University in Gaza City.(AFP)


A Palestinian youth runs in front of a burning building at the al-Quds open university after it was attacked by gunmen in Gaza January 2, 2007. Fighting between Palestinian factions escalated across Gaza on Friday, killing at least 11 people as Fatah set the Islamic University ablaze. (REUTERS)

Situation Update
Friday, February 02, 2007

"The situation over the past few days has been very bad, we have no electricity now and I have dictated this post to my son in the UK for distribution.

The infighting has escalated and shattered the truce. Hamas ambushed a fatah convoy bringing some sort of supplies to the Presidential guard (either logistical supplies or arms?? no one can know for sure), they have also been attacking the presidential compound overnight with a variety of weapons (including mortars and rockets) This is just outside my flat and has caused me great distress (, Some of the explosives have been falling a few feet from my doorstep. Presidential forces on the other hand stormed the Islamic University in an alleged search for arms and they claim to have arrested seven Iranian "military experts".

It looks very bleak. I am worried that the western powers want to support a coup This can only take Palestine back to a peace process similar to Oslo that serves Isreal and the west more than it serves Palestinian liberation.

On a personal level, the past 24 hours have been disturbing because I have been separated from my daughter Sondos by the fighting. She was visiting her sister half a mile away and I have no way of reaching her safely. I am stuck in my flat with my sister, a friend of mine and her 10 year old niece. We were coming back from Khanyounis where we were visiting my mother for her 85th birthday.

From Gaza with love"

".....The fighting began in the afternoon when four truckloads of supplies entering from Israel's Kerem Shalom crossing were intercepted by Hamas fighters, who claimed that they had commandeered an arms shipment to the Presidential Guard, a U.S.-backed security force loyal to Abbas.....

In late December, an Israeli-approved arms shipment of 2,000 rifles, 20,000 magazines and two million rounds of ammunition from Egypt passed through the same Kerem Shalom crossing into the Gaza strip.

The resumption of violence comes as Washington announced plans to deliver a further 86.4 million dollars to back President Abbas.

Hamas officials have denounced Washington's involvement in training and financing Fatah security forces. Spokesman Ismayil Radwan said in a public speech that it was Washington's intention to "fuel a civil war in the Palestinian arena."

Mouin Rabbani, a senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, said that the United States is seeking to build Abbas's Presidential Guard into the leading Palestinian security force.

"It was developed to take on the Executive Force of Hamas," he told IPS. Rabbani said that the United States is preparing for the long haul, rather than trying to spark the clashes that Gaza is immediately experiencing.

"This is not a direct instigation by the Americans, because they are not yet convinced that Fatah are ready to take on Hamas," Rabbani said. "But they are beginning to pump significant amounts of weapons, training and funds in the hope that Fatah will prevail in the eventual conflict."

For its part, Washington has acknowledged that it is training Abbas's Presidential Guard in urban warfare tactics in the West Bank city Jericho under the guidance of Lt. General Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

In an interview in December, Dayton told the Israeli daily Yehidot Ahronot, "We are involved in building up the Presidential Guard, instructing it, assisting it to build itself up, and giving them ideas." Dayton denied the Force was being groomed to confront Hamas.

In December 2006, the U.S. Congress passed the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which explicitly denounced the elected Hamas leadership. The Act seeks to bolster the Palestinian National Authority under Fatah's partnership.....

The Islamist movement Hamas ended Fatah's 40-year rule of the Palestinian political scene when it won parliamentary elections in January 2006. A strict U.S.-led sanctions regime was imposed when Hamas formed a government in March. This is, according to the United Nations, the first sanctions regime of its kind imposed on an occupied population. The sanctions regime has worsened the situation in Gaza that was already being described as a humanitarian crisis by UN agencies such as the World Food Programme (WFP)......

"The kids used to play 'Palestinians versus Israelis'; now they play 'Fatah versus Hamas'," said the father of two young children......"

By Joel Pett

Washington has exaggerated Tehran's capabilities and intentions in Iraq. It is confused and frustrated

Jonathan Steele
Friday February 2, 2007
The Guardian

"......The real purpose of Washington's heightened talk of Iranian subversion seems to be twofold. The administration is playing the blame game. When the "who lost Iraq?" debate develops in earnest as the presidential election contest hots up, Bush's people will name its fall guys. Number one will be the Democrats, for failing to fund the war adequately and allowing the "enemy" to take comfort from the sapping of American will. Number two will be Iran for its alleged arming of militias and insurgents. Number three will be Syria for allowing suicide bombers through Damascus airport and into Iraq.

The second purpose of Washington's anti-Iranian claims, as the former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski recently suggested, is to prepare a case for a US military strike on Iran. It will be described as defensive, just as the first attacks on North Vietnam two generations ago were falsely said to be an answer to the other side's aggression.

There could be a third aim: a desire to influence the internal Iranian debate. A senior US official stated in London this week that the Iranian government was a monolith and "we try to discern differences within the Iranian regime at our peril". That may not be the majority view within the administration. Ratcheting up accusations against Iran's revolutionary guards who are close to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may be a device to make a case for moderates like the former president Hashemi Rafsanjani. He appears to favour a deal with Washington rather than confrontation.

The safest conclusion is that Washington remains confused about what Iran is doing, and frustrated by its own inability to find allies to support a response. All options are being prepared, along with their "justifications". The International Institute for Strategic Studies' annual survey rightly pointed out this week that US power is fading. It can shape an agenda but not implement it globally......"

By Pepe Escobar

".......In this sorry attempt by the Iraqi government to create a one-size-fits-all conspiracy (Saddamists, al-Qaeda and Iranian fanatics all in cahoots), the main problem is how to fit in current US anti-Iran hysteria. The Mahdawiya have never had anything to do with Iran. This is a nationalist Iraqi group: no wonder they are fiercely opposed to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is Iranian, born in Sistan-Balochistan province.

According to Abu al-Hasan, a Mahdawiya member close to Sarkhi, quoted by London-based Al-Hayat, the accusations of a planned ayatollah massacre in Najaf are nothing but lies. Hasan said what happened was that Iraqi police tried to arrest Sarkhi, his followers revolted, and that led to the massacre.

Religiously, it's important to note that the Shi'ite clerical aristocracy in Najaf - of which Sistani is the epitome - does not like being challenged, be it by the Sadrists or, worse even, by a splinter group. In parallel, Arab Shi'ites all over southern Iraq prefer to trust an Arab marja (senior spiritual leader) in Najaf, and not a Persian (Sistani)......

Both the Hawatim and Khazaali tribes are fiercely Iraqi Arab nationalist. They are fiercely against both the SCIRI and Da'wa - that is, the governments of Najaf and Baghdad, which for them are puppets of Iran. The Mahdawiya for its part was based in Zarga. They could have easily been set up as the fall guys in the massacre. Nothing could be more convenient than blaming it all on a fanatical, anti-government Shi'ite cult. But a consensus emerging among southern Iraqi tribes is that the massacre was a Baghdad-concocted operation designed to torpedo an increasingly popular, non-sectarian Sunni and Shi'ite Iraqi nationalist alliance (anti-US and anti-Iran).

The modus operandi was clear: Shi'ites supported by Iran (the current Iraqi government) screaming "al-Qaeda!" and used the Pentagon to kill Arab nationalist Shi'ites. In this scenario, everything in Iraq that is not SCIRI or Da'wa is bundled into the "terrorist" bag. This pattern is bound to be replicated before, during and after the US surge.....

What is certain is that the Maliki-Hakim alliance will continue to deploy its US-trained Iraqi army and police in further massacres, advised by the dreaded Scorpion commando squad, which is funded by US dollars, and responding to the head of Iraqi intelligence. In this sense, the Najaf massacre is also a classic case of the "Salvador option" in its Iraqified version: or how the lessons of Latin America in the 1970s and 1980s are useful for the "New Middle East".

Furthermore, the massacre also signals that the Pentagon is now linked to killing Arab Shi'ite tribes. If this is true, it is a big mistake. Sistani does not control them anymore. This means more and more revengeful, nationalist Arab Shi'ites will be amplifying another anti-US/Baghdad guerrilla front.

Take the example of the Beni Tamim, a mixed Sunni and Shi'ite tribe. Their sheikh, 70-year-old Hamid al-Suhail, was killed one month ago in Baghdad by a death squad. Revenge is inevitable. Anti-US and anti-Baghdad guerrillas in southern Iraq have been spreading like wildfire since November.

The model is to be found in modern history: the Shi'ite resistance that from the 1920s to the 1930s fought and kicked out the British. Southern Shi'ite tribal chiefs are going for a united, Sunni and Shi'ite muqawama (resistance). The Bush administration is reaping the kind of Iraqi chaos it craves: yet one more civil war - of (Arab) Shi'ites against ("Persian") Shi'ites. "

This Armored Vehicle Belonged to Abbas' "Presidential Guard." It Must Have Been Part of Condoleezza's Generous "Aid Package" to Her Sock Puppet.

We Certainly Did Not See Palestinian Armored Vehicles When The IOF Was Slaughtering Entire Palestinian Families In Beit Hanoun. But Now, These Vehicles Are Being Used Against The Palestinians Themselves. The Midwife Of Death Must Be Smiling On Abbas Now.

"......The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unqiue areas such as in Lebanon, is Israel's primary target on the Eastern front in the long run, while the dissolution of the military power of those states serves as the primary short term target. Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi'ite Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbor, and the Druzes who will set up a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern Jordan. This state of affairs will be the guarantee for peace and security in the area in the long run, and that aim is already within our reach today.14

Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other, is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel's targets. Its dissolution is even more important for us than that of Syria. Iraq is stronger than Syria. In the short run it is Iraqi power which constitutes the greatest threat to Israel. An Iraqi-Iranian war will tear Iraq apart and cause its downfall at home even before it is able to organize a struggle on a wide front against us. Every kind of inter-Arab confrontation will assist us in the short run and will shorten the way to the more important aim of breaking up Iraq into denominations as in Syria and in Lebanon. In Iraq, a division into provinces along ethnic/religious lines as in Syria during Ottoman times is possible. So, three (or more) states will exist around the three major cities: Basra, Baghdad and Mosul, and Shi'ite areas in the south will separate from the Sunni and Kurdish north. It is possible that the present Iranian-Iraqi confrontation will deepen this polarization....."

These words were written in 1982 by the Israeli Oded Yinon. Read the entire essay and judge for yourself if what is happening now is a series of "mistakes" or is just mere coincidence.

By Robert Dreyfuss

"Since President Bush’s State of the Union address last Tuesday, the White House has manufactured a crisis that pits the United States against Iran. In what looks like the military and diplomatic equivalent of a full court press, Washington has unleashed a barrage of threats, maneuvers and limited military actions that seem calculated to set the United States on a collision course with Iran in Iraq and the Persian Gulf. All in all, it is an exceedingly risky and dangerous gambit.....

That’s not to say that Iran does not have multiple, and powerful, ties to virtually all of Iraq’s Shiite political elite and to some Kurdish warlords. Iran provides cash, arms and assistance to the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, whose Badr Brigade militia operates as a death squad on behalf of the U.S.-allied government of Iraq. It has a vast presence in Iraq’s Shiite south, building ties to private militias, tribes and urban political machines. It has massive economic ties to Iraq, and, in a recent New York Times interview, Iran’s ambassador in Iraq announced that his country would open a branch of Iran’s leading bank in downtown Baghdad and “offer Iraqi government forces training, equipment and advisers for ‘the security fight.’” Iran has hosted visits from Iraq’s president, prime minister, foreign minister and other top Iraqi officials. But, it must be stressed, it is richly ironic that nearly all of Iran’s ties in Iraq are with Iraqi political forces who are America’s nominal allies – not to the armed resistance fighting the U.S. occupation.

Were this not so deadly serious, it would be farcical. One goal, apparently, of U.S. threats and bluster against Iran in Iraq is an attempt to break ties between Iran and, say, SCIRI – even though SCIRI is organically tied to Tehran and even though it was created in 1982 by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. Though SCIRI is happy to receive U.S. support as well (its turbaned leader recently visited the Oval Office), there is no question that the Shiite leaders in Iraq know that one day the United States will leave, while Iran, Iraq’s giant neighbor to the east, will always be there. Those realities seem not to have registered with Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, who told The Washington Post that even though SCIRI and Iran had close ties in the 1980s, “Now it’s a different situation, so there is a need for adaptation of what’s appropriate in terms of a relationship.” Perhaps, by invading the compound of SCIRI’s leader and seizing several officers of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard there last month, Khalilzad thought he was sending the “appropriate” message that SCIRI needs to break its ties to Iran. Not likely....."

Neo-cons, orientalists and Zionists gathered recently in Israel to confirm their fantasies about history, people and politics

By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly

"The seventh annual Herzliya Conference, held in the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Centre, featured a rarefied blend of neo-conservatives and old-guard conservatives who have preserved their "unbounded vitality and eternal youthfulness", as one might hear in the plug for one of our video clip starlets these days. How it warmed the heart to see assembled together in a single conference such illustrious figures as the eternal orientalist Bernard Lewis, the permanently startled Shimon Peres, the notorious Richard Perle and, of the same clique, former CIA director James Woolsey.

Where else in the world could you come across these sorts of people and other leeches upon this part of the world underneath one roof? It could only be in Israel, of course, which has become one of the major centres for provoking the clash of civilisations and cultures, and for glorifying "Western civilisation", in which Israel so unreservedly situates itself, in spite of the "Third Worldness" and corruption that pervade its mass culture and the mindset of its politicians. Israel has made itself a forum for economic liberalism and the politics of globalisation (to be read as Americanisation), without self-criticism inside the conference hall and without demonstrations outside. Herzliya, after all, is not Vancouver where people are mad enough to protest against this type of conference. It is located on the most extreme and most extremist fringe of Western colonialist culture; it is, according to Zionism's self- definition, the West's "spearhead against Eastern barbarianism," as that Zionist hero, Osishkin, put it in order to win the British over to the Zionist enterprise......

The crusader state, in its heyday, succeeded marvellously in turning brother ruler against brother ruler and conquering its neighbouring statelets, even without the advantages of state-of-the-art technological superiority and nuclear might. Indeed, they used very much the same instruments of war that the Arabs had and they didn't even enjoy the degree of social and scientific advancement the Arabs had attained at the time. And they certainly didn't have to convene a Herzliya conference. Their ally was the fragmented structure of the surrounding statelets and their mutual rivalries and suspicions. These are the historical circumstances that we cite metaphorically in order to warn of the consequences of failing to build a nation founded upon the concept of citizenship.

Believe it or not, this metaphor is closer to present day realities than Bernard Lewis's theories. The Arabs have made some progress since the Middle Ages -- some considerable progress: Israel can't keep them down or even preserve itself without technological superiority and other forms of superiority, unlike the crusader state which lasted for some 200 years without these advantages. But the unresolved problem of nationalism, Israel, and the failure to build a democratic civil state are definitely among the foremost factors to have stalled this progress. Meanwhile, the folks at Herzliya have their own theories to expound on the Arab condition, because they approach it from a different mindset altogether.....

Apparently, Peres hadn't attended Lewis's lecture about how little the rest of the world cares about this part of the world and Islam's next encroachment into the West -- he seemed indifferent to that danger. Rather, the impression he left was that Israel did not want peace with Syria, that it was preparing for war against Iran and that the Palestinians had better be ready to accept much less than what was offered to them at Camp David II. On the latter point, he was explicit about what the Palestinians had to accept. Israel, he said, has no intention of letting demographic reasons end its existence as a Jewish state. It would not go the way of Lebanon, which ended as the only Christian state in the region due to the demographic price it paid for its mistakes. Israel, in other words, would never accept the principle of the Palestinian right to return; as to what "mistakes" the Lebanese made, these were left unsaid.

Yes, with or without Bernard Lewis, the analogy to Mameluke petit states is very useful in order to grasp the blindness of an Arab order that supported the occupation of Iraq, that has no idea what stance to take on the current process of partitioning Iraq and on the prospect of an increase in American forces there, and that has a strong inclination towards availing itself of any mechanism, including fuelling sectarian tensions, in order to keep its people mired in backwardness.

And the analogy is particularly apt when it comes to the Arab order's stance, or lack thereof, on the attempt to impose Israeli conditions on the Palestinians by means of economic blockade, while at the same time calling for a Palestinian unity government on the conditions set by the Quartet, without making any demands on Israel, as a preliminary for reviving a negotiating process aimed at securing Israel's conditions for a settlement. This is definitely an Arab order in a muddle and looking for a way out of the awkward and embarrassing position that the resolve, perseverance and skill of the Lebanese resistance have put it in.

True, Israel's military and technological superiority is essential to its survival. However, the gap between Israel and the Arabs is not so much created by its superiority as it is by the Arabs' backwardness. At the root of this backwardness lie the petit states in which, to borrow from Ibn Khaldun, flattery and favouritism are the way to rank and power, rank and power are the route to money, and alliance with Israel and any other power is the way to forestall the rise of any alternative."

Members of the Hamas armed wing take over a presidential guard armoured vehicle [AFP]

"Gun battles have erupted in the Gaza Strip between Hamas fighters and security forces loyal to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president.

Six people were reported killed and at least 70 others wounded in the violence on Thursday afternoon that tested a three-day-old ceasefire.

Hamas said its fighters ambushed what it alleged was a convoy carrying weapons to Abbas's presidential guard in the Gaza Strip.

Residents said it was the fiercest fighting in the territory since the truce went into effect early on Tuesday.

The heavy clashes were taking place outside the main entrance of the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps in the central Gaza Strip, security sources and witnesses said.

Al Jazeera correspondent Nour Odeh said the situation was deteriorating quickly and that people had closed their shops and gone home.

She said fierce fighting had been reported from the northern Gaza Strip and that a security compound had been razed.

Accusation

Also on Thursday, Hamas said that an "Arab country" had shipped weapons to the presidential guard which is loyal to the rival Fatah faction.

Ismail Radwan, a Hamas spokesman, said: "A large cargo of weapons was transported yesterday."

He said the shipment passed into the Gaza Strip via Egypt through a crossing on the border between Egypt, Israel and the Palestinian territory.

"These weapons are intended for the presidential guard and the Fatah putschists," Radwan charged.

"Military Jeeps and shells are among these weapons which come from an Arab country, whose name we do not wish to divulge," he added.

Fatah denied having received any such shipment.

Abdelhakim Awad, a Fatah spokesman, said: "It's a slanderous accusation throwing water into the fire."

Burhan Hammad, the head of Egypt's Gaza-based security delegation, also similarly branded the allegations a "total lie" that he said intended to push bitter rivals Fatah and Hamas into an "arms race".

The two factions have been locked in a power struggle since Hamas formed a government last March after a landslide victory over Fatah at the polls."

أنباء عن وقوع 6 قتلى وعشرات الجرحى
مصدر في "حماس": الشاحنات القادمة إلى الرئاسة محملة بالسلاح من دولة خليجية

"غزة - المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

أكدت مصادر رفيعة المستوى في حركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس" أن المعركة التي جرت الخميس في غزة، ولا تزال مستمرة قرب معبر "كريم سالم"، نشبت بشأن شاحنات كانت محملة بالأسلحة في طريقها إلى حرس الرئاسة في الأراضي الفلسطينية.

ونفت هذه المصادر، التي طلبت عدم الكشف عن اسمها في تصريحات خاصة لوكالة "قدس برس"، نفياً قاطعاً أن تكون هذه الشاحنات محملة بالمواد الغذائية، مؤكدة أن "ما تحمله الشاحنات هو أسلحة متنوعة، قدمت من دولة عربية خليجية كبيرة، ومرت عبر القاهرة، قبل أن يحط رحالها في معبر كرم سالم، الواقع تحت الإشراف الصهيوني المباشر. واعترضت عناصر من حركة حماس هذه الشاحنات ونشبت معركة بينها وبين قوات الرئاسة".

وعبرت هذه المصادر المسؤولة عن استغرابها الشديد واستهجانها بأن تقوم دولة خليجية معروف عنها أنها متسامحة وليست إرهابية بدعم أمن الرئاسة وحركة فتح ضد حركة حماس، بما يذكي نيران الحرب الأهلية.

وأوضح المصدر أن هذه الكميات من الأسلحة أتت كجزء من الدعم الأمريكي الممنوح لحرس الرئاسة، نافياً أي علاقة لهذه الأسلحة بالمصريين، مشيراً إلى أن "مصر لا علاقة لها لا من قريب ولا من بعيد بهذه الكمية من الأسلحة، إلا أنها مرت عبر أراضيها".

وأكدت هذه المصادر أن عناصر القوة التنفيذية والحكومة لم ولن تسمح بمرور أسلحة إلى الداخل الفلسطيني من أجل تذكية الصراع، وقالت: "طبعاً نحن نؤكد مجدداً أننا لم ولن نسمح بمرور أسلحة إلى الداخل لتذكية الصراع، وكنا نتمنى من الأخوة في العالم العربي أن يكونوا عوناً لنا للاتفاق والتفاهم لا للاقتتال والتناحر".

وأوضحت هذه المصادر أن طبيعة هذه المعركة "لا علاقة لها بالاشتباكات التي كانت قائمة وانتهت مع توقيع اتفاق وقف إطلاق النار، وإنما هي ذات صلة بكمية الأسلحة القادمة إلى معبر كرم سالم من هذه الدولة الخليجية العربية".

وكانت الاشتباكات التي دارت قد أسفرت، بحسب بعض المصادر إلى مقتل ستة أشخاص وجرح نحو سبعين آخرين بجروح مختلفة، في حين تجري جهود حثيثة من أجل تطويق المواجهات.

بدوره؛ أكد ممثل حركة المقاومة الإسلامية حماس في لبنان، أسامة حمدان أن جهوداً سياسية كبرى تبذل الآن لتطويق الأزمة الناشبة بين حركة حماس وحرس الرئاسة.

وقال حمدان: "إن اجتماعات متواصلة تتم الآن لإنهاء هذه الأزمة، وتبذل حركة حماس بالتنسيق مع الطرف المصري جهوداً كبيرة، من أجل تهدئة الأوضاع والحفاظ على السلم الأهلي الحذر، الذي تشهده الأراضي الفلسطينية عقب التوقيع على اتفاق وقف إطلاق النار بين حركتي فتح وحماس".

ورفض حمدان الحديث عن أي تفاصيل عن فحوى المحادثات التي تجري الآن، لكنه قال إن "الخلاف الجاري حالياً ليس بين حركة فتح وحماس، بل هو بين حرس الرئاسة وحركة حماس، وجهودنا مستمرة ونأمل أن تكون النتائج إيحابية"."

Gaza truce near collapse as four killed in clashes

".....In the central Gaza refugee camp Bureij, Hamas gunmen ambushed what the Islamic group alleged was a convoy carrying weapons from Egypt into the Gaza Strip, intended for the presidential guard.

Abbas's Fatah faction said the four-truck convoy, which set off from the Kerem Shalom crossing with Israel, was carrying medical equipment and tents, and accused Hamas of plunging a 3-day-old Palestinian ceasefire into "grave danger".

The ceasefire had largely stopped a surge in internal fighting in the territory in which at least 34 Palestinians had been killed.

A battle raged between Hamas gunmen and presidential guards accompanying the convoy, according to residents in the area.

"A real war is taking place, gunmen are using the heaviest arms they have," a witness said.

Sources in the governing Hamas movement said the trucks were carrying weapons for the 4,000-man presidential guard, a force loyal to Abbas and his Fatah faction.

"Hamas's heroes have commandeered arms shipments that came through Kerem Shalom as part of the fight against the Palestinian people," a presenter on a Hamas radio station said.

Fatah spokesman Tawfiq Abu Khoussa said the convoy was carrying generators, tents and medical equipment.

"There are no weapons at all," Abu Khoussa told the Reuters news agency, adding the ambush "represented a grave danger to the continuation of the (ceasefire) agreement"

Asked about the convoy's cargo, a Palestinian security official declined to comment. A senior Israeli official said she knew trucks had entered the Gaza Strip but did not know their contents.

Palestinian gunmen opened fire at Hamas officials in two separate attacks early Thursday.

Early Thursday, unknown gunmen opened fire at Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum as he drove with three bodyguards in his white sedan toward an impromptu checkpoint near Gaza City, Hamas said. There were no casualties. A Hamas announcement blamed "coup-seekers," a reference to militants from the rival Fatah party.

"This is a violation of the [truce] agreement," Barhoum said. He reported the incident to Egyptian mediators and the gunmen removed their checkpoint, he said.

Later Thursday, gunmen in a car shot at Islam Shahwan, a spokesman for a Hamas militia, Shahwan said, blaming the shooting on Fatah-affiliated security officers. One Hamas member was wounded, he said....."

The destroyed center of Ramadi, in Anbar Province, the site Tuesday of some of the heaviest fighting between U.S. occupation forces and the Iraqi Resistance.

The question is:

Will the Palestinian dialogue in Macca (S.A.) succeed in ending inter-Palestinian strife?

With over 1,800 responding so far, here is the breakdown:

Yes......40%

No.......60%

UN Office For The Coordination Of Humanitarian Affairs

IRAQ: More Palestinians flee Baghdad

"BAGHDAD, 1 Feb 2007 (IRIN) - The number of Palestinians stranded at the Iraq-Syria border has risen to 700 as more refugees flee the escalating violence in Baghdad, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said on Wednesday.

"Another 50 Palestinians have fled to the Iraq-Syrian border following a traumatic week in Baghdad, bringing the total number stranded at the frontier to about 700," Jennifer Pagonis, UNHCR spokeswoman, said at a press briefing in Geneva......

UNHCR said a group of 356 Palestinians has been in no-man's land between Iraq and Syria since May, and is living in a makeshift camp that was erected there. The second group of more recently arriving Palestinians, which now numbers around 340, is stuck in another improvised camp, al-Waleed, on the Iraqi side of the border.

Syrian authorities continue to deny access to all Palestinians, leaving them stranded in these camps, UNHCR added.

UNHCR is concerned that Palestinians have been systematically targetted and threatened by authorities and militias. The refugee agency said they face constant threats from death squads.

"More Palestinians are leaving Baghdad on a daily basis due to ongoing violence against them and they are heading to the borders where they are suffering a lot," Dhilal al-Kasous, the Palestinian Charge d'Affaires in Baghdad, told IRIN.

"They are living in tents in very dismal conditions during this cold weather season, and have no access to potable water and medicine. Their children have left schools and they will be an uneducated generation in the future," al-Kasous said.

He added that fewer than 15,000 Palestinians are now left in Baghdad where they do not venture out of their houses for fear of violent attacks by militia and harassment by Iraqi police.

On 16 January, Iraqi security forces broke into two buildings in Baghdad that are rented by UNHCR for Palestinian refugees and arrested 30 men. But they were released shortly.

In another incident in Baghdad's central district of al-Batawyen, Interior Ministry forces broke doors and windows of a building and arrested 17 Palestinian men. A third incident took place in al-Amin district in the eastern side of the capital on the same day and 13 Palestinian men were apprehended by Iraqi security forces.

"We again urge the international community, including neighbouring and resettlement countries, to help find a humane solution for these refugees who are persecuted inside Iraq and have nowhere to go," UNHCR said. "

Adapting to Global Warming?

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Mike Luckovich

A Good Article
By Pepe Escobar

"The Bush administration, in a sense, is getting what it wants in the wider Middle East. To battle a fictitious Shi'ite crescent (a construct by Jordan's King Abdullah), it has emboldened even more a reactionary Sunni crescent (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates), thus exacerbating to a paroxysm the "strategy" it has already applied in Iraq: sectarianism as the golden parameter of imperial divide and rule. Historically, Sunnis and Shi'ites have co-existed amid social tensions. But never have these tensions been so cynically exploited - by Washington - as in post-invasion Iraq and the wider Middle East.

The administration of US President George W Bush was forced to acknowledge that the monumental disaster of occupied Iraq had to be blamed on a new scapegoat. Thus the umpteenth twist in the "war on terror": exit al-Qaeda, enter Iran.

The Sunni Arab "axis of fear" is merrily playing along. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia even complained in a Kuwaiti newspaper that Iran is trying to convert Sunni Arabs to Shi'ism. Even Israel is now by all means allied with Saudi Arabia against Iran - Mecca/Jerusalem against Qom; Muslims and Jews battling Muslims.

It's enlightening to compare this development with how Iran's ambassador to Syria, Mohammad Hassan Akhtari, sees it - as nothing other than a replay of the British Empire's divide-and-rule. Washington is once again sowing the seeds of discord among Muslims: "Bush and his allies are in favor of further unrest, turmoil and crises so that they can justify deployment of their troops in the region."

Shi'ites also happen to live in the midst of the "axis of fear" - such as in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf monarchies. Beyond sectarianism, Arab popular perception is alert enough to identify this for what it is: a war of the US - supported by dictatorial Arab regimes - against Islam. And the target is not only Iran: the Saudi/Israeli link is also anti-Hamas - an obvious point as the House of Saud is little else than an annex of Washington.

A recent survey of Arab public opinion by the British YouGov group revealed that Israel (88%) is the "greatest threat to the security and future" of the Middle East, followed by the US, al-Qaeda and finally Iran (33%). This has not prevented the bulk of Arab mainstream media from engaging in a systematic anti-Iranian propaganda wave.

But as Iran strives to position itself in practice as the key supporter of the Palestinian national-liberation movement, it is bound to solidify its pre-eminent popular role in the Middle East. Washington, once again, will not be amused.

Patriot games
As even the mineral kingdom is aware, the Bush administration's war on Iran is already on. Escalation and provocation are fast reaching fever pitch. This includes:
* The - bogus - White House claim that Iranian "networks" are helping to target US troops in Iraq.
* An imminent Bush administration-peddled dossier detailing alleged Iranian "subversion" in Iraq, which is bound to include the surrealistic notion of Iranian "agents" collaborating with the Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance) in an anti-American orgy.
* US Special Forces destabilizing Iran on the ground (especially in Khuzestan and Sistan-Balochistan provinces).
* United Nations sanctions.
* The blacklisting of Iranian state-owned Bank Sepah.
* The deployment to Israel and Gulf states of defensive Patriot missiles (theoretically to shoot down any retaliatory, incoming Iranian Shihab-3 missiles).
* The deployment toward the Gulf of the USS John C Stennis nuclear strike force plus the USS Eisenhower nuclear strike force - in practice two huge floating airports accompanied by guided-missile cruisers, frigates, destroyers, and submarine escorts and loaded with a deluge of missiles and helicopters. In the event the Nimitz strike force - currently in San Diego - also heads to the Middle East, the attack on Iran will be a certainty.

And there is the non-stop disinformation avalanche. As in 2002, pre-shock and awe, where the focus was shifted from Osama bin Laden to Saddam Hussein, in the 2007 remix (with a nuclear twist) the focus is being moved from the quagmire in Iraq to the Iranian "threat".

The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies has joined the fray, insisting Iran "could" be only two years away from building a nuclear bomb. This curiously ties with Likud supremo Benjamin Netanyahu claiming that Iran is "1,000 days away" from going nuclear. CNN and Fox News are mercilessly slugging it out to get prime Pentagon handouts - the best ringside view to watch the next war.

Meanwhile in Tehran, everything hinges on a crucial decision to be made by the nationalist theocracy's leadership. What path to choose: cooperation with the US, or confrontation? President Mahmud Ahmadinejad and his faction favor confrontation. Hashemi Rafsanjani, in practice the regime's No 2, favors cooperation (as does a crucial player, reformist Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri). Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali al-Khamenei has taken steps to isolate Ahmadinejad. But it may be too late: whatever the path chosen, the Bush administration is already on a war footing. Options abound.

As under the new White House-defined rules the guerrillas in Iraq are now led by Iran and not al-Qaeda, Iran can be attacked with no further authorization. The crucial missing piece is how to fabricate the new (Persian) Gulf of Tonkin incident, as in 1964 when Vietnamese naval vessels attacked US destroyers, setting in motion the impetus toward the Vietnam War.

Pray and then I'll kill you
The US-stoked Sunni-Shi'ite divide had to involve oil. Saudi Arabia is directly confronting Iran inside the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Traders take for granted that the Bush administration is once again allied with the House of Saud. Iran wants oil to be sold for at least US$70 a barrel. Saudi Oil Minister Ibrahim al-Naimi, on the other hand, keeps repeating that oil prices are going "in the right direction", ie down.

The US/Saudi nexus pulls no punches to squeeze Iran economically (fewer oil sales, less hard currency, mounting problems for Ahmadinejad, whose notoriously incompetent administration has not managed a better distribution of Iran's oil revenues). To top it off, to extract a barrel of oil Saudi Arabia may spend as little as $2. Iran, on the other hand, may spend as much as $18. And it will get worse. Iran is barred from buying the best exploration and drilling equipment, which is basically made in North America.

No wonder Tehran is proceeding with extreme caution - while bracing for a possible attack. Diplomatically, Tehran has invited International Atomic Energy Agency scientists and diplomats from the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77 and the Arab League to visit Iran's nuclear sites. Ali Larijani, the head of the Supreme National Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator, went to Saudi Arabia and personally talked to King Abdullah - conveying the Supreme Leader's offer of Iranian help to stabilize Iraq. But this won't be enough to appease Bush.

Bush's green light for the assassination of Iranians inside Iraq has been no less than absurd - apart from being illegal. The majority of Iranians in Iraq are pilgrims, who go predominantly to the holy sites in Najaf and Karbala (Iran is actually financing the construction of an airport in Najaf). Anyone now can dub the pilgrims "spies" or "terrorists" or worse, and engage in targeted assassinations. What Iranian agents do is sell mortar shells and rocket-propelled grenades to Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army commanders. The Mehdi Army is not killing Americans - at least not yet.

American casualties are not produced by Shi'ite pilgrims. The killers are Sunni Arabs - from al-Anbar province to Salahuddin, from Mosul to western Baghdad. These Sunni Arab killers are sponsored by none other than wealthy individuals living in the "axis of fear" - Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the Emirates. Of more than 10,000 prisoners in US jails in Iraq, the majority of foreigners are Saudis, followed by Jordanians. There are practically no Iranians.

In a January 19 interview with the Arab satellite channel al-Manar, Hezbollah secretary general Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah sharply analyzed how Lebanonization is linked to Iraqification and to the larger Sunni-Shi'ite divide in the Middle East. It all has to do, of course, with Bush's "New Middle East".

In Nasrallah's view, "In short, the 'New Middle East' signifies a collection of statelets that are divided along religious, sectarian and racial lines from Lebanon to Syria to Iraq to Iran to Turkey to Afghanistan to Pakistan; all the way to Saudi Arabia and Yemen and the rest of the Gulf states, reaching North Africa. And here ... I would like to warn everyone in the Arab and Islamic world, whichever sect or religion they identify with, whether they be Muslim or Christian, Shi'ite or Sunni or Druze, whichever race they belong to, Arabs, Kurds, Turks, etc ... Whoever believes that the 'New Middle East' will grant him his own independent state, that may be the case, but they should not ignore that a founding pillar of the 'New Middle East' is continuous conflict between these statelets."

Reality proves it. The Bush administration thrives on chaos - internal sectarianism and state-to-state sectarianism. It orders an Iraqi client regime (the Nuri al-Maliki government) to kill Sunni Arabs (or nationalist Shi'ites, such as the Sadrists). It orders a supplicant client in Palestine (Mahmoud Abbas) to kill people from Hamas. It orders a client regime in Lebanon (the Fouad Siniora government) to kill people from Hezbollah. This is what Washington calls "democracy". Compare it with the fact that Nasrallah, Khalid Meshal from Hamas and Ahmadinejad are the three most popular Muslim leaders among the Egyptian masses.

If "Sunni solidarity" were something more than a meaningless slogan in the war for the soul of Islam, the "axis of fear" would have had to support the Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq to drive out the US. They could never have summoned the courage, of course - unlike their populations - so they fabricated the threat of a "Shi'ite crescent". The US is more than comfortable attributing to hardcore Sunni Saudi Arabia the role of key "axis of fear" player in the war of the US against Shi'ite Iran. Taliban-friendly Pakistan may soon join.

The fact that both Saudi Arabia and Pakistan fabricate "terrorists" in industrial quantities is a minor detail. What matters now for the Bush administration is yet another wild bunch of even more evil "terrorists" who threaten "civilization" with (non-existent) nuclear weapons.

Should a mini-September 11, 2001, come, the US will blame it on Iran. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the US Congress will have to say "yes" to US bombs. And meanwhile, Muslims will be killing Muslims all over the Middle East for the United States' greater benefit. "

Sorry, but there is no English version of this important article.
Please see my brief translation at the end.

تشكيل ميليشيات مجهزة بأحدث الأسلحة والتنفيذ بدأ
مصادر: دحلان يقود مخططاً لشن حملة اغتيالات تطال قيادات "حماس" بإشراف عباس

"غزة - المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

أكد مصدر فلسطيني مطلع، يتبوأ موقعاً قيادياً داخل رئاسة السلطة الفلسطينية، في تصريح لـ "المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام" أن حركة فتح، وبإشراف وتنسيق مع رئيس السلطة محمود عباس وتدبير وتخطيط من محمد دحلان، الذي يشار إليه باعتباره أحد قادة التيار الانقلابي في حركة "فتح"، قد قررت القيام بحملة اغتيالات واسعة تطال قيادات حركة "حماس".

وبحسب المصدر؛ فإنّ الخطة تشمل تشكيل ميليشيات مسلحة في قطاع غزة من مختلف الأجهزة الأمنية، يتراوح عددها ما بين 7000 إلى 10000 عنصر، يضاف إليهم 5000 آخرين من مسلحي كتائب شهداء الأقصى، مما يمنحها تفوقاً عددياً على "القوة التنفيذية"، التابعة لوزارة الداخلية، من وجهة نظر أصحابها والمشكلين لها، وذلك بهدف العمل على إضعاف حركة حماس من خلال تنفيذ حملة اغتيالات شاملة تطال مختلف المستويات القيادية فيها.

ويقول المصدر، الذي رفض الكشف عن هويته؛ إن مقر "أنصار"، الذي أُنزلت فيه الليلة الماضية كميات كبيرة من الأسلحة والعتاد العسكري، سيكون المقر الرئيس وساحة التدريب والانطلاق الخاصة بهذه القوة، وأن عملية اختيار وفرز العناصر المُشكلة لهذه القوة تتم حالياً بشكل دقيق للغاية، بحيث يتم التدقيق في طبيعة العناصر المختارة، وضمان مرورها على ما لا يقل عن عشرة أشخاص من الأجهزة الأمنية الذين خصصوا لهذا الغرض، بما يمنع إمكانية تسرب أي عنصر منتمٍ أو موالٍ لحركة حماس بأي حال من الأحوال.

ويضيف المصدر أنّ التدريب الذي تتلقاه هذه القوة هو تدريب قوي وبالذخيرة الحية، وأن عناصرها مجهزون بالعتاد الحديث، بما يمنح كل عنصر فيها وحدة نارية كاملة، كما سيتم صرف رواتب كاملة لهم بمعزل عن بقية الأجهزة الأمنية.
"قوات العاصفة" .. فرقة موت جديدة للانقلابيين

وأكد المصدر أنّ هذه القوة ستحمل اسم "قوات العاصفة"، وتتبع مباشرة لحركة فتح، وأنّ العتاد العسكري الخفيف والمتوسط (رشاشات وقنابل وقذائف آر بي جي) قد أصبح في متناول أيدي هذه القوة، فضلاً عن عدد كبير من "الجيبات" الحديثة وعدد من "الجيبات" المصفحة لتنفيذ المهام الخاصة، مشيراً إلى أنّ هذه القوة هي التي خاضت الاشتباكات الأخيرة مع حركة حماس والقوة التنفيذية التابعة لوزارة الداخلية، ونفذت العديد من المذابح وعمليات القتل والاغتيال والإجرام خلال الأحداث الأخيرة التي وقعت في قطاع غزة.

وأوضح المصدر أنّ هذه القوة تهدف أساساً إلى إضعاف حركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس"، بشكل واضح في فترة زمنية تقارب ثلاثة أشهر، بما يسمح بتمرير وفرض مخطط الانتخابات المبكرة التي تراهن عليها حركة فتح للعودة إلى الحكم في أعقاب تنفيذ مخطط إضعاف حركة حماس أمنياً.

وشدد المصدر ذاته على أنّ القوة إياها قد قطعت شوطاً كبيراً في عملية التجهيز والإعداد، إلا أنها لم تستكمل بعد كامل تجهيزاتها، مؤكداً أنها سوف تعمل بشكل مبرمج بين الحين والآخر على تصدير الأزمات والأحداث بشكل شبه يومي هنا وهناك، بشكل يمثل تدريباً تدريجياً لعناصر القوة ريثما تستكمل التجهيزات والاستعدادات، انتظاراً لبدء تنفيذ المخطط الذي سيشهد استدراج حماس ميدانياً، لإشعال المعركة الشاملة بشكل متزامن في الضفة والقطاع.

ووفقاً للمصدر؛ فإنّ الخطة المرسومة تقضي بأن تشرع هذه القوة في العمل وبشكل مدروس في تصفية قادة ورموز حركة حماس، وخاصة في شمال قطاع غزة وخان يونس.

كما أكد المصدر على أنّ من ضمن الخطة التي تم رسمها، الشروع في حملة اعتقالات في صفوف أبناء حركة حماس بشكل متوازٍ مع بدء القوة الجديدة لحركة فتح أعمالها وإشعالها للمعركة مع حركة حماس، وذلك بما يشبه الاعتقالات التي جرت في جنين مؤخراً، والتي شكلت "بروفة" مبدئية لما يمكن أن يكون عليه الحال مستقبلاً.
"الوقائي" يستعد لاغتيالات محددة ضد قيادات "حماس"

وفي السياق ذاته؛ أوضح المصدر أنّ جهاز الأمن الوقائي قد أعد عدته للانتقام من حركة حماس والقوة التنفيذية عقب مقتل العميد محمد أبو غريب، وأنه قد شكل "فرق موت" خاصة لتنفيذ إعدامات محددة ضد قادة وأعضاء في حركة حماس والقوة التنفيذية، وهو ما بدا واضحاً خلال الأحداث الأخيرة التي ارتكبت فيها عناصر من الأمن الوقائي جريمة اقتحام واستباحة مسجد الهداية في حي تل الإسلام (تل الهوى) بمدينة غزة، وإعدام الشهيد القائد زهير المنسي بدم بارد، وهو يتدارس كتاب الله مع ثلاثة من إخوانه، فضلاً عن قتل واغتيال عدد كبير من المجاهدين من أبناء حماس والقوة التنفيذية في مناطق مختلفة من قطاع غزة.

وأكد المصدر أنّ محمد دحلان يقود بشكل مباشر هذه القوة، ويقع تحت إشرافه العديد من القيادات التنظيمية ومن بينها سمير المشهراوي وماجد أبو شمالة وسامي أبو سمهدانة وسليمان أبو مطلق وعادل حلس وماهر أبو الجديان ومحمد العواودة، فضلاً عن راسم البياري وتوفيق أبو خوصة وعبد الحكيم عوض وماهر مقداد.

واختتم المصدر حديثه بالقول إنّ حكومة الوحدة الوطنية هي "آخر ما تفكر فيها حركة فتح، وأنها لن تقدم بأي حال من الأحوال على التجاوب مع الجهود الراهنة لتشكيل الحكومة، وأنها سوف ستظل تفتعل الأحداث الميدانية ريثما تشتعل المواجهة الشاملة مع حركة حماس والتي ستتكفل بقبر جهود حكومة الوحدة وإنهائها من وجهة نظرها".

يُذكر أنّ الإدارة الأمريكية قد كشفت عن مبالغ ضخمة تقدر بعشرات الملايين من الدولارات يتم تحويلها إلى حساب الرئاسة الفلسطينية، وآخرها مبلغ 86 مليون دولار خصصت لتقوية الأجهزة الأمنية الخاضعة لرئيس السلطة ومدها بالسلاح المتطور لمواجهة حركة حماس والقوة التنفيذية، في الوقت الذي كشفت فيه مصادر أمريكية وصهيونية وفلسطينية رسمية متطابقة عن شحنات ضخمة من الأسلحة يتم توريدها بشكل شبه يومي إلى الضفة الغربية وقطاع غزة، وخصوصاً منطقة القطاع الذي تشعر فيها حركة فتح والأجهزة الأمنية التابعة لها أنّ الغلبة ترجح فيها لحركة حماس والقوة التنفيذية.
بيان تهديد .. خطوة أولى في إطار المخطط

وفي ظل الكشف عن هذا المخطط؛ أصدرت حركة فتح وكتائب شهداء الأقصى والأجهزة الأمنية والعسكرية بياناً هددت فيه قيادات في حركة "حماس" ووزراء في الحكومة بالقتل والاستهداف.

وجاء في البيان، الذي حصل "المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام"، على نسخة منه؛ "إن كل أفراد حماس (وكتائب الشهيد عز الدين) القسام والميليشيات السوداء (في قصد منهم إلى القوة التنفيذية) هم أهداف مشروعة لبنادقنا وسنقتص منهم"، مشيرة إلى أنها ترصد تحركاتهم وسياراتهم "وسينالون مصيرهم المحتوم".

وهدد البيان، الذي ذيّل بـ "دولة فلسطين .. اللجنة الإعلامية لحركة التحرير الوطني الفلسطيني فتح"، بشكل صريح كلاً من الدكتور عاطف عدوان وزير شؤون اللاجئين في الحكومة الفلسطينية، والنواب من كتلة "التغيير والإصلاح" بالمجلس التشريعي التابعة لحركة "حماس"، يوسف الشرافي، وإسماعيل الأشقر، ومشير المصري، فتحي حماد، وغيرهم.

ويتزامن هذا التهديد في الوقت الذي وصلت فيه شحنات أسلحة ووسائل قتالية إلى قطاع غزة عبر معبر رفح (الفاصل بين مصر وقطاع غزة)، وفي الوقت الذي تعهدت فيه الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية بتسليح حرس الرئاسة ودعمه بأكثر من ستة وثمانين مليون دولار."

***

A VERY BRIEF TRANSLATION

An anonymous, high ranking source within Abbas' office asserted that Fatah, with coordination and direction from Abbas as well as planning by Mohammad Dahlan, has decided to launch a large scale campaign to assassinate Hamas leaders. For this purpose armed militias are being formed involving 7,000-10,000 from the various "security" branches and an additional 5,000 from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. The Ansar Center is the headquarters of this combined force. Large quantities of weapons (from Egypt) arrived there last night and intensive training with live ammo and new weapons is going on there. Individuals selected for this force are very carefully screened to exclude any who might have any sympathy or support for Hamas. This force, which is directly under Fatah's control, has been equipped with light and medium weapons including RPGs as well as armored jeeps. This new force is the one that was involved in the deadly attacks on mosques and Hamas supporters in the past few days.

This force, pending full readiness and mobilization, will incite limited and scattered attacks on an almost daily basis. A full scale and coordinated attack on Hamas in both Gaza and the W.B. is planned when the force is ready. The force is directly under Dahlan's command. Large scale arrests of Hamas supporters are planned.

***

The Midwife of Death, Rice, will be in the region, again, in 2 weeks. The plan, apparently, is to have the Pinochet-style putsch led by Dahlan underway at that time.

***

Breaking News!

Four were killed this afternoon when Hamas intercepted two trucks loaded with weapons heading towards Gaza City coming from the south. The weapons were provided by Egypt, even though Egypt denied the charge. Hamas took control of the smuggled weapons.

Palestinian women shout slogans and hold Palestinian flags during a demonstration against the internal violence between the Palestinian factions, at the Khan Younis refugee camp, southern Gaza Strip, Wednesday Jan. 31, 2007.(AP)

A Great Editorial
عبد الباري عطوان

01/02/2007

عندما اندلعت الاشتباكات الدموية في قطاع غزة، التي اودت بحياة ثلاثين شخصا علي الأقل من خيرة ابناء القضية الواحدة، حاولنا ان نكون متوازنين، وان نضع اللوم علي الجانبين، ولكن عندما أعلنت الادارة الامريكية يوم امس انها ستقدم ستة وثمانين مليون دولار لتدريب وتسليح الحرس الرئاسي، وتدرس في الوقت نفسه توسيع تقديم المساعدة لتشمل عناصر قوات الامن الوطني التابعة للرئيس محمود عباس وبعض قادته الامنيين، فإننا نجد من الصعب علينا ان نلتزم الحياد ونمسك العصا من الوسط، لان هذه الخطوة الامريكية لا يمكن الا ان تكون مشروع فتنة، وصب المزيد من الزيت علي نار الحرب الاهلية، او جمرها الذي ما زال متقدا تحت رماد الاتفاق الاخير للهدنة، الذي يصارع من اجل الثبات.
لا يستطيع احد ان يقنعنا، مهما تبحر في علم البلاغة والبيان، بأن الولايات المتحدة تريد تمويل قوات الرئاسة، والامن الوطني الفلسطيني، وتسليحها، من اجل التصدي للقوات الاسرائيلية، وتوغلاتها المستمرة في الاراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة واغتيالاتها التي لا تفرق بين كتائب القسام وشهداء الاقصي. ولا يمكن لأحد ان يحاججنا ايضا، بان الحكومة الاسرائيلية ستسمح بمرور الاسلحة لهذه القوات، من مصر والاردن، اذا كان لديها ادني شك، في ان هذه الاسلحة ستستخدم ضدها وضد جنودها ومستوطنيها.
نحن الآن، ونقولها بكل اسف وحزن، امام كونترا فلسطينية جديدة، تدعمها الولايات المتحدة من اجل تصفية المقاومة الفلسطينية وحركاتها، وكل من يفكر بمعارضة الحلول الامريكية المفروضة، وهي حلول اسرائيلية بالأساس. فمثلما تصدت فرق الكونترا لرجال المقاومة في امريكا الجنوبية واستنزفت الأنظمة الوطنية فيها ستفعل هذه القوات الفلسطينية الشيء نفسه وربما اكثر، او هذا ما هو مخطط لها ان تفعل. وعلينا ان نتذكر ان نغروبونتي الذي عين قبل شهر نائبا للسيدة رايس هو الأب الشرعي لفكرة الكونترا هذه.
المصيبة ان الكونترا الفلسطينية الجديدة تتطوع بالقيام بمثل هذا الدور الدموي القذر، دون ان يكون هناك اي حل علي الطاولة، يستند الي قرارات الشرعية الدولية، ويحقق الحد الأدني من المطالب الفلسطينية في حق تقرير المصير، والعودة والدولة المستقلة.
ومن المفارقة ان هذا الاعلان الامريكي يتزامن مع اتخاذ حكومة ايهود اولمرت، رئيس الوزراء الاسرائيلي، قرارا بتغيير مسار الجدار العنصري الحالي بحيث يضم مستوطنتين يهوديتين جديدتين في الضفة الغربية، والتصديق علي قرار آخر باقامة مستوطنة في غور الاردن لاستيعاب المستوطنين الذين تم اجلاؤهم من قطاع غزة في الصيف قبل الماضي وبناء كنيس يهودي في باحة المسجد الأقصي.

لا نعرف ما هو الغرض من انشاء حرس رئاسي فلسطيني يزيد تعداده عن عشرة آلاف عنصر، ونحن ما زلنا تحت الاحتلال، ولا يستطيع الرئيس الفلسطيني مغادرة قصره الا بإذن شاويش اسرائيلي. ولا يستطيع رئيس وزراء فلسطين المنتخب الاجتماع مع وزرائه في الضفة الا عبر الهاتف وبتنصت اسرائيلي.
نفهم ان يؤسس رئيس دولة اقليمية عظمي مثل الراحل صدام حسين حرسا جمهوريا ضخما، او ان يفعل الشيء نفسه رئيس روسيا العظمي او حتي رئيس مصر الذي يتنقل بين عدة قصور واستراحات ورثها عن العهد الملكي، ولكن ان يقيم رئيس دولة وهمية لا تزيد مساحتها عن بضعة عشرات الآلاف من الاميال خاضعة للاحتلال وتأتمر بأمره، حرسا رئاسيا، فهذا ما لا يخطر علي بال احد، ولكن كل شيء ممكن في هذا الزمن العباسي السعيد.
هناك مشروع سري يتم طبخه علي نار هادئة من وراء ظهر الشعب الفلسطيني، فتمويل هذه القوات وتسليحها من قبل الولايات المتحدة، وبمباركة اسرائيلية هما العمود الفقري له، وهو مشروع حرب اهلية، يبشر بحمامات دم فلسطينية ـ فلسطينية من خلال استهداف حركات المقاومة الفلسطينية، وكل ما اشيع عن حوارات من اجل تشكيل حكومة وحدة وطنية، والتوصل الي وفاق بين رأسي السلطة، هو مجرد مناورة لكسب الوقت، واستكمال الاستعدادات للمنازلة الدموية الكبري التي باتت وشيكة جدا.
الدكتور صائب عريقات المستشار السياسي للرئيس عباس قال في تصريحات صحافية تبريرا لهذه الخطوة، بأن الاموال الامريكية ستذهب الي تمويل اجهزة ومعدات لمراقبة المعابر. فإذا كانت الادارة الامريكية حريصة فعلا علي هذه المعابر، فلماذا لا تبادر الي فتحها اولا، وخاصة معبر رفح المغلق منذ ستة اشهر، الا في حالات نادرة. حيث يحشر اكثر من مليون ونصف المليون فلسطيني في قفص كبير اسمه قطاع غزة. فما دخل الأجهزة بمرور المرضي والحجاج والمعتمرين؟
الشعب الفلسطيني يتضور جوعا، والأوبئة تتفشي، والمستشفيات خالية من الأدوية الاساسية بسبب الحصار المالي الامريكي، وعشرات الآلاف من الموظفين، ومعظمهم من حزب الرئيس، لا يجدون رغيف الخبز لاطفالهم، ومع ذلك تستثني الادارة الامريكية قوات الرئاسة من حصارها وترسل عشرات الملايين من الدولارات لاعطائها الاسلحة والذخائر التي ستستخدمها في الاشهر المقبلة لتصفية حركات فلسطينية تتمسك بالثوابت التي انطلقت من اجل تحقيقها الثورة الفلسطينية بزعامة حركة فتح .

ما زال من الصعب معرفة ما اذا كان الرئيس محمود عباس قد تشاور مع اللجنة المركزية، او الكوادر الوطنية الشابة لحركته وكتائب شهداء الاقصي بالذات قبل الموافقة علي الانخراط في هذا المشروع الامريكي الخطير ام لا، ولكن ما نستطيع التكهن به، انه لم يفعل ذلك مطلقا، ولم يلجأ الي اي مرجعيات فلسطينية سواء داخل تنظيمه او خارجه، لان كوادر فتح كما نعرفها هي في قمة الوطنية والحرص علي الثوابت ولا يمكن ان تقبل بالانخراط في حرب تصفيات ضد اناس يرفعون راية المقاومة، ويتطلعون للشهادة. فالمؤكد ان الرئيس عباس بات اسيرا لبعض الشخصيات التي تلتف حوله، وترافقه كظله في حله وترحاله، هذه الايام، وتزين له محاسن القبول بالاملاءات والمخططات الامريكية.
النوايا تتجه الآن الي حل قوات الامن الفلسطينية، او غربلتها، كنتيجة للاتصالات التي اجراها خبراء امريكيون مع قادة الاجهزة الأمنية الفلسطينية. والغربلة تعني ابعاد او تجميد كل عنصر ما زال يتمسك بحق العودة، وقيام دولة فلسطينية عاصمتها القدس، ويتعاطف مع المقاومة، اي اننا امام خطوة مماثلة بحل الجيش العراقي، ولن نفاجأ اذا ما جاءت النتائج متطابقة.
الشعب الفلسطيني يقف الآن امام مجزرتين ، الاولي بشرية كنتيجة لحرب التصفيات التي من المتوقع ان تنفذها الكونترا الجديدة، والثانية سياسية ، ستترتب مباشرة علي المجزرة الاولي، وسيكون عنوانها فرض تسوية منقوصة، ومعيبة، علي الشعب الفلسطيني وفق المقاييس الامريكية والاسرائيلية.
الادارة الامريكية تريد تنظيف المنطقة العربية من حركتين اساسيتين للمقاومة، هما حماس و حزب الله ، قبل الانطلاق نحو الحرب الكبري ضد ايران، بغطاء عربي من الدول المعتدلة، ومشاركة اسرائيلية كاملة.
فليس من قبيل الصدفة ان تتحدث السيدة كوندوليزا رايس عن دولة فلسطينية مؤقتة قبل اجتماعها الثاني مع وزراء الدول العربية المعتدلة في الكويت. فالمؤقت سيصبح دائما، وسيظل مرهونا بمدي الرضوخ للاملاءات الامريكية والاسرائيلية.

الرئيس عباس يقدم علي مقامرة جديدة، اخطر بكثير من مقامرة اوسلو ، قد تكون باهظة التكاليف بالنسبة الي الشعب الفلسطيني، فقد عقد العزم مثلما يتراءي لنا، ان يكون جزءا اصيلا في تحالف المعتدلين او حلف بغداد الجديد، اعتقادا منه ان الرئيس عرفات اخطأ عندما وقف ضد تحالف مماثل ايام حرب الخليج الاولي عام 1991، وضم الدول نفسها عدا الأردن، وبما سمي في حينه دول اعلان دمشق .
الرئيس عرفات لم يخطئ عندما وقف في خندق شعبه في مواجهة الخندق الامريكي المقابل، لانه كان يدرك بحدسه الوطني ان بوصلته الوطنية هي الاكثر دقة ومصداقية. فقد حققت امريكا غرضها من اخراج القوات العراقية من الكويت، وتدمير العراق، ونزع اسلحته، ولم تقدم للعرب، وحلفائها علي وجه الخصوص غير حرب اهلية دموية في عراق مفتت ممزق، وخلل اساسي في موازين القوي لمصلحة اسرائيل في الغرب وايران في الشرق.
كان اشرف للسيد عباس ان يتهم بأنه رئيس ضعيف، علي ان يدخل التاريخ كرئيس اشعل فتيل الحرب الاهلية الفلسطينية ووضع اوراقه في السلة الامريكية مقابل حلول جزئية هزيلة، هذا اذا حصل علي هذه المكافأة.

By Mike Whitney

".....Hoorah! More innocent people butchered!

Say what you will about the corporate media; they still havn’t lost their appetite for carnage.

Neither has the decider-in-chief who, when asked about the attack, answered, "My first reaction on this report from the battlefield is that the Iraqis are beginning to show me something."

What the Iraqis "showed" Bush was how easy it is to dupe the US military into carrying out their genocidal reprisals against rival groups. Just as the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias are "laying low" while the US military ethnically cleanses Sunni neighborhoods throughout Baghdad, so too, the Shiite-led Iraqi government is now using American firepower to eliminate their potential Shiite enemies.

Apparently, Bush is as happy with this new arrangement as the Shiite warlords who now run the country.

A spokesman from the Iraqi Ministry of Defense said that "200 terrorists were killed and 60 wounded" lowering the original estimates.

"Terrorists"?

"Terrorist families" (including children) or just plain old terrorists?

Whatever the precise details may be, the official version is utter nonsense. That’s why the survivors of the attack are being prevented from speaking to the press. Just like the bombed-out wedding party in Anbar Province, or the Jessica Lynch fiasco; the official version is "always right" as long as there is no competing narrative.

The bottom line is that the US military is now being used as an "enforcer" in tribal and clan-based disputes. This will make it even more difficult for Washington to prove that its honest broker who can reconcile the differences between the between the warring factions. With every reckless act of violence, the US becomes further mired in an "unwinnable" war in a hostile country. Only the American media thinks that that's something to cheer about. "

NAJAF, Iraq, Jan 31 (IPS) - Iraqi government lies over the killing of hundreds of Shias in an attack on Sunday stand exposed by independent investigations carried out by IPS in Iraq.

AN IMPORTANT INVESTIGATIVE PIECE
By Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

"Conflicting reports had arisen earlier on how and why a huge battle broke out around the small village Zarqa, located just a few kilometres northeast of the Shia holy city Najaf, which is 90 km south of Baghdad.

One thing certain is that when the smoke cleared, more than 200 people lay dead after more than half a day of fighting Sunday Jan. 28. A U.S. helicopter was shot down, killing two soldiers. Twenty-five members of the Iraqi security force were also killed.

"We were going to conduct the usual ceremonies that we conduct every year when we were attacked by Iraqi soldiers," Jabbar al-Hatami, a leader of the al-Hatami Shia Arab tribe told IPS.

"We thought it was one of the usual mistakes of the Iraqi army killing civilians, so we advanced to explain to the soldiers that they killed five of us for no reason. But we were surprised by more gunfire from the soldiers."

The confrontation took place on the Shia holiday of Ashura which commemorates Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad and the most revered of Shia saints. Emotions run high at this time, and self-flagellation in public is the norm.

Many southern Shia Arabs do not follow Iranian-born cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They believe the religious leadership should be kept in the hands of Arab clerics. Al-Hatami and al-Khazaali are two major tribes that do not follow Sistani.

Tribal members from both believe the attack was launched by the central government of Baghdad to stifle growing Shia-Sunni unity in the area.

"Our convoy was close to the al-Hatami convoy on the way to Najaf when we heard the massive shooting, and so we ran to help them because our tribe and theirs are bound with a strong alliance," a 45-year-old man who asked to be referred to as Ahmed told IPS.

Ahmed, a member of the al-Khazali tribe said "our two tribes have a strong belief that Iranians are provoking sectarian war in Iraq which is against the belief of all Muslims, and so we announced an alliance with Sunni brothers against any sectarian violence in the country. That did not make our Iranian dominated government happy."

The fighting took place on the Diwaniya-Najaf road and spread into nearby date-palm plantations after pilgrims sought refuge there.

"American helicopters participated in the slaughter," Jassim Abbas, a farmer from the area told IPS. "They were soon there to kill those pilgrims without hesitation, but they were never there for helping Iraqis in anything they need. We just watched them getting killed group by group while trapped in those plantations."

Much of the killing was done by U.S. and British warplanes, eyewitnesses said.

Local authorities including the office of Najaf Governor Asaad Abu Khalil who is a member of the pro-Iranian Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) had claimed before the killings that a group of primarily foreign Sunni fighters with links to al-Qaeda had planned to disrupt the Ashura festival by attacking Shia pilgrims and senior ayatollahs in Najaf. The city is the principal seat of religious learning for Shias in Iraq.

Officials claimed that Iraqi security forces had obtained intelligence information from two detained men that had led the Iraqi Scorpion commando squad to prepare for an attack. The intelligence claimed obviously had little impact on how events unfolded.

Minister of Interior Jawad al-Bolani announced to reporters at 9 am Sunday morning that Najaf was being attacked by al-Qaeda. Immediately following this announcement the Ministry of National Security (MNS) announced that the dead were members of the Shia splinter extremist group Jund al-Sama (Army of Heaven) who were out to kill senior ayatollahs in Najaf, including Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

Iraq's national security advisor Muaffaq al-Rubaii said just 15 minutes after the MNS announcement that hundreds of Arab fighters had been killed, and that many had been arrested. Rubaii claimed there were Saudis, Yemenis, Egyptians and Afghans.

But Governor Khalil's office backed away from its initial claims after the dead turned out to be local Shia Iraqis. Iraqi security officials continue to contradict their own statements. Most officials now say that the dead were Shia extremists supported by foreign powers.

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has a pattern of announcing it is fighting terrorists, like its backers in Washington. Many Iraqis in the south now accuse Baghdad of calling them terrorists simply because they refuse to collaborate with the Iranian dominated government. "

"....While living in Gaza and experiencing the situation on the ground, and
living in the midst of the Palestinian-Palestinian clashes between Fatah
and Hamas, I blame both parties for the Palestinian bloodshed and do not
give any excuse whatsoever for any of them, nevertheless I blame the West
for its economical sanctions against Palestine and the Israeli occupation
which on its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip it converted to a big boiling
pressure cooker.

That Israeli disengagement plan from Gaza was a new form of Occupation,
because Israel still controls Gaza from outside. It controls the borders
and the economy, and has a free hand to carry out various incursions.
Israel’s disengagement from Gaza was a step towards making an independent
Palestinian state impossible. Its consequence was to turn the Palestinian
cause into a charitable not a national issue. By making the Palestinian
people go hungry and lose all aspects of a dignified life, it is a step
towards demoralising them and making them in the end accept whatever
solution, however small and inadequate.

What do you expect of people living inside this pressure cooker, but all
sorts of aggression, despair, demoralization, and frictions against each
other? More than 60 people were killed, 30 in 3 days, and more than 70
were injured in different parts of Gaza. Most people stayed inside their
homes, one man was killed inside his home, many buildings in the Remal
area where I live were hit by random shooting, many residents left their
homes seeking safer areas, but where are those safe areas, when no place
is safer than any other?

It is mid-term holidays for the children of Gaza, 2 weeks holiday, no
regular electricity, no safe streets to run in, no proper places to play,
no safe homes to stay in, and no proper food to eat. Life continues and
the most dangerous time is when people start to lose faith and hope, and
have no vision for the future.

With your solidarity, with the solidarity of all those good people
worldwide who hate to see injustice and aggression, and continue to work
for a better world, I can keep my hope and vision for a better future, and
try to transmit those feelings to the others here to keep them strong.

I still count on you for a better future for the Palestinian people, the
women, the children who deserve better lives.

From Gaza with love

Mona"

by Robert Parry

"While congressional Democrats test how far they should go in challenging George W. Bush’s war powers, the time may be running out to stop Bush from ordering a major escalation of the Middle East conflict by attacking Iran.

Military and intelligence sources continue to tell me that preparations are advancing for a war with Iran starting possibly as early as mid-to-late February. The sources offer some differences of opinion over whether Bush might cite a provocation from Iran or whether Israel will take the lead in launching air strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

But there is growing alarm among military and intelligence experts that Bush already has decided to attack and simply is waiting for a second aircraft carrier strike force to arrive in the region – and for a propaganda blitz to stir up some pro-war sentiment at home.

One well-informed U.S. military source called me in a fury after consulting with Pentagon associates and discovering how far along the war preparations are. He said the plans call for extensive aerial attacks on Iran, including use of powerful bunker-busting ordnance.

Another source with a pipeline into Israeli thinking said the Iran war plan has expanded over the past several weeks. Earlier thinking had been that Israeli warplanes would hit Iranian nuclear targets with U.S. forces in reserve in case of Iranian retaliation, but now the strategy anticipates a major U.S. military follow-up to an Israeli attack, the source said.

Both sources used the same word “crazy” in describing the plan to expand the war to Iran. The two sources, like others I have interviewed, said that attacking Iran could touch off a regional – and possibly global – conflagration.

“It will be like the TV show ‘24’,” the American military source said, citing the likelihood of Islamic retaliation reaching directly into the United States.

Though Bush insists that no decision has been made on attacking Iran, he offered similar assurances of his commitment to peace in the months before invading Iraq in 2003. Yet leaked documents from London made clear that he had set a course for war nine months to a year before the Iraq invasion.

In other words, Bush’s statements that he has no plans to "invade" Iran and that he’s still committed to settle differences with Iran over its nuclear program diplomatically should be taken with a grain of salt.

There is, of course, the possibility that the war preparations are a game of chicken to pressure Iran to accept outside controls on its nuclear program and to trim back its regional ambitions. But sometimes such high-stakes gambles lead to miscalculations or set in motion dynamics that can't be controlled.

‘You Will Die’

The rapidly deteriorating situation in Iraq is seen as another factor pressing on Bush to act quickly against Iran.

Other sources with first-hand knowledge of conditions in Iraq have told me that the U.S. position is even more precarious than generally understood. Westerners can’t even move around Baghdad and many other Iraqi cities except in armed convoys.....

Another experienced observer of conflicts around the world told me that Bush’s new idea of putting small numbers of U.S. troops among Iraqi government forces inside police stations represents an act of idiocy that is sure to get Americans killed.

Conditions in Iraq have so deteriorated – and animosity toward Americans has so metastasized – that traditional counterinsurgency strategies are hard to envision, too.

Normally, winning the hearts and minds of a target population requires a commitment to move among the people and work on public action projects, from building roads to improving the judicial system. But all that requires some measure of political goodwill and personal trust.

Given the nearly four years of U.S. occupation and the devastation that Iraq has suffered, not even the most talented American counterinsurgency specialists can expect to overcome the hatred swelling among large segments of Iraqi society.

Bush’s “surge” strategy of conducting more military sweeps through more Iraqi neighborhoods – knocking down doors, gunning down hostile Iraqis and dragging off others to detention camps – is not likely to assuage hard feelings.

Wider War

So, facing slim odds in Iraq, Bush is tempted by the allure of escalation, a chance to blame the Iranians for his Iraq failure and to punish them with air strikes. He might see that as a way to buy time, a chance to rally his pro-war supporters and a strategy for enhancing his presidential legacy.

But the consequences both internationally and domestically – from possible disruption of oil supplies to potential retaliation from Islamic terrorists – could be devastating.

Yet, there is a sense of futility among many in Washington who doubt they can do anything to stop Bush. So far, the Democratic-controlled Congress has lagged behind the curve, debating how to phrase a non-binding resolution of disapproval about Bush’s “surge” of 21,500 troops in Iraq, while Bush may be opening an entirely new front in Iran.

According to intelligence sources, Bush’s Iran strategy is expected to let the Israelis take a lead role in attacking Iran's nuclear facilities in order to defuse Democratic opposition and let the U.S. intervention be sold as defensive, a case of a vulnerable ally protecting itself from a future nuclear threat.

Once American air and naval forces are committed to a new conflict, the Democrats will find it politically difficult to interfere at least in the near future, the thinking goes. A violent reaction from the Islamic world would further polarize the American population and let Bush paint war critics as cowardly, disloyal or pro-terrorist.

As risky as a wider war might be, Bush’s end game would dominate the final two years of his presidency as he forces both Republican and Democratic candidates to address issues of war and peace on his terms.

On Jan. 10, the night of Bush’s national address on the Iraq War, NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert made a striking observation about a pre-speech briefing that Bush and other senior administration officials gave to news executives.

“There’s a strong sense in the upper echelons of the White House that Iran is going to surface relatively quickly as a major issue in the country and the world in a very acute way – and a prediction that in 2008 candidates of both parties will have as a fundamental campaign promise or premise a policy to deal with Iran and not let it go nuclear,” Russert said. “That’s how significant Iran was today.”

So, Bush and his top advisers not only signaled their expectation of a “very acute” development with Iran but that the Iranian issue would come to dominate Campaign 2008 with candidates forced to spell out plans for containing this enemy state.

What to Do?

The immediate question, however, is what, if anything, can Congress and the American people do to head off Bush’s expanded war strategy.

Some in Congress have called on Bush to seek prior congressional approval before entering a war with Iran. Others, such as Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, have asked Bush to spell out how expansive he thinks his war powers are.

"I would suggest respectfully to the President that he is not the sole decider," Specter said during a Senate hearing on war powers on Jan. 30. "The decider is a shared and joint responsibility."

But Bush and his neoconservative legal advisers have made clear that they see virtually no limits to Bush's "plenary" powers as Commander in Chief at a time of war. In their view, Bush is free to take military actions abroad and to waive legal and constitutional constraints at home because the United States has been deemed part of the "battlefield."

Nothing short of a direct congressional prohibition on war with Iran and a serious threat of impeachment would seem likely to give Bush more than a moment’s pause. But congressional Republicans would surely obstruct such measures and Bush might well veto any law that was passed.

Still, unless Congress escalates the confrontation with the President – and does so quickly – it may be too late to stop what could become a very dangerous escalation."

By Khalid Amayreh

"......Hamas’s massive victory not only shocked Fatah (the Palestinian FLN), but surprised Hamas itself which never thought even in its wildest dreams that it would harvest up to 75 seats out of the 132 contested seats, making up the Legislative Council.

Now, a year later, and with the specter of civil war haunting and hounding every Palestinian, and with the West, particularly the Bush Administration, hell bent on punishing the Palestinians for electing a government that is not to America’s and Israel’s liking, many Palestinians are wondering if it was wise to hold elections under the Israeli military occupation in the first place.

Many other Palestinians feel that the international community deceived and betrayed the Palestinian people, first by encouraging them to hold elections and then by imposing crippling sanctions when the outcome turned out to be incompatible with American and European expectations.

PIC spoke to Professor Atef Odwan, a political scientist and Minister for Refugee Affairs in the Hamas-led government on how he would , in retrospect, evaluate the past 12 months, particularly since the Hamas-dominated government took power in April, 2005

“The January elections were not the first polls to be organized under the Israeli occupation; and the problem doesn’t lie in the elections, but in Israeli and western policies that makes a mockery of democracy. Indeed, the fact that the US and EU hastened to impose a hermetic siege on us immediately after the elections was a clarion proof if one was needed that these countries are not really serious about the ideals and ideas they claim to uphold and adhere, namely democracy and human rights.”

Asked if he thought that the West deliberately deceived the Palestinians with regard to the elections, Odwan said the matter went beyond mere deception. “The US thought and calculated that the outcome of the elections would be different, but when the outcome turned out to be undesirable from the American view point, the Bush Administration hastened to bully other countries to blockade and isolate the government in the hope that the Palestinian people would rise up to topple it and then replace it with a government that is acceptable to the US.”

Odwan, though a government minister, doesn’t believe that the government is blameless. He says that much could have been done, and that had it been done properly, the overall picture would have been different in many aspects. “In retrospect, I believe that more efforts should have been made to form a government of national unity, a government that should have encompassed all the colors of the Palestinian political spectrum. This would have enabled the Palestinian people to avoid the sanctions. The fact that this didn’t happen was a real mistake, a real blunder.” Asked farther if he thought that it was still possible to correct this mistake, Odwan said that in order to correct the mistake, of which all Palestinian factions, not just Hamas are responsible, strong intervention by Arab states is necessary. “We need sincere intervention from Arab States, such as Saudi Arabia . This could have a true positive effect.”

A somewhat opposing view comes from Abdullah Abdullah, a Fatah MP and former Director-General of the Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He attributes much of “the perplexity in our political thinking” to the fact that many people don’t really understand “that we are still in the national liberation phase.” “We have a fledgling experiment, and our constitutional laws are incomplete, and the borderlines between the presidential powers and prime ministerial powers are not well marked and the result of all of this is duplicity of authority.” Abdullah puts much of the blame for “the tribulations of the past year” on Hamas and its “political inexperience.” “The problem is that our brothers in Hamas don’t make a distinction between the political and the ideological. The ideological is absolutist by its very nature but the political is relative. In ideology, I am right and you wrong, period. But in politics, there must be sharing, compromise, give and take. It is the art of the possible.”

Like Odwan, Abdullah believe that more efforts should have been made to form a government of national unity. “I believe that Hamas came with the mentality of the opposition, they should have sought to build up on the accumulative achievements that had been made by the previous government and previous parliament…but they insisted on doing things their own way and this undoubtedly created a psychological mistrust and feelings of dichotomy.”

Abdullah argues that a strong central leadership was very important in order to safeguard Palestinian national interests in this stage of national struggle, arguing that democratic evolution, however important it may be, is always dwarfed by and relegated to a secondary degree when national survival is at stake.

The tribulations of the past 12 months pushed many Palestinians to the edge and shattered many taboos in our national life and thinking. Now, as society is regaining some serenity and mental equanimity, it is imperative that Palestinians, individually and collectively, go through a process of soul searching.....

And while Palestinians have no alcoholic problem, they certainly need to muster all the wisdom in the world to extract themselves and their enduring just cause from the clutches of uncertainty and disunity."

Only 22% in U.S. Say Bush Relies on Facts

"......Polling Data

Do you think U.S. president George W. Bush’s decisions about policy in Iraq and other major areas are influenced more by the facts or more by his personal beliefs, regardless of the facts?

Influenced more by the facts
22%

Influenced more by personal beliefs
67%

Don’t know
11%
......."

Mutiny trend in Fatah secretly smuggles weapons and munitions through Rafah

"Gaza - Palestinian security sources have affirmed Wednesday that trucks loaded with weapons and munitions were parked at the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing point waiting to secretly cross into Gaza Strip during night in the coming two days.

According to the sources, more trucks carrying weapons and munitions have crossed the borders over the past few days and unloaded their loads at PA presidential guard’s Ansar camp, and the PA preventive security headquarters in Gaza. Both PA security apparatuses are under the command of PA chief Mahmoud Abbas.

The sources furthermore revealed that the military support came directly to Mohammed Dahalan being the leader of the mutiny trend in Fatah faction that vandalized Gaza streets and killed 33 Palestinian citizens, most of them Hamas cadres.

However, smuggling of the weapons goes under the watching eyes of the Israeli occupation government and its army in a bid to bolster strength of Dahalan’s groups in the Strip against Hamas.

A Fatah leader who preferred not to be identified had earlier revealed to the Hebrew Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that Dahalan was building private army with full American and Israeli support and blessing.

He added that Dahalan’s private army would comprise 12,000 armed men, mostly coming form Fatah armed wings and PA security apparatuses. He added that financial support for that army comes from European countries through Abbas’ office. Military support was left to the USA and Israel, the Fatah leader asserted.

Meanwhile, spokesman of the executive force of the PA interior ministry, which keeps law and order in the Strip, Islam Shahwan condemned Abbas’ remarks on the force, adding that the force was a legitimate one being part of the interior ministry’s security force.

PA basic law allows interior minister to create security force he deemed necessary to enhance peace and order condition in the PA-run lands, which PA interior ministry Sa’aeed Siyam had exactly done.

During a press conference in Egypt Tuesday, Abbas alleged that the force was illegitimate.

“We have documented papers with Abbas’ signature proving that the force was endorsed by the PA chief himself, and we have distributed copies of the endorsement to media apparatuses. This is clear tampering of the law on the part of the PA chief”, said Shahwan in refuting Abbas’ remarks."

By Reuters

"The United States is considering expanding assistance beyond Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Presidential Guard to members of the largest
force under his command, Western and Palestinian officials said.

Providing U.S. funds to train elements of Abbas's National Security Forces (NSF), in addition to the Presidential Guard, could increase U.S. involvement in the violent power struggle between Abbas's Fatah faction and the governing Hamas movement.

Officials said members of the NSF would undergo a review process to ensure they are qualified and have no ties to militant groups before undergoing the training.

The nearly 4,000-man Presidential Guard is far better armed and trained but tiny in comparison to the NSF, the closest thing the Palestinians have to an army.

Palestinian officials estimate that the NSF have as many as 40,000 members. Western diplomats involved in the matter say the number of "active" members is closer to 20,000 and that a portion of those would be eligible to participate in the U.S.-funded training.

"They need a lot of work," said a Palestinian security source who has been involved in evaluating the forces.

U.S. President George W. Bush has committed $86 million to provide training and non-lethal equipment to forces loyal to Abbas. Guns and ammunition are being supplied by key U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt, with Israeli approval, Israeli officials say.

Diplomats say Abbas's military build-up is meant to counter strides by Hamas in smuggling in more powerful weapons into Gaza for its fast-growing "Executive Force" and armed wing."

by Ramzy Baroud
Global Research, January 31, 2007

"......That said, one should not succumb to the analysis that puts the entire blame for this unfolding drama on the active Cold War between the US and Iran. In Lebanon, for example, sectarianism and factionalism, similar to Iraq’s sectarianism and tribalism, has rendered the country nationally fragmented and hardly possesses the necessary requirement of a nation state, where allegiance is made to the state, not to a sect, clan or tribe. The same is true for the Palestinians, where corruption is rife and disunity has been the longest defining factor of the Palestinian political temperament. While plenty can be said as of how physical fragmentation has lead to national disintegration in Palestine, and how many Palestinian groups, willingly or otherwise, served the interest of regional powers, the truth is that the Fatah- Hamas clash was forthcoming and preceded the US’s ongoing blunders in the region. The US-Israeli backing of Fatah merely exposed the perpetual weaknesses that have marred Palestinian society for generations, by providing political, financial and military requirements to intensify the fight so that Palestinian resistance against the Israeli occupation might fizzle out, an evident outcome of the current fighting.It is indeed more than disheartening to see that Palestinians have themselves surrendered readily to the Israeli and American designs, allowing their revolting factionalism to morph into a near civil war which has already harvested many lives. Those responsible for the violence — blame that can no longer be placed on a cluster of individuals — must have forgotten that their infighting is taking place in an occupied land, besieged by Israeli fences and walls, and under the watchful eye of Israeli intelligence, who must be brimming with glee as Palestinians are shamelessly slaughtering one another, a job that has for a long time been reserved for Israel, and for Israel alone."

What the Media has Deliberately Concealed

by Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya
Global Research, January 31, 2007

"The barbaric lynching of Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, was a choreographed event, a carefully staged U.S. sponsored PSYOP, with a view to triggering social divisions and fomenting sectarian violence within Iraq and the broader Middle East.....

In his last moments, the words of Saddam Hussein were very compelling. When he was told to "go to Hell" by his executioners, the Iraqi leader replied, "[You mean] to the hell that is Iraq!?"

Who turned Iraq into a living Hell? Who is to be blamed? These words were so powerful that several major media outlets conveniently omitted them from their translations, including the BBC and CNN. Any meaningful revelation or coverage of the correct final statements of Saddam Hussein could have severe and negative implications for the Anglo-American military roadmap in the Middle East. "To the hell that is Iraq!?" could become a powerful political slogan, serving to rally public opinion throughout the Muslim World against America's imperial ambitions.

The Iraqi leader’s final words carry great weight because they describe the situation created in Iraq under military occupation. This final statement could also have political ramifications in the U.S. and Britain, as public opinion becomes increasingly aware that these last words, "the living Hell," describes what Iraq has been turned into, under U.S. and British military occupation.

The late Saddam Hussein’s words could have strong implications for rallying resistance in the Arab world against the US-UK occupation of Iraq. In this regard, the Arab mainstream media has played a calculated role in furthering the Anglo-American military agenda by shifting the blame for Saddam Hussein’s execution onto the Shiite Iraqis.....

This deliberate media portrayal of an emerging “Shiite ascension” in Iraq and the Middle East is part of a multifaceted strategy geared towards creating tensions within the predominately Muslim populations of the Middle East. It is a typical “divide and conquer” strategy, which is supported by the long tentacles of the intelligence apparatus of the United States. The hidden agenda is to trigger "civil war" and the redraw the map of the Middle East. The ultimate objective is the domination of the Middle East by the United States, Britain and their coalition partners, including Israel and proxy Arab leaders. The active collaboration of the frontline Arab governments, which have military cooperation agreements with NATO and the U.S., are also tied into this agenda.

Divisions and animosity within their respective populations is what has allowed these pro-U.S. Arab authoritarian figureheads, which increasingly act as proxies, to remain in power.

Since the Anglo-American sponsored Israeli siege of Lebanon, the coalition building phase of the military roadmap has been launch. The United States has been constructing the “Coalition of the Moderate,” which includes Israel, Saudi Arabia, Mahmoud Abbas, the Lebanese government, Egypt, the U.A.E., Turkey, and Jordan. While this has been going on there is a continuous attempt to build public consensus in support of dividing Iraq and military strikes against Syria and Iran. The media in North America, Europe, and the Arab World have played an important role in demonizing the Syrians and the Iranians.

As the United States gears up for the next stage of the Middle East war, the drive to divide the populations of the region now encompasses a broad area extending from Lebanon and Palestine to the Persian Gulf.

The life of Saddam Hussein was used by the United States as firewood to further fuel discord and division in Iraq and the Middle East before the next phase of its military roadmap, which is directed against Iran and Syria."

An Important Note
From Imad Khadduri

"An email from a friend:

"What is certain from the information we have (see the different 'official' versions of this massacre then scroll to under the two pictures for the eye-witness story) is that processions of Arab shiite tribes were walking (as part of the Ashoora tradition) to Najaf: The Hawatim and The Khazael. Both tribes are known for their Arab national and patriotic positions. Khazael for example had played an important role in supporting Iraq's position toward Palastine in 1948.

Had they the intention to attack the Hawza symbols in Najaf? I cannot be affirmative but there is a story from inside iraq saying that they have demanded that all Iranians in the Hawza are to leave Najaf.

Were they Mahdists? This may be a simple propaganda to isolate them among other shiites and in the eyes of the outside world.

In any event, this massacre is of great significance.

First: There were many indications and information that the Hakim-Maliki-Sistani alliance is becoming very isolated among the Arab shiite tribes and cities throught central and southern Iraq. For a while, Saddr (in Arabic) was an alternative but since he participated in the elections, returned recently to rejoin the parliment after demanding a scheduled withdrawal of occupation forces while his followers participate in wide spread attacks against the sunnis, he is losing his influence among Iraqi shiites. Iraqi nationalism is stronger than sectarianism.

Secondly: The use of lethal force by the Americans, like what they did in in Falluja, against important Arab tribes will spread the anti American anti Iranian resistance. The myth of the shiites being united behind Sistani is finished. More and more of Arab shiites will join the resistance.

The occupation and its puppets have nothing to the Iraqi people but blood, death, lies and destruction.

Abdul Ilah Albayaty" January 31, 2007

Questions do come to mind? How can more than 300 'terrorists' remain hidden in a field near Najaf for so long, and are then suddenly discovered and obliterated? If they are claimed to be such well-trained militants, how come the Iraqi police and military casualties are so low in comparison with near 260 dead 'terrorists'?"

by Paul Craig Roberts

"President George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq is the greatest crime of the 21st century.

Armed with a powerful moral case against Bush, whose lies are responsible for a war that has caused thousands of U.S. casualties and killed vast numbers of Iraqi civilians, Democratic leaders are damning Bush's war because it did not succeed!....

The invasion of Iraq under false pretenses comprises solid grounds for impeaching both Bush and Cheney and for turning them over to the War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague. Under the Nuremberg standard, to commit unprovoked aggression is a war crime.....

The conclusion is unavoidable that Bush has committed a massive crime against Iraqis, against the Middle East, against American citizens and military families, and against America's reputation.

Finally coming to their senses and realizing the pointlessness of Bush's war, the American people gave the Democratic Party control over the House and Senate in the hopes that the Democrats would put a stop to Bush's war.

Was the electorate's faith in the Democrats justified?

Listen to the Democrats' statements and judge for yourself.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden declared on ABC's This Week that "it's the failed policy of this president, going to war without a strategy, going to war prematurely, going to war without enough troops, going to war without enough equipment."

Sen. Hillary Clinton, a likely Democratic candidate for president, says, "This was his decision to go to war with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy."

The Democrats are damning Bush not for his monstrous crime but for failing at it!

Instead of holding Bush accountable for his crimes with impeachment proceedings, Hillary Clinton merely wants Bush to get rid of the problem so she will not be troubled with it on her watch: "We expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office." Hillary says it would be "the height of irresponsibility" for Bush to pass the war along to the next president.

A moral, humane, decent, honest person would define "the height of irresponsibility" as the act of taking two countries to war on the basis of lies and deception.

Now that Bush and Cheney have lost their war due to their incompetence and faulty execution, the Democrats are going to pass a nonbinding resolution against escalating the war in Iraq. While Congress negotiates a posture on the Iraq war, the Bush regime moves forward with its plans to attack Iran.

Everyone can see the U.S. buildup of massive air and naval attack forces on Iran's borders. Fox "News," the Bush regime's main disinformation agency, is busy preparing its viewers for the U.S. attack by whipping up fear and hysteria over Iran. The Bush regime suddenly changed its line and now blames Iran instead of al-Qaeda for its defeat in Iraq. The Israel Lobby is working around the clock for a U.S. strike on Iran. On Jan. 30 Bush again threatened that he will respond firmly if Tehran escalates its involvement in Iraq.

Bush's threats are part of the propaganda that is creating an excuse that Bush can use to attack Iran.

Bush plans to bomb Iran. U.S. war doctrine has been altered to allow Bush to use nuclear weapons to attack Iran. American neoconservatives and Israel's right wing have argued in behalf of attacking Iran with nuclear weapons, and a number of foreign experts are forecasting such an attack.

While Bush prepares in public view his war on Iran, the Democrats turn a blind eye. For the Democrats the only issue is whether or not Bush should send 21,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq.

The issue is whether the war in Iraq can be quickly ended, or Bush and Cheney impeached, before the two war criminals create a more monstrous crime and a more dangerous situation for America and the world by attacking Iran."

By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
The Independent

"A group of senior British MPs has held private meetings with prominent members of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, despite the international boycott imposed on the PA since the Islamic faction took office last March.

The parliamentarians, a Tory whip, two senior Labour backbenchers and a Liberal Democrat peer, are easily the most influential group of British politicians to have met senior members of the PA cabinet since Hamas's election victory in 2006. British ministers and officials are precluded as a matter of policy from meeting members of the Palestinian cabinet.

The meetings, which took place last week in Ramallah, came to light yesterday as the Commons Select Committee on International Development strongly criticised the boycott and accused Western governments of pushing the Hamas government closer to Iran by its policy of isolating the PA.

The all-party report said that the international embargo had stripped Hamas of any real accountability for its performance to the Palestinian people, caused widespread misery and hardship among Palestinians, and forced the Hamas government to look elsewhere for support, including Iran. It also urged the international community to hold Israel to the agreement it signed in November 2005 to facilitate movement of goods from Gaza.

Last week's separate all-party delegation, including Richard Burden, chairman of the Britain Palestine parliamentary group and the Opposition whip Crispin Blunt had initially expected to hold talks in Gaza last Friday with Ismail Haniyeh and the foreign minister Mahmoud Zahar but were forced to turn back at the Erez checkpoint because of the factional violence between Hamas and Fatah."

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad

"There are growing suspicions in Iraq that the official story of the battle outside Najaf between a messianic Iraqi cult and the Iraqi security forces supported by the US, in which 263 people were killed and 210 wounded, is a fabrication. The heavy casualties may be evidence of an unpremeditated massacre.

A picture is beginning to emerge of a clash between an Iraqi Shia tribe on a pilgrimage to Najaf and an Iraqi army checkpoint that led the US to intervene with devastating effect. The involvement of Ahmed al-Hassani (also known as Abu Kamar), who believed himself to be the coming Mahdi, or Messiah, appears to have been accidental.

The story emerging on independent Iraqi websites and in Arabic newspapers is entirely different from the government's account of the battle with the so-called "Soldiers of Heaven", planning a raid on Najaf to kill Shia religious leaders.

The cult denied it was involved in the fighting, saying it was a peaceful movement. The incident reportedly began when a procession of 200 pilgrims was on its way, on foot, to celebrate Ashura in Najaf. They came from the Hawatim tribe, which lives between Najaf and Diwaniyah to the south, and arrived in the Zarga area, one mile from Najaf at about 6am on Sunday. Heading the procession was the chief of the tribe, Hajj Sa'ad Sa'ad Nayif al-Hatemi, and his wife driving in their 1982 Super Toyota sedan because they could not walk. When they reached an Iraqi army checkpoint it opened fire, killing Mr Hatemi, his wife and his driver, Jabar Ridha al-Hatemi. The tribe, fully armed because they were travelling at night, then assaulted the checkpoint to avenge their fallen chief.

Members of another tribe called Khaza'il living in Zarga tried to stop the fighting but they themselves came under fire. Meanwhile, the soldiers and police at the checkpoint called up their commanders saying they were under attack from al-Qai'da with advanced weapons. Reinforcements poured into the area and surrounded the Hawatim tribe in the nearby orchards. The tribesmen tried - in vain - to get their attackers to cease fire.

American helicopters then arrived and dropped leaflets saying: "To the terrorists, surrender before we bomb the area." The tribesmen went on firing and a US helicopter was hit and crashed killing two crewmen. The tribesmen say they do not know if they hit it or if it was brought down by friendly fire. The US aircraft launched an intense aerial bombardment in which 120 tribesmen and local residents were killed by 4am on Monday.

The messianic group led by Ahmad al-Hassani, which was already at odds with the Iraqi authorities in Najaf, was drawn into the fighting because it was based in Zarga and its presence provided a convenient excuse for what was in effect a massacre. The Hawatim and Khaza'il tribes are opposed to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the Dawa Party, who both control Najaf and make up the core of the Baghdad government.

This account cannot be substantiated and is drawn from the Healing Iraq website and the authoritative Baghdad daily Azzaman. But it would explain the disparity between the government casualties - less than 25 by one account - and the great number of their opponents killed and wounded. The Iraqi authorities have sealed the site and are not letting reporters talk to the wounded....."

Their zealous advocacy of the invasion of Iraq may have been a disaster, but now they want to do it all over again - in Iran

Francis Fukuyama
Wednesday January 31, 2007
The Guardian

".....American military doctrine has emphasised the use of overwhelming force, applied suddenly and decisively, to defeat the enemy. But in a world where insurgents and militias deploy invisibly among civilian populations, overwhelming force is almost always counterproductive: it alienates precisely those people who have to make a break with the hardcore fighters and deny them the ability to operate freely. The kind of counterinsurgency campaign needed to defeat transnational militias and terrorists puts political goals ahead of military ones, and emphasises hearts and minds over shock and awe.

A second lesson that should have been drawn from the past five years is that preventive war cannot be the basis of a long-term US nonproliferation strategy. The Bush doctrine sought to use preventive war against Iraq as a means of raising the perceived cost to would-be proliferators of approaching the nuclear threshold. Unfortunately, the cost to the US itself was so high that it taught exactly the opposite lesson: the deterrent effect of American conventional power is low, and the likelihood of preventive war actually decreases if a country manages to cross that threshold.....

Use of force looks very unappealing. The US is hardly in a position to invade and occupy yet another country, especially one three times larger than Iraq. An attack would have to be conducted from the air, and it would not result in regime change, which is the only long-term means of stopping the WMD programme. It is hard to have much confidence that US intelligence on Iranian facilities is any better than it was in the case of Iraq. An air campaign is much more likely to build support for the regime than to topple it, and will stimulate terrorism and attacks on American facilities and friends around the globe. The US would be even more isolated in such a war than during the Iraqi campaign, with only Israel as a certain ally.

None of these considerations, nor the debacle in Iraq, has prevented certain neoconservatives from advocating military action against Iran. Some insist that Iran poses an even greater threat than Iraq, avoiding the fact that their zealous advocacy of the Iraq invasion is what has destroyed America's credibility and undercut its ability to take strong measures against Iran......

What I find remarkable about the neoconservative line of argument on Iran, however, is how little changed it is in its basic assumptions and tonalities from that taken on Iraq in 2002, despite the momentous events of the past five years and the manifest failure of policies that neoconservatives themselves advocated. What may change is the American public's willingness to listen to them."

· Transatlantic rift emerges over how to handle crisis
· America builds up its naval forces in the Gulf

Ian Traynor in Brussels and Jonathan Steele
Wednesday January 31, 2007
The Guardian

"Senior European policy-makers are increasingly worried that the US administration will resort to air strikes against Iran to try to destroy its suspect nuclear programme.

As transatlantic friction over how to deal with the Iranian impasse intensifies, there are fears in European capitals that the nuclear crisis could come to a head this year because of US frustration with Russian stalling tactics at the UN security council. "The clock is ticking," said one European official. "Military action has come back on to the table more seriously than before. The language in the US has changed.".....

"There's anxiety everywhere you turn," said a diplomat familiar with the work of the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. "The Europeans are very concerned the shit could hit the fan."

A US navy battle group of seven vessels was steaming towards the Gulf yesterday from the Red Sea, part of a deployment of 50 US ships, including two aircraft carriers, expected in the area in weeks....."

An Excellent, Long Article
By Chalmers Johnson
Asia Times

"......The choice ahead
By the time I came to write Nemesis, I no longer doubted that maintaining America's empire abroad required resources and commitments that would inevitably undercut, or simply skirt, what was left of our domestic democracy and that might, in the end, produce a military dictatorship or - far more likely - its civilian equivalent.

The combination of huge standing armies, almost continuous wars, an ever growing economic dependence on the military-industrial complex and the making of weaponry, and ruinous military expenses as well as a vast, bloated "defense" budget, not to speak of the creation of a whole second Defense Department (known as the Department of Homeland Security) has been destroying our republican structure of governing in favor of an imperial presidency. By republican structure, of course, I mean the separation of powers and the elaborate checks and balances that the founders of the United States wrote into the constitution as the main bulwarks against dictatorship and tyranny, which they greatly feared.

We Americans are on the brink of losing our democracy for the sake of keeping our empire. Once a nation starts down that path, the dynamics that apply to all empires come into play - isolation, overstretch, the uniting of local and global forces opposed to imperialism, and in the end bankruptcy.....

So my own hope is that - if the American people do not find a way to choose democracy over empire - at least our imperial venture will end not with a nuclear bang but a financial whimper. From the present vantage point, it certainly seems a daunting challenge for any president (or Congress) from either party even to begin the task of dismantling the military-industrial complex, ending the pall of "national security" secrecy and the "black budgets" that make public oversight of what the government does impossible, and bringing the president's secret army, the CIA, under democratic control. It's evident that Nemesis - in Greek mythology the goddess of vengeance, the punisher of hubris and arrogance - is already a visitor in the United States, simply biding her time before she makes her presence known."

Alarmist Israeli statements about Iran do not necessarily reflect the strategic thinking of Israeli national security officials. Jerusalem's veiled threats to attack Iran's nuclear facilities are also at odds with its internal assessment of the feasibility and desirability of such an attack

By Gareth Porter
Asia Times

"WASHINGTON - When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert declared last week that his country could not risk another "existential threat" such as the Nazi Holocaust, he was repeating what has become the dominant theme in Israel's campaign against Tehran - that it cannot tolerate an Iran with the technology that could be used to make nuclear weapons, because Iran is fanatically committed to the physical destruction of Israel.

The internal assessment by the Israeli national-security apparatus of the Iranian threat, however, is more realistic than the government's public rhetoric would indicate......

Occasionally, Israeli officials do let slip indications that their fears of Iran are less extreme than the "second Holocaust" rhetoric would indicate. In November, Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh explained candidly in an interview with the Jerusalem Post that the fear was not that such weapons would be launched against Israel but that the existence of nuclear capability would interfere with Israel's recruitment of new immigrants and cause more Israelis to emigrate to other countries.

Sneh declared that Ahmadinejad could "kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button. That's why we must prevent this regime from obtaining nuclear capability at all costs."......

In the end, the Israelis know they are dependent on the US to carry out a strike against Iran. And the US is the target of an apocalyptic Israeli portrayal of Iran that diverges from the internal Israeli assessment."

***

"....but that the existence of nuclear capability would interfere with Israel's recruitment of new immigrants and cause more Israelis to emigrate to other countries.....kill the Zionist dream without pushing a button"

This goes to the heart of Israel's reasoning that it has to remain the dominant power in the region. It will not tolerate the emergence of any other power, be it Iraq, Iran or any combination of Arab states. All other rationalization is nothing but hot air.

By Kurt Nimmo

"As expected, the attack Iran hype has slipped into overdrive.

“The Pentagon is investigating whether an attack on a military compound in Karbala on January 20 was carried out by Iranians or Iranian-trained operatives, a U.S. official told CNN on Tuesday…. Some Iraqis speculate that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps carried out the attack in retaliation for the capture by U.S. forces of five of its members in Irbil, Iraq, on January 11, according to a Time.com article published Tuesday.”

In other words, CNN, as a faithful propaganda handmaiden, is speculating, thus adding fuel to the attack Iran fire now smoldering, ready to break out into a five alarm conflagration, as planned, with the appropriate admixture of irresponsible speculation, as usual backed up with little more than thin air.

“Some Iraqis speculate that the IRGC has already started a campaign of revenge with the killing of five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. 20, nine days after the arrest of the IRGC [Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.] members in Erbil. As the logic of the rumor goes, five American soldiers were killed for five Iranians taken; [the attack at the Provincial Joint Coordination Center in] Karbala was an IRGC message to release its colleagues—or else,” writes Robert Baer for Time Magazine, basing his story on rumor and hearsay, a common enough modus operandi for corporate journalists these days. “There is nothing the IRGC likes better than to fight a proxy war in another country,” never mind this would play right into the hands of the neocons, thus providing yet another pretext for an ultimate attack, as long planned.

Meanwhile, the Butcher of Honduras, Order of Death alumni (otherwise known as Skull and Bones), Council on Foreign Relations member, Kissinger flunky, currently grand poobah of intelligence, John Negroponte, “told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that an emboldened Iran presented new difficulties for U.S. interests in Iraq, the Gulf region, Lebanon and in Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking,” reports Reuters. Naturally, the illegal U.S. invasion of Iraq, its continuing occupation, its support for reactionary and decadent Gulf monarchies, and above all else its unfailing and unconditional support for the brutal settler state of Israel at the expense of the Palestinians has nothing to do with these ostensible “new difficulties.”

Unable to contain themselves, Democrats as well as Republicans kissed Negroponte’s hem. “Democratic and Republican lawmakers praised Negroponte’s record. The panel’s Democratic chairman, Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, predicted its members would vote quickly to recommend his confirmation by the full Senate,” never mind that the “death-squad manager nonpareil” and “gangster-diplomat extraordinaire,” as Toni Solo pegs him apropos, who micromanaged the “Salvador Option” in Iraq, should be in a war crimes docket with the rest of the neocons, not taking up residence, with the profuse blessing of “lawmakers,” as deputy secretary of state.

Iranians and Syrians, averred Negroponte, “know what they need to do,” that is they will need bend over backwards, jump somersaults, and generally act like domesticated pets, ready to grovel, beg forgiveness, and plead for their lives.

Short of that, they are advised to build bomb shelters."

Contributed by
Layla Anwar

"JERUSALEM - At the height of World War II, Khaled Abdelwahhab hid a group of Jews on his farm in a small Tunisian town, saving them from the Nazi troops occupying the North African nation.

Now, Abdelwahhab has become the first Arab nominated for recognition as "Righteous Among the Nations," an honor bestowed on non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews from Nazi persecution.

The nomination of Abdelwahhab, who died in 1997, has reopened a little-known chapter of the Holocaust in the Arab countries of North Africa.

Abdelwahhab was nominated by Robert Satloff, director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a U.S. think tank.....

"I asked, did any Arabs save Jews in the Holocaust?" Satloff said. "If they did, these are stories about which Arabs could be proud. It would also entail accepting the context, because it would mean there was something to save Jews from."

The search led to Abdelwahhab, the son of an aristocratic family who was 32 when German troops arrived in Tunisia in November 1942. The nation was home to some 100,000 Jews at the time.

According to Israel's Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, the Germans imposed anti-Semitic policies in Tunisia that included fines, forcing Jews to wear Star of David badges and confiscating property. More than 5,000 Jews were sent to forced labor camps, where 46 are known to have died. About 160 Tunisian Jews in France were sent to European death camps.

Abdelwahhab served as an interlocutor between the population of the coastal town of Mahdia and German forces, Satloff said.

When he heard that German officers were planning to rape Odette Boukris, a local Jewish woman, he gathered her family and several other Jewish families in Mahdia — around two dozen people — and took them to his farm outside town. He hid them for four months, until the occupation ended.

"Khaled is the finest example, though not the only one, of an Arab who saved Jews from persecution during the German occupation," Satloff said.

Satloff first heard Abdelwahhab's story several years ago from Odette Boukris' daughter, Anny Boukris, a resident of a Los Angeles suburb. An 11-year-old in 1943, Anny Boukris was also hidden by Abdelwahhab.

Satloff went to Mahdia and talked to Anny Boukris' childhood friends, who confirmed the story. Just weeks after Boukris recorded her 83-page testimony, she died at age 71.

Abdelwahhab still has to be approved by the Yad Vashem commission that grants the honor. Since the war, Yad Vashem has conferred the status on 21,700 people, including some 60 Muslims from the Balkans. But no Arab had ever been nominated.

"The commission will decide based on the strict criteria for recognizing the Righteous Among the Nations. We can't speculate on what the outcome will be," said Estee Yaari, a spokeswoman for Yad Vashem.

Tunisia was the only North African country to come under direct Nazi rule. Morocco and Algeria were governed by the pro-Nazi collaborators of Vichy France.

Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, a North Africa expert at Tel Aviv University, said Morocco's king at the time, Mohammed V, intervened to protect Jews in his country. "But the story in Tunisia was quite different, because there was a direct occupation by the German army," he said."

(Click on cartoon to enlarge)
By Mike Luckovich

"A US Navy strike group led by the assault ship USS Bataan steamed through the Suez Canal on Tuesday on its way to join the buildup of American forces in the Middle East.

The Bataan, which entered Egyptian waters Monday, spent the night at the Mediterranean harbor of Port Said and was expected to leave the Egyptian part of the Red Sea later Tuesday, a Suez Canal official said, speaking on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the press.

The seven-vessel Bataan group includes 2,200 US Marines and sailors, helicopters and Harrier fighter jets, the Navy said in Bahrain.

The US Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, will be overseeing around 50 warships in the Mideast after the arrival of the Bataan and an American aircraft carrier group in February, said US Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Brown.

The Fifth Fleet normally commands a fleet of about 45 ships, about a third of them from US-allied navies, Brown said.

The Navy is in the midst of a regional buildup, with the group of the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis on its way as well as 21,500 US soldiers being sent to Iraq. The carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower is already in the region.

The United States has not had two carriers in the Mideast since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Bataan will join a second amphibious assault ship, the USS Boxer, which was on port visit in Dubai on Tuesday.

Brown said the Pentagon recently extended the tour of duty of the Boxer's US Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is in Iraq.

The Bataan is on a routine six-month deployment to the region to conduct "maritime security operations" which includes boarding and searching ships suspected of carrying terrorists or nuclear components to Iran, the Navy said."

By Kurt Nimmo

"Is it possible we are stupid enough to fall for it again?

“US officials in Baghdad and Washington are expected to unveil a secret intelligence ‘dossier’ this week detailing evidence of Iran’s alleged complicity in attacks on American troops in Iraq. The move, uncomfortably echoing Downing Street’s dossier debacle in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, is one more sign that the Bush administration is building a case for war,” reports the Guardian....

Once again, we are subjected to the discredited accusation “Iranians are smuggling into Iraq sophisticated explosive devices, mortars, and detailed plans to wipe out Sunni Arab neighborhoods,” never mind that Pentagon has done a mighty fine job of accomplishing the latter without the help of Iran.

“But as was also the case in the days before Saddam Hussein fell, powerful external forces, ranging from exiled Iranian opposition groups to leading Israeli politicians, appear intent on stoking the fire—and winding up the White House,” an unabashedly fair assessment, although it would help if the Guardian told us the rest of the story, namely the so-called “case” against Saddam Hussein consisted of a transparent passel of lies, fabrications, and fairy tales.....

“The al-Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards is stepping up terrorism and encouraging sectarian violence in Iraq,” Alireza Jafarzadeh—a US-based Iranian dissident who is linked to the Marxist cult Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MeK), officially listed by the State Department as a terrorist group—told the Moonie, er Washington Times earlier this month. In essence, Jafarzadeh is but another Ahmed Chalabi, pedaling lies and exaggerations, the vile stuff of neocon pretext.

In the not too distant past, Jafarzadeh was happy to proffer scary stories about mullahs with nukes. Now, however, as a neocon team player, he has adopted the Iran meddling in Iraq theme, apparently the emerging rationale conjured up as a flimsy excuse to be used in the upcoming effort to shock and awe Iranian school children and grandmothers....."

Simon Tisdall
Tuesday January 30, 2007
Guardian Unlimited

"US officials in Baghdad and Washington are expected to unveil a secret intelligence "dossier" this week detailing evidence of Iran's alleged complicity in attacks on American troops in Iraq. The move, uncomfortably echoing Downing Street's dossier debacle in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, is one more sign that the Bush administration is building a case for war.
Nicholas Burns, the senior US diplomat in charge of Iran policy, says Washington "is not looking for a fight" with Tehran. The official line is that Washington has made a conscious decision to "push back" against Iran on a range of fronts where the two countries' interests clash. Primarily that means Tehran's perceived meddling in Iraq, where its influence with the Shia-led government and Shia majority population appears to be increasing as Washington's weakens.....

Israel is also pushing the intelligence case while upping the ante, claiming to have knowledge that Tehran is within a year or two of acquiring basic nuclear weapons-making capability. In a BBC interview last week former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu compared President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime to Hitler's Nazis. Speaking in Davos the deputy prime minister, Shimon Peres, demanded immediate regime change or failing that, military intervention.

The US "push back" against Iran comprises many other elements beyond Iraq. Unconfirmed reports suggest Vice-President Dick Cheney has cut a deal with Saudi Arabia to keep oil production up even as prices fall, to undercut Iran's main source of foreign currency. Washington is pursuing expanding, non-UN global financial sanctions against Tehran; encouraging and arming a "new alignment" of Sunni Arab Gulf states; and highlighting Iran's role in "supporting terrorism" in Palestine, where it helps bankroll the Hamas government, and Lebanon, where it backs Hizbullah. The US is also deploying powerful naval forces in the Gulf that are of little help in Iraq but could more easily be used to mount air strikes on Iran.

Almost any one of these developments might produce a casus belli. And when taken together, despite official protestations, they seem to point in only one direction. The Bush administration, an American commentator suggested, is "once again spoiling for a fight"."

Rima Merriman, The Electronic Intifada, 30 January 2007

"......It's really hard to understand the source of Abbas's expressed optimism. He has no power whatsoever to achieve anything in his present capacity without, in his words, "a behind-the-scenes international conduit", which is not even on the horizon.

But the most telling factor that evokes skepticism in Abbas's optimism is his implicit acceptance of the spurious Israeli point of view regarding the reasons behind the stalling of progress in the peace process these past many years (Palestinian terrorism). Also appaling is his misreading of Israeli's new administrative procedures as signs of good intentions, when they are clearly and simply meant to entrench and streamline the occupation by providing such mundane things as special privileges to some and special permits to others......

But Israel is neither ready to determine the beginning of the road to peace (it's still busily consolidating its illegal settlements and especially its annexation of Jerusalem) nor where it will end. The occupied territories seem to be the least of Israel's worries right now. The ongoing Palestinian infighting is focusing Palestinian rage away from Israel for the moment. Additionally, given the inequality of power between the Palestinians and Israelis, the exercise of continuing to confine, restrain, oppress and subdue all of the occupied territories is scheduled to take hardly any of incoming Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkanazi's energies or brain power, except perhaps as a convenient training ground to re-instill confidence and pride in the Israeli army, especially in terms of ground fighting.

Israel has now successfully defined the cause of its insecurity generically as Islamist terror in concert with the political mindset of the US and the UK, the zeitgeist if you will, and not as what it really is: the indelible stain on Israel's soul resulting from its un-confessed crimes against Palestinians. Israel is looking ahead to be busily engaged in flexing its muscles against much bigger fish -- Iran, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq. The captive ants in Israel's fenced backyard, so easily squished, are nothing compared to the excitement of regional aggression against so-called nuclear threats and evil mullahs that are bound to result in large-scale mayhem......

There is so little past evidence to give confidence to the Palestinians in UN and Security Council resolutions or, God help them, in the vision of George W. Bush or, especially, in "past agreements" with the Israelis or in Arab initiatives, that one wonders why the Palestinian Liberation Organization is so stuck on what has not worked before and is so unwilling to open itself up to radical new directions....."

"Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, has accused George Bush of creating chaos in Lebanon, and rejected the US president's latest criticisms of the Shia group.

Speaking at Beirut ceremonies marking the climax of the Muslim festival of Ashura, Nasrallah accused the US of ordering Israel to launch last year's attack on Lebanon.

"The one who fomented chaos in Lebanon, who destroyed Lebanon, who killed women and children, old and young in Lebanon, is George Bush and (Secretary of State) Condoleezza Rice who ordered the Zionists to launch the war on Lebanon," Nasrallah said.

The US president on Monday accused Hezbollah and its allies Iran and Syria of stirring up the latest violence in Lebanon in a bid to topple its government and said "those responsible for creating chaos must be called to account".

Nasrallah said: "The one who must be punished, who must be tried, is the one who ordered the launching of war on Lebanon."

The July-August war killed nearly 1,200 people in Lebanon, mainly civilians, and 157 Israelis, mostly soldiers.

"George Bush wants to punish you because you resisted, he wants to punish you because you won," Nasrallah said.

He made his address to thousands of Shia muslims who converged on Beirut's southern suburbs to commemorate the killing in battle of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Mohammad's grandson, in AD 680.

Earlier, the crowd marched in Hezbollah's Beirut stronghold, rhythmically beating their chests in a sign of grief over Hussein's martyrdom and chanting "Death to America, death to Israel".

Some carried red, yellow and black flags with religious slogans. Others wore green headbands and chanted, "We will never be humiliated."

"George Bush knows ... and we reiterate to him and the whole world should hear that we are a nation that doesn't succumb and can't be humiliated, " Nasrallah said....."

by Nicola Nasser
Global Research, January 30, 2007

"The crisis in Lebanon is rapidly accumulating the potential to plunge the country in a second civil war, while Israel is closely watching on the sidelines for the right moment to exploit the ensuing security vulnerability and finish the Lebanese divide off by intervening militarily to conclude what it officially describes as the “inconclusive” war last summer. Meanwhile, the most influential external potential mediators, regional and international, are more or less part of the crisis than they are part of the solution and pre-empting possible mediation efforts......

The Israeli occupation, the ensuing Syrian alarm and the emergence of the Hizbullah-led Lebanese resistance were Iran ’s gateway into Lebanon . Iran’s negative and passive performance in Iraq vis-à-vis the American occupation and the Iranian convergence of interests with this occupation vis-à-vis the Iraqi national resistance, dubbed by both as “terrorist,” explicitly indicates the Iranian role in Lebanon as having more to do with regional plans than with credible solidarity with the Lebanese resistance.......

Israelis Watching for Right Moment

The status quo in Lebanon is also threatening to disintegrate its national security system. The national army and the security forces are preoccupied with the mission of preserving their neutral unity, which in any time now could prove impossible amid a snowballing national divide. “True the army is suffering from pressure … The army has been bearing above its load for months,” the commander General Michel Suleiman told As-Safir newspaper. At the same time Hizbullah, the backbone of the national defense against the Israeli looming threat, is preoccupied with a national-political crisis that is driving the country into the brink of a second civil war. Both parties to the crisis are becoming more vulnerable and less immune to resist the external factors and their internal extensions, which are pushing the divide towards its inevitable conclusion.

The crisis is creating the exemplary environment for a successful Israeli military intervention. On January 23 the Associated Press reported an Israeli military drill the previous day on a mock Arab city in the Negev desert complete with mosques, apartment buildings, even a faux Palestinian refugee camp, built on eight square miles with the help of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The AP quoted a veteran of the war on Lebanon , Sgt. Shalev Nachum: “We're definitely training for the next war. Next time, it will be different.” The $40 million Urban Training Center was unveiled to coincide with naming a new Israeli army chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi.

Ashkenazi is a veteran of Israeli wars on Lebanon , commanded major operations in the invasion of 1982 and oversaw the eventual withdrawal of all Israeli occupying forces from south Lebanon in 2000; he replaced Dan Halutz, who resigned after criticism of his handling of the war on Lebanon last summer. Ashkenazi’s “mission,” according to AP, is to “restore Israel 's deterrent posture and public confidence, both dented by last year's costly and inconclusive Lebanon war.” Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and “Defense” Minister Amir Peretz “expressed confidence in Ashkenazi's ability to … implement the lessons from the war in Lebanon ,” said a government statement announcing his appointment.

Israel is wasting no time to redress what she considers the 2006 “inconclusive war” on Lebanon . The determination of all the Lebanese parties to the crisis to emerge winners in a divide that if continued will only condemn all of them as losers is a determination to make the Israeli “mission” much easier. Their national consensus on national unity as the only way of survival is also the only background on which potential mediation efforts could take off to neutralize the adverse external factors, avert a civil war and at least make the price of a new Israeli military adventure too high to have a “decisive” instead of an “inconclusive” conclusion."

By William S. Lind

"Bush's splurge is already bringing premature claims of success, even though the first troops are just arriving in Iraq. A column in today's Washington Times by Ollie North quotes an American officer in Iraq as saying, "Do they [members of Congress opposed to the war] even know that in the last two weeks we have set AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] and the Mahdi Army both back on their heels?" Well, maybe, but if they are back on their heels, it is only to sit and see how their enemy's latest operation evolves. That is smart guerilla tactics, and does not mean they have suffered a setback......

The Mahdi Army and other Shi'ite groupings have a different perspective. Once we understand what it is, we can see that it makes sense for them to avoid a confrontation with the U.S. military if they can. From the Shi'ite perspective, American forces are in Iraq to fight the Sunnis for them. Our troops are, in effect, the Shi'ites' unpaid Hessians.

Thus far, we have been willing to play the Shi'ites' game. Their challenge now is to make sure we continue to do so as Bush's "big push" in Baghdad unfolds. Originally, they wanted U.S. forces to control access to Baghdad, cutting the Sunnis' lines of communication and reinforcement, while the Shi'ite militias carried on their successful campaign of ethnic cleansing. With Bush insisting American forces work in Baghdad, the Shi'ites came up with an alternate plan, one we have seemingly accepted: the Americans will drive out the Sunni insurgents, leaving Sunni neighborhoods defenseless. As the American troops move on, they will be replaced by Iraqi soldiers and police, mostly Shi'ite militiamen, who will ethnically cleanse the area of Sunnis, just as in plan A. Again, the Americans will have fulfilled their allotted function, fighting the Sunnis on behalf of the Shi'ites. Aren't Hessians great?....."

Hebrew paper: Dahalan forms own army in Gaza with US support

"Gaza - The Hebrew Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper has quoted Fatah leader as affirming that Mohammed Dahalan was forming a 12,000-strong private army in Gaza Strip with full American military support with the aim to topple the PA Hamas-led government.

According to the Fatah leader who asked not to be identified, Dahalan’s proposed private army will be financed by European countries through the office of PA chief Mahmoud Abbas, and that military supplies will be provided by the USA.

“We are currently scrutinizing candidates to join the army, and we shall exclude any one found to have brother supporting Hamas”, the Fatah leader further revealed.

The paper furthermore quoted what it described as “men of Dahalan” as asserting that all Fatah militias will be integrated in the new army, and that Israel will facilitate military support for it.

Elements of the Dahalan-led “mutiny trend” in Fatah carried out a series of heinous crimes in Gaza Strip against Hamas cadres and elements of the executive force of the PA interior ministry over the past three days, including killing Muslims inside mosques among other heinous crimes.

The new Dahalan’s army is widely believed to be a concrete implementation of the US conspiracy run by William Abrams, the assistant of the US national security advisor, with the aim to ignite Palestinian civil war and throw the Hamas-led government as earlier unveiled by former MI6 intelligence officer Alistair Crooke. "

By Gareth Porter
Asia Times

"WASHINGTON - US President George W Bush's State of the Union address appears to confirm other indications in recent weeks that he is not merely sending more troops to Iraq to do more of the same, but has adopted a new strategy of fighting all three major Iraqi Arab political-military forces simultaneously.

Bush hinted strongly that he has decided to make Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army a major military target of the increased US troop presence in Baghdad, while continuing to wage war against both al-Qaeda and its Sunni extremist allies, on one hand, and the non-jihadi Sunni resistance, on the other.

Two weeks before the January 23 State of the Union speech, Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno, the No 2 US commander in Iraq, told reporters he wanted to use most of the additional 21,500 troops to launch a new military push against both Sunni and Shi'ite militias in Baghdad.

The new policy appears to have been prompted by both the need to demonstrate to the US public that the administration is doing something different and to use force against a presumed ally of Iran in the region. But it means that the United States is now planning to fight what is in essence a three-front war without any reliable Iraqi Arab ally. Only the Kurds can be counted on to cooperate with the US military in such a war, because of their reliance on US support for their aspirations for quasi-independence......."

By Leon Hadar
Asia Times

"......So it's not surprising that journalists and pundits who continue to follow their professional instincts are experiencing a certain sense of deja vu as they begin to wonder these days whether Bush and his aides are planning to expand the current war in Iraq to Iran (and Syria). The initial source of this "urban legend" was Bush's infamous "axis of evil" speech, in which he lumped Iran together with Iraq and North Korea as deserving US punishment.

The speech was followed by various pledges, including public statements, press leaks and even the commitment of US financial resources to "export" democracy to Iran. And in the aftermath of ousting Saddam from power in Baghdad, there were even a few hints here and there about "regime change" in Tehran. Interestingly, the Bush administration denied press reports about Iranian attempts to negotiate a diplomatic deal with Washington over Iraq, Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine.......

The sense of alarm perpetuated by the Saudis was reinforced through press leaks suggesting that the members of the hawkish wing of the Saudi royal family, led by former ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar bin Sultan, were gaining strength, and that the Israelis and the Saudis, backed by Washington, have been conducting secret talks to coordinate the anti-Iran strategy.

Indeed, according to Israeli press reports, Olmert and Prince Sultan have met to discuss Iran and related issues. The meeting and other signs of coordination on Iran among Washington, Jerusalem and Riyadh have raised the possibility that the Bush administration is trying to draw the outlines of a new strategic consensus involving it, Israel and the pro-US Arab-Sunni regimes (Saudi Arabia and the other Arab Gulf states, and Egypt and Jordan).

These reports recalled a similar "strategic consensus" that evolved in the 1980s during the Ronald Reagan administration, when the Americans, Israelis and Saudis - and, yes, then-US partner, Saddam's Iraq - were cooperating in dealing with both the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and with the challenge from revolutionary Iran.

And anyone who knows how to assess the balance of power in Washington will tell you that when the Americans are joined by the Saudis and the Israelis and their powerful supporters in Washington in a coordinated effort to harm you, run fast for cover. Both the Soviets fighting against Osama bin Laden and his mujahideen allies (assisted by Washington) in Afghanistan and the Iranians attacked by Saddam's Iraqi military (assisted by Washington) learned that lesson in the 1980s.

In addition to the pressure exerted by the Saudis and Israelis on Washington, Bush in his January 11 speech blamed the Iranians for targeting US troops in Iraq and threatened to use US military power to disrupt such actions. The next day Bush announced that he was sending an aircraft carrier to visit Iran's neighborhood, and the military ordered US troops to raid an Iranian consulate in the Iraqi Kurdish city of Irbil. Such actions could lead even a low-level intelligence analyst to see "signals" coming out of the White House aimed at Iran......

But Bush-Cheney and their neo-con advisers may have found a way to overcome the threat of congressional and Democratic opposition, and it has to do with the potential Israeli role in a crisis with Iran.

If Israel decides to attack Iran's nuclear sites, many of the same lawmakers would probably applaud the move, a reflection of their pro-Israeli disposition. After all, can anyone imagine Democratic presidential candidate Senator Hillary Clinton bashing the Israelis on the eve of the primaries or the general election?....."

A Powerful Article
By Layla Anwar

"Today the United Nations Department of Public Information held its second annual observance of the International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust followed by a ceremony at the UN Headquarters......

A very special day for a very special people...

A resolution echoing the first collective shout by the "civilized" nations following World War II, the shout " Never Again !"
It,in fact took millions of victims of different nationalities, different religious and ethnic backgrounds to fuel that first shout "Never again."
The United Nations itself, the International Court of Justice and the Geneva Conventions were created following that primal shout "Never again"......

Meanwhile.... and in parallel...
1948 - The Establishment of Israel by the International Community, that same international community. And since that year, a silent mass genocide takes place in Palestine, silent to the deaf ears of the world.
Millions of refugees, hundreds of detention prisons, burns by cluster bombs and other "friendly" weapons, mass starvation, mass destruction,mass graves, collective torture, concentration camps and ghettos . Ramallah, Jenin, Tul Karem, Nablus, Gaza .... name tags and discrimination, a collective rape of a people, its identity, its memory by none other than "survivors" and it goes on till this very day....Never again ?......

1990 - Present : Comes the big chunk Iraq.
Never in contemporary history has the International Community and the United Nations been a direct culprit in mass genocide like it has done in Iraq.
In 1990, the most cruel embargo and set of sanctions were imposed on the Iraqi people with the blessings and the complicity of the United Nations. That same United Nations that was born out of the birth pangs of "Never Again."

After the "liberation of Kuwait", the sanctions were maintained with vehemence and an iron fist.
Some of you may know but it is good to remind you , that over 1.5 million people died as a result of a decision taken by the Security Council in 1990 and maintained even though it had no more reason to continue maintaining it since the small oil banana republic Kuwait was finally liberated.
13 years of mass genocide and of mass murdering by the UN and the Security Council.
Not less than 1.5 million men and women dead, out of which not less than 500'000 children under the age of 5. And you know the famous phrase by Madeleine Albright the American :"The Price was well worth it."

The going rate of infant death from 1990 until the "liberation" of Irak and its invasion , ie. 2003 was 5'000 per month. 5'000 children per month... Never again ?
The total number during those 13 years of sanctions were a double Hiroshima and Nagasaki put together.......

A big ghetto of massive proportions. A huge concentration camp. No visas were given, people were stuck in mass genocide.
Those who managed, worked as waiters, garbage collectors , taxi drivers carefully hiding their university diplomas. And the less lucky ones , ended up in brothels in neighboring countries. Some as young as 14 years old, hoping to find refuge in exchange for food and shelter and a bit of pocket money promptly sent home under the benevolent eyes of the brothel's Matron.

This is just a glimpse of what happened during the sanction years under the auspices of the United Nations, the one that was born out of "Never again."
No one budged.......


Today, the 29th January 2007,Iraqis long for the days of the sanctions.
Iraq has been "liberated", from 2003 till the present.
Today in Iraq, people are collectively raped, murdered, tortured, experimented on with various drugs and drills and american bombs. Lazer bombs, phosphorus, cluster, DU....
Today in Iraq, every city has become a massive ghetto. Baghdad, Falluja, Ramadi, Mosul, Haditha,etc...
Today in Iraq, there are mass concentration, rape and torture camps.
Today in Iraq there are 3.7 million refugees seeking shelter outside.
Today in Iraq, there are 700'000 plus dead since 2003, add to this figure 260'000 children. Today in Iraq, there is no aspirin, no food, no water, no electricity, no nothing....
Today in Iraq people, are persecuted for their name tags.
Today in Iraq, there are no more universities or schools.
Today in Iraq, people have stopped selling their organs and are selling their kids instead......

Palestine, Bosnia, Iraq have one common denominator...I leave it to your intelligence to guess what it is ....


Never again ? Yes sure thing ...Bring on the UN General Assembly and the lamenting violins for me now ...
I, personally hold the International Community and the United Nations responsible for Crimes against Humanity as they are happening today in Iraq. I hold the United Nations responsible for a holocaust. I hold it and all other silent ones, apathetic, indifferent,complacent ones, responsible for this Holocaust , today, in the day of "Rememberance and Beyond."
Never again ?....."

Report suggest that ‘US defensive ring’ may be new front in war on terror

"President Bush is preparing to attack Iran's nuclear facilities before the end of April and the US Air Force's new bases in Bulgaria and Romania would be used as back-up in the onslaught, according to an official report from Sofia.

"American forces could be using their two USAF bases in Bulgaria and one at Romania's Black Sea coast to launch an attack on Iran in April," the Bulgarian news agency Novinite said......

Sofia's news of advanced war preparations along the Black Sea is backed up by some chilling details. One is the setting up of new refuelling places for US Stealth bombers, which would spearhead an attack on Iran. "The USAF's positioning of vital refuelling facilities for its B-2 bombers in unusual places, including Bulgaria, falls within the perspective of such an attack." Novinite named Colonel Sam Gardiner, "a US secret service officer stationed in Bulgaria", as the source of this revelation.....

Before the end of March, 3000 US military personnel are scheduled to arrive "on a rotating basis" at America's Bulgarian bases. Under the US-Bulgarian military co-operation accord, signed in April,2006,an airbase at Bezmer, a second airfield at Graf Ignitievo and a shooting range at Novo Selo were leased to America. Significantly, last year's bases negotiations had at one point run into difficulties due to Sofia's demand "for advance warning if Washington intends to use Bulgarian soil for attacks against other nations, particularly Iran".

Romania, the other Black Sea host to th US military, is enjoying a dollar bonanza as its Mihail Kogalniceanu base at Constanta is being transformed into an American "place d'arme". It is also vital to the Iran scenario.

Last week, the Bucharest daily Evenimentual Zilei revealed the USAF is to site several flights of F-l5, F-l6 and Al0 aircraft at the Kogalniceanubase. Admiral Gheorghe Marin, Romania's chief of staff, confirmed "up to 2000 American military personnel will be temporarily stationed in Romania"....."

"Fernando Botero must number among the most famous painters alive....

But Botero, 74, took everyone by surprise when he devoted a series of drawings and paintings to the torture of Iraqi prisoners by American security personnel at Abu Ghraib detention center, west of Baghdad.

UC Berkeley, through its Center for Latin American Studies, has brought many of Botero's Abu Ghraib pictures to the West Coast for the first time for a show, opening today in the university's Doe Library.

The artist never expected the work to achieve the notoriety it has.....

"The whole world and myself were very shocked that the Americans were torturing prisoners in the same prison as the tyrant they came to remove," he said. "The United States presents itself as a defender of human rights and of course as an artist I was very shocked with this and angry. The more I read, the more I was motivated. ... I think Seymour Hersh's article was the first one I read. I was on a plane and I took a pencil and paper and started drawing. Then I got to my studio and continued with oil paintings. I studied all the material I could. It didn't make sense to copy, I was just trying to visualize what was really happening there."

In all, he produced 87 drawings and paintings on the subject.

His New York gallery, which presented the Abu Ghraib work for the first time in the United States, received some hate mail for its trouble, some visitors evidently perceiving the work as anti-American.

"Anti-American it's not," Botero said emphatically. "Anti-brutality, anti-inhumanity, yes...."

"They are absolutely not for sale," he said.

Instead, he has offered to give them to any museum that will commit to keeping some of them on view at all times. Perhaps that, as much as their content, has led to occasional imputations of anti-American sentiments.

"I already have an offer from Germany," Botero said, "from the Kunsthalle Würth, near Stuttgart. But I think they should be here" -- in the United States -- "or in Baghdad. My hope is that they will not disappear into some museum's storage."....

"Art is important," Botero said, "because when people start to forget, art reminds them what happened. Like 'Guernica.' People would not remember the tragedy of Guernica today if it were not for that painting.".....

Partly as a consequence of Berkeley's interest, the Katzen Arts Center at American University in Washington will show the entire Abu Ghraib series later this year."

"Nazareth - Former Israeli deputy minister has announced Sunday that the IOF troops seriously mull launching a full-scale military invasion into the Gaza Strip purposely to kill leaders and destroy institutions of Hamas Movement there.

The Hebrew radio quoted General Ze’eve Boim, the former Israeli deputy war minister, as saying “If Hamas succeeded in knocking down Fatah in Gaza Strip, the IOF troops will, without hesitation, invade the Strip again”.

Boim’s remarks came at the sideline of an Israeli cabinet session Sunday.

The Israeli war general alleged that the planned Israeli invasion to the Strip means to prevent the transformation of Gaza Strip into new south Lebanon, and would allow Israel to control the Salahuddin axis in southern Gaza Strip to stop money and arms “smuggling” through Egypt.

In his statement, Boim hinted that the mutiny trend in Fatah led by Mohammed Dahalan was “carrying out a war against Hamas in Gaza Strip on behalf of the IOF troops”.

According to Israeli military sources, the Israeli occupation government pledged to provide Dahalan all the protection he needs, including using Israeli air force among other means, in case of serious Hamas threat against him.

During the past few weeks, the Israeli occupation government allowed more weapon supplies to PA security forces loyal to PA chief Mahmoud Abbas, especially after the latter put PA security forces loyal to him under Dahalan’s command.

Well-informed sources revealed that Dahalan’s mutiny trend in Fatah started execution of its part of the American conspiracy against the Palestinian national project, which was unveiled by former MI6 intelligence officer Alistair Crooke.

According to the British officer, the American scheme was run by William Abrams, the assistant of the US national security advisor with the aim to topple the current Hamas-led PA government through civil war.

Sources close to Dahalan have secretly revealed that he ordered his followers in the PA security apparatuses to inflame Palestinian internal front anew just few days before the national dialogue on unity government starts in Gaza city, especially that he rejected all pressures exerted on Abbas to accept unity government with Hamas.

Dahalan, moreover, is known for his public threats to any Fatah leader who considers joining any Hamas-led PA national coalition government.

He played a significant role in foiling an Egypt-sponsored prisoners’ swap deal between Israel on the one hand, and captors of IOF serviceman Gilad Shalit on the other hand, as he pledged to Israel to work for the release of Shalit in return for nothing.

Fawzi Barhoum, the spokesman of Hamas in Gaza Strip, asserted that Dahalan was implementing a US and Israeli-designed conspiracy that aims at dismantling the infrastructure of the Palestinian resistance, recognizing the Hebrew state, and accepting a Palestinian state with temporary borders that would bury the Palestinian question forever.

Armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, meanwhile, warned that the mutiny trend in Fatah faction was conniving to drag PA security apparatuses into the marsh of civil war and bloodbaths, urging elements and leaders of those apparatuses to resist any attempt in this regard.

The armed wing, furthermore, underlined that it had never started any of the bloody incidents in Gaza Strip, and that it was always at the defense position, stressing that it will not allow American and Israeli projects in Palestine to succeed.

“We will not allow US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice to steer the Palestinian national affairs; and we shall not remain arms folded towards the crimes committed at the hands of USA and Israel agents in the Palestinian arena”, the armed wing affirmed in a statement it issued and a copy of which was faxed to the PIC."

Shi'ite Muslims flagellate themselves during a Moharram procession in Multan January 29, 2007. Devout Shi'ites commemorate the suffering of Imam Hussein, prophet Mohammed's grandson, who was killed in battle near the Iraqi city of Kerbala in 680 A.D. REUTERS/Asim Tanveer (PAKISTAN)


Shi'ite Muslims flagellate themselves during the Moharram procession in Islamabad, January 29, 2007. Devout Shi'ites commemorate the suffering of Imam Hussein, prophet Mohammed's grandson, who was killed in battle near the Iraqi city of Kerbala in 680 A.D. REUTERS/Faisal Mahmood (PAKISTAN)


Shi'ite mourners flagellate themselves during a Moharram procession in Lahore January 29, 2007. Devout Shi'ites commemorate the suffering of Imam Hussein, prophet Mohammed's grandson, who was killed in battle near the Iraqi city of Kerbala in 680 A.D. REUTERS/Mohsin Raza (PAKISTAN)

Democracy Now!
With Amy Goodman

"Anti-war protesters filled the streets of Washington on Saturday in one of the largest protests since the invasion of Iraq. Veterans and military families joined lawmakers, peace groups and celebrities to urge Congress and President Bush to bring the troops home now. Protest organizers United For Peace and Justice estimated 500,000 took part in the demonstration. In California, smaller rallies were held in San Francisco, Los Angeles and Sacramento. In Washington, marchers converged on the National Mall for a two-hour rally. The crowd included people who came on 300 buses from 40 states.

* Voices of protesters from around the country

* Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), co-founder of the Out of Iraq caucus

* Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-CA), co-founder of the Out of Iraq caucus. In January 2005, she became the first member of Congress to call for a withdrawal from Iraq.

* Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chair of House Judiciary Committee

* Garrett Reppenhagen, Iraq Veterans Against the War

* Navy Seaman Jonathan Hutto, co-founder of the Appeal for Redress

* Brenda Hervey, Military Families Speak Out

* Bob Watada, father of 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to refuse deployment to Iraq.

* Jesselyn Radack, former Justice Department Official"

To Watch, Listen Or Read The Transcript, Click Here

Globalization And The Davos Spectacle

The question is:

Do you expect a Palestinian civil war?

With more than 1,500 responding so far, here is the breakdown:

Yes........33%

No.........67%

By Chris Hedges

"......The warning, given 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and television evangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts toward taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. This call for fundamentalists and evangelicals to take political power was a radical and ominous mutation of traditional Christianity. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of the Bible.......

The radical Christian right, calling for a “Christian state”—where whole segments of American society, from gays and lesbians to liberals to immigrants to artists to intellectuals, will have no legitimacy and be reduced, at best, to second-class citizens—awaits a crisis, an economic meltdown, another catastrophic terrorist strike or a series of environmental disasters. A period of instability will permit them to push through their radical agenda, one that will be sold to a frightened American public as a return to security and law and order, as well as moral purity and prosperity. This movement—the most dangerous mass movement in American history—will not be blunted until the growing social and economic inequities that blight this nation are addressed, until tens of millions of Americans, now locked in hermetic systems of indoctrination through Christian television and radio, as well as Christian schools, are reincorporated into American society and given a future, one with hope, adequate wages, job security and generous federal and state assistance. The unchecked rape of America, which continues with the blessing of both political parties, heralds not only the empowerment of this American oligarchy but the eventual death of the democratic state and birth of American fascism."

The Mahdi Gang Left Its Calling Card, In The Form Of Mortar Shells, At This Girls' School In Baghdad. Four Students Were Killed And 21 Wounded.

Kissing Israeli Butt At Davos; This Is His Job.

By Kurt Nimmo

"According to Efraim Halevy, former Mossad boss, we are astride World War Three, or as the neocons call it, World War Four, and don’t know it.

“The world does not understand. A person walks through the streets of Tel Aviv, Barcelona or Buenos Aires and doesn’t get the sense that there is a war going on,” Halevy told Yedioth Internet.

Of course, this is because the supposed world war, as hyped by neocons and Israeli Likudniks, is primarily a crass propaganda contrivance, not an actual war—except for Iraqis, Palestinians, Lebanese, and soon enough Iranians.

“During World War I and II the entire world felt there was a war. Today no one is conscious of it. From time to time there is a terrorist attack in Madrid, London and New York and then everything stays the same,” Halevy continues.

Obviously, this state of affairs, this ability to ignore wars in faraway lands, is unacceptable, as peace at home usually infuriates warmongers and psychopaths. In order to violently jerk people out of their slumber, “Islamic militants” will need accomplish a “nuclear strike” in one of the above mentioned cities, never mind said extremists are not in possession of nuclear weapons and, if the experience of Iran is any indication, they won’t for many years to come........

But anyway, Efraim Halevy’s curious observation that we are walking around, oblivious to Word War Four, is yet another indication the Zionist war drums are beating more furiously as the crosshairs are drawn on Iran, even though most of us cannot hear them. Such cheesy propaganda, designed to scare old ladies and sickly children, will increase in ferocity, especially now that Iran will cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency, a turn that has thrown a bucket of cold water on the drive to attack Iran.

Expect more fantasies and hysteria straight ahead."

PA source: Abbas security aides amassing arms to bolster forces

By Reuters

"Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's security advisers have been amassing weapons in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to build up a wider range of forces than just the presidential guard, Palestinian security sources said.

The sources said several thousand assault rifles and other weapons have been set aside in storehouses for members of Preventive Security and other services that are dominated by Abbas's Fatah faction and are locked in an increasingly violent power struggle with the ruling Hamas movement.

Previous arms shipments were earmarked solely for Abbas's presidential guard with U.S. and Israeli backing. Up to $170 million, including U.S. funds and Palestinian tax revenues released by Israel, will provide training, equipment and other support to the guard, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.

Palestinian sources did not disclose the source of the weapons or when they arrived in the Palestinian territories.

The Palestinian security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Abbas has yet to authorize distribution of the assault rifles in storage to the other security forces.

But Hamas officials say forces loyal to Abbas appeared to be better equipped during clashes over the weekend across the Gaza Strip, which killed at least 24 people. In most previous flare-ups, Fatah suffered heavier losses than Hamas......

The senior Palestinian security sources said between 3,900 and 4,900 Kalashnikovs and M-16 rifles and other weapons were being stored in the West Bank city of Jericho and in Gaza for Preventive Security as well as Abbas's National Security and General Intelligence services.

Several previous shipments of guns, ammunition and other lethal equipment were delivered to Abbas's presidential guard from U.S. allies Egypt and Jordan with Israeli permission.

A senior Israeli official said Israel was unaware of any weapons going to forces beyond the presidential guard.

Of the $100 million in Palestinian tax revenues that Israel transferred to Abbas's office earlier this month, $85 million will go towards a U.S.-led program to bolster the guard, said Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Washington plans to use $86 million of its own money in coming months to provide the presidential guard with training and non-lethal equipment, officials said......

With U.S. support in the coming months, Abbas's presidential guard is expected to expand from 4,000 to 4,700 men. Palestinian officials say the force could eventually grow to 10,000 members.

Preventive Security and Abbas's General Intelligence service have about 6,000 members each. The National Security forces have up to 40,000 members in total.

The United States and Israel have also backed a proposal by Abbas to let about 1,000 members of the so-called Badr Brigade, a Fatah-dominated force based in Jordan, into the Palestinian territories, though no date has been set."

by Eric Margolis
The Toronto Sun

"Presidential State of the Union addresses often strike me as embarrassing spectacles of imperial pomp and crass jingoism unworthy of the great American republic.

They often recall Chairman Leonid Brezhnev's turgid orations to the Soviet Politburo. Watching senators and congressmen jump to their feet at every presidential cliche and applaud like clapping seals cheapens what should be a dignified event. President George W. Bush's address this week was far more sombre and subdued than his previous "bring 'em on" gasconades. He looked relaxed and confident in spite of the air of "fin de regime" hanging over Washington.

However, a new poll shows most Americans now believe Congress, not the president, should manage foreign policy. This is a remarkable sea change.

Following Bush's address, the Senate's foreign relations committee politely rebuked Bush's plans to send more troops to Iraq. A similar non-binding resolution from the full Democratic-controlled Congress is expected next week. But the real power behind Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, immediately sneered back, "it won't stop us." His contemptuous retort illustrates the neo-totalitarian impulses that continue to grip the Republican party's far right. Cheney and a cabal of pro-war neoconservatives are the prime exponents of imperial presidency.

They dismiss Congress and the courts as "little jabber houses," to paraphrase British imperialist, Sir Basil Zaharoff.

The stage is now set for what could become a major constitutional crisis between executive and legislative branches.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the president, like Rome's consuls, is military leader and holds primacy in foreign policy. Congress declares war, controls purse strings, levies troops, and confirms treaties. The constitution is vague about congressional power in foreign affairs. But, at minimum, Congress speaks for all Americans, particularly in wartime, and must not be ignored.

Bush's last term marks the zenith of the long growth of the imperial presidency and decline of congressional authority. The 9-11 attacks and a docile Republican majority dominated by southern rustics and holy rollers turned Congress into a rubber stamp for Bush's policies. Most of the members of Congress have demonstrated political cowardice, moral failure and gross dereliction of their duty to defend the constitution, the nation's laws, and citizen's rights.

Hillary Clinton and fellow Democrats who now piously denounce the Iraq war eagerly voted for it in 2003 out of sheer ignorance or fear of being branded "anti-patriotic" by Republicans. In 2008, American voters will hopefully censure those legislators who voted for this faked, totally unnecessary war, and approved the administration's growing use of torture, kidnapping, and secret prisons. Never, in my memory, has Congress brought so much shame on itself, nor sunk so low.

Congress is now belatedly trying to assert itself. But its so-far timid pleadings are wrong. The constitution declares Congress the premier arm of government. It is Congress's duty to demand President Bush and VP Cheney, who have gone dangerously astray, to cease and desist. Cheney's views notwithstanding, America is not an autocracy, and he is not Richelieu.

White House defenders claim Congress had no constitutional right to interfere in the detailed conduct of war. Not so. The essence of America's political system that has been a beacon to the world for two centuries is the remarkable system of checks and balances conceived by its founding fathers to prevent the emergence of an autocrat, despot, or monarch. It is precisely Congress's duty to stop a president and vice-president who have lost touch with reality, violated the constitution, and are taking America over a cliff. Congress must cease its timidity and stop entreating the president as if he were king. He is only chief executive of the republic, one man among many. Congress is the board of directors. The president, in spite of his supporter's efforts, is not the sacrosanct embodiment of America; that role belongs to Congress.

At a time when America is reeling in defeat, and plunged in deepening confusion, Congress must roar, not whimper.

Look At These Thugs With Brand New U.S. Weapons; They Never Resist The IOF:
Armed Palestinian militants from Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades kidnap Fayyad al Arba, a local Hamas leader, center, in the West Bank town of Nablus, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2007. The Palestinian militants allied to President Mahmoud Abbas marched into a downtown bank Sunday and snatched al Arbaa in front of news crews and startled tellers. (AP)


Masked Palestinian militants from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of President Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah movement, stand guard next to local Hamas leader Fayad al Aghbar (R) after he was kidnapped in the West Bank city of Nablus January 28, 2007. In the West Bank city of Nablus, a Hamas city councillor was abducted as he left a bank, witnesses said. Gunfire broke out but no injuries were reported. The Fatah-linked Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for his capture. REUTERS


Palestinians lay on the ground, pretending to be dead, during a demonstration calling for an end to Fatah-Hamas factional fighting, in the center of the West Bank city of Ramallah, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2007.(AP)

By Tony Karon

"The bad news for the “1938″ crowd — the bomb-Iran alarmists led by Benjamin “Newt”-anyahu (who seems to have learned from Gingrich that a discredited crank can still get headlines by yelling “the sky is falling and nobody is doing anything about it”) and the Washington neocons, is that Iran is refusing to play the “clear and present danger.” Indeed, if things carry on this way, it’s going to get a lot harder to make a case for war.

Then again, as we know from Iraq, a war doesn’t really need a case. The Washington Post reports that the U.S. has already launched a dirty war against Iran inside Iraq, giving its troops license to execute Iranian operatives there. And, not surprisingly, two of the Administration officials quoted in the story compare Iran to Nazi Germany. The neocons and the Likud demagogues clearly see this as their most potent rhetorical tool — a connection made in the public’s mind by connecting it with the foolish antics of Iran’s own populist demagogue President Mahmoud Ahmedinajad.......

The irony is that while the Administration’s most discredited hawks will try, however improbably, to suggest that Iranian “meddling” is the reason for Washington’s failure in Iraq, the reality may be that U.S. efforts to confront Iran on Iraqi soil, against the wishes of the majority of Iraqi leaders, may actually hasten the demise of the U.S. project in Baghdad."

DEBKAfile Exclusive: Fatah is willing to sustain 200 to 500 dead to prevail over Hamas in Gaza, Hamas Damascus-based leader Khaled Meshaal is warned

January 27, 2007, 1:29 PM (GMT+02:00)

Mahmoud Abbas’ close associate, the Palestinian-Kurdish tycoon Mohammed Rashid, flew into Damascus Saturday night, Jan 27, with an ultimatum for Meshaal. During the day, Palestinian casualties from Hamas-Fatah factional battles rose to 25 with dozens of wounded. Rashid told the Hamas leader that this was his last chance for a ceasefire. If he agreed, Abbas would return to the negotiating table and go back to the proposals they had discussed when they met in Damascus last week. If not, his Fatah forces were ready to sustain up to 500 dead to win control of Gaza. Abbas lieutenant Mohammed Dahlan is commanding the Fatah side.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Saturday both factions turned their guns on each other’s senior commanders. Fatah death squads stormed Hamas mosques, seized and executed three officers of Hamas’ special units. Hamas reciprocated by eliminating Fatah commanders.

By Uri Avnery

""If Arafat were Alive…"

"IF ARAFAT were alive…" one hears this phrase increasingly often in conversations with Palestinians, and also with Israelis and foreigners.

"If Arafat were alive, what's happening now in Gaza wouldn't be happening…" - "If Arafat were alive, we would have somebody to talk with…" - "If Arafat were alive, Islamic fundamentalism would not have won among the Palestinians and would have lost some force in the neighboring countries!"

In the meantime, the unanswered questions come up again: How did Yasser Arafat die? Was he murdered? If so, who murdered him?

On the way back from Arafat's funeral in 2004, I ran into Jamal Zahalka, a member of the Knesset. I asked him if he believed that Arafat was murdered. Zahalka, a doctor of pharmacology, answered "Yes!" without hesitation. That was my feeling, too. But a hunch is not proof. It is only a product of intuition, common sense and experience.

Recently we got a kind of confirmation. Just before he died, Uri Dan, who had been Ariel Sharon's loyal mouthpiece for almost 50 years, published a book in France. It includes a report of a conversation Sharon told him about, with President (George W.) Bush. Sharon asked for permission to kill Arafat and Bush gave it to him, with the proviso that it must be done undetectably. When Dan asked Sharon whether it had been carried out, Sharon answered: "It's better not to talk about that." Dan took this as confirmation.

The secret services of many countries have poisons that are all but undetectable. The Mossad tried to kill Khaled Mashal, the Hamas leader, in broad daylight on a main Amman thoroughfare. He was saved only when the Israeli government was compelled to provide the antidote to the poison it had used......

IF ARAFAT were alive, there would be a clear address for negotiations with the Palestinian people........

Dialog? With whom? No use to talk with Mahmoud Abbas, because he is unable to impose his will on the Palestinian people. He is no second Arafat. He has no power. And we couldn't possibly talk with the Hamas government, because it belongs to Bush's "axis of evil". So what do you want, Condi dear?

Tsipi Livni, Condi's new buddy, goes further: at the convocation of the billionaires' cabal in Davos she warned Abbas publicly not to strike a "compromise with terrorists". A timely warning. Desperate to create a credible Palestinian address, Abbas had just flown to Damascus to meet Mashal. Thus, by the way, he has admitted publicly that nothing can be done without the Hamas leader, who has become a kind of Palestinian super-president.

Livni recognized the danger at once and rushed to torpedo the mission. No dialog with a Palestinian unity government, much as there is no dialog with Abbas or Hamas. That Ok, Condi honey?

IF ONE wants to see real joy, one has only to look at the faces of Israeli correspondents who appear every evening on television to report on events in Lebanon......

"When two quarrel, the third laughs," as the proverb goes. When an Arab hits an Arab - whether in Baghdad, Gaza or Beirut - the government of Israel and its commentators in the media are glowing. That has been a dominant theme in Israeli thought since the founding of the state, and even before: when Arabs are fighting each other, that is good for us......

IF - "IF" in capital letters - the government of Israel desired peace, it would adopt the opposite strategy.....

Nowadays that is more evident than ever. Bush and his henchmen and henchwomen are trying to set up a pro-American bloc consisting of Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Abbas and Siniora. On the opposite side there is the "axis of evil" consisting of Iran, Syria, Hizbullah and Hamas.

The leaders of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia are paying lip service to the Palestinian cause, but are quite ready to sell it out in return for suitably lavish American aid. The Israeli government is honored to find itself in the company of the three eminent democrats - President Husni Mubarak and the two Kings Abdallah......

There is no chance of making peace with Mahmoud Abbas, nor would it have any value, without the full support of Hamas. But even a Fatah-Hamas partnership would not be broad enough to ensure a peaceful future for Israel. It would need the support of the whole Arab world......

Therefore, if one wants peace, one will not rejoice in face of the bloodshed in Gaza and the Lebanon. We have nothing to laugh about when Arab hits Arab. Woe to such laughter.

And, of course, if Arafat were alive, everything would be much, much easier. "

The Man Without Doubt

In a rare print interview, Dick Cheney talks about Iraq, Iran, Chuck Hagel, his image as 'Darth Vader' and Bob Woodward.

Urban fighting amid the ruins
By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Published: 28 January 2007

".....But the failings of this strategy become more obvious the further one gets from Washington and the closer to Baghdad. The insurgents and militiamen, both Sunni and Shia, usually have more credibility in their districts than Iraqi government forces. As for the heavily Shia police commandos, they are seen by Sunni in Baghdad as licensed death squads.

A foretaste of what the "surge" of US and Iraqi soldiers will mean came last week, as they fought their way into the tough Sunni insurgent-controlled Haifa Street neighbourhood, only a mile from the Green Zone. Iraqi soldiers happily let US forces take the lead, and a US long-range missile demolished a house from which snipers were allegedly firing. The readiness of the Americans to use such heavy weapons in densely-populated urban areas ensures that many civilians have been, and will be, killed and wounded.

The Iraqi government forces are either highly sectarian or will not fight. The insurgents and militias are strong because they provide the security the government does not, and Baghdad has already broken up into several dozen hostile townships, each defended by its own militia. There are fewer and fewer mixed districts; Shia caught in Sunni areas are killed, and vice versa. Strangers are viewed with suspicion, and there are signs everywhere, saying "Death to Spies".

The American troops may be seen as temporary allies by either side, but are also blamed for the lethal anarchy. Some 61 per cent of Iraqis, a majority of both Sunni and Shia, approve of armed attacks on US forces......."

Uncle Sam: Let us rest for now, THEY are carrying on just fine.
By Hamid Najib.

I apologize to our visitors who do not read Arabic for posting these two important short articles. Since they were freshly released, an English version does not exist as of now. I will post the English version as soon as it is available.

المخطط ينفّذ بالمال الأمريكي والسلاح الصهيوني
دحلان ينفّذ نصيبه من خطة "ابرامز" الأمريكية بإشعال حرب أهلية لإسقاط الحكومة

"غزة - المركز الفلسطيني للإعلام

تنفيذاً للمخطط الأمريكي، الذي كشف عنه مؤخراً ضابط الاستخبارات البريطاني الستر كروك؛ كشفت مصادر مطلعة أن التيار الانقلابي في حركة "فتح"، والذي يعتبر محمد دحلان أحد قادته البارزين، بدأ بتنفيذ دوره في الشق المتعلق بالخطة.

وبحسب كروك؛ فإن هذا المخطط يديره وليام ابرامز مساعد مستشار الأمن القومي الأمريكي، ويستهدف إسقاط الحكومة الفلسطينية، التي تقودها حركة المقاومة الإسلامية "حماس"، من خلال إشعال حرب أهلية.

وسرّبت مصادر مقربة من النائب محمد دحلان أنه أوعز لأتباعه في جميع الأجهزة الأمنية بضرورة توتير الساحة الداخلية، قبيل أيام عن قرب الاتفاق على حكومة الوحدة الوطنية، مؤكدة أن دحلان عبّر عن بالغ رفضه لجميع "الضغوط"، التي مورست على رئيس السلطة محمود عباس، للقبول بحكومة الوحدة الوطنية.

وذكرت المصادر ذاتها أن دحلان قد أمر باستخدام كافة السبل، وأمر بالبدء في استخدام جميع الأسلحة، التي تم إدخالها خلال الأسابيع الأخيرة لتعزيز قوات الرئاسة الفلسطينية، وفي مختلف المناطق والأماكن، من أجل الدخول في صراعات داخلية، لتعطيل لقاءات تشكيل حكومة الوحدة الوطنية، التي بدأت وسط أجواء التفاؤل، وكذلك لإعادة الاعتبار لحركة فتح، من خلال إراقة كثير من دماء قادة وكوادر حركة حماس، ومزيداً من القتلى في صفوف القوة التنفيذية وكتائب القسام.

وكان دحلان، الذي أسندت إليه المسؤولية عن الأجهزة الأمنية الفلسطينية، من قبل رئيس السلطة، قد هدد أي شخصية من حركة "فتح" تدخل إلى حكومة تقودها حركة "حماس"، وهذا الكلام مسجل عليه صوتياً.

ويؤكد المراقبون أن دحلان "يعلم أن أي إنسان غير شريف لا يمكن أن تقبله حماس، لذلك فهو يريد أن يعزل حماس، ويعزل تيار فتح الشريف، تمهيداً لإسقاط حركة "حماس"، وإفشال حكومة الوحدة الوطنية".

ونوهوا إلى أن دحلان، القيادي في "فتح"، بدأ يستقطب إلى تياره الانقلابي، بالسلاح والمال، بعض القيادات من فتح، وأنه يسعى إلى السيطرة على الحكومات القادمة بالمال الأمريكي وبقوة السلاح الصهيوني.

وقد سقط أكثر من 24 قتيلاً وعشرات الجرحى في سلسلة اشتباكات وقعت خلال اليومين الماضيين، إثر إقدام عناصر من التيار الانقلابي داخل حركة فتح على إعادةَ التوتر بالأراضي الفلسطينية.

وجاءت هذه التطورات بسبب تصعيد أتباع التيار الانقلابي في فتح، والذي بدأ بتفجير سيارة جيب تقلُّ عددًا من أعضاء القوة التنفيذية، التابعة لوزارة الداخلية؛ مما أسفر عن مقتل اثنين من أفرادها، وهو ما تلاه إطلاق نار من جانب المتورِّطين في الجريمة، أثناء محاولة اعتقالهم، استهدف سيارة الإذاعة التابعة لحركة "حماس"، وكذلك إطلاق النار على مسجد الهداية في غزة، وقتل ثلاثة من المصلين وأحد الأطفال الرضَّع.

واتهمت حركة "حماس" في بيان لها حول الأزمة التيار الانقلابي داخل فتح بالعمل على تصعيد التوترات الفلسطينية؛ بهدف "إشعال نار حرب أهلية مدمرة، وتخريب الوضع الفلسطيني بشكل تام، والعمل على جرِّ حركة حماس إلى معركة دموية شاملة".

جدير ذكره أن دحلان كان ضالعاً في مؤامرة إفشال صفقة تبادل الأسرى بين فصائل المقاومة الفلسطينية الآسرة للجندي والاحتلال الصهيوني، التي تسير بوساطة وجهود مصرية، حيث تكفّل للاحتلال بتكثيف تحركاته الاستخبارية لمعرفة مكان الجندي الأسير، للإفراج عنه، دون الإفراج عن أي أسي